he could, what Doon eventually planned to do with him - having been betrayed once in the garden, he didn't plan to be betrayed again. But he couldn't twist around to see Boon's eyes, and whether that really stopped him from seeing into the man's mind or whether he simply couldn't control the gift well enough to see a person's thoughts without looking at him, Jas found nothing, could tell nothing.
They got back to the hospital room, which was still empty. Without a word Jas gingerly lifted himself out of the chair, and though he wanted to refuse Boon's help, he had to lean on the man as he made his way to the bed.
"Thirteen years old," Boon whispered. "Well, heaven knows you're ready for pilot school, anyway. They'll undoubtedly bend the rules and make you a pilot before you turn twenty - one - why they chose that age anyway is beyond me to fathom. You should go on two or three voyages, and then sometime, say a century or a hundred and twenty years from now, when you return to Capitol from a voyage, come to the Ministry of Colonization and ask for an appointment with me.
They'll know that they should wake me then. I'll look forward to seeing you again, my boy."
"Going back to sleep now, Mr. Doon?" Jas asked.
"In a few days. I've spent far too much time with you as it is, and I'm behind schedule on all my other work. You'd better be worth it."
"I hope I'm not."
"You like being excellent too well, Jas. You won't be able to stop yourself."
"I will not be part of your bloody vision!"
"How do you know that your resistance to me isn't exactly what I want from you?" Doon asked, amused.
In despair Jas threw himself back on the pillow, staring at the ceiling. There was no picture there. Through gritted teeth he said, "There isn't a damn thing I can do."
"You can trust me," Doon suggested. Jas laughed bitterly. Doon sighed. "Why don't you just look, and see who I am?"
"Look inside you?" Jas asked.
"Or are you afraid that if you knew me, you couldn't hate me anymore?"
And so Jas leaned up on his left elbow and looked behind Abner Doon's mind. It wasn't just a glance this time, as it had always been before. This time he looked deep, looked far, found the hidden places, found the lies and the lies behind them and finally came down to the truth. He held it in his mind - the basis on which Abner Doon thought, decided, acted - and was amazed. And then he stopped being amazed, and only with drew from Doon's mind. Painfully, reluctantly removed himself, and then, because he had left, he wept. Doon went away. Finally Jas slept.
When he woke, he remembered vague words that Doon had said, but whether Doon had actually said them or Jas had only dreamed them, he didn't know. He remembered them, though, and over the next few weeks, as bureaucrats processed him into the Service, tested him, trained him, as he consented to everything done to him, he stopped despising himself for the memory of Doon's words, and began, instead, to call them back, to listen to them again in his dreams, and in his daydreaming.
One day they came to him and told him he was ready for his first Service assignment. It was on the other side of Capitol, a long journey, and at the end of it he was assigned a tiny cubicle in a far corner of the officers' section of the command center. It was lowest in the hierarchy of privilege and perks, but it was a private room all the same, and in officers' quarters, too. And there was a full - length mirror on the wall.
"Ha," Jas said when he saw himself in it.
He was surprised to see that he was still only thirteen years old, still only a little over 165 centimeters in height, his main growth still ahead of him. Somehow during the last week he had stopped thinking of himself as a child. He was surprised at how young the face was. How slight the body.
He grinned, and the boy in the mirror smiled slightly back at him.
Then Jas turned and unpacked his few belongings, then began memorizing the list of command center rules and regulations that had been given him upon arrival. He was going to be the best damned