Hair Power

by Piers Anthony

Then she saw the fin again, this time heading directly for Gena.

  “You bastard!” Quiti swore. She doubled her stroke, accelerating at a rate that surprised her, and swam to intercept the shark. She grabbed at its tail.

  The shark whipped its head back to bite her. This time she punched it in the snoot. It was no token blow; she felt the cartilage of the shark’s face crushing under the impact. It was hurting. Again it fled.

  This time it did not return.

  “I saw that,” Gena said. “You punched it out.”

  “It annoyed me. I had warned it.”

  “I guess you did. You are one tough girl.”

  So it seemed.

  They left the water, showered in the facility to get the salt and sand off, and returned to the rig. “For some reason I am no longer as keen on swimming as I was,” Quiti said.

  “Me neither. Can’t think why.”

  Gena found a citrus fruit load to haul to Oklahoma. Her rig was not refrigerated, but ice would suffice for this if they didn’t dally. She got loaded and they set off.

  The first night out they had to park near a forest. As they remained parked, Quiti perked up her head. “I smell a shark fin.”

  “Your hair’s alert,” Gena said. “Out here there’s a small chance it could be marauding bears, and a big chance it could be men.”

  Quiti turned her head. “Men. They’ve got us surrounded. Maybe six of them. I think they know we’re young women; the sex on their minds is coming through strongly.”

  “Okay, we’ve got maybe three choices,” Gena said. “One is to crank up the rig and hightail it out of here right now.”

  “And maybe run a couple of them over in the process,” Quiti said. “That would be manslaughter. I’m not up to it. They—their minds indicate they’re not bad men, just hot for sex. They actually think women say no just for appearances; that they really want it just as much as the men do. They’re in denial, at least about sex.”

  “A chronic state, with men.”

  “Damned if I want to say no no and have them hear yes yes.”

  “Two: give it to them, so they’ll go away. I could do it while you hide.”

  Six lusty men? Quiti continued to pick up on the surrounding minds. “They know there are two of us, and I’m the one they want more.”

  “Three: use one of your tricks to scare them off.”

  Quiti smiled. “I think that will do.”

  They quickly rehearsed their plan. Then they got out of the truck, leaving its parking lights on so that they could be seen. More important, so that the men closing in on them could also be seen. Quiti oriented on each in turn, planting subtle effects.

  The men came, surrounding the cab. “Hi there, sweethearts!” one called. “Looking for a good time?”

  “Maybe,” Gena said. “Come a little closer, dearies, so we can see what you’ve got.”

  “We’ve got this,” the man said, opening his pants to reveal a standing erection.

  Gena glanced at Quiti. “What do you think? Will he do?”

  “He looks full of blood.”

  “Let’s get out of these confining clothes. Can’t vamp properly in them.”

  They quickly stripped naked, knowing the effect it was having on the men. Their minds were wide open to suggestion.

  “Are we ready to vamp, sister?” Gena asked Quiti.

  “More than ready. I’m hungry as hell.”

  “Then let’s feast tonight!”

  The men were so eager they were practically drooling. Now they all had their members out.

  Quiti let loose with her illusions. Suddenly the two women were sprouting fangs and wings.

  “Vampires!” a man exclaimed.

  “Vamps,” Gena agreed. “Let me at you, you luscious piece of meat!”

  The two women advanced on the men. The men retreated.

  “Don’t let them get away!” Gena said. “We can have three apiece. That much blood will hold us for a month.”

  But the men were already fleeing.

  “Come back!” Quiti called. “Only the first bite hurts!”

  Their pleas were of no avail. The men were gone.

  Gena and Quiti hugged each other, laughing.

  “That was so much fun,” Gena said. “I could almost see your fangs and wings myself.”

  They returned to the rig and dressed, knowing the men would not be back.

  They delivered the citrus fruit without further event, found another load, and drove on west. There was no further question of their continued association; they liked each other and were having a ball.

