A Different Light (22 page)

Three weeks. He began to believe that the event that had happened to him—and, he was sure, to nobody else—had devolved. Occasionally he felt hedged by memories not his own, coming, seemingly, from a space he could not get to in his mind—but that was a minor effect. He thought.

Until the night when, bored with studying a navigator's text for work he would never do, he headed for the gym.
You need exercise, Theodore.
He needed a workout; a climb on the ropes to clear out the kinks.

But in the doorway he had to stop. Russell was there, alone, throwing himself forward and back, forward and back, rolling on the mats. The redhead looked up—and Theo felt a low moan from deep in his mind. Everything reeled. DAMN IT, THEO, WHY DID YOU DO THAT? He hung on to the wall outside the gym and waited for his heart to stop hitting him.

He ought to be gone. YOU ought to be gone.

I TRIED.

Theo said, slowly,
You're real, aren't you? You aren't going to be gone. You're not a fantasy and not a fabric—you're a person. Jimson.

YES.

Would you leave me alone?
he asked.
At least till I pass my test?

TELL ME ABOUT THIS TEST.

You lie down on a couch, and they give you a dose of suppressants. Then the examiner tries to
take over your mind. If it happens, you fail. If you resist the takeover, you pass.

DO PEOPLE FAIL?

Theo was indignant. "All the time!"

I WAS ONLY ASK-ING, Jimson said, producing a very credible imitation of Goryn. I WILL TRY TO LEAVE YOU ALONE, THEO, he said. BUT YOU ARE THE ONLY LINK WITH REALITY THAT I HAVE.

Jimson kept his word, as best he could. But Theo began to dream odd dreams.

Intersecting, moving light, a giant net of colored bubbles in which a city seemed to hang like something captured in flight... a dark and glittery room permeated with the sound of drums... a woman with silver eyes...

He slept badly. His lover moved out on him after two nights of it, and he slept, rather insulted, alone. He inquired casually of the others who had participated in The Experiment. They all said yes, their dreams had changed. Goryn said it was an effect of The Experiment and a possible proof of its working, that the twelve pattern-impressees dreamed in colors now, all the time. They all agreed it was exciting. Something had changed the way the impressees looked at things. But no one had Theo's dreams.

Four weeks after the death and burning of the body of Jimson Alleca, the instructors announced the final examination.

The night before the exam, Theo dreamed that he was slumped before a crib in a clinic on New Terrain. Ensel the telepath was drilling a hole through his mind.

He woke from the dream to find Ysao sitting on his bed. The hairs on Theo's neck stood on end. They did when he got angry. "I'm asleep," he said.

"I know you're asleep," said Ysao. "You're dreaming."

PRIVATE!! The flags went up and the portcullis went down in Theo's head with an almost audible thud. Ysao was sitting practically in his lap. He concentrated on physical reality: the shadows thrown by the heavy starlight against the wall, the taste of sleep in his mouth, the chill of the room. He hunched his knees to his chest and pulled the blanket higher.

He temporized, not knowing how much Ysao knew or how much he had guessed. "All the impressees have been dreaming," he said.

Ysao nodded. "Your dreams are different. I think it's very likely nobody noticed but me. But I was linked with Jimson Alleca for a little while. Your dreams have the feel of him. Knowing he's dead, and then touching your dreams is like salting a wound. Something happened to you that happened to none of the other impressees. Do
you
know what it is?"

Theo closed his mind shield as tight as he could make it, and decided to lie. "I think," he said carefully, "that it's a simple personality impress. I was linked with Jimson at the moment of his death. I got some of his memories. The booktapes I checked said that when personality-impress occurs, it takes about two weeks for the effect to wear off. But those were based on impresses from damaged brains. Nobody ever tried to impress a mind like Jimson's before. It's taking longer for the effects to fade. For a while the effects were hitting me all the time, waking and sleeping. But the strength of them appears to have faded. All I get is dreams now."

He wondered if he had been too glib. He waited.

Ysao said, "You didn't think it was worth mentioning to one of us?"

Theo said, "I can handle it."

"Are you taking the exam tomorrow?"

"Yes, of course."

"Had you considered that it might interfere with the exam?"

"I can handle it," said Theo stubbornly. "It's just some stray memories, Ysao."

"All right," Ysao said. "You know yourself best."

A whisper drifted through Theo's brain. AH, YOU ARE A GOOD LIAR.

"Are you planning to mention it to the others?" Theo asked.

"Shouldn't I?" said Ysao.

"Well, I wish you wouldn't."

"Why not?"

"Because if you tell Goryn, she won't want me to take the exam. She's like that."

Even in the dark Theo could see Ysao raise a massive eyebrow. "I've never found Goryn to be solicitous," said the giant.

"Hell, no," said Theo. "But she wouldn't permit me to take the exam if she thought I would damage myself. I might ruin the results of The Experiment. And it would be a waste of good material—me—and such a waste of her time!"

Ysao laughed. "I won't tell her." The giant stood up. The bed lifted level again. Theo spared himself a brief grin of pride at the success of his deception.

At the door Ysao turned. "Have you talked, at all, to Russell O'Neill?"

"To Russell?" said Theo. "Why should I talk to Russell?"

"I thought, with the effect of the personality-impress in your mind, you might have found yourself wanting to."

Theo said quietly, though his heart was beating very fast, "I did start to, once. But I couldn't."

"Just as well." Ysao sighed. "When Jimson was alive Russell could not deal with his death, and now that Jim is dead his guilt is coming close to killing him. I don't know why he stays here. He hasn't—" Ysao paused. "He won't talk to me. He won't talk to anyone, and not even Goryn has the strength to ask him to go. He reminds me of a bolt of lightning, looking for something to strike."

Chapter 19

Theo walked into the examining room hungry.

