Orchid

Orchid By Jayne Castle St. Helen's-3 1998

Prologue

'Time is running out, Mr. Batt.' Rafe Stonebraker rose slowly from the massive, old-fashioned Later Expansion period chair. He was well aware of the effect his deliberate movement had on the man seated across from him.

Batt did not exactly flinch but the dapper little man definitely tensed. 'Running out?'

'You've had three weeks to find me a wife. To date you have not produced a single possible match from your files. What seems to be the problem?'

'With all due respect, Mr. Stonebraker, you are not the easiest person to match.' Hobart Batt produced a professional, placating smile but there was a cautious expression in his eyes. 'I warned you when you first registered that it might take some time to find a suitable candidate.'

Rafe stood looking down into the flames that flared in the cavernous fireplace, 'You advertise that you are one of the most efficient matchmaking agencies in New Seattle with a success rate exceeding ninety percent. I expected better service from your firm, Mr. Batt.'

'Mr. Stonebraker, I assure you, we are doing our best. The thing is—'

'Yes?' Rafe turned his head to study Hobart's earnest, anxious features. 'Just what is the thing?'

Hobart shifted uneasily under the scrutiny. He tweaked his pink bow tie and adjusted the sleeves of his expertly tailored pale gray suit jacket. 'To be blunt, Mr. Stonebraker, your, shall we say, rather unique situation is proving to be a bit more difficult than I had anticipated. We face a number of serious challenges.'

'I see. Are you saying that the resources of your matchmaking agency are not up to the task of finding me a wife?'

Hobart's neat brows came together in an offended line above the rims of his round, gold-framed glasses. 'I assure you that we are doing everything possible to find a good match. But the combination of your rather unusual psychic talent and your somewhat rigid personal requirements constitutes a considerable stumbling block.'

'When I registered you assured me that Synergistic Connections had established a reputation for its ability to match even unusual and rare high-class talents.' Unusual and rare were among the more polite descriptors for those such as himself whose paranormal abilities did not fit into the normal range, Rafe reflected. Exotic was the popular term. His jaw tightened. As if he was some sort of strange, wild beast from one of the still-unexplored continents of St. Helens, he thought.

'Quite true, sir.'

'You saw my para-talent certification papers. I'm only a class six. Mid-range. I fail to see why I should be a problem for your firm.'

The certification papers were frauds, of course. He'd had them prepared by an expert forger several years ago. It had cost him a great deal of money, but money had not been a problem. It was never a problem for him.

Rafe made money the way a baker made cookies— easily, quickly, and efficiently. With his particular type of psychic talent it was no great trick to sit down in front of the computer, analyze the financial markets, and make decisions that produced quite predictable profits.

He had commissioned the false certification papers because he had no intention of allowing himself to be formally tested in a syn-psych lab. Psychic talents were common in the population. Almost everyone had some degree of paranormal ability. But most people fell well within the conventional, measurable spectrum, which ranged from one to ten.

The vast majority went to a lab to obtain an exact rating. Such testing was as routine as getting a driver's license and took place at about the same time in life. The full degree of individual psychic talent did not mature until the late teens.

Paranormal abilities had appeared early on in the small population of colonists stranded on the planet St. Helens two hundred years ago. Psychic powers took two general forms. The majority of the population fell into the category called talents, meaning that they possessed a specific type of paranormal power that could be actively used. There were illusion-talents, hypno-talents, horticultural-talents, diagnostic-talents, tech-talents, etc.

The psychic energy that talents produced endowed them with a sixth sense. But unlike the other five senses, it could not be accessed except in brief, unpredictable, erratic bursts without the aid of a prism.

Prisms comprised the second, smaller category of people with psychic abilities. In them, paranormal energy took a different form. Prisms possessed the ability to focus the powers of a talent for an extended length of time. The economics of the situation being what they were, trained, high-class prisms often made good money selling their focus services to talents who wished to use their paranormal senses in a controlled, predictable manner for a lengthy period.

Neither talents nor prisms were distributed equally across the para-spectrum. The vast majority in both groups were bunched together in the lower and middle ranges. Very few people, talent or prism, possessed anything higher than a class-six level of psychic power.

By the time he was fifteen, Rafe had figured out that his talent was not only exotic, but much stronger than the average. His parents, both academics who held tenured professorships at the University of New Seattle, were disappointed that he had not inherited their gifts for teaching and research. Instead he had been born with a full measure and then some of his grandfather's rare para-sensitive strategic-awareness talent, commonly referred to as strat-talent.

To further complicate matters, he was obviously more than a class ten, although it was impossible to tell just how much more as the lab instruments could not measure energy levels higher than class ten.

Knowing the difficulties that lay ahead, his folks had urged him to conceal the full extent of his psychic abilities. Rafe had intuitively understood and complied. He did not need anyone to tell him that the strength of his paranormal powers placed him in the dark, unexplored regions that lay beyond the far end of the official psychic spectrum.

Like the handful of other people he knew who had a higher than normal degree of para-talent, his instinct was to keep the fact a closely guarded secret.

There was a name for people whose talent was so far off the charts that it could not be tested and quantified: psychic vampires.

The experts claimed that there was no such thing as a psychic vampire, of course. Given that true, off-the- chart talents seldom, if ever, volunteered for testing and current lab equipment could not measure anything higher than a class-ten talent, anyway, no one seriously argued the point. The current state of technology had created a classic scientific impasse. As far as the researchers were concerned, what could not be detected or measured did not exist.

But psychic vampires occupied a unique place in mod-era fiction and film. They were, after all, the stuff of legend. They fascinated and repelled. Rafe was well aware that books featuring handsome, sexy, super-talents who enslaved lovely, innocent prisms and forced said prisms to focus exclusively for them sold faster than iced coff-tea lattes in July.

The reality, however, was that even class-ten talents had a difficult time getting a date for Saturday night. People respected high-end talents; some were even a bit awed by them. But almost everyone was a little wary of anyone who possessed an extremely high degree of para-talent, especially when that talent was a particularly rare type. Strong power, in any form, made intelligent people cautious.

High-class talents were often difficult to match with a high probability of success. Exotic high-class talents were even more of a problem for matchmakers. Any talent who was fool enough to admit to possessing both an exotic talent coupled with an off-the-scale amount of psychic power would very likely have no sex life at all, Rafe reflected.