“Groups of l’lendaa and w’wendaa began a search for her both inside and out of the city, and one group, the one containing our agent, found something more than the faint, cold trail they would have been willing to settle for. Once they had left the city behind them, they were contacted by a completely unexpected ally—the giant black seetar that was Tammad’s usual mount. How the beast had gotten out of the city no one seemed to know, but his recognition of some of the riders had brought him from the forest surrounding the road the riders were on, his thoughts positively frantic. Our agent was already familiar with the seetar’s emotion-symbol for Terrilian, and since most of the agitation in the beast’s mind centered around that symbol, he knew at once that the seetar had seen her. He worked for a short while calming the beast, then began the very difficult task of extracting what information he could. By the time he was through he was exhausted, but was also certain he understood what the seetar had been trying to tell them.
“Apparently he had seen Terrilian riding past him on another seetar, felt confused as well as annoyed as to why she would do that, then decided to follow her. She didn’t go very far before she stopped, dismounted, and sat down in the woods beside a tree, but before he was able to approach her she suddenly fell over unconscious. He was trying to decide whether to go for help—and how to get the only man he could count on to give that help-when two strangers appeared, picked up the unconscious woman, and disappeared back into the forest. He followed them to something that smelled a little like a sword but was very large, watched them enter the thing, then had to stand helplessly by while the thing rose silently into the sky and out of his reach. He waited a short while to see if it would return, and when it didn’t he started back for the city to find help. The emotions signifying ‘high’ and ‘gone’ were so clear to our agent, he lost no time calling us to say Amalgamation people had taken Terrilian. ”
“And how right he was,” Ashton said with a snort and a flash of remembered anger. “We located their private transport in orbit, and were able to lock onto them before they left that orbit. If it hadn’t taken them so long to get around to leaving once they had the girl, we most probably would have missed them completely. I wonder what they were so busy with, that it took them that long to get started.”
The question was put very casually and only to Murdock, but there was something in the woman’s mind that sneered faintly in my direction, and that on top of the way she was pretending I wasn’t there at all. I didn’t have to know what she was hinting at in order to resent it, but once again the option of replying was taken from me by Murdock.
” They were certainly overconfident through being in orbit around an undeveloped world,” he said, his tone suggesting his guess was the only reasonable one. “It never occurred to them there were others around who would be able to detect them, so they took their time and no precautions at all. We hadn’t planned on using you as bait to help us find their hidden base of operations, Terrilian, but once presented with the opportunity we could hardly refuse to take it. We were in the midst of trying to decide whether it would be possible to free you before we returned to our people with the news, when our instruments told us you had effected your own escape. We sent people down into the woods to intercept you, found you senseless from’ the vicious beating you’d been given, and quickly took you to this transport. Now, happily, you are once again among your own.”
The faint, icy smile he sent me was very familiar, so familiar it was probably meant to distract me from what he’d said to the great amount of very real satisfaction he was feeling. Unfortunately for his intentions, though, I was too annoyed by the snide attitudes of his woman companion to be anything but critical of what I’d been told. Murdock’s narration was as neat and outwardly complete as anything I’d ever heard from someone in the XenoDiplomacy Bureau, but a small figure named logic was jumping up and down inside my head, pointing eagerly and insistently at the gaping holes in the fabric so recently constructed for my benefit.
“You know, I have the strangest feeling I’ve been told that before,” I remarked, doing my damnedest not to slump in the chair the way my body wanted to. “I’m referring to your comment about me being among my own, Murdock, and I also have the feeling I’ve doubted the sincerity of those who previously told it to me. Maybe that’s why I’m being so ungrateful as to feel no hesitation about lumping you in along with the rest of them.”
“A reaction like that is no more than to be expected after what you’ve so recently gone through, child,” the head of Central’s XD Bureau said smoothly, his mind as unconcerned and convincing as his expressionless expression. “When one is forced to spend time among those who cannot under any circumstances be trusted, one most naturally transfers the attitude to all who are thereafter encountered. Only a lack of betrayal can serve to alter the attitude, so you must expect to spend some time among us before. . . ”
“Before easy explanations and overblown sentiments can blind me to the truth again’?” I interrupted to ask, my brows raised with the question. “I’ve always admired your ability to weave blindfolds, Murdock, but this time you were a little sloppy. I wonder if that’s because you thought I was hurting too much to notice. I certainly hope it wasn’t because you decided I would never notice even under the best of circumstances. I’ve learned to resent having people dismiss me like that.”
“You’re in no position to resent anything, girl!” the woman Ashton snapped out, her mind filled with heavy annoyance rather than any sort of guilt or regret, her light eyes hard. “Right now you owe your life to us, and you’d be smart to understand you’re not important enough for Murdock or anyone else to bother lying to. All you Central bigwigs are alike, so full of yourselves you think the universe stops and goes only when you press the switch. Once you’ve been in my group for a while you’ll learn better, and until then you’ll keep your mouth closed and your opinions to yourself!”
The woman’s words started out heated and rose in temperature from there, her mind reaching out toward mine and quickly surrounding it before beginning to squeeze. Murdock was saying something in protest that both of us ignored, and although I now knew the main reason the woman didn’t care for me, that didn’t stop me from being as furious as she was. I’d taken all from her I intended taking, and it was time to fight back.
The Prime Ashton Farley was sitting up and forward in her chair, her hands clamped tight to the armrests, bracing herself physically for the mental assault she was in the midst of. For me, just sitting there normally was almost too hard, but then I didn’t need to brace myself in order to drop my curtain. Ashton’s mind was strong and trying hard to impress me with that strength, the pressure she exerted aimed toward making me ask her to stop—or begging her to, which was probably more like it. The instant I dropped my curtain I began exerting my own pressure outward, hard against her efforts but not as hard as I could have. First I let her see what she was trying to contain and then I flung her mind away from mine, more contemptuously than I had ever done with anyone.
The woman had been very surprised when my mind didn’t immediately quiver and collapse under her efforts, but the surprise paled into shock when my curtain disappeared to show her what she was working to hold down. She gasped and tried to continue squeezing even as the blood drained from her face, choked as she tried to throw herself back in the chair, but nothing happened the way she wanted it to. When I thrust her away from me she was even beyond the ability to scream, her mind clanging with shocked disbelief and fear, her body shuddering and gasping. Her feet had been pushing at the floor to get her farther away from the table, and when she had the chair facing far enough away, she staggered to her feet and ran. There was silence for a moment after that, and then Murdock brought his eyes and attention back to me, looking more shaken than I had ever before seen him.