Sharon Green - Terrillian 05, page 41
They were also listening to what was going on in my room, that was almost as clear as words, and suddenly I knew how I wanted to respond to their questions-and incidently divert them from looking outside for a while.
“I can’t explain what I did to Serdin,” I said, bringing my eyes back to her while giving no indication that I knew anyone else was listening. “I don’t understand myself how it works, all I know is how to do it. As far as the rest of it goes-what I can do is beat any Prime in this place. If none of them have ever gotten out the way I did they can’t be much, which is exactly what I think of this whole operation. Half-baked normals puffing up the pride of a bunch of so-called Primes, all of them trying to hide how incompetent they are by telling each other how great they are. But they are men, Finner, so I never expected any more.”
“Is that supposed to be between you and me?” she asked, fractionally more amused. “Did you check a mind or two on your way out, and that’s how you know what they’re like? And while we’re near the subject, just exactly how did you get reawakened in the first place?”
“How I got to be awake is a piece of information I’ll be keeping to myself for a while,” I said, making it sound as though I intended bargaining with the point at a later time. “You can tell or not tell what I said about their operation, I couldn’t care less, but I don’t think they’ll really enjoy hearing it. And no, I didn’t check any minds on my way out, but I didn’t have to. As great as Kel-Ten thought he was, he was still here. By getting out, I proved I’m better.”
“I see,” she said, stirring in the chair before getting to her feet. “For some reason they don’t want any men around you, so you and I will be spending some time together. I’ll let them know you’re awake and somewhat willing to be reasonable, and then I’ll be back. Want anything to eat or drink?”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” I said with a snort, folding one leg under me on the leather couch. “What I found in the woods and got from the Ejects was no banquet, but at least it wasn’t added to. I’d rather starve than find myself drugged up again.”
“So it was the Ejects who helped you,” she said, nodding at the confirmation she’d gotten out of me. “We thought so, but didn’t know for sure. They’ll end up teaching them not to do that again, especially after they thought they knew better than to interfere with one of ours to begin with. I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.”
She went out and closed the door behind her, leaving the room a little darker without the presence of her white uniform. I kept my face expressionless and my mind curtained, but I wanted to bare my teeth at what they thought they’d be doing to those “Ejects” who had helped me. I couldn’t wait until they really were mixing it up with those who had helped me, but I had to stall for time until everything was ready. That was why I’d insulted them and their precious Primes, pretending at the same time that 1 knew nothing about the level of mind power I’d be going up against. Injured pride very often makes people act like fools, especially if they believe they can get the answers they want along with a good deal of satisfaction. If they let me challenge their people they could have me watched while I did it, and then they could find out about my abilities before I was flattened. That was the way I was hoping it would work, but I still kept my fingers crossed out of sight while I waited.
It was longer than the couple of minutes Firmer had mentioned before she got back, and she certainly hadn’t been reporting anything to anyone. She’d gone to the room her bosses were in and had waited while they argued about what to do, and I thought I knew how it had worked out. If Serdin hadn’t been one of the ones listening my planning probably would have ended up down the drain, but he had been one of them, and what he wanted was revenge. The others had argued with him but he’d shouted them down, and then he’d given instructions to Firmer.
“You were right about them not liking the way you looked down your nose at their Primes,” she said as she closed the door behind her before going back to her chair. “They decided that if you’re all that good, you won’t mind answering a challenge or two from their men. I told them I doubted if you’d mind at all.”
“Of course I wouldn’t mind,” I blustered, trying to sound nervous and unsure but too stubborn to back down. “I know they can’t be anything much, so why would I mind?”
“You wouldn’t, so you’ll be glad to know they’re setting it up now,” she said, getting some amusement out of my discomfort. “As soon as everything’s ready they’ll send for us, so we can relax until they do. And in case you were wondering, this room is in the middle of the complex, but don’t expect to pick up anything through the walls. The room is shielded, so you won’t be able to get through.”
“Oh,” I said in a wilted way, hoping I looked completely chastened instead of ready to stick my tongue out and make a rude noise. So that was what that strange tension around the room was supposed to be, shielding, and didn’t Serdin and his friends feel safe behind it. I made myself more comfortable on the couch while I hoped they felt very safe-right up to the minute I reached through it to get them, and then gave them my thanks for what they’d done to me and the child I would now never know.
It took me a couple of minutes to back my rage down to a manageable level, but once it was done I found I had nothing to occupy me enough to keep it down. I needed a distraction until my challenge was arranged, but friendly conversation with Firmer was out; the less I said the less chance there would be of my saying the wrong thing, and I didn’t particularly want to get friendly with Firmer. That left nothing but her mind to occupy me, a mind I couldn’t touch because she was a null. I’d never really been that close to a null before with nothing else happening, and I had nothing better to do anyway
… .
