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took advantage of other people to get what they wanted for themselves. The
Gray Man's the only one I know, and he can't be too im-portant. But there are
others out there on the Mass."
"What do they want from us, any-way?" he said. "What do they want from me?
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I've never bothered them."
"Except by wanting to work on the Mass."
"Lots of people want to work on the Mass. What happened? Did I take a job they
wanted for one of their own people?"
"No,"
she said, "but you're differ-ent. You're dangerous to them. I can't explain
too well why, Chaz. But the Citadel has people with paranormal talents, and
it's got computers. It can put the two together to get a rough forecast of
what any person might do to its plans; particularly any person under captive
conditions, the way you all are, out there on the Mass. They run a check
automatically on anyone who tries to qualify for work on the Mass."
"Why? What's the Mass to them?" he demanded. "There's no market for illegal
goods and services here, is there?"
"Of course not. But they want the Mass for themselves what did you expect?
They want to be the people, or among the people, who get a chance to emigrate
to a clean world, if the Mass can find one."
"And they think I'm going to stop them? What're they afraid of?" A wild
thought struck him suddenly.
"Eileen, do I have some special paranormal talent I don't know anything about?
Or more talent than anyone else something like that?"
"Dear Chaz,"
she said,  You do have talent; but nothing like that. If my talent hadn't been
greater than yours, for instance, I couldn't have blocked you on those early
tests you took. It isn't paranormal abilities that makes you dangerous to
them. It's the way the linked events work in a probability chain the very
thing chain-perception discovers. The alternatives anyone perceives are
deter-mined by his own way of looking at the universe his own attitudes. For
some reason, your attitudes are differ-ent from other people's. All wrong or
all right or something. From the
Citadel's standpoint they could be all wrong; and the Citadel didn't want to
take the chance."
"The man you call the Gray Man was my examiner on the Pritcher Mass tests,"
Chaz said. "A man named Alexander Waka. He gave me a special test and made it
pos-sible for me to be here."
There was a second of no response from her.
"Chaz?"
she said then.
"Is that right? It doesn't make sense."
"It's a fact," he said grimly, "square that with the fact that, ac-cording to
you, I've got no unusual talents."
"Oh, Chaz!"
There was a little pause, perhaps half a breath of pause
. "How can I get the point over to you? It's you I'm worried about. I want you
to take care of yourself and not let anyone hurt you. You've got to realize
how it is. No, you don't have any unusual talents. If I hadn't if I
felt differently about you, I could have used my ability to make you do what I
wanted almost without thinking about it."
"Thanks," he said.
"But you've got to face the truth! Talents are something else. Chaz, I want
you to live, and the
Citadel would just as soon you didn't unless you can prove useful to them.
That's the only reason they're holding off. You just might turn out to be
useful. But the odds are against you. Can you understand that?"
"That I can believe," he said, deeply, remembering back through the many
schools, the different places, the childhood in his aunt's house even when his
uncle had been alive it had been his aunt's house. "All right, tell me what
can help me, since there's nothing special about me."
"All right," she said. "Chaz, to me you're more special than anyone I've ever
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known; but we have to face facts. You're talented, but there are more talented
men and women, particularly on the Mass. You're bright, but there are brighter
people. Everything you've got, other people have, and more. There's just one
thing. You're unique. Oh, everybody's unique, but they don't operate on the
basis of their unique-ness. They don't really march to the tune of their own
distant drummer and stand ready to deal with the whole universe
single-handedly if the uni-verse doesn't like it."
"I don't know if I understand you," he said.
"No," she said, `that's because you're on the inside looking out. But it's
what makes you dangerous to the Citadel, as far as the Mass is con-cerned. The
Mass is subjective it can be used by anyone who can work with it; and you see
things differently from anyone else, plus you've got this ter-rible drive to
make things go the way you want."
"Who said I had this terrible drive?"
"I did. Remember I was the one who sat and listened to you for four hours that
night in the game rooms, when you told me everything there was that mattered
to you "
She broke off. Her voice fell silent inside him. The physical sound of a call
buzzer was ringing in his airsuit helmet the general call signal. An-grily, he
opened the communications channel to his earphones.
". . . Sant? Chaz Sant!" It was the voice of Lebdell Marti. "Can you hear me?
Are you all right up there?"
"Fine," said Chaz.
"You were told to keep your phones open on the General Chan-nel, but they
weren't when Ethrya checked just now. Are you sure you're all right? You
haven't been feeling any different from normal?"
Chaz grinned wolfishly inside his helmet.
"I had a little touch of dizziness just after Ethrya left," he said. "But it
only lasted a second. Good news. I've made contact with the Mass. I'm ready to
go to work on it."
No answer came for a long second from the phone. Then Marti spoke again.
"You'd better come in now," he said. "Yes, I think you'd better come down.
Don't try to do anything with the Mass; just come in. Come right to my
office."
"If you say so," said Chaz. "I'll see you in a few minutes." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]