Death and Taxes Page 3

  *****

  A Walk on the Wind

  I’ll go if it kills me, vowed Amint. She looked across the wide plain below the scarp on which she stood, to the distance-smudged badlands containing the peak named Lahraf.

  “Dying isn’t the problem,” said a voice behind her.

  She whirled to face a girl – no, a young woman now – of her own age, whose pretty face bore an expression of pleased superiority.

  Amint’s cheeks burned as she realized she had thought so vehemently that she had broadcast the words. And her blush made it impossible to deny either the gaffe or her embarrassment.

  “You shouldn’t eavesdrop, Suli,” she countered weakly. Suli, with her poise and easy sociability, always made Amint feel awkward and unsure of herself, moreso now that Suli was an adult.

  As if speaking to a young child, Suli began to explain that thoughts could be screened from transmission if one considered them private.

  “I know that!” snapped Amint, vainly wishing she could keep control of her emotions, so that she could have said, with icy calm, “I’m aware of basics, thank you.”

  “Oh, good,” returned Suli, unruffled. “I thought perhaps you were a bit backward in that field, too.”

  “You’ve only just taken your own test!” Amint cried. “I’m only a few days behind you.”

  “But half a year older,” Suli smiled. “Why don’t you give up pretending you’ll ever be an adult?”

  “I will be!” said Amint. “I’m going today.”

  Suli raised elegant eyebrows. “Really? What’s managed to screw up your courage?”

  That was a hit, and Amint’s face flamed again.

  “Ah,” said Suli. “It wouldn’t be Keril’s visit yesterday, would it?”

  He and several other recent adults had been doing an impromptu tour of the local villages, showing off their new status on the excuse of practicing long-range levitation. Suli had joined the group and, when one of them had asked Amint if she were coming too, Suli had broadcast the remark that Amint was a perpetual juvenile – using a confidential tone, as if Amint were really so backward she could not even catch a half-shielded thought.

  Keril had tried to cover the moment by suggesting that a couple of the group could support her, if she’d like to join the party. His kindness-to-a-cripple meant that he was accepting Suli’s evaluation of her. Trying both to deny that status and to find an excuse to refuse the humiliation – and hesitating to do either because Keril might be one of the ones to carry her – Amint stumbled over her words incoherently.

  But Suli cut in quickly: “Are any of us proficient enough yet to risk carrying someone else?”

  There was a sudden silence as each of the group unwillingly thought about the consequences of a loss of control while tuned in to the Amplifiers. They were all recent enough adults to be still living with that fear. It took years of practice of tapping into the global system before they could be casually sure their strength and confidence would steadily withstand the attacks to which the amplifier system exposed them. Attacks that constantly probed for an overstrained user who would be vulnerable.

  In spite of hundreds of generations of selective breeding on the parent planet as well as on this one, there was still a two per cent casualty rate, most of the victims failing in their first tap-in attempt. That was why it had to be solo and in the form of an activity that involved no equipment: weaklings and incompetents had to be weeded out before they could touch the planet-wide psionic equipment system.

  The death of a few young people, however hard on their families, was infinitely preferable to what would happen to the whole population, if the Outness ever got a sufficiently widespread contact through the psionic system. The Outness could be held off by even a single adult with enough practice and confidence; but a young person whose experience was not equal to some rash aspiration – too long or fast a flight, too heavy a lift, too prolonged a rapport with the Amplifier – could become a victim. The lucky ones among these were the ones with the opportunity to kill themselves quickly.

  There had been no further talk of carrying Amint. The touring group had hurriedly, and a little nervously, gone on its way, leaving her behind with only a last glance of sympathy – or was it pity? – from Keril.

  “Do you really think you stand a chance with him, even if you do get to be an adult?” Suli asked now, with indolent contempt.

  Torn between wanting to deny that particular ambition and wanting to say, “If I don’t, why do you feel a need to dissuade me from trying?” Amint had not managed to get out an answer when they were interrupted by the approach of Amint’s mentor, Rean.

