"I don't know what you're going to do with me."
"Why don't you look in my mind and see?"
Jas wondered why he didn't. But he didn't. "No."
"Do it. Test me. See what you find out."
Jas shook his head. "I don't want to."
"Why not? I'm asking you to. Or do you only like to peer in people's minds when they don't know you're looking?"
Jas shivered now with the cold he felt. "I don't want to look."
Abner Doon sighed. "I suppose my mind isn't all that lovely a place to visit, anyway. Never mind."
He got up and dressed. Jas still lay on the ground, except that he curled up on his side. His back was cold as the air touched it. Why don't I look in his mind? I'm afraid, Jas decided. I'm afraid I'll find my own death there.
"Tired?" Doon asked.
"Yes."
"Does your hand hurt?"
Jas nodded.
"Do you feel weak?"
Jas smiled. "No. I feel like ripping a tree into toothpicks."
Doon, dressed again in the steel and asbestos protective clothing, the stuffy, out–of–date suit, knelt beside Jas in the grass. "Jas, you've done a lot of studying over the years. Your teachers seem to feel that you never forget what you've read. Ever heard of the Estorian twick?"
Jas's mind reflexively found the reference. "Yeah. Deadly little animal. Wiped out the first colony on Estoria."
"What else do you know about it?"
"Marsupial mammal. Teeth like razors. Small, but it hangs on with its claws while it bores with its teeth. Once it gets on a person he has maybe thirty seconds to get it off. If it lands near something vital, you've got only five seconds or so. Could cause nightmares."
"Very good, Jas. How do you kill it?"
Jas laughed. "A laser. A cockle. I remember reading a story where somebody tried beating it with a rock and it just jumped on and started eating his hand."
Jas watched uncomprehendingly as Doon gathered all of Jason's clothing from the ground and held it in a bundle under his arms. "You don't happen to have a laser or a cockle, do you?" Doon asked.
"Yeah," Jas said. "I hid ‘em both in my mouth. I was only waiting for an opportunity to get you."
"In other words, no."
"I don't even have a toothpick," Jas said. "What are you doing with my clothes?"
"Getting them out of the way," Doon said. "Good luck."
"Good luck for what?"
"Good luck in the upcoming battle. In a few seconds an Estorian twick will be turned loose at the other end of my little garden here. He'll be headed your way."
And then Doon took off at a run.
Jas jumped to his feet, started after Doon, but only got a few feet when he realized that Doon was too far, already at the door, already closing it behind him. Jas turned back and looked into the darkness around the lake. The moon was rising, but there wasn't enough light. And if there was, Jas wasn't sure if he could tell what a twick was. Had he ever seen a picture? Yes — and as he remembered what it looked like, he saw a living one crouched on a tree branch about thirty feet away.
Weapon? Unlikely. Doon wasn't the kind to leave spare lasers lying around.
The twick darted forward on the branch. So quickly that Jas could hardly see the movement — it was simply a few meters nearer. The twick didn't take its eyes off Jas.
The words of the book flashed back. "Toys with its victims. Tries to seem harmless. Many fatalities among children who try to pet it." Useless information. What Jas needed to know was how to kill one without a laser.
I should have looked in Doon's mind, Jas told himself. At least I would have known the method he planned to use to kill me. Some kind of pervert, Jas decided. Likes to watch bloody death. Have fun, Doon. This one's on me.
Jas's injured hand throbbed.
The twick wasn't on the branch. One minute it was on the branch and the next minute it wasn't.
Jas looked down at the ground. Two meters away the twick crouched in the grass. It was absolutely motionless. Jas couldn't remember seeing any movement. Was the animal smiling? Jas wondered if an animal was capable of gloating over a victim. Its fur glistened. Apparently Abner Doon groomed his assassins well.
And suddenly Jas felt an excruciating pain in his right calf. He reached down to pry the animal off. For a moment the twick clung, still boring into Jas's leg. Then it wriggled out and in less than a second was burrowing into Jas's upper arm. The leg gushed blood.
With the twick tearing at his right arm, Jas could only strike at the animal with his left hand. It did no good.
I'm going to die, Jas shouted in his mind.
