The Wilding

Rho awoke with a groan. For a moment she couldn’t even see straight, which was rare for her; even after the worst experiences she rarely bore the effects of it into the next day. So she just lay there for a few minutes, listening to the rustle of insects nearby, wondering what had moved her to sleep in a place where insects would be.

When she felt the tide of incipient panic mute to a controllable level she raised herself up on one elbow and tried to force her eyes to see again. She was outside, all right. On a real planet too, from the looks of it. Not good, not good at all. She was lying in the mouth of some kind of natural cave, such as an animal might seek for shelter. Had she dragged herself there, or had someone—or something—done it for her? Try as she might, she couldn’t unlock the proper memories.

The sun was a Zeymour-class orb in the yellow range and the foliage had evolved along traditional lines for that spectrum; the place wouldn’t have seemed nearly so alarming if every plant surrounding her wasn’t completely unfamiliar. Wherever she was, she was willing to bet she’d never been there before. At least the ground was damp with dew, and there were a few wispy clouds overhead in the bluish sky, which told her that the moisture parameters were likely to be within a human-compatible range. Thank the Lyu for that. All she needed was to be dumped on some desert—

Memory washed over her suddenly and was gone, too quickly for her to grasp at anything save one fleeting revelation. Was I “dumped” here? She searched her memory for some clue as to how she had arrived—any clue at all—but there was nothing more to be had. The past few days were a blank slate, and she had no memory of this planet save the images her bleary eyes were taking in now.

Gods, her head hurt. And she was hungry, too. She searched in her pockets and found a half-eaten snack bar, which she gladly devoured. Flavor pills in another pocket served as dessert. That wasn’t going to last her very long. She looked out over the lush greenery and wondered how in a thousand hells she was supposed to figure out what was safe to eat and what wasn’t. On Kysh she could have watched the native animals and taken cues from them, but in this place? It was possible the whole ecosystem was laced with substances that were poisonous to the human system. Look at Azea. You wouldn’t know that kind of thing until it was too late. . . .

She seemed to be partway up the side of a mountain of some kind. The earth was black and crumbly, most likely volcanic in origin. Judging from the depth of the vegetation it hadn’t erupted recently, but of course that was no promise of future behavior. In the distance she could make out the blue of an unnamed sea lapping at black shores, which curved back out of her line of sight in a way that implied she was standing on a peninsula of some kind, or perhaps even an island.

With a sigh she sat down at the cave’s mouth and gave the cut on her forehead a fingertip inspection. It wasn’t large and it had scabbed over on its own; thank the Lyu for small favors. The rest of her ached but it didn’t feel like there was any specific injury; only the normal stiffness you suffered when you’d been dumped on an alien planet, to spend the night sleeping on a chunk of unnamed rock.

With a sigh she shut her eyes, and used the Disciplines of meditation and centering to bring her mind into proper focus. It seemed to take longer than usual, but perhaps that was because her nerves were jangling over her sudden displacement. When she felt that she had her focus, and with it complete conscious control of her power, she reached out. First to the area surrounding. A thousand shadowy presences brushed against her mind, browsers and hunters and fliers and frightened little things that were just a squeak of fear down in the grasses . . . pretty much your basic oxygen-based ecosystem. She couldn’t feel anything that she’d call high-sentient intelligence, but that didn’t mean something wasn’t out there. Her strength was in close-range, face-to-face communication, not psychic scouting.

For a brief moment she envied those telepaths who could reach out as far as stars with their senses and taste the essence of a whole world without even trying hard. Maybe if she was that strong she’d be able to make contact with her people and tell them where she was. Nice fantasy, Rho. As far as she knew there was only one group of telepaths capable of that, and its members weren’t likely to be lost on primitive planets with nothing except a half-eaten snack bar for backup.

With a sigh she reached out again, this time to encompass the land surrounding. It was harder to focus at this distance, but she thought that this time she could sense something familiar at the very edge of her consciousness. Human? She tried to get more of an impression from it but couldn’t. Finally, with a sigh, she returned her focus to her own body. Her head was pounding twice as hard as before, the inevitable price of trying to push her mind in a direction it didn’t want to go.

But . . . she had found people. Maybe human. And when she got into range she’d be able to use the powers that were natural to her, and get whatever help they could give her. And then she’d be able to get back home, to whatever project she’d been working on when this planet had sidetracked her.

As she walked downhill—or climbed, rather, for the slope was fiercely canted and at times hands as well as feet were needed to maneuver down it—she tried to focus her memory enough to get some clue as to how she had arrived here. She’d been on a mission of some type, she remembered that. One of the Hasai had been with her. There had been a small ship, and they had set out into a region of space that was mostly uncharted, and then . . . and then. . . .

And then she was here. With no memory of what came between. It was as if a slice of her memory had just been cut out. But that didn’t make any sense. If someone had captured their little crew and played memory games with them, wouldn’t they be around here watching? Wouldn’t there be some sign of their presence that a trained psychic could discern? What purpose could it possibly serve to dump her here like this, without even a clue as to what it was all about?

When she finally reached level ground her hands were so scraped and sore from gripping the abrasive lava rocks for balance that she knew they’d be swelling up on her pretty soon. It would be good if she could find civilization before then, hopefully with medicines to stave off infection.

