The Seeker

by Isobelle Carmody

  That night, I had a nightmare. Much as in the dream Cameo had once told me about, I was being pursued through the darkness by something terrible that hungered for me. When I mentioned it to Matthew, he gave me a haunted look and said he had had a similar nightmare, only it was not him being pursued but Cameo while he stood by helplessly.

  Dameon said nothing, but it was obvious from the shadows under his eyes that he was sleeping badly, too, even if he had not had nightmares. I asked him if his empathy could give us any insight into what was happening.

  “I don’t perceive others’ emotions as clearly as you and Matthew can hear their thoughts. Empathy is much hazier. I can sometimes even project feelings onto another and have tried to send calmness and serenity to Cameo, but her fear is like a wall I cannot surmount.”

  “Fear of the doctor?” I asked.

  “Fear of something. I cannot say what,” Dameon said, frowning.

  Two nights later, Cameo was moved into my room, an extra bed having been put in to accommodate her. The reasons given were that a new group of Misfits would soon be arriving and extensive repairs were to be carried out in some areas of Obernewtyn before wintertime. Whether this was true or not, I was glad of the opportunity to spend more time with her.

  On her first night, I was awakened by her scream. Sitting upright, I stared across at Cameo writhing in her bed. Then I looked in astonishment at the others, who were all still soundly asleep. Finally I realized that I had heard a mental scream, which I alone had been capable of receiving. I probed the others lightly to make sure they were truly asleep before getting up and padding across the cold floor.

  Cameo was lying with her back to me now, whimpering softly. The moon fell across her pillow. It gleamed whitely in the light, but I could not see her face. She moved sharply and muttered something in an odd, deep voice. It didn’t sound like her at all, and the queer thought came to me that it wasn’t Cameo lying there, but some other person with soft blond hair.

  She moaned and rolled over, and I could see of course it was Cameo. I sagged against the side of her bed, grinning like an idiot at my stupid fright. Then her eyes opened and my grin froze, for the eyes looking out of Cameo’s face were the wrong color! They were a hot, sickly ocher hue and full of amusement.

  “You’ll never find it,” she rasped in that same deep, strange voice.

  I was petrified, but then I realized she was not actually speaking to me. She was in a trance, and it struck me that I might be able to question her in this state.

  “Tell me about the doctor?” I asked softly after checking the others still slept. “What does he do to you?”

  “Find it if you can. I’ll not show you,” said Cameo in the unfamiliar voice. She gave a sneering old woman’s cackle of laughter.

  I frowned. Her answer made no sense. Looking into her eyes, I wondered with a chill if a demon had taken possession of her. Louis insisted there were no such things, but seeing Cameo transformed like this, I wasn’t so sure. All at once, she closed her eyes and dropped into a sound sleep. Returning to my own bed, I had to pinch myself to make sure I hadn’t dreamed the whole thing.

  “Poor Cameo,” Dameon said the next day. “But I do not know what we can do to help her.”

  “Do you think a sleep drug would help, if we can manage to get some?” I suggested.

  Dameon said he did not think sleep drugs were the answer. “She would still dream,” he said. “We have to find out why she is having so many nightmares and take away whatever is causing them.”

  That brought us back to the doctor’s treatments, but how could we stop them when we did not even know what they were? It occurred to me that night, when Ariel had again led Cameo away, that I could enter his mind. He might not know much, but he would surely know something.

  But the next morning, Ariel did not take us to the farms as he usually did. When I asked where he was, one of the girls whispered that three people had tried to escape the previous night, and he was involved in the search. Later I heard the Norselander twins had been captured and were now locked up in cells beneath Obernewtyn. I was not surprised that they had attempted to escape. Had I not heard them plotting to do so? But I wondered who the other person was who had succeeded in getting away, and I hoped he or she would manage it unscathed, for it came to me that the only way to look after Cameo might be for us to escape with her.

