"Given the size of the fee that Synergistic Connections charges, I think that goes without saying," Lucas muttered. "You'll have to excuse me, Batt. I've got an appointment."
"Certainly, certainly. I'll call you in a couple of days to see how you're getting along."
Lucas hung up the phone. The sense of doom thickened. Registering with an agency was the smart thing to do, he reminded himself. No doubt about it. Five years ago he had proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that, while he was very good at finding jelly-ice, he was remarkably incompetent when it came to the business of finding a life mate.
He had been searching for something besides jelly-ice for years. It was only recently that he had finally put the need into words. He was tired of being alone. He longed for what most people took for granted, a family of his own. He wanted to feel connected. He wanted to look in his children's eyes and see the future.
He had no clear memories of his parents. He only knew that, like so many others who did not fit into the conventional routine of life in the city-states, they had ended up in the Western Islands. The frontier attracted the drifters, the loners, those with shadowed pasts, and those without family ties the way honey-syrup attracted bee-flies.
In the islands a man or a woman could start a new life with no questions asked. Lucas sometimes wondered if it was the burden of an off-the-scale talent that had driven his father to the edge of civilization. Psychic power was an inherited characteristic.
His parents had not survived long enough for Lucas to ask them why they had moved to the islands. Both Jeremy and Beth Trent had been killed in a violent windstorm when their son was three.
There had been no relatives to take Lucas in and raise him. That task had been shouldered by a dour old jelly-ice prospector named Icy Claxby.
Claxby had been as alone in the world as Lucas. In addition to teaching his young charge everything he knew about finding jelly-ice and survival in the jungle. Icy had taught him how to get by without the cushioning network of an extended family.
But the one thing that Icy Claxby had not been able to teach Lucas was how to control the unpredictable flashes of the powerful talent that had made its first appearance shortly after Lucas hit puberty. Icy, an untrained prism, had done the next best thing. He had given Lucas some important advice.
"If you ever get yourself tested, boy, you're gonna go right off the scale," Claxby said. "That ain't good. It ain't good at all."
"Why not?" Lucas asked. He was only thirteen, and he was still having fun with the process of discovering his erratic psychic abilities. "I thought you said high-class talents are respected in the city-states. They get good jobs and stuff 'cause they're usually smart."
"A powerful talent gets respect, but too much talent scares folks. I'm just a medium-spectrum prism, kid, untrained to boot, but I can tell you that you've got more talent than those fancy lab techs will be able to measure. If they figure out that you don't fit into their notion of what's normal, they'll get spooked. Word will get out, and you'll have nothin' but trouble."
"I wouldn't mind throwing a scare into Kevin Flemming," Lucas said, thinking of the bully who was making life miserable for him and his classmates at the small school in Port LeConner.
lcy's alarm was immediate and plain. "Five hells, boy, you ain't tryin' to use your talent at school, are you? Damn it, I warned you not to ever fool around with it in front of anyone except me."
"No, sir," Lucas said. "I haven't tried to use it at school."
lcy's expression relaxed slightly. "There's other ways of dealin' with a bully. Find one."
"Yes, sir."
Icy gripped Lucas's shoulder with hands that bore the scars of a lifetime spent on a harsh frontier. His faded eyes glittered beneath his shaggy brows. "Listen, boy. I'm serious about this. If folks find out that you've got a powerful talent, there'll be hell to pay."
"Like what?"
"People will call you a psychic vampire."
"So?" The possibility held distinct appeal.
"So you'll have problems gettin' a job, for starters. Men won't want to hire you. Others will refuse to work with you or for you. Lots of ice miners are superstitious, you know that."
"Yes, but--"
"You won't be able lo date any decent females 'cause their parents will think you're a freak. You been talkin' lately about havin' a real family of your own someday. Well, you'll never find a wife because no matchmaking agency will register you. See what I'm sayin'?"
"Yeah," Lucas said. Being a psychic vampire was apparently not as exciting or as useful as it sounded. It could prevent him from having a family of his own. Bad synergy. "I see."
Lucas had found another way to deal with Kevin Flemming, a method that had involved a large bucket of garbage and a pair of small, harmless twin-snakes.
Dealing with the erratic bursts of talent had proved to be much more complicated. Icy Claxby was an untrained prism. He could provide only limited guidance.
Psychic power made its own demands on a growing boy, just as all the other natural human needs and abilities did. The inborn urge to use the talent, to control it, and to understand it drove Lucas to seek solitude for extended periods of time. Icy Claxby had always been a loner himself. He didn't ask many questions about Lucas's absences.
With increasing frequency, Lucas took refuge in a small, hidden grotto he had discovered deep in the jungle. There, secure in the knowledge that no one could come upon him without warning, Lucas had spent endless hours teaching himself to deal with the strong spikes of psychic energy that his mind produced. The realization that he might never be able to work with a prism who could focus his full spectrum of talent had made him struggle all the harder to learn to control it himself.
He'd had some limited success, much to ley's surprise. Lucas taught himself enough to conceal the extent of his talent from others, including prisms and synergistic psychologists. If he concentrated, he could force his psychic energy to obey his will for a few seconds at a time without using a prism. The hard-won skill had saved his life and the lives of others on more than one occasion during the Western Islands Action.
It was in the course of cleaning out the pirates that Lucas had discovered there were other powerful talents with secrets living in the islands. The knowledge that he was not the only freak in the world had reassured him. But Rafe Stonebraker and Nick Chastain valued their privacy as much as he valued his. The three men became friends and allies, but they rarely discussed the subject of their off-the-chart talents.
Icy Claxby died the year Lucas turned eighteen. Work, study, and the search for jelly-ice had filled the void for a time, but in the end a cold, dark well of loneliness had opened up somewhere deep inside Lucas. He spent long hours in his hidden grotto, gazing into the fathomless jungle pool. His dream of having a family of his own returned to haunt him.
Eventually he had formed a partnership with Jackson Rye, and for a time the fantasy of belonging to the Rye clan had kept the old dreams at bay, but Lucas had never lost sight of his goal to have his own family.
Five years ago he had met Dora. She had been as alone in the world as he. It seemed to him that they had a lot in common.