Psy & Changelings 02 - Visions of Heat

everywhere and it was nowhere.
    Since it had already brushed past her several times since she’d entered the Net, she decided to head out to a quiet area, near the least interesting data flows, and wait for its next pass. In doing so, she was ignoring the voices of logic and reason—a certain jaguar had taught her that logic wasn’t always right. Sometimes, you had to go with instinct, even long-buried and rusty instinct.
    The brush when it came was so subtle and familiar that she almost missed it. Catching the trailing edge of the pass, she sent out a narrow thought aimed at a restricted area around her entire consciousness. Hello?
    No response.
    Can you hear me?
    She had no idea if it was even present or whether she was talking to herself. She assumed it was visible on some psychic level or had a permanent core the Council could access, but if that was so, it was a well-guarded secret. Seemingly alone in this particular sector, she decided to take a wild chance. If the NetMind was young and unformed, it might be normal. And if it wasn’t, then the Council would come for her.
    I am not weak, she told herself.
    No, you’re not, Red. Vaughn’s voice was a husky whisper in her ear.
    If they come for me, I’ll fight and I’ll get out. I have a jaguar to tame.
    With that thought in mind, with Vaughn in her heart, she laid her life on the line.
    Please. A single word, but one that shimmered with persuasion, joy, and hope. The emotions were awkward from lack of use. But in this barren place, they were the solitary hints of gentleness.
    Something swept across her mind a microsecond later. She tasted the texture and found it unlike anything she’d ever before touched . . . or was it? Vaughn’s image blazed into her mind and she felt the wildness in his eyes, the teasing in his voice, the pleasure in his touch. He was alive as this sentience was alive.
    ???

CHAPTER 19
    She almost stopped breathing. Very carefully, she narrowed the already constricted ring of thought. My name is Faith. What’s yours?
    ???
    It didn’t seem to understand speech, but had reacted to emotion. Biting her lip in the physical world, she took a deep breath and sent out an image of her as she was, dark red hair, less than average height, eyes of a cardinal. She was nothing extraordinary, but she was unique and so was the NetMind. Would it understand her message?
    A long silence and she thought she’d lost it, but then she was hit by an avalanche of images, an endless fury that threatened to crush her mind. She staggered against the overload on the psychic plane, and on the physical, her hands clutched at a head that threatened to explode.
    Stop! Images of endings, feelings of pain.
    Sudden halt. Another brush. Silence.
    Slow. Accompanied by forgiveness, happiness at the contact, pictures that conveyed the need for less speed.
    Another silence, as if it was thinking or had been scared. Wanting to reassure it, she awakened one of her most cherished memories—the way Vaughn had stroked her hair when she’d spoken of Marine. She tried to put the unbearable tenderness of that caress in the next thought she sent out.
    A slower rush of images answered her. Fast even for a Psy, but bearable. It was obvious that the NetMind thought much faster than she did, calculated much more quickly, much more easily, but it was also clearly young. It needed instructions and, even more, it needed care. Understanding its hunger as perhaps only a cardinal F-Psy could, she let it show her whatever it wanted, what mattered to it. A child’s secrets.
    They were not images per se, more like broken pieces of thought. Pieces of what it knew, snapshots of what it had seen, hints of mystery. It was testing her. She couldn’t blame its wariness if the Council had indeed tried to enchain it. With that realization went her final fragile illusions about the leaders of her people, because after scant seconds of contact, she knew that the NetMind was a truly sentient being. As such, it should’ve been accorded respect and the freedom to develop without interference or manipulation. But then again, the Council didn’t even accord those things to its own people.
    She wanted to ask the NetMind why it had chosen to speak to her, but could think of no image to represent the question. Finally she sent out an image of her conversing with someone, but her partner was a blur. The answer came back at whiplash speed and she saw what the NetMind saw itself as—the PsyNet given form.