Twenty minutes later that was all I had out of my efforts: a whole lot of nothing. Firmer sat relaxed in her chair while I shifted on my couch, trying to figure out where she could be feeling whatever it was she did feel. I’d done a little gentle sending just as a test, but the big blond Sec hadn’t felt a thing. I knew she was there and alive, I could see that even if I couldn’t prove it with my mind, but where the hell were her emotions? They had to be
.some place if she was feeling things, and the amusement shed shown meant she was feeling them. Were they working on a different frequency, hidden in another dimension, what? Where in hell could they possibly-
“Okay, they’re ready for her now,” a voice came from the doorway, making me jump and look up. Another null female Sec stood there, and she was talking to Firmer.
“Okay, honey, now’s the time you get to show everybody what you can do,”
Firmer said, getting out of her char. “You follow her, and I’ll follow you.
I stood up slowly, still playing scared but stubborn, and went toward the newcomer Sec. She waited until I reached her before turning and leading the way, and once I was out in the hall I understood where I was in relation to the part of the complex I knew. We were walking through the area on the inner side of the executive offices, and the women’s Medical section was just ahead.
After just a few steps we were passing their lines, and they still didn’t look around in curiosity.
I was escorted through the women’s dormitory and the low dining room into the men’s area, and from there to the part of the building where all the exercising and training was done. When we moved out of the lift area we could see a small crowd of people waiting around the assignment board, mostly male with a couple of female executive types among them, and I didn’t realize the welcoming committee wasn’t official until Finner moved up to walk to my right instead of following along behind.
“I hope you’ll excuse our not stopping, but we have people waiting for us,”
she said to the group in general, keeping it polite but also making it firm.
“Since you were all invited, why don’t you just come along with us?”
“We prefer voicing an opinion or two ahead of the rest,” the lazy answer came as one man stepped out in front of the others, his grin full of anticipation.
I didn’t have to look twice to know Jer-Mar, the very first Prime I’d met in that place, and when his blue eyes came to me I also had no trouble remembering the vicious delight they usually showed. “Well, well, sweet thing, so you’ve returned to us in ignominy. They won’t be letting Kel-Ten keep you all to himself any longer, you know, which means you’ll be available to the rest of us again. They intend seeing how well you do being tied down in a room with an open door, I hear, so I’ve already volunteered to be first. And tenth.
And fiftieth. You have no idea how much I’m looking forward to that.”
He had moved up to stop in front of me by then, deliberately blocking our path, his mind positively writhing with delight. Firmer put a hand to my arm, obviously intending to guide me around him, but the slime wasn’t finished.
Once he’d said the words meant to send me cowering to the floor at his feet, he reached a hand out and closed his fingers hard on my left breast.
Any competent tactician would know that the worst thing you can do is show your surprise reserve before the battle starts, but it wasn’t a tactician who had had so much done to her by that lower life form, it was me. Without even stopping to think about it I reached through my curtain to Jer-Mar’s mind, and then it was him doing the screaming, his face twisted in shock at the pain he felt. He went to his knees clutching his groin, his screams echoing in the otherwise silent area, and the faces of his cronies were gray with suddenly-departed gloating.
“So now we know one of the things you can do,” Firmer observed calmly, looking down at the writhing Prime. “Would you like to tell me what it is for the sake of my next report?”
To possibly keep them off your back for a little longer, was the suggestion, which might or might not have been true. At that point it hopefully didn’t matter that much, so all I did was shrug.
“He thinks he’s feeling very sensitive parts of him being squeezed in a strong, angry fist,” I answered, watching Jer-Mar collapse completely to the floor as I released him. “I’m sure you know it isn’t the pain we’re given but the pain we think we feel that hurts, so I didn’t have to touch him to do that. All I had to do was give him the proper sensations.”
“All,” the other Sec said in a mutter from my left, still staring at Jer-Mar.
Firmer did no more than nod, and then we continued on our way. Behind us we left a number of very upset males, and two equally disturbed females in yellow uniforms. Quatry and her loyal assistant still hated me, but now they feared me as well.
Our final destination turned out to be one of the bigger training rooms, and there were quite a lot of people in it. Aside from white-clad Secs and black-clad trainers there were dozens of Primes dressed in their short exercise clothes, most of their minds filled with outrage and indignation. Iii been told how touchy they were when it came to being challenged, but that was just too bad about them. You didn’t have to be special to challenge someone, you just had to be good-or ready to fall. As I felt my curtain thickening against the noise I knew I wasn’t ready to fall, and wouldn’t be if I had the choice. Through the windows wed passed I’d been able to see it was almost full dark, not far from the time the attack was scheduled for.
I was led through the big room to the back of it, away from the doors to the hall where the major portion of the crowd was. There were two men in black waiting for me there, giving off the air of being in charge, but I already knew they weren’t. We were being watched and monitored from very near, from a place that was safely behind shielded walls, where those in the room could remain untouched.
“So this is the ring who thinks she can face up to Primes,” one of the trainers said as we came up, his voice dripping contempt as his mind probed toward mine. “It’s too bad we were all dragged away from what we were doing for nothing. Her mind power is so weak, I can barely detect it.”