  The older woman frowned at Suli. “You shouldn’t interrupt Amint’s preparation.”

  “She’s not going now?” cried Suli, jolted out of her poise for once.

  “I told you I’m going!” Some of Amint’s anger came out in her words.

  “You didn’t say right away.” Suli was forced onto the defensive, and Amint felt a surge of pleasure and even a little self-confidence at the sight.

  Rean said, “Scat.”

  Suli hurried away, but rallied to call back, “I think I’ll go for a flight, too. Perhaps to Meravu.” That was Keril’s village.

  Rean looked carefully at Amint, and asked, “Has she been upsetting you over something?”

  “No more than usual.” With Rean, Amint was able to relax, and even take a more dispassionate view of her own problems. “At least she stopped me from brooding.”

  “Were you brooding?”

  “Not really. Well, no more than everyone probably does.”

  “And you still feel ready?”

  “Yes. At least I’m keyed up to it, and putting it off again would make things worse.”

  “Give me mind touch, please.” After a moment, Rean continued casually, “All right, you may go ahead with it. I’ll see you when you get back.”

  Amint felt Rean’s mental grip fasten on her. The pressure of the rocky ground left the soles of her shoes and she moved up and out over the edge of the scarp. As she came to a gentle halt, she drew a sharp breath and sent the thought, “Ready,” to Rean.

  Her mentor put into her mind the key to contact with the Amplifiers, and then released her. Amint plunged toward the plain far below.

  She had expected to be afraid in that first moment, but her mind was far too busy to give any attention to emotion. Simultaneously, she applied the control she had practiced in little lifts around the village all her life and made the contact with the global amplifier system – a much more complex contact than with the village’s small amplifier. The contact, which an experienced adult soon honed down to near-instantaneity, took her two seconds on her first attempt; but she made it, and held.

  Only then could she give her attention to the sensations of the shocking drop – the negative-gee, the lurch in the pit of her stomach, the rush of air up past her, the primal fall-fear; but by then they were memories, like those of a nightmare: vivid but fading as she realized her safety and channeled her adrenalin-rush into her task of levitation.

  She had dropped far below the level of the cliff edge, but was well out from it and still high above the plain. She could start from there; but instead, she took the time and effort to raise herself back up to scarp level so that Rean could see her. For the duration of her flight to Lahraf and back, no one would permit her mind contact; so only by seeing her could her mentor know she had survived the first strain of the test. Rean, following the traditional pose of indifference, would not look down over the cliff; but Amint knew she would be casually facing outward, waiting for a glimpse of her protege.

  Resisting an impulse to look back and wave, Amint added forward motion to her lift, swinging her legs in a long-striding action that helped her focus her will to the movement she wished. She had practiced the combination of physical and psychic action above the village ground, but that had been small-scale; just the thought of steps had usually been enough to drift her in the direc
tion she wanted to go. Now she had a long distance to cover, and she was handling immensely greater power, holding a far higher lift. It took real physical motion to shape the willing and the power control that moved her. By the time she had leisure to think about what she was doing, she was well out over the plain.

  A sense of exhilaration came to her, not only from her success but from the delightful sensation of moving smoothly through the air, warmed by the sun and cooled by her own wind of passage, looking out across the plain, which spread like a map below her. It was even better than the time she had first lifted to higher than house height, watching as her view of the tree in front of her altered from under to level to over, as if the tree were doing the moving instead of her. She had had to push down hard that day, to stay up for even a few minutes; nowadays she was rarely conscious of the effort, in the small-scale world of the village.

  Here, where so much more effort was needed, she also had access to power so abundant it felt limitless. She knew it was not; but it was far beyond her need: the real limiting factor was her ability to tap the power. But so far everything was going well. She was moving quickly and smoothly, already beginning to relegate the willing to as automatic a function as real walking. The day was beautiful and the slowly shifting view spectacular. In a surge of self-confidence and pleasure, she almost danced rather than walked through the air.

