The Gentle Seduction (9 page)

Chipper whirred into the room. Fanth grabbed the bag and started to work.

Shea turned to Veddin. "How would we know how widespread the problem is?"

Fanth looked up from inserting a tube in the woman's arm. "It's probably the whole planet, Shea." His voice held little hope. "A psi-resonant field keeps its strength no matter how far away you go. The jamming has surely spread all over Hydra."

For a long moment the four of them pondered the scope of the disaster. At length, Fanth stood up. "Well, we won't do any of them any good standing here. Let's go"

Veddin shook his head. "What are you going to do?"

Shea look tired. "We'll go on down the street. What else
can
we do?"

Autumn stomped her foot. "You can't help the whole planet like that!"

Fanth started shaking with stress. "We can't do anything about the whole planet. We have to do what we can. Maybe there are other Couples like us and—" he paused, "couples like you, who can help the people on the other islands."

Autumn leaned forward to say something cutting, but Veddin spoke first. "What happened to this woman, anyway? Is this a reaction to the jamming?"

"In a sense. She has Ciquestan's deficiency, which has nothing to do with the jamming, but she and her touched one probably kept the chemical imbalance under control using their psi powers." Fanth paused.

In the midst of the stillness, the sound of someone's breathing stopped.

Fanth turned back to the bed. "No!" He ripped at the sleeve of the woman's gown, and pushed another needle in. A mottle of darker blue spread across her features. "Damn!" Fanth clenched and unclenched his hands, not knowing what to do.

Shea took him by the arm. "Come on," she whispered. "We'll save the next one." She looked at Autumn. "We'll be down the street if you need us. " They shuffled out of the room.

Veddin turned away from the dead woman. "We have to find the jammer." He didn't know what to do in this house. He hurried to leave. "Isn't there some way to track down the source of a psi field?"

Autumn didn't answer till they were out of the house again. "Some of the most sensitive receptor Couples, and the telekinetics, can home in on a sender's location in space. But . . ."

"But all the receptor Couples and telekinetics are probably in bad shape, and even if they aren't, if they tried to find the jammer they'd probably get broken up and then they'd
really
be in rough shape," Veddin completed her sentence.

She looked down. "Probably."

"Isn't there some mechanical way to locate them? On Kaylanx, we developed the ability to at least detect resonant psi fields, after we met the Squishies. We were even able to shield ourselves somewhat by the time they attacked Kaylanx. Surely Hydra has a far better psi technology than the FreeFed."

"Not really. There's never been a need to understand psi here; all they've ever had to do is use it." Autumn looked up at him. "There have been some experiments, at a couple of the universities. In fact, I seem to remember hearing about Couple Berrens, on Pyrta, making some breakthroughs recently." Her voice perked up. "The Berrenses have an especially powerful resonance, too; they might've been strong enough to survive the jammer, especially since Pyrta is on the other side of the planet." Autumn's features tensed with hatred. "When we find out who's responsible, we'll kill them."

"First we have to find them. How can we contact the Berrens Couple?"

Until that moment, Veddin hadn't noticed that the sun was sinking. The city lights had been slowly brightening, taking up the slack. Now Veddin noticed the lights, because they went out.

Earlier, the city had been too quiet. Now the stillness was deathly.

Autumn's hand came to her mouth. "Oh no."

"What happened now?" Veddin tried to force himself to grasp the kaleidoscope of disasters the last few hours had brought. He didn't succeed.

"The fusion reactor for this island chain must've failed. The reactors are monitored by psikinetics, who tune the reactors by controlling the cold catalyston flux. The flux density must ve dropped below the critical region. There's no power, probably anywhere in this whole ocean."

Veddin rolled his eyes. "Joy. Don't you people do anything without using psi powers?"

Autumn's eyes were flashing again. Veddin decided that that was their natural state. "Of course we do things without psi! Why do you think we have fusion reactors in the first place? For the most part the machines do the work. Couples only do the important work, like keeping the machines from going berserk." She paused. "People only do a handful of the most important jobs. It's just that the important jobs are, uh . . ."