He had been without food or drink for twelve hours. His stomach would not stop rumbling. His throat tasted like a fistful of sand. The optimists among the students claimed that the fasting decreased the possibility of side effects from the drugs; pessimists said that the lack of nourishment made it easier for the suppressants to take hold. Theo was too hungry to have an opinion. But at the sight of the couch with its attached restraining webs, he bristled like a cat.

RELAX.

Mahil looked apologetic. "Sometimes people thrash," he explained. "Mostly we don't have to use them."

Theo lay down without comment. He felt the light cold of a gel ampule press against his bare arm. It spread out on the skin and dissolved, like an amoeba turning itself inside out.... He blanked, and came back to consciousness with Goryn like a bright red blaze in his head and with webbing tightly crisscrossing him everywhere. He was sopping wet, sweating wet. There was I.V. tubing running into the big vein in his strapped-down right arm.

"What happened?"

You threw a fit
, Goryn said.
Very en-ter-tain-ing
.

He lay still. His body and his mind felt sore. "Get this stuff off me," he requested. Mahil unsnapped the webbing and pulled the I.V. needle from his arm. Goryn came walking into the room. There was a bruise under her left eye, darkening.

Theo said, "Did I do that?"

Far inside the recesses of his skull, someone was having a fit of malicious and appreciative laughter.

"You think I did it myself? Yes, you did."

"I'm sorry," he said.

"How are you feeling?"

"All right. I think." He swallowed. "Did I pass?"

"Certainly you passed! I feel pity for the unwary idiot who might try to control you. You don't like it at all. Anybody else would have gone to pieces, trying to juggle two sets of memories as if they were oranges. Not you; you're tough as a little bull."

Defensively he said, "I figured I could handle it. It's just a personality-impress. It'll go away."

Goryn snorted. "Do I care? Juggle what you like."

"What do I do now?"

"You get off this couch and get out of here."

In the hall Theo had to lean against the wall.
Goddamn it,
he said to his assistant,
stop laughing!

WAS SHE MAD AT YOU!

It wasn't my idea to hit her in the eye!

I COULD HARDLY HAVE DONE IT WITHOUT YOUR FIST.

Theo went to his room. Elation stormed through him; he sang in the shower, and picked out clean clothes, the bright clothes that he loved to wear, flame- colored satin shirt, tight white pants. He preened a little in the mirror.
How do I look?

QUITE THE DANDY, THEODORE. WHO ARE YOU CHASING TONIGHT?

You have a suggestion?

HOW ABOUT A STARCAPTAIN? The voice was teasing, but Theo sensed the intense core of desire underneath it.

Would you want that?
he asked, incredulous.

DO WHAT YOU WANT.

You DO want it. All right. I will.
He strode down the hall towards Russell's room. But by the time he got there he had to lean against the wall to quiet his shaking legs. It was embarrassing. His nerves were learning to respond to someone else's feeling.

I'M SORRY.

Would you kindly calm down and let me handle it? He knocked on the door.

"Who is it?"

He pushed the door open and sauntered in.

Russell was sitting at the desk. He turned around. "I didn't say
Come in.
Who the hell are you?"

THEO—

Stay away!
Theo warned.
And trust me. You know him—but I'm the telepath.
He felt Jimson's watchful and unconvinced retreat. "My name's Theo," said Theo, "and I'm the telepath who was linked to Jimson Alleca's mind when he died."

A pen snapped in Russell's hands. It was a violent sound. A skein of memory unravelled in Theo's head. He remembered a fireball blazing into darkness, burning a derelict starship to ash. He heard Shev Allard's voice cut off in mid-cry, and Russell's cry of fury.... Memory overruled his telepathic sense. A reflex not of his own making made him step back, and raise his hands to protect his eyes.

"What's the matter?' said Russell.

Theo dropped his hands. The Starcaptain had not moved.

I told you
, Theo said.
Back off!

TELL HIM THE TRUTH.

Oh, all right! I can't deal with the both of you!
Theo said to Russell, "I thought you were going to hit me."

"Why?" Russell laid the pieces of the pen aside. "I wasn't. Why should you think that if you're a telepath?"

Theo started to ready the story of the personality-impress. NO! The voice exploded in his mind. DON'T LIE TO HIM. TELL HIM!

Theo could not refuse that plea.

Russell heard him out in profound and painful silence. The half light of the evening transposed to night. Russell lit a candle and it threw a circle of wavering light across his hands. His hands opened and closed, and opened and closed.

"You have Jimson's memories?" he asked when Theo fell silent.

He hasn't understood. "Some of them."

"And his feelings?"

"Not exactly." Theo tapped his forehead. "There are two of us in here."

There was a darkness about Russell's hunching shoulders that had nothing to do with the night. "Are you talking about the patterning?" He said the word with loathing.

"No," said Theo. "The patterning probably worked on the others. This is something different." He hesitated. He could not quite say,
Don't you understand? In a sense, Jimson Alleca is still alive.

Russell said, "I don't understand. But it wouldn't be the first time I didn't understand." He bowed his head as if over a secret. "I think you'd better go."

In the place in Theo's mind that was Jimson Alleca, there was a sob.
Now,
said Theo, coldly imperative,
now will you get the hell out of my cortex and let me do this my way?
He felt Jimson withdraw to that far off space in his mind. He was just aware of him. "Think of it," he said to Russell, stepping forward to the desk, "as something that Jimson left to both of us."

"He left me nothing," said Russell. A terrible bitterness welled up in him. Theo felt the pain like the scent of burning paper. Smoke curled at the limits of Russell's mind. It rose like an incense, till Theo felt that his lungs were filling with the bitter smoke. "Some pictures." His blocks were all down. Every avenue to his mind was open.