Robinson, Spider - Telempath

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Telempath

Spider Robinson

Fout! Onbekende schakeloptie-instructie.

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or

incidents is purely coincidental.

A Baen Book

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN: 0-671-31825-X

Cover art by Patrick Turner

First Baen printing, July 2001

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH

Printed in the United States of America

This book is dedicated

to Charles and Evelyn for the

heredity and environment,

to Jeanne and Luanna for the patience,

and to the Bearden Bulldogs

for the sawbuck.

Winds out on the ocean

Blowin’ wherever they choose.

The winds ain’t got no emotion, babe:

They don’t know the blues.

—James Taylor

LIFE STINKS

Wendell Morgan Carlson stepped out between the big shattered lamps that bracketed Butler Hall’s front entrance.

I put my head down and ran, flat out, for the greatest killer of all time.

And the first Musky struck.

Terror sleeted through my brain, driving out the rage, as something warm and invisible plastered itself across my

face. I think I screamed then, but somehow I kept from inhaling as I fell and rolled, dropping the rifle and tearing

useless at the thing on my face. I aimed without seeing, and the gun bucked in my hand.

The massive gasoline drum between me and the crane went up with a whoom, and I dove headlong through the

flames. The Musky’s dying projections tore at my mind as the creature exploded behind me.

My hindbrain screamed Muskies never travel alone! And before I knew what I was doing I tore loose my nose

plugs to locate my enemy.

Foul stenches smashed my sanity, noxious odors wrenched at my reason, I was torn, blasted, overwhelmed in

abominable ordure. I couldn’t stand it, it was unbearable, how had I walked, arrogant and unknowing, though this

stinking hell all day?

And with that I remembered why I had come here, and knew I could not join my brother Izzy in the peaceful,

fragrant dark. I could not let go—I had to kill Carlson before I let the blackness claim me.

BAEN BOOKS by SPIDER ROBINSON

The Star Dancers (with Jeanne Robinson)

Starmind (with Jeanne Robinson)

Deathkiller

Lifehouse

User Friendly

By Any Other Name

Telempath

Callahan’s Lady (upcoming)

MAPS

Fout! Onbekende schakeloptie-instructie.

caption:

1 The Tool Shed

2 The Pantry

3 Hospital

4 The General Store

5 Security HQ

6 The Ad Building

7 School (P.S. 1)

8 The Gate

9 Theater (planned)

10 Sports Field

11 Town Square & Pond

12 Dormitories

a) Hilton b) Sheraton

c) Statler d) HoJo Inn

e) Ritz f) Holiday Inn

13 Public Showers

14 Church

15 Private Homes

a) Store b) Krishnamurti

c) Phinney d) Dalhousie

e) Collaci f) Gowan

16 Stone Study

17 Public Beach

18 Motor Pool

19 Factories

20 Munitions

21 Research Labs

22 Distillery

23 Sewage-Methane Converter

24 Fuel Dump

25 Power Plant

26 Water Towers

27 Windmills

CHAPTER ONE

Excerpt from the Journal of Isham Stone

I hadn’t meant to shoot the cat.

I hadn’t meant to shoot anything, for that matter—the pistol at my hip was strictly defensive armament at the

moment. But my adrenals were on overtime and my peripheral vision was straining to meet itself behind my head—

when something appeared before me with no warning at all my subconscious sentries opted for the Best Defense. I

was down and rolling before I knew I’d fired, through a doorway I hadn’t known was there.

I fetched up with a heart-stopping crash against the foot of a staircase just inside the door. The impact dislodged

something on the first-floor landing; it rolled heavily down the steps and sprawled across me: the upper portion of a

skeleton, largely intact from the sixth vertebra up. As I lurched to my feet in horror, long-dead muscle and cartilage

crumbled at last, and random bones skittered across the dusty floor. Three inches above my left elbow, someone was

playing a drum-roll with knives.

Cautiously I hooked an eye around the doorframe, at about knee-level. The smashed remains of what had recently

been a gray-and-white Persian tom lay against a shattered fire hydrant whose faded red surface was spattered with

brighter red and less appealing colors. Overworked imagination produced the odor of singed meat.

I’m as much cat-people as the One-Sleeved Mandarin, and three shocks in quick succession, in the condition I

was in, were enough to override all the iron discipline of Collaci’s training. Eyes stinging, I stumbled out onto the

sidewalk, uttered an unspellable sound, and pumped three slugs into a wrecked ’82 Buick lying on its right side

across the street.

I was pretty badly rattled—only the third slug hit the exposed gas tank. But it was magnesium, not lead: the car

went up with a very satisfactory roar and the prettiest fireball you ever saw. The left rear wheel was blown high in

the air; it soared gracefully over my head, bounced off a fourth-floor fire escape and came down flat and hard an inch

behind me. Concrete buckled.

When my ears had stopped ringing and my eyes uncrossed, I became aware that I was rigid as a statue. So much

for catharsis, I thought vaguely, and relaxed with an effort that hurt all over.

The cat was still dead.

I saw almost at once why he startled me so badly. The tobacconist’s display window from which he had leaped

was completely shattered, so my subconscious sentries had incorrectly tagged it as one of the rare unbroken ones.

