Hidden Faults (31 page)

I gave her back the glass, and she put it in her little autoclave.

“
The Febkeinzes, I almost get because religious bigots don’t surprise me any more, but you lot? What’s wrong with you? I don’t know why you put him through this. With his background...why turn him into a rapist, the very thing he loathes?”

She winced at the word. “You’re quite right. It
is
rape. It’s just...I suppose we all suffered so much abuse in prison that what Kir does...doesn’t seem so bad. Can you at least understand that? We’ve had to compromise so much, lost so much, we can only hang onto such shreds of comfort as we can.”

“You’re no different from the government if you argue that. Doing the unspeakable in the name of good.”

“
You should know
.”

I yanked my shirt back on, angry again. “All my patients signed consent forms. They knew what they were getting into.”

“Consent where there’s no real choice, is no consent.” She held up her hand as I drew breath to yell. “I understand your point. I'm only saying that when one is in an abnormal situation, it’s easy to lose sight of the real ethics. I think of all of us, Kir is probably the only one who never has. Yet he does it anyway because he knows it’s important.”

“So why don’t you do it? You’re a telepath, and a woman would have more chance of success in this kind of work.”

She stared at the ground. “There are reasons why I can’t. Kir’s stronger than me. We abuse that. I can’t excuse it. I can’t change it either.”

“So that’s it. I accept Kir raped me for reasons people considered sufficient at the time, leaving him and me both screwed up, and I'm supposed to go on as if nothing’s happened.”

She looked me in the eye. “What you do is up to you.”

“I can hardly leave.”

“You could...possibly. Your memory would have to be erased. You know too much.”

“Another mindrape.”

“If you see it that way. You think we have so many choices? You think we aren’t all coping with trauma? Jeyle’s husband divorced her while she was in prison and went off with his mistress, taking their children with him. Hermi’s lost access to his daughters and wife. I’ve lost...many things. We’ve been raped, tortured, abused for so many years. We can either sit on the ground and refuse to do anything because of the burden of our many sorrows, or we can get up, go on and fight.”

“But you weren’t raped by one of your own.”

Hesitantly, she laid her hand on my arm. “Only you can make your peace with Kir over that. Normally it’s the last thing I’d tell a rape victim to do but these aren’t normal circumstances.”

“And if I don’t, then I'm on the outer.”

“Not with me, not with Hermi. Not even with Kir. Jeyle may not forgive you, but she’s a mother defending her chick. As for the rest of them....” Her lip curled in a sneer. “Hating Kir would probably make you a champion.”

“That’s unfair. It’s immoral.”

She sighed. “Since at least as far back as our earliest records, paranormals have shared a common ethical standard, an understanding of how we have to behave if normals aren’t going to kill us out of hand. We don’t use our powers to kill. Oh, we
can
kill. We’ve been soldiers. But we don’t use our talents. Kir’s done that, and the others are revolted.”

“But if he had to kill for good reason, why not use his talent? A weapon would put him at risk, and he’s not the first paranormal to do this, surely.”

“
No, he’s not, and others have done so with far less reason. But the taboo runs deep and isn’t lightly overturned. Kir didn’t do so lightly, but he’ll always put the protection of the innocent above any other considerations and well above his own happiness.”

“And this cuts no ice with these people?”

She pursed her lips. “They believe there’s always another way. I don’t really know what they expect Kir to do. I don’t see any of them volunteering to take his place. He’s had special training, certainly, but others could do so.”

“His hands—the tattoos were removed by the Weadenisis?”

“Yes. Their covert tactics are much more advanced than anything we have, and they mastered the safe removal of paranormal tattoos even before the terrors. But people here are proud. They don’t want to think of themselves as spies. They want to cling to their professional status, their high moral principles, and let Kir be—”

“The garbage man?”

She nodded. “They’ve made their choices concerning him. Now, so can you. Censure or forgive. Only you know which will heal you most.”

“His power—your power—terrifies me.”

“Yes. And if it stopped terrifying you, you’d immediately suspect one of us of manipulating you. Take your time, Jodi. Think about it. Talk to him and talk to me. Kir’s worth the effort to understand. He’s not evil.”

“He’s lucky to have you as a friend.”

“You have me as a friend too, dear. Now, how’s your head?”

I paused and listened to my body’s messages. “Better. I feel wrung out.”

“Then maybe a nap after lunch, and then a good hour or two in the daylight room. Weren’t you and Ronwe supposed to be practising your talent at some point?”

I’d completely forgotten. “Does it matter?”

“Yes. It does. So do it. Go on, and try not to fret about this.”

“I don’t have anything else to do but fret. Have you nothing I could work on in here?”

“Yes, I do, but not today. Your thoughts are too disordered and you’re distracting me. Shoo.”

