Golden Torc - 2 Read Online Free PDF

in the back garden. The ghastly trip into the cave had been for nothing. "I hate you!" he had screamed, bringing his mother on the run. But by the time she reached him he was cradling the black kitten against his bruised and filthy cheek, stroking it while the sound of its purring helped slow his thudding heart. Cinders had lived for another fifteen years, fat and complacent, while Bryan's boyish devotion to the animal dwindled away into vague fondness. But he would live forever with the horror of the loved thing lost, the fear and the gush of hate at the end because his bravery had been wasted. And now he was entering another chasm...
    The friendly voice of the skipper drew him back. "The lady you're looking for. Did they tell you she was down here in Muriah?"
    "An interviewer back at Castle Gateway recognized her picture. He said she had been sent here. Creyn seemed to hint that if I cooperated with the local authorities along professional lines, she and I might meet."
    He hesitated only for a moment before unbuttoning his breast pocket and taking out the durofilm sheet. Highjohn stared at Mercy's self luminous portrait.
    "What a beautiful, haunted face! I don't know who she is here, Bry, but then I'm on the river most of the time. God knows I'd never forget her if I ever did catch sight of her. Those eyes! You poor bastard."
    "You can say that again, Johnny."
    "Why did she come here?" the skipper asked.
    "I don't know. Ridiculous, isn't it, Johnny? I knew her only a single day. And then I had to leave her for some work that seemed to be important. When I returned, she was gone. All I could do was follow after. It was the only choice open to me. Do you understand?"
    "Sure, Bry. I understand. My own reasons for coming weren't that different. Except that no one was waiting... But there's something you've got to expect, when you do find her. She'll be changed."
    "She was a latent. They'll have given her a silver torc. I'm aware of that."
    The big riverman shook his head slowly. Once again he touched his own gray necklet. "There's more to it than a latent's becoming operant, although God knows, acquiring metafaculties all of a sudden has its hazards, so I'm told. But even us grays, without getting any metafunctions to speak of, gain something fantastic through this torc. Something that we never had before." He pursed his thin purplish lips, then suddenly exclaimed, "Listen, man! What do you hear?"
    "They're singing in their Tanu language."
    "And to you, the words mean nothing. But to us collared ones, the Song says well met, and fear not, and this is it, and we-you-us! When a human being becomes part of the torced society, he gains a whole new level of consciousness. Even us grays, with no operant metafunctions, can share in it. It's more than telepathy, although that's a part of it. It's a whole new form of social intercourse, this mind-to-mind intimacy. How the hell can I explain it? Like being a member of some kind of superfamily. You know you belong to this great thing that keeps rolling along and taking you with it. You'll never be alone in your pain again. Never be outside. Never be rejected. Any time you need strength or comfort, you can dip into the collective resource. It's not a smothering thing because you can take as much or as little of it as you choose, well, subject to limitations unless you're a gold-wearer. You obey orders, just like in the service... But what I'm trying to tell you is that wearing these things changes you deep inside. It doesn't happen right away, but it does happen. As you wear the torc, you're educated whether you want to be or not. Your lady is going to be a different person than the one you remember."
    "She might not want me. Is that what you're trying to prepare me for?"
    "I don't know her, Bry. People react in different ways to the torcs. Some of them bloom. Most of them."
    The anthropologist did not meet the skipper's dark eyes.
    "And some don't. I see. What happens to the