Mindship v1 0, p.5
Mindship (v1.0), page 5
“You can tell. Sometimes something happens which almost pushes you over the brink, and you know you’ve had enough. The stupid and greedy ones stay on for that extra high-risk Contract. The smart Sensitives get out at once. When Lucille died, and Baeder and J’kar broke, and I found myself looking for a length of strong rope…well,
I knew it was time I cashed in and pulled out.”
He upended the bottle of absinthe, drank, set it down, and wiped a hand over his moustache and beard; he needed a shave again.
“It was a mixed ship, you see, men and women. We cared for each other, something most psi-ship crews never do. Maybe that was what made us all so susceptible when things began to go sour. I know all the theories—sometimes a bisexual mindship can be as bad as a single sex charter, if not worse. But it’d worked for the Drowner for the twelve years before I shipped out on her, and it’d worked for most of the six I spent aboard. Until I came back from a leave on Endrim and mated with a girl names Lucille.
“There’s one thing a Cork should never do, Raymond, and that’s look into the mind of a woman he’s loving. You see things you never expected you’d see, and sometimes…things you don’t want to see. I wanted a simple physical mating…she wanted more. She felt more. It wasn’t what I wanted, so I broke off with her. That’s when she started with Baeder, a Communications man I’d counted among my friends. They shouldn’t have done it, Raymond; not then. Not right after she’d broken up with me.
“You see, I’m a Cork, and a Cork has to touch everyone’s mind. Everyone, even ex-lovers. Lucille was a Technician, she should have realized she wouldn’t be able to make a clean emotional break…but she tried to; she tried to transfer her desire to Baeder, who wasn’t really strong enough to take that kind of strain. Both of them were constantly aware of me, and I was constantly aware of them. We couldn’t get away from each other to heal. We never had that chance. The tension kept building and building, and one day when we were heading back toward Endrim…it broke.
“Everything broke: Baeder, Lucille, a friend of mine named J'kar. And almost, I broke too…”
Kilgarin’s voice trailed off. In reflex his foot straightened out, knocking the absinthe bottle over, sending it tumbling down the stone steps to smash on the pavement below.
“Lucille died before we reached port,” be finished. “Baeder and J’kar were left here in a hospital; Baeder died, J'kar’s slowly pulling back together. I kept on with the Drowner for six more months and then I quit. I had to. Otherwise I’d go insane.”
“I sec,” said Raymond.
Kilgarin spat into the street and looked up at the man sitting next to him. “You know something, Raymond?” he said. “I think you do.”
The party had been in progress for over an hour. There were thirty or forty people clustered together in the three rooms of Kilgarin’s private suite, and almost half of them would have been invited by the Cork if he’d seen them. In some cases he had; as it stood, though, most of those present had heard about the gathering through the District grapevine, and knowing Kilgarin from other parties, had felt free to invite themselves. The other half were either strangers or friends of friends…and some of these were undesirables, people who for one reason or another were avoided by the majority of the District population. As he sat perched on the kitchen sink, seeking a moment’s solitude, Kilgarin decided that perhaps the two were the same—strangers and undesirables. Apparently those who didn’t know Kilgarin personally felt no compunction to be polite or careful. In the morning, Kilgarin knew, the apartment would be in shambles. It didn’t matter. Enough friends would remain to help set things aright. That too Was the way of their crowd.
Kilgarin had drawn his feet up and hooked his arms around his knees and now he peered over them, watching the movements of the three brothers dancing in the next room. The music was loud, yet at times the voices around him seemed louder. The moments were few when the melody would reach him clearly, but at those moments Kilgarin would close his eyes and feel himself sway in sympathy with the rushing beat. He was doing this when a hand touched his wrist. He looked up, smiling, to see J’kar.
Whyte hovered in the background, his hands tucked self-consciously into his overjacket pockets. J’kar’s expression was stiff and formal, and his voice was without emotion as he said, “Whyte say you told to come. So we come. And I take your job, huh?”
“I’m glad you’re here, J’kar. I really am.”