Anger is fuel, the Hasai taught. A tenet of Braxin philosophy, adopted by the psychic community at a time when anger was all they had. Rho shut her eyes and reached out again, channeling all her rage into psychic strength. She could feel the boundaries of her power forced outward, and her head pounded as she strained her senses to the utmost, seeking any sign of high-sentient life. This time, yes, she felt the clear weight of another mind upon her consciousness. She was even reasonably sure it was human. Letting the rage subside, she allowed herself a few deep breaths before starting off after it. What do you know. The Braxins were right.

The yellow sun was overhead when she finally sensed her quarry nearby, though it was hard to guess just what that meant without knowing how long a local day was. When it was close enough that she could almost make out thoughts she slowed her passage, and crept up as quietly as she could to the place where she sensed them.

There were three of them. Human. One was visibly old, which told her that the planet was probably low-tech; no one with access to modern medicine suffered that kind of skin degradation any more. Two appeared to be children. All three were female, which she regarded as a good sign; low-tech societies generally regarded belligerence as man’s business. Their form was not unlike her own, and but for a few streaks of natural color and slight alteration of the ears and nose they might have been from her home planet. Definitely within one or two percent of the human genetic mean.

But. Such differences might mean little to her, but to a primitive, alien people they were warning signs as vast as space itself. She was the Unknown. She was not-one-of-us . And whether they were going to interpret that in some weird religious context, or assign her to some natural source reputed to give birth to strange deformities—or come up with some wholly original explanation for her existence—had yet to be seen.

She watched them for a while as they cut away pieces of plants—a stem here, a handful of leaves there—and as the woman gave what seemed to be instructions to her two young charges. Dare she hope this was a healer? She’d run into enough of those on scouting missions for the Hasai to know that they were usually more curious than violent. Sometimes they had psychic power in their own right, though their society might not recognize it as such. Carefully she reached out with a slender tendril of thought and brushed against the old one’s mind.

It seemed to her the woman started, and yellow-green eyes with slit pupils began to scan the underbrush in her direction. A quick warning hiss brought both of the children to her side, and gnarled hands the texture and color of aged tree bark grasped both of them by the shoulders. Yes, she was sensitive, that was clear to see. But trained? The woman’s mind made no answering foray, despite its alertness. No; this one could hear the music of minds, perhaps, but she didn’t know how to respond to it.

Well, it’s now or never, Rho thought. And she stepped out into the clearing, so that the three might see her. Hands open: I do not hold weapons. Arms close to her side: I do not claim your space. Trying to make herself seem physically diminutive, at least enough to communicate her peaceful intent. It was hard when you didn’t even have a clue what gestures meant what in the local kinesthetic vernacular, but some things were a safe guess on any Scattered Races world.

For a moment the woman stared at her in silence. She didn’t run away, Rho noted. That was a good sign. She didn’t pull out a weapon either, or make some superstitious gesture of protection or warding to drive away the Other. Downright hopeful. God knows Rho had been taken for a demon often enough in her duties as Hostilities Analyst. It was a bad way to start off, especially when you didn’t have a clue where your shuttle was or why you were here in the first place.

After a time, when the woman seemed content that Rho wasn’t going to bite her—or perhaps transform into something nasty—she came closer, to inspect her. Gnarled fingers touched Rho’s arm, her breast, her hair. Like-us but not-like-us, the healer’s mind hummed audibly. Rho couldn’t tell if that was a good or a bad thing without delving deeper. Hopefully this wasn’t one of those places where they killed aliens on sight. Or worse yet, tried to eat them for breakfast. She’d been to one of those planets. No fun at all.

At last the old woman grunted. It seemed to indicate approval to the children, for they came closer, and one of them gingerly touched Rho’s torn jumpsuit with dirty fingers. Their thoughts weren’t clear but from each there was a distinct murmur of awareness. That was unusual, in children so young. Was this whole race thought-sensitive, or had the old healer chosen her wards for that particular quality?

At last the woman grunted some order in an unknown tongue, and gestured for her to show her hands. She did so, and could feel the sharp scrutiny of a healer focusing upon her scrapes and cuts. The woman asked her something, but though Rho knew the sounds had to do with identification of the wounds, she couldn’t make out more than that. Damn it, this was as bad as her psychic internship on Forrah had been . . . only back then she had known they would come and get her after a set number of days, whether she succeeded or not. And there she had known the rules.

There were rules here too, she realized suddenly. Not the taboos of this place, but outside rules. It was a fragment of memory, nameless, disjointed, arising from the confused darkness within her brain. Rules. They mattered. Her life might depend upon them.

For some reason the sight of Rho’s scraped palms seemed to reassure the woman. Maybe demons didn’t bleed. She took a rolled leaf out of a small sack at her side and offered it to Rho. Some kind of herbal paste, it looked like. The psychic grit her teeth and smoothed some of it onto her palms, hoping that local biochemistry was similar enough to her own that it wasn’t going to kill her. If it had just been a question of healing the scratches she probably would have refrained just for caution’s sake, but when strangers on an alien world offered you things to make you feel better, you took them and used them and worked hard to look grateful. She even rummaged around in her pocket for something to offer in return, in case that was expected, but the woman waved her efforts short.

Without further words the healer turned to lead her charges back the way they had come. Rho fell in behind, grateful for the older woman’s slow pace through the underbrush. Her feet ached and she was thirsty, but she wasn’t about to try to communicate either of those things. Enough now to listen, to taste the tenor of their thoughts, and to try to figure out where in the hells she was. Why in the hells she was here. And how in all the human hells she was going to get home.

