Free Weird Space 2: Satan's Reach by Eric Brown Page A

what happened?”
    He turned to look at her. “You’re persistent, aren’t you? Okay, if you must know... when I was four my mother sold me to the Expansion authorities. I’d tested psi-positive – that is, I was potentially telepathic. I underwent an operation to release that potential, fitted with software up here.” He stopped, then went on, “I never saw my mother again. Years later I tried to trace her... I found where she’d last lived, that she’d been a singer, but she’d died a month or so earlier. Can you begin to imagine what it was like, to be brought up by a loving mother... or so I thought at the time... and then sold to the militaristic Expansion?”
    She stared at him. “I’m sorry. No, I can’t imagine.”
    “I wanted to know why my mother sold me, why she felt she had to. I’ve since found out that they paid her fifty thousand units for me... so it might have been that she was desperately poor and needed the cash – but we never seemed that poor back then.” He shrugged. “But what do kids know about things like that?”
    “Nothing,” she whispered. “The adult world is a mystery to children, isn’t it?” She was quiet for a time, then said, “It’s a pity you didn’t find her before she died, Den. Things might have... I don’t know, turned out differently.”
    “Maybe,” he said. “Who knows? Maybe I wouldn’t have liked the women she was. Maybe I would have discovered that she’d sold me because she was greedy and didn’t really want a snivelling brat holding her back.”
    He stared straight ahead, wishing that the girl had not made him dredge up all the memories, the bitterness.
    “You said your mother was a singer.”
    “I’ll tell you something else, too, while you’re so intent on psychoanalysing me–”
    “Hey, who said anything about–?”
    “ Judi ’s voice is copied from my mother’s.” He told her about the recording of her singing, and how he’d had the ship synthesize his mother’s voice. He went on, “It’s all I have of my mother, other than a few memories. I find it... comforting.”
    “I’m sorry,” she said. “And you said that working for the Expansion was hell...”
    “They work you hard, make you do things you’d rather not do. And all the time they’re indoctrinating you, so that you believe that the terrible things they do are done for a cause, for the right reason.” He laughed without humour. “But as a telepath, Zeela, you can see right through all their lies and propaganda, even though all the trainers and high-ups are shielded. You read the minds of the underlings, the desk-jockeys and hangers-on... and you see what a vast organ of repression the Expansion is.”
    “So how did you get away, if you don’t mind me asking?”
    “And there I was, saying that I’d rather not talk about what happened... How do you do it, girl?”
    She shrugged. “Maybe it’s not me. Maybe it’s you. Maybe it’s just the right time to talk, to tell someone all about it.”
    He slid a quick look at her as she stared ahead at the road. He’d underestimated her, patronised her. She might be young and pretty, but she was also as sharp as hell.
    “One day,” he said, “something happened which was the final straw, as much as I could take. It pushed me over the edge. Let’s just say that it was painful, and afterwards I considered killing myself. Death seemed preferable to what I’d gone through. But I was too much of a coward to kill myself – so I did the next best thing. I took some leave and stole a starship – Judi , here – and took off across the Gulf to Satan’s Reach. It was the only thing in my life up to that point that I was proud of doing, and it wouldn’t matter if they caught me and killed me. I’d defied them, made a stand.”
    “And they sent someone after you?”
    “You bet they did. They sent a trained killer. A rogue telepath is a dangerous person in the eyes of the authorities. They know too much, and can get to