Starblood

was no chance of ever escaping; he would be forfeiting the future and any better opportunities that might arise. He shut off his mobility system at the Brother's suggestion and sank onto the mattress; now he was in the thrall of gravity.
    "I believe," the gentleman said, "that you may even be the type to cooperate with police after you become a medium-range addict. But that would be folly. In the event you do manage to destroy the Brethren, you gain nothing. They could supply you with the confiscated stores of the drug, but they would soon run out of those. And only we know where it comes from. You understand? No one else will ever be able to synthesize it—or even come close. We are the only source. When we go, so does that source. And then you would find yourself with a craving you couldn't fill—one that would become quite deadly in time. I think you see the wisdom here, no?"
    Timothy said nothing.
    Against the far wall, Baker stirred, then pushed groggily to his feet. A small amount of blood ran out his nose, but he seemed otherwise unscathed. When he had his feet properly under him, he charged Ti.
    "Baker!" the gentleman shouted.
    The brute stopped and stood glowering at Timothy. Because of the way he had obeyed his master, Ti knew he was a surgically altered man. For the first time, he felt a bit pleased that the Army had indulged in such debased and inhumane research…
    The gentleman approached with a hypodermic case, he had withdrawn from his inside coat pocket. He sat on the edge of Ti's bed while he filled the measured tube from a bottle of amber fluid. He found a vein on Timothy's hip, stabbed the needle in, drained the tube, and put the instruments away again. "That should be taking effect shortly," he said, getting to his feet.
    Timothy felt his psi talent slipping away just as before, though this dose was not so massive as to deny him speaking powers. "I won't let you do this to me," he said. He wanted
to
scream about the inhumanity of taking away his third hand, for that was equal to dismembering a healthy man. But he thought it might be better to remain silent about the loss of his ESP. If Baker or others like him realized the mutant was totally helpless, there was little chance of his escaping repeated beatings.
    "You have little choice," the gentleman said. "We'll be around twice a day. I'll administer these myself. I'd call it sweet revenge, but it's chiefly to please those in the organization who were close to Klaus, to keep them content."
    "Revenge?" he asked. In his mind there was a ghost river, a grass raft, and drifting autumn leaves…
    "What else?" the gentleman asked.
    He was no longer grinning.
    There was a river of wine, wine, wine…
    "I don't understand," Timothy said with an effort, trying to hold on to the concrete reality here before the ethereal illusions swept him away into drunken, chaotic madness…
    "Of course you do," the gentleman said. "My name
is
Jon Margle."
    Ti fell down into the surging wine river…

CHAPTER 8
    Ti had no more nightmares under the PBT, for they were no longer giving him the massive doses that Kealy had used in the amusement park. Instead, he coasted through illusions of a heavy, sensual nature, through idyllic paradises from which he hated more and more to be withdrawn when the drug began to lose its influence on his mind. When he was clearheaded and had none of the stuff in him, he realized that his delight in the dreams meant he was losing hold of reality. He was accepting fantasy for experience, and that horrified him. He was quite aware that he yearned for the dreams because they were the only way he could ever know sexuality; they were an entire world he had never envisioned or expected to experience. But this alone, he argued, was no reason to give in to them. His life had been built on battles, and: if he were to lose one to a mere chemical substance when he had won so many against tough human adversaries, it was all a sham.
    Yet he did give in to them. Again and again.
    And when he did not have the drug, he found himself often lying listlessly on his bed, wishing they would hurry with the next dose.
    And then he would know fear…
    On the third morning in the house, Margle and Baker broke the routine when they brought his dose. He was not surprised when he realized he was about to get a beating from Baker. Nothing Jon Margle could do would surprise him now. He knew the man for what he was—a coward and a sadist. And that was the deadliest of