Just a minute or so earlier I’d been all ready with a large number of words, each one designed to tell those people exactly what I thought of them. The words were still inside my head somewhere, still bouncing with indignation and huffiness, but they were no longer first in line and maybe not even second. I don’t like revelations, especially startling ones, and too much of what I’d just heard fell into the wide-eyed, what—the-hell-are-you-talking-about category.
“What the hell are you talking about?” I demanded almost at once, only glancing in the direction of Murdock, who wasn’t looking at me. “He can’t be your brother, you don’t even have the same last names. And what do you mean, his ‘talent’? Murdock’s from Central, and he doesn’t have a talent.”
“Murdock grew up and lives on Central, but like the rest of us he was born in the community,” the woman Ashton corrected, and if she wasn’t the sort to be gentle, she had no trouble managing patience. “Of course he and I have different last names, we were raised in different places by people who have no connection with each other except for wanting to be sure we don’t all end up living in chains. Our natural parents don’t use last names, so those of us raised away from the community simply keep the last names we grew up with when we go back. As for Murdock’s talent-our people were very upset when he wasn’t born an empath, and with both Rimilian and Centran blood in him couldn’t understand why he wasn’t. They didn’t know about his talent until he learned to talk, I’m told, but it was so strong and definite in him that they began checking others for the same thing. They discovered then that quite a few of us have it, but none are able to be quite as accurate as my brother. When he gets a flash of prescience, it usually can’t be argued with. ”
This time I turned my head to look directly at Murdock, vaguely wondering why he still wasn’t looking at me. There wasn’t the least expression on his narrow face, but it was almost as though he were ashamed of what I’d just been told. The pride I’d heard in Ashton’s voice made his attitude something I couldn’t understand, which only added to the crowding in the compartment of my mind meant to hold confusion.
“I think you can see now why his making us wait really was for your benefit,” Ashton went on, unbothered by the fact that I was no longer looking at her. “None of us could imagine how you could possibly get out of there, most especially with all that conditioning they use, but Murdock’s talent kept us from giving up and leaving. And he was the only one of us who didn’t want you turned off again, too. We insisted because we can’t afford to have someone with your strength walking around thinking we’re practically blood enemies, but it will only be until we get you home to the community. Once you share that with us and know you’re one of us, you’ll also know that what we did was in no way uncaring use or abandonment.”
I didn’t need my abilities to know the woman believed everything she was saying, believed it deeply even though she didn’t expect me to believe. My innermost thoughts were carefully searching everything I’d been told, looking for loopholes and inconsistencies and flaws running counter to simple logic, but I suddenly realized I didn’t expect them to find any. What I’d been told was what the people telling it considered the absolute truth, and then something else came to me with the same feeling of total conviction.
“Murdock, there’s something bothering you that has nothing to do with what Ashton just told me,” I said, the statement considerably softer than the words I’d previously addressed to him. “I’m too confused right now to know what to think, but this is a point I’m not uncertain about. I think you have something else to talk about-that I won’t be terribly happy to hear.”
“Intuition that accurate is almost certainly much more than mere intuition,” he answered, a faint smile curving his lips before he turned his head to look directly at me again. Once he did I could see that the smile wasn’t reflected in his eyes, a lack that made me even more uneasy than his words. “Terrilian, child, there’s one important point you haven’t yet commented on or questioned,” he said, something of a sigh behind the words. “Both Ashton and I have told you you’re one of us, but you haven’t yet asked how that could be. It’s possible you don’t believe us, or perhaps so much else has been told you that you haven’t yet gotten around to considering the contention. Will you do me the favor of thinking about it now?”
Reaching through my shield showed that Ashton was puzzled and concerned, undoubtedly because of the way Murdock’s mind was behaving. He was absolutely determined to go through with discussing what he had begun on, but the rest of him was so filled with the desire to avoid the subject that he was just about trembling inside. From Ashton’s reaction I could see I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t used to seeing Murdock like that, but at least I had his request as a partial distraction.
“I don’t really know what to think about it,” I admitted, finally remembering I held a cup of kimla I could drink from. “Murdock, have you forgotten that I know my parents even though they didn’t raise me? They were the ones who turned me over to the Centran government so that I could be raised in a creche with other empaths like myself. The authorities considered them my parents, and with all the checking routinely done, I don’t consider it likely that they weren’t.”
“Terrilian, we were expecting and prepared for all that checking, that’s why it showed the authorities nothing we didn’t want it to show,” he answered, gray eyes still sober, mind still burdened. “Not many of our people have ever been placed on Central itself, but not because doing the placing was all that difficult. Keeping in contact with them was the hard part, making sure they didn’t forget us—or talk about us when they were too young to realize what danger the talking would put us all in. We usually provided one older friend and confidante to support them with understanding companionship until they were old enough to be discreet, and then they were told the truth about where they came from. Once they knew, they were able to make occasional visits back to the community, to grow closer to those they came from, but, child-none of them were ever Primes.”
“Central tends to spoil Primes for any position lower than Ruler Of All Creation,” Ashton put in, her tone dry, her thoughts totally disapproving. “We’ve had Primes raised on other worlds relocate to Central, and after a couple of years there, there was no living or getting along with them. When the time came to pull them out of public life and bring them home for good to keep them from disappearing forever into what we then thought of as a Prime-maw, the very first thing they tried on the very first day was taking over direction of the community. They didn’t need or want to join any of our training classes, they just wanted to run everything in sight because they were so special. They had to be flattened hard before they listened to anything told them, and with most the lesson had to be repeated more than once.”
“Which should explain the rather-cool reception you had from Ashton at the very beginning,” Murdock said, the faintest of smiles on his face. “She herself took over heading our training program only after she was convinced she really was the strongest and most advanced in the community, and most of the difficulty she mentioned—and more she didn’t mention-became hers to contend with. But we seem to have strayed from the point