"Really?" Mama came bustling out, wiping her hands on her apron. "You must mean Finny! We've known for a long time that she's good at making people think she doesn't look like her real self. You mean she can project emotions, too?"
"Project them and raise them in another person!" Papa turned to her. "Show Mama what you just did, Finny!"
Finny wasn't at all sure she wanted Mama to know how she had charmed Papa—but the older woman was looking at her with such hope that it made her remember the few times Mama had been delighted when she'd been particularly deft with telekinesis and, hoping to receive that kind of approval again, she tried to remember the feeling the boys raised in her. She managed to recall it and let it grow—and grow, and grow.
Orly came in with a load of firewood in his arms. He turned toward the fireplace and saw Finny. The wood clattered on the floor as his jaw dropped.
"Yes, I see." Mama beamed, lit by a glow of her own. "How wonderful, Finny! But I think that's enough now." She looked up at Papa and said, "I think our little girl will go far."
"Even to high places," Papa agreed, one arm around Mama's shoulders. "Congratulations, Finny! An ability like that is rare, very rare indeed!"
"Unfair, too," Orly grumbled as he bent to pick up the wood.
"Oh here, let me help you!" Finny cried, all contrition. She knelt to pick up the logs, but Orly's breath hissed in and she straightened, staring. "I—I'm sorry, Orly."
"Don't be," the teenager said. "It's been a horrible day, but you just made it a good one."
His eyes were warm with admiration, but also with amusement. Finny smiled and helped him finish with the wood.
When they were alone later that night, though, Mama had some very earnest words for her.
"It's a gift with which you must be very careful, Finny. If you make a boy fall in love with you, he could become very angry when you spurn him—and very badly hurt inside. You could do a great deal of damage."
Puzzled, Finny asked, "You mean I shouldn't use that gift?"
"If you can project one emotion, you can project them all," Mama said slowly, "and raising pity or sympathy in somebody, or a sense of responsibility, can do a lot of good. If you fall in love with a boy, of course, you're going to want to try to make him fall in love with you—but strong though they may seem, boys aren't made of steel, you know."
Finny looked doubtful. "You don't mean I could use that gift to hurt a boy, do you? I mean, do real damage."
"You certainly could," Mama said, "and you must be careful not to, unless your commander orders it when you're grown up. If you play with boys' hearts carelessly, you could wreck homes, turn men into thieves, make them kill one another—all sorts of horrible things."
Finny swelled inside with the feeling of power that gave her, even as her heart shrank from the thought of the guilt she would feel if she used her gift in such a way. "I'll be careful, Mama. I promise."
She was, trying very hard not to let the special feeling leak out—though she couldn't keep it from rising whenever one of her foster brothers let slip a glance of admiration. She reminded herself that, when a boy smiled at her that way or whistled or came over to talk, it wasn't her face or figure that had attracted him but the warmth of the emotions that she had let slip out. She knew she was a cheat and a fake, but she couldn't see any way to be anything else. She was born to be a deceiver and would have to live with that nature for the rest of her life.
In town, Finister discovered a new and thoroughly acceptable use for her gift. When five of the girls went shopping and a gang of town boys gathered to heckle them, she let her special feeling grow and projected it. Then the boys began to sweet-talk her and she paid attention first to one, then to another, until she had them arguing over who would have the pleasure of escorting her back to Papa's wagon. Then she projected anger into them as she led her sisters away a step at a time, watching as the boys began to shove one another and shout insults. They forgot the girls as they began to fight in earnest, and Finny and her sisters made their escape. As soon as they were out of sight, they began to laugh at the boys' foolishness—but Orma didn't laugh and began to eye Finny with envy. That bothered her.
In fact, her emotional growing pains were becoming strong enough that the schoolroom was something of a refuge. There Mama and Papa took turns teaching the more advanced subjects, such as physics, psychology, economics, and history— not just the history of old Earth but also of the whole Terran Sphere. They learned about SPITE, the Society for the Prevention of Integration of Telepathic Entities, the selfless and virtuous organization that spanned all the colonized planets and all of civilized time to try to save the people from tyranny—especially the tyranny of VETO, the Vigilant Exterminators of Telepathic Organisms, the totalitarian organization that tried to enslave all common people and make them labor at jobs that dulled the spirit until they became virtual robots, all in the name of the State. The inefficient and equivocating democratic governments weren't much better, according to Mama and Papa—they spent so much time vacillating and never making a decision that they left the people victims of Big Business, which was as willing to grind the workers into robots as VETO was, but also poisoned the people with the products it made them buy. Worst of all was the DDT, a democratic government that was trying to subvert the government of Gramarye.
All the children became very angry at the villainous VETO but even more at the sneaky DDT. Mama and Papa told them that if they became really skilled in their use of ESP, they would be allowed to join SPITE when they grew up and become Home Agents. Then they could help rid Gramarye of both VETO and the DDT. Finny began to realize that she could use her special gift to set the men in both organizations fighting each other the way the town boys had. Men were so easy to manipulate, after all.
Now that they were old enough, Mama took the big girls aside and told them how they had probably come to be born—not by parents who wanted them but didn't have money enough to keep them, but by women who had let men seduce them with their lies and charms, get them pregnant, then abandon them. Those women may have wanted to keep their children, but having no husbands, they would have been hard-pressed to make enough money to live. Worse, once they were no longer virgins, few men would be willing to marry them, not without dowries, and they might have to become prostitutes. It was quite possible that several of the children could be half brothers or half sisters, the unwitting by-blows of their mothers' pathetic attempts to make a living—though most of the money they earned would have been taken by their pimps.
Now Finny began to feel the hot, burning anger that would be with her the rest of her life, the urge for revenge upon the man who had seduced her unknown mother or forced her into prostitution. Since she didn't know who the man was, she would spend long years trying to revenge herself on any man who came by.
Except for Orly, but he came later—at least, as something other than a brother.
Mama and Papa knew which of their foster children were more tenderhearted than the others and knew that Finny was among them, so they didn't let her see a chicken beheaded until she was twelve. Even then, they told her to brace herself, described what she would see, and told her to erect her full mental shield so that she would not feel the fowl's death pangs. They did tell her that it would be quick, and it was— but in her case, twelve was still too early; she was naturally a very sensitive and affectionate child, and it gave her nightmares. The next year, they let her start seeing sheep butchered, and at fourteen, pigs. It was horrifying and sent her into fits of tears, but Mama told her gently, "It's the way of the world, Finny. If we want to have chicken for dinner, we have to kill the chicken first—and if we want bacon and pork chops and pigskin to sell, we have to slaughter the pig and clean it. You'll learn to cope with it, dear. We all do, sooner or later."