Teek

by S. Andrew Swann

  The remaining rules all went together. Teek was a sense, and the limitations she had found about density, viscosity, and size all seemed more to be limits on her teek sense’s ability to perceive than with any physical laws.

  What was she missing in describing this thing?

  Allison noted that she had nothing on the sheet that had anything to do with range. For all she knew she could knock hats off of people in China. However, she doubted that. Her notes showed that her teek seemed very well-behaved for something that was supposed to be the province of ghosts, mystics and the National Enquirer.

  Well, range was easy enough to determine.

  Allison reached back and rummaged through her paper bag. There was still some interesting stuff in it. She pulled out a can of Campbell’s cream-of-mushroom soup.

  She’d always hated mushrooms.

  “Macy?”

  “Huh?”

  “Could you pull over to the breakdown lane for a moment?”

  “There’s a rest stop in three miles—”

  “Not that. I want to test something.”

  Macy shrugged and pulled the Taurus over to the shoulder of the road.

  “Keep going until the odometer rolls over.”

  “Ok.” After a second, the Taurus rolled to a stop. “Going to tell me what you up to?”

  “I just want to see what my range is.”

  Allison rolled down the window and, with her teek, hung the can over the guardrail, right next to the mile marker. She barely needed to concentrate to do it.

  “You done?”

  Allison closed the window, shut her eyes, and tried to think only of levitating the soup can. “Drive, and when I tell you, check the odometer and tell me how far we’ve gone.”

  The Taurus pulled back into traffic and Allison kept her mind snugly wrapped around the can. As she made an effort to hold the can where it was, the sense she got was— well— uncanny. She felt an immediate sense of the can growing heavier. As they moved away from it, the feeling was as if some invisible hand was pushing against her, trying to make the can rupture her teek field by sheer pressure. Much too soon, it took a real effort for Allison to keep the thing airborne. The can’s weight pressed straight through her forehead, increasing at an accelerating rate. Within moments she was putting as much effort to keep the can of soup airborne as she had in levitating a Jeep four-by-four.

  “Now,” Allison told Macy. Then, with a great feeling of relief, she let go of the demon can. She opened her eyes half expecting to hear the crashing impact as a three-ton can of soup slammed into the highway behind them. She looked back, but saw no cascades of dehydrated cream-of-mushroom soup. She could barely see the can at this distance.

  “Ah,” said Macy, “about one and a half tenths?”

  About eight hundred feet.

  Over that much distance it had taken as much effort to hold up a single can of soup as it did to hold up a Jeep Cherokee at about two yards.

  Want to bet that the effort goes up with the square of the distance?

  Allison marked that as rule number eight.

  ◆◆◆

  According to the signs, they were 80 miles west of Washington DC when Macy saw the cop.

  “Porky at six o’clock.”

  “How fast are we going?”

  Macy looked at her. “I am not speeding in a stolen car.”

  “Just asking.”

  “Sorry.” Macy shook her head. “We should have done something about the plates.”

  Allison looked behind them and saw a state patrol car following them a few car-lengths back. The sight made her mouth turn dry. She thought of the change machine she’d wrecked this morning. The strongbox was still there, sitting in the back seat. She grabbed Babs from the footwell and squeezed her.

  “Maybe he isn’t after us?” Allison said with a hope she didn’t really feel.

  Macy shook her head. “Something put him on to us. He’s been back there for five miles.”

  As if in response, the flashers lit on the cop car.

  “Damn it!” Macy slammed her hands on the steering wheel. “I ain’t going to no redneck jail.”

  “Pull over,” Allison said, clutching her rabbit. “See what he wants.”

  “He wants to arrest us—”

  “Maybe our taillight’s out or something. Pull over.”

  “Then what?”

  “One step at a time,” Allison said. “One step at a time.”

  Macy looked pained, but she rolled the Taurus on to the shoulder. “If that hillbilly cop makes one racist comment—”

  “Shh.”