  Dameon and Matthew were as interested as I was in the identity of the escaped Misfit, and we spent midmeal and nightmeal that day speculating on who it might be.

  Afterward, when I returned to my room, I found Cameo alone, sitting on her bed. Going to sit beside her, I asked her gently where she had been the previous night. She lifted her head as if it were too heavy for the slender stalk of her neck and said dully that she had been ill. I asked who had been treating her, but she only shrugged, though it seemed to me the shrug was as much a shudder as anything else. Then she burst into tears, and holding her, it occurred to me that sooner or later, her mind would crumble under the pressure of what was being done to her.

  “I’m so scared,” she whispered suddenly, turning her tearstained face to me. “It didn’t seem so awful at all when I came here. Not like I expected it to be. But now I keep dreaming of things chasing me and of an old lady laughing.” That sounded like the persona that I had seen during her trance, and I wondered if the blocks were beginning to break down. I debated whether to press her but decided against it, because she looked so ill and exhausted.

  The next morning, at firstmeal, I heard someone ask if Selmar had been caught. She had been missing from her bed for more than a week, and I had assumed she had been moved to another room or had been wandering at night as she had been wont to do.

  “Caught?” I asked.

  “Haven’t you heard?” said the girl beside me. “She was with the twins when they tried to escape, but she got away.”

  It had never occurred to me that a defective might be the unknown escaped Misfit. Astonished at this news, it was a moment before I turned to Cameo, who had come to the meal with me. Her face had gone the color of dirty soap, and I wondered why the news that Selmar had escaped Obernewtyn provoked such a look of horror. Looking down at my food, I remembered suddenly what Louis Larkin had said about Selmar being different when she first came to Obernewtyn, and a terrible idea formed in my mind. What if the thing that had turned Selmar into a defective was the doctor’s treatments? I was suddenly determined to question Louis about Selmar, and if he would not answer me willingly, then I would enter his mind and find out for myself what had happened to her.

  I was shocked when Louis flew into a rage the moment I mentioned Selmar’s name. He ordered me out of the milking barn, so there was no opportunity to probe him. I had simply to slink away, wondering why he reacted so violently. Only later did it occur to me that he had done so because he knew Selmar had escaped and feared for her. Hadn’t there been real fondness in his voice when he had mentioned her before? Perhaps before she had become defective, they had been friends.

  That night, no one knew whether or not Selmar had been caught, but there was a rumor that the twins were being sent to one of the remote Councilfarms that dealt with the cleansing of whitestick. It was no less of a death sentence that if they had been ordered burnt.

  Ariel’s absence continued, and more than once I heard it whispered that he was not just involved in the search for Selmar but was leading it. One boy told me that Ariel and his dogs—wolves, really—always chased anyone who ran off. And he always caught them. Remembering Selmar’s reaction to Ariel, I pitied her, though I could hardly credit that he would use wolves to hunt her, for it was said that, unlike dogs, they would not be stayed from a kill.

  I decided I would definitely deep-probe Ariel when he next showed himself. I would have tried again with Louis Larkin, but when Rushton came for us at the maze gate the next day, he said coolly that I had offended the old man and he had refused to have me in the milking barn. Therefore I would be mucking out sta
bles that day. Rushton seemed to relish giving me the reassignment, and a cold anger filled me. I decided I would probe him instead. He might only be the farm overseer, but as such he might know something about the hunt for Selmar if dogs were used.

  Then I thought of Sharna, and my heart quickened, for he might know something of these dogs Ariel was supposed to be using. But Sharna was not in the stables, and Rushton did not linger, so in a moment, I was alone. Even the horses had already been led out. In spite of everything, it was delicious to be entirely alone, and I lowered my shield and loosened my thoughts to let them fly and hover. It felt odd, since I had not done this since I was a child in Rangorn, and only ever when I was alone, roaming in the fields and on the edge of the forest, for to send out my thoughts in this way meant my body would remain motionless as a doll until I returned to it.

