But a condition it shouldn’t be possible to suffer from. I stiffened again as the realization came, a flood of protest from the part of me that normally engaged in arguing against things that were accepted as truth but were patently not so. How do you turn off one of your senses? that part of me demanded, a thought I knew I’d had before even if I couldn’t remember when. To turn off your hearing you had to plug your ears, to turn off sight you needed a blindfold, to avoid smell you had to hold your nose, and to keep from touching things you needed gloves. Keeping things out of your mouth took care of taste-in the absence of strong odors, that is—but without using special means, senses could not be turned off. To keep them from working you had to block them off, shield them from what was around them, interrupt the flow of data—
Shield. The single word-thought set me sitting up straight again, feeling more like an imbecile than anything else. That, of course, had to be it, but it had taken me so long to see even with all the clues I’d had! That Prime Jer-Mar, the one I’d insulted in the low dining room. How many times had he mentioned in passing that he couldn’t “reach” me with his strength, not even when he was furious? None of the Primes at the complex knew about shields, none of them used one, and even Kel-Ten’s amazement over the one I’d shown him hadn’t rung any real bells. I was stupid, that’s what I was, which is a hell of a lot worse than just being ignorant. Conditioning or no conditioning, I should have realized a lot sooner that the only way to “turn off” an empath is to key a shield into being around his or her mind.
“With intelligence like yours, you would have made a good brain surgeon,” I muttered to myself, moving my legs under the cover so that I could sit cross-legged and lean my arms on my knees. “Are you going to test the theory, or just sit here and admire it for the rest of your life?”
I didn’t quite sigh at the question I’d asked myself, but only because I would rather have put off answering it for a while. The theory was sound, no argument there, but I had a fairly good idea of how many sound theories never worked out in practice. I really needed it to work out, but that didn’t mean it would; all it meant was that I had to try as soon as possible, even if there was nothing but disappointment waiting for me as a result. After all, disappointment wasn’t all that bad or unbearable, not with all the practice I’d had living with it . . . .
The second time I did sigh, but that was only a necessary prelude to making the effort that had to be made. If there was a shield imposed around my mind I was the only one who could be generating it, which meant it was subject to me and my decision to banish it. Theory, theory, that was the theory, but how do you make something go away that you never asked for in the first place? Banishing a shield-banishing it wasn’t the hard part, letting it form to begin with was harder. You had to encourage it to come nearer to form it, but to banish it you just
Let it drop. It was almost like taking sound-deadeners off my ears at first, but in an inexplicable way was more than that. Even that drab cabin brightened in color, I could breathe deeply and freely again, and best of all could feel the presence of other minds on the transport. I was free of the Shackles they’d tried to put on me, and couldn’t help grinning at the thought that those particular shackles should never work again. I was awake, but hadn’t been “turned on” with the usual keying word or phrase. Two “offs” in a row shouldn’t work with conditioning any more than it did with a mechanical switch, but that was a theory I was in no hurry to test. What I did instead was allow the shield to form again, that light shield I could see through when I tried—and had seen through, the strange impressions I’d had in the complex proving that—then got up to look for the clothes that had been taken from me. Ever since my eyes had opened I’d been feeling as though I were starving, and I was suddenly eager to see how my dear friends would treat their poor, helpless little capt-ah-guest.
When I left my cabin the single table in the common room was neatly set but unoccupied, which I took to mean that it was waiting for me. As soon as I sat down the steward appeared, looking faintly startled but making no attempt to refuse the food order I gave him. It didn’t take him long to return with my meal, which meant I was able to get more than halfway through it before two people came out of the passageway that led to or from the command deck. Murdock McKenzie was being helped by his friend Ashton Farley again, but I paid very little attention to them until they were both settled at the table. By then I was ready to acknowledge the fact that I couldn’t eat any more, so I simply pushed my plate away, picked up my cup of kimla, then leaned back to stare at Murdock while I sipped in silence.
“Whether or not you’re prepared to believe me, I’m glad to see that you appear better than you were yesterday,” Murdock offered, the words a shade calmer and more quiet than usual. “The doctor was furious with us -for allowing you to leave your bed, but happily it did you no real harm. Would you like an explanation of why it was necessary to do-what else-was done to you?”
“Not really,” I answered, holding my cup in the fingertips of both hands. “I’m more interested in what you intend doing next—and also in hearing more of how terribly concerned you are about me. And you are concerned, aren’t you, Murdock?”
“It so happens that’s exactly what he is,” the woman Ashton put in when the man I stared at didn’t respond, at least not in words. That pain I’d seen the last time we’d spoken was there again, and maybe that was why I shifted my gaze to the high and mighty female Prime. She was looking at me with a good deal less than sisterly love, a reaction I more than shared.
“Not that it will do any good telling you this,” she went on, “but the only reason we were near New Dawn long enough to pick you up is that Murdock refused to just leave. He kept arguing with the rest of us, trying to convince us we had to do something to get you out of there, even though he knew as well as we did that there wasn’t anything we could do. I kept telling him he was just wasting time, and then when you turned up in the woods I understood that was exactly what he’d been doing: wasting time to give you a chance to do what we couldn’t. How long do you think you would have lasted out there if he hadn’t given you that chance?”
Her question was surprisingly calm considering what had previously gone on between us, but there was a faint bitterness behind it that I could just feel filtering through my shield. Her light eyes were making no effort to avoid mine, which meant I could see the brief flash of surprise in them when I made a sound of scorn.
“That touching story is very-touching, but what do you expect it to accomplish?” I asked in turn, making it clear that now I was holding her gaze. “Am I supposed to be so overwhelmed by his thoughtfulness and loyalty that I stop thinking and just emote? You told me he made everyone wait around when they didn’t want to, so would you like to tell me what he was making them wait for? I didn’t know there was anyone out here waiting to pick me up if I got out of the complex, so what good did his delaying tactics really do me? It was pure luck I was not only forced to run, but also able to do it when I had to. If he makes a habit of expecting the intervention of luck like that, you’re all a bunch of fools for listening to him.”
“You don’t know anything about us at all, do you?” the woman asked, her sudden frown and faint pity making it my turn to be surprised. “You’re one of us, no possible doubt about that, but you haven’t the faintest idea of what you’re one of. There are a number of us who had to leave the community at a very young age and grow up elsewhere, but we always knew who we were and who we came from. I don’t know why they did it differently with you, hadn’t realized they did do it differently, and don’t much like it. Of course my brother was counting on luck like that, but we aren’t fools for listening to him. When he gets the feeling something wildly improbable will happen, it usually does. His only mistake was in thinking we had to make it happen, when we had no real part in it. Sometimes his talent works like that.”