Dreamspy. Jacqueline Lichtenberg
couldn’t pull free, and marched in a long, measured stride toward the door. All eyes turned to her as they passed, but she had to pay attention to her barriers. The man who held her was a minimally sensitive telepath.
It was actually warmer outside than in, but the thin coverall was still not enough. It flapped in the breeze, and she felt naked. She concentrated on discerning the layout of the camp, concluding that it was a physical training camp for Paitsmun entering the Imperial Service. The wide-open areas between the buildings were laced with the typical Paitsmun running tracks. In one field she saw hurdles, obstacles, and strange rope constructions scaled for Paitsmun.
To one end of the compound was a low, squat building with no windows and a bright orange roof. That had to be the armory. At the far end, away from the armory, was the infirmary, and near it, an area painted in bright green stripes marking a landing field. There was a small space yacht parked there now. She recognized the make and model: a fast, expensive machine favored by the Eight Families. As she watched, guards ran from the ship as the distinctive gravitic whine split the air, and the yacht took off.
They passed work crews raising towers to hold security sensors, and she read the signs: DANGER, SCRAMBLER EMANATIONS, KEEP OUT, all in Teleod scripts. It occurred to her that she didn’t have to hide her knowledge of Teleod languages. Before the war, there had been free trade between Teleod and Metaji, so only her accent and intonation would betray her.
At the infirmary door, the guard turned her over to a group of armed women...large, tough women with the look of high-gravity training about them. As they pushed her through the big, transparent doors into a typical emergency receiving room, a thrill of fear gripped her. Their elaborate plan had failed. Trained medical personnel would do the drug-assisted interrogations. Considering what she knew of Teleod practices, she was suddenly willing to reveal her identity. Maybe they only want a med tech to work for them?
The emergency-receiving corridor was lined with rolling cots waiting for patients. The air was colder here, designed to relieve physiological stress for injured Paitsmun. A few twisting, winding turns under the high ceilings and she was lost. They came at last to an office that had been carved out of the Paitsmun’s idea of a treatment room by installing temporary buff colored walls to define several reasonably sized areas.
But inside the office, instead of a desk, couches, lamps, and files, there was one metal chair rigged with sensor probes as well as a large display screen. Beside the chair was the familiar shape of a pod’s stasis unit, activated.
Kyllikki tore loose from the guards and threw herself at the case, peering inside. She got one confirming glimpse of Zuchmul’s face before the guards picked her up and put her in the interrogation chair. But they didn’t activate the sensory probes, didn’t strap her in.
“Stay there or we’ll have to take measures,” one of the guards warned her, her tone incongruously friendly.
Two of the women took up stations by the door, and the rest left. A silence descended in which she could hear the faint tick-sh-sh-clack of the stasis unit. She’d never noticed that sound in space. The other onboard systems made enough white noise to drown it out.
She knew the silent waiting was a war on her nerves, all very carefully metered. It worked. By the time the interrogators finally arrived, two women and a man trooping into the little room as if marching on parade, Kyllikki could not face the idea of giving up her life, her sanity, or Metaji military data to Teleod drugs, nor could she contemplate another meeting with Zimor.
One of the women spread a kit out on a high ledge and prepared an instrument as she said, “I am Dr. Itslin. You have nothing to fear, Officer Abtrel, for I will see that no harm comes to you. Hold out your arm.”
She turned and, with swift continuous movement, grabbed Kyllikki’s hand, shoved the blue sleeve up, and plunged a sharp instrument into Kyllikki’s flesh. Swabbing off the dot of blood, she folded Kyllikki’s arm up, saying, “I just took a small cellular sample for identification and immunization purposes. Purely routine.”
Kyllikki’s throat closed over a squeal of protest. If they processed her geneprint through Barkyr’s Metaji register, they’d learn her real name. How many Lailas were there in the Metaji? How many would they think there were? Maybe they’d only check Prosperity’s data from Captain Brev’s log tapes. Then her geneprint would read “Abtrel.”
While Dr. Itslin worked, the man cleared his throat, consulting a noteboard. “I understand you’re a friend of this luren.” He nodded distastefully at the unit.
“Not really,” she answered, thinking fast. “He’s a colleague, a tech from Prosperity. I never met him before I got this job. But when the ship blew up, he saved my life, then saved the lives of all of us in the pod several times over.” She lowered her eyes, keeping scrupulously to the truth as she painted a false picture. “I feel responsible for his ‘death.’ It was an accident, but I feel guilty. At least I’ve got to see he gets properly awakened.”
“That’s what you’re here to discuss. Now, tell me, what exactly would happen if we shut down this unit and allowed him to waken?”
She gave the textbook answer. “He’d very likely die, permanently.”
“But he would crave blood first, and be so crazed by his need that he’d kill for it.”
She gaped at him.
“I see you know that little luren secret. What do you know of how his people prevent that from happening?”
“Just what anyone knows—that they don’t tell how.”
“It’s known that luren revere the one who wakens them as a parent, and serve that parent’s welfare above all others. But what exactly does a parent do to earn that?”
“Why are you asking me?” She pushed back in the chair, wishing she could put some distance between herself and them.
The woman who hadn’t spoken yet leaned close to Kyllikki. “Because you know! And you’re going to tell us.”
The man restrained her with a hand. “Gently. Kyllikki is an intelligent woman. She’s just upholding her own honor as a human in trying to protect his rights.”
The woman pulled free of the man’s grasp. “We’ll use the probe, soften her up, and then call in one of the telepaths to pick her emotions apart.”
The man turned the woman around and instructed patiently. “Only if we have to, but I doubt it will be necessary.” He came to lean over Kyllikki. “Now, if I turn her and the telepath loose on you, there won’t be much left when they’re finished. But if you cooperate with me, you won’t even have to go back to the barracks tonight. I’ve reserved a private room for you in the officers’ hall, with its own heater, a nice bed, and usable plumbing. Now, keeping all that in mind, what exactly is done to parent a luren and earn his obedience?”
Suddenly, she understood. They wanted to waken and control Zuchmul, force him to use Influence to control the prisoners, or extract information. They wanted Zuchmul as a weapon. His worst fear, come true. “I don’t understand why you’d think I’d know such a thing.”
The man knelt beside her chair. “There were many witnesses to your arrival. One was a telepath, of course. Living in the Metaji, you wouldn’t know what that means. Our telepaths have skills your people would never imagine, and no law prevents them from using those skills. We know the truth about you, about how you feel about Zuchmul and his revival. The home planet of the luren is in the Teleod. We know a lot about them. We’re going to learn a lot more.”
The distinctive whine of the yacht landing shook the walls of the building, obliterating voices while she wondered why she hadn’t spotted the snooping telepath, and what exactly had leaked through her barriers. A lesser telepath might have gotten only what she’d intended, a non-telepath’s natural reflex barriers bursting from desperation.
As the noise abated, the man sadly shook his head. “If you really don’t know how to parent a luren, we must experiment blindly. It’ll go harder for him, I’m