  They sat in the Taurus and waited. The cop car pulled in behind them, flashers going. Allison noted that there was only one cop in the car, and he had picked a very desolate stretch of road to stop them. It made Allison’s natural paranoia work overtime.

  The red lights on the car flashed like her pulse, and the afternoon sun etched the scene like dilute acid. They were stopped amidst low, empty hills. Next to them, across a field of brown grass, a line of high-tension towers marched toward the horizon like an army of skeletal robots.

  Allison realized that without even thinking about it, she had reached out with her teek sense. Its otherworldly dimensions were already contaminating her vision.

  The cop stepped out of the police car. Even as Allison saw the cop, her teek sense strayed to his car, almost by itself.

  The cop was a grim looking man with rusty hair and mustache, an evil Ron Howard. Allison hoped the caution with which he approached the Taurus was just a matter of rote, and not because he thought them dangerous.

  He walked up and tapped on Macy’s window.

  Macy rolled down the window and the cop said, “Can I see your driver’s license and registration, please?”

  “Ah, Allie?” Macy said, all her bravado gone. Allison opened the glove compartment and fished out the registration. With her teek sense still groping about the police car, actually feeling things with her fingers seemed odd, as if everything was covered with a microscopic layer of grease.

  Macy hadn’t moved to get her wallet and Allison had to elbow her to get her to move.

  Allison handed the registration papers to the cop. “It’s my mom’s car, we’re taking it to—” Allison almost said Washington, “Baltimore for her.”

  The cop took the papers expressionlessly and clipped them to his board. “Your name is?”

  Allison almost lied, but it was her mom’s name on the registration. “Allison Boyle. What’s the problem officer?” Allison was trying to sound innocent, but with her mind groping about twenty feet behind them, she was going to settle for coherent.

  With the cop there in front of them, Allison couldn’t risk looking behind them with her eyes. So she had to feel around the cop’s patrol car blindly, using only her teek.

  She really wished she knew how to drive.

  “Miss, you have to take the license out of the wallet.”

  Was this thing the parking brake? Was this the gear shift? Or was it an automatic?

  Macy fumbled with her wallet. Allison watched with one part of her mind as the other part used her teek to play with the controls of the officer’s car. They were on the right side of the highway. There wasn’t a guardrail here, just a ditch that fell off from the gravel shoulder. On the other side of the ditch was a chain link fence topped by barbed wire to keep people away from the high-tension sentinels.

  “Ok, ladies. I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you both to get out of the car.”

  Allison’s teek hit something and the siren went “WHOOP.”

  The cop spun to face his car and Allison decided that this was the signal for her to do something. She used her teek to pump what she hoped was the right pedal.

  The engine revved, and the cop started running toward it. Allison looked back and saw that she hadn’t achieved what she’d had in mind, whatever that had been. The cop car was accelerating for the rear of the Taurus.

  Desperately, A
llison let go of the gas pedal and tried to grab the steering wheel with her teek. It tried to slip out of her grasp, but the lesson with the cue ball had taught her to lead her intended target. Once she had hold of the wheel with her mind, it grabbed talons into her brain and tried to tear itself free.

  With her eyes she saw the police car on a collision course with the Taurus, its wipers going, the lights flashing, and the hood bouncing up and down, gaping like a hungry mouth.

  Allison, in the brief contact she had with the steering wheel, pulled it all the way to the car’s right.

  The effect was dramatic. The cop car pulled off the right side of the road. When its front right tire left the gravel shoulder, the whole nose of the vehicle canted rightward, and the entire car flipped over into the ditch.

  Macy used the distraction to floor the Taurus out of there.

  Allison let go of the car, the familiar mental fatigue warping her mind. The state trooper stood there, frozen on the shoulder, perhaps not yet even aware that they had driven away.

  ◆◆◆

  Macy pulled the Taurus off the freeway at the next exit they came to.

  “We got to change the plates on this car.”