  Able now to relax from complete concentration on lift and motion, she began to look around, especially at the plain below her. It was nothing like as featureless as it had seemed to become in the distance, seen from the scarp top. There were streams and ponds, slopes of little hills, patches of woods, and outcrops of bedrock. There were small herds of grazing animals of different kinds – one group running, perhaps from some predators. Amint wasn’t sure of the species – wildlife management had not been among her studies – but she thought they might be Earthdeer, one of the breeds brought from world to world, where the ecological balance could stand it, from the original planet itself. There were cloud shadows rolling over the landscape and the flash of movement between cloud and shadow as soaring birds rode the thermals.

  Amint began to feel almost as much at ease as those soarers as she swung along, now hardly conscious of the effort of staying aloft. She felt comfortably supported on the air, and the feel of its passage as she clove it gave her the sensation of movement that she did not get from the slow shifting of the scenery below her. She had been told that distant ground would seem motionless, so she was not worried by her seeming slowness of progress; but she was glad that the air gave her so much sense of motion.

  Her enjoyment of her own ability, of her motion, and of the novelty of watching the mini-changes of the plain pass by, kept her fully occupied for most of the distance to the peaks of the badlands. Once, far to her right, she saw three figures – obviously young adults – larking about; beyond them was another pair of figures, moving with the steadiness of maturity, toward her village, Homlar, from the direction of Meravu.

  Thinking of Keril’s village reminded her of Suli, and a stab of resentment went through her. What she hated most about Suli, Amint admitted, was that she herself kept wishing she were more like Suli – poised, attractive, admired, never making the silly mistakes Amint did, never afraid to tackle anything. Well, not quite anything: she had hurriedly scotched Keril’s notion of the group’s transporting Amint yesterday; but that might have been an excuse because she had not wanted Amint along; and she’d probably think up something spectacular to do today, to show that she was just being cautious for the sake of the others in the group that other time.

  What would she do? Set a height or distance record for her stage of experience? Amint hoped bitterly that she would try, and kill herself in the attempt. Or worse.

  Amint slammed so violent a check on that thought that she even stopped her own motion. She wouldn’t wish that even on Suli; and even if she would, she must not think about such things, not while she was inexperienced, and tapping the Amplifiers.

  After a few tense moments, she was able to relax her hold-back attitude and will herself to move forward again, still carefully channeling her thoughts into admiration of the scenery and a visualization of the rest of the flight to Lahraf; of the pause there to pick out a crystal from the cairn maintained on the peak; and of the flight back, to ceremoniously present it to her mentor. She would have Amint’s name engraved on it and add it to her credit-shelf.

  Amint knew she herself was not spectacularly competent at anything, but she was steady and dependable; so she might be a mentor herself someday, with a growing collection of Lahraf crystals to attest the numbers of protégés she had successfully trained. The steadiness was needed for the students one lost; sometimes the mentors took it even harder than the parents, although the whole purpose of the custom was to provide emotional distance between the adolescents and the ones who must send them out.

  Rean wanted Amint to go into psionics, specifically the attempt to study the Outness; but Amint firmly denied any talent in psionics, and refused to consider that career – refused to admit even to herself that the study held any interest for her.

  She was above the first jumbled uplifts of land, now. The scenery would be more varied in the badlands, giving her more to concentrate her thoughts on. To make sure she did keep her attention on it, she held her altitude as the ground rose, until she was dodging among the wind-carved rocks and hills. She lifted higher as the peaks did, but continued to skim the ground, swinging around rock columns, diving through gaps, vaulting out of blocked passages, and launching herself down slopes at an almost reckless speed.

  It was as much fun as childhood romps a few centimetres above soft grass had been, with the spice of physical danger thrown in now. It was also foolhardy to stay so low at the speed she was maintaining; but, ironically, it saved her life when she fell.

  She had been making her game even more dangerous by keeping part of her attention on the appearance of the fast-shifting scenes around her. Her gaze focused on a projection of twisted rock that looked like the distortion of a human face agonized beyond bearing. It slapped across her awareness like a physical blow; through her reckless mood and her evocation of childhood days, it triggered the memory she had been holding so tightly suppressed. She panicked and chopped off her contact with the Amplifier.

