And for those few who might try to hold out against it, it would be easy enough to slip them the drug unnoticed. Everyone has to eat and drink, and one dose was all it would take.
Valentine had always believed the simplest plans were the best.
So he handed out the precious pills, and the Silvestri and the Romanov and the Kartakis swallowed them down, and everyone was reminded of just who was in charge of things in the old Deathstalker Standing. Valentine had the grace not to smile triumphantly at them. They would have liked to kill him for the secret, and regain control of their lives, but they didn't dare. They knew that if he died, they would die too, and however badly he died, they'd die worse.
'I trust you enjoyed the dinner,' he said smoothly. 'Something a little different today.'
The three aristocrats looked suspiciously at the dinner table, trying to remember if anything had seemed out of the ordinary.
'No, no,' said Valentine, correctly interpreting their expressions. 'I wouldn't waste any of my special concoctions on such an unappreciative audience. Rather, I thought we might all enjoy a taste of the last real produce exported from the food planet of Virimonde.'
For a long moment none of them got it. There was no food left on the planet anymore. Everyone knew that. And then the Silvestri's eyes widened, and he put a hand to his mouth as all the color drained from his face. 'The dead… the people of Virimonde… we've been eating…'
'Yes, you have,' said Valentine. 'And with such good appetite too. Ah, me; so many taboos, so little time. Enjoy the after-dinner mints, gentlemen.'
With a cheery smile and a modest inclination of the head, Valentine Wolfe left to plan the surprises he had in mind for Owen Deathstalker and Hazel d'Ark.
The great Deathstalker castle had been built on a huge promontory of solid granite. From the front and the two sides, open plains stretched away in all directions. To the rear there was a solid drop of hundreds of feet, ending in nasty, jagged rocks lashed by a vicious incoming tide. Which made the Standing both extremely easy to defend and very hard to sneak into. Perfect security thinking. Though that wasn't why Owen had chosen to put his Standing there. He just liked the view.
Of course, he'd never expected to have to break into his own Standing, so when he and Hazel finally came in sight of his old home, they had to stop and do some hard thinking. A frontal or side approach was out of the question; their special nature might make them invisible to the castle's sensors, but they were still perfectly visible to the naked eye. And Owen didn't share Hazel's faith in their invulnerability. So after a certain amount of argument, they finally decided the only practical way was around the back. It meant retreating back some of the way they'd already come, and a slow descent down to the wave-lashed shore at the foot of the great promontory, but eventually they stood together amid the flying spray, looking up at hundreds of feet of bare granite wall.
'There used to be birds here,' said Owen quietly. 'Or things very like birds. Soaring and wheeling on the wind, crying out in the saddest voices you ever heard. And now they're all gone. They even killed the damned birds.'
'Just another reason to take revenge,' said Hazel. 'Nothing like a little stoked rage to warm a body on a long, cold climb.'
'It's very cold here,' said Owen. 'I don't think I'll ever be warm again.'
He started up the dark granite wall, climbing slowly and carefully, and after a moment Hazel followed him. The wind rushed around them, trying to pluck them from the sheer rock face, but couldn't budge them, so it just settled for blowing tears from their eyes. Owen concentrated on the wall before him, moving confidently from one foot and hand hold to another.
After the first hundred feet, he decided very firmly that he wasn't going to look down again till he was safely inside the castle. Great views aside, he'd never been fond of heights. And yet he moved increasingly easily up the bare rock face, his hands and feet instinctively finding holds and supports he would have sworn weren't there till he needed them. Not for the first time, it was as though his body knew how to do something without having to be told. Owen brooded over that as he climbed. He'd become able to do all kinds of things that he never could before, since he passed through the Madness Maze, and emerged so much more than he had been. The talents came and went, and he couldn't always be sure they'd be there when he needed them. And even after all this time he was no nearer understanding their nature. He looked across at Hazel, skittering calmly up the smooth granite surface like an insect on a pane of glass, and had to look away. He really hoped he didn't look like that. He made himself look again, and found Hazel looking back at him.
'I know what you're thinking,' she said easily.
'Wouldn't be the first time,' said Owen. 'I assume you had no prior knowledge of rock climbing before today either?'
'Got it in one. It's as though my hands and feet know where to go without me looking, as if they've always known. Spooky. I wonder what else we could do if we just put our minds to it. I've always dreamed of flying…'
'I wouldn't try that out just now,' said Owen. 'Those rocks below look to be particularly unforgiving.'
'Good point.'
They climbed some more in silence. Owen couldn't help noticing that neither of them were even breathing hard.
'Do you ever think about the things we can do?' he said finally. 'What we're becoming? We're not espers. I had a number of major players from the esper underground scan me, at my request. They had no idea at all how I'm able to do the things I do.'
'I try not to think about it too much,' said Hazel. 'We were given gifts. Gifts that have kept us alive in situations where anyone else would have perished horribly. They helped us overthrow the Empire. Why look such a gift horse in the mouth?'
'Just because something has a leg at each corner and eats hay, it doesn't necessarily mean it's a horse. Espers, for all their powers, are still human. That's one of the reasons we fought the rebellion. But we were changed by an alien device. Who knows what it was really intended to do, what it was supposed to produce?'
'Transfiguration,' said Hazel slowly. 'It made us… better than we were. That was its function. I remember that much.'
'But what do we mean by better? A human definition or an alien one?'
'Why the hell are you asking me? You're the brains in this partnership. I just hit things.'
Owen sighed. 'Because I'm tired of asking myself questions that I can't answer. Or else coming up with answers that are just too damned disturbing. Our only hope of enlightenment was the Maze itself, and the Maze is gone. Destroyed. And with it went all our hopes of discovering exactly what was done to us and why.'
'So why torment yourself?' said Hazel, stopping to look at him as she realized he'd stopped climbing.
'Because I'm scared of what I might be becoming,' said Owen. 'I'm scared I might be losing my Humanity. Leaving it behind. Have you ever thought we might end up as distant from ordinary men and women as the Hadenmen or the Wampyr or the AIs from Shub? That we might become so… alien that we might forget who and what we used to be?'
'Stop it, Owen,' said Hazel sharply. 'You're just spooking yourself. I don't feel any different from the person I used to be. I still believe in the same things, want the same things, hate the same things. I'm still me. My abilities just make it that much easier for me to achieve the things I want.'
She started climbing again, and after a moment Owen followed her. 'I think it's subtler than that,' he said finally. 'One small change might not mean much, but put enough of them together… I mean, we don't even have the first idea of how our powers work. Why they come and go the way they do. Sometimes we're just fighters with an edge, and other times we're all but gods. We're not in control of our powers. They control us.'
'Look,' said Hazel. 'If you're trying to spook me now, you're succeeding, so cut it out. Our condition didn't exactly come with a user's manual, so all we can hope to do is learn by doing.'
'It's dangerous to use any new weapon without checking out the small print. There could be side effects we haven't noticed yet. Maybe we're using up our lives. Burning up all our years to come. The energy that powers our abilities has to come from somewhere. The candle that burns twice as brightly burns half as long. And we have burned brighter than suns.'
'God, you're in a morbid mood today. I feel fine. I feel better than fine. Maybe we'll live forever.'
'And another thing, why did we all come out of the Maze with different abilities?'
'Why not?' said Hazel reasonably. 'We were all different people.'
'Yes, but… some of what we do is similar to esp. Jack and Ruby are firestarters, and Giles could teleport. I've
