Joan D. Vinge - Psion

To Carol Pugner,

who always believed in Cat.

And to Andre Norton,

who is Cat's spiritual godmother.

PART I

CAT

The gem-colored dream shattered, and left the kid gaping on the street. Jarred by passers-by and stunned by ugliness, he gulped humid night air. The dreamtime he had paid his last marker for was over, and somewhere in the street voices sang, Reality is no one s dream

A richly robed customer of the Last Chance suicide gaming house knocked him against a pitted wall, not even seeing him. He cursed wearily and fumbled his way to the end of the building. Pressure-sensitive lighting flickered beneath the heavy translucent pavement squares, trailing him as he stepped into the funnel of an alleyway. Aching with more than one kind of hunger, he crept into the darkness to sleep it off.

And one of the three Contract Labor recruiters who had been watching nodded, and said, Now.

The kid settled into a crevice between piles of cast-off boxes, where the unsleeping gleam of the pavement was buried under layers of back-alley filth. He didn t mind dirt; he didn t even notice it. Dirt grayed his worn clothes, the pale curls of his hair, the warm brown of his skin. Dirt was a part of his life: like the smell, like the constant drip of sewage somewhere in the darkness, leaking down through the roof of his world from Quarro, the new city that had buried Oldcity alive.

Water striking a metal walkway rang like endless bells through the fibers of his abused nerves. He raised unsteady hands to cover his ears, trying to stop the sound of the water torture and the sounds of the furious argument in a room up over his head. He felt the throbbing of distant music the beat of heavy footsteps coming down the alley toward him.

He froze, sitting as still as death, caught in a sudden premonition. His eyes came open slowly, intensely green eyes with long slitted pupils like a cat s. The pupils widened, his eyes became pools of blackness absorbing every particle of available light- showing him with unhuman clarity three heavy bodies wearing shadow-black uniforms: the carrion crows of Contract Labor, a press gang searching the night for volunteers. Searching for him.

Jeezu! His drug-heavy body jerked with panic. He dropped forward onto his knees, hands groping in the trash around him. His fingers closed over the plass-smooth coolness of a bottleneck. He pulled it to him as the alley filled with dazzling, confused motion and he was surrounded by men in black. Their hands caught his clothing, dragging him up, off-balance; he was slapped, shoved. Trying to find words, breath, time to protest he found his arm instead, his hand, the bottle clutched in it. He brought it up in one hard sudden rush.

The heavy shatterproof plass struck the side of a man s head with a dull sponk; the impact jarred the kid against the greasy building wall, and the recruiter fell. Two were still coming, their faces dark with vengeance, ready to make him pay. He dodged left, right, making them counter; suddenly he kicked out and up with ruthless urgency. A second man went to his knees with a bellow of agony.

The third one was on him as he tried to break away, dragging him back and down. The kid clawed at the pile of crates beside him, twisting like a snake in the recruiter s grip. The load shifted and swayed; he felt it begin to fall-

He sprawled free as the crates came down. He was on his feet and running before the crashes and cursing ended, before any of them were even up off their knees to follow him.

Kid!

He had almost reached the alley mouth when the shout caught up with him. He kept running, knowing the recruiters were not armed. Something struck him in the back of the head; he cried out as painstars burst inside his eyes. Warm wetness showered over his hair, sluiced down his neck, drenched his jerkin. He lifted a hand, brought it down from his forehead wet with luminous orange dye, not blood. Shit. He swore again, half in relief, half in fresh panic: they had marked him for a police pickup. He stripped off his jerkin as he ran, running harder out into the midnight crowds of Godshouse Circle. But the dye had already soaked through to his skin, and even the crowds could not hide him. Night was when the upsiders came slumming, came to wallow in Oldcity sin; and the Corporate Security Police came with them, to protect the rich from the poor. He elbowed aside thieves and beggars, musicians, pimps, and jugglers, along with the silken customers who fed and bled them all.

He had been a thief for most of his life; on another night he would have welcomed this crowd. But tonight startled heads were turning, angry voices were rising, arms waving, pointing, clutching. Somewhere an arm in gray would lift a stungun-

He broke through into the Street of Dreams; its throat of golden light swallowed him up in incense and honey and loud, rhythmic music. He had never run down this street before. He had stood gawking in it a thousand times, seduced by the promise that all his wildest dreams would be fulfilled if only he would step through this door this door my door no, mine. But none of those doors had ever let him past, given him refuge, welcomed or even pitied him. Tonight would be no different. He pushed on through the yielding chaos of real and holo-flesh, feeling the crowd drain the bright energy of his panic. A mistake, this was a mistake- Orange sweat ran into his eyes; the street s glaring assault on his tortured senses was making him sick.

Someone shouted, and this time he saw uniform gray. He began to run again, trying to keep the crowd between them; running through nightmare. But he still knew the streets better than he knew his own face. Instinct saved him, and he dodged into a narrow crack below a shadowed archway. He ran down steps, up steps, clattering through sudden light and blackness along a metal catwalk- out into another alley, between rows of silent pillars; navigating by constellations of distant streetlights.

Footsteps and shouting still trailed him, but they were falling behind now, out of sight. He let himself slow, almost missing the break between abandoned buildings- the crumbling wall that left him room enough to squeeze through, just below the hanging entrails of Quarro. He clambered up a fallen girder, his breath coming in sobs. He crouched and leaped, straining to bridge the gap. But his legs gave way; his body had no strength left to give him. His fingers caught, clung, slipped from the lip of broken stone. He dropped back into the rubble four meters below. An ankle cracked as he came down; as his body, abused for too long, betrayed him at last.

He huddled over, cursing the white-hot pain softly, until they came for him. Again he crouched in a yellow wash of light until rough hands dragged him up and held him against the wall. This time there were guns, and this time he didn t try to struggle. He whimpered as they prodded his leg; they made him stand on the other one, hands locked behind him, until the pickup unit arrived. They knew who had marked him. They worked for the Federation Transport Authority, and the FTA took care of its own, they said. They knew his kind, they said; they knew his record, too. He couldn t do what he d just done and think he wouldn t pay. Get used to it, kid. This is the end of everything for you.

But they were wrong. It was only the beginning.

It started where it ended, in Quarro. Quarro is the main city on Ardattee, the garden spot of the galaxy, the Hub, the Heart, the Crown of the Federation. Somehow it always looked more like the garbage dump to me; but that was because I lived in Quarro s Oldcity.

My name is Cat. Cat s not my real name, but it fits, and I like it. I don t know my real name. They always called me Cat on the streets because of my eyes: green eyes that see in the dark, that don t look human. I have a face that makes people uneasy. If you want the story of my life, it goes like this: I was standing in an Oldcity alley when I was maybe three or four. I was crying, because the hunger in my belly hadn t gone away, because it was so cold that my fingers were blue- because I wanted somebody to do something about it. Somebody came out of a doorway and told me to shut up, and beat me until I did. I never cried again. But I was hungry most of the time, and cold. And doing dreamtime, when I had any money for drugs- dreaming the kind of dreams they sold on the street. No excuses. To have dreams of your own is the only way to survive, but Oldcity had killed all mine. Reality was nobody s dream.