  She had just dodged an upthrust rock, momentarily checking her horizontal motion, so she fell almost straight through the space from half her height to the ground. Her violent reaction also doubled her into a half-fetal position, so she hit rolling, and suffered only cuts and abrasions.

  She was completely unaware of them. She was back in the village of her childhood days.

  She had been in a neighbour’s house and, in some game or whim of exploration, had crawled under a cloth-draped chair. Only the neighbour man, Elapron, was in the room with her. He was engaged in some psionic activity that involved tapping the Amplifiers. He was also in a grumbling mood, which he was broadcasting for a whole room width. Amint had peeked out to see if his annoyance had anything to do with her.

  Amint never found out what carelessness or weakness betrayed Elapron. At the time she did not even know what happened to him. But she saw his face, and his body that seemed trying to turn itself inside out, and she felt the terror and horror and – wrongness – that he broadcast in the instant before he was unable to communicate anything.

  His mental screams had hit everyone in the village, so standard shock treatment was applied to all, with special attention to the children; but since Elapron had appeared to be alone when the nearest adults rushed to him, no one realized the depth of shock Amint had received – that she had felt the echo of the Outness touch. Not the touch itself, of course, or she would not have survived at that age; but she had experienced its existence.

  Only years later, during her training, had she learned that it had taken Elapron days to die; that a person fully seized by the Outness could not be killed. The first adults to reach him h
ad tried to kill him, of course; but they had not reached him within the vital few moments when it could be done. Amint was assured that once he did die he was free of his agony, for the Outness could not hold a mind once the body ceased to live; but her mentor could not answer Amint’s quiet question, “How do you know?”

  No one even knew quite what the Outness was – forces or beings or existence, beyond all the dimensions of the universe – only the effect it had, if it happened to make a firm contact with a sentient brain, and the fact that only during psionic activity at a highly amplified level was the mind vulnerable. Even then it could be held out of the mind by firm rejection. Sufficient confidence in one’s ability to reject it enabled a person to use more and more powerful and complex psionic devices safely: the most skilled Elders in the world even operated the occasional contacts with the nearest other colonized planets; but no one was ever trusted to operate any of the higher level of psionic equipment without first demonstrating the ability to resist the Outness during the performance of a prolonged use of amplified personal psi.

  Amint lay huddled on the rocky ground, wrestling with her suddenly surfaced memories, for a long time, before logical thought gradually returned to her, and she began to worry about her present problem instead.

  As emotional fatigue slowly calmed her, she considered the possibilities. She could stay where she was. When she was long enough overdue for her failure to be certain, someone would come to pick up her body and, discovering her alive, would carry her home...to live as the perpetual juvenile Suli had called her. And Keril would look elsewhere for a mate, might even fall for Suli’s charms!

  Over my dead body! Amint thought fiercely. Well, yes, that was another alternative. If she could not bear either to go on or to go back, she could lift high over the peaks and then disconnect from amplification. Amint wondered if she would have sufficient determination not to reconnect during her fall. The doubt led her to the realization that she did not want to die – further, that she did not really want to give up.

  And that left only the choice of going on...with her confidence undermined by her surface memories of the Outness’s existence, and of what it would do if it found a chink in her defence. But this choice was unthinkable only if it got her. The other two choices were unacceptable even in their best form.

  Besides, she told herself, she might even have an advantage. Having come so near an Outness touch, she might be able to recognize an attack sooner than other people, and be able to react that much faster to it.

  But, however fast her reaction, would it be strong enough to force the Outness back before it secured its hold? She could not trust to that hope. There was another defense, though. If she felt a touch getting through her resistance, she could cut herself off from the Amplifiers, as in her second alternative; and if she were at the right height, gravity and solid rock would claim her before the Outness could establish its grip.

