Redshift Part 28

Greer nodded, marveling at his bad luck to have a man like this consider him a friend.

Hating himself for it but not quite able to resist, Greer left with Erickson.

They headed down back alleys and past more than one alert tele-pathic sentry, until they reached an abandoned warehouse near the old airport at the edge of town.

From inside Greer felt excitement.

"This is it," Erickson said, rubbing his hands together. "You and me, we've got a special bond, don't we? You can really get off when I-"

Greer stared in wide-eyed fascination at Erickson. "I never thought you were like this."

So they tie me up and beat me, Erickson thought.

"You want everyone in the warehouse to pick up everything you're thinking and feeling?

Even humiliation?"

Erickson nodded, barely hiding his excitement. Greer felt his heart pound a little faster.

Telepaths were all potential voyeurs, but generally avoided it among commoners since it was so difficult and distasteful. Not to mention, most of them were ordered to snoop as part of their jobs. At the end of a long day, getting out of a commoner's head was more important than diving back to eavesdrop. Among themselves, it was considered impolite in their mostly male society, where offenses were settled more violently than in the commoner world. When you knew the depths of another man's thoughts, it provided a potent rationale for using force to decide an argument. After all, it was never impersonal.

"I wanted to be an actor," Erickson explained. "My company wouldn't let me. They wanted me to beam out motivational thoughts to their workers. For all the good that does. Like f.u.c.king musk stuffed into the head. That doesn't matter anymore. This ... is better. It's what I want to do."

Erickson opened the metal door, and they slipped inside. Guards stood on either side of the entrance, checking telepathically to be sure they belonged. Erickson obviously did. Greer wasn't so sure about himself, but the guards let him pa.s.s. He heard their acknowledgment ofhis telepathic abilities.

The warehouse was dusty and dark, with only a few spotlights shining on a man-high, arm-thick metal post equipped with shackles. Greer scanned the crowd. There were perhaps a dozen spectators, all men, which wasn't unusual. The XY chromosome combination produced ninety-nine male telepaths for every female. While men were mostly receivers, a few were only transmitters like Erickson. Greer had never round both talents in one man. That combination seemed reserved for women.

Too bad Kathee wasn't here. Greer would have enjoyed feeling what she did as she took in the antic.i.p.ation of the crowd, their enthusiasm, their perverse excitement as she rebroadcast with her own slant. He felt dirty and discovered he liked it. Even worse, he thought Kathee might too.

Greer was suddenly pushed out of the way as two men, stripped to the waist and sweating, grabbed Erickson and dragged him off. Greer recoiled at Erickson's response: fear-and antic.i.p.ation that became something more than s.e.xual as the shackles locked around his wrists.

Erickson's shirt was ripped away, and a slow, methodical lashing began.

Every crack of the whip caused Erickson to send out agonizing waves of mental pain.

Agonizing for him, but also curiously enjoyable for the spectators. Greer found himself transfixed, hypnotized by the sweet-and-sour mixture of emotions flooding from Erickson's mind.

Erickson obviously loved the pain and degradation of others receiving his deepest, darkest thoughts.

As much as Greer, to his surprise, discovered he loved sharing it.

That's disgusting, Kathee thought.

Greer caught a hint of possible betrayal in her thought. As light as a feather falling, or a b.u.t.terfly wing brushing his cheek, he felt her consider telling the vice squad about the screamer.

Kathee worked for the robbery division but was often lent out to other departments for interrogation of difficult or important witnesses. If the courts ever decided that using a telepath to squeeze information out of a defendant was legal, she would be even more in demand.

As much as Greer hated his job, he felt that what Kathee did- sinking into the minds of people who might be rapists and murderers- was worse. How did she tolerate it?

Is it worse than letting that fool Erickson degrade himself like that?

It was something he wanted to do, Greer thought. Even commoners for blocks around got off on it. I saw some of them reeling as we left the warehouse. They didn't know what had happened, but they had gotten enough from- Erickson's transmission to experience his thrill.

It shouldn't be something you want to eavesdrop on, she shot back.

But Kathee, this isn't eavesdropping. Erickson knew I was there. He knew everyone wanted to . . . share.

It sounded feeble, but Greer laced his thoughts with some of the excitement he had experienced. He felt her wavering. Kathee knew what was moral, but this transcended the ordinary. This was uniquely telepathic. Was it wrong to share that which is freely given?

Erickson is going to get into trouble."How?" Greer asked aloud. He stared into her eyes and wondered what it might be like if she had been there, to take in Erickson's pain and stark emotional response and then filter and magnify it through her own mind.

That might be the experience of a lifetime.

Are you so bored?

Bored, tired, disgusted, all of that, he thought. Greer caught her fleeting agreement.

What happens if Erickson is seriously injured? He's a powerful sender. You know how dangerous it can be for a telepath to be close when someone is hurt.

No, I don't, Greer replied. This was one of the questions that had never been answered to his satisfaction. While he had not pursued the query too aggressively, he had never found a telepath who had been with anyone who had died, who had been mentally linked to the dying person. There were so few telepaths-and those who might have been in a position to tell had died with the nontelepaths around them in a variety of accidents.

Commoners had their distinctive urban myths, and telepaths had their own.

There are so few of us-you should be careful. Erickson is not quite right in the bead.

And he might have died.

Greer sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly. That had occurred to him, and it excited him as much as the flood of pain and desire from the shackled Erickson as the men took turns whipping him.

"Yeah," he said, studying her closely. She was worse than plain, she was downright unattractive. But Kathee's appeal lay in other directions. Greer had heard of only three other telepaths who could both send and receive thoughts, and they might be part of the myth structure, because no one he knew had ever met them.

