“Needless to say, the better you are at it, the higher you will rise in Charon society,” Garal added.
Tm not sure any of us really believed what we were being told, but we kept an open mind as it was information on how the place operated. Before I believed in any magic though, I’d have to see it demonstrated myself.
If this ability took training, it was worth going after. “Just how do we get the training needed to develop this?” I asked our hosts.
“Maybe you do, maybe you don’t,” Garal replied. “First of all, there’s that self-control, a certain mental ability and attitude-set that you just can’t teach. The fact is, most people can’t handle the discipline involved, or can only handle it to a degree. Needless to say, it’s also not in the best interests of the powers-that-be for everyone to develop this ability, even if they could. It is this way all over. There are few wolves and many sheep, yet the wolf rules the sheep. There are masses of people, nearly countless people, in the Confederacy, yet their entire lives, from their genetic makeup to jobs, location, even how long they will live, are in the hands of a very few. Please don’t expect Charon to be any different.”
That we could all understand at least. There was a government here, a government headed by the worst kind of power-mad politicians and super-crooks, and they had to preside over a society that was at least five percent as crooked and nasty as they were, or the children and grandchildren of the same sort. Such a government would not willingly share any of its power, nor dare to make it easily available. Still, I reflected, my own self-discipline and mental training and abilities were engineered to be way above the norm, and what an Aeolia Matuze and lesser lights could do, I most certainly could do as well. And there was always somebody ready to beat the system. Unofficial training would be around someplace—if it could be found, and if its price could be met.
In a way I suspected this might be something of a test We had come to Charon with nothing but our wits; those who could secure the method and means for training and its protection and chance for upward mobility would do so. The rest would join the masses in the endless pool of eternal victims. That was, I felt sure, the challenge they were issuing us here.
Back in our room, Zala and I talked over what we’d been told the first day.
“Do you think it’s-for real?” she wanted to know. “Magic, hexes, voodoo—it all sounds so ridiculous!”
“Ridiculous perhaps, when put in that context, but that’s the context of science. Look, they’re not saying that anybody on Charon can do anything that a good psych with a battery of mechanical devices couldn’t do. Believe me, I know.” And I did know—but not from being on the wrong end of them as she believed.
“Yes, but that’s with machines and experts…”
“Machines, yes,” I agreed, “but don’t kid yourself that the experts are any less expert here than back there. There are even psychs sent here—they’re the most imaginative people you can find, but they go out of their heads more often than those in any other job. No, the only difference here is that everybody^ carrying his own psych machine around inside of him—an organic machine, but still a gadget, a device.”
She shivered. “What’s wrong?” I asked her.
“Well, it’s what you said. Psychs are the people most likely to go nuts, right? I guess it’s because they not only get involved in hundreds of messed-up people’s minds, but then: machines give them a god complex.”
“That’s pretty fair,” I agreed.
“Well, what you just said is that we’re on a world of psychs and everybody is under their machines and can’t get disconnected. I mean, if a psych goes nuts back home, there are other psychs and computer monitors and all the rest to catch it, pull the plug, and get him out of you, right?”
I nodded.
“But, Park—who’s the monitor here? Who’s around to pull the plug on these people?”
And that, of course, was the real problem. Loose in a Bedlam with the psychs crazier than the patients, and nobody to pull the plug—and no plug to be pulled. Nobody except… me.
It hadn’t been a very trying day, but the release of tension added to the fact that none of us had gotten any real exercise for weeks, made it pretty easy to turn in fast. I had a little trouble figuring out how to extinguish the oil lamp in the room without burning myself, but I finally discovered the way the globe was latched. A tiny little cup on a long handle hanging next to the towel rack proved the easiest way to extinguish the light. It was not until days later that I found out that this was exactly what the little cuplike thing was for.
Despite my near exhaustion, I couldn’t fall asleep right away. I kept thinking about Charon and the challenge it posed. Obviously I could do nothing until I was able to experience this pseudo-magic first hand and get a measure of what I was up against and what I had to learn. After that I’d have to get a job, I supposed, to develop some local contacts, to find out what I needed to know about training and rogue magicians. I would be totally ineffective until I had enough experience and expert instruction to hold my own on this crazy planet. It was entirely possible—likely, in fact—that the top politicians like Matuze weren’t the top powers in magic here. I suspected the skills involved were quite different. But she would be flanked and guarded by the absolute tops, that was for sure; and the only way to her would be right through them. As a top agent, I had no doubt that I could eventually master the art enough to get by the best, but I was pragmatic enough not to think I could get through all of them single-handedly. No, I would need help—local help. The one thing I could be certain of was that a system like this would breed a whole raft of enemies for Matuze, and they’d all be either as criminal or as psychotic as they come—or both. The trick was to find them and organize them.
“Park?” Her voice came to me in the darkness, through the sound of the omnipresent rain on the roof.
“Yes, Zala?”
“Can I… would you mind if I got into your bed? Just for a while?”
I grinned in the dark. “Not afraid I’ll strangle you or something.”
She got up and walked over, almost stumbling, and sat on the edge of my bed. “No, I don’t think so. If I really ever thought so I wouldn’t have stayed in here a minute.” She crawled into bed with me and snuggled close. It felt good, oddly comforting, but also a little disconcerting. I wasn’t used to women that much larger than I was. Well, I’d better get used to it.
“What makes you so sure about me?” I teased, whispering. Still, it was reassuring to have the uncertainty settled so quickly.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she replied. “I’ve always been able to tell things about people.”
“Things? Like what?”
“Oh, like the fact that Tiliar and Garal are a couple of hoods who don’t really give a damn about us. Or that that big son of a bitch would enjoy breaking people in two just for fun.”
“And what can you tell about me?”
“I—I’m not sure. There’s a hardness in you somewhere, that’s for sure, but you’re no psycho. It’s almost as if, well, if I didn’t know it was impossible I’d say you weren’t Park Lacoch at all but somebody very different, somebody who didn’t belong in t at body at all.”
Her observations was dead on, and my respect for her intuitive abilities, if that’s what it was, went up a hundred notches. Still, a smooth, glib cover was called for.