But his survival instinct was still strong, despite the terrible pain and the worse fear. Like a reflex he realized that the twick would simply jump from target to target on Jas's body. It was only a matter of time until it hit a vital artery, or until if found the boneless cavity of his abdomen and devoured his bowels. But Jas could delay. Jas could force it to move.
He threw himself to the ground, trying
(hopelessly) to crush the animal under the weight of his body. Of course the twick was uninjured. But the maneuver had won Jas a moment's respite — the animal wriggled out and away, and it crouched two feet from where Jas lay on the ground.
Jas leaped to his feet and started to run. Of course the twick struck, but Jas's back was turned, and the animal only dug into the muscles under the shoulder blade.
Jas threw himself violently to the ground, backward. This time the twick made a sharp sound (pain?) and scurried a little further away. Jas tried to run again. He knew he couldn't outrun the twick, especially now with his back ripped open and his calf torn up so that every step was agony. But at least he was doing something.
The twick landed on his buttocks and tore at him. Jas broke stride, fell to one knee. Then he noticed that the lake was only twenty feet away, parallel to his line of flight. He had instinctively been avoiding the water. But maybe —
He got up again and staggered toward the water. The twick kept boring into him, tearing at the great muscles that controlled Jas's left thigh. The animal struck bone just as Jas hit the water.
I can't swim, Jas thought.
Oh well, the coldly intellectual part of his mind answered. Maybe the twick can't either.
It was impossible for Jas to relax enough to float. He just crouched under the water, holding his breath forever, trying to ignore the agony pulsing upward from his buttocks, from his leg, from his arm, from his back. He could feel the twick burrowing along the edge of his pelvic bone. His analytic mind noted the fact that this was taking the animal away from the vulnerable anal areas. Muscles can heal. Muscles can heal. The repetition kept him underwater despite the agony, despite his lungs bursting for air. He concentrated on the rhythm of the words muscles can heal muscles can heal muscles can heal.
And then the twick stopped burrowing. A moment later it dropped off Jason's body.
Jas lunged for the surface. He gasped air. He gasped again. A few inches away from his face floated the twick. It was moving feebly, also gasping. Jas grabbed it and forced it underwater again. It wriggled, but it didn't get free, and after forever it stopped moving at all. Jas threw it (with his left arm) out into the deeper part of the lake, breathed again, then felt irresistibly weak and sank back into the water. The water closed over his eyes.
He woke in a gel bath. Only his head and his knees broke the surface of the green slime. He was vaguely aware of throbbing in his leg and arm and buttocks, a tightness in his back. But the gel kept the pain away, kept pressure off the wounds. Jas closed his eyes and went back to sleep.
When he woke the next time he was in a conventional bed, and his wounds hurt more. He groaned with pain,
"Ouch," agreed a pleasant voice. "Well, that's it. Conscious and almost no chance of coma now."
"Very good." Jas recognized the second voice. Doon.
Someone got up and walked away. Someone else didn't. Jas was aware of breathing near him. He opened his eyes. The light was dazzling. He closed them again.
"Abner Doon," Jas said.
"Feeling better?" the man asked cheerfully.
"Than what?" Jas asked. Abner laughed. It was as if he hadn't tried to have Jason killed in the garden. As if they had last met at a cocktail party. As if they both shared a very good joke. "Why?" Jas feebly asked, because he was too tired and enervated to say what was really on his mind.
"You're a survivor all right," Abner Doon said, patting Jason's hand. "So many people never use their heads. Even people with fine minds. You'll do. You'll do very well."
Jas didn't ask what he'd do very well for. He knew that in the opinion of an Estorian twick, he'd do very nicely for supper. Jas disregarded the vague fear and anger he felt in his stomach and turned his head away.
"I'll come visit you later," Doon said, still cheerful.
"Don't bother," Jas mumbled. Then he slept again. He dreamed of tearing Boon with his teeth, burrowing into his throat and ripping out his voice and then opening the jugular vein. The hot blood leaped from the throat. Then, suddenly, the blood was coming from the picture of his father on the ceiling in his mother's flat, and Jas felt the blood warm on his face. He woke up, grief stricken and guilt–ridden.
Boon was washing his face with a warm cloth.
"Quite a dream," the man said. "You were sweating quite a bit."
