“Here’s the syringe. Doctor,” another voice said. “It’s fully loaded.”
Frantically, Hector tried to brush the cobwebs from his mind. Concentrate on Acquatainia, he told himself. Concentrate! But he could hear the footsteps approaching his booth.
And then his mind seemed to explode. His whole body wrenched violently with a flood of alien thought pouring through him.
One moment Odal was sitting in the Acquatainian dueling machine, thinking about Geri Dulaq. An instant later he knew he was in Kerak, and someone else was in the dueling machine with himHector! His mind was open and Odal could look deep. … A flash like a supernova explosion rocked Odal’s every fiber. Two minds exposed to each other, fully, amplified and cross-linked by the circuits of the machine, fused together inescapably. Every nerve and muscle in both their bodies arched as though a hundred thousand volts of electricity were shooting through them.
Odal1 Hector realized. He could see into Odal’s mind s if it were his own. In a strange, double-visioned sort of way, he was Odal … himself and Odal, both at the same time. And Odal, sharing Hector’s mind, became Hector.
Hector saw long files of cadets marching wearily in heavy gray uniforms, felt the weight of the lumpy field packs on their backs, sweated under the scorching sun.
Odal felt the thriU of a boy’s first sight of a star ship as it floated magnificently in orbit.
Now Hector was running through the narrow streets of an ancient town, running with a dozen other teenagers in brown uniforms, wielding clubs, shouting in the night shadows, smashing windows on certain shops and homes where a special symbol had been crudely painted only a few minutes earlier. And if anyone came outside to protest, they smashed him, too.