ancient blue jeans sat near the entrance, begging patrons for money or a drink. He alternately received gifts, showers of alcoholic saliva and swift kicks to the legs and chest. Whichever, he muttered gracias to everyone, even those who ignored him completely.
Inside, she found the giant at the bar, covering two stools with one leg thrown out in a leisurely fashion. Although the place was packed, he also had the immediate stools to either side free, as people tended to give giants plenty of space, even more than they needed. He hunched over a two-liter mug of draft beer, favoring his drink over the slightly overweight hooker who was doing her best to attract his attentions.
Drawing in a breath and swallowing her fear like a sharp object, Tamara walked up to the giant and touched the back of his massive hand. He turned to look down at her, and she watched with her perceptions in fascination. It was as if a statue had come to life at her touch. He looked down at her and recognition flickered across his mind. She was counting on surprise and hesitation here, and also on his supreme self-confidence. With his quick reflexes and incredible strength, he could have crushed her instantly, killing her on the spot and then fleeing the scene. But she had known a few giants, and knew that many of them were convinced of their own invulnerability.
So, when he faced her, she maintained physical contacted and mentally she gave him a shove. A very hard shove, which ran a hot bolt of pain through her head. Instead of turning into a zombie as she had expected however, she felt that his mind had merely become more suggestible, as if she had just given him a very persuasive argument when he was in a receptive mood. For a flash she almost panicked. She had given him her best shot, figuring that the difficulty she had experienced with his mind earlier had been due to the drug blur, but apparently it also had to do with his mental abilities as a giant. She had planned to simply order him outside like a robot, but instead she had to come up with something more clever. And quickly, before the effect wore off.
She did the only thing she could think of. She made him think that she was someone else. Not Tamara at all, not the girl he had been paid to kill. She dredged up the image of another girl, one she had picked up from the minds of the eighth grade boys she had taught algebra to. It was the face of a popular anchorwoman on television. Suddenly, she had blue eyes that opened, blonde hair and soft red lips.
“Would you like some company?” she heard herself ask.
His reaction for a moment convinced her that her mental shove had failed utterly. He opened her coat, brushing her breasts with fingers thick as flashlights. She shrank back reflexively while he frankly examined her body beneath. She wore a cotton jumper that did nothing to accentuate her charms, but neither did it hide the fact that she had an attractive figure.
“Sure,” he said, closing her coat again with a gentleness that belied his size. He pulled his leg off the stool to his right and ordered her a drink. Tamara climbed up on the stool, wondering what to do next. She barely noticed the hooker who thumbed her large nose at her back. After a few more drinks, Tamara suggested that they leave together, and the giant, whose name was James Billings, agreed.
They walked out into the cooling, but still humid, night air. James had to stoop down and turn sideways to get out of the door. No one had questioned his picking up a blind girl. No one had dared.
Outside it had rained. The streets were black and reflected the city lights like wavery mirrors. Storm drains gurgled and beads of water reflected like thousands of eyes off the windshields of the cars they passed. Tamara saw this through James’ eyes, she was holding his hand and understood how to move through the giant’s mind better now.
Somehow, Tamara started feeling sorry for James. He had been a victim of the same experiments that had left her sightless and- different. She felt the loneliness and alienation in him, a man but not a man. Alternately feared, hated and idolized, he was an outcast in the midst of human society. She knew that these feelings were partly due to her natural empathy with anyone she was around. She always started seeing things their way, understanding their point of view. Despite that, she still sensed that he was like her, a monster that no one really knew what to do with. Tolerated, but with poor grace.
When they reached his hotel room, she knew that she had to gain some control over him. His elemental force of personality matched his physical prowess, and he was by no means subtle. He was also becoming increasingly drunk.
“You know, Sarah,” he said, pouring her yet another drink which she would have to pour away into the bathroom sink or the planter.
“There is something different about you, something familiar.”
She knew he had seen her on the holo-net channels. She had picked a poor disguise. He thumped over to her and handed her the drink. Then he leered down at her, his warm alcoholic breath washing over her. Something in his manner, something that his mind was hiding brought her a sudden jolt of fear.
“You look just like the witch-girl I was supposed to kill last night.”
Tamara spilled her drink. Bourbon soaked quickly into her pants, spreading coolness over her thighs. He smiled at her, and took her tiny hand in his.
“You’re tricks don’t work on me, Tammy. I damned near caught you last night, but this way was much easier.”
“How…?” she gasped, fear choking her words.
“Here,” he said, grabbing her small hand up in his.
“I know all about you. Come on and read me.”
Tamara knew it was a challenge. James liked challenges, he had an ego as big as his hat-size and wanted to pit himself against her. Besides, he was half-drunk, and for a giant that meant he was close to the berserker state. Then he opened his mind to her, and she knew everything.
She knew that the giant got a thrill out of the idea of “doing her” before he killed her. He was intrigued by the idea that she might want it that way, that she would like it that way. He also had had special government training to resist empaths. In his official career he had killed nearly a hundred men, and now that he was free-lancing he would go on killing.
She did something then that she had never done in the presence of any man except for Sato. She opened her eyes. She opened her eyelids, that is, but behind them there weren’t any eyes. Instead James Billings found himself looking directly at her exposed brain cells, protected only by a milky membrane. Beyond the membrane floated living pink tissue, blood pumping through the thin squiggly lines that were arteries and veins.
James Billings opened his mouth, perhaps to laugh or perhaps to scream, but what he also did was lose his concentration. It was all the opportunity that Tamara had and she took it. She shoved as she had never shoved before. She had learned her way through his mind a bit by now, he was drunk and he was off-guard. Up close like this, she could even perceive his brain inside his thick skull. She could feel the workings of his neural network, the chemical stimuli and responses.
First, she turned him on his bosses. She sparked a tiny flame of hate, then built it up, blaming all the tragedies of James Billings’ life on them. She dredged up memories of a scared father, beating a screaming two hundred pound eight-year-old son with a shovel. She conjured his first experience with a girl, her screams, his hands squeezing the life from her afterward. Finally, she made him relive the first time he got wired on blur, the fanatical rage, the fury of the berserker. When she had turned his heart into a pounding steam-press, when his nostrils were flaring wider than a dying bull’s, she let go of him and closed her eyes. He ignored her. He pulled the closet door off the wall, reached inside and brought out a heavy combat rifle. Normal men would have to mount it on a tripod to use it, but he carried it easily in one hand. He walked through the door into the hotel hallway, not bothering to open it first. He headed for the elevators, for the penthouses fifty stories up, where the bosses were.
Lying in the wreckage behind him, Tamara wept a few tears for James Billings. Although she had no eyes, her tear ducts were in place. After a time she got up and slipped out of the hotel, before the riot police and the Special Forces teams could arrive.
TA 96
Samuel Giddeon’s transcript, as interpreted by the ATLAS system’s network server:
… hope so, I’m not used to this transcriber thing in my head. It should be transmitting everything that I sub vocalize, but of course, I have no way of knowing.
