“Be quiet!” the man in black shouted as he came up beside me, his face red as he raised both arms to command the silence he’d demanded. “Shut up and listen to me! You’re all acting like a bunch of tight-assed virgins, listening to this ring and taking her seriously! Didn’t any of you ever face a challenge before’? Did you let your opponent talk a win out of you? If she didn’t know damned well she would lose, wouldn’t she be fighting instead of flapping her mouth? Are you men and Primes, or are you shivering rings yourselves? Get over here and make her drop this shield, then teach her what you do to females who try getting out of the place they belong!”
He shoved me forward a few steps then, deeper into the new mutter rising to both sides of the room, but worse than that closer to the three he’d mainly been addressing. They’d all been staring at me during his harangue, their minds too far away to reach easily through the shield, and after a very brief hesitation Kel-Ten started forward! All I could think of was the time Len had used his mind to make my body react, the times Tammad had done the same, all those times other Rimilian males had unknowingly coerced me into doing what pleased them. If Kel-Ten and the others got control of me Iii do anything they said, answer any questions they asked, and being done like that frightened me more than even the thought of death could. If I stayed shielded they couldn’t touch my mind—but the trainer had said it was possible to force a shield open! To keep them away from me I’d have to kill them, but I didn’t want to kill them! I was very much afraid it wasn’t possible to kill with your mind when you didn’t want to, which left me with nothing at all to do to protect myself. I stood in the middle of the floor as Kel-Ten, leading the other two, slowly got nearer, helpless to keep myself from trembling and not far from a whimper.
“The girl isn’t the only one who had a lot to say,” Kel-Ten announced suddenly, stopping just as abruptly with the other two behind him. “You did a lot of talking yourself, Master Trainer, but I somehow missed the part where you proved she was lying when she said you were using us. Did you miss the fact that we could feel her mind all the way over on the other side of the room? Would you like to know how little spread there was even at that distance? We were told we were being rewarded by being allowed to go after her together to teach her a lesson. We could do anything we liked as long as we didn’t hurt her permanently, they said. Facing a mind like that is a reward? Without being told we have to work together, otherwise we’ll end up losing? Would you like to tell us how many of us you expect to lose anyway? Would you?”
By that time Kel-Ten was shouting, his fury so strong it blazed out of him in all directions. Even through my shield I could feel that Ank-Soh and the other Prime in red were linking their own fury and sending it out with his, spreading it to every Prime in the room. The man in black beside me had gone pale, and then he was staggering under the storm of rage echoing throughout the room.
“Get them all!” Kel-Ten screamed with teeth bared, and without an instant’s hesitation the Primes in the room turned on every white or black-clad figure, using their minds against the black and their fists and feet against the white, those two colors going down beneath whichever torrent overwhelmed it. There’s a limit to the amount of power you can shunt aside when it comes at you, and every trainer in the room was well beyond that limit.
I stood in the only sane three-foot square in the room, watching in shock as the Primes raged and ravened all over the rest of it, attacking the paneling on the walls when there were no more living enemies to go after. Every shred of resentment and anger they’d ever felt had been triggered at once, turning them into deadly, unreasoning animals, not caring what they did or who saw it.
Saw it! I realized with another shock that they didn’t know we were being watched by what was probably every higher-up in the complex, who had to have some way of stopping riots like that. I knew I had to do something to stop them, but it wasn’t possible to work through the boiling sea of insanity the room had become. I had to get out of there, and then I would do what I could.
I actually glanced over my shoulder to see whether or not I was being watched by the two Secs who had brought me there, then looked quickly away again before starting to make my way out of the room. I would have felt stupid for not realizing that a white uniform is a white uniform no matter who’s wearing it—if I hadn’t felt so sickened instead. That they were women had made no difference to the Primes, all that had mattered was that they were Sees. I would have closed my eyes and emptied my insides at that horrible example of total equality, but I simply didn’t have the time.
It didn’t take me as long as I thought it would to get out of the room. I was worried about the brown uniform I had on, but wrapping myself in a strong projection of unimportance had let me move through the riot without anyone paying any attention to me. I stopped out in the hall and took a deep breath, but didn’t have any more time to lose than that. Once the training room was completely demolished the riot would spill out into the rest of the building, and I had to be away after the people I was looking for well before that. Glad that the shielding on the room was still intact I sent my mind out, and found what I was looking for almost immediately. Those very important people were very close, and all of them seemed to be in a panic. I saw where they were in relation to the room I had just left, and quickly headed that way.
Down the hall and around one turn brought me to a door marked, “Do not enter,” and I had no doubt the command was usually obeyed. That time, though, it was ignored completely as I turned the knob and quietly entered, the noise in the room hitting at me as soon as I opened the door. The room was very tastefully and comfortably decorated around the half dozen viewing screens it held, but the men occupying it weren’t enjoying what it offered or taking advantage of the viewing it afforded. They were arguing bitterly, and Serdin seemed to be one against all the others.
“I don’t know why the pacifiers aren’t working!” he was shouting, his gray uniform looking rumpled rather than neat and cool. “That’s why I sent a repair crew to central control! What more do you want me to do?”
“We want you to get this stopped!” one of the men came back in a hiss, a heavy man also in gray who had very long brown hair and rings on nearly all of his fingers. “If this is an example of the way you’ve been running this complex, I’m surprised it’s still standing! You can be sure Rathmore will hear all about the way you entertain important guests, you certainly can be sure!”
“Krover, you’ve already been told this has never happened before,” Serdin growled, then gestured toward another man in yellow. “Your own spy there told you that, and if you’re not going to believe him, why did you bother sending him here to be my assistant? You and your associates will be just as safe in this room as I am, and once we get them quieted down you can even help me decide what to do to them for this outrage. Something like that should brighten your visit considerably.”
“I’d rather do something to darken it,” I said as the fat man began to appear mollified, stepping forward to let the door swing closed behind me. Every head in the room turned in my direction, most of them showing expressions of shock, but Serdin looked furious.
“You!” he spat, taking one step toward me, his hands closed to fists at his sides. “You have the nerve to walk in here after everything you’ve done?”
“Why not?” I asked mildly, letting him see nothing of what was growing in my mind—or letting him know I’d dropped my shield. “You don’t have your nulls with you any longer, so what was there to keep me from paying you’ a visit?”