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Ch. 09 · The Man Who Staked The Stars

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  Chapter nine of The Man Who Staked the Stars by Catherine mac Lean. This
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  LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter nine. Looking into Bryce's face,
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  he slid to his feet, slowly ground out the stub of his cigarette,
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  and stood before the dusk. Bryce took out his gun and held it
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  where peers could see it. Our Minoba's ever shot was a heavy little gun,
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  his Maggie. Its barrel sleek and rounded, the heavy metal warm from
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  being worn close to the skin. Sometimes it's a natural enough reaction. It
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  was a space worthy gun with adjustable velocity for driving through padded suits and pressure
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  suits. The velocity was set high, but it would be inartistic to blow
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  a large hole through a psychotherapist. Bryce turned the dial down, slowly,
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  watching him do. The professional ethics of privacy and non publicity cover this kind
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  of situation. Pierce was smiling slightly, with a touch of bitter humor.
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  It's undiplomatic to tell you that, but yes, the contingency is covered.
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  There is nothing to connect myself with you as a case in any records,
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  nor anything to identify me as a member of the Manoba group contracted by your
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  company. The ethic of privacy is allowed to have no exceptions for the family's
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  record. A cool curiosity held him, tell me, when you saw that,
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  I was beginning to think, why didn't you just needle me down for
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  a short nap and leave? The smile remained. I am supposed to control
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  a shock of realization and make sure that it is assimilated without damage to the
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  subject. Is dark, expressitionless eyes met Bryce's, and Bryce felt the impact
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  of them and realized for the first time that there was the same slight,
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  bitter, offhand smile on his own lips, and inwardly the quiet, ironical
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  mood with the still clarity of a deep pool his own mood. He hafted
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  the gun in his hand, feeling its weight and balance. You could have
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  done that over the televiewer, He pointed out, as passionately. What is
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  the average mortality? Do you know? Not high? It is only an
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  experience that is dangerous. If one can get through one's first three or four
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  cases, it's safe enough. Looking back over the past days, it was
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  quite clear that Pierce had control over his emotions. Any emotion Pierce chose him
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  to feel, he would feel. It remained to be seen how much that
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  could influence what he was going to do. The dark skinned young man stood
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  before the desk casually and answered questions with a slight, restrained smile that set
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  the wry irony of both their minds. A man does what he wants,
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  that is freedom, but what he wanted could be controlled. Apparently, a
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  man is what he wants, but what he wanted could be changed. How
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  easy had it been to change him? Bryce tried himself with a thought of
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  the power and glory of rule, the rain and mastery of space, a
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  goal that had warmed his thoughts for many years. He didn't want it.
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  There was a slight numbness where there should have been a motion, and all
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  he could feel for his loss was the resignation and the faint, bitter humor
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  permitted him by Pierce's smile. Watching that smile, he shifted the heavy little
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  gun in his hand, turning it over casually, feeling its familiar weight in
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  the texture of its surfaces. He spoke gently, If you don't mind my
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  asking, have you passed through your first three cases yet? You are my
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  first, said Roy Peers, whom he had trusted. I'm afraid I was
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  clumsy. Oh you did all right, Bryce shot him, then, placing
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  the bullet carefully in the pit of his stomach, where it would hurt.
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  That was for doing well for justice. No man has the right to meddle
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  in another man's mind. Pierce had been starting to speak. He swayed back
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  a half step with a flicker of change crossing his face, then stood steady
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  and smiling again. That brief grimace touched Bryce's nerves with a sensation that was
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  like the jangle of something heavy dropped inside a piano, a sound he had
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  heard once, but the numbness did not lift from its feelings. He was
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  still smiling. The third bullet would be between the eyes. The words were
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  low and rapid, but clear. Bryce did not listen. This is for
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  doing a good job, he said, overriding the other voice with his own,
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  and pulled the trigger again, placing the lug slightly lower, this time
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  in the belly, where if it entangled in one of the spinal plexus it
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  could hurt. Past belief, Pierce swayed slightly. His face went to the
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  clay blue color that comes to dark skinned races when they pale, bleeding inside
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  somewhere, and already dead. Unless he were given help, Bryce figured For
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  a moment, Bryce saw something like effort in the dark, unreadable eyes.
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  Then some appear smiled, his young face, disarmingly innocent and merry. Oh,
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  come on, Bryan said's not that serious. Be a good sport.
