| Excerpt
MindFlight
By Stephen Goldin
PART I: EARTH
Chapter
One
Alain Cheney sat quietly in the spaceliner’s passenger lounge, face
buried in his hands. He caressed his forehead delicately with his
fingers, as though by massaging the skin outside his skull he could ease
the pulsing pain growing within it. His eyes were closed against the
bright light of the room, and he had intentionally slowed his breathing
down to a steady, rhythmic pattern to help him cope with the pain.
There was a presence approaching him. With a minimum of mental exertion,
Alain could read that it was a ship’s steward who had noticed this one
passenger left sitting in the lounge. As the man came nearer, a picture
of conflicting emotions grew sharper in Alain’s mind. The steward was
concerned because the passenger was not looking well; he was also
annoyed because he’d hoped to leave the ship early, and this
complication could conceivably delay his departure.
As he came within what he considered acceptable limits, the steward
spoke aloud. “Are you all right, sir?”
Alain lifted his head and opened his eyes. He looked straight into the
man’s face and tried to project both confidence and normality. “Yes,
fine, thank you.”
“Almost everyone else has disembarked, sir.” Assured now that the
passenger was not ill, the steward’s mood shifted subtly over to
impatience. As an afterthought he added, “Were you needing any further
services?”
“No, I…I just wanted a few last moments here in the lounge before
leaving. It was such a nice trip I wanted to store up my memories of it
by sitting here a while longer. I hope I’m not inconveniencing you.”
“Oh no, sir, not at all,” the steward said, while all his thoughts
contradicted his words. This was an inconvenience, and the sooner the
passenger left, the better the steward would like it.
“I was just about finished anyway,” Alain said, standing up. The calm of
the room had been shattered for him; the steward would now be hovering
over him constantly with subtle hints he should be on his way. The
mental oppressiveness would only make his condition worse. He might as
well leave and face the inevitable crush outside.
Alain took one last look around the lounge. He had spent a great deal of
time here on the journey from Leone to Earth. Even though the ship had
carried nearly a hundred people, comparatively few of them were ever in
the lounge at any given moment, which meant the number of minds pressing
onto his own would be minimal. He had spent most of the voyage staring
into the infinite blackness of space, letting all sensations go numb and
reveling in the oblivion the enormous viewscreens provided.
Now those same viewscreens merely exhibited the hell waiting for him
outside the ship’s hull: Vandenberg Spaceport, Earth—a seething mass of
humanity in perpetual Brownian movement down the scrubbed tile
corridors. It was hard for him to think of Earth as “home” any more.
He’d spent so little of his adult life here, that he felt almost a
stranger to its ways.
The steward’s relief was almost tangible as Alain left the lounge and
began walking down the halls to the main hatch. There would normally
have been a smartly dressed attendant standing at the doorway to wish
him goodbye, but the ship had been aground so long that the attendant
had left the post; maintenance crews were now swarming over the ship,
checking out its condition after its trip through interstellar space,
and preparing it for its next voyage in a couple of days. The mechanics
paid scant attention as Alain walked out the hatchway and started down
the ramp toward the customs building.
Leaving the ship was like a physical blow; every step down the ramp was
a hammer pounding at his skull. Ahead of him and through those
ominous double doors were people—hundreds, if not thousands, of
them—each thinking individual thoughts and broadcasting them randomly
into the air. To Alain Cheney, a trained telepath, it was a raucous
shouting that could not be stopped by simply plugging his ears.
Most telepaths used drugs to dull their
powers and drown out background “noises.” Knowing that he was landing on
Earth, an overcrowded world, Alain had downed two extra trimethaline
capsules earlier that morning, but his precautions seemed inadequate
now. Even trimethaline did not help much these days.
By the time he reached the foot of the ramp, the telepathic din was a
surf pounding at his skull. He paused, bracing himself for the ordeal to
follow, then pushed open the doors and entered. The audible clamor only
added to the psychic Babel beating on his brain. Mobs of people pushed
through the large open chamber before him, shoving and shouting in
impersonal confusion. Loudspeakers blared incoherently from the low
ceiling, and no one paid them the slightest attention. Vidicams in the
upper corners scanned the scene coldly, noting any and all possible
transgressions. Guards armed with variable-speed Horgan z‑beam repeaters
were stationed every few meters throughout the throng to correct any
situations the vidicams spotted.
There were more vidicams and guards than he’d ever seen here before, he
noted as he pushed his way through the riots of colors and the stench of
all the mingled bodies. Nearly twice as many. Things must be tight,
he thought. Maybe I should be glad I don’t live here.
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