Blindfold. Kevin J. Anderson

animal.

      She worked to sharpen her truthsaying ability into a usable tool, then went inside Troy’s thoughts, tentative and skittish. She brushed the surface of his memories, unwilling to go deep—and there she found it sitting like a black stain on the top of his mind: a guilt, a fear.

      She probed deeper, feeling herself stiffen and grow even more wary, afraid to see—but it was her duty. She was a Truthsayer. She had to see.

      She looked into Troy’s memories for just a glance, a snatch, a vision—

      —and saw the sprawled body, saw the blood, heard the scream echoing in his mind. My God, there was so much blood.

      The body lying there in the dim orange light.

      The blood.

      The overpowering guilt.

      Kalliana froze, trembling until her shuddering became so violent she could not go deeper. She didn’t have the strength to probe for clearer details of the actual murder, but the answer was obvious to her. Too obvious.

      She pulled back, jerking her hands away and cried out in a hoarse gasp. “Guilty,” she said. “Guilty!”

      Troy’s face drained completely of blood. “No,” he whispered. “You’re wrong.”

      But Kalliana staggered away, hiding from him. She did not wish to see any more. “Guilty,” she said again, then fled into Guild Headquarters, to safety.

      vii

      Guild Master Tharion leaped to his feet as the crowd yelled.

      “That can’t be right,” he mouthed, but caught himself before saying it out loud, knowing the terrible consequences if he, the Guild Master, accused a Truthsayer of making a faulty judgment, of distorting the truth … of finding an innocent man guilty! That simply could not occur. On Atlas it would never happen. The Guild would fall apart if the faith of the public faltered.

      Qrista grasped his wrist and squeezed so tightly that her fingernails bit into his skin. Tharion looked down at her, his face devastated. How would he be able to remedy this? He couldn’t announce that he knew Kalliana’s judgment was in error. He couldn’t admit how he knew.

      “You can’t let this happen,” Qrista said, her words stabbing like knives.

      “I can’t do anything about it,” Tharion said. “Not at the moment.”

      He looked up to see a pair of familiar figures in the crowd: bald Maximillian, then Franz Dokken with his blond hair and ageless face. Both Dokken and his manservant looked bewildered by the outcome, and Tharion wondered what could have gone wrong. Had Kalliana intentionally given a false verdict? Was she involved in the black market sales somehow? He realized that someone in the Guild might be a link—but Kalliana? The possibilities swam in his mind, making him dizzy.

      He wanted to rush over to the landholder, to grab him by the collar and demand to know what had gone wrong, but Dokken and Maximillian looked as confused as Tharion.

      Troy should not have been found guilty—but now that the judgment had been pronounced in public with full ceremony, Tharion knew of no way he could rescind it. This was all so impossible!

      The uproar continued, and he looked up to see the elite guard grabbing a limp Troy Boren by the bindings on his wrists and hauling him toward the armored walls of the Guild Headquarters. A convicted murderer.

TRUTHSAYERS GUILD

CHAPTER

       10

      i

      The SkySword’s library contained a repository of knowledge from old Earth. Many of the old ship files were locked with long-forgotten military passwords and thus unavailable to members of the Guild. However, once the Truthsayers had learned to use the computer databases and gain access to files, they had begun keeping track of their own work, maintaining files of the cases they had determined.

      Kalliana sat alone inside the metal-walled library room. The consoles were discolored and scuffed, the swivel chairs worn by time. She gazed at the phosphor-filled screens as if they were deep wells into a universe of information. The reflection of her pinched face stared back at her, distracting her. She blinked to restore her concentration and tapped again on the keyboard, summoning the next list.

      The names were just a blur, one after another, accompanied by capsule summaries of their trials, the crimes of which they had been accused: thievery, vandalism, rape, murder, conspiracy, arson. The far column listed the most important data of all.

      Innocent.

      Innocent.

      Guilty.

      Innocent.

      Guilty.

      Guilty.

      Over two centuries, the colonists had come to Atlas in waves, ships full of wide-eyed colonists, exiled criminals, military forces, religious fanatics….

      According to transmissions, a new ship called the EarthDawn was on its way. Atlas had heard nothing from Earth in decades, not since the Pilgrim exiles had come forty-two years earlier, spouting tales of social upheaval and Armageddon. However, the Pilgrims were Millennial religious fanatics and saw the end of the world in everything—so the veracity of their news was in question. But without a doubt, something terrible had happened on distant Earth.

      Kalliana viewed another screen of data, working her way down through the years. She wasn’t searching for anything in particular, just a confirmation of the work the Guild had done, a salve for her doubts and the pain that so many guilty readings had brought her.

      After his trial Troy Boren had been sentenced to permanent exile up on OrbLab 2, the separate orbital processing facility where he would work in the dangerous Veritas-processing chambers. There had been an increasing number of disastrous accidents in the past few years, so the free-floating lab always needed new workers. Troy Boren would be shipped up on the space elevator and transported from the Platform to the orbital laboratory as soon as the proper contingent of guards could be arranged.

      More names flashed across the screen, but the words were blurred through her dry burning stare.

      Guilty.

      Guilty.

      Innocent.

      Guilty.

      So many names … for every bad one the Guild removed from society, Atlas seemed to breed another, and another….

      ii

      Kalliana went to one of the military briefing rooms that had been converted into a classroom, where Ysan was teaching (and playing with) seven young children. All were dressed in little white gowns and had the pale hair and complexions of those exposed to Veritas since they were embryos.

      Though visits to help train the children were part of Kalliana’s regular duties, she also wanted to divert herself, watching the innocence and exuberance of the young ones.

      “Ah, Kalliana!” Ysan said, climbing to his feet as the white-robed children scattered, giggling and laughing. He surrendered his maroon chair at the head of the meeting table. “Look who’s come to play with us, kids. Sit down, Kalliana. We were just doing the mind practice game.”

      “I don’t want to disturb you,” she said.

      “No, you’ll help us,” Ysan answered with a grin.

      “All right.” She flashed a small smile of her own, then sank