Melinda Snodgrass - Double solitaire

“It took you seven hours,” said Mark. “And you were almost unconscious by the end.”

“So when you read a mind, what are you getting?” asked Jay.

“First, just the surface thoughts, and it’s very confused, a constant running babble. We’re trained to break it out, enforce grammatical order so it’s understandable. Deeper memories are harder, you have to dig a little. It’s like searching through an encyclopedia for the proper reference. Let’s say I’m searching your mind to determine how you cowed Digger Downs. I might have to turn over a whole series of buried memories – stealing a dime from the little girl in first grade, striking out with your date at the senior prom -”

“Hey!” Jay exploded. Mark chuckled.

“So telepathy is not as simple as it seems. And it becomes more difficult when you’re dealing with a trained mentat. They’ll have alarms to warn them of interlopers, and if they’re powerful enough, traps to destroy the weak or unwary.”

“Zabb twigged to you pretty fast,” said Mark.

“That’s because he knows me very well. There is a signature, a taste, if you will, to each mind. Each is unique.”

“So old friends or close relations will believe you instantly,” said Jay.

“And if by some dismal chance none of those happy few remain, I’ll have to convince related strangers with a dazzling display of knowledge that no impostor could possibly possess.”

“And then?” asked Jay.

“And then we find Blaise and recover my body.”

“It sounds so simple,” Mark said.

“It won’t be,” said Jay. “How the hell do we find two people when they have an entire planet to hide in?”

Trips contemplated his dealings with Blaise – dealings that had left one woman dead and almost cost Mark his daughter. He sighed and said, “If Blaise is on Takis, I’m sure he’s, like, made his presence felt.”

Back home in Oklahoma they’d had a cat. A lanky orange critter with a crooked tail – legacy of a fight with a neighbor’s Labrador – and haunted, feral gold eyes. For six years it had slunk about the house, grabbing at food when it was set before it, but otherwise ignored and despised. That was Kelly’s status in House Vayawand.

Sometimes he wondered if Takisians possessed invisibility as well as telepathy. He had certainly become transparent. A few times he’d forced the issue – placed himself like a small stone in the midst of a rushing stream, greeted someone as they broke and eddied past. But he’d gotten this look, which sent him folding in on himself like the leaf of a touch-me-not, and been whirled away by the rushing currents of people. He then lowered his sights. Obviously the lords and ladies of House Vayawand thought he had cooties. Okay, he’d try servants. It made no difference. Even the servants were snotty.

So here he was sliding through the door of a… mess hall? family cafeteria?… ready to make another snatch-and-run food raid. He picked an empty table near the door to the kitchens. It was noisy with servants hurrying past, and smoky each time the doors swung open. It was not elegant dining. Which was why it was deserted. No self-respecting Takisian would sit in such an inferior position.

Only a very inferior bogus Takisian, thought Kelly sadly as a plate of soup was slid very carefully and very quietly under his nose.

The servants might look at him as if he were dirt, but their behavior was always excruciatingly polite. Because he had the face – borrowed though it was. He might be an impostor, but the face bestowed power and an aura of danger. Not that there was a lot of physical difference between the mind-blind majority of the planet and their telepathic overlords. They were all fair – the darkest hair color Kelly’d seen was a sort of mink brown – on the small side, but the Tarhiji tended to plumpness, whereas the carefully inbred psi lords possessed a refinement, and an almost tooth-aching beauty, which combined with their ancient eyes into a terrifying presence. And each time those eyes were turned on Kelly, he felt as if his bones had been replaced with ice.

I share so much with you, Kelly cried inwardly to the bowed head of the young man who served him. I’m as terrified of them as you are. Talk to me!

And once again his random ability to tap into the telepathic gift that lay dormant – but dangerous – in his borrowed mind stirred to life. The young man heard Kelly’s thoughts and jumped like a frog on an electric wire. The pale brown eyes fluttered nervously up to meet Kelly’s gaze. The servant placed his hands briefly over his ears and shook his head.

“But why?” asked Kelly aloud.

It was an effort to say the words, but the young man forced them out in a grating whisper. “You are trouble. Great trouble.”

He was gone, swallowed up by the clatter and steam of the kitchen.

“No, I’m in trouble. Big trouble,” said Kelly to the empty space left by the waiter’s precipitous retreat. With a sigh he lifted his spoon and began to eat.

There was an eddy of movement at the main door. Four guards, their bodies forming a protective square, sailed into the room. At their center, nestled like a precious jewel in a living setting, walked a lavishly overdressed Takisian. This one Kelly recognized – Ke’elaa, head of Vayawand security. Kelly couldn’t pull his gaze away from the martial parade. In that strange overworld where his uncontrollable telepathy periodically carried him, Kelly perceived Takisian thoughts as dancing rainbow colors. Now there was a swirling black storm eating at the edges of those oblivious colors. Kelly shook his head, trying to clear the weird feeling.

Then he realized: Blaise. Blaise was in this room. Someone had been jumped.

One of the guards hesitated, frowned, and looked back toward the soldier at the rear of the phalanx. But the reaction, the premonition of danger, came too late. The heavy pistol was out of its holster, the barrel jammed into the back of Ke’elaa’s head. Cooked brains and congealing blood were suddenly flying from the hole in what had been Ke’elaa’s face.

Reflexes Kelly hadn’t even known he possessed kicked in, and he took a low, long dive that carried him through the shuttering lens of the kitchen door. He came to rest against the lower legs of a waiter, who tottered, skittered, danced, to no avail. Food pattered down, a vegetable rain, followed by the mind-numbing sound of shattering china. It almost drowned out the screams, curses, and the snarl of weapons fire from the dining room. Self-preservation was still the paramount drive for Kelly. Crawling from beneath the half-stunned servant, Kelly surrendered to the urge that was pure Kelly Ann Jenkins. He howled like the teenage girl he really was. That need satisfied, he clutched the stump of his right arm against his chest and bolted.

The house was seething like a disturbed anthill. To Kelly’s fevered imagination, hours seemed to pass until he at last stumbled past Blaise and Durg serenely playing cards, and into the haven of his bedroom.

Pillow clutched desperately against his aching stomach, Kelly rocked backward and forward in an agony of fear and shock. Blaise sauntered in. There was a sated, well-fed feeling surrounding him. He sat on the edge of the bed and asked in a soft voice, “What’s wrong?”

“You know damn well what’s wrong. You killed Ke’elaa, and now everybody’s killing everybody out there.” His voice caught on a sob.

“It wasn’t me. These Takisians kill each other all the time.”

Kelly wanted to smash the hypocritical smile off his face. “I felt you.”

Blaise pushed back the sweat-matted bangs from Kelly’s forehead. “But you’re not going to tell anybody, are you?”