“You don’t know these people, but I do.”
“You aren’t one of them.”
“I’ve touched their minds, poppa,” she said, slipping a bit.
“You haven’t called me poppa since you were a little girl,” said Sato. For a moment he smiled.
“Listen, poppa. They don’t think like we do, they don’t feel the pain of others. They kill men the off-handed way that farmboys kill gophers.”
For once, Sato had nothing to say. Tamara reached out and closed her soft fingers over the rough skin of his hand. “They will try to kill you now, too. I know it.”
Sato was silent for a long time. Tamara, sharing his feelings intensely now that they were in physical contact, felt like weeping for him. She felt his sense of loss, of failure to her. She followed his thoughts for a time while he remembered her as his daughter. Had he not programmed much of her genetic structure? Had he not raised her, taught her his values? To not be able to help and protect her, much less himself, was difficult for him to accept. He felt old and useless.
“So, what do we do?” he asked her.
“I’m through running,” she said. Anger had begun to burn in her again, the way it had when she had felt the children in pain. Their bodies had burned on drugs, hearts beating unnaturally fast, breath hitching from their lungs. Nervous uncontrollable energy, flushed cheeks, small bright eyes surrounded by gray skin. She remembered the children.
“I will protect you, father. I can use my mind in the horrible ways that I did before. I will reach inside them and twist,” Tamara said, thinking of the things she had done to the first pushers, the ones that gladly sold blur crystals and other synthetic drugs to her second-graders. Used just the right way, her thoughts had snapped their minds like dry twigs, the way an arm or finger could be snapped by a professional.
“Before the assassins come again, I must go after them.”
Like Saint Bernard dogs that are over-bred and turn mean, the giants were genetic extremes. They had been developed for size, strength and speed only, with no regard to their mental tendencies. Quick reflexes and stamina had been lifted to their maximums, while reasoning and emotional elements had been left up to the idle whim of chance. As a result, most of them were mentally unbalanced to some degree, and nearly all of them had the capacity for a killer rage buried down deep in their genes somewhere.
When Tamara finally found the giant that had stalked her relentlessly the night before, evening had fallen once again. She found him in a nightclub downtown, a club where men and women with carefully trimmed pubic hair pranced in G-strings on a dirty stage. The glaring words LIVE SEX SHOW blinked and spun in holographic splendor over the street outside the place, switching from English to Spanish, then back again. A bum in a torn sweater and ancient blue jeans sat near the entrance, begging patrons for money or a drink. He alternately received gifts, showers of alcoholic saliva and swift kicks to the legs and chest. Whichever, he muttered gracias to everyone, even those who ignored him completely.
Inside, she found the giant at the bar, covering two stools with one leg thrown out in a leisurely fashion. Although the place was packed, he also had the immediate stools to either side free, as people tended to give giants plenty of space, even more than they needed. He hunched over a two-liter mug of draft beer, favoring his drink over the slightly overweight hooker who was doing her best to attract his attentions.
Drawing in a breath and swallowing her fear like a sharp object, Tamara walked up to the giant and touched the back of his massive hand. He turned to look down at her, and she watched with her perceptions in fascination. It was as if a statue had come to life at her touch. He looked down at her and recognition flickered across his mind. She was counting on surprise and hesitation here, and also on his supreme self-confidence. With his quick reflexes and incredible strength, he could have crushed her instantly, killing her on the spot and then fleeing the scene. But she had known a few giants, and knew that many of them were convinced of their own invulnerability.
So, when he faced her, she maintained physical contacted and mentally she gave him a shove. A very hard shove, which ran a hot bolt of pain through her head. Instead of turning into a zombie as she had expected however, she felt that his mind had merely become more suggestible, as if she had just given him a very persuasive argument when he was in a receptive mood. For a flash she almost panicked. She had given him her best shot, figuring that the difficulty she had experienced with his mind earlier had been due to the drug blur, but apparently it also had to do with his mental abilities as a giant. She had planned to simply order him outside like a robot, but instead she had to come up with something more clever. And quickly, before the effect wore off.
She did the only thing she could think of. She made him think that she was someone else. Not Tamara at all, not the girl he had been paid to kill. She dredged up the image of another girl, one she had picked up from the minds of the eighth grade boys she had taught algebra to. It was the face of a popular anchorwoman on television. Suddenly, she had blue eyes that opened, blonde hair and soft red lips.
“Would you like some company?” she heard herself ask.
His reaction for a moment convinced her that her mental shove had failed utterly. He opened her coat, brushing her breasts with fingers thick as flashlights. She shrank back reflexively while he frankly examined her body beneath. She wore a cotton jumper that did nothing to accentuate her charms, but neither did it hide the fact that she had an attractive figure.
“Sure,” he said, closing her coat again with a gentleness that belied his size. He pulled his leg off the stool to his right and ordered her a drink. Tamara climbed up on the stool, wondering what to do next. She barely noticed the hooker who thumbed her large nose at her back. After a few more drinks, Tamara suggested that they leave together, and the giant, whose name was James Billings, agreed.
They walked out into the cooling, but still humid, night air. James had to stoop down and turn sideways to get out of the door. No one had questioned his picking up a blind girl. No one had dared.
Outside it had rained. The streets were black and reflected the city lights like wavery mirrors. Storm drains gurgled and beads of water reflected like thousands of eyes off the windshields of the cars they passed. Tamara saw this through James’ eyes, she was holding his hand and understood how to move through the giant’s mind better now.
Somehow, Tamara started feeling sorry for James. He had been a victim of the same experiments that had left her sightless and- different. She felt the loneliness and alienation in him, a man but not a man. Alternately feared, hated and idolized, he was an outcast in the midst of human society. She knew that these feelings were partly due to her natural empathy with anyone she was around. She always started seeing things their way, understanding their point of view. Despite that, she still sensed that he was like her, a monster that no one really knew what to do with. Tolerated, but with poor grace.
When they reached his hotel room, she knew that she had to gain some control over him. His elemental force of personality matched his physical prowess, and he was by no means subtle. He was also becoming increasingly drunk.
“You know, Sarah,” he said, pouring her yet another drink which she would have to pour away into the bathroom sink or the planter.