Kerwin looked at him, uncomprehending.
“Make a clear picture in your mind of that glass going to pieces. Careful, don’t let it shatter or explode; nobody wants to be hit by flying glass. Use the matrix to see into its crystalline structure.”
Suddenly Kerwin remembered the man Ragan doing something like that, in the spaceport cafe. It couldn’t be so difficult, if Ragan could do it. He stared intently at the glass, then at the crystal, as if intense concentration could force the process into his mind, and felt a curious stirring…
“No,” Kennard said harshly, “don’t help him, Tani. I know how you feel, but we have to be sure.”
Kerwin stared into the crystal; his eyes began to ache and blur. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I can’t figure out how.”
“Try,” Taniquel insisted. “Jeff, it’s so simple. Terrans, children, anyone can be taught to do it, it’s nothing more than a trick!”
“We’re wasting time,” Neyrissa said. “You’ll have to give him the pattern, Ken. He can’t do it spontaneously. ”
Kerwin stared at them suspiciously, for Kennard was looking grim. “What now?”
“I’ll have to show you how it’s done, and the technique’s nonverbal; I’ll have to go straight in. I’m an Alton; that’s our special technique, forced rapport.” He hesitated; and it seemed to Kerwin that they were all watching him apprehensively. He wondered what was going to happen now.
Kennard said,“Watch my finger.” He put it close to Kerwin’s nose; Kerwin watched, startled, wondering if it would disappear or something, and what kind of demonstration of psi power this could possibly be, watched as Kennard very slowly drew it back. Then he felt the older man’s hands, touching his temples, then…
He remembered no more.
He moved his head, groggily. He was lying back on the cushions, his head pillowed on Taniquel’s lap. Kennard was looking down at him with friendly concern. Elorie’s face, over Kennard’s shoulder, was aloof, curious. Kerwin’s head felt strange, as if he had a hangover.
“What the hell did you do to me?” he demanded.
Kennard shrugged. “Nothing, really. Next time you won’t consciously remember this, but it will be easier.” He handed Kerwin the goblet. “Here. Crystallize it.”
“I just tried. . .”
Under Kennard’s eyes he stared rebelliously at the matrix. Suddenly the goblet before him blurred, took on a strangeness. It was no longer a flat piece of glass; he seemed to be seeing it differently. It wasn’t glass at all, glass was amorphous; the goblet was crystal, and within it he could see curious tensions and movements. He was conscious of a strange throb from the matrix crystal in his hand, an emotional tension, an equilibrium… The crystals lie in a plane, he thought, suddenly perceiving the plane, and even as it became clear in his mind, he heard a faint crack; the new kind of sight blurred and vanished, and he stared down, unbelieving, at the goblet lying on the cushions before him in two halves, split evenly down the center as if by a sharp knife. Surrealistic, he thought. A few drops of the pale kirian lay soaking into the cushions. He shut his eyes. When he opened them, it was still there.
Kennard nodded in satisfaction. “Not bad, for a first attempt. Not quite even, but pretty good. Your molecular perception will sharpen with practice. Zandru’s hells—you’ve got strong barriers, though! Head ache?”
Kerwin started to shake his head no, realized it should be yes instead. He touched his temples gingerly. Elorie’s grey eyes met his for a moment, cool and aloof.
“Mental defense,” she said, “against intolerable stress. Typical psychosomatic reaction; you say to yourself, if I’m in pain they’ll stop hurting me and let me alone. And Kennard’s squeamish about hurting people; he stopped, to avoid hurting you more. Pain is the best defense against mental invasion. For instance, if anybody tries to pick your mind, and there’s no damper, the best defense is simply to bite your lip until it bleeds. Damned few telepaths can get through that. I could give you a technical explanation about sympathetic vibrations and nerve cells, but why bother? I’ll leave that to the technicians.” She went to the cabinet where the drinks were kept, shook three flat green tablets from a small vial and put them into his hand, deftly, without touching him.
“Take these. In an hour or two it will be better. When you’ve had more practice, you won’t need them because you can work on the channels directly, but for the meantime—”
Kerwin obediently swallowed the pills, looking again, without belief, at the goblet lying in neat halves, sundered along a clean line of cleavage. “Did I really do that?”
