In Conquest Born, page 46
Now there was only one thing left to do, and then she would be free. Letting her mind reach forth from its bonds, leaning on the nearest panel for physical support, she sent out a bolt of mind-force to the station, focused on the most receptive man within. In an instant she tapped his vision and knew where he was, and where she wanted him to be. The attack was so sudden that by the time he had ascertained its existence he was entirely overwhelmed by it; a mental convulsion so powerful that it blotted out his consciousness and threw him violently against the far wall, jamming his arm into a line of controls—one control in particular—prepared for emergency use. Blood dribbled from his head and from the corner of his mouth and he fell. Yet still his body twitched, caught in the grip of something far stronger than he had ever been prepared to fight. Assistants ran to his side and his feet, checked where he had been standing, discussed the possibility of power leakage, and in general sought to analyze the unknown force that had struck him down. In that momentary chaos (which she deftly encouraged, even while urging the Starbird forward) no one thought that perhaps he had been thrown against one switch in particular. And by the time they did notice, it was too late.
“The field’s down!”
They brought it up again, quickly, but by then they knew their loss. One of the silver needles was gone, thrust magnificently forward by man’s finest accelerative achievement and lost forever in the darkness beyond Lurien. They reported the theft, but they knew that nothing could be done. The Starbirds had been designed to outrun anything; no one doubted that this one could do so now.
In the depths of space, freed at last from the bonds of law and servitude, the figure unfastened its bulky helmet and pulled the globe free from its moorings. Rich red hair, bloodblack and magenta, poured down her back as she laughed her triumph, and she set her course with eager fingers.
One last rendezvous with the Conqueror, to collect those who shared her dream. I’m sorry, Torzha. She turned toward the warship—no longer hers, no longer important. The true warrior will not be disarmed.
One last stop, and then freedom.
Feran tried to still his nervousness as he approached the House of Zatar. Thus his hand was almost steady as he put it to the door’s black plate, and his stride, as he passed the portal guard and walked the length of the forehall, was almost confident. But it was a sham, and the Pri’tiera would be quick to see through it. Zatar had a skill that was almost psychic—and perhaps in Feran’s case, where continued psychic contact was part of their relationship, the power might indeed be developing.
Was that possible? Might the Probe be acting as catalyst for a latent, as-yet-undiscovered talent? Feran shivered. The thought of Zatar with all the options of telepathic mastery allied to the force of his personality was a terrifying one. But even if the Pri’tiera did have the proper genetic prerequisites—which Feran half-believed, despite evidence to the contrary—it would take more than a handful of surface-mind exercises to bring them into play. It would take . . . what? A Probe’s talent, he decided, and a Probe’s willingness to rework the very foundations of thought. If it could be done at all.
B’Salos willing, no one would ever try.
As he approached Zatar’s private chambers, the feeling that had been nagging at him since he left his home became even stronger. Something was different this time. Zatar hadn’t called him here for a discussion of psychic privilege, nor to explore the limitations of that special skill. Today his concern was something else, something . . . frightening. Feran had felt it all the way from his own House, halfway across Kurat, and he tensed as he tapped on the heavy wooden door, announcing his arrival.
“Enter.”
He took his place before the Pri’tiera and knelt, as befit his station. There was a strange comfort in it.
“I have a job for you.” Zatar’s voice was cold and his surface thoughts made it clear: You won’t like this.
“I am the Pri’tiera’s servant.”
“Of course.” He waited a moment, letting the fact of their relationship sink in. “Come with me,” he said at last. “I have something to show you.”
Feran rose and followed him, into a section of the House given over to workrooms. Here was Zatar’s armory, and a room devoted to the upkeep of the building’s mechanical intelligence. Here there was a whole room full of books, real fabric-and-paper books, awaiting restoration, and fragments of primitive artwork, painstakingly preserved. Everywhere workmen labored, most of them were busy with archeological finds. Zatar’s interest in Berros was clearly paying off.
“In here.” The Pri’tiera indicated a pair of metal-and-wood doors, which slid open at their approach. Inside three men were laboring over something—a painting, perhaps?—but the natural gloss of the item’s surface, combined with the angle of the lighting, prevented Feran from making out what it was.
“Go,” Zatar told the men; they obeyed him without word, leaving the two Braxaná alone.
He closed the doors and locked them, then set the soundproofing. “This was found in the dining hall of a hunting palace, on what was once Harkur’s estate. The preservation is remarkable, given the painting’s age; we can thank the dryness of the Berros’n air for that. I’m having a molecular restoration done to save it.” He looked at the painting, then at Feran. Tension radiated from his body but his voice, as always, was steady. “Look at it, Feran.”
He approached it slowly, wondering at Zatar’s behavior. In all the time he had known him, he had never tasted tension in him as strongly as now. It was even evident in his body language, if one knew how to look—and that was unheard of. Walking along the side of the worktable, Feran sought a position that would allow him to view the glossy surface without interference from the lighting. He found it at last, by the side of the portrait, and gazed down upon a work of art which the centuries had buried.
And he trembled.
“You see,” the Pri’tiera said.
