Living with the Dead
Page 27

The hum of the generator was the first thing Adele heard. A few more steps and the raucous shouts and musical sound effects of a cartoon seeped through the next door. Tom and Jerry, Adele guessed. That was Thom's favorite.
When she opened the final door, it was still almost dark. They kept the lights low to save generator fuel. The seers didn't complain. They'd never known anything brighter, and would scream in pain if they stepped into the sunlight. Or Thom and Melvin would. For the third, Martha, the world was eternally dark.
Martha's crib lay just inside the door. She reminded Adele of the grubs she'd sometimes turned up doing garden work, white and wriggling, blind and limbless. Martha didn't wriggle much – only when her diaper was dirty and starting to chafe, and she'd twist and mewl, the loudest sound she could make, her white face thrashing back and forth, smooth pits where her eyes should have been. If she got agitated enough, she'd dislodge her feeding tube. When Adele had been sentenced to her month caring for the seers, she'd learned to check Martha regularly or she'd have an extra week tacked on if someone needed to reinsert the tube.
Inbreeding made stronger clairvoyants, but every now and then, a seer was born – a very powerful, deformed clairvoyant. To the kumpania, they were revered as gifts from the gods... just not a gift they cared to be blessed with too often. A seer required constant medical care, and the kumpania didn't need more than two or three good ones. Seers were like dishwashing machines, Niko had explained. Having a couple lightened the kumpania's workload immensely.
More than that would be an unnecessary expense.
Martha's albinism was one known condition with seers. As for her missing limbs and eyes, Martha's mother had blamed the drugs she'd been taking for morning sickness, their effect made worse by a genetic predisposition to mutations. Or so Niko had told Adele when he brought her down here. She didn't care about the reason for Martha's condition. All that interested Adele was that this slug was the most powerful clairvoyant in the kumpania.
Unlike the other two seers, Martha's brain was unaffected by her condition. Adele had thought about that – what it would be like to spend your life in a crib, sightless, limbless, unable to communicate except through visions.
She'd mentioned that to her kirvi, Lizette – the drone who raised Adele after her mother sold her to the kumpania.
Lizette had held Adele and rocked her and comforted her, talking about pity and empathy and the unknowable will of the gods. Adele had listened, and thought Lizette a fool. She didn't feel anything for Martha. No more than she felt for Lizette, smothered in her sleep when she outlived her usefulness.
Her only interest in Martha was in how she might access the powers of that trapped mind, but that secret belonged to the phuri. That was how they guarded themselves against ambitious younger members. Only they could use the seers.
Or so they thought.
She glanced at Melvin, sitting in one recliner, his vacant eyes fixed on the flickering colors of the cartoon. Veggie Boy, she called him, though not in front of anyone. Niko said Melvin was severely mentally retarded. And he wasn't a boy, but a man in his thirties. He looked like a child, though, with his hairless plump body, and his round, smooth, wide-eyed face.
Other than the hairlessness, the brain damage was his only birth defect, but it also made him the weakest of the seers. Adele had heard the phuri debate Melvin's ongoing care, whether he was enough of an asset to warrant keeping alive. But his father was Niko, and while they were supposed to abandon and disavow their blood relations to the seers and drones, as long as Niko lived, so would Melvin.
" 'Dele..."
Adele turned to Thom, who watched her with a sloppy smile, his blue eyes glowing with doglike devotion. Just like his brother.
Thom was a year older than Colm, who knew nothing of his sibling. Colm was supposed to have been introduced to the seers at thirteen, but Neala had convinced Niko that under the circumstances, he should wait a few more years. He needed more maturity to prepare for the shock. He was too sensitive, Neala said, blaming his father's genes. Rhys had been a durjardo – an outsider like Adele – who'd introduced fresh blood into the kumpania. It hadn't worked with Thom, but at least they'd gotten a seer out of it.
When Colm and Thom met, there would be no way for Neala to hide who Thom was. His features were so like his brother's, he could be his reflection... viewed through a funhouse mirror.
 
Thom had an oversized head, bulging and misshapen. His chair was specially fitted with a contoured headrest to support it. Unlike the other two seers, Thom could leave his seat, though he needed the help of a walker, as his legs were shrunken and twisted.
He was what Lizette had called "slow." But he wasn't nearly as bad as Veggie Boy and could communicate, though he usually chose not to. The phuri had high hopes for Thom. At sixteen, he was already a more powerful clairvoyant than Niko. In a few years, he might even surpass Martha.
Being able to communicate through speech made him already more useful than Martha. There was no real secret to using his powers. If he granted a clairvoyant access, they could use him. But getting that permission was harder than it might seem.
Here was where Thom and Colm differed. Colm tripped over his feet trying to help others. Thom was mule-stubborn, and when pushed where he didn't want to go, he'd throw a tantrum, locking down his powers, refusing access to everyone.
Fortunately for Adele, though, she'd discovered that Colm and Thom shared something else in common, though it was probably less related to genetics than to teenage hormones. The moment she stepped into view, Thom's sweatpants tented.
She walked over and bent to rub him through the fabric. He made a noise in his throat, like the rough purr of a cat, again reminding her of his brother.
"How are you today, sweetie?" she asked. "Miss me?"
He arched his hips in answer and reached for her shirt front, balling it in his fist and lifting.
She laughed and slapped his hand away. "Not yet."
The purr hardened to a snarl, Thom's eyes narrowing.
"Oh, all right," she said. "Just a little."
She slid her hand into his pants and stroked him. He closed his eyes, that rough purr returning. After a minute, she dropped her fingers to his balls and fondled them.
"Please, sweetie? I really need your help."
One blue eye opened, his lips curving in a smug smile. Thom might be slow, but he had an animal cunning and an ego his little brother lacked. She had to deal fairly with him and let him know how special he was, how much she needed his help and how grateful she'd be for it.