“Well, none of us did,” Rannirl said dryly. “And I imagine you can estimate the probabilities of all the molecules losing their tension along a line like that by chance. Putting them at one in a hundred trillion would be very good odds.”
Kerwin picked up the two halves, feeling the sharp fracture edge with his fingertips. He was trying to formulate some explanation that would satisfy the Terran half of his mind, playing with phrases like subliminal perception of atomic structure—Hell, for a minute he’d seen the way the crystals were held together by a pattern of living tensions and forces! During his schooling, he remembered, he had learned that atoms were just whirling aggregates of electrons, that every solid object really consisted of empty space occupied by infinitesimal forces in stasis. It made him feel dizzy.
“You’ll learn,” counseled Rannirl, “or you can always do like Tani does—think of it as magic. Concentrate, wave your hand, and there you are—Poof! All done by magic!”
“It’s easier that way,” Taniquel protested. “It works, even if I haven’t figured out the exact forces involved in the molecular stresses…”
“And that’s just playing into the hands of the people who enjoy being superstitious about us!” Elorie said angrily. “I think you like it when they call you sorceress and witch—”
“They’re going to do it anyway, no matter what I call myself,” Taniquel said with equanimity. “They said it of Mesyr, and she was one of the top technicians in her day. What does it matter what they think, Lori? We know what we are. Or what’s that proverb Kennard’s so fond of, about going to learn logic from the barkings of your dog?”
Elorie didn’t answer. Kerwin took up the broken glass and fitted the edges together, staring at it fiercely. Once again the new kind of perception came, the insight as if seeing beneath the surface, all the forces and tensions in the structure of the crystal…
The glass lay whole in his hand, joined neatly, but a little out of true, a notch in the rim showing where the split had been.
Kennard smiled, as if relieved. He said, “That leaves only one test.”
Kerwin was still staring at the slightly off-center goblet. He asked, “Can I keep this?”
Kennard nodded. “Bring it along.”
Again Kerwin felt Taniquel’s small fingers folding through his own, and he could sense that she was frightened, feel her fear like a pain somewhere inside him. “Is that really necessary, Kennard?” she appealed. “Can’t you put him in the outer circle and see if he can be shocked open that way?”
Elorie gave her a pitying glance. “That almost never works, Tani. Not even in a mechanic’s circle.”
Kerwin began to be afraid again. He had come so well through the other tests, had begun to be proud of what he was accomplishing. “What is it? What now, Taniquel?”
But it was Elorie who answered, gently. “What Kennard means is only this; now we have to try you in a circle and see how you can fit into the relays— the nexus of power. We know you’re a high-level empath, and you’ve passed the basic tests—you have enough PK for a good mechanic, when you learn how. But this is the real test—to see how you’ll mesh with the rest of us.” She turned to Kennard. “You tested him in rapport, you know how he works on pattern. How are his barriers?”
“Hellish,” Kennard said. “How would you expect them to be, coming of age among the head-blind?” He explained to Kerwin, “She means that
I forced rapport on you, to give you the pattern there—” He pointed to the broken-and-joined goblet, slightly out of line. “And so I had a chance to test how strong your defenses are. Everyone has some natural defense against telepathic invasion—the technical term we use is barrier; protective shielding among telepaths, to keep you from broadcasting your private thoughts all over the locality, and to protect you from picking up a lot of random telepathic static—after all, you don’t need to hear the groom deciding which horse he’ll curry first, or the cook wondering what to have for dinner. Everybody has it; it’s a conditioned reflex, and the stronger the telepath, in general, the stronger the barrier. Well, when we work in a circle, we have to learn to lower that barrier, work without the protective reflex. Most of us started work when we were in our teens, and we learn how to keep the barriers up, or lower them, consciously. Growing up on a world of non-telepaths, you probably learned to keep them locked in place all the time. Sometimes the barrier won’t drop at all, and has to be forced, or shocked, open. We have to know how hard it’s going to be to work with you, and how much resistance you have.”
“But why tonight?” Mesyr asked, speaking for the first time—Kerwin had a vague notion that she considered herself apart from the others, no longer a part of their inner circle. “He’s doing so well; why hurry things? Can’t you give him time?”
