Betrayals by Sharon Green Page A

a dozen ordinary people in and around this city who know the Five by sight, and that’s who would find them: ordinary people. Those who would be able to identify the bodies won’t even hear about the incident-assuming the bodies are found at all.”
    “And even if they are, we’ll have been Seated by then,” Selendi said with the satisfaction they all obviously felt. “We’ll also have made good progress in ridding ourselves of anyone who might be willing to use the discovery against us, so we’ll be doubly protected. When are we going to begin, and what do you have planned for Zolind?”
    “I have something rather… complex in mind for our friend Zolind, and we’ll begin about an hour before dinnertime,” Kambil replied, letting his own satisfaction show through. “He always has dinner guests, which means our little production will have an adequate audience. I’ll tell you the plan, and then you can all criticize it for flaws.”
    “Not all of us, happily,” Homin disagreed rather dryly. “Poor Delin over there won’t be criticizing or complaining ever again, for which I’m extremely grateful. If you hadn’t put him under your control, I’m convinced he would have soon begun to whine.”
    “What do you mean, ‘would have’?” Bron countered with a snort. “If he wasn’t whining about being left out of things, I’ve never heard the sound. This way we have his strength and talent in the Blending, but otherwise don’t have to put up with his feebleminded insanity. So what are we going to be doing to Zolind?”
    Kambil leaned forward and told them, all the while marveling at the artificial personalities he and his grandmother had imposed on the three. The idea of doing that had been Grammi’s, and it had come as a mild surprise that she’d perfected the technique on Kambil’s father, who was her son. She’d begun her practice on her own husband, and when she’d accidentally ruined his mind had had to arrange his death. A different accident had made the death of her daughter-in-law also necessary, but by the time she worked on her son, she knew all the trouble spots which had to be avoided.
    And Kambil had found the technique ridiculously easy to work with when they’d done his three Blendingmates. Their dysfunctional personalities had been pushed aside and overshadowed by calm, rational pseudo-egos, none of which could really be considered fully normal, but ones which were easily led and manipulated. The three subjects loved what they called their new selves, of course; what they had no idea about was the fact that they weren’t permitted to do anything but love them.
    Their ability to function in the group had been increased, though, so Kambil was serious about consulting their opinions. The four of them discussed Zolind’s coming demise for quite some time, until Kambil announced that he’d arranged for a late-afternoon bite to eat. The interim meal would hold them until they returned to the house, and then they would dine long and well.
    They took Delin along to eat as well, of course, and Kambil found himself regretting all over again that it hadn’t been possible to adjust the man the way the others had been adjusted. He had to be kept in a sort of nonthinking limbo most of the time, and then had to be controlled carefully when his talent was needed. It was a lot of extra effort that should have been unnecessary—except for the deeply twisted thing Delhi’s mind had been turned into. Kambil was beginning to nurse almost as much resentment against Delin’s father as Delin felt….
    But simple revenge would have to wait until more pressing matters were attended to. Kambil sat back at the end of the meal to study his people, for the most part satisfied with what he’d accomplished. That excuse his father had been given about why he ’d been put into a Blending … Despite the care Kambil usually took to keep from frightening those he came in contact with, someone had seen through the