Orchid (38 page)

Thus far things had been easy. Too easy, perhaps.

The layout of the ParaSyn physical plant that he had retrieved from his computer had been accurate. He hoped the data on the security system was also.

Rafe and Selby had left the Icer parked on a side street and simply walked up to the front gate. Selby had distracted the guard with a string of questions about a friend who worked at ParaSyn. Rafe had taken care of the rest.

He got to his feet and tugged on the ParaSyn uniform. He attached the small radio to his belt.

“Where'd you learn how to do that?” Selby sounded both awed and shocked.

“Operate a two-way radio? It's not all that tricky. They're used a lot in Stonebraker warehouses and on the docks.”

“I wasn't talking about the damned radio. Anyone can work a two-way. I meant what you did to the guard just now. The way you crept up behind him and put your arm around his throat. He didn't even make a sound. He just collapsed.”

“It's no big deal, Selby. I just cut off the flow of blood to his brain for a few seconds. He sort of fainted.”

“Fainted? Is that what you call it?”

“Actually, it's a meta-zen-syn exercise taken to its logical conclusion.”

“I thought that meta-zen-syn stuff was all peace and harmony and synergistic balance.”

“Balance is not always achieved with peace and harmony.
Sometimes you have to give things a little push.” Rafe started to turn toward a stand of trees.

“Wait a second. We're inside the grounds, but what's the plan here?”

“We find Orchid and Briana and we get them out.”

“Just like that, huh?”

Rafe tapped the small radio. “With any luck, this will make things a little easier. Come on, let's get moving. We don't have much time. The guard has to check in periodically. When he misses his next call from headquarters, someone will come looking.”

Rafe led the way into the trees that darkened the parklike grounds of the ParaSyn campus. Moonlight splattered on the ground like so much spilled milk.

“Lucky they don't have any guard wolf-hounds,” Selby muttered.

“According to the security data, Dr. Bracewell doesn't like animals around except the ones used in the labs. Too dirty.”

“I still don't understand why this Bracewell character would want to kidnap your friend Orchid.”

“It's a long story.” Rafe quickened his pace. He was almost loping through the trees now. His senses were jacked up as far as they could go without the aid of a prism. Periodically he used a burst of psychic energy to widen his awareness for a few brief seconds and to make a sweep of the psychic plane in a search for Orchid. Thus far he had gotten no response to his questing probe but he was certain she was here somewhere.

The headquarters of ParaSyn functioned as Dr. Gilbert Bracewell's lair. According to the map in the Synergy Fund files, Bracewell actually lived on site. He had a small apartment in the main building.

Bracewell would feel safe here, surrounded by his guards and his unassailable prestige, Rafe thought. He would feel in control here. A man who was slipping over the edge would cling to a sense of control the way a drowning man clung to a rope.

“Not so fast.” Selby's breath quickened as he strained to keep up with Rafe. “I can barely see you, let alone where I'm going. It won't help matters if I run into a tree.”

Selby had a point. Rafe knew he could not afford to risk leaving his cousin to wander aimlessly around the darkened grounds. Reluctantly he slowed his pace.

A few minutes later he halted at the edge of the woods. The main building of ParaSyn, Lab A, was so well lit with outdoor floodlights that it almost glowed. The annual report claimed that it operated around the clock but tonight it looked as if it had been shut down for a holiday weekend.

Rafe studied the two other, smaller labs. Both appeared equally quiet.

He could feel the trap. The only question was, who had set it? The Synergy Fund biographical data on Dr. Gilbert Bracewell had not painted a picture of a man who was a great strategic thinker. Yet Bracewell had to be involved in this somehow.

Selby stumbled to a halt beside Rafe and gazed at the brilliantly lit building in despair. “We'll never be able to get inside.”

“Sure we will. All we need is another uniform.”

“How the hell are we supposed to get one? Take out another guard?”

Rafe glanced across the service road. He watched a man in a blue work uniform walk out the side door of Lab B. The man headed toward a van parked in the lot behind the building. The sign on the side of the van read “ParaSyn Janitorial Dept.”

“I think I see an easier way,” Rafe said.

Chapter
20
 

Orchid saw the wild glitter in Gilbert's eyes. He had already killed more than once. There was no reason to think he would hesitate to shoot Briana.

She felt the probing tendril of a low-range psychic power.

“Two…” Gilbert tightened his grip on the pistol.

She answered the probe with a brilliant, crystal clear prism.

“Ah, yes.” Gilbert's face relaxed into an expression of approval. “I knew you would be reasonable about this, my dear.”

Unwholesome waves of power began to flow through the prism. Orchid fought the instinctive impulse to dissolve the focus. The only thing that made the experience tolerable was the fact that Gilbert Bracewell was not a strong talent.

“Okay, you've got your focus link, Two-Watt. Now, what?”

“Now, this, my dear.” Gilbert tightened his grip on
the relic. His face grew taut as though he strained to lift a great weight. “Now, you will understand—”

Without warning, his low-class hypno-talent surged. Out on the psychic plane, Orchid watched first in alarm and then in mounting horror as the power pouring through the prism intensified.

In a matter of seconds she found herself focusing a great, rushing, pounding psychic talent. Dark energy crashed through the prism in waves that grew stronger with every beat of her heart.

“The relic,” she managed. “You're doing this with it.”

“Indeed, I am.” Gilbert's smile was tight and strained, but his eyes were bright with cheerful madness. “The artifact is some sort of mechanical device that can heighten the level of an individual's psychic power. But it only functions when that power is focused through a prism who can adapt to the odd wavelengths given off by the alien machine.”

“An ice-prism.”