The village was a small one, as primitive as they came. Two dozen, maybe three dozen huts, a typical grouping for this level of tech. One glance at the crude thatched roofs and equally crude storage pottery told her she wasn’t likely to find any means here of contacting her people, or even figuring out her current stellar position. So much for getting home quickly.

Painted faces greeted her. The natives seemed to have some natural coloration that provided markings about the face and neck, but human vanity had taken them beyond that. On the younger ones you could still see the natural markings, but the older folk had layered them under paint and tattoos—it was hard to say which—until you could hardly tell if they’d been mainstream humans to begin with, or some more exotic variety. Rho picked up enough surface thoughts to know that the tattoos were related to tribal status and the temporary paint to less weighty concerns, but there were too many colors and patterns for her to start classifying them in any more detail. Hopefully her life wasn’t going to depend upon interpreting some subtle shade of ochre, or the sweep of a painted line through a plucked eyebrow.

At least they were similar to her in form. She didn’t want to think about what this visit would be like if the natives weren’t so close to the human genetic mean, or hadn’t been Scattered Races stock at all. If the latter were the case she probably wouldn’t have arrived walking, but netted or lanced or lashed to some primitive vehicle of confinement, an alien trophy to be studied and then killed. She’d been on enough hostile planets to know what that was like, and was grateful not to have to deal with it again. Of course, on those worlds there were back-up teams that would come in for you . . . not leave you stuck in the middle of nowhere, wondering how the hells you had gotten there. . . .

A few of the natives came and looked her over. Surprisingly few. Given how alien she must have looked to them, Rho was surprised more didn’t show an interest in her. Granted, the differences between their people and hers were minor, but it was still enough to mark her as more than a simple visitor. Some of the men seemed interested, but as they looked her over it seemed that their concern was more sexual than xenophobic. That figured. Men who lived their lives as warriors, hunters, and explorers were drawn to the alien on a primal level, and their arousal had as much to do with marking territory and claiming the unknown as it did with any sexual characteristics.

She wondered if she was going to have to fend off rape to earn her place here She managed to keep a smile on her face throughout the inspection, but the cold look in her eyes was measured against the nature of each man’s desire: enough to warn him that she would not be a willing conquest, not enough to make that thought exciting in its own right.

How did the deadheads get through stuff like this? They did, she knew that. The scouts of both Empire and Holding were entirely nonpsychic now, and had to rely upon purely external cues in all their diplomacy. She suspected more than a few of them had latent power, probably buried so deep by denial they’d never know it. Hells, it had to be. Last she’d heard, new recruits in the Empire were being given “tests” to make sure their insights were from a “verifiable” source. That was a nice fantasy.

Deadhead idiots. Their fear was so thick you could taste it. Sometimes when she got home from an assignment among them she wanted to scrub herself clean until she was raw, just to get off the smell of their emotional overload. Not their fault, of course. If you took boiling water and sealed it up inside a pot so that none of the pressure could escape, it would eventually blow open too.

Rho felt her before she saw her, a presence so distinct that it made the hairs on the back of her neck rise. She was dressed in layers of bleached cloth that Rho was willing to bet had not been cleaned for several planetary revolutions. Her face was painted with a chalky white in patterns that reflected the skull beneath, masking whatever natural markings there might have been. Her hair was long and tangled and likewise painted, with twigs and talismans woven into it. Her aura tasted of . . . death. Presence of death, knowledge of death, acceptance of death, defiance of death. The feeling was so powerful that Rho could taste it, and it sat upon her tongue like bitter chalk. Even the healer fell back when this one came, and Rho could understand why. Anyone with a tad of psychic sensitivity would want to get out of her way, and fast.

A long arm reached out, streaked with whitish lines to suggest the bones beneath, and painted fingers touched Rho. Her skin, her face, her hair: an inspection. The eyes were rimmed in black powder, and seemed to stare out at her as if from an abyss. Suddenly Rho found she was aware of just how much death there was in that place. Bodies of ancestors buried in nearby mounds. Stillborn children in tiny cairns by their mother’s huts. Offerings on altars to the gods of hunting and killing, charms to bring death, stave off death, channel death. . . . It all rushed over her like a wave, too much to absorb. She staggered back from the woman, stunned by the power of the images. This wasn’t like anything they’d taught her back home. Even the Hasai had never shown her mental images like that.

The healer brought her to a pool where the women bathed, clearly expecting she would want to clean herself. Rho was loath to strip in front of others, lest the sight of her unpatterned body prove too alien for their comfort, but at least she could wash the grime and sweat from her face. They’d already seen that part of her.

She reached out to the water as if touching the reflected image might somehow make it more real. Ripples spread out across a face that was remarkably un-alien. To the locals, that was. To Rho it was a face so unfamiliar it might have belonged to that of a stranger, and she raised her fingers to feel the strange flesh, searching for familiarity in texture, in sensation.

She bore the markings of this people now, in soft sweeps of color across her cheeks and brow. Her nostrils had the same funny twisted slits that the locals’ did. Her eyes hadn’t changed shape—the pupil was still round—but the color was a shade of yellow-green better suited to their world than hers. And her hair . . . that was still the same short length and the texture was unchanged, but the pale gold strands were brown now, and all the treatments she’d put on them to hold the style in place had clearly been removed.

For the first time since her arrival she was truly afraid. This wasn’t the kind of fear you could rationalize away, or soothe with a few choice Disciplines. Sometimes there were things you really should be afraid of. Fear was a survival mechanism, after all.