“Time is the one thing we don’t have to give him,” Rannirl said. “Remember, we’re working against a deadline.”
“Rannirl’s right,” Kennard said, looking at Kerwin almost in apology. “We brought Kerwin here because we were desperately short-handed here at Arilinn, and if we can’t use him, you know as well as I do what’s going to happen to us all.” He looked around bleakly. “We need to get him in shape to work with us, damned fast, or else!”
“We’re wasting time,” said Elorie, and rose, her pale draperies floating like some intangible drift of air around her. “But we’d better do it up in the matrix chamber.”
One by one they rose; at Taniquel’s tug on his hand, Kerwin stood up, too. Kennard looked pityingly at Taniquel and said, “I’m sorry, Tani; you know as well as I do why you can’t be part of it. The link’s already too strong. Neyrissa will monitor.” To Kerwin he explained, “Taniquel is our empath, and in rapport with you. If she was part of this, she’d help you too much; she couldn’t stand it otherwise. Later, the rapport between you will make the link stronger and help the circle, but not while we’re testing you. Tani, you have to stay here.”
Reluctantly, she let go of his hand. Kerwin felt cold and alone; evidently the sense of warmth, of confidence, had been part of what Taniquel was radiating and pouring into him. He felt, quite suddenly, scared.
Rannirl said, “Cheer up,” and put his own arm lightly through Jeff’s. The gesture was reassuring, but the tone wasn’t; it sounded too much like an apology.
Kennard motioned and they went in a close group through the long hall, up a flight of stairs and through a corridor; and finally up another flight of stairs to a closed-in room Kerwin had not seen before. It was small, eight-sided. Along the walls were glass and mirrory surfaces that reflected random images, distorting their shapes out of recognition, and Kerwin saw himself, a lean streak of black uniform topped with a brief crimson flame of hair. At the center of the room was a sunken circle lined with padded seats, and Kerwin saw them moving into the circle in an order that seemed familiar, predetermined. At the central part of the circle there was a small flat table or stand, with a woven cradle like the one he had seen in the house of the leronis, giving Kerwin a brief painful flash of déjà vu again. In it lay a crystal, larger than any he had seen before. Rannirl murmured in his ear, “It’s the relay lattice,” which seemed to make no sense at all to Kerwin. Trying to explain himself, Rannirl added, “It’s a synthetic lattice, not a natural matrix,” but that explained nothing at all to Kerwin.
“Take us out of the relays, Neyrissa, just for tonight,” Elorie murmured. “There’s no reason those people at Neskaya should know what we’re doing here, and I don’t think Hali wants to know!”
Neyrissa went to the central seat, insulating her hands with a length of the silk as the leronis in Thendara had done. She leaned over the crystal, and Kerwin covered his eyes with his hands, the déjà vu was so strong, as he watched her graceful gestures.
What was wrong with him? He’d never been in a matrix chamber before, never seen a circle form… an illusion, a false perception of the two halves of the brain, he told himself fiercely; nothing more than that…
He heard the drift of thought, the random flickers around him, then clearly, though Neyrissa did not speak. We are testing at Arilinn, we will be out of the relays for twenty-eight hours…
Carefully, shielding her hand, Neyrissa removed the enormous crystal from the cradle. “We’re shielded,” she said, “and out of the screens.” She put the crystal away in the cabinet, wrapping it carefully in its heavy silks, but she did not return to the central seat. She said to Elorie, with a curious formality, “The circle is in your hands, tenerésteis.” Kerwin recognized the archaic term for Keeper, without quite knowing how.
Elorie laid her own crystal in the cradle, taking it from around her neck. She looked questioningly at the circle, at the others. Kennard nodded; Neyrissa and Rannirl followed suit. Auster looked briefly doubtful, but finally said, “I defer to your judgment, Elorie. I said all along I’ll go with the majority decision.”
Young Corus pursed his lips, looked skeptically at Kerwin. He said, “I think Mesyr was right, we ought to have waited. But I can manage, if you think he can.”
Elorie was looking at Auster; he said something unintelligible to Kerwin, and Elorie nodded in agreement. Kennard leaned toward Kerwin and said, “As long as you and Auster can’t resonate, we’ll have to keep you on separate levels.”