  Two weeks later they were back in California. Quiti’s hair was now close to six inches long, and her powers were still increasing. “Now you get to meet Idola,” Gena said.

  “Is this wise? I don’t want to complicate your relationship.”

  “I’ll want to meet your family, too, some day, when you’re no longer on the lam.”

  They took nine year old Idola out to an amusement park. She was brown haired and brown eyed, like her mother, and seemed fated to be as lovely as an adult. She was shy about meeting Quiti.

  “Touch her hair, dear,” Gena said.

  The girl did. “You’re telepathic!” she said.

  The hair was becoming too expressive for Quiti’s complete comfort. “It may only seem that way.”

  “And I won’t tell,” Idola said. “I like you.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “Will you teach me how to read minds?”

  “That’s not something I can do,” Quiti said.

  “Oh, yes, it’s the hair. I wish I had hair like that.”

  “Yours is lovely as it is,” Quiti assured her.

  “But it can’t read minds.”

  “It can’t read minds,” Quiti agreed.

  They had a fine afternoon, and Quiti did enjoy it and the girl’s company. By the end of the day she was quite satisfied to be a peripheral part of Gina’s larger family. She was becoming Auntie Quiti.

  Meanwhile they continued to explore the developing powers of the hair. When they had time alone, they tried jumping off a rising wall, at first from a low level, then higher. The hair flared out like a little parachute, and really did seem to slow her descent.

  “I think more is going on than just parachuting,” Gena said. “You’re falling too slow.”

  “I felt light,” Quiti agreed. “But I can’t feature antigravity.”

  “We’d better find out, all the same. As your hair grows, it seems to be developing new qualities as well as strengthening the old ones. We need to know what they are.”

  Quiti could only agree. She went to the highest section of the wall, then jumped down about five feet, bracing for a hard impact. But the hair flared and took hold, and lifted her by the head, so that the impact was soft.

  “How far does it go?” Quiti asked rhetorically.

  “This makes me nervous, but we still need to know.”

  They considered. Then they gathered fallen leaves to make a pile under a spreading oak tree, and Quiti climbed up the trunk with surprising alacrity, hung from a branch, and dropped about seven feet onto the pile.

  The landing was soft. This time there was no doubt that the hair was holding her up to a degree, so that her fall was slower than it should have been.

  She climbed the tree again. This time she stood on the branch, making her descent about twelve feet. She jumped.

  And the landing was no harder than before.

  “It’s more than parachuting,” Quiti said. “I’d need a full sized parachute to slow me this much, rather than an eighteen inch flair.”

  “Do you have an invisible jet motor?”

  “I don’t feel any jet passing my face.”

  “Maybe magnetic repulsion of the ground?”

  “Maybe,” Quiti agreed dubiously.

  “We need smoke or vapor, so we can see what the air is doing around your hair.”

  They went to a pond and Quiti focused on vapor. Her hai
r reached toward the water. Suddenly there was visible vapor rising, forming a thick fog. It expanded and drifted over the pond and adjacent ground. Just what they needed. But now they were away from the tree.

  Impatient, Quiti tossed off her clothes. “Lift me up. Tell me what you see.”

  Gena bent down, caught hold of Quiti’s legs, and heaved her up. Then Quiti jumped down through the patch of fog.

  “There was a swirl of air going in toward your head,” Gena reported. “And another swirl going down, and some up. But no single direction. It’s not making sense to me.”

  “Yet it is somehow lifting me.”

  They continued experimenting and discussing it, and concluded that it was a combination of effects: some magnetic repulsion, some antigravity, some jet propulsion. That it in effect subtracted about fifty pounds from her weight, so that she fell more slowly and landed with less impact. The special fields were limited so that there was not the dangerous phenomenon that straight antigravity would cause: air without weight being squeezed out in a column as the pressure of the atmosphere pressed in, and forming a violent jet that would deplete all air in the vicinity. No, this ended a few inches away from the hair, so that the jet soon dissipated. The hair, or maybe the aliens who had cultured it, knew what it was doing.

