Free Psion by Joan D. Vinge

on my heels.
    “Cat?” She called me back. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking, but for just a second the corners of her mouth turned up a little. She wasn’t looking at me as I stopped beside her, but she said, “You move like a dancer. You’re very quick and graceful.”
    “Me?” I laughed, embarrassed. “Comes from walkin’ on eggs all the time.” I pushed my hands into my pockets. It was the first time I could ever remember anybody noticing something good about me. “What’s that?” I nodded at the terminal. It was just a plain bright screen with a couple of control buttons below it. There were three letters printed on the screen.
    “That’s your name.”
    I touched it with my hand. “My name?”
    She nodded, tracing the symbols with a stylus, naming them, C-A-T spells Cat.
    I said the sounds after her. “ I seen all those letters before.”
    She nodded again.
    But now they really mean something. I reached out, pulled back a little, finally took the stylus she was holding out to me. I touched its tip to the screen, leaving a bright smear.
    Someone came into the room. I felt it before I saw them . . . Siebeling, and a Corpse with him. I jerked around, dropping the stylus, looking for another way out-
    Jule’s hand caught my sleeve. “It’s all right. He’s not here for you. It’s me he wants to see.”
    “You?” But already I saw that he wasn’t a Citicorpse, that he was wearing the insignia of some combine government. “Jule, you got a record?”
    She didn’t answer. Siebeling came over to us, leaving the Corpse waiting in the doorway. Jule usually started to glow all over whenever she saw Siebeling, but this time her face was set and pale, and her mind was full of darkness.
    “Jule, there’s someone here to see you,” Siebeling said.
    She nodded, keeping her head down. “I know. I don’t want to talk to him, Ardan. Make him go away, please. . . .” She began to bite a fingernail.
    “I think you should talk to him.” Siebeling’s voice was quiet, but it was almost an order. “Jule, you didn’t tell me that you-“
    She picked the stylus up and put it into my hand. “Here,” she whispered. “Practice.” Then she moved away from us, toward the Corpse, her arms folded in front of her and her hands clutching her elbows. She was trying to hold in her tension, but I could feel it like electricity in the air.
    “ What’s he want ? She ain’t bein’ arrested, is she?”
    Siebeling glared at me like I’d insulted her. “Of course not. He brought a message from her family.”
    “Her family?” There was something so solitary about Jule that I’d always thought she must be as alone as I was. Siebeling was the only other person she ever really talked to besides me. The two of them had had a thing going almost from the start; everybody knew it even though they pretended not to. It wasn’t easy to keep a secret from a bunch of psions, and Jule was only just learning how to keep her feelings hidden at all. She might as well have shouted it. If she wanted to get involved with Siebeling that was her business . . . even though I couldn’t see what she saw in him, myself . “They sent a Corpse to tell her? Whose colors is he wearing?”
    “Centauri Transport. It’s a shipping combine; the biggest and one of the oldest.” And the taMing family controlled its holdings. Her family . . . the thought was lying on the surface of his mind, bright with his own surprise.
    “You mean she’s rich?”
    “Does she look rich?” He bit off the words.
    I shrugged. “Not from here.” She was talking to the Corpse, still hugging herself, still broadcasting resentment. “Don’t worry. I ain’t planning to mug her.” I turned back to the screen, annoyed, and started trying to copy my name.
    “What are you doing?” Siebeling said it like he’d caught me defacing property.
    “Doin’ what she told me to do. ” C . . . A . . . T. My hand shook; I was holding the stylus like it would jump