"Important," Veddin said dryly. "So now it's only the important jobs that aren't getting done." Looking around, he saw a robot frozen in the middle of the grassy land; undoubtedly it was externally powered, by transmission lines from the reactor. "It looks like none of the unimportant work is going to get done around here anymore, either." He pointed at the robot.

"It could be worse, you know. If the flux had gone up instead of down, the reactor could have exploded. "

It was Veddin who exploded. "Surely you've got failsafe systems!"

"Well, we do, but . . ."

"Lords of Tarantell! Even your hoverplane had multiple redundancy!"

"Yes, you're right, of course. But hoverplanes are usually flown by people who'd be helpless if the plane failed. The reactors are run by psikinetics who specialize in probability manipulation." She paused. "We import our reactors, and the reactors come equipped to be operated by isolates. But since there's always at least one psicouple, probably two, watching a reactor, I'm afraid we don't maintain the systems the way we ought to. I've mentioned it to my father a couple of times, but I don't think he ever did anything about it."

Veddin wanted to scream. "We've got to fly back to my ship right away. I'll pull in some of my senships from system orbit, put them around the planet. At least then we'll have warning if one of Hydra s reactors blows up." He headed for the hoverplane.

Autumn pulled on his arm. "Wait, Veddin. We can't fly back." There was a hysterical note in her voice.

He turned toward her, jerking quickly; his nerves were also frayed. "Why not?"

"The plane—it's beam-powered. It won't fly."

Veddin was stupefied for only a moment. "Then we walk." He turned back to the grassy lane, turned left, turned right, threw his hands up. "Which way do we go?"

Autumn bit her lip. "I don't know."

"Wonderful. Do you have any maps on your hoverplane?"

She shook her head. "We don't use maps here."

Veddin just stared at her, the question on his face.

She answered. "When a Couple wants to know how to get someplace, they just think with another Couple in the right area, someone who knows their way around that island."

"I see." Veddin felt weak. "And you, milady, how do you navigate?"

"Sometimes I have friends put me in contact with the right Couple." She shrugged. "Actually, I usually ask the robots how to get where I'm going."

Veddin stared at the frozen robot in front of him. It stared back. Finally Veddin burst out laughing; it seemed a more reasonable reaction than crying. "Do they shoot looters here? I'd guess not. Come on, lady." He held out his hand. "We'd better eat something before we leave. It could be a long journey."

Together, they headed into the nearest house.

While Autumn rattled through the kitchen, Veddin stepped outside and looked for a convenient roof to climb. Seeing none, he loped to the tree behind the house, and sped to the top: it was a lot different to climb a live tree than a jungle gym, he discovered, but not enough to stop him. Peering around in the fading light, he spotted what looked like a starship's needle prow. It was more or less back in the direction he thought they'd come from. Satisfied, he returned to Autumn.

Through the door into the living room Veddin could see two pairs of eyes staring at him. The room was gloomy, but Veddin thought the eyes belonged to two children. He felt certain that they were holding hands. "Hi," he waved at the kids, and stepped toward them.

They vanished before he could reach the doorway.

"There's no need to be frightened," Veddin shouted out. "Are you hungry? We're fixing things to eat." He became aware of scuffling behind him and turned to Autumn.

"It's no use," she said, "they don't speak Standard yet."

"They don't? They look like they're nine or ten. Surely they've learned the language by now."

Autumn shook her head as she searched the cabinets. "It's the last thing they teach in the schools." She smiled at him. "You keep forgetting that this is Hydra. Those children are touched-ones, with the same telepathic powers everybody else has."

"Don't they learn a little before they come here?"

"Those two you just saw were born on Hydra."

"Really? That's some coincidence, isn't it, for both members of a Couple to be born on the same planet?"

"Not on Hydra." Autumn snapped down a knife on a wedge of cheese. "Couples don't necessarily fall in love, get married, and have children, you know. Sometimes they even hate each other. Many of them have other lovers. When someone wants to have a child, the Seekers try to find matings that will produce children with resonant bonds."

"I didn't know they knew enough about Coupling to do that."

