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nuance of the de-mons' plot would be immediately attainable. The girl was
young, untried, and as yet barely able to command her gift. But she was also
extraordinarily brave.
Reluctantly the Vaere ran a third set of equations. Lacking her mentor's years
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of training and preparation, did the girl possess enough resilience to master
the bonding process on her own? Her personality profile was still sketchy; the
Vaere had not mapped her tolerance to stress. But extrapolations based on her
past history yielded figures which offered a slim pos-sibility of success.
Never in Keithland's history had the Vaere been forced to make this crucial a
decision on such scanty data. The stakes were inflexibly severe; should Taen
fail to withstand the rigors of a Sathid bonding, if she once lost control to
the matrix, she could not be permitted to survive. Yet logic offered no better
course of action.
The lights on the control panels flickered red as the Vaere entered sequence
after sequence of probability figures. If the demons' plan was to be thwarted,
Taen must master the Sathid matrix, and achieve the full potential of her
gift. Programmed to protect humanity, the Vaere could only ensure her ordeal
was handled with optimum chance of success.
The girl rested dreamlessly in her capsule while the Vaere finalized its
rigorous analysis. A day later, after pursuing each alternative, it concluded
that Taen's self-confidence would be-come seriously impaired were she to be
given last minute in-struction. Knowledge of the bonding process would be no
help to her.
The Vaere surveyed her vital signs, ran a final check on her health. Unlike
Anskiere and Ivain, this child must experience the ardors of bonding ignorant
and untrained. If she survived to gain her mastery, she would be physically
changed, for the Sathid took seven years to mature. But by applying the
prin-ciples of the star-drive directly to her capsule, the Vaere would create
a time anomaly; she would emerge at the age of sev-enteen, but Keithland's
continuum would have advanced only days by contrast. Once the parameters of
the time envelope were set, the girl would be physically isolated from
Keithland's reality.
No longer could the Vaere intervene in her behalf.
Taen lay peacefully in her capsule, her ebony hair, red lips and pale skin
like the sleeping beauty in the tale from old earth. She felt no pain as the
needle pierced her flesh. The Vaere injected a solution containing an alien
entity into the vein in her arm; when the Sathid evolved enough to challenge,
it would strike when Taen was most vulnerable. In time, the girl would battle
her psychic nemesis.
The Sathid spread swiftly through Taen's body. Triggered by warmth and the
presence of life, it germinated and groped, instinctively as a newborn child,
for awareness of its new host. Impressed by
Taen's own character, the Sathid began patterning itself to mesh with her
mind. The sensitive psychic empathy of her gift opened like a gateway to her
innermost self. Guided by the Sathid's need to explore, Taen began to dream of
her past.
Time meant nothing to the matrix. From the moment of birth to the first
acquisition of language, it experienced the girl's memories, analyzing even
the most trifling details. Through her memories, it learned to walk, to speak
and to reason. Sharing a stolen tart in the alley behind the bakeshop it
discovered duplicity, and from her first lie it gained cunning. Taen dreamed
on, at first unaware a foreign entity inhabited her awareness.
Carried back to the age of two, she sat in her mother's lap, playing with
shells, while the gusts of an afternoon squall battered the windowpanes and
rain fell in hissing sheets down the chimney. Taen concentrated singlemindedly
on her game, uneasy in the strange surroundings of her cousins' house. But
Uncle Evertt tossed in his cot, sick with a fever. Her mother tended him while
Emien and their father were off fishing in the sloop.
Thunder rumbled overhead, shaking the floor with its vio-lence. The girl
cowered against her mother's breast, small fists clenched around her shells.
Suddenly, horribly, she had dif-ficulty breathing. Taen choked, red-faced, and
struggled not to cry; she had promised to be quiet, and let Uncle Evertt
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sleep.
But the air seemed thick as syrup in her lungs. A sharp, tearing pain gripped
her chest. Taen felt dizzy.
Tears traced silently down her cheeks and soaked into the neck of her wool
shift. And alerted by the quiver in her daughter's body, her mother lifted her
up.
"Child, what in Kor's Fires ails you?" She peered anxiously at her daughter's
face.
Yet Taen knew no words to explain what her mind envi-sioned, that her father
struggled for his life, entangled in a net under the sloop's dark keel. Too
young to comprehend his death, she laid her head against her mother's shoulder
and wept. And the Sathid, sensing discord in her life, probed deeper.
Three days later, the townsfolk brought Emien home. Taen heard the scrape of
boots on the brick sill of the kitchen door. Men spoke in hushed voices in the
next room, and suddenly her mother cried aloud in anguish. Alarmed, Taen
peeked around the door, her rag doll forgotten in her arms. She saw Emien
standing among strangers, still clad in his oilskins. Her broth-er's clothing [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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