Braxi-Azea - In Conquest Born Part 3

Ferian del Kanar was less than happy about entering the housing satellite of Security Base Five, but because he was a Braxana-or at any rate, because he was training to become one-he tried not to let it show.

"Something wrong?" an Azean crewman asked.

d.a.m.n. "Nothing."

He caught a glimpse of himself in the gleaming surface of the dock's interior wall and checked his posture, movement, countenance . . . there. A far better deception. "Nothing at all." So what if he was entering one of the most carefully guarded domifices in the Empire? So what if he was half-Braxana, and looked as if that part was dominant? He was also Ferian del Kanar, one of the Empire's few Probes-and if the average person couldn't tell a Probe from a telepath, they knew enough of both to be impressed.

He settled the red-and-gold cord of his rank more comfortably about his head, nodded to the transport crew which had accompanied him thus far, and withdrew his clearance chip for a guard of the orbiting domifice to inspect.

Brightway: a haven of refuge for the officers of StarControl, the one place besides their Base where they might relax, knowing that the best of the Empire's science had been devoted to their safety. Here Darmel lyu Tukone had lived, had laid aside his interrogative duties nightly to be, for a short time, merely a man.

Here his mate had come when the day's work was finished, to cast off her authority like a discarded garment and lie beside him in the safety of their home.

And here they had died, both of them, the victims of Braxin poison.

"Ferian del Kanar . . ." the guard muttered. The Probe's adult name was unusual; Ferian had chosen it for that reason. The presence of a subname declared that he was (despite appearances to the contrary) Azean. That was enough for strangers to know. "Temporary Clearance, eh?" The guard was obviously suspicious. Frowning, he slipped the clear chip into a computer slot and waited for an a.n.a.lysis. At last the screen cleared, and words appeared.

VALID. CURRENT. CONFIRMED.

Still frowning, he nodded. "You're clear. Li Nath'll take you in." And Hasha help you if you make trouble, he added silently. He handed the clearance chip back to Ferian and gestured to one of the other guards.

"Thirteen/twenty-three. Search him first."

Ferian allowed himself to smile. With his velvet-black hair and translucent white skin, the Probe looked Braxana enough to disturb any Security officer. And if that hair was long and his face was cleanshaven-concessions he had grudgingly made to the fashions of the Empire-that did not obscure the fact that he really was, in body and spirit, part Braxana.

"All right." Li Nath said, after a thorough search with a hand-held scanner. It was clear he wasn't happy about his orders. "Come with me."

Level thirteen, subsection twenty-three. The corridors were a labyrinth in three dimensions, punctuated by sensor-panels which-much to Ferian's annoyance- demanded confirmation of his clearance before they would let him pa.s.s. An impressive display, he thought, but only that. For after all, when it came right down to it, the system had failed. Darmel lyu Tukone and Suan lir Aseirin were dead-a.s.sa.s.sinated- and all the scanners in the world couldn't change that fact.

"This is it." the guard said sharply. Distaste radiated from him as he touched the portal, alerting the apartment's only occupant to their presence. A moment pa.s.sed-the near-silent whrrr of a scanner reminded Ferian that he was still under the domifice's observation-and then the door opened, and Nabu li Pazua, Director of the Inst.i.tute in charge of psychogenetic research, greeted them.

"Ferian! At last." He was an older man, well into his twelfth decade, impressive both in stature and in psychic ability. The red cord of telepathy was bright against his skin, and the semi-military dress which he affected lent him an additional air of authority.

"Thank you," he told the guard. He motioned Ferian into the apartment and reset the portal behind him.

"You had no problem getting here?"

"Oh, I had problems." He let the Director of the Inst.i.tute share his memories: security checks, verifications of clearance, a fight with his escort guards while in Kiaun orbit. . . . ~ But l'm here, he concluded telepathically, then added ~ Where's the child?

~ This way.

The apartment which had housed Darmel lyu Tukone was a richly textured place, with fine knotwork covering the walls and soft-surfaced furniture that seemed to grow right out of the floor. Not typically Azean at all; that culture tended toward clean-edged surfaces in bright, contrasting colors. Here the walls were muted blue fading into Rahnsea green, with a faint touch of lilac woven into the pattern at irregular intervals . . . more Lugastine than anything, Ferian thought, though the texturing was unmistakedly Braxin. An odd blend of styles for a Security officer to adopt.