Elorie said, “I’ll take Auster first, and bring Kerwin in last.” She glanced from Rannirl to Kennard, finally said, “Kennard, you bring him in.” She glanced quickly round the circle, shifted slightly in her seat, and Kerwin saw a slight, almost imperceptible communication run round the circle, nods, glances, a kind of mutual settling-down, small agreements needing no words. Elorie lowered her head, glanced for a moment into the matrix, then pointed a slender finger at Auster.
Kerwin, watching, apprehensive, sensitized to these currents, felt something like a palpable line of force connecting the delicate girl with Auster; felt a small electrical shock in the air as they dropped into rapport.
An overtone of emotion in the room like a sullen flame, a covered flame burning against the ice…
Rannirl…
Forces in tension, aligning, a strong bridge across an empty abyss…
“Corus,” Elorie whispered aloud, and Kerwin knew, without knowing how, picking it up like flickers of thought, that Corus was young enough, and inexperienced enough, that he could not pick up the circle without the verbal cue. Grinning nervously, the youngster covered his face with his hands, his forehead screwed up into intense concentration. He looked very young. Kerwin, still tentatively feeling out the atmosphere in the room, sensed his curious visualization of hands and wrists interlocking, like the meshing grip of acrobats in midair, a tightening grip…
Neyrissa, came the silent command, and suddenly the room was filled with small electrical sparkles, a web of little shimmers interconnecting. For a moment Kerwin felt them all melt together, a blend of eyes, circling faces, and as he felt Kennard slip away from him and into the rapport, he sensed the flight of birds, wheeling as one, swooping, faces, waiting eyes…
“Easy,” Kennard whispered to him. “I’ll bring you in.” Then Kennard’s voice thinned, dimmed, seemed to hum in Kerwin’s ears from an enormous distance. He could see them all now, not with his eyes, but like a circle of faces, waiting eyes… He knew he was hovering on the edge of the telepathic rapport; it looked to him like a web, delicately waving its strands…
Elorie whispered, “Jeff,” but the soft w
ord was like a shriek.
Just let go and slide into contact, it’s easy. It was like the instructions he had been given about finding his way to them, random walking through the streets of Thendara. He could tell where they were, he could feel the circle waiting for him, somehow visualized them as a ring holding hands, a space left empty for him… but how to move toward it? He stood helpless, as if hanging back from their stretched hands, and suddenly felt as if he were swinging in midair over an immense gulf, awaiting a signal to jump for some moving target… He knew he was picking up a mental image from Corus, and didn’t know why, but he felt the same nerve-twitching fear of the great height, paralyzing terror of the great gulf, the fall, the plunge down and down… what was he supposed to do? They seemed to think he knew.
You can do it, Jeff. You have the Gift. It was Kennard’s voice, pleading.
No use, Ken. He can’t quite make it.
The barrier’s a conditioned reflex. After twenty years with the Terrans, he’d have gone mad without it. Kennard’s face wavered in the curious light in the room, reflecting from Elorie’s crystal, flashing prismatic flares of color all around them. He could see Kennard’s lips move but he could not hear him speak. It’s going to be rough. Twenty years. It was hard enough for Auster after five, and he was pure Comyn.
He moved blurrily through the light in the room; he seemed to be swimming underwater.
Try not to fight it, Jeff.
Abruptly, like a knife-stab, he felt the touch—indescribable, unbelievable, so alien and indefinable that it could be interpreted only as pain… in a fractional second, he knew that this was what Kennard had done before, that this was what could not be borne or remembered, this intolerable touch, intrusion, violation… It was like having his skull bored open with a dentist’s drill. He stood it for about five seconds, then felt himself twitch convulsively all over, and heard someone scream from a million miles away as he slid into the darkness.
When he came out of it this time he was lying on the floor of the octagonal matrix chamber, and Kennard and Neyrissa and Auster were standing and looking down at him. Somewhere he heard muffled sobbing and saw, with the fringes of his mind, young Corus hunched over, his face buried in his hands. Rannirl was standing with his arm around Corus, holding the boy against him. Kerwin’s head was a giant balloon filled with red-hot seething pain. It was so awful he couldn’t breathe for a second; then he felt his lungs expand and a hoarse sound coming from him, without volition.