Her body had been transformed. All of it. She could have been one of them in truth, for all that they could see. No wonder so few had shown an interest in her, when she arrived. She was a stranger, yes, but no more than that. Not some wondrous thing they should feel a need to explain. Or fear.

Shaking from the effort, drenched in a cold sweat, she stood up and looked around her. The storage hut she’d been allowed to sleep in seemed to be pressing in on her, suddenly. She climbed to her feet, wiping the sweat from her forehead, and then, with a shudder, she pushed her way past grain-filled urns of plaited rush, and exited the small hut. Outside she could feel the alien thoughts of the natives pressing in on her mind, and her head began to pound again. She started to walk. No destination in mind, just a need to get away from them all. Then started to run. Past wooden bowls filled with roots she had helped pound to paste. Past rolls of bark she had helped soften. Things you did in a primitive society to prove yourself useful, so that they were willing to feed you and give you shelter, until. . . .

She ran and ran until she was far from the village. Far enough that she stopped at last, in a clearing atop a bleak rise. Overhead she could see three moons, nearly full now. Alien moons. Was someone watching her from that vantage point? She tried to reach out to them but it was too far away.

She stared at the map the healer had brought her and tried not to rage aloud. How could she explain to the woman that she’d hoped for some sign of advanced technology, or at least someplace to begin a search for it? Tropical island cultures were notorious for staying low-tech; the abundance of food one could find in an ocean combined with moderate temperatures meant that humans could thrive without worrying about how to make complex tools to hunt or farm, tame the elements, or travel great distances overland. Those things and war were the great technological motivators.

She felt so frustrated she wanted to take the map and throw it against the far wall. Instead she took a deep breath and forced a smile to her face. “Thank you,” she said. It was easy to pick up a language when you could sense the meaning behind each word. Soon enough she would be fluent. Soon enough . . . she would be able to speak like one of the natives, and work like them, and maybe even take a mate. She knew they were discussing that last factor. She knew now that was why they’d taken her in. A limited gene pool like this one was always looking for mates from the outside.

Something inside her was going to snap, soon. She knew that. Something nameless that had been building up inside her, seeded by rage and frustration and fear, that had become more than all those things. She had always prided herself on her self-control . . . but this monster, she sensed, was beyond her usual methods. This was a primal emotion that she didn’t know how to contain. All she could do was build up the walls that guarded it high enough and strong enough to delay the inevitable explosion, while searching desperately for some way to get herself out of this situation.

She tried a few questions in her half-fluent best but none of them were answered. Rho didn’t think it was because the woman was unwilling to answer her so much as . . . she didn’t seem to understand the need for questions. Anyone who knew the language would know what meeting the dead meant. Surely. Questions were waved aside casually, as if to say I have too much to do now, do not ask for answers any child could give you.

Dozens of wind chimes tinkled in the cool evening air, weird constructs of stone and clay now raised on high poles to greet the night. She knew what the ritual chimes were called in the local tongue because she’d asked when she saw them in storage. Voices of the Dead. Here and there natives sat quietly, cross-legged, listening to the discordant notes, meditating. She could taste the change in their consciousness as she passed them, without even trying. As if the music gave their minds more power. Or perhaps it was the drugs she caught the scent of, aromatic smoke clinging to the skin of men and women alike. A drug to foster psychic awareness? Despite her growing unease, she couldn’t ignore the raw potential of such a thing. She found herself pausing as she passed by those in contemplation, trying to memorize the scent. If there was a plant here that could affect psychic sensitivity in such a way, and if she could identify it, that might be worth this whole miserable journey.

They were gathering in the center of the village, in a circular arena beaten into the earth, packed hard by many generations of use. In the center was a pit edged with pale stones in which a thicket of ghostly white stakes had been erected. Each had been painstakingly stripped of its bark, and was carved in a manner that suggested human bones in some parts, though if you looked close enough you could see faces as well. Ancestors? Gods? Rho passed close enough to see drops of oil or resin glimmering on their surface, and the scent that came to her was the same as that which she’d been noticing on so many of the villagers. Some sacred substance, perhaps? The faces seemed to appear and disappear as you walked around them, and as moving shadows played across them . . . eerie constructs that set the stage well for the night’s endeavor.

The healer nudged her toward one of the long earthen banks that functioned as benches and took a seat beside her. There was an air of tension amidst those assembling that no psychic could miss, and despite her training Rho could feel their powerful emotions stirring things inside her. Like was calling to like, tension to tension. Hasha, she thought, now is not the time to lose control . But it was hard to tune out so many people under the best of circumstances, and these were not the best of circumstances.

Her breathing shaky, she reached inside herself for the barriers of Self that would protect her from Other. Distinction Discipline. The healer noticed her concentrating and said something to her, but Rho couldn’t hear the words. Not now. This was too important, if the dead were truly coming. Or even if the natives simply believed they were.

With a sigh of relief she felt the Discipline take hold. The emotions of the others were more distant now, though still stronger than they should have been. Was that because of some strange drug in the air, or . . . maybe a consequence of something that had been done to her by the same people who left her here? Fear became a sudden knot in her gut as she realized that the same unknowns who had taken her memory away might have worked other changes as well. What would happen if she called upon some other Discipline to protect her, only to find that it no longer worked at all? If this one wasn’t working completely—

Hells! She wasn’t a child, incapable of mastering the storm of emotions that puberty let loose. She was an awakened adult, a fully trained psychic, and a valued member of the Hostilities Project. She knew every Discipline in the book, and if they weren’t working one hundred percent right now, well then, she would have to make up for the difference in sheer willpower. There was simply no other option.

