“We really don’t intend stealing those clothes until much later, so for right now you’ll be safe in putting them down in a corner somewhere,” Ashton said, taking a short step forward before sitting on the carpet fur with her cup of kimla. “That’s one of the nice things about being in the community—we warn our victims before we strike. ”
“I think I would really enjoy having someone strike at me right about now,” I muttered with a glare for Ashton’s grin and Murdock’s amusement, then looked around for a place to put the pouches I still held. “The only thing I ever slammed at with full strength was the Hand of Power, but lately I’ve been getting this urge- I never realized it before, but every now and then enemies do come in handy.”
“One of the purposes of enemies has always been as an outlet for aggressions,” Murdock agreed, watching as I put the pouches down near a wall then headed for the pitcher of kimla. “Life becomes a good deal easier in the living, when one is able to give one’s anger to someone other than friends. Are you able yet to discuss what befell you among our enemies?”
I waited until I had poured the cup of kimla and had moved around to sit opposite the two before looking at Murdock, and then I merely shrugged in answer to his question. His words had approached the subject as carefully as his mind, and I wasn’t being pressured into talking about anything I couldn’t. Both he and Ashton had asked during the trip back to Rimilia, and when I’d ignored their gentle inquisitiveness, they hadn’t pressed the matter.
“You’re going to need the information at some time, so it might as well be now,” I conceded, raising my cup to sip from it. “It’s-unpleasant to remember, but remembering isn’t as painful as living it was. I woke up in a small room, all alone and unable to remember how I got there, and then a woman came to take me to someone who was called the director of the complex. I found out later he wasn’t really the head of the place, only someone they used as some sort of figurehead, an obvious incompetent to be looked down on and considered harmless. He-tried to key me into the heavy conditioning and at first it worked, but then he-tried putting his hands on me, and for some reason that broke me out of it.”
“Even adopted Rimilian women know who has and doesn’t have the right to touch them,” Ashton said, her mind refusing to let her hot-glowing anger flare up out of control. “The first time I visited here I decided Rimilian women were doormats, taking anything their men cared to give, but that isn’t true. They were raised in a culture totally different from Central and Central-derived ones, so they accept things we look at as impositions. What they don’t accept is being touched by any man who doesn’t have the right to touch them, and their men back them on that completely. If any man on this world tried suggesting he’d raped a woman because she encouraged him, he’d be maimed and then dead so fast he wouldn’t have time to understand his mistake. For Rimilian men all women are encouraging and arousing; it’s up to the man to control himself until he finds a woman of his own.”
“And conditioning of any sort would have difficulty holding a mind like yours for very long,” Murdock put in, carefully keeping away from a topic that belonged to women to discuss. “They had no way of knowing that, of course, which made it a stroke of luck for our side. I do, however, find myself curious to know- Were you able to learn the identity of the true head of the complex?”
“As far as I could tell, it was a man named Serdin,” I answered, making a face before drinking more of the kimla. “He was the one I used to get me out of the complex, and nothing he said was questioned by anyone. If he doesn’t run the thing, the Secs don’t know the difference. ”
“Serdin, of course,” Murdock muttered, his mind going as cold as his expression usually was. “He rose through governmental ranks by the simple expedient of quickly showing a talent for knowing when to look the other way, of ruthlessly thrusting others out of his way, and for divining which of those around him were destined for power. He suddenly dropped out of sight a few years ago, and the unofficial explanation was that he had retired because of poor health. It must surely have been Rathmore’s idea for him to be behind an incompetent figurehead; Rathmore finds it amusing to let half of those he associates with believe the other half can’t be trusted or relied on. It gives them a false sense of security and power he can then take advantage of as he sees fit.”
“What did you mean, he was the one you used to get you out of the complex?” Ashton asked, her eyes narrowed as she stared at me. “What could you have done to talk him into it? Threaten to shrink his office by crying all over it?”
“Oh, I didn’t have to threaten him,” I came back, her manner retrieving all that irritation I’d been feeling only a short while earlier. “He decided he was curious as to what the other men in that place found so attractive about me, so he was going to try me for himself. His interest made it easier getting a grip on him, and after that he thought he was serving his own ends with everything he did. No female-‘guest’-had a chance of getting out of that place by herself, but no one tried to keep our ‘hosts’ from doing anything they pleased.”
“You were able to take over his mind,” Ashton said, a quiet statement showing very little of the shock she felt. “I know most of us can influence others for a short time, but it’s very draining even for those trained in the technique. Just as a guess you had to establish control over him, tell him what you wanted him to do, leave wherever you were with him and wait while he followed your orders, then keep holding him until you were clear of the complex. I would have been burned out halfway through that, even if things happened one after the other with no delays in between. But you weren’t anywhere near burned out, were you?”
Her second statement had no backdrop of shock to it, nothing but rising excitement that put the start of a grin on her face. She was sure everything she’d said was true, and that pleased her!
“Don’t you know how to do anything right?” I asked, wondering why I was feeling so uncomfortable. “You’re not supposed to like the idea of what I can do, you’re supposed to be afraid of it. What do they teach you people in this place?”
“They teach us that experiment has proven what one of us can do, so can the rest,” she answered at once, that faint grin growing and widening. “If I see someone who’s better at something than I am, I get started right away trying to find out how they do it. Spending time resenting them for managing it before I did is a waste of time, and I’m too busy to have much of it to waste. And now that you mention it, how did you develop that much strength?”
“Now that I mention it?” I repeated in outrage, trying to decide how I ought to feel. If they really did welcome those who were different as potential new sources of an increase in their own ability . . . “Ashton, if anyone deserves experiencing what I did in order to develop this kind of strength, you have to be the one. Maybe I ought to promise not to let anyone else try it first.”
“Somehow that doesn’t strike me as being what most consider a generous offer,” she responded, immediately suspicious as she studied me. “I don’t know the details of everything you went through, but . . .”
“Excuse me, but we’re back,” a voice broke in from the curtain behind me, drawing Ashton’s eyes and interrupting the frown Murdock had begun developing. Even if I’d been completely shielded I would have known who it was, and I mentally kicked myself for not once thinking about who Murdock’s agent in my company could have been. There really was only one person it could have been, and I turned where I sat to look up at Lenham Phillips.
“Hi, Terry,” Len said with an attractive grin on his handsome face, my brother empath greeting me casually after no more than a short time of us being apart. “They all thought I was crazy not to worry about you more, but somehow I knew you’d get away from those clods. When it comes to picking the winning side, any side you’re on is the one that gets my money.”