  Allison sat, numbed. All she could think of was the car flipping over. That hadn’t been what she’d been trying to do. She wasn’t sure anymore what she’d been trying to do. What if it had hit their own car, or the policeman, or it rolled into traffic? What if the cop had a partner, or a prisoner in back of the car?

  She was chilled by what she’d almost done.

  “Allie!”

  “What?”

  Macy looked scared. “Don’t leave me like that, girl. Not in the middle of all this. You got to help me change the plates.”

  Allison nodded, weakly. If they weren’t fugitives beforehand, they certainly were now— as soon as that state trooper got word back. Their names, descriptions, the car they were driving—

  And all Allison really wanted to do was talk to her mother, see her father, understand why…

  “Here we go,” Macy said. They’d pulled into some town called Hancock, and Macy had found a Long John Silver’s parking lot on its periphery. “That white Saturn, it just pulled in.”

  Macy pulled into the space next to it, on the far side from the restaurant. She got out and looked around. “Come on,” she said back into the car.

  Allison stepped out of the car and realized that she still clutched Babs. When do I start sucking my thumb? She left Babs on the passenger seat of the Taurus.

  She walked around and saw that the Saturn had Georgia plates.

  “Are there any tools in this thing?” Macy asked, popping the trunk in the Taurus.

  Allison stood look-out, while Macy found a first-aid kit that had a pair of blunt kindergarten-type scissors. Somehow Macy managed to use them as a screwdriver to work the plates free.

  Allison was glad that Macy hadn’t asked her to teek the plates free. She had difficulty concentrating right now. Her mind needed a rest.

  Her life needed a rest.

  She wanted everything to be over with, one way or another. Everything felt as if it was crumbling, first her school, then her past, then her family…

  Now it felt as if she was fraying at the edges herself. The person who had stolen two-hundred dollars and had rolled a Maryland State Highway Patrol car wasn’t the Allison she knew. Allison the telekinetic, Allison the fugitive, these were people she didn’t know, people she didn’t think she liked.

  The process of swapping the plates proceeded in fits and starts. They had to hide what they were doing whenever a car entered the parking lot. The repeated panic as they stopped and started was almost as fatiguing as her teek.

  When they were done, Macy resumed their drive south, away from US-48.

  ◆◆◆

  As they drove, Allison tortured herself by cataloging the ranks of people who’d been bludgeoned by her talent. Chuck was the first, and the most grievously wounded, whether he deserved it or not. Then there was Macy, who was as much a fugitive as Allison was, whose only real crime was being her friend. Then there was Mom—

  Please, don’t start thinking that again.

  There was even poor Mr. Luvov.

  As Allison thought herself into a deeper depression, Macy took secondary roads in an effort to get them out of Maryland. The road-map she’d been using had been pitifully low on detail, one small sheet of paper for the entire US. Once they’d left the Interstate they were in terra incognita.

  Macy’s navigation was something along the lines of “aim east and hope.”

  They passed through too many towns that ate up too much time and not enough miles. The sun set and the darkening sky narrowed their world into the slice carved out by their headlights.

  It was nearly midnight when they rejoined the Interstate System.

  “Oh Christ, how’d we get on I-81?”

  “Huh, is that good or bad?”

  “Get the map out and tell me.”

  Allison got out the map and folded it so she could see Maryland. “I can’t find—”

  “Oh shit. Never mind.”

  “What?” Allison looked up.

  “We just passed a sign saying Lynchburg in fifty.”

  “Lynchburg?”

  “Yeah, wrong part of the wrong state. Sort of explains the mountains, though. Boy did we get lost.”

  At twelve-fifteen they pulled into the outskirts of Lynchburg, Virginia.

  FIFTEEN

  RICHMOND HEIGHTS, OH: Thursday October 28, 1999

  12:20 AM

  The private plane that landed at Cuyahoga County Airport was out of place. Most of the planes on the tarmac were conventional-looking prop-driven planes. The Beechcraft Starship, with its canards and swept wings, looked like an alien invader.