He was lucky Kathee had chosen him among all the other telepaths.

d.a.m.n right you're lucky, came her thought. And this is so out of character for you.

"I can't explain it," Greer admitted. "I was repelled and attracted at the same time."

More attracted than repelled, or you would have left.

He had no answer to that. She was right.

"Have you heard about things like this going on?" he asked out loud.

Rumors. Always rumors.

"Screamers might be fairly new," Greer said. "There have been so few of us telepaths. But there are more all the time."

Receivers, Kathy thought bitterly. "And men," she said aloud. Her eyes blinked as she stared at him from inches away They were naked and lying alongside one another in bed, but they might as well have been a thousand miles apart.

"And men," he said, grinning. "Just like you like." He moved closer and began making love to her.

After a moment of hesitation, she responded.

And somehow, as he climaxed, his thoughts were not on her pa.s.sion being fed telepathically into his brain, but of Erickson.

Erickson could have died.

What would that have felt like?

He tried everything in the next two weeks, but nothing matched the thrill Greer had felt atthe screamer. It began taking on an almost mythic proportion in his thoughts, even pushing aside s.e.x with Kathee.

Greer became obsessed.

He hunted for Erickson, but the man had vanished. No one had seen him or even caught a vagrant thought from him. Sitting at the bar one night, Greer decided that Erickson had done this on purpose to annoy him. Nothing about the man was pleasant. They would never be friends, despite what Erickson thought.

But, because of the screamer, Greer now acknowledged a bond between them that he could not deny: Erickson had enjoyed sending out waves of pain, and Greer had liked sharing it.

Maybe it's because you didn't have to worry about physical scars on your own back, Kathee said, sitting down beside him at the bar.

"It's more than that," Greer said, eager to continue their discussion of the matter. He had been talking about little else with Kathee since the screamer. The more he talked about it, the better his memory of it became. Too much of the screamer was like a will-o'-the-wisp, there but not there when he looked too hard. Or like fairy gold: if he reached out and tried to touch it, it evaporated.

For all you know, Erickson might be dead, Kathee thought.

I checked the hospitals. No one has seen or heard about him.

"Greer," Kathee said as she moved closer, putting a hand on his arm. "Don't you see anything wrong with all this?"

"No," Greer said, almost angrily. "We've been through it a hundred times. If you'd been there, you would have felt the same way." He paused and looked into Kathee's face. A smile crept onto his lips. "You would have enjoyed it, wouldn't you? Is that what's bothering you?"

It's so good when we make love.

What would it be like if dozens of people magnified those feelings and returned them to you? he asked.

Kathee shivered and tried to push the thought away. Greer caught snippets, no matter how she tried to deny it. She was as intrigued as he had been-and also as repelled. A powerful combination.

Let's find him, Greer suggested. "Or another screamer. There were enough people there that it can't be a one-shot occurrence."

She looked at him, disapproval on her face. But he saw into her mind.

Hand in hand, they left to find a screamer.

I recognize most of them here, Kathee said, surprised. I suppose that shouldn't strike me as unusual, since I have contact with so many officially.

Finding this screamer had been easy, and here were hundreds and hundreds of telepaths, all gathering for the same reason he and Kathee were. Some of the crowd he had seen before, in the bar and at social gatherings. Most were complete strangers to him, but he caught some of their arousal at the idea of sharing the sadom.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.t exhibition.

I don't believe this, Kathee said, but there was the faintest hint of antic.i.p.ation behind her words.

Greer wet his lips. Three posts were erected in the middle of the clearing in the junkyard.There were no spotlights.

We're late, he thought. I think it's going to start- The mingling a.s.semblage became suddenly focused, moving closer as three men were led through the crowd directly to the posts, shackled, their shirts stripped from their backs.

Kathee squeezed his hand.

Greer felt the excitement mounting and shared it in much the same way he did with Kathee when they were making love. But this was different, had different layers and emotions and was infinitely more varied and complex.

Philosophical emotions? Kathee asked.

Don't a.n.a.lyze it. Just enjoy it.

I don't know that I can. It is so ... so unnatural.

That's what makes it exciting, Greer said. Look! The man chained at the far post. That's Erickson!

He held her in his arms as the first whip rose and lashed against Er-ickson's bare flesh. He and Kathee moved closer, only a few feet away, and received Erickson's full mental anguish and ecstasy.

Kathee tensed and then held Greer closer.

I've never felt anything like this, she admitted.

You like it.

Yes.

The crowd grew in size and the intensity of the emotion flowing from the three shackled men increased. Erickson did not seem to recognize Greer-he was too deep in relishing the pain he received. The emotions were pure, laser-sharp, shared by everyone in the junkyard.

This was illicit, wrong, forbidden-and ever so much more exciting because of the shared weakness.

The shared transgression.

The shared s.e.xual excitement.

Closer, Kathee thought. If we get closer, it will be more intense.

They moved to Erickson's side. So did others. Those in the crowd touched now, shoulders rubbing and bodies jerking in response to every lash.

The three men using the whips began striking their blows in unison on their victims' backs.

This caused the flood of emotion to magnify a hundredfold, in synch like a laser beam powering up. Greer and Kathee moved even closer until they could almost touch Erickson. He looked at them, his eyes wild and bright with transcendence.

They both felt his rapture.

This is amazing. Kathee's thoughts were intense. I had no idea- Greer felt weak in the knees. This was very wrong, he was suddenly sure. He knew he should leave, but instead he moved even closer, as eager as a boy at his first peep show.

More!

Greer wasn't sure if the crowd thought this or if Kathee sent it. The men chained to the posts sobbed and moaned as they took every lash. Only Erickson could project his thoughts clearly.

He wanted more, too.