Free Psion by Joan D. Vinge Page B

laughter.
    “Twenty-three! Time?”
    “Catch!”
    “Over and under-“
    (Cat, warning.)
    Jule’s sending lit my mind a second too late, as the stool that had been sitting clear across the room materialized right behind me. I stepped back into it before I could stop myself; my feet tangled and I landed on the hard ripple-rings of the tile floor. Siebeling had done it to me again. He was good, real good. Too good. I lay on the floor and thought things at him that I didn’t have the breath to say out loud, but his mind was woven solid and he didn’t feel a thing. Didn’t feel anything, the stinking- Jule did; I saw her wincing, at my anger or at my pain. Guilt pinched me, and I tried to get control of my feelings, for her sake.
    The others stood shifting from foot to foot. I shut my own mind against their muttering thoughts.
    “Come on,” Siebeling said, and you couldn’t tell from his voice how much he must be enjoying it. “Get up, you’re breaking the rhythm.”
    “You’re breaking my neck! Why is it always me?”
    “Because you’re the least experienced,” he said quietly.
    “No-because you’re always on my back, that’s why!” I started to pick myself up, piece by piece.
    “If I give you more attention, it’s because you need it. You obviously need it or you wouldn’t have fallen. Stop making excuses.”
    I got up, rubbing my bruises, and kicked the stool toward him. He watched me with that look I’d gotten to know too well, one dark with something I couldn’t ever reach; as if maybe even he didn’t know why he hated the sight of me. Then suddenly he looked away from me toward Jule, and the thread of tension snapped. He looked down. He shrugged and said, “That’s enough for today. We’ll work on this again tomorrow.” He gestured toward the doorway at the far end of the hall, making a point of not looking at me now. As he turned, I heard Cortelyou mutter to him, “Quit picking on the kid, Ardan. It’s not what he needs from you. You just make him expect to fail. . . .” I moved away from them, straight for the door; wondering if seeing me fail wasn’t just what Siebeling wanted.
    When I was almost to the doorway, I had a sudden dizzy flash, my mind’s eye saw me, like a mirror picking up the image from some other psion’s mind. But the image came from outside the room, not through the eyes of anyone here . . . not from the mind of anyone I knew. I stopped, touching my head. We were being watched; someone was waiting in the hall. But when I got outside, no stranger whose mind burned with cold fire was waiting for me. The hall was empty. I went on to the lifts; I got into the first one that came and sent it up before anyone else could follow me.
    When it couldn’t go any higher, it let me out into the quiet lounge at the top of one of the Institute’s peaks. There were a handful of lounges spread through the building’s ice-sculpture sprawl; this lounge was one not many people bothered with, because you couldn’t see the ocean. Today the sky was weeping, lidded with clouds, wrapping the towers of Quarro in dirty gauze; no one else at all was up here. That suited me fine. I settled down into the formless pile of seat in the center of the room, letting it ease my stiffness as I took out another camph. I leaned back, watching the billowing rain slide down the transparent ripples of the dome. I’d never seen rain before I came here, except once, in Godshouse Circle. It was warm and brown. I’d felt like Quarro was pissing on me, and I didn’t like it. I remembered how for a long time I hadn’t even known what the sky was.
    I’d thought I’d come up here to be angry, but somehow now I didn’t have the strength for it. I just felt tired. My mind lay open, gray and empty like the sky. I closed my eyes, listening to the patter and drip of water; but the space behind my eyes filled up with images of Oldcity, like tears, and I blinked them open again. “Damn!” pinching myself one more