  In a sense it was.

  When the plane landed, four men boarded it, the entire security complement of Fred Jackson’s field team. The scientists, and Elroy, were on their way back to Dallas on a medically-equipped Learjet.

  The Beechcraft turned around and began the takeoff procedure without even bothering to refuel.

  Inside the plane, Fred Jackson and his team were greeted by an old man in a white suit. The wispy hair he had left was snow white. A thin smile showed under a white mustache, and gray eyes burned at Fred over a pair of rectangular bifocals as he sat forward, thick hands resting on an antique walking stick.

  “I am somewhat disappointed in this performance,” the old man said.

  Fred Jackson was the only man who found his seat without looking disturbed. “Mr. Stone,” Fred said with an acquiescent nod.

  “Fred,” Stone nodded in turn to each man, “Barney, Rocky, Dino. As I’ve said. I find this performance disappointing.”

  Barney cradled a cast on his wrist. “Fuck, you ain’t the only one—”

  Stone glared at Barney. “Barney, you will kindly shut that sewer you call a mouth. Your accident began this sequence of events, and has placed Prometheus at risk.”

  “But—” Barney said.

  “Science needs another human control subject. Do you wish to be it?”

  Barney shut up.

  Stone shook his head, “I am disappointed in you, Fred. Very clumsy.”

  “The whole situation was unexpected, and unprecedented,” Fred said.

  Stone shook his head as the cabin lurched toward takeoff. “The Agency for Scientific Investigation was not supposed to be an active cover. It was supposed to be for intelligence only. An interface for the local authorities. After twenty years, you may have soiled it for us.”

  The cabin was silent as the Beechcraft taxied for the take off. After a moment, Fred Jackson said, “I take full responsibility for that.”

  Stone nodded. “That goes without saying.”

  The Beechcraft took off, and after the plane began banking east, Stone spoke again. “I want you to understand something, gentlemen. At this point we only have two options. We can capture this girl, who may be the m
ost powerful asset we’ve yet come across, or we neutralize the threat to Prometheus.”

  “Sir?”

  “Because of your fumbling, and because of Boyle’s previous connection to Prometheus, we cannot allow this girl to reveal anything publicly. If capture turns out not to be an option…”

  Barney smiled. Fred nodded.

  “Now, gentlemen, we are going to Washington DC.” Stone said. “The Maryland State Police reported an incident with our subject’s car.”

  LYNCHBURG, VA: Thursday October 28, 1999

  12:40 AM

  “What a pit,” Macy said as she opened the door.

  Allison silently agreed as she followed her friend into the motel room. The furniture had been scarred by cigarettes and water rings. The Mylar wallpaper was coated by a scummy white patina. The two black vinyl chairs were giving way at the seams, exposing foam-rubber viscera. The fiberglass tile stapled to the ceiling was dotted with brown rust stains that made Allison think of blood.

  There was only one bed.

  “Oh… I wanna smack that guy,” Macy said, tossing two backpacks in the corner. “I said for the two of us. And this cost us the last of—”

  Allison shrugged. “It’s a queen size bed—”

  “I look like a queen? That ain’t the point.”

  “It’s got a coin vibrator thingie—”

  Macy gave her a withering look. “You’re not being funny, girl.”

  Allison sat down in one of the wounded chairs. “Sorry.”

  “Dibs on the shower.” Macy yawned. “Check the blue backpack. I snagged some clothes from home that might fit you.”

  Allison nodded weakly. She felt tired, used up. I feel like we’ve gone across the whole country. One day on the road. One day.

  So much can change.

  What the hell was she doing in Virginia? What was she accomplishing by running to Dad? Could her absent father, a person she barely remembered, really help her with what was happening? After all, where the hell was he for the past decade? Allison could blame at least half the silence dividing her from Mom on herself. But Dad? Dad was a cipher. He knew enough to have called Mom. But he had never once tried to contact his daughter.