“That makes you weak, not me,” I countered as I stopped a couple of feet in front of him, refusing to get flustered or angry or embarrassed the way he wanted me to. “If you were all that good you’d be showing off your knees like the rest of them, not wearing black from head to toe. If we’re supposed to be here for a reason, why don’t we skip the conversation and get on with it.”
The man’s face flushed as his mind filled with insult, but he realized very quickly I was just giving back what I had gotten. He didn’t seem to think I had the right to do that, but he wasn’t too thickheaded to remember I was a Prime, and one who could do things no one knew much about. He would have preferred continuing the argument, but he gritted his teeth and got on with the show instead.
“If you’re in that much of a hurry to lose, I think we can oblige you,” he said, still stiff with affront but also pleased at the thought of what he knew would be done to me. “Step right out here and we’ll get started.”
He gestured toward one of the lines on the floor before beginning to head for it, and my two Sec companions moved toward the back wall when I followed the man. They were the only other women in the room, and even though their faces were expressionless I had the strangest feeling they were hoping I wouldn’t lose. The men in that place were arrogant beyond standard for the breed, and even though female Sees would not be given the disdain used on female Primes, they must have had something they would have enjoyed getting even for. I smiled to myself just a little at that, taking it as a confirmation that nulls did feel things like everyone else after all.
“There’s no sense in having one of our absolute best waste his time on you,”
the man in black announced more to the audience than to me when I joined him on the line, a smirk creasing his face. “After this is over you’ll have their attention, but not now. Prime Ind-Fam will begin, and will probably also finish. Just face him, he’ll take care of the rest.”
The man stepped away from me to the accompaniment of laughter from the watching Primes, all of them really enjoying themselves. The one who seemed happiest, though, was the brown-haired, brown-eyed man who stood facing me on a line of his own, twenty feet away if the distance indicators were accurate.
That had to be Ind-Fam, of course, and he didn’t waste a minute beyond the time it took for the trainer to get out of range.
“You don’t have to be afraid of me,” he called while projecting heavy fear, his mind. steady and confident. “You’d be very wise if you were, but you don’t have to.”
The man had moderate strength in his range, but just as the trainer had said, he wasn’t one of the best. I shunted the spread-out fear past me, then sent back a little gift of my own.
“You don’t have to be sorry for what you did, but somehow I think you are,” I called back, playing the game while I sent him grief instead of sorrow. His mind blotted up the emotion like a dry towel dropped in a puddle, his frantic efforts to resist proving absolutely worthless. His eyes widened as he began to tremble, and then he was on his knees sobbing with heartbreak, his face buried in his hands. There was shock in the minds behind him, and then two of his friends came forward to help, while that second trainer I’d seen moved out of the crowd and came forward. By then the first one in black was standing beside me again, and he was the one the second trainer spoke to.
“Nothing,” he said as he came up, his face on the pale side. “If there was any spread I couldn’t detect it, and neither could the Primes in front of me. I was watching them at the same time.”
“Why should there have been any spread?” I asked innocently, just as though I didn’t know what the problem was. “I was taught to keep my projections tight.
Weren’t the rest of you taught the same?”
The two men stared at me without answering, knowing damned well that everyone’s projections spread at least a little at the edge of their range.
Since twenty feet should have been close to my limit they didn’t understand what was happening, but standing there guessing wasn’t getting them anywhere.
“We’ll go on to the next one,” the first trainer who was obviously in charge decided, ignoring me in favor of his coworker. “Get back in position.”
The second man nodded then turned and trotted back to where he’d been, passing another great Prime who had stepped out of the crowd to claim a line. This one wasn’t laughing or making clever comments, and the line he stood on was thirty feet away. As soon as I was alone again he launched his attack, which proved to be a little stronger than the previous one. Increasing your range also increases your strength, of course, and the scathing, belittling contempt should have sent me shuddering back in shame and inadequacy, firmly believing I had no chance against him. He also held the projection longer, which meant I had to work around what he was sending in order to reach him, but reach him I did. His projection began wavering when the insecurity touched him, and only seconds later he was also down on hands and knees, but not crying like his predecessor. His problem was that he was so unsure of himself he didn’t dare trust himself to stand without falling, and wasn’t even certain he could keep the floor under him with the help of his hands. This time there was a thick faintly frightened silence before anyone came forward to help him, and after that the muttering began.
“You’re playing some kind of game with us, aren’t you?” the first trainer said from his place to my left, having already gotten a headshake from his second in command in the crowd. “You’re showing nothing like enough power to do all that, but you’re still doing it. Who the hell are you, or better yet, what are you?”
“I’m a Prime of the Centran Amalgamation,” I answered, turning my head to look him in the eye. “Did you think they gave that calling just to superior men, and simply let the women use it to soothe their delicate little egos? Did it never occur to you that you might have done better training the girls?”
Again he simply stared at me, trying not to believe I was telling him women were potentially more powerful than men, an outright lie I was hoping they would all start to believe. They deserved to be driven wild for what they’d done to the women in that place, even if that wildness lasted only a little while. The ones who survived would learn the truth-but first they had to survive.
