Tin Woodman Read Online Free PDF Page A

merited her scorn.
    Div reached out and took her arm. His eyes met hers, and he opened his mind to her, totally. Mora recoiled under the bombardment of images, feelings, and thoughts which flooded her consciousness. Even as she did so, she realized that Div was forcing nothing on her, She had merely to will it, and the flood ceased at once. Shutting him out, Mora was safe in the silence of her mind.
    But she opened her mind again. Trusting Div now, she let him see into her own soul. She let him see the fear, the vulnerability which Normals always seemed to sense. Since childhood they’d abused her, stabbing into her mind to relieve their own pain. Asshe had grown into womanhood, men became the worst, deadliest of vultures with their sadism-passing-as-virility pounding pounding pounding on her soul until she thought she—
    So, Space Service was my last refuge, Mora thought, suddenly compressing and organizing her thoughts and assigning them words. I had tried . . . I’d moved around. I’d tried to live in the little farms and villages—Schuylkill Haven, Willowood—where Talents live apart, building their own worlds. But I felt as though I were running. The world that mattered, that I knew, was outside, allowing us to do this.
    They call us Talents and laugh. They mock us. They call us Talents and then can’t decide to cure us or kill us. Because they know all we really are is disturbed. Unbalanced and dangerous. But when I was a child, I didn’t understand the laughing. They called me a Talent and I believed it. I felt I should use my “gift” to help others.
    So I came to the service. What human beings were doing in space was noble—surely such people were too disciplined, too respectful of one another to waste energy on the luxuries of torture. I went to the academy. I spent four years trying to learn the mental discipline, the little tricks a shiplady has to know. I learned the soothing ways of “physical therapy” and a lot of other nonsense—all their excuse for sticking me here to whore in a little metal can falling through space, where people are only people after all . . .
    Mora let the train of thought fade as she tottered there on the brink of night. She looked at Div. There was no pity in his eyes. Instead, there was understanding. And the beginnings of something deeper. Their clasped hands tightened together.
    “Would you like some coffee? We can take it to my cabin,” she said aloud as the lift platform came to a halt on Mora’s deck.
    Div said, “Something else besides coffee, maybe.”
    She gave him a trembling smile and led him to a drink station.

    RAC COMMUNICATIONS, INC.
    MAGNEPAPER® #TX8794a

    Leana Coffer
    Exec. Commander
    Triunion Starship PEGASUS

    Dear Me,

    Vocoder time again.
    Met the Talent from Earth. Div Harlthor. He worries me. Reminds me of Mora Elbrun—without Elbrun’s strength. Odd. Never thought of Mora as a woman with a strong character. Compared to this boy-freak she seems sturdy as a soldier in combat armor. Harlthor was confined to a sanitarium on Earth, and seeing what the Talent can do to a human being I rather wonder at the inner reserves Mora must have to exist in the hostile world of this ship.
    This ship. Darsen’s little world. Another reason Harlthor worries me. I know what Darsen wants—and why—though I don’t think he knows himself. He’s not analytical but emotionally driven and on the Pegasus his needs become commands and are translated into obedience so quickly that he need never define, measure, or control them. I can see what the man’s ideals are: entirely egocentric, a puffing up of self. Darsen’s damned selfish, and I’m sure this fact has not escaped Harlthor. I just can’t see their intentions or modes of approach toward the alien as compatible at all. Darsen’s reasons are entirely personal—but I can’t fathom Div Harlthor’s yet. If this perception is correct, why is Darsen giving the Talent such power?
    Of course, the captain