"In here." Li Pazua indicated a doorway. ~ Be careful.

~ I always am, Ferian lied.

He stepped into the dimly lit room and came to the side of a forcebed, where a lone figure lay in a sleep akin to death.

And stopped.

And stared.

"Tell me what you see," li Pazua urged.

She was a human unlike any he had ever seen, slender and pale and so fragile that it seemed impossible she had ever lived. Her skin was colorless, her hair an inhuman hue which poured over her shoulders and across her throat like a thou- sand fresh incisions, blood-colored and gleaming. "Their child?" he whispered, incredulous. "She's not Azean."

"Recessive grouping," li Pazua explained. "Look closer."

Ferian touched her mind with his special talent, and he realized why the Director had brought him there. Inside the fragile body, where there should have been thought, there was nothing. Nothing. Not rudimentary consciousness, not the vestiges of recent memory, not a single hint that the body had ever been inhabited. Stunned, he searched the inside of the child's mind with the kind of thoroughness that only a Probe could master. And still found not even the promise of consciousness.

Which could only mean . . . Hasha!

"Ferian?"

He found that he was trembling. "How old is she?"

"Six Standard Years. Four and some. Lugastine."

"Pre-p.u.b.escent, then."

"Without question."

The implications of that!

~ Ferian?

He forced himself to speak. "It's telepathy." he said hoa.r.s.ely. He groped for a chair, found one, sat. ~ To come into one's sensitivity this early. ... He shuddered.

~ You're certain, then.

~ Yes. He touched her mind-or lack of it-again. Not even a murmur from the backmind! ~ She's put up a block- and a blessed good one. too. There were trained telepaths who couldn't keep him out; how had a child managed to do it?

The Director was calm and rational, an island of reason in the storm of Ferian's thoughts. ~ Current theory states that psychic awakening is linked to the hormonic changes a.s.sociated with- "Theory be d.a.m.ned!-or blessed," he corrected, translating the oath into its Braxin equivalent. "The girl is telepathic- actively telepathic. Look, Director, you wouldn't bother to shut your eyes if you'd never seen. What would be the point?

She's seen the light and rejected it, and her mental lids are shut so tight that not a glimmer can get through-in either direction. That's as sure a sign of telepathy as I've ever seen."

"Can you save her?"

He frowned. ~ Be specific.

~ Make contact. Bring her out.

~ Difficult . . .

~ But possible?

He considered the problem. ~ Have you thought of the possible ramifications?

My signature is markedly Braxin- ~ My other Probes have tried, the Director told him. ~ All of them. If you can't do it, we'll lose her. He sighed, projecting his frustration. ~ Your emotional makeup is . . . unique. Maybe it'II make a difference. I hope so.

He lapsed into thoughtful silence; Ferian considered what he knew of the case and then asked aloud, "She saw her parents die?"

"She was found by the bodies." The Director projected an image, since the term "bodies" could not encompa.s.s the carnage. Stiff black residue in two mounds of human length were the only remains of Azea's most valued Security personnel.

Braxin poison. That terrible semi-living substance which could lurk unnoticed for days in the bloodstream of a victim, then erupt suddenly into a ma.s.s of churning black h.e.l.l. It had devoured Darmel, its host. His mate had come in contact with it while trying to save him and it had claimed her as well. And the child. . . .

"She was reaching out to them," Li Pazua explained. "The poison must have gone inert before she got to it."

"She was in contact with it?" Ferian asked sharply.

The Director nodded.

"I didn't realize that."

He looked at the body-frail, so frail!-and touched her brain stem with his awareness. "The metabolic signals are erractic," he mused aloud. "Continued stress?"

"You think she's trapped in a nightmare?"

"Perhaps."

Ferian sat down on the edge of the bed. Slowly, with a grace that was half genetic heritage and half training, he moved an arm across her until his hand came to rest on her forehead.

"I'm ready."

And he ventured forward, into the child's mind.

Where there was only darkness.

He sought greater depth.

~ (Resistance.) ~ (Insistence), he offered.

~ (Darkness. Fear.) ~ (Gentle entry.) The intrusion is not a source of harm. Let me be absorbed into you. There will be no damage.

~ (Resistance to any contact.) ~ You need not touch me at all. Stand aside. I pa.s.s through and beyond. There need be no direct contact.

