If I am undergoing some form of treatment it can’t be for physical injuries, I wouldn’t need a perceptual reality for that. I must have had some kind of mental breakdown, and this is my therapy session.even as she said it she could feel her heart rate increase, but the blood quickening in her veins only seemed to make her skin colder.
Very good. But, Syrinx, you did not have a breakdown, your own thought routines are quite exemplary.
Then why am I here?
Why indeed?
Oh, an outside influence?
Yes. A most unpleasant experience.
I’ve been traumatized.
As I said, your thought routines are impressive. Those of us running your therapy have temporarily blocked your access to your adult memories, thus avoiding contamination of those routines by the trauma. You can, for the moment, think without interference, even though this state does not permit your intellect to function at full capacity.
Syrinx grinned. I’m actually smarter than this?
I prefer the term swifter, myself. But what we have is adequate for our purpose.
The purpose being my therapy. With my adult mind traumatized I wouldn’t listen. I was catatonic?
Partly; your withdrawal was within what the psychologist called a psychotic loop. Those responsible for hurting you were trying to force you to do something quite abhorrent. You refused, for love’s sake. Edenists everywhere are proud of you for your resistance, yet that obstinacy has led to your current state.
Syrinx gave a downcast smile, not entirely perturbed. Mother always said I had a stubborn streak.
She was entirely correct.
So what must I do now?
You must face the root of what was done to you. The trauma can be overcome; not instantly, but once you allow yourself to remember what happened without it overwhelming you as it has done until now, then the auxiliary memories and emotions can be dealt with one at a time.
That’s why you talked about the past, so I can learn to face my memories without the fear, because that’s all they are, memories. Harmless in themselves.
Excellent. I will now make them available to you.
She steeled herself, foolish that it was, clenching her stomach muscles and fisting her hands.
Look at the owl,wing-tsit chong instructed. Tell me its name.
The owl blinked at her, and half extended its wings. She stared at the flecked pattern of ochre and hazel feathers. They were running like liquid, becoming midnight-blue and purple. “Oenone !” she shouted. Pernik island rushed towards her at a speed which made her grasp the balcony rail in fright.
Please don’t, Syrinx,Oenone asked. The deluge of misery and longing entwined with that simple request made her eyes brim with tears. Don’t leave me again.
Never. Never ever ever ever, beloved.her whole body was trembling in reaction to the years of memory yawning open in her mind. And right at the end, the last before stinking darkness had grasped at her, most vivid of all, the dungeon and its torturers.
Syrinx?
I’m here,she reassured the voidhawk unsteadily. It’s okay, I’m fine.
You saved me from them.
How could I not?
I love you.
And I you.
I was right,wing-tsit chong said.
When Syrinx raised her head she saw the old man’s face smiling softly, the multiplying wrinkles aging him another decade. Sir?
To do what I did all those centuries ago. To allow people to see the love and the sourness which lives in all of us. Only then can we come to terms with what we are. You are living proof of that, young Syrinx. I thank you for that. Now open your eyes.
They are open.
He sighed theatrically. So pedantic. Then close them.
Syrinx opened her eyes to look up at a sky-blue ceiling. The dark blobs around the edges of her vision field resolved into three terribly anxious faces bending over her.
“Hello, Mother,” she said. It was very difficult to talk, and her body felt as though it were wrapped in a shrunken ship-tunic.
Athene started crying.
There were fifteen holoscreens in the editing suite, arranged in a long line along one wall. All of them were switched on, and the variety of images they displayed was enormous, ranging from a thousand-kilometre altitude view of Amarisk with the red cloud bands mirroring the Juliffe tributary network, to the terrifyingly violent starship battle in orbit above Lalonde; and from Reza Malin’s mercenaries flattening the village of Pamiers, to a flock of overexcited young children charging out of a homestead cabin to greet the arrival of the hovercraft.
Out of the five people sitting at the editing suite’s table, four of them stared at the screens with the kind of nervous enthusiasm invariably suffered by voyeurs of suffering on a grand scale, where the sheer spectacle of events overcame the agony of any individual casualty. In the middle of her colleagues, Kelly regarded her work with a detachment which was mainly derived from a suppressor program her neural nanonics were running.
“We can’t cut anything else,” Kate Elvin, the senior news editor, protested.
“I don’t like it,” said Antonio Whitelocke. He was the head of Collins’s Tranquillity office, a sixty-year career staffer who had plodded his way to the top from the Politics and Economics division. An excellent choice for Tranquillity, but hardly empathic with young rover reporters like Kelly Tirrel. Her Lalonde report scared him shitless. “You just can’t have a three hour news item.”
“Grow some bollocks,” Kelly snapped. “Three hours is just dip-in highlights.”
“Lowlights,” Antonio muttered, glaring at his turbulent new megastar. Her skinhead hairstyle was devastatingly intimidating, and he’d heard all about poor Garfield Lunde. Marketing always complained about the use of non-mainstream image anchors. When he thought of that pretty, feminine young woman who used to present the breakfast round-up just last month he could only worry that one of the possessed had sneaked back from Lalonde after all.
“The balance is perfect,” Kate said. “We’ve incorporated the fundamentals of the doomed mission, and even managed to end on an upbeat note with the rescue. That was a stroke of sheer brilliance, Kelly.”
“Well, gee, thanks. I would never have gone with Horst and the mercs back to the homestead unless it made a better report.”
Kate sailed on serenely through the sarcasm; unlike Antonio she’d been a rover once, which had included a fair share of combat assignments. “This edit will satisfy both our corporate objectives, Antonio. First off, the rumour circuit has been overheating ever since Lady Macbeth came back; Marketing hasn’t even needed to advertise our evening news slot. Everybody in Tranquillity is going to access us tonight—I’ve heard the opposition are just going to run soap repeats while Kelly’s on. And once our audience access they aren’t going to stop. We’re not just giving them sensenviron impressions of a war, we’ve got a whole story to tell them here. That always hooks them. Our advertising premium for this is going to be half a million fuseodollars for a thirty-second slot.”
“For one show,” Antonio grumbled.
“More than one, that’s the beauty. Sure, everyone is going to make a flek of tonight. But Kelly brought back over thirty-six hours of her own fleks, and then we’ve got the recordings taken from Lady Macbeth ’s sensors from the moment they emerged in the Lalonde system. We can milk this for a month with specialist angle interviews, documentaries, and current affairs analysis panels. We’ve won the ratings war for the whole goddamn year, and we did it on the cheap.”