*You have been using telepathy alone for the last few minutes,* Corina
sent with a purr. *And you have surpassed your teacher; it was some
weeks before I could receive thoughts not specifically directed at me.*
Medart rose and stalked to where she sat still purring with
satisfaction, and glared at her, fists on his hips. "You tricked me!"
Then he gave her one of his lopsided grins. *But I guess you had to,
didn't you?*
*I am afraid so,* Corina agreed, pleased but not surprised by the
Ranger's rapid grasp of the situation. "It was the only way I could
get past your shield."
"How long?"
"Since that mental picture you had of me curled up in your lap. It
relaxed and amused you enough that you dropped your shield to the point
where I could get past."
"Well, I'll . . . be . . . damned," Medart said, half in admiration and
half in wonder. "I never felt a thing."
"You were not supposed to," Corina said calmly. "If you had, the
procedure would have been a failure."
"Can I work it on humans? Did you find anything else?"
"I know of no reason you could not. In fact, you should find it easier
with other humans than with me, because the basic mind pattern ought to
be more similar. As for your other question, you do have much
potential; it remains to be seen if you can develop it. Your mind
shield can be made stronger with practice, and there is unusually
powerful darlas latent. I sensed no traces of the other usual
Talents."
She paused, then continued, puzzled. "There is also something else,
but I cannot be sure what it is. I have never before sensed such an
aspect of Talent. Even describing it vaguely is difficult." She
paused again, laying her ears back in a frown. "The closest I can come
would be to call it a sort of darlas in reverse, but that is almost
pathetically inadequate."
Medart could feel her puzzlement changing to amusement, echoed it with
some of his own when she sent, *And Thark believes humans are
unTalented! Undeveloped and untrained, most certainly, but hardly
unTalented. You have not bred for it, even as indirectly as we have,
so the percentage of Talented humans is probably much lower than it is
for Irschchans, but--*
*--we're hardly the total incompetents he thinks we are,* Medart
finished.
"True. However, he does not know that and would not be convinced
merely by being told, even if we knew his location and were able to
communicate with him; his beliefs, once established, require
overwhelming proof to be changed." Her ears twitched. "I have thought
about contacting him telepathically, but even if he were to accept my
mind-touch, which I am certain he would not, he no longer trusts me
enough to believe my unsupported word."
"I'm afraid you're right," Medart agreed. "There's not going to be any
easy way to end this Crusade of his. I'm just hoping the information
you've already given us, and the help you're still going to give, will
let us stop it without too much bloodshed."
"I hope so, as well," Corina said, her tone as serious as his.
"Irschchan culture was quite chaotic and warlike at one time, but the
Order was a civilizing influence, and the idea of unnecessary bloodshed
has become quite unpleasant."
"Civilizing influence? I suppose so," Medart said with less than total
agreement. "It did cut down on warfare, which is a major benefit--but
I still say it caused stagnation, too. Your progress slowed from
faster than ours to almost nothing after the Order took over, in the
name of stability. Even slower than the Traiti, and for them gradual
progress is the norm. It took you fifteen hundred years to go from a
crude aircraft to just a system-capable spacecraft--it took Terra less
than a hundred."
"That was fortunate for you," Corina said with a touch of pique.
"Otherwise Terra would be an Irschchan subject world rather than the
center of a growing Empire." Then her tone grew softer. "But I was
raised an Imperial citizen, and I am glad of it. If the Academy
accepts me, I will be able to travel, always finding out new things . . .
meeting people of all races and species . . ."
Her voice trailed off, and Medart was struck by the sudden enthusiasm
and warmth replacing her normal controlled formality. No, he mused,
she'd never be happy in a society as static as Irschcha's, even as a
member of its ruling elite.
She was quiet now, gazing wide-eyed into nowhere, and Medart decided to
try his new ability. He sent a faint, wordlessly-questing thought at
her, and was rewarded with a mental image she had of herself. She was
clad in Imperial Navy service blue with an ensign's stripe, standing on
the bridge of a ship. The vessel appeared to be much smaller than the
Chang, and it was highly imaginative--didn't correspond to any actual
class--but he got the feeling it might be a courier or perhaps a scout.
He withdrew, letting the picture fade from his mind. So that was her
dream. She could achieve it easily with her ability, of course, and
more . . . yet what a waste it would be. Anything short of the Rangers
would be a waste as far as she was concerned, but he knew he couldn't
force her into that decision. There were compensations, sure, but it
was still a tough job, one that had to be taken on willingly. He could
and would use all his powers of persuasion; he could not and would not
use any form of coercion.
He'd been turned down once before, which had been disappointing--but
Corina's refusal would be worse. He wanted to make her accept the
Empire's need of her, its desperate urgency to make the best possible
use of such outstanding minds--especially, now, a non-human's. Linda
Ellman might have found it easier to persuade the young Irschchan, he
thought. She'd said Steve Tarlac had had a similar lack of
self-confidence when she'd recruited him. But that was nothing but idle
dreaming; this was up to him, not to Linda.