“Hasha. . . .” Feran reached out a finger to touch the ancient paint, on the section which the workmen had finished. It was real. If it was the truth. . . . “Forgery?” he managed.
“I checked. The age is right, the molecular composition of the materials, the condition of the sealed room I found it in, everything. What you see was actually created over ten millennia ago—although it was in considerably worse condition when my men first found it than it is now.” He paused. “My guess was correct, then; the alien figure in the painting is Azean.”
It took him a moment to find his voice again. “Many millennia ago, before the race was Standardized, this was what they looked like. With great variation in pigmentation, of course; that was the point of Standardization.” He looked at the figure’s warm brown skin, guessed at the secrets it had housed, and shuddered. “The structure of the face gives it away. But what I don’t understand is how this happened. There couldn’t have been contact that early. Azea had no superluminal travel before Standardization; Braxi never expanded past Lugast—”
“History is an inexact science at best. What we understood of the past was evidently inaccurate. Certainly both our peoples have reason enough to pretend that there was no peaceful contact between them.”
“This is collaborated by other sources?”
“No. There are gaps in early Braxin history; this is one of them. Harkur the Great kept notes on every alien race he encountered, but many of those were lost when the Braxaná took over. Lost on Berros when the government relocated to Braxi. Another reason to study the place.” He laughed, a bitter sound. “I seem to have gotten more than I bargained for.”
Feran read the inscription in the frame, felt himself shiver. “If the writing is accurate—”
“I’m certain it is.”
“—then she . . .” He couldn’t finish.
“Anzha lyu Mitethe is Braxin. More accurately, the mutation responsible for her odd coloring appeared among our own people in Harkur’s day, at a point when there was contact between our home planets. A contact which involved her ancestry.”
“Have you told her?”
“No.”
“But will you—”
“It’s no longer that simple, Feran.” He hesitated, and the turmoil of his mind was a moving backdrop to his words. “Anzha lyu Mitethe has deserted.”
He heard the words, but could not accept their meaning. “Deserted?”
“Left the Empire. Without a word of explanation, I gather, to anyone. Even StarControl seems stunned by her actions. That could be an act, of course, but—”
“Impossible. That she would desert—no. I can’t believe it.”
“Believe it or not, it’s happened.” And he told Feran the story as his spies had told it to him. The Conqueror had made a repair run to Lurien, and shortly afterward the Starcommander and five members of her crew had disappeared. Along with some sort of new diplomatic runner the military was working on, meant for transportation inside the Active War Zone. The connection was obvious; the list of charges soon to be leveled against her began with theft and ended with treason.
“It’s not like her,” Feran muttered, while a voice inside him argued, Yes. Very much so.
“An enemy is most dangerous when he is unpredictable.”
“But she lived for the War—”
“And politics forced her into a Peace she didn’t want. Come, Feran, surely you realized that! You were sitting there beside me—didn’t you pick it up? If she were left to her own devices, we would never have had this last Peace. And she could have worked untold damage during the Plague and afterward, had they not stopped her. How could any warrior not resent such limitations? Every day we kept our part of the treaty must have been a thorn in her palm. Until she broke. And went—where? I must know that, Feran. She’s too dangerous, loose in the galaxy. Too unpredictable. I must locate her.“
Like a worm gnawing at his insides, knowledge of Zatar’s intentions grew within him. “Pri’tiera, there’s no way—”
“You’ll find her for me.”
“It’s not possible!”
“Your Institute’s theory says it is. Distance is no barrier to telepathy—”
“—but focus is, Pri’tiera! With the whole of the galaxy to search—”
“We can narrow the field better than that, Feran. Quite a bit better. Starships move quickly, but their speed is still finite. That gives you a limited range to search.”
Fear—the old fear—overwhelmed him. “She would kill me!”
“A chance we’ll have to take. Surely you’re not afraid, Feran. Probes have tricks that mere telepaths can’t master. Or so you’ve told me. Can’t you use any of those to safeguard your own life?”
Maybe. An abstract touch, divorced from material identity, might go unnoticed. If he could find her. “Nothing like this has ever been done—”
“Then you’ll be the first.” There was anger growing within him; Feran could feel it. “Let me make this very clear. You belong to me, or you die. You will serve me—successfully—or I will kill you.”
Feran’s colorless face went even whiter. “Pri’tiera—”
“She is a threat, I must find her, you are my only available tool. Choose!”
He could feel the weight of bracelets on his arms, where imagination had affixed them. “I’ll try,” he managed. “But I don’t know that such a thing is possible—”
“If you’re incapable of serving me, the result is the same as if you had refused. It’s that simple, Probe.” He opened the doors, cutting off any response Feran might have made by terminating their privacy. The workmen reentered, dutifully uncurious.
“Report to me in the morning,” the Pri’tiera ordered. “With results.”
Feran stood on the roof of the Zarvati mansion, muscles knotted in fear, trying to work up the courage to begin. Which was the worse fate, he wondered. Failing, and facing Zatar’s wrath? Or succeeding, and facing hers? He shivered at the thought of it. But of the two, Zatar was the more immediate threat, and so he settled himself against the observatory wall and let his mind roam free of its corporeal bonds, to search the stars for life.