The priestess had arrived now, along with a half-dozen acolytes dressed in similar white rags. As they moved in the moonlight a wispy, ghostlike light seemed to follow them. Damned good showmen, Rho mused, wondering what phosphorescent substance had been painted onto their rags to bring about the effect. The priestess could have been a ghost herself, or rather a living skeleton; the bones painted on her face and hands glowed like nacreous fire in the double moonlight. Ghastly. Compelling.

The priestess came to the center of the circle then, and stood still. So still. The stillness was like a wave that coursed out from her over the banks of spectators, devouring all sound, all motion. When she knew that all eyes were upon her, she raised her hand to the cold night sky and intoned, “I am Innana, child of the dead, kin to the dead, speaker for the dead. I am she who calls ancient souls to communion with the living, in the way of our people. I am she who hears their words.”

There was silence for a moment, then a woman rose to her feet. Across the circle a man did likewise. Then another. One by one more people rose, until there were a dozen standing. Some looked entranced. Some looked as though they clearly regretted what was to come next. Tension rippled through the crowd like a cold wind. Rho could taste it.

“Behold,” the priestess said. Her words were half-chanted, half-sung, like the text of some ancient and venerated prayer. “Before the dead there is no dissembling, for they have passed beyond the need for flesh and lies. So make yourselves naked, you that would come before them. Make offering of your own flesh and your own lies, that you may be worthy of them.”

The first woman to stand—one of those who seemed most entranced—said quietly, “I spoke ill against my neighbor, in order that a man might favor me more.” In the utter silence of the night her words carried despite their softness. “I ask their forgiveness.”

She sat, and another took her place. “I . . . stole a knife from another man’s home.” He looked across the circle and met the eyes of another; the victim of the theft? “I beg forgiveness,” he whispered . . . and the man nodded. Then another did the same, standing and confessing his offenses against tribal law. Then another. Some were simple transgressions, small things that might be overlooked in the course of days. Others were more serious. One was a breach of marital customs, and the man confessing looked over the crowd to make sure his partner was standing too, before he spoke her name. Tears were in the eyes of both of them.

The priestess looked at Rho. For a moment their eyes locked, and Rho could taste the power behind that ancient gaze. Go, the priestess seemed to urge her. Confess why you are here, what you have done. What you now plan. This is the time, the place. This is where forgiveness may be found.

It took all of Rho’s strength not to back her response with psychic power, searing it into the other woman’s brain. I have nothing to confess, unless you count vehement hatred for whoever left me in this godsforsaken place. If that’s a sin in your book you’ll just have to deal with it, I’m not apologizing.

She saw in the priestess’ eyes that she was not satisfied, but at last the woman turned away to address more cooperative sinners. Rho took the opportunity to draw in a long, shaky breath. What was it about that woman that so unnerved her? It was more than mere power, she knew that. Perhaps . . . confidence of power. Absolute certainty that no matter what happened, no matter who challenged her, all the dead might be summoned up in her defense. Who could make war with that?

Faith. It was a powerful emotion. Emotions like anger and lust paled beside it. Little wonder then that the ranks of the priesthood were so often filled with latent psychics . . . or sometimes even active ones. Rho had learned it was the first place you looked for psychics when you came to a new world.

When the confessions were done the priestess intoned something in a language Rho had not heard before. It took no psychic skill to know it was a ritual cleansing of some kind. When she was done, she raised her hands upward in benediction. “Now you are true.” She spoke not to the sinners alone, but to the whole crowd. “Now you are worthy.”

It seemed to Rho then that the night grew colder. Imagination, of course. Rho wrapped her arms around herself nervously as the natives began to chant their own invitations to the dead, whispering ancient poems and melodies under their breath. She could feel tendrils of their cold faith filling the arena, swirling like fog about the bases of the odd wooden sculptures. Those were the ancestors, of course. The knowledge seeped into her skin even as she studied them. Those were the spirits of the dead as their descendants had seen them, manifested here in this circle. Whitewashed bones and faces stretched thin by the night, ghostly apparitions that would . . . that would . . .

Alien thoughts were in her head. Frightening thoughts. They came from the people sitting across from her, from the healer at her side, even from the children present. But most of all they came from the priestess. Yes, she was a borderline psychic, a powerful Aggressive, and her faith and training had turned this ritual into a Discipline of sorts that gave new boundaries to her power. Only . . . when the ritual was completed, there would be no boundaries any longer. Her vision of the world would flood the minds around her until the living brains drowned her in holy madness. It would be the ultimate religious communion—not with the spirits of the deceased but with the mind of one who stood on the border between life and death, drawing on the heat of living souls to balance out her internal madness.

Rho felt the priestess’ eyes upon her then, and more than eyes. A dozen other sets of eyes—a hundred—that glimmered unseen in the darkness behind her. Eyes of the dead . . . or faces of delusion. What was the difference, in practical terms, when a Psychic Aggressive was placing the images directly into every brain? What did it matter where the disembodied voices came from, if they were real to her, if she could make them real to you?

The priestess walked about the circle, chanting ancient verses that Rho knew instinctively were invitations to all the ancestors of this primitive people. Come, come to the circle, however you wish, in whatever guise. Appear in the air, rise up from the earth, take a body if you wish and swallow its soul for an hour, a day, a year. All that we have is yours. All that we are is yours.