  Slowly, Amint stood up. Getting to the right height would be difficult with apprehension sapping her confidence. She considered climbing one of the nearest peaks, and launching herself from there; but it would take a long time, and provide very little advantage. More important, it would be yielding further ground to fear. She drew a deep breath, and keyed open contact with the Amplifiers.

  Her defenses held. She hurled herself upward, lifting rapidly above the peaks, then directed herself onwards. With height achieved, some degree of reassurance and composure returned to her: she had a last resort.

  The continuation of her flight, though tense, was uneventful until she was halfway across the part of the badlands between the plain and Lahraf. Then something touched her mind.

  She almost reacted according to her desperation plan before she realized it was not an Outness touch, but a human one. That was a second shock, for no one contacted a person undergoing a test, or allowed such a person to make contact. But before she could react to her surprise, she also realized that the call was a cry for help. And it was near, for it was unamplified.

  She swerved toward it without thought. Anyone in need of help who could not make a distance call must be in urgent trouble indeed. She homed on a figure face-down among the rocks, hearing weeping in the moment before the other sensed her presence and twisted to look at her. It was Suli.

  “What are you doing here?” cried Amint, astonishment swamping her other emotions.

  “Amint, help me! I’m hurt!”

  “What happened?”

  “I fell...” Suli twisted her head away again. “Amint, I’m bleeding, and I can’t move. Help me!”

  “I don’t have any healer training – I could do worse damage. Call a healer.”

  “You call one.”

  “I’m under test. No one will accept a call from me. Why don’t you call?”

  “No! You’ve got to do it.”

  Amint began to repeat her previous comment, then shrugged and sent out a call. As she expected, she made no contact. “You see, Suli? No one will allow me to touch.”

  “Did you – did you amplify?”

  “Yes, of course. You see, even you refused to mind touch me, or you’d have known. Now, call for yourself.”

  “No!”

  “What’s wrong, Suli?”

  “I’m hurt!”

  “Your head isn’t. Call the healers.”

  “You’ve got to help me!”

  “The only thing I can do is go back and send someone out to you. That will take twice as long as calling for someone yourself. Look, what’s happened to you? How did you get here? Why won’t you call? Why don’t you lift home yourself? You can hold your body in lock so you won’t do it any more damage.”

  “I can’t lift!” wept Suli; “and I can’t hold my body much longer.”

  The story came out gradually, mostly in mental pictures that revealed more than Suli intended. Amint gathered that Suli had barely started her flight to Meravu when she remembered that Keril was away. Not wanting to go aimlessly back to Homlar, she had cast about for an alternative plan, and decided to circle around Amint – who, she knew, would take a slow, steady pace – and be casually sitting on the cairn at Lahraf when Amint arrived, able to jeer at the plodder. “But I didn’t know you were going to be this slow!” she wailed. “I could have died here, waiting for you to come by!”

  Not wanting to tell of her fight with fear, and trying to get Suli back onto the track of her story, Amint did not explain what had delayed her. “You swung out around me, so I wouldn’t see you, then you cut back in when you neared Lahraf, and – what? Did you overstrain yourself in your hurry?”

  Suli’s mind jerked away from the thought again. “I just paused to check where you were...”

  And also to relax for a minute, on that excuse, according to the picture in her mind. She had felt strained, and worried by it. Then, acting out her excuse, she had broken the firm rule of no contact with a person under test: reaching to pick up any unguarded thought that would reveal Amint’s location, she had looked straight into Amint’s thoughts.

  While Amint was fighting her memories.

  The snatched, unclear glimpse of horror had convinced Suli that, overstrained, she was under attack by the Outness. She had panicked and cut herself off from amplification. She had been at just the wrong height for either safety or death, and had smashed into the rocks hard enough to bring about slow death unless she had prompt help. And she was too frightened to touch the Amplifiers again.

  When she had pieced together the story, Amint tried again to persuade Suli she had not been attacked, and that it would be safe for her to reconnect to the Amplifiers. But Amint’s deductions failed to convince Suli that the horror she had felt had not been an Outness attack on herself. She would need a healer’s touch in her mind as well as in her body before she could resume adult life.