Jas pulled his head away from the cloth. His wounds didn't feel as painful as they had before. Tight, though, and Jas still felt weak and sleepy.
"Don't pull away, Jas," Doon said. "I'm only trying to wash your face."
Jas turned his back, holding on to the opposite side of the bed.
"Don't be absurd," Doon said. "You're acting like an adolescent."
Jas turned back over, and the quick motion made him grimace with a sharp pain from his hip. He looked at Doon, who again seemed to be kindness personified.
"Sorry that I didn't die on schedule," Jas said.
"Schedule? I have you scheduled for several centuries from now."
"You tried to kill me, you bastard!"
"Oh, that," Doon said, dismissing it with a wave of his hand. "That's not worth arguing over. Come along."
Doon beckoned to an orderly, who brought over a wheelchair. The orderly helped Doon lower Jas into the chair. Then Doon himself pushed Jas out of the room.
They went down corridors whose doors didn't open, until the corridor itself opened into a large room. Prominent at one end of the room was a desk. Behind it the wall was an elaborate computer terminal.
Doon wheeled Jas over to the computer terminal.
"Here's where I found you, Jas."
But Jas studiously did not look at the terminal. Instead he gazed at his injured upper arm. Of course the bandages had long since been removed, while he was under the healers' sleep, and the connective tissue now looked purple and disgusting. Doon didn't seem to mind that Jas wasn't paying attention, though, and soon the boy gave up and looked where he was supposed to.
"I have two basic files here — they hold everything I need to know. One is the nonsense file. The other is the contradiction file. If found you in nonsense, of course."
A code. Jas noticed, too, that Doon had a double cover code on the program, besides the basic search and specify. The screen flashed: "All left–handed blue–eyed women with an IQ of 97 who eat more than two pounds of meat a week and who have more than three lovers." The list took three flashes to read out fully on the screen. "You'll be amused to know, Jas, that the list you just saw includes not just one, but two mistresses or former mistresses of Cabinet members. Incredible, isn't it, that they could both meet that description. Amazing things in this computer."
"And you found me under the program for all blue–eyed thirteen–year–old orphans with telepathic gifts," Jas said.
"No. You were part of a much more random search. Everyone knows the computer knows everything — the trouble is that you have to have the keys to find what you want. I have the keys. And here's the program that found you."
The screen flashed: "All children IQ greater than measurable, PQ above 3.8, health excellent, with unfavorable reports from at least two teachers."
Jas's curiosity was stirred. "Why the unfavorable reports?"
"It's possible to be brilliant and utterly uncreative," Doon said. "But brilliant and creative people always antagonize the merely bright, who lack, shall we say, originality. Your odds of running into such unoriginal persons in the school system of Capitol are about 8,000 to one — a reasonably good guide, then, to creativity. Better than any test I've seen."
"And you had unfavorable reports from two of my teachers?"
"Actually, Jas, you stuck out on this list because you've never had a teacher who didn't file an unfavorable report on you, despite the fact that your PQ shows you adjusted at the 3.9 level, which is neurotic but certainly not antisocial. Why the reports? I could only conclude that you were exceptionally creative. So I had the computer file you and gather all data. Merely routine, of course, but I was aware of you. That was five years ago. Between then and now I've been asleep on somec. Normally I take twenty years —" which, Jas realized, meant that Doon was getting more somec sleep than was legally permitted outside the service " — but because of you I came out only three weeks ago."
"I didn't mean to wake you. I'll be quieter next time."
"I had the computer set to wake me when a certain kind of contradiction came up. The contradiction that triggered it was, of course, your score on the astrodynamics test."
"I wish I'd flunked it."
"No you don't. I don't mean the first astrodynamics test. That was routine. It merely identified you as a Swipe, and the computer would have been content to let you die. Luckily for me and the Empire — and you, of course — you're a survivor. You lived long enough to take the second test."
Jas remembered how he had labored over the answers to that one. "I didn't pass that one by checking in on anybody's mind, Doon."
"I know. After all, whose mind would you check in on, as you so colorfully put it? There isn't a single mind — or computer, for that matter — in the Empire or out of it that could have given you all the answers. You missed one test question, of course. But there were three questions on that test for which we didn't have an answer."