“Yes, my dear. An ice-prism is the only kind of prism that can work with it. A very strong ice-prism. You see now why you are so important to me, Miss Adams?”

In the metaphysical realm the dark, unwholesome power surged to new levels. This time Orchid sensed that Gilbert was not simply exercising his new level of psychic talent. He was gathering it with a purpose.

Dread shafted through her. With the aid of the relic and her unique prism capabilities, Gilbert had become a hypno-talent of monstrous magnitude.” A true psychic vampire.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“I believe this is an excellent opportunity to conduct a small demonstration of my enhanced psychic powers. By the Curtain, no one will ever call me Two-Watt Bracewell again.”

He kept the pistol trained on Briana as he opened a drawer beneath the lab bench. Orchid tensed.

“Gilly, you don't know anything about this relic. There's no way to test it safely under these conditions.”

“Give me some credit, my dear Miss Adams. After all, I am the director of research here at ParaSyn. I know what I'm doing.”

Gilbert turned slightly to reveal the object he had taken from the drawer. The cold lab lights glinted on a pair of heavy shears. Orchid recognized it as a tool used for cutting wire and other hard objects.

Carrying the shears in the same hand he used to clutch the relic, Gilbert walked across the room to where Briana sat on the edge of the gurney. He freed her hand from the plastic cuff with a single snip.

“Take these, Mrs. Culverthorpe.” He slapped them into her hand. “And look into my eyes.”

Understanding dawned on Orchid. “Don't do it, Briana. Don't look at him.”

Still dazed from the effects of the gas that had been used to stun her, Briana stared uncomprehendingly down at the shears. Then she raised her confused gaze to meet Gilbert's eyes.

Hypno-talent slashed through the prism. Briana's gaze went from dazed to glassy-eyed.

“What do you want me to do?” she whispered in an emotionless voice.

“Very simple my dear.” Gilbert stepped back several paces. He smiled broadly. “Take the shears and plunge them into your chest.”

“No.”
Desperate now, Orchid tried to dissolve the prism.

Nothing happened. The prism was locked in Gilbert's enhanced psychic talons. She could not cut off his mechanically augmented power surge.

“Please be quick about it, Mrs. Culverthorpe. I don't have all night, you know. Miss Adams and I must leave here soon.”

“Briana, no,” Orchid shouted. “Don't do it. Look at
me, Briana. Don't look at that stupid little elf.
Look at me.”

But Briana continued to gaze steadily at Gilbert, who smiled fondly back.

Dark psychic energy whirled and slammed through the prism, intensifying the hypnotic effect.

Briana raised the shears and aimed them at a point between her breasts.

“You bastard.” Orchid stared at Gilbert. “Don't do this. I'll go with you. I'll help you conduct your experiments. But only if you stop this right now.”

“You'll help me regardless, my dear. I have you in my power now.”

Orchid saw a strange expression pass through Briana's eyes. It was as though some part of her understood what she was about to do and resisted. But her muscles tensed in preparation as she aimed the shears at her own heart.

Orchid no longer had the ability to dissolve the glittering ice-prism. But there was still the possibility that she could manipulate it.

There was no point struggling against the alien-tainted power. But meta-zen-syn taught that all power was dependent upon the endless struggle for balance.

She concentrated on the brilliant crystal facets of the prism. She would have only one chance to alter the synergistic balance. If she failed, Briana would die.

Gently she began to shift the focus. The raging power followed, realigning itself.

For an instant Gilbert did not realize what was happening. He was too busy concentrating on the results of his terrible experiment.

“Orchid?” Briana's eyes cleared slightly. She blinked and stared at the shears she had aimed at her own breast. “Orchid, what's going on?”

Orchid did not answer. She was wholly occupied with the task of altering the focus of the prism facets.

Gilbert suddenly realized that something was wrong. He was slamming more power than ever through the
prism now, but Briana had begun to lower the shears. Rage screwed up his gnomelike face.

“What's this?” he screamed. “What's happening?”

Orchid continued to manipulate the focus. Mirrors, she reminded herself. The facets were tiny psychic mirrors fashioned to focus energy waves the way a laser focused light waves.

“Stop it,” Gilbert shouted. “Stop this at once.”

But he was too late. Orchid sensed the exact instant when he frantically tried to cut off the flow of talent. But nothing happened. Power slammed through the re-focused prism. Gilbert was as much a prisoner now as Orchid. The alien relic was out of control.

Slowly, inevitably, Gilbert turned the gun so that it no longer pointed at Briana. He aimed the barrel at his own chest.

His eyes no longer twinkled with evil glee. They widened in horror. More dark, raging hypno-talent surged through the refocused prism.

“No,” Gilbert screamed.
“No.”

But it was too late. Overwhelmed by his own magnified hypno-talent turned back on himself, he squeezed the trigger of the pistol.

The blast echoed loudly in the cold, clean room. The gun clattered on the white tile floor. Gilbert toppled backward. Orchid watched, stunned, as blood welled in the center of his tailored lab coat.

On the psychic plane the flow of talent ceased with appalling suddenness. Orchid was free. She hastily dissolved the prism. There was no reason to think that the alien relic could function on its own without a talent to guide it, but there was no sense taking chances.

“Dear heaven,” Briana stared at the fallen Bracewell. “He killed himself.”

Orchid wrenched her attention away from the horrifying scene on the floor. “The shears. Give them to me so that I can cut off this restraint cuff.”

Briana looked at her. “You made him do that, didn't you? Somehow you reversed the flow of his hypno-talent.”

“Yes.” Orchid pushed the gurney closer to Briana. “I'm an ice-prism.” She reached for the shears.

Briana shook her head, dazed. “You saved my life.”