“Sure. Just the man to liven things up, right? Good thinking, you.” The ex-Communications man sniffed, relaxing visibly. He half-turned and settled his hip on the edge of the sink. “So what’s happening, you in sink, them dancing out there? How many people and who, huh?”
“Couple’a dozen or so. Some old mates and their friends. You know them,” he said. “But what’s wrong with you joining them, J’kar? You can’t play social outcast forever.”
J’kar shook his head slowly. “Something, you. Really something. What you think, I’m glad the way I am? Think I want everyone know, give me claps on back, offer money, smiles? Sure, friendly me. Maybe not let them too near, huh?”
“Sorry, J’kar. You know that’s not how J meant it.”
“Sure, well. Guess everyone’s close enough edge, huh. Sure.”
He shoved from the sink and left the room, limping past a couple entwined in the doorway. Whyte caught Kilgarin's eye and lumbered over. “You shouldn’t be too rough on him. He hasn’t healed over.”
“And your protecting him will help?”
“Maybe a little.”
Kilgarin swung off the sink. He brushed arms with two men talking near the food dispenser console. “You’re just helping him stay inside himself, Whyte. Sure, he’s hurt—he’s lost a lot these past twelve years, from what he told me when we were on the Drowner, together with what happened to him six months ago. Strong people who lose their strength don’t really have much to fall back on, except the sympathy of other people.” He frowned at Whyte, then turned and moved toward the doorway. “Think about that the next time you excuse him.”
He located Raymond near the speaker, system. The Physical was crouched under the two triangular apertures, clutching his glass in both hands and eyeing the Sensitives moving past him. Kilgarin slid in next to him and took the young man’s glass. “Thanks,” he said, and downed it “Want another?”
Raymond shrugged. “I haven’t figured out where to look.”
Kilgarin led him across the room to a small table beside the balcony windows. Pul was there, squatting on a stool and gazing across the rooftops, his featherlight hair blown back from his forehead by the evening wind. “Hey, old man,” said Kilgarin, “fix my friend a drink.” The old Cork swiveled around and fixed Raymond with a suspicious “A normal, Killy?”
“I said fix my friend a drink.”
Pul hurried to his feet and worked with glasses and bottles, and something with ice in it appeared in his band, topped with a shadow of yellowish green. The old man gave it to Raymond, who tasted it and nodded.
’Thanks, Pul,” Kilgarin said. He brought Raymond onto the balcony and found a place by the rail a safe distance from a threesome crouched in the shadow of the farther wall.
“Why did he look at me like that?” Raymond asked. “Pul’s an old man. He’s not too quick.”
“Not that old, Kilgarin. Am I crashing something private?”
The Cork laughed. In spite of himself he found Raymond’s whipped-dog attitude amusing. “No, nothing private, really. You’re just not a Sensitive, Ray. That bothers .some people.”
“Does it bother you?”
“If it did, you wouldn’t be here.”
“Who was that old man, anyway? A friend of yours?”
“He’s a bartender in the Llyia’s, one of the private pubs. I guess bar-tending’s in his blood; if there’s any such thing as a servile instinct. Pul’s got it. If automatic bars ever come to Endrim, old Pul will just shrivel up and die.” “He’s a Cork?” a Cork. He broke about fifteen years ago; some people never come out of it.”
Raymond was silent, and after a while Kilgarin went back inside.
The brothers had stopped dancing, and now a young girl had assumed their place on the spot of bare flooring. The lights were dim and improperly directed, so Kilgarin was unable to make out her face. She was one of his, though; there were ten of them at the party at least. He studied her from the edge of his bed. Only part of her body was visible in the shifting light, swathes of skin and strands of hair, all of it moving and swinging. He looked away. Standing apart from the knot of unfamiliar people near his bed, in the shadow of the arch that led into the hall, was Marka.
She’d changed her clothes. In the semidarkness, and perhaps because of the drinking he’d done, it seemed to Kilgarin that she’d recaptured something of the woman she’d been three years before. She’d done things with her hair, and she wore a dress of some lightweight material, a single piece that covered one breast, uplifted the other, rounded her hip and swirled about again to flow to the floor. She saw him as he approached and she raised her glass in a mock salute.