She could see the people around her changing, each in his own way. Some slumped down, as if their flesh had suddenly failed them; others stiffened where they sat, a look of fevered expectancy upon their faces. She saw pain, ecstasy, love, despair, hope . . . even fear, in some of the youngest. The fear would give way in time. The priestess would pound her reality into their heads until their own private universe gave way, and the dark things that coursed in the night would be given a home in their souls.

Yes, the voice persisted. Did it come from outside her mind, or from within? It is our way. If you mean to join our people, then you must embrace our dead. When she did not answer it pressed on, Have not your own dead abandoned you? Are you not here alone? Are you not afraid? Submit to them, become their conduit, and they will protect you.

She couldn’t just run. It would mean something to these people if she did, something very bad. Rejection of their dead? They would hunt her down and they would take her life and then they would curse her soul so it was bound to the earth and could never rise again—

It seemed to her then there was a stirring in the air. Bits of fog congealing in the darkness near the ancestor carvings. Was it likely that the priestess could control such things, or more likely that her madness was so powerfully defined she could make everyone in this circle share it? A soft moan came from across the circle, and Rho saw one of the younger women fall to her knees, her eyes rolled upward until only the whites of her eyes were visible. Possessed . . . but by the spirits of dead, or some mental phantom loosed within her by the priestess’ own power?

Wisps of fog began circling the ancestor carvings, becoming more and more defined as they did so. As much as Rho tried to shut them out, still the ghostly images remained. Was it possible they were really there? Or perhaps they were a manifestation of some other life-form that inhabited this planet, whose exudations had been interpreted as human souls? It seemed to her that there were faces hidden in some of the ghostly tendrils, and as much as she tried to shut them out, they seemed to be leering at her. Alien, came the whispers. Inside her head, outside her head, everywhere. Lost one. How does your soul taste, Outsider? Soon we will know. . . .

The priestess began to chant. It was not her own voice that she used this time, but a deeper and more compelling sound that came from the same cavity. Rho had seen enough religious rites in her life to recognize the signs of possession. Which dead spirit was the woman supposedly channeling that would choose the body of a priestess to attend these rites? There was too much madness there, too much dark religious ecstasy to wade through in search of facts. The priestess’ surface thoughts were so entangled with images of death and resurrection there was no making sense of them.

The power seemed to arise from the earth itself, from the circle of spectators, from the very air they breathed. Rho could feel it well up before her, around her, whirling raw power that centered upon the circle of carvings and the woman who stood beside them. Power born of dozens of living minds crying out in unity, along with the thousands of dead spirits they believed to be listening. It was searing mental power, raw psychic yearning stripped of every civilized trapping, almost unbearable to contain. Rho could feel her senses shutting down in self-defense, the automatic triggers of Distinction Discipline coming into play for her protection. She fought them. Hard. Fought to remain aware of what was happening. Because even as the power flowed through her with ice-hot tendrils, even as she knew that every mind in that circle was being woven into a whole that was vast, untamed, terrifying, she knew that such power could be used. And she had need of it. Far more than these people did.

There was no time to wonder if it was the right thing to do. She was desperate, and this . . . this power . . . offered her the first real hope she’d had since being stranded here. So into the psychic maelstrom she inserted her own thoughts, feeling them swept away like leaves in a hurricane. No one seemed to notice. She tried again, fighting to keep her balance amidst the psychic winds, imprinting them with her purpose. It seemed she could actually hear the maelstrom now, a roaring in her head that drowned out all natural sound. No more wind chimes. No more chanting. Only her and the power, her and this raw force which could be shaped, directed, used . . .

Out, out, into the depths of space. She could feel the power of these people bolstering her own sensitivity, giving her the strength she needed to reach out beyond her natural limitations. Out past the heat of the sun, past the moons, past asteroids and planets and comets and blackness, reaching out screaming in need and fear and desperate hope I AM HERE I AM STRANDED COME SEE ME COME HELP ME I NEED YOU—

—and she was swatted back to earth like an insect smacked by a vast hand. Head reeling, she tried desperately to focus. The priestess was staring over her now, her eyes rimmed in red, and the thoughts from her brain were so focused and accusatory they hit Rho like a hammer.

You are alien. You are enemy. You come into our circle and call to your own dead, so that they can take what is ours. There was a strange satisfaction in the thought, as if the priestess had known all along this was how it would be. Now we will cleanse this place.

Rho ran. Stumbling over the first earthen bench, then vaulting the ones behind it. She seemed to move fast enough that she took the others by surprise, or maybe they were so entranced by the rites that it would take them a few seconds to respond. Either was good enough. She broke through their ranks and was at the outer edge of the circle by the time she heard people stirring behind her. By the time the priestess commanded them to follow her she had broken through the first line of trees and was chest deep in the tropical vegetation.

Where to go? There was no easy passage here except along the hunting paths that the villagers used, and it would be too easy for them to follow her there. In the darkness of forest shadows she fought her way blindly, ripping at the vines that threatened to strangle her, cursing the thorns that raked at her legs. Behind her she could hear them coming, oh, so many, she could hear them cutting at the foliage with their long curved knives, could taste their intentions along with the sweat on her lips—knife cutting through the invader red blood on the night-soaked earth—oh gods, what had she done, what had she done? It was the madness inside her, the screaming need to do something, and now look where it had led her. Please, she begged, whoever left me here, if you are listening, please, let the game be over. Whatever you wanted, whyever you have done this to me, let this be enough!