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  You don't want to Suddenly Bryce saw the situation as the sheerest humor, a
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  sort of lunatic farce for the laughter of some cosmic joker. He swung the
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  gun, sights up toward the smiling face. Amusement bubbled in his blood,
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  and he heard himself laugh, heard it with a grim secondary amusement. The
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  joke's on you, he said, and pulled the trigger, then laughed again.
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  The joke was on him. He had missed. He had missed at
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  a distance of three feet, yet his hand was rock steady. Pierce's control
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  had him His laughter stopped as the humor in Pierce's attitude faded down again to
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  the small, wry smile that had been there from the beginning. Bryce had
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  not lost. He only had to wait a little, and he had won.
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  Unless Piers could use his control to force him to call help, he
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  set himself to resist and not to listen. There was not long to go.
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  The expressionless, dark eyes that held his were beginning to widen slightly in
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  an effort of sight that meant a private darkness was closing in on the psychotherapist.
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  The rumble of distant rockets seemed louder, covering his fading voice. It's
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  your choice, Bryce, I give it to you. You won't want this
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  later, Bryce, but don't hunger to undo it is payment enough for all
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  times like this that you change and do not want them any again. Pierce
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  pulled in a strangling breath, swaying more visibly. Gun, he whispered,
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  reaching out in Bryce's direction, his eyes going sightless. Piers handed him the
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  magnematic and watched as Peers fumbled his hands over it, putting his prints on
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  it blindly, his knees bending when he fell. Bryce picked up the phone
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  and called emergency. The emergency squad would be cruising around in the hall somewhere
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  nearby, looking for the source of the three radio notes that had told them
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  a gun was fired. That was the last I saw of him. The
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  young man stopped talking and looked pleased with himself. Donahue drained his drink irritably
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  and put it on the bar that had been set up on the ceiling.
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  When the g's went off, it clung magnetically. Make it the same,
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  please, He turned to Roy Piers, floating beside him. Stop needling me,
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  man, finish the story the way you tell it. I don't know
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  what you did, how you did it, or even whether you died or
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  not. Oh I died, said Roy Peers. But they revived me,
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  he added. Good, I'm glad to hear that, said Donna Hue worre
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  cheerfully, wondering suddenly just how extensively he was being kidded. For a moment
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  there he had me worried. Now, explain about this treatment. It's called
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  soul eating, explained the dark skinned, straight haired boy. I don't think
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  you could do it. Donahue thought that information over carefully. Maybe not.
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  How's it done in the tribes of my people? The soul is supposed to
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  be an invisible double who walks at your side, protecting you and speaking silently
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  to your mind. It's face is the face that looks out of me and
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  up from pools at you, and the shadow that walks on the ground beside
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  you. Evildoers. After they had spoken to him, Nooba would say that
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  their reflections were gone. Our family was called the eaters of souls, and
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  all the tribes were afraid of us for nine hundred miles around so am,
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  I said, Donna Hue, compactly as my Yiddish grandmother on my mother's side
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  would say. It sounds from werewolves. I can explain it. No magic,
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  look, said the youth tersely. Do I want to get kicked out
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  of the fnme? What if I had sat in a jungle circle, loaded
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  to the ears with herbs and spells, with the drums of my cousins throbbing
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  around me, and learn the best and sulless ways of my technique back in
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  time, looking through the eyes of my great grandfather, or conversing with his
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  ghost. Do you think I would say so? No, Donahue admitted,
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  He edged away a little. The youth spoke gloomily. Rapport and intensified empathy
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  is something you learned by exposing yourself to mirrors. The technique is published,
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  known and accepted among psychologists, but most of them just don't try. It
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  backfires too easily and it takes too high a level of skill. It originated
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  with my family. The youth spoke even more gloomily. What I do is
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  obvious enough if I make it so, it's simply prior mimicry. I watch
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  the trend of what goes on in his thoughts and express approximately what he is
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  feeling and thinking a little before he does so that presently, subconsciously, he
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  is depending on me to tell him what he thinks and how he feels.
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  I was his mirror, his prior mirror. I am a clear, expressive
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  underplaying actor as an actor, and each shade of reaction is separate and unmistakable.
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  The subconscious is not rational, but it generalizes from regularities that the conscious
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  mind never has the subtlety to notice. It saw me consistently representing its own
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  internal reactions, hour after hour, in every situation, more clearly than Bryce
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  ever saw himself express anything in a mirror, and more steadily than he ever
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  saw any mirror. The subconscious then associated the inside emotion with the corresponding outside
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  image. For each one, I became Bryce's subconscious self image. When he
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  thinks of doing anything, the image in the imagination that does it is not
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  himself, It is me. This can cause considerable mental confusion. It should.