Autumn snicked some sort of taff roll in half with a loud bang. "They don't. They make a lot of mistakes."

Veddin came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. "I'm very thankful for one of those mistakes."

He glimpsed a smile playing across Autumn's lips.

Veddin stepped away. "What's for dinner?"

Autumn turned to the table. "I'm sorry I couldn't do better," she said, waving her hand at a collection of pale vegetables. "But most of the food here requires cooking, and of course we don't have any power."

"Quite all right," Veddin replied, taking a healthy bite out of a lime-colored, but otherwise carrot-like thing. He made a face. "On second thought . . ."

Autumn looked away, and Veddin was mad at himself. "Wait, I didn't mean it. Here, eat something with me. We have to hurry. I think I know where we're going, but I'd rather get started while there's still some daylight." He went back to munching on the green carrot, and Autumn joined him. "In fact," he started stuffing his pockets with food, "I think we can probably carry this stuff with us."

"Stop!" Autumn ordered as he grabbed a plump blob. "You'll crush the ograns. I thought I saw a knapsack in the living room; we can find a better way to carry stuff than in your pockets."

"Fine." Veddin watched with both humor and joy as she gathered up the food; she was beautiful, and durable, and spoiled, and he feared he was quite in love.

Disregarding Veddin's offer of help, Autumn whipped the pack to her back. They headed off past the hoverplane, in the general direction of the starship prow Veddin had seen. "How old are you, Autumn?" Veddin asked.

"Almost nineteen. Why?"

"Just curious." Veddin was almost thirty, himself.

"Were you hoping for a respectable old dowager? If so, that's tough. I like me as I am."

"I see. I guess I can live with that."

"Yeah?" She flashed him a smile with the same energy her eyes held when she was angry.

"Yeah." He considered her for a moment. "You know, all through this trip I've been surprised at how much you know about the machines here: the spaceport, the factories, and the fusion reactors."

She shrugged. "I talk to the robots a lot. And I've spent a lot of time working with equipment all over Hydra. Most of the Couples don't like machines. They'd probably get rid of them if they could. But not everybody is a multiply-resonant telekinetic/psikinetic/receptor/broadcaster. Most of them need the machines as much as people from Earth or Kaylanx." She hesitated. "Sometimes I think I have more in common with machines than with people. The robots don't have any touched-ones either." She smiled shyly at him. "At least, I
used
to think I was like the machines. Until you came."

They trudged silently along for a time. The neatly cut lawn of the city turned wild and ragged as the buildings disappeared in the distance. It started to get cooler, and darker; far darker than Veddin had ever seen it get on a planet. He moaned when he realized why. "Lords of Tarantell! You don't have any moons here!"

It took Autumn a moment to understand his meaning. "No, of course not. Hydra doesn't have any moons. Why?"

"Because we're trapped out here, that's why. In a few minutes it'll be too dark to see." He glanced back the way they'd come. "There's not a building close enough to get to, either."

Autumn laughed. "Don't worry, the wild animals won't hurt you. We don't have any wild animals."

"No, but we'll get damn cold, at this latitude." He considered it for a moment. "Though I was sort of surprised at how warm it was during the day."

Autumn laughed again. "Of course it's warm, silly. The psikinetics control the weather, taking the edge off the . . ." She stopped laughing. "Lords of Tarantell. No."

"Well, let's hope the loss of weather control doesn't catch up with us for a couple of days. I think we'll make it through tonight, and tomorrow we'll be back on the ship."

"Yes, but—" she shook her head. "The main purpose of the weather control is to stop the tornadoes and hurricanes that're constantly starting up around the equator. If we don't stop them, they'll destroy most of the islands. And all the people who live there." She paused. "Including Couple Berrens and the university."

Veddin picked up the pace.

And stopped when Autumn stumbled in the dark and cried out in pain.

"You all right?" he asked, kneeling next to her.

"Yes. I stepped into a rut, I guess." She reached down to touch her left ankle.

Veddin gently squeezed both her ankles; she seemed to be all right. "We're stopping here for the night."

"We can't."

"We are." They did. Veddin lay down beside Autumn, reached out to hold her.