Therefore, they reasoned, the hurtling object must be in fact emerging from the open door just beyond the window.

Anything coming out a doorway that high from the ground just had to be a Musky, and my hand is much quicker

than my eye.

Now that my eye had caught up, of course, I realized that I couldn’t possibly track a Musky by eye. Which was

exactly why I’d been keyed up enough to waste irreplaceable ammo and give away my position in the first place.

Carlson had certainly made life complicated for me. I hoped I could manage to kill him slowly.

This was no consolation to the cat. I looked down at my Musky-gun, and found myself thinking of the day I got it,

just three months past. The first Musky-gun I had ever owned myself, mine for as long as it took me to kill Carlson.

After my father had presented it to me publicly, and formally charged me with the avenging of the human race, the

friends and neighbors—and dark-eyed Alia—had scurried safely inside for the ceremonial banquet. But my father

took me aside. We walked in silence past fields of growing corn to Mama’s grave, and in the distance the setting sun

over the Mountain looked like a knothole in the wall of Hell. Dad turned to me at last, pride and paternal concern

fighting for control of his ebony features, and said, “Isham . . . Isham, I wasn’t much older than you when I got my

first gun. That was long ago and far away, in a place callea Montgomery—things were different then. But some

things never change.” He tugged an earlobe reflectively, and continued, “Phil Collaci has taught you well, but

sometimes he’d rather shoot first and ask directions later. Isham, you just can’t go blazing away indiscriminately.

Not ever. You hear me?”

The crackling of the fire around the ruined Buick brought me back to the present. Damn, you called it again, Dad,

I thought as I shivered there on the sidewalk. You can’t go blazing away indiscriminately.

Not even here in New York City.

It was getting late, and my left arm ached abominably where Grey Brother had marked me—I reminded myself

sharply that I was here on business. I had no wish to pass a night in any city, let alone this one, so I continued on up

the street, examining every building I passed with extreme care. If Carlson had ears, he now knew someone was in

New York, and he might figure out why. I was on his home territory—every alleyway and manhole was a potential

ambush.

There were stores and shops of every conceivable kind, commerce more fragmented and specialized than I had

ever seen before. Some shops dealt only in a single item. Some I could make no sense of at all. What the hell is an

“rko”?

I kept to the sidewalk where I could. I told myself I was being foolish, that I was no less conspicuous to Carlson

or a Musky than if I’d stood on second base at the legendary Shea Stadium, and that the street held no surprise

tomcats. But I kept to the sidewalk where I could. I remember Mama—a long time ago—telling me not to go in the

street or the monsters would get me.

They got her.

Twice I was forced off the curb, once by a subway entrance and once by a supermarket. Dad had seen to it that I

had the best plugs Fresh Start had to offer, but they weren’t that good. Both times I hurried back to the sidewalk and

was thoroughly disgusted with my pulse rate. But I never looked over my shoulder. Collaci says there’s no sense

being scared when it can’t help you—and the fiasco with the cat proved him right.

It was early afternoon, and the same sunshine that was warming the forests and dorms and work-zones of Fresh

Start, my home, seemed to chill the air here, accentuating the barren emptiness of the ruined city. Silence and

desolation were all around me as I walked, bleached bones and crumbling brick. Carlson had been efficient, all right;

nearly as efficient as the atomic bomb folks used to be so scared of once. It seemed as though I were in some

immense devil’s autoclave, that ignored filth and grime but grimly scrubbed out life of any kind.

Wishful thinking, I decided, and shook my head to banish the fantasy. If the city had been truly lifeless, I’d be

approaching Carlson from uptown—I would never have had to detour as far south as the Lincoln Tunnel, and my left

arm would not have ached so terribly. Grey Brother is extremely touchy about his territorial rights.

I decided to replace the makeshift dressing over the torn biceps. I didn’t like the drumming insistence of the pain:

it kept me awake but interfered with my concentration. I ducked into the nearest store that looked defensible, and

found myself sprawled on the floor behind an overturned table, wishing mightily that it weren’t so flimsy.

Something had moved.

Then I rose sheepishly to my feet, holstering my heater and rapping my subconscious sentries sharply across the

knuckles for the second time in half an hour. My own face looked back at me from the grimy mirror that ran along

one whole wall, curly black hair in tangles, wide lips stretched back in what looked just like a grin. It wasn’t a grin. I

hadn’t realized how bad I looked.

Dad had told me a lot about Civilization, before the Exodus, but I don’t suppose I’ll ever understand it. A glance

around this room raised more questions than it answered. On my left, opposite the long mirror, were a series of

smaller mirrors that paralleled it for three-quarters of its length, with odd-looking chairs before them. Something like

armchairs made of metal, padded where necessary, with levers to raise and lower them. On my right, below the

longer mirror, were a lot of smaller, much plainer wooden chairs, in a tight row broken occasionally by strange

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TelempathSpiderRobinsonFout!Onbekendeschakeloptie-instructie.Thisisaworkoffiction.Allthecharactersandeventsportrayedinthisbookarefictional,andanyresemblancetorealpeopleorincidentsispurelycoincidental.Copyright©1976SpiderRobinsonAllrightsreserved,includingtherighttoreproducethisbookorportionsthereofi...

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