’To the rebellion,” she said.
“Which oner “In the Outworlds, of course.”
He smiled and took a drink from a passing cart “I’m not with it in spirit but I’ll drink to your toast.”
When she’d finished her wine, she said, “It’s a fine party, Kilgarin.”
“I’d like to say the gallant thing about it being because you’re here, Marka, but I don’t think you’d take it quite properly.”
“You’re right,” she said. “I wouldn’t.”
They smiled at each other, and then someone said something behind him that made him turn around.
“I’m James Kilgarin,” he said to the portly man who’d asked for him. The man swung around from the group he’d been querying, sized up Kilgarin with a flicker of his eyes, and nodded, as though silently agreeing.
“I’m Oliver, Fellow Kilgarin,” the man said. “I represent the Charter Company here on Endrim.” The company name was meaningless; all of the small offices belonged to one major licensing organization, chartered by the earth Federation Colonial Office, and that organization was the Company. Oliver was a Company man.
“You were invited, Mr. Oliver?” Kilgarin asked him.
“No, uh, I’m afraid I’m not here socially, Fellow Kilgarin.”
“I gave up the Fellow when my Contract expired, Mr. Oliver.” Kilgarin separated from Marka and moved closer to the squat, red-faced Company agent. “And if this isn’t a social visit, then what do you want?”
They were attracting a crowd. Oliver realized this and apparently found it disturbing, for he inhaled heavily and removed a packet from his waistcoat. “Your brother’s name is Marc Kilgarin?”
Kilgarin felt a chill of premonition. He resisted the temptation to probe the man’s mind and leam what the interruption was all about. He answered Oliver’s question carefully, added, “Why?”
The fat man zipped open the packet and shook out a square wafer and a plastic chit ’These are your brother’s effects, Kilgarin. The chit is the money he had on his person at the time of the accident. The wafer is his Contract.”
Kilgarin accepted the items. Something warm was rising under his ears. The wafer was weightless, the chit cool and sharp, biting into his flesh as his fist closed over. “Accident, Mr. Oliver? What accident?”
“Your brother was killed aboard the Company ship Charter two days ago. It occurred while he was acting in his capacity as Cork for that vessel. The details are all recorded on that wafer. The Company expects to hear from you within the next forty-eight hours concerning your decision on the fulfillment of the terms of your brother’s Contract.”
Oliver frowned, then added briskly, “I’m sorry, Fellow Kilgarin. The Company offers its condolences.” He left the room, passing between two of Kilgarin’s former shipmates from the Drowner. The taller of the two men glanced from Oliver to Kilgarin, his hands moving at his sides. Kilgarin caught the look the Sensitive threw him and shook his head; hurting Oliver would do none of them any good. He looked down at his fist clenched about the wafer and the chit, and then he brushed past Marks and hurried down the hallway, hearing the first hesitant whispers beginning behind him.
He knew what they’d be saying; not the precise words perhaps, but the feelings behind the words—and he hated the pity his friends were going to feel for him. It was just too much, added to his own.
He sat on the ledge of the chimney, staring over the roofs of the buildings that cupped the spaceport peninsula. The spotlights of the port were swinging in narrow arcs across the cloudless sky, beams of topaz and sapphire straining against the night. There were the sounds of the tractors in the distance, or perhaps the cranes rumbling in their concrete beds, sounds too familiar to an ex-spacer: a ship being readied for a morning launch. He hated that sound.
For a while he examined his hands. They lay in his lap, one resting loosely on the other, relaxed in a way Marc would never have allowed. The plastic chit and wafer glittered in the moonlight as he looked at them. He closed his eyes. His mind was empty. He couldn’t think.
