VISIONS OF HEAT

“I simply wanted to talk to you.” Shoshanna linked her hands behind her back, her black-on-black suit making her fingers appear skeletally white. “Do you usually wear this type of clothing?”


Faith knew it wasn’t the normal Psy mode of dress. “It makes it easier for Medical when intervention is necessary.” However, the reality was that she preferred . . . liked, wearing dresses.

“Of course. I’ve never really spoken to one of the F designation. What’s it like to see the future?” Pale blue eyes bored into hers as they stopped beside a small pond.

“Having never lived any other way, I can’t make a comparison,” she said, reminding herself to be very careful. One slip and Shoshanna would know that something wasn’t quite right about this particular F-Psy. “However, it did give me a purpose at a time when most Psy remain unformed.”

“You’ve been forecasting since you were three?”

“Officially. But my family has records that state I was making erratic but accurate non-verbal predictions even earlier.” She admitted that because she believed Shoshanna already knew her history—Councilors made it their business to know things about those they wanted to talk to.

“How did passage through the Protocol affect your abilities?”

The Protocol. Silence. A choice made generations ago to wipe out violence, but that had also succeeded in wiping out joy, laughter, and love. It had made the Psy an emotionless, robotic race that excelled in business and technology but produced no forms of art, no great music, no works of literature.

“My ability to fine-tune the visions grew apace with my progress through the Protocol. Instead of needing several markers to trigger them, I began to need only one or two.” What she didn’t say was that as she’d progressed, she’d also stopped having the dark visions.

The unexpected memory had appeared in a quicksilver flash. It was as if Shoshanna’s prodding had unlocked a secret compartment within her mind, opening her eyes to the fact that there had been a time in her childhood when she’d seen darkness. Keeping her expression calm became an exercise in self-restraint.

“Interesting.” Shoshanna began to walk once again.

Faith followed in silence. The other woman was beautiful, but she was part of the Council—no one reached that post without having shed blood. Her mind’s eye flickered and, for one instant, she could literally see the deep red substance staining the Councilor’s hands. The vision was gone as quickly as it had come, but she heeded the warning. Because she’d more than seen blood, she’d had a knowing, too.

One day soon, Shoshanna Scott was going to have Faith NightStar’s blood on her hands.

Unless she could change the future. That was why F-Psy were so valued—the future they saw wasn’t fixed. Businesses could head off a rival if they knew that that rival was about to put out an important invention, or buy up shares in a firm that had been forecast to rise. Faith had never before seen something that had the potential to so directly affect her.

“Are you fulfilled by your work?” Shoshanna’s voice was a cool sound that cut through the whispers of the leaves in the wind.

Faith didn’t know what Shoshanna wanted so she chose to answer with the truth. “No. It’s become too easy. I can forecast share trends in my sleep should I need to. There’s no challenge to it.” The Protocol may have stripped them of emotion, but it had done nothing to stem their unabating need for mental stimulation. “I’m the best in this hemisphere. The only one in the Southern Hemisphere who occasionally challenges me is Sione from the PsyClan PacificRose.”

“Yet you’ve never applied for entry to a higher position.”

Faith began to get an inkling of what this visit was about, but couldn’t bring herself to believe it. “As it happens, I have been considering it recently. But since my age would be a barrier, I thought to wait and learn.”

“Very efficient.” Shoshanna actually sounded impressed by the lie. “No one would think to monitor an F designation cardinal for that kind of shadowing. Learned anything interesting?”

Faith decided on honesty one more time, on the basis that Shoshanna almost certainly already knew. “There are signs of dissent in the PsyNet. The loss of Councilor Santano Enrique in somewhat mysterious circumstances has engendered an unstable level of speculation.”

“What do you think we should do to stem the speculation?”

Faith wasn’t sure she wanted it stopped—debate and change had to be better for the Net than stagnant obedience. But to say that would be to attract the wrong kind of attention. “I’m sure the Council has thought of a solution far better than anything I could offer.”

Once again, Shoshanna smiled that cold Psy smile, something Faith had never adopted. If she felt no amusement or hope, why should she smile?