~ (Weakened resistance. Psychic fatigue. Potential yielding.) ~ Image: An amoeba of light yielding to the approach of a foreign particle. It pa.s.ses through the cell, distinct and separate, and out the other side. The light- amoeba glows, whole and unharmed.) ~ (Compliance. Darkness parting. Inner silence.) The Probe strained his senses to the utmost; there was nothing. He surfaced enough to send ~ No output.

~ Nothing at all?

- Psychic reflex. No thought behind it.

~ That's what the others reported.

~ I'm going to try direct emotional input.

He didn't have to say what they both were thinking; his perception of emotion was so unique among telepaths that such a course might succeed for him alone.

He formed and purified a bolt of emotion. Guided by a single thought, a single thread of inner consciousness, a Probe might reach the deepest and most closed portions of a mind. But there must be something to guide him, and that was what the halfbreed sitting on the bed's edge hoped to inspire.

~ (Grief!), he offered.

~ (Unfeeling darkness.) ~ (Hatred!) ~ (Darkness without response.) ~ (Anger!) ~ (Absolute silence.) ~ (Accusation!) A stirring of thought in the distance-too faint and too fast to catch hold of. He cursed himself for not being superhuman as well as telepathic. Trying the same stimulus again, he received no response.

"But not dead!" he said aloud, with satisfaction.

He prepared an image, gathering it to him for transmission. It would identify him to the child with an instantaneous awareness of who and what had invaded the privacy of her mind. He chose the image carefully, on the a.s.sumption that her background would have instilled in her certain vehement prejudices. Then he forced it into her awareness.

The image was Braxin, and it flashed suddenly inside her.

The child of Darmel lyu Tukone rebelled. Waves of aversion rose about him, pressing against him, an instinctive reaction designed to drive him out without really knowing how to do so.

She denied his reality.

He persisted.

She broke. - There is no Braxin psychic!

He grabbed at her reaction and held onto it. One coherent thought could serve as a lifeline to her inner mind, locked though it was in silence. She struggled to withdraw from him, to return to that inner world which promised (but did not fully deliver) a release from all pain and disturbance. He let her go there. And he followed.

~ (Boiling guilt. Self-hate. A swamp of moral ugliness- the image of self.) These were not new things to him, and he brushed them aside.

~ (Terror! Pain!) He grasped it.

The thought withdrew, back, back through the ugliness to a central core of torment, to Darmel is screaming.

She is startled out of halfsleep, into a world beyond her comprehension. The air throbs with terror and agony, where before it was only air. Unearthly pain a.s.sails her-where is it coming from? Dimly she perceives that her mother has run out to the hallway; frightened, the child follows.

The living poison administered days ago to her father has matured. Rooted in his chest it mutates, growing and feeding on his flesh until it emerges by his shoulder, a living black coagulation of parasitic tissue. Had it appeared within an extremity he might have been saved, by the unhesitating amputation for which Suan's dagger was designed. But already it has reached areas too precious to remove.

Darmel lyu Tukone writhes in mindless agony. Black foam trickles from his mouth and the horror consumes his lips and neck from inside and out. His convulsions cast bits of the blackness about him, to the feet of his horrified mate.

And the child, who moments ago was merely a child, suffers his pain as though it were her own, his mindscreaming agony the catalyst for her psychic awakening.

She dies with him, knowing intimately the madness with which he tears at his own flesh. Scoring a shoulder, with tearing strokes; striving, like a terrified animal, to remove the portions of his body that pain him.

A sc.r.a.p of discarded death is flung unexpectedly across Suan and takes root there before action can dislodge it. The black malignance burns to fresh life, quickly eating through clothing and flesh to intrude itself deep within her body.

Knowing the manner of the end that awaits her, having only a moment of coherent thought left before the pain claims her utterly, Suan turns the forcefield blade into herself, acting before fear can weaken resolve. The suicide resonates within the child's terrified mind, alongside the fear and pain which are Suan's last living moments.

Against death-wish and agony the child struggles in vain, finding at last the key to closedmindedness. Then sight is gone, and hearing follows. Peaceful, blissful darkness envelops the tortured mind, leaving only thought in the relatively painless void. Thought . . . and memory.

I saw him.

Terrible, terrible knowledge; what child could face it and remain sane?

I saw him. The a.s.sa.s.sin. Hasha, help me. . . .