Zinnia

Zinnia By Jayne Castle St. Helen's-2 1997

Chapter 1

 There is nothing complicated about our little arrangement, Mr. Batt. I plan to marry soon. Therefore, I require a wife.' Nick Chastain folded his hands on the gleaming surface of the massive obsidian-wood desk. 'You will find one for me.'

Hobart Batt, attired in dapper evening wear, perched on the edge of his chair with the nervous air of a small mouse-wren. He swallowed visibly and tugged at the collar of his pleated shirt with soft, well manicured fingers. He blinked rapidly as he met Nick's half-shuttered gaze.

'I'm afraid I don't quite understand, Mr. Chastain,' he said.

Nick suppressed a sigh. Intimidation was a useful tool, but it had to be used with surgical precision. Apply too much and the patient collapsed into babbling hysteria. Use too little and the response was unsatisfactory.

With the intuitive knowledge that he had acquired from years of practice and experience, he knew he was pushing the limit with Hobart. He also knew that if he eased up on the pressure, Batt might regain his nerve and become defiant.

Decisions, decisions.

'Let me put it in more straightforward terms, Mr. Batt. You lost ten thousand dollars downstairs in my casino tonight.'

'Yes, sir, I'm aware of that.' Hobart rubbed his palms on his knees. 'I have no idea how it happened. I rarely gamble. I came here with some friends and they encouraged me to play cards. I seemed to be doing rather well for a while and then, suddenly, everything went wrong. I tried to recover but things only got worse.'

'I understand.' Nick tried to project sympathy and deep concern in his smile.

Hobart's eyes widened. He flinched and shrank back in his chair.

So much for the smile, Nick thought. He abandoned the effort. He never had been good at sympathy and deep concern.

Hobart's expression became one of entreaty. 'I simply don't have that kind of money, Mr. Chastain. I... I suppose I could sell my house, but I still owe the bank a great deal on the mortgage and I-'

'There is no need for such a drastic move. You don't seem to get the picture here, Mr. Batt. I'm offering to make a deal. Find me a suitable wife and I'll consider the debt repaid.'

'A wife?' Hobart stared at him. 'You want me to find you a wife?'

Nick forced himself to keep a tight rein on his patience. 'What's so strange about that? You're a syn-psych counselor at Synergistic Connections, one of the most exclusive marriage agencies in New Seattle. I'm not asking you to do anything that you don't do on a daily basis for your clients.'

'But... but, that's just the point.' Hobart plucked a snowy white handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his damp brow. 'A professional match isn't worth ten thousand dollars.'

'It is to me.'

Suspicion flickered in Hobart's jumpy gaze. 'Why would you be willing to let me repay you with my professional services?'

'I hear you're very good.' Nick did not mention that he knew that Hobart had matched his friend, Lucas Trent, an off-the-scale illusion-talent, with Amaryllis Lark, a full-spectrum prism, a few months earlier.

The fact that Trent and Amaryllis had found each other on their own was beside the point so far as Nick was concerned. Hobart had confirmed the supposedly impossible match independently, which meant that as a syn-psych counselor he was one of the best. Nick wanted the best. After all, marriage was a lifetime commitment here on St. Helens. Divorce was virtually impossible.

The institution of marriage and the value of strong families were enshrined in law and reinforced with the full weight of the social structures that had been established by the First Generation colonists from Earth.

Two hundred years earlier, the Founders had been stranded on the lush green world of St. Helens after the energy gate known as the Curtain had closed. When it had become obvious that the Curtain might never reopen and that there was no hope of rescue, the colonists had gathered their philosophers, religious authorities, sociologists, and anthropologists together. The group had hammered out the rules and conventions of a society they believed would be able to survive the rigors of isolation in an untamed wilderness. The cornerstone of their carefully crafted civilization was marriage.

Sooner or later almost everyone got married. Although happiness was not the most important goal in marriage, the Founders had understood that well-matched couples would add to the stability of the institution. To that end, they had established matchmaking agencies staffed with synergistic psychologists to ensure unions that could stand the test of time.

The concept had proven so successful that today non-agency marriages were extremely rare. It was true that a few alliances among the elite were contracted for old-fashioned reasons such as money and power, but the vast majority of the population had the good sense to go through the agencies. Families insisted upon it.

Hobart stared at Nick, perplexed. 'I beg your pardon, Mr. Chastain, but if you want a wife, why don't you just walk through the front door of Synergistic Connections and register the same as anyone else?'

Nick leaned back in his chair and propped one elbow on the cushioned arm. He rested his chin on the heel of his hand and allowed the silence in the red-and-gilt chamber to deepen while he considered the situation.

Hobart was proving to be more difficult than he had anticipated. The jovial, well-dressed little man who had entered the casino three hours ago looked crushed and crumpled now. But Hobart was still able to reason clearly enough to be wary of the bargain Nick had offered. Hobart was scared, but he was not stupid.

It was time to take a closer look at the matrix. Nick drew a breath and released part of it as though he were preparing to throw a knife or pull a trigger. He had no prism to help him focus his psychic energy, but after years of grim determination he had achieved enough control to use his raw paranormal abilities in a crude manner for a few seconds at a time.

He was a matrix-talent, gifted, or cursed, depending on one's point of view, with a rare form of psychic energy that gave him the ability to intuitively perform what was technically known as Synergistic Matrix Analysis. In lay terms, it meant that he could see connections, weigh possibilities, estimate odds, and deduce synergistic relationships where others saw only random events or complete chaos.

Matrix-talents were uncommon and most were not especially strong. They tended to rank below class-five on the paranormal scale that had been developed by the experts.

Very powerful matrix-talents such as Nick were virtually unknown-the stuff of psychic vampire legends.

Research on matrix-talents was limited, not only because the number of people who manifested the unusual form of paranormal energy was so small, but also because most of them refused to be studied. Matrix-talents were a suspicious lot. Some people claimed they were downright paranoid.

The development of a wide variety of psychic powers in the descendants of the colonists had first been observed some fifty years after the closing of the Curtain. As with everything else on St. Helens, the phenomena was governed by synergistic principles.

To work the talent effectively, efficiently, and with a degree of reliability, people who possessed paranormal abilities required the assistance of individuals known as prisms.

Prisms were unique in that their paranormal gifts were limited to the ability to project a psychic crystal. The prism crystal constructs they created on the metaphysical plane were used by those who possessed psychic talent to focus and control their talent.

The combined use of both kinds of psychic power, talent and prism, required willing cooperation from both of the people involved. The necessity of mutual agreement between prism and talent was thought to be nature's way of ensuring that talents didn't become predatory. Just another example of the laws of synergism in practice.

The need for a prism in order to use his power to the fullest extent annoyed Nick, as it did most strong