Read Online Psion by Joan D. Vinge - Free Book Online Page A

throat-cutting competition they were used to, and they didn’t much like that. But they lived with it.
    So an isolated Colony of the Federation grew up out around the Crab, controlled by the FTA and independent from everything else. And the rest of the Federation, even though it was still only a few hundred light-years across, wasn’t a bubble shape expanding evenly into space anymore. It started to stretch out toward the Colonies. Earth lost its economic influence, and Quarro became an independent Federal District, the new center of power and money and everything worth having.
    All of that was why Quarro’s District Corporate Security, the FTA’s own soldiercops, had gotten involved in something going on way out in the Crab Colonies. The FTA had learned through its spies and informers that some sort of dirty business was taking shape out there, and they figured some combine or alliance of combines was backing it. But they couldn’t get any closer to the heart of it; all their leads just kept slipping through their fingers. They were sure Quicksilver was behind the plot, whatever it was. That made them real nervous, because the telhassium supply was out there in the Colonies. But eventually they learned that Quicksilver had contacts here in Quarro-and that he was looking for recruits.
    So we were here to work undercover, to find the real source of the trouble and make sure it was stopped before it knocked the Federation on its ass. Siebeling made it sound like making history, like poor psions saving the galaxy. I thought about that, and about me as a big hero. . . .
    Siebeling said, “Keep that smirk off your face. This isn’t a joke. If you can’t take it seriously, I’ll send you back-you aren’t being given the chance to slide out of anything here.”
    I sighed. “I’m glad you ain’t a mind reader.”
    Cortelyou laughed and shook his head. Siebeling just turned away, looking toward Jule.
    I watched them leave together, all of them going home when I couldn’t. My head was crammed so full of information that I felt as if moving it would make everything overflow. I thought about psions plotting out in the Colonies, about going out there and stopping them, about being a hero and a part of history. I looked down at my hands, at my bare wrist that would be wearing a data bracelet in a few more weeks . . . at the broken thumb that had healed crooked after I’d picked the wrong pocket once. And I realized suddenly that I was glad I wasn’t going home.
    The next day Goba and his techs used hypnosis on me again, giving me a screen of half-true memories that would protect the real truths I knew now from anything but a direct telepathic probe. And beginning the next day Dere Cortelyou worked me harder than ever, forcing me to learn the mind tricks I needed to handle a direct attack. It wasn’t any easier; but at least now I knew why I was doing it, so it was easier to keep trying.
    And then I really was a part of the research program, playing psi games with the rest of the psions and waiting for something to happen. Before long I began to wish we’d be waiting there forever. Sometimes I think that was the happiest time of my life.
    It surprised me how fast I’d gotten used to the Sakaffe Institute, because it was so different from-everything, from before. I had decent clothes that fit me. I could eat as much as I wanted to, any time I felt like it. I even had my private room. They’d stopped locking me in at night, but by now it didn’t matter: the bed was soft, clean, and mine, and that was all I wanted. There were a dozen different projects going on at the Institute besides ours, too; and once they’d gotten used to seeing me, the lab workers let me hang around and watch. Or just sit and stare at the threedy in one of the lounges, if I felt like it. Nobody cared. I was never bored. I didn’t even miss the drugs; just looking out any window was like some kind of an alindith dream. I had to pinch myself