Free gaian consortium 06 - zhore deception by Christine Pope Page B

At first she’d thought they were only an affectation. Now she realized they served another purpose. With the light reflecting off the lenses, it was difficult to get a good read on the expression in his eyes. She’d always relied on those sorts of observations to assist her in deciphering what other people were thinking, how they were reacting. In many cases, watching someone’s shifting expressions could tell her almost as much as their thoughts did. Now, though….
    “Yeah,” he said. “Not as easy as you thought, huh? And I’m just one guy wearing glasses. How about a planet full of aliens, all of them hooded? No faces to read. No expressions to interpret. And they tamp down their emotions pretty hard, from what Brant told me. So the only way you’re going to get anything from them is if you probe. Hard.” He rocked back in his chair. “Try it.”
    “On you?”
    “Who else? No one here but us chickens.”
    She raised an eyebrow, not understanding the reference. But she knew he didn’t want her to ask any questions. He wanted her to do what she’d come here for.
    In the past, she’d always been careful when dipping into other people’s thoughts. It was easy to get lost in the welter of their emotions, of their hopes and fears and the million stray ideas that passed through someone’s head at any given moment. She’d only ever gone in to get one particular piece of information, and in her own mind, she’d always thought of the procedure as rather like using a laser scalpel, a beam of targeted light aimed at a very specific point.
    Now, though, when she tried to use the scalpel approach, it was clear that it wouldn’t work. It was like trying to poke a needle through a surface made of concrete.
    She needed a sledgehammer.
    And that was how she visualized it — like an enormous hammer she could slam down on the smooth, unyielding surface of Blake’s own defenses.
    “Ouch!” he exclaimed, then pushed his chair away from hers. “Subtle, Knox. Real subtle.”
    “Sorry,” she said, although she really didn’t mean it. Anyway, trying to get into Blake’s mind that way hadn’t worked at all. It had felt like swinging a mallet into shatterproof glass. Her attack had bounced back, shaking her as well.
    “Obviously, that approach isn’t going to work.” He shifted, moving so he was perched more or less on the edge of his seat. “You try pulling that crap on a Zhore, and they’re going to feel it and be on you so fast, you won’t even realize what’s happening until you’re locked up in jail. Or whatever they use for jail, I guess,” he added, with a scratch on the side of his nose. “Anyway, the last thing you want is to do something that’s going to attract everyone’s attention. So try again.”
    Trinity frowned, doing the exact opposite of Blake and instead settling against the back of her chair. She could tell she wouldn’t be able to brute-force this, so she had to figure out something else. The whole trick was to pick up his thoughts in a way that he wouldn’t notice. She needed to be as invisible as the air he breathed.
    Like air….
    All right, maybe not air exactly, but like the finest of mists, something so delicate and unsubstantial that she could drift through the tiny chinks and cracks in his mental armor, openings so small he probably didn’t even know they were there. For all she knew, she had the same sort of defects in her own defenses, but Blake hadn’t yet figured out how to exploit them. Hopefully, he never would.
    Her intention drifted on the air, settling down on the surface of his mind and seeping through, in the same way the spray from the misters in a greenhouse would gently penetrate the earth in which the plants were growing. He was sitting very still, but she didn’t see him startle or make any kind of movement at all. There was even a lopsided smile on his mouth, as if he was laughing internally at her ineptitude.
    Yes, that was it exactly. He didn’t think