Psion by Joan D. Vinge Read Free Book Online Page B

a telepath in spite of everything-seeing the lines of psi energy shining with life force. I thought about being born to use them: the Third Eye, the Sixth Sense, the Extra Ear . . . about a screaming thing locked in a cell somewhere in the pit of my mind . . . about thinking too much. I took out another camph.
    “Do you know what a ‘joining’ is?”
    I shook my head.
    “It’s a meeting of minds, between a telepath and another psion, so complete and unguarded that their minds become one-each open to the other totally, with nothing held back. Their psi powers are heightened, each one’s by the other’s ; they do things they could never do alone. It’s the ultimate form of giving, of belonging. It’s like nothing else you can experience, and it can change the ones who join forever. . . .” His eyes were alive with longing.
    “You ever do that?” I asked, because he expected something.
    “Once.” His clenched fists opened; I heard more joy and loss than I’d ever heard filling one word before. “A pure joining is very rare. It’s almost impossible for more than two human psions. It’s a combination of the highest ability and the deepest need. . . .” He looked up at me again, and his look told me I’d never experience it, unless somehow I could make my brain stop chasing its own tail.
    “I can’t imagine ever wanting to get that close to nobody.” I leaned back, away from him.
    He leaned back too, and sighed. “Well, a journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step.”
    After that the steps got longer. Now that I could actually make contact with him, he began trying to teach me all the things he’d said I had to learn about controlling my talent. I didn’t see what was so important about most of what we did. But then, I didn’t understand most of what was happening to me here, anyway. I hardly even knew when I was confused, half the time.
    He told me I’d had it easy working with technicians who weren’t psions themselves; their concentration and control was so poor that any telepath could keep them at bay. Working against another psion was going to be something else. He explained to me how trained telepaths could sort out the strands of image that patterned someone else’s thoughts; how they could locate one particular pattern, follow it along all its branching ways to their scattered ends and back again. He also told me how another telepath could protect that pattern by weaving a shield-burying it behind and between tangles of other images and information-or by sensing the probe and sidetracking it, braiding the intruder’s mind into a false strand, a lie. Most psions were better at protecting themselves from a mindread than normal humans, even if they weren’t telepaths, just because they were more in control of their own minds.
    I was supposed to be a stronger telepath than he was. It should have been easy to keep him out of my mind. But I hadn’t been feeling my mind, exercising my talent-and he had. He told me that if one telepath knew the tricks of thought-tracking and the other one didn’t, the greenhorn couldn’t hide his deepest secret, no matter how much raw confusion he put up to save himself. Then to prove it, he’d make me nervous or angry. I’d forget what I was doing, and he’d walk right into my mind. He didn’t usually go very deep, but he didn’t need to. Using my telepathy never got any easier, and feeling him pry into me like that still drove me crazy. And then he’d jump on me anyway for letting him do it. For someone who looked so soft, he was as tough as steel when he was doing his job.
    And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t trick him, and that just made it worse.
    But in spite of everything, working with Cortelyou I finally began to act like a real telepath. Or I thought I did, even if nobody else did. But Goba didn’t have any time left to be fussy, he said, when he finally sent me to meet the rest of Siebeling’s psions.

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    The psions were