The vines that entangled her feet gave way then, and from overhead a glimmer of moonlight broke through the canopy. A path. A hunting path. She followed it gratefully, hoping it would take her pursuers long minutes to find it. Minutes in which she might get some distance on them. So that she could get—

She stumbled as she ran, and cursed the rocks that tripped her. Where was there to go? What place would give her refuge, on this island they knew so well? Behind her she could hear shouts as they came upon the path she had taken. Voices drew rapidly closer, even as she stumbled along the narrow road. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide, not on this soft earth which captured her tracks so clearly that even the filtered moonlight showed them clearly. If she veered from the path they would know it, if she dove for the cover of brush they would know where to look, if she tried to find—

Something hard smashed into the back of her head. She stumbled for a moment, trying with reeling senses to stay on her feet, to keep moving. Someone had struck her. Were they that close? Or were there others who knew the way of this path, who had cut her off already?

She tried to dive for cover in the brush, but it was too late. Another impact from behind sent her reeling, and another. Then another from in front of her; they must have circled around and cut her off. She drew up her arms instinctively to protect her face, and they were hit almost immediately.

A barrage of projectiles brought her to her knees; sticky warm blood began to seep out of the many wounds. Stones. They were stoning her. Of all the primitive, messy deaths to have to suffer! She struggled to get to her feet again but the barrage was too much for her: too much impact, too much pain. She swayed on her knees for a moment, knowing that once she fell the battle was lost. And then she fell. Face first into the mossy earth, as missile after missile struck at her flesh.

For a moment there was nothing. Through the ringing in her ears she could hear the sudden silence. Only one set of footsteps moving now, calm and measured. She knew who it was without looking . . . but she looked anyway, blinking the streams of blood from her eyes in order to see.

Her garments glowed like ghostly fragments in the darkness. Her face was a skull, all humanity extracted from it, only illusion remaining. Her mind . . . that was madness. Pure madness, pounding at Rho like the rocks had pounded at her. She intoned something in a foreign tongue, and Rho could catch the thoughts behind it. Now the invader falls. Now her dead fall with her. Now, behold, I will bind her to the earth, so that death is a prison to her, and she may never rise again to defile our rituals—

Rho reached out. It was not a move that was rational, or even one she knew she was making. It was as much a move of pure animal instinct as the dying struggles of a herdbeast, striving to tear one last bit of flesh out of the predator that had brought it down. But Rho had no teeth or claws with which to strike . . . only her mind.

The touch of the priestess’ soul was like ice. Rho struggled to get inside it, to find the place were actions were initiated, the core of the reasoning soul. But she was a Receptive, not an Aggressive, and her mind was unused to such battles. Slowly the skull-woman raised her arm, moonlight glinting on the edge of her knife as her thoughts pounded deathdeathdeath. It seemed to Rho she moved almost in slow motion, that she had a small eternity to pit her dying strength against the icy resoluteness of the other woman’s mind. Yet even so, even though it seemed to take minutes instead of seconds, the knife did descend. Rho couldn’t hold it. That wasn’t the kind of power she knew how to handle; it went against all her natural instincts. There were psychics who knew how to invade the mind of another and take control of it, and she wasn’t one of them. Bloody tears filled her eyes, hazing everything in a mist of crimson as the gleaming blade descended. She couldn’t do it. She didn’t have the power. Steel sang in the moonlight, hymns of the dead accompanying it in its arc toward her flesh. Music from the mind of a priestess she could observe, but not invade. Whispers of spirits dead and gone to ease the way of steel into flesh, into blood—

The ice gave. Cracked. She surged forward with all her strength, even as the cold of the steel blade prickled the hairs on the back of her neck. I will not die, damn you! Upward and inward she thrust, into a soul whose substance was utterly without heat, mouldering shadows of thought sticky about her, like some chill web. You will not do this to me! Grasping the mind that grasped the hand that grasped the blade, twisting it, turning . . . steel whispered hungrily by her neck and bit into the ground. The dead screamed out in frustration. She could hear them now, echoing in the vast dark holds of the priestess’ mind. Voices that were never silent, never satisfied. She thrust past them and could feel the woman fighting her now, pitting the power of her faith against Rho’s innate psychic abilities. But no one had trained Rho to do this, not ever. Invading the mind of another, seeking out the place where commands were given, squeezing it until it gave . . . instinct drove Rho, hot bloody instinct, and she could taste the woman’s essence boil at last, ice giving way to the fire of sheer desperation.

She stood. They stood. It stood, a composite life that was neither one nor the other, an envelope of flesh wrapped around silent screaming. Do it! Rho shouted to the priestess, and she forced her mind down the channels of muscular control, forcing the woman to stand. Forced herself into the vocal cords and the fleshy parts of the mouth, shaping them into words. Forced herself into the lungs, to send air through those passages.

“It is done,” the priestess said. Generations of the dead howled in protest, but they had no power to dislodge Rho from the flesh she now posessed. She could see her own body lying still, its face dripping blood, as she forced the priestess to turn back the way she had come. Behind her were a dozen or more people—it was hard to see numbers in the forest shadows—still holding chunks of rock in case the fearsome stranger should move again. Dead, Rho crooned into the other woman’s brain. She is dead, dead, dead. . . . She had to make her believe. Else this all was wasted. The minute the priestess was free of Rho’s control she would just come after her again. And where was there to hide, on this small island? You slit her throat, Rho told her. Remember? You saw that she no longer breathes. The stranger is dead. You know this for a fact. Could you take control of memories, as well as flesh? A day ago she would have said that either was impossible. But now . . .