I really needed some damn shields.

~~~

I did as she said, ate, rested, and sat under the bright, warm daylight lamps. Physically, I felt better. Mentally, I was a wreck. I wavered between anger and paranoia, self-loathing and loathing of the other people here. I was in prison still—a comfortable, well-furnished prison, but still a trap. Being with Kir had masked this fact. Now I had no allies, and I was ready for exploitation by another Ganwe. They were surely too fastidious to demand blowjobs—but then they’d happily asked Kir to whore around for them, so maybe they weren’t.

My mood lifted a little when later that afternoon Ronwe and his lover took me outside, away from the mountain and along the Gulkami range, near Mount Kizwha, a small active volcano. They explained that they used the volcanoes to hide their heat signatures.

“
Not that the Pindoni satellite system is that sophisticated, not officially, but we can’t take the risk,” Lonin explained. He’d once been an electronics engineer, Weadenisi-trained, and had worked on the first satellite systems. “Since relations broke down with the Weadenisis, the Pindoni surveillance apparatus took a bad knock. We were leasing space on their satellites. Putting our own up took a lot of time and skills we didn’t have. Of course, we don’t know everything the government is doing now. I wouldn’t mind betting our surveillance is at least as sophisticated as theirs—
we’ve
got access to the Weadenisi data, you see.”

Hovering in midair over a pristine, endless snowfield, great plumes of steam and smoke rising a couple of pardecs ahead of us, and surrounded by vast, dark and white clad mountains, I listened with only half an ear to his burbling. All this talk of surveillance and spying brought back unhappy memories, and I didn’t completely approve of what they did with the information they received. But Lonin found it fascinating, so I pretended I did too. I’d made enough enemies that day. And being outside, however frigid the air, lifted some of the ever-present oppressiveness from my heart. I amused myself watching the clouds of vapour coming out of Lonin’s mouth, and wondering if he talked this much in bed.

Finally Ronwe interrupted Lonin’s long and technical explanations. “Right. Jodi, make a fireball about the size of Lonin’s arse.”

I gave Ronwe a baleful look as his lover smacked him.

“Do I need to take my gloves off?”

“Only if you want to.” He pointed at a spot a few midecs away from the aforementioned backside. “Just...imagine it. Then want it.”

Kir’s words came back to me, and I remembered the feeling....

A ball of fire about three midecs wide appeared with a slight pop and floated steady as a rock right next to Lonin’s butt. A jolt of pleasure rippled through me, much more powerful than what I’d experienced last night, and I gasped at the almost orgasmic sensation. I put a little more power into the flames, and the pleasure ramped up, my balls tightening almost as if I was about to come, but without the frantic need to do so. I swallowed and thanked fortune neither of my companions could read my mind.

Ronwe crooned with delight. “Yes! Perfect...no, don’t lose control.” I’d let it drift down a little in my distraction over my physical reaction. “You’re the master, not the fire.”

“Mmmm, toasty,” Lonin said, holding his hands out to the miraculous flames.

“Get back, dear, he’s about to make it bigger. Go for it, Jodi.”

I could, I realised, very quickly grow addicted to this power. Every time I used the pyrokinesis for anything bigger than a candle flame, it stroked my pleasure centres—the bigger the flame, the bigger the rush, the more intense the thrill up my spine and into my cock. No wonder Ronwe had fallen in love with his volcano. I wanted to ask him if it was the same for him, but I didn’t dare. Not today, at least.

“You’re a natural,” Ronwe finally declared. “Now remember—you can shape any flame as easily as the stuff you produce. It works exactly the same.”

“Can you show me how to make a weapon?”

“What?” Lonin floated in front of me, his green eyes frowning.

“I want to know how to use my power to defend this place if I have to. I want to be able to control it without having to think. I want not to be useless, Lonin.”

Ronwe patted his lover’s arm soothingly. “It’s okay, Loni. He’s got a point. It’s not like we don’t all have potentially lethal abilities.”

“Except Hermi.”

Ronwe gave me a funny look and I wondered what else the government hadn’t told us about empaths. “Pay attention, Jodi. I’m going to show you how to make a thermal lance, PK style.”

If I thought making fireballs was fun, melting rocks felt like being a god. I terrified myself—what must the early peoples have felt, seeing one of their kind produce this kind of power? How frightened had they been? And the Pindone government were worried about PKs who could just about light candles with their talent? I felt like going to Vizinken and cutting Parliament House in half, to show them I could.

And then five minutes later, I’d be electrocuted, shot, and most likely bombed. No, not very sensible. But tempting.

I said as much to Ronwe. “Yeah, it is. PKs have always had it the worst—TPs creep people out, but we flat out scare them to death. Even when we were legal, we had to keep things quiet. Of course, it would be utterly unethical to use our powers to kill, so we’ve tended to avoid being used by governments when we could. Hasn’t always worked.”

“Are we unstoppable then?”

“Hardly,” Lonin answered tartly. “Watch. Throw a fireball at me.” I did and he deflected it without moving a muscle, sending it skittering off into the air until I made it vanish. “Something harder, now.”

Throwing fire at a real living person scared me more than the rock melting had, but Lonin was equal to anything I sent at him, even when Ronwe joined in. We spent nearly an hour duelling and messing around, until Ronwe put his hand to his ear and then held up his hand.

“Guys, we’ve got to go back. They need Jodi again.”

What now,
I wondered.

Re-entering the refuge’s stony prison felt harder than it should have been. I wondered if I could somehow move to a less oppressive hideout. One less populated by people with whom I apparently had so little in common.

To my surprise, Kir came to collect me from the elevator. He searched my eyes, seeming to want to know how I was.

You ain’t gonna like what we found, Jodi.

They’re fast, aren’t they?

The information wasn’t that hard to find, once we knew what we were looking for. Come with me.

Jeyle still after my head?

He managed a grin.
Think a little lower down.

Ouch.

He started to walk on, but I touched his arm.
I talked to Dede
.
She argues very prettily that I should try to move past my anger for my own sake as well as yours.

Can you?

I don’t know. I...don’t want to feel this way forever. I need time.

I figured.

I thought he’d be pleased I was prepared to make the effort to understand, but his reaction was so muted, I couldn’t imagine what he was thinking. After a moment or two, I moved on. This wasn’t the time or place for this conversation.

We went to another smaller meeting room with a viewcom and printer set up in the corner. Wesejne looked as pleased to see me as I felt to see him. His girlfriend wouldn’t meet my eyes at all. Jeyle merely nodded at my arrival. Hermi smiled but not as warmly as before—maybe afraid his lover would cut him off. Or something off, anyway.