  I felt almost light-headed as my mind floated free of my body; waves of thought and impressions washed over me. They came from every corner of the stable, flitting like butterflies, drifting like peat smoke. Idle thoughts about how to saddle a horse that had never been ridden or what to do with a fevered mare, a fleeting thought about a bitter wintertime when hundreds of animals had died. The barn was alive with memories now that I had opened myself to receive the imprints they had made. There was no telling how long the impression of a thought might last. It depended on the thinker and the time and the place and a dozen other things.

  Remembering my intention to probe Rushton, I raised his image in my thoughts, seeking his mind in particular. The beauty of probing him at a distance was that even if he felt something, he would not associate it with me. But I would be very careful and reach only into the upper levels of his mind.

  I pushed my thoughts farther afield, striving out to where Misfits were picking fruit, and beyond to where livestock grazed in far fields, into every corner of the farms. I was ranging too widely now to receive any individual thoughts; it was like traveling through a pool and getting deeper and deeper without ever touching the bottom.

  I went out beyond Obernewtyn, forgetting Rushton and wondering how far I could go. If it was possible to go beyond the mountains, I might be able to reach Maruman. But before I could try, something brushed against my mind.

  I recoiled, but curiosity made me withdraw only a little way. Foolishly, I ventured near again, and again my thoughts touched something. It was not a mind but some sort of force. I touched it again and felt it squirm. Then it reached out and enveloped me. Suddenly I was afraid. I began to withdraw, but the force grew stronger and held me tightly. Frantically, I pulled back, but whatever the force was that I had disturbed began to drive me back toward my own body. I fought, but I was like a leaf in a storm. I became aware of the nearness of my body. Dimly I registered that I had fallen to my knees.

  Inexorably, I was forced into my body, and to my horror, it was my body as well as my mind that was now trapped. I could not move a muscle! A drumming sounded in my ears, and a wave of new fright washed over me when I realized that the force was summoning my body.

  With a sob, I felt my legs tremble. Against my will, I began to walk stiffly toward the open door of the stable.

  “No!” I screamed, but inwardly, since not even my mouth would respond to my will.

  Then I sensed another mind. It was not like the mindless force that had taken hold of me. It was human, but there was something strange about it, too. But any curiosity I might have felt was swamped by my terror.

  “O reaching girlmind … who?”

  This other mind was far stronger than Matthew’s, but there was something disjointed about it, as if a voice spoke in an echoing chamber. I felt the cool touch of the other mind, and its tendrils meshed gently with mine. Instinctively, I fought free of its embrace, knowing that such a connection would reveal me utterly to that unknown mind. Yet in that moment I had sensed its desire to help me.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “Trust me, sistermind. What is your name? My friends and I have sensed you before.”

  I struggled for a moment in the viselike grip of the inhuman force and realized I was about to walk out into the open.

  “Help me!” I cried to the other.

  “Perhaps if we help, you will trust. You are strong. But the machine that holds you is too strong for you to fight. Together we will be stronger. Meld with me, and when I signal, pull away as hard as you can. The machine has no mind to make a decision. It will not realize that to divide is to conquer.”

  “I can’t meld,” I said desperately, fearing the revelation that would result almost as much as I feared the terrible force that held my mind and drew my body forward.

  “You must,” said the othermind urgently.

  I was in the doorway now, and I was suddenly fearful that whoever controlled the force that had taken hold of me was determined to make me reveal who I was. Terror gave me strength, and I swayed uncertainly, neither moving forward nor back as I battled the force with every bit of strength I could muster.

  It was not enough. I stepped out into the sunlight.

  “I will meld,” I agreed in desperation. The othermind moved forward at once, and I felt a great desire to simply surrender to those soft tendrils. But as if it knew my fear of a deeper melding, the othermind held itself rigidly away from the center of my thoughts.

  “Now!” it called, and we began a terrific tug-of-war. As predicted, the machine, if such it was, tried to keep us both but did not have the strength. The moment it slid off me, I slammed a shield into place.