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  Dona Hue agreed fervently. I put him in new places and situations where
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  he was unsure and I was sure, so that when I diverged from mirroring
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  him, he gave me the lead and mirrored me. One of us had
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  to be the originator and the other of the reflection. But now it was
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  reversed. He did not fight it subconsciously because the results were pleasant. I
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  kept the lead and led him a mental dance through thoughts and reactions he had
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  never had before in her personality pattern completely foreign to his own, one that
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  I wanted him to have. I hadn't been hired for that, but I
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  had time to pass before I could untangle that ut problem, and I wanted
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  to do it for him. The mirror link was complete the first day,
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  but I'm afraid the extra days made it indelible. He'll always be me in
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  his mind, and mirrors will never look right to him. It's so simple,
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  it's obvious, said Donahue with disappointment. It doesn't sound like magic to
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  me. The youth was thoughtful, frowning. Sometimes it doesn't to me either.
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  I wonder if the ghost of my grandfather was telling me the right forget
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  the ghost of your grandfather, Donahue interrupted, hastily. On a few space
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  trips. He could never get used to this business of floating eagerly around in
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  the air, and it seemed a poor time to talk about ghosts. What
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  about Bryce Carter? What became of him? You know? He said defiantly.
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  I like his plans for organizing the belt and breaking u Tea, And
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  come to think of it, if I had been there when you were interfering
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  with that, I think I would have shot you myself. Ut had only
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  hired me to find the organizer of the smuggling ring and persuade him to disband
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  his organization. In ut I had done that. So the third day,
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  when I could walk, I left the hospital and went back to Earth and
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  collected my fee for a job done. Many people had vanished suddenly from their
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  payrolls, and the crime statistics in some cities had shown a startling lull.
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  They knew I had done it, and so they paid and were grateful.
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  The dark youth shrugged. I didn't feel I had to tell him about Arillo.
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  He tipped the police and started a rumor, and there was evidence enough
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  in the crime statistics of the months before when they were correlated with the distribution
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  of branches of Union Transport. Though there was nothing to point at it,
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  anyone in particular except the ones who had disappeared. Donahue remembered, Sure,
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  that's that investigation of transportation monopolies that raised such a stink last year. I
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  saw a part of it in congress. Pearce handed him a travel folder,
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  godly illustrated. It advertised the advantages of the c Ando line for space tourists
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  Carter and Arillo. Donahue looked up, puzzled. But this is the next
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  step in what he planned. I thought you changed him. Mahatma Gandhi would
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  have followed out those plans, Pierre said, with a touch of grimness.
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  As you pointed out they are attractive, but I changed him. I won't
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  give you personality dynamics, but if you want a list of changes. He's
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  married to Sheila Wesley, that's one change. And instead of going home nights,
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  he roisters around in bars and restaurants, talking to everybody, listening to
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  everybody, liking them all, and enthusiastically making friends in car load lots.
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  That's another change. He doesn't look into mirrors because they make him feel cross
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  eyed. That's because he unconsciously expects to see me in the mirror, and
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  he will organize the belt and be president as he planned. I won't stop
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  him in that. The difference will be that he won't want the power he'll
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  get, Pierce said grimly. A power lesting man can never be trusted with
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  power. He goes megalomaniacal Carter was already halfway there. But he's safe from
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  that. Now. He's going to be given plenty of power and see it
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  only as responsibility and not want it. That's the only safe kind of man
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  to have in a powerful position. That, said Donahue, with great earnestness,
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  is like sending a poor damn soul achismetic paradise as a eunuch. You
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  psychologists are all complete sadists, he said, lifting his drink. I suppose
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  you put something in my drink. Absolutely nothing, Roy Pierce assured him,
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  grinning. Funny thing was when I got back to Earth that time, I
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  kept feeling cross eyed when I looked into a mirror, and my friend said
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  I was not myself. If I was not myself, I knew I must
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  still be Bryce Carter. Things had seemed different, and they had warned me
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  that the technique sometimes backfired when I was learning, so I called my uncle
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  mordand on the televiewer he's the head of the family and he lives in an
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  estate in the jungle, and he Donahue was fascinated again. There was a
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  different approach for each case. Pierce had found it was not ordinarily ethical to
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  discuss any case history, but he knew with great surety that Donahue could be
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  trusted not to repeat what he was being told. The only reason there wasn't
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  something extra in his current drink was because there had been something in the last
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  drink. This was Case five. End of chapter nine, end of The
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  Man Who Staked the Stars by Catherine MacLean, red by Paul Hampton.