11.
The third night of our private shows, I first saw Martin Jones in the audience. Something about him attracted my attention. I felt his grief reaching out to me, and I knew... I knew there was something about this man that... that I needed to find out.
I have always been a religious man, or spiritual, if you prefer. But I also believe that much of what happens in our lives is merely chance, the turning of the wheels of coincidence. However, with Martin, I found myself believing that God herself, himself, had placed this man in my way for a specific purpose. Rela, I...I found myself obsessed with finding out what was in his mind. To the point of even... with him.
- Yes...? - She awakens desire in me, and sees into me.... - Oh, you and he.... -
Yes, Rela. He was the first man I became intimate with. I had been with several women before, but never... never with a man.
12.
Martin came to four shows in a row. Each night I could spot him out there in the audience, and feel his grief and desire for me. After the fourth show, I saw him hanging around the stage door, but when I came out, he turned away. I pretended to walk off, then, turned around the corner of a building and waited for him. Sure enough, he came after me. I stepped right in front of him. He was a bit taken aback by my abrupt confrontation, but I asked him to go for coffee with me. He glanced around, feeling very guilty. He need not have worried. I had extended a shield over both of us. Our feelings appeared... like two men, bored, nothing to do but go out for a drink before splitting up and heading home for bed. As it turned out, I took him home with me. That was the beginning of our three week relationship. Short, intense, and quite revealing.
I found out - from reading bits of thought he let slip - that he had temporarily been suspended from his work for reasons of emotional stress. His overseers had decided he needed to hear us sing, and got him tickets in hopes we might calm him down. They did not even know what he had been working on, so secret was his project - they were responsible only for his administrative arrangements, and in particular the personnel issues involved in his declining mental health. The minister of science alone was aware of what exactly Martin had been working on.
I feel Rela's thoughts moving in me again, then her quiet voice, asking me, - That is what you found out, isn't it, Jorak? The work he had been doing. That is the terrible secret you carry. He gave it to you. -
Yes, well, not gave it. He was very careful not to tell me. I don't think he knew I was telepathic, but he was still careful not to even think about it. He occasionally thought about his suspension, and orders to attend our concerts, but practically never about his actual work. Only in his dreams... as he slept in my bed after making love with me... and occasionally, just after he woke up from his nightmares, then I caught the echo of his real torment and worry. He was... a moral man, a brilliant physicist with a deep spiritual conviction, who had begun work on a project that the government found useful for... for its own reasons, and they caught him in the trap of power. As he progressed, agents from the ministry of knowledge had taught him how to cover his thoughts, but in his dreams the truth whispered to him, and I heard what he had to fear....
- Jorak.... -
Yes, Rela?
- How is it the ministry of knowledge didn't know of your relationship with him? -
Oh, they did. They do. Within a day or two I knew they would be onto me, once it was reported Martin was seeing me. So I went in to the ministry myself, and used my mother's name to see a deputy minister. The man was fully aware of my work in music, and agreed that I should take Martin on myself, to try and bring him back to some kind of... emotional stability. He also did not know what Martin's work was, only that one of the council of oligarchs - the minister of science - was his employer. The deputy minister didn't tell me this, of couse, but I caught him thinking rather loudly about it. Then he made his decision. I was to report only to him, the deputy, and no one else. The ministry would leave me alone with Martin. Once I learned from his dreams what he had been developing, I returned to the deputy minister and told him I needed to go out into the countryside to do some quiet field research on Martin's family history. Realizing there was no one in Calinova I dared tell what I had learned, I was already planning to take the information to some people I had mind-read in Tao Pablo. I asked for three months; the deputy minister said I could have two. I warned him I should not report until then. He reluctantly agreed.
- And that is how you know when they will come for you? -
Yes... I told Martin that I had to go visit my sisters in their country estate for a couple weeks, and then I just left and began walking toward Tao Pablo. Not at all the direction I was expected to go by anyone. But sooner or later the deputy minister will figure it out. They're very good at getting people to cooperate and give up their memories of who they saw go by, and there were hundreds of people who saw me leave the city in those first few miles. They just don't know what they actually saw - it's hanging there in their unconscious. But the ministry will find them and understand. And send a retrieval squad north after me.
Go to Chapter(s) Thirteen/Fourteen - Martin's Dreams