  I staggered back inside the stables, appalled to discover the extent of my weakness. My face dripped with perspiration, and I wiped it hastily on my sleeve.

  A machine able to exert a force that could capture a mind! I was astounded and frightened, and not only because someone was apparently using a forbidden Beforetime device. It was the knowledge that whoever was using it might know about people like Matthew and me. And so, I thought, must the Oldtimers who had created such a machine. But I dismissed that notion. My abilities, like Matthew’s and Dameon’s, were Misfit abilities that had arisen from the poisons of the Great White.

  My more immediate concern was the identity of the strange othermind that had helped me.

  There was nothing to do but to get on with mucking out the stables, and I did so slowly, because the battle with the machine had drained me. I cursed the stupidity that had led me to farseek. I would not dare attempt it again. In fact, I was now too frightened to use any but the most basic powers, for perhaps any use of my abilities would draw that malevolent force to me again. And the othermind might not be there to rescue me a second time.

  My vague notion of escape grew into a determination to get away from Obernewtyn and all of its mysteries and dangers. Cameo must come, and Dameon and Matthew. I knew of no other I cared to trust. Fleetingly, I thought of my rescuer. A man, I thought, but there was no way to contact him without arousing the machine. Anyway, he seemed smart and strong enough to take care of himself, and he had spoken of friends, so he was not alone.

  Learning what had happened over midmeal, and agog with delight to hear of the othermind, Matthew disagreed. “If we really are going to escape, yer bound to take him an’ his friends, too. After all, he saved ye.”

  “There is no way to learn who they are with that machine ready to catch any probe,” I said.

  “There must be some way,” he insisted, entranced with the idea of my gallant rescuer.

  I was less romantic. “He might not even want to leave. We don’t know if he is a Misfit or if he is at Obernewtyn. I’m not even really sure it’s a he. And the whole thing might have been a trap.”

  “Ungrateful Elspethelf,” Matthew sputtered into thought.

  “He helped me, and I am grateful he saved my life,” I conceded hastily, forestalling one of Matthew’s emotive lectures. “Which is why I am not going to throw it away trying to learn who he is. That would be truly ungrateful.”

  “Speaking of help,” Dameon interjected quiet
ly, “I have been thinking. If you really intend to escape, you should not take me. I would slow you down. And it is not so bad for me here.”

  “Of course yer comin’ with us!” Matthew said firmly. “We’ve taken yer blindness into account.”

  Dameon smiled at his friend sadly. “Sometimes I think you have more heart than sense. Most times,” he corrected comically, and we all laughed. Then Dameon grew serious again. “Well, if I am to come, then I will speak. This is a dead quest from the start if it is not planned carefully. Have you thought what will happen if we do get away? We have no Certificates, and we will stand out wherever we go.”

  I stared at him. I had not thought beyond escape, but he was right. We had to plan everything, otherwise we would find ourselves condemned to whitestick cleansing.

  “What about dressing up as gypsies?” Dameon said.

  “Wonderful!” I cried, for gypsies did not have Normalcy Certificates, and they moved constantly about the Land.

  Suddenly Matthew stiffened, looking over my shoulder. “Look out. It is our surly friend, the overseer.” I turned my head slightly to see that he was talking with another Misfit.

  “He takes an interest in us,” Dameon said softly, obviously empathising the overseer as he came closer. “He does not like what he sees.”

  “Maybe he’s only interested in one of us,” Matthew muttered with a sly glance in my direction.

  Catching the gist of his thoughts, I scowled. “Don’t be an idiot,” I snapped. Rushton made no pretense of his dislike of me.

  “He’s coming over,” Matthew said, and we all munched our food casually.

  “You! Elspeth. I have a job for you,” Rushton called. Nodding to the others, I got to my feet and went to the waiting overseer. I could not make out his expression, because the sun was behind him. He led me away.