When be looked up again, he could see Marka standing in the arch that led onto the roof from below. She was silhouetted in the glow from the plates in the stairwell ceiling. She’d spoken his name and he’d turned to her, but he couldn’t recall either the word or the movement. Against the yellow light she seemed ethereal, hair sparkling in the golden wash. There were too many shadows for him to make out her face, but her voice, when she spoke again, was the young voice he’d known years before.
He didn’t understand what she said. Once again the words were lost. Something seemed to have dropped away inside him; his mind was no longer able to connect words with their abstract meanings. Finally she left the stairwell and came over beside him. Her fingers were cool on his arm. He showed her the things in his hand, and she took them from him and slipped them into her shift He tried to say her name. No sound came out. She pressed her head against his chest and glanced up at him, her features outlined by the stairwell light. It was Marka. Her features were soft, not the harsh features he’d seen earlier in the evening. He didn’t understand her expression, but a part of him responded to it and he dropped from the ledge and stood facing her. Her hands were holding his, and as he slipped down she drew him closer. He enfolded her tightly, impulsively. His mind felt sucked clean. He couldn’t think and didn’t want to think. Marka pressed against him, whispering, but even though he tried, be couldn’t make sense out of her words.
He woke in the morning, aware of the sunlight filtering through the window beside him. He was in his bed and the sheets covering him were moist with his own sweat. He tried to recall his dream—a feeling of darkness and pressure—but was unable to summon the details. He rolled over wearily, feeling a feminine arm pressing into his side. Remembering Marka, he smiled and shifted to face the woman sleeping next to him. He ran a hand along her back and she shivered, and settled again, and when he slid his fingers into the warmth of hair at the nape of her neck, she turned over completely and dropped her hand against his hip. smiling at him, groggy with sleep. He took her hand away and sat up. The girl asked him what was wrong, but he didn’t answer; he found his robe on a chair and pulled it on as he walked into the kitchen. He needed coffee, he thought, and maybe something stronger. He wondered if Marka had left during the night, and then wondered if she’d ever been with him at all.
The coffee was hot and bitter, and he sat on the windowsill drinking it for a long time, waiting for the stranger in the next room to leave.
An hour later, dressed and wanned by a hot breakfast, Kilgarin started toward the distant spaceport, and the duties that awaited him there.
Chapter Two
Eighth month, fourth day, anno Domini 3146
He was met at the entrance to the Charter’s private field by a short man dressed in Physical grays. There was a moment’s wait as the man examined the Contract wafer and Kilgarin spent the time studying the lines of the ship above him. The Charter had been built more recently than the mindship Kilgarin had crewed, but still, despite the lack of bow lights and the addition of another cargo hatch under the main airlock, the Charter was fairly standard. Six main thrusters to lift the ship off a planetary surface, several smaller engines for guiding it within a primary gravity well—the external equipment was familiar to Kilgarin, painfully so. In many ways the ship was a duplicate of the Browner.
Finished running the Contract through a portable scanner strapped to his waist, the small man returned the wafer to Kilgarin, noticing the expression on the ex-Cork’s face. The man nodded, his features twisting in a parody of a smile. Kigarin realized that the other man was a blown Sensitive, partially healed.
“You sense it too, don’t you?” the man said. “The ship? It’s a hate ship, Fellow Kilgarin.’ It destroyed your brother; that’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”
“You knew my brother?”
“I was there when the Captain signed him on. He was too young, your brother. He didn’t understand what sort Of a ship this was.”
“You were there?” Kilgarin studied the Physical. “Are you the Mate?”
“No. I’m the Cook. We don’t have a Mate aboard the Charter. Just me.”
“The Company allows that?”
“There was no choice. The cargo comes first, yes? That’s why the Captain took your brother. He had to.” The Cook sighed. “Maybe.”
Kilgarin frowned as the short man took his sleeve and drew him up the ramp into the air lock. The fingers holding Kilgarin’s arm were loose, twitching: the Cook was agitated beyond his ability to control the finer movements of his limbs. Once inside the ship Kilgarin was led down a passage lit on four sides by translucent light panels. They came to the mess and turned in. “I want to talk with you before you see the Captain,” the Cook said. “It’s important you understand.”