  How bad were her physical injuries? Amint looked mentally, and was appalled. Suli had not been exaggerating. Using natural-level psi, she had been automatically holding herself locked, so her body co
uld not react to its injuries; but without amplification, she could not keep that up. Already her strength was running out; she was bleeding again, and her grip was failing. The hold had also interfered with what was left of the normal functioning of her body; when her hold gave way, collapse would be rapid.

  Urgently, Amint tried again to make contact with someone. Snatching a moment of power from the Amplifiers beyond the amount she was authorized to handle, she blasted out a cry of Emergency. There was no slightest response...only a feeling of building pressure against her mind that quickly forced her to reduce her consumption of psionic energy. The pressure also faded; but it did not quite vanish. Amint thought, anthropomorphically, that she had drawn attention to herself as a potential target for breakthrough.

  She faced the realization that she would have to give up on her test and go for help herself. Maybe, in view of the circumstances, they would let her try again. Had anyone ever been allowed a second chance? She had never heard of a case. But surely... After all, she was not just giving up... She shoved the thoughts aside. She had no choice, so there was no use thinking about the results.

  “Suli, I’ll go get a healer.”

  “Don’t go!” gasped Suli. “I can’t hold out alone.”

  “But Suli, no one will let me make contact. Unless I go and speak to someone, no one will come till far too late.”

  “Don’t leave me!”

  Suli was failing. By now she probably couldn’t handle amplified psi even if she could be coaxed to try. Amint augmented Suli’s hold on her body, and felt the other girl relax into a haze of exhaustion.

  Amint could help in the hold, but without knowledge, she could not indefinitely maintain the hold on another’s body by herself. Suli would die if Amint could not get help; but if Amint left to fetch help, Suli would almost certainly die before it arrived. Suli had asked her to stay. The arguments were almost even, and Amint was very aware of the fact that if she chose to stay and ease Suli’s dying, she could then go on to complete her test before reporting back. There would be no criticism for not hurrying back when all need for haste was gone. But the idea of not trying to do something repelled her; and she knew that if she did refuse to try, she would always feel she had done so because of her dislike for Suli, and because of her selfish wish to complete her rite of passage.

  She sighed and let through the tiny thought that had been insisting there was a way that offered some hope for Suli. Amint could try to carry her back.

  She refused to consider the pros and cons: any thought about the consequences of failure would only increase its likelihood. It was a way: she must try it.

  She drew power, locked Suli rigid, and raised her from the ground. Suli, aware only that Amint was helping her weakening grip hold her body, pleaded again for Amint to stay with her.

  “Hang on, Suli. We’ll get help,” Amint told her. Keeping her mind firmly on the task itself, she drew more power and lifted herself up beside Suli. The nagging little pressure expanded into a tangible push at her mind. Her only acknowledgement of it was to raise them both to the suicide level she had chosen before. Then she began the flight back.

  It was no longer effortless. She had constantly to push down against the drag of gravity, as she had done in her early days each time she strove to master a new level or duration. But in those days the only danger had been physical, with help promptly at hand. Now there was the added strain of the mental pressure itself and the awareness of its threat waiting to pounce on her least flicker of weakness.

  She concentrated on the three thoughts of staying up, moving forward, and holding Suli locked immobile. Eventually she was surprised to see she had left the badlands behind and was over the plain. Perhaps she would make it!

  But her heart was labouring and her lungs straining, all her muscles tense with effort as she walked through space, pushing Suli along beside her. It was not just twice the effort of moving herself: the awkwardness of moving another object, to which she could not give the ease of a natural motion like walking, took more than an equal amount of energy; and the power she drew on had to be channeled through herself. Her own energy was drawn into it and consumed in steady proportion.

  She spared an occasional bit of attention to snatch a quick glance around in hopes of spotting other travelers. How she could persuade one to come, with her calls still being refused, she had no idea; but the need to try to attract attention did not arise, as she saw no one.

