Daniel Keys Moran - A Tale of the Continuing Time 01 by Emerald Eyes

Author:Emerald Eyes
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf

McKann: What's it like to read another human's mind?

Castanaveras: Unpleasant.

McKann: Can't you be a little more specific than that?

Castanaveras: I'm not sure I can, not in any meaningful way. In the purest sense, it's not reading minds.

A better description would be to say that I look at the world through another person's eyes. While I do it I am both persons, both myself and whoever it is I am in touch with. I see through two pairs of eyes, think with two minds. If I read the mind of someone who is more intelligent than I am—and I have, on occasion— in that moment, I am capable of understanding perfectly things which generally are not within my grasp. Two minds, linked by one Gift.

McKann: You still haven't explained your use of the word "unpleasant."

Castanaveras: Do you know what the commonest of human emotions is?

McKann: I can guess.

Castanaveras: No you can't. Guilt. This vast regret for the things which they've done which are wrong. Those are the people whose minds it hurts to contact, and they are far and away in the majority. The percentage of people who don't suffer from guilt is so vanishingly small I'm tempted to say that such people are not sane.

Either they're not sane or the rest of us are not sane, and those of us who feel shame for things we've done outnumber those who don't by a vast number.

McKann: Isn't that one of the definitions of a sociopathic personality? The inability to feel guilt?

(Castanaveras is silent for a long moment.)

Castanaveras: I'm not referring to such people. There are sociopaths, of course, but not many, at least by percentage of the population. (Silence again.) Some people have—well, the best way I can say it is that they know themselves. They know who they are, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and they are at peace

with themselves. Those people, they don't do things which might make them uncomfortable. (Half smiles.) It must be nice.

McKann: I take it that you're not one of those.

Castanaveras: Me? Hell, no. I do things I regret all the time.

McKann: Really?

Castanaveras: Constantly.

They stood in sultry darkness beneath the shelter of the trees, a meter away from the brightly lit lawns.

Glowfloats bobbed restlessly ten meters in the air above them, casting a harsh and relentless light across the entire scene.

A fence ran all the way around the mansion except at the main entrance. Both live and automated guards—modified hunting waldos, as near as Carl could tell—patrolled at the single gate through which traffic could pass in and out of the

protected inner area. There was a well-lit stretch of lawn of nearly sixty meters between the edge of the trees and the fence.

I see no light trips.

Neither do I, said Carl. He focused with the sunglasses and zoomed in on the fence. There was a brightness above the fences that was so faint Carl was not certain he was not imagining it. Look, just above the fence.

I do not.. . ah. They have strung fineline above the fence.

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