. . . touching violence and mining hunger, images of faceted brilliance and shining gold wealth . . . a cultural fix, nothing more. He was so unaccustomed to this type of work that it was hard for him to focus on what he was supposed to be doing. There, a mind or two standing out bright against the darkness . . . (he strained) . . . a governor, avaricious and cancer-ridden, incurable because of some cruel medical law he himself had introduced, never expecting it would backfire on him . . . a woman reaching for the stars so strongly that her need vibrated across the Void and brought tears of emptiness to the Probe’s eyes . . . a thousand others, equally outstanding; equally normal, waves in the fluid of the Voidmind that rose, submerged, and rose again elsewhere, else-when . . . and none of them her, in power or purpose.
He withdrew, exhausted. His hands were shaking and his mind was weak from the unaccustomed exertion. Where was she? What was she doing? How did one even begin such a search? He could explore the galaxy planet by planet and die of old age before he’d searched a fraction—while she, flitting from port to port, might find refuge on planets he had already searched. Should he look for hatred, vendetta-violence, frustration, or what? What aspect of her personality-signature would be most likely to stand out among the myriad semipsychic minds that filled the Void with thought?
There was a presence beside him. He touched it: Zatar. Without turning, in a voice full of bitterness, he said, “I haven’t found her yet.”
“So I gather.”
The Pri’tiera remained. Feran tried to send his questing senses out into the Void again, but years of habit kept him from doing so in front of another man. He picked up his reflection in Zatar’s mind and noticed the tears glinting like starlight on his face—the tears of an unknown woman, far off in the Void and now lost to him. He did nothing to wipe them away, or to indicate that they weren’t his; they might as well be. “I’ve gone over one of the Border territories as well as I can. Maybe I missed her. If I didn’t, I couldn’t even tell you what planets I looked over, only what direction they were in and what their cultural signatures were.”
“Your abilities seem insufficient for the task.”
He bit his lip in silence a moment before answering, “Then they’ll have to improve, won’t they?”
A stiff plastic sheet touched his shoulder. He took it. “What’s this?”
“Culture-patterns for key planets in the holding, by sector. Computer-generated; I make no claims for their quality.”
Feran looked at the information in amazement. For each planet there was a listing that included its exact position, its visual position relative to the B’Saloan heavens, and a count of how many centers of human population there were between it and Braxi—vital landmarks for telepathic work. Psychological generalities were noted: “Colony on unpleasantly hot lowgravity planet with severe water shortage, slow diurnal cycle. Local religion revolving around water—and sun-symbolism, death fixation common, hostility ritualized about winter solstice . . .” It was the telepathic equivalent of a starmap.
He looked at Zatar, surprised and relieved. “These will help—”
But the Pri’tiera was already gone.
He studied the chart for a while, familiarizing himself with its key points, then steeled himself and reached out again.
. . . a forest of minds tangled between the stars, bright points here and there . . . counting one, two, three outward through the constellation of the Warrior Exultant, there, focus tightly . . .
He grasped the planet Talmir and turned it in his mind, caressed its surface with his questing thoughts and noted here, and here again, a mind bristling at the unaccustomed contact. Latent psychics, carrying the genes for power but not the patterns for operancy. He touched them with only a moment of longing, born of the pain his power had brought him. Why couldn’t I be like that? Then he sifted through the planet-mind in general, finding nothing that would lead him where he needed to go.
I don’t want to die! Fear poured out from him in all directions, until the currents of the Voidmind had touched all planets in the Holding with his desperation. That was dangerous. If she sensed him before he sensed her, she might strike at him while he was wide open. He withdrew his mind from Talmir, and focused back on his material circumstances. His body, responding to his fear, had crumpled to the floor of the observatory and was tightly balled in dread, hands clutched over stomach, trembling.
Must break through . . . must!
A bolt of sheer need cut through the Void and seared the mental fringe of some unknown planet. I’m losing control! he thought helplessly. He imagined the patterns of Distinction Discipline, ran them through his mind once, twice, three times before they took at last and closed him off from the world. It’s my years here, he told himself. The training’s slipping. But he was pleased that he had made it work.
After a time the Discipline relaxed and he worked a careful tendril outward again. Then he withdrew to think.
I won’t survive this, he admitted, if I go blindly from sector to sector—even if I don’t have to do them all. There has to be a better way. I have to find it. . . .
He let his thoughts sink into the pool of his innermind and waited to see what impressions surfaced.
I’m a Probe, not a telepath. Yet I’m going about this in a way that any telepath could attempt, and have no greater chance of success. Is there an approach that would allow me to use all my power, even the abstract specialties, in a way no mere telepath could manage? There would stand my greatest chance of success.
It was a hunch and nothing more, but the Institute taught that hunches were valid cognitive experiences, and he trusted this one.
I’ve been thinking of her in concrete terms. Telepath. Renegade. K’airth-v’sa. These are the crutches that a telepath needs, that limit power to the realm of sensory imagination. I know her mental signature. (Ar, do I know it!) I need to think in pureform.
