For Love of Mother-Not - Alan Dean Foster [68]
“Oh, no?” Nyassa-lee ticked off her points on the fingers of one hand. “One, his statistical potential is alarming. Two, he’s sixteen, on the verge of full maturity. Three, he could cross into that at any time.”
“The girl,” Brora pointed out, “was considerably younger.”
“Agreed,” said Nyassa-lee, “but her abilities were precocious. Her advantage was surprise. This Number Twelve is developing slowly but with greater potential. He may be the kind who responds to pressure by reaching deeper into himself.”
“Maybe,” Brora said thoughtfully, “but we have no proof of it, nor does his profile predict anything of the sort.”
“Then how do you square that,” she responded, “with the fact that he has by himself—”
“He’s not by himself,” Brora interrupted her. “That woman from the lodge was helping him out on the lake.”
“Was helping him. She didn’t help him get to that point. He followed us all the way to that lake on his own, without any kind of external assistance. To me that indicates the accelerated development of a Talent we’d better beware of.”
“All the more reason,” Haithness said angrily, slapping the table with one palm, “why we must push ahead with our plan!”
“I don’t know,” Nyassa-lee murmured, unconvinced.
“Do you not agree,” Haithness countered, forcing herself to restrain her temper, “that if the operation is a success we stand a good chance of accomplishing our goal as regards outside manipulation of the subject?”
“Possibly,” Nyassa-lee conceded.
“Why just ‘possibly’? Do you doubt the emotional bond?”
“That’s not what concerns me. Suppose, just suppose, that because his potential is still undeveloped, he has no conscious control of it?”
“What are you saying?” Brora asked.
She leaned intently over the table. “With the girl Mahnahmi we knew where we stood, once she’d revealed herself. Unfortunately, that knowledge came as a surprise to us, and too late to counteract. We’ve no idea where we stand vis-à-vis this subject’s Talents. Suppose that, despite the emotional bond, pressure and fear conspire to release his potential regardless of his surface feelings? Statistically, the subject is a walking bomb that may not be capable or mature enough to control itself. That’s what worries me, Haithness. The emotional bond may be sufficient to control his conscious self. The unpredictable part of him may react violently in spite of it.”
“We cannot abandon our hopes and work on so slim a supposition, one that we have no solid facts to support,” Haithness insisted. “Besides, the subject is sixteen. If anything, he should have much more control over himself than the girl did.”
“I know, I know,” Nyassa-lee muttered unhappily. “Everything you say is true, Haithness, yet I can’t help worrying. In any case, I’m outvoted.”
“That you are,” the tall woman said after a questioning glance at Brora. “And if Cruachan were here with us, you know he’d vote to proceed too.”
“I suppose.” Nyassa-lee smiled thinly. “I worry too much. Brora, are you sure you can handle the implant?”
He nodded. “I haven’t done one in some time, but the old skills remain. It requires patience more than anything else. You remember. As to possible unpredictable results, failure, well”—he smiled—“we’re all condemned already. One more little outrage perpetrated against society’s archaic laws can’t harm us one way or the other if we fail here.”
Off in a nearby corner, Mother Mastiff sat in a chair, hands clasped in her lap, and listened. She was not bound. There was no reason to tie her, and she knew why as well as her captors. There was nowhere to run. She was in excellent condition for a woman her age, but she had had a good view of the modest complex of deceptive stone and wood structures as the skimmer had landed. Thousands of square kilometers of damp, hostile forest lay between the place she had been brought to and the familiar confines of Drallar. She was no more likely to steal a vehicle than she was to turn twenty again.
She wondered what poor Flinx