  However, that jet could be adjusted. Quiti learned how to angle her head toward standing water, and form it into a fire-hose blast that could devastate whatever stood before it. In short, it was a kind of weapon.

  “Where is the limit?” Gena asked. “Suppose your hair grows to be five or six feet long? Will you be able to fly?”

  “Yes.” Then, hearing herself, she realized that the hair had given her the answer.

  When Quiti mentally called Speedo that evening, he had news for her. They couldn’t have a dialogue, though that might come as the hair grew, but she could read his most superficial thoughts as she zeroed in on him.

  They know where you are. They’re watching you.

  Quite paused, mentally. How could he know that? He couldn’t tell her, but he was sure. So she sent her message: Thanks. I’ll be alert. Tell my folks I’m fine.

  Then she talked with Gena. “Speedo says they’re watching me. I don’t know how he knows.”

  “Your eatery man. Try him.”

  Quiti searched for Joe’s mind. Sure enough, he had a surface message for her. Rumor that they’ve spotted the magic girl riding with a trucker.

  So he was the one who had told Speedo. Joe knew just about everything that went on in his neighborhood, because his hearing was better than his diners realized. Hairpower here. Thanks, Joe.

  So now her friends back home knew that she knew. But what should she do? She didn’t like being vulnerable. The authorities could close in at any time, and she’d have trouble escaping if they knew what she could do, as they surely did. Unless they underestimated her.

  “If they know, and it sure seems they do,” Gena said, “Why haven’t they moved in on you?”

  Quiti applied her enhanced brain to that specific problem, and the right question produced the answer immediately. “Because they’ve caught on that my hair gives me special powers. Those powers are more important to them than I am. They are letting me discover them myself. Once I am complete, probably when the hair is full length, they’ll snap the trap shut.”

  “So maybe you’re not threatened right now,” Gena said. “But you will be when? In a year?”

  “About then,” Quiti agreed.

  “So let’s enjoy the year, traveling the country, as if we have no inkling. But you need to figure out how to disappear again when you need to. I’ll be sad to see you go, in fact I’ll be grief stricken, but it probably has to be.”

  Quiti hugged her.

  They set off with a load for a town in Maine. When they were safely on the road, they talked. “I’m assuming that they can’t bug us here on the moving truck,” Quiti said. “That it’s mainly that they spotted me on a surveillance camera and a computer identified me, so now they’re tracking the rig. Laissez-faire surveillance. That’s why the hair didn’t spot it.”

  “They’re getting smarter,” Gena agreed. “They know that if they try to nab you, not only will you likely escape, but even if they get you, you won’t cooperate, and they’ll never see your full powers. They probably also want to know how you got the hair, and you’ll never tell them unless they make real nice to you.”

  “They’re not the enemy. It’s their ignorance I fear. Maybe when I have full telepathy and can read their minds, I’ll be ready to trust them.”

  “Maybe,” Gena agreed again, as much with her doubt as with her words.

  “But I do mean to be sure they can’t hold me against my will. I need to be able to drop off their screen at any time.”

  “Your invisible head routine. When your hair is six feet long, you’ll make your whole body invisible.”

  “To all wavelengths,” Quiti said. “So their sensors can’t pick me up. Vision, sound, radar, heat, everything.”

  “Everything.”

  ****

  A year passed, mostly on the road. Quiti kept in touch with Speedo, Joe, and thus her family. Meanwhile her hair grew. When it reached her waist, she gave up wearing a regular shirt or bra; the hair did the covering and her breasts needed no support whatever. The hair was on the way to becoming an encompassing cloak that never needed combing or washing, and that would weigh about twenty pounds complete. The same as the original hairball.