  She wondered if she should land on the plain and rest; but she feared she might not be able to regain sufficient height to top the scarp, and worried over the effect of any delay on Suli. More than either, she feared that she might not be able to force herself to the effort again, if once she stopped...if once she were free of that aching, twitching, grating pressure that was digging into her mind. She shuddered and tried to force the consciousness of it out of her thoughts.

  In the moment of inattentiveness, they had begun sinking. Amint stopped their descent with a tired, clumsy jerk, and raised them again.

  The sudden change roused Suli from her daze, and she thought a confused question to Amint.

  “It’s all right,” Amint assured her. “We’re on our way home. Almost there,” she exaggerated a little.

  “Who came? Why didn’t they send a healer?”

  “I couldn’t call anyone, so I’m taking you back myself.”

  It took a moment for Suli to realize the risk that implied that she was linked to an inexperienced mind trying to achieve beyond its training, and that only that mind held off the Outness from them both. Panic rushed through her; unable to thrash physically, she poured all her fright-dredged energy into a mental struggle to escape.

  The two of them tumbled wildly in the air, plunging downward. Desperately, Amint called on yet more energy from the Amplifiers, to overpower Suli’s resistance to her control. With agonizing slowness, their plunge braked, their gyrating stopped, and they began to move back up...and a searing needle touched Amint’s mind.

  Her reaction was sheer fury. This was just too much to put up with, after everything else. She slammed against it all the hatred her years of fear and her recent struggles and her resentment of Suli had built up, momentarily glad to have the Outness reachable to attack...and the needle hesitated, writhed in an attempt to pass her counterthrust, and then gradually pulled back out.

  Abruptly the scarp was ahead of them. Frantically, Amint tried to regain the lost height, but her exhausted mind could not scrape up the extra energy. Even if she dared try to draw more power, with that needle still waiting, and no reserves left to fight with again, she simply could not handle more energy in her exhausted state. It was all she could do to keep moving; and that would crash them into the cliff face in a moment.

  She must stop and descend carefully, to avoid losing control and falling. But even if she succeeded, how could she attract attention for Suli in time? No, she must get higher, somehow. She strained, but the lift was too slow; the cliff rushed at her...and the needle stabbed into her mind again.

  Her tired mind finally thought to stop her forward motion; but she could not gain any more lift. There was the stabbing, and pressure, and suction, and tearing at her. In another moment she must cut off or give way.

  No! I’ll burn out sooner than give way to that! Amint reached far beyond her limits of knowledge as well as of authorization, dragging power from the Amplifiers, slamming it at the Outness. Her consciousness of everything beyond herself and it faded. She thought she must be falling, but could feel nothing, nothing but her defiance of her lifelong fear...

  And then, suddenly, there were minds blending with hers, practiced skill driving back the pressure. Sight and touch came back to Amint, and she found herself in the midst of a flock of people who were taking over the burden of Suli, and explaining that someone had spotted the rigid figure being conveyed, and realized something was wrong. Everyone near enough had launched out to help, discarding the communication taboo. Before the group was back above th
e scarp edge they had learned the whole story.

  Rean firmly supported Amint herself, and Amint wearily allowed it. After all, it could not matter, now that she had already forfeited her test.

  Rean laughed and gave her a little shake. “You’ve passed it, silly.”

  “But I only got three-quarters of the way...” Amint mumbled.

  “And did the equivalent of twice that coming back carrying Suli,” said Rean. “Or, looked at another way, you’ve done a task that’s a magnitude more difficult than the one assigned. And most important, you’ve demonstrated you can hold off the Outness, even under strain. That’s the real test; the rest is just the setup for testing.”

  In her flood of gladness, Amint still felt one regret. “I didn’t bring you a Lahraf crystal.”

  “You can do that another day. And I’ll tell you what. When Suli recovers, I’m going to send her to fetch you one. That’ll larn her.”

  Half a day earlier, that humbling of Suli would have pleased Amint almost as much as a date with Keril. But at that moment Suli and even Keril seemed of little importance. “Let her be,” said Amint absently. “When can I start studying psionics?”