She forced the possessed body to take a deep breath. Waited while the substance of her message was absorbed into the woman’s brain. Then she made her speak again. “She is dead. In the care of our ancestors. They will see that she never rises to trouble our people.” A brief whisper of protest surfaced in the back of the priestess’s mind, was quickly strangled into silence. Rho was in control now, and she had no intention of letting loose her mental grip until the woman believed in her death. However in the Hells of the Scattered Races you did something like that.

Deep into the woman’s mind she reached, past all the bleeding safeguards, into the core of her memory. The touch of her thoughts was cold, unclean, like a thing long dead and rotting. But she needed her memories to make this right. She needed the ritual that the dead were even now demanding, the words that would bind a dead soul to the earth, so that it could never roam free again.

She could feel the power of the incantation wrap around her like a shroud, chill and black and stifling. But its power was a meager thing, compared to some of what she had faced in the past, and it had no power to harm her. She wasn’t dead, after all. And the words were not coming from a priestess of the dead, but from a psychic who had invaded her flesh and taken control, and forced out sounds without any power behind them.

She dared to shut her eyes for a moment, blinking out some of the blood that had trickled into them. The part of her that was inside the priestess saw the motion, and it should have registered in the woman’s brain as a sign of life. But it did not. Rho was dead, the other woman knew that for a fact. The illusions cast by night’s shifting shadows would not make her believe otherwise.

And they left. Thank Hasha! They left. A ringing filled her ears as they moved away. She tried to raise her head but couldn’t. Something sticky beneath her cheek. How much blood had she lost? She needed to move. Command your own flesh, as you commanded hers. Body not obeying. Hot warm sticky in so many places. How much blood? No strength left. Get up, get up now or you may never do so again. Tasting it in her mouth. Bad. Bad. Senses going, ocean roar in ears turning to whistling turning to light—

Rho drew in a deep breath and nodded. Her head was pounding, but it was the pain of trials come and gone. Other faces were coming into focus now. All Hasai. Shards of memory began to surface, things that had happened the last time she had seen those faces—

She drew in a deep breath and did as asked. Moving her muscles one by one, then group by group, to test the responsiveness of each. It was hard, and her head hurt, but in the end each one did what it was supposed to do. Mind and body were well connected.

“Very good.” Thera smiled. She was an older woman; you could see it in her eyes, the accumulated wisdom and patience of more than a century’s life. “Now I will return your memories to you. Shut your eyes and try to relax. This will not hurt, but it will be . . . disconcerting.”

—and memories came crashing back into her like a tidal wave, slamming into her mind with a force that left her gasping—Damned Braxin scout dirty stinking muscles like steel LEAVE ME ALONE who thought they’d in this part of the galaxy NOOOOO invasion of body and mind damned Braxin arrogance pounding into her WILL NOT LET THIS HAPPEN tears tears tears WILL NOT BE HELPLESS no defenses against sheer physical might WILL NEVER BE HELPLESS AGAIN—

When it was all gone, when the tsunami of remembered fear and shame had washed over her, she lay gasping upon the bed, unable to speak or even think aloud. Oh, Hasha. What he had done to her. What she had done to herself, in order to see that such things could never happen again.

She shut her eyes. A tear trickled out from one lid, though whether from pain or fear or hate or just exhaustion, she could not have said. ~Yes. I asked you to make me Shaka. I asked you to help me find the power that was in me . . . or let me die, if I couldn’t have it.

The wordless affirmation bathed her brain in warmth. ~Yes. Shaka. One of the few. . . . I’m sorry there was no other way to awaken the power in you. Desperation, sustained despair, fear of assault, all these things are components of awakening. But in the end we don’t really understand enough to of the process to control it artificially. We have to rely upon catalyst cultures, such as the one you visited, to trigger the proper sequence of emotions. For some it is enough, and they find the power within themselves. For others. . . .

~Oh yes. Quite real. We’ve used this planet often; it has a number of host cultures that suit our purpose. Their legends are such that we can use them repeatedly, and each time they will interpret the experience in such a way as to remain a useful tool. Very rare, that. Usually we have to send down operatives to remove portions of memory in key individuals, in order to use the same group of people again.

It was all too much to take in. For a moment Rho just lay still, feeling the veil lift slowly, painfully, from so many memories. Terror, despair, rage . . . enough emotion, it seemed, to awaken a power in her which few had mastered. The ability to move into the body of another and command it. To break a human mind with simple thought. Powers coveted and feared by the people who served the Lyu, which few ever dared to court. She knew in that moment that it was the pain inside her which had made this awakening possible. That all the desire for power in the galaxy would not have opened her mind to such things, had pain not already carved a path in that direction.

The woman hesitated, then spoke. Only spoke. It was rare for the Hasai to use words like that, devoid of all psychic trappings. “I am sorry,” she said softy, “We should have foreseen this. We didn’t know it would happen while you were being Tested. It would have been against protocol to interrupt.”

A leader of men has two choices, and only two. He can bear himself with flawless strength every waking moment, so that no man ever has the opportunity to see weakness in him . . . or he can divorce himself from the company of common men entirely, so that others know only rumors of his strength, and cannot gain enough information to threaten him with less obliging judgement.