  When it reached her knees, she discovered further properties. It could emulate her clothing, right down to the buttons and belt. It also insulated her body, maintaining comfortable temperature and humidity. Not only could she wear it instead of her clothing, it was better than clothing. She gave up clothing entirely, including underwear, carrying her wallet in a loop the hair obligingly made. The hair had become her blouse, skirt, and even her shoes as it curled under her feet. It looked exactly like regular clothing, and she changed its appearance daily so there would be no suspicion. It even emulated shorter regular hair, the pattern of brown curls around her shoulders, or a braid down her back. Hair imitating hair!

  “I envy you,” Gena said. “No fuss, no muss, no laundry. You never get sweaty or cold. It never chafes. It’s always in style. And it’s about as cheap as you can get.”

  “I don’t yet know what the hairballs will require. It was presented as a return favor, but I suspect it was more like a consignment. There has to be much more of a price to pay, when it finally comes due.”

  “Get real, girl! Without it you’d be six months dead by now.”

  “True.” Because it was now absolutely clear that her cancer was gone.

  More, they discovered that it protected her. They experimented, with Gena first striking with her fists and encountering only gentle but effective resistance, then with a hammer, then stabbing with a large heavy screwdriver. Nothing got through.

  They got more experimental. Gina hosed water on Quiti, and it simply washed off without wetting her. She got a blowtorch, and the hair did not even shrivel, it merely dampened out the flame. Finally, nervously, Gena tried a pistol she kept for emergencies, firing at the fringe so that Quiti would not be hurt if the hair failed. But the bullet dropped to the ground, neither Quiti nor the bullet itself harmed. Her hair skirt was truly invulnerable.

  It also could emit gases, including ones that would put other people to sleep. That could be useful if a crowd ever attacked her. But that was dangerous, because too much of it could kill people. She would use it only if the situation were dire and there seemed to be no alternative.

  But mainly they worked on the flying. Idola was desperate to participate, and could be trusted, so they took her out one day for a long forest hike, got alone, and practiced levitation. When Quiti focused, the hair blew out in a cone starting at her head and extending to her feet. Air circulated and she lifted off the ground, her body within the cone like the clapper of a bell.

  Idola, now age ten, was
delighted. “Hair skirt!” she cried, pointing upward. “And your panties are showing!”

  “I’m not wearing any,” Quiti called down.

  “Yes you are. I see them.”

  Quiti felt a curl of the hair in that region. A lock of it was giving her the illusion of panties, to keep her respectable. That was probably just as well, though she had no intention of flying in public.

  Navigation remained tricky. It required mental nuances to angle the gravity jets properly, so that she could not only lift vertically but also propel horizontally. Slowly she trained herself, so that she could fly with increasing precision.

  “Good job,” Gena said, satisfied. “You’ll never fall down a well and get stuck.”

  “I wish I had hair like that,” Idola said.

  “Don’t we all,” Gena said. “But Quiti’s one of a kind.”

  Now the hair was as long as she was, and her powers were still being explored. They knew the authorities would not wait much longer to grasp what they thought was theirs.

  The last thing they worked on was the telepathy. Quiti could now contact Speedo at any time, and dialogue with him. But the one she most wanted to be mentally close to was Gena. “As far as we know, they can’t yet detect telepathy,” Quiti said. “So we can remain in touch regardless of physical proximity.”

  “I want that. Quiti, you’re the very best thing that’s happened to me, and I don’t ever want to lose you.”

  “With the telepathy, we’ll never be far apart.”

  “I count on that.”

  “You have enabled me to grow the hair to full length. I sincerely appreciate that. But I have also really enjoyed being with you.”

  “Double ditto here! I’m bound to be lonely, driving alone, when I never was before. Just bored.”

  “Maybe you should retire from driving and find a good man.”

  “Maybe I should. But I won’t. Garden variety life has lost its appeal. I’ll wait for your thought, and wish I could meet a hairball like yours.”

  “I fear the next tour will be our last together. They are getting ready to pounce. I feel the background tension.”

  “We know what to do when they strike.”

  They hugged. Then they boarded the rig.

  They were hardly a hundred miles on their way when Quiti felt it. “The trolls are gathering,” she reported.