by Clara Ward
“Wait, slow down.” Howard had said all that in the time it took Sarah to recognize the voice and get some handle on the choppy words. “You’re saying someone wants to kill me?”
Aliana and Emma both came over and started whispering questions at that, but Sarah managed to hush them with a hand motion and a stern look.
“Yes! For what you did to, for what they think you did to you-know-who. They’re really scared that you could—”
“Who’s trying to kill me?”
“People here, like us. They sent someone, one of us, well, not like you and me, but like the rest of my family. I think he’s had some training, from the government, so he could protect himself, but I don’t think he’s really trained as an assassin.”
“Is it someone I would know or recognize, maybe?” Sarah clutched the phone too hard and looked away from her friends. Her skin prickled, but she swallowed her panic like a large, dry pill.
“I don’t think so, but I’ve met him. He lives in our building. He has the rounder kind of Chinese face, sort of like R—like my cousin, but he’s taller, a bit older. You should just get out of there. I don’t think he’s landed in Chiang Mai yet. And I gather he plans to attack while you’re sleeping. But you should leave before he can watch the building. And remember, he might pick up if anyone saw you or spoke to you. He might be able to sweep around local hotels, asking about you, listening to what people don’t say, or listening for the—the other kind of person with you.”
“Are they, the people with me, in danger, too?”
“Maybe, at least as hostages.”
“Where can we go?”
“They waited until you left where you’re living. You might be safe back there.”
When Sarah hung up the phone, Aliana and Emma both spoke at once. It took Sarah a moment to sort out Emma’s, “What’s going on?” and Aliana’s, “Was that for real?” and to answer, “Stay calm. I need to talk to Emma.”
Despite the look of rage on Aliana’s face, Sarah dragged Emma to the far side of the room and whispered in her ear. While Sarah was pretty sure Emma’s parents knew what had happened with Tom, she’d avoided saying anything to Emma. Now it made the situation much harder to explain.
Sarah whispered, “I think a teep from Chinatown is being sent to kill me for a problem I may have caused another teep. He knows where we are, but he probably hasn’t arrived in Chiang Mai yet, and plans to wait until we’re asleep. He evidently knows how strong Aliana’s thoughts are, and may use her to find us. Could he hear her if we were passing him in a taxi? Could he zero in on her in a crowded train station?”
Emma stood stunned for a moment staring at Aliana. Aliana, standing across the room, hand on one hip, said, “I think I deserve to know what’s going on here.”
Emma whispered to Sarah, “Right now, I think any teep on this floor of the hotel could hear her. I’m not sure about a taxi, but she’d probably stand out in a train station.”
Sarah bit her lips trying to find another solution, then whispered, “I can try something that might make her unreadable, but you’d have to go along with it and tell me if it works.”
Emma’s face tightened, but she nodded fractionally. Sarah felt a stab of terror at what she was about to risk and what she might find out.
She took one of Emma’s hands in her own, trying to offer reassurance and calm, while answering Aliana. “I think you might deserve to know, but most of what’s involved isn’t mine or Emma’s to tell. It’s something that involves the Johnsons, and me, and some other people. I think you’re in danger now, too, and I’m really sorry for that.”
“How can you be so calm about this?” Aliana’s eyes were wide, but her voice was needle sharp. “What sort of trouble are you into?”
Holding Emma’s hand, Sarah felt inhuman, statue-cold or at least reptilian. Aliana, chin and chest thrust forward, face damp from washing, seemed so much more real, so deserving of a real answer. Instead Sarah enunciated, “I’m calm because I need to be. I’m trying to figure out what they would least expect us to do, and I think I’ve got it. But to do this, you’ll have to trust me, without any real explanation.”
There was silence in the room. Sarah could feel her heart racing. It pounded fast blood through her neck and arms. She hated pretending to be more confident than she felt, but it was the only way to get things done fast.
“Do you trust me, Aliana?”
With an almost religious, focused calm and a much softer voice than before, Aliana said, “I trust your intentions.”
“Fair enough. Hope for the best.” Sarah pulled a spread off one of the beds. It was red with a pattern of white elephants and black dots. “I’m going to have Emma hold this over you for a minute, okay?”
Aliana merely nodded as Sarah cloaked her in the bedspread, a child’s ghost costume with pachyderms and polka-dots.
Sarah told Emma, “Hug it around her.” But even as Emma clumsily reached around the spread, offering a few moments of tactile distraction, Sarah covered Aliana in the telekinetic cocoon she had previously used on herself, Mr. O’Reeley, and Tom.
Emma almost immediately looked at Sarah, mouth open, eyes wide. Sarah discontinued the pressure even before Emma said, “It worked.”
She pulled the blanket off Aliana, and asked, “You feel okay?”
“Was that all?”
“That’s it.”
“Perhaps later, you’ll convince me you’re not crazy?”
Sarah smiled despite the knot in her throat. Aliana looked so young, like a sassy little sister, as static made even the hair on her arms stand on end. “I’ll try. For now, put what you need in your carry-on bag and let’s get out of here. Oh, and we should leave the cell phones. You both have active GPS, but I know how to take the data cards out if you want.”
Aliana wanted her data out; Emma didn’t care but took it. Sarah quickly checked their guidebook for train information and gathered her own essentials in a bag, while Aliana smoothed her red hair under a dark scarf. Within a few minutes they were sneaking down the back stairs and out onto a minor road.
Winding their way a few blocks from the hotel, they skirted the tourist frenzy near a night bazaar. Music and the smell of spiced meat buffeted them. There was no place out of sight to cross the river, but once across they found peaceful minor streets leading toward the train station.
Aliana, hurrying along in her dark scarf, seemed the timeless image of a woman with a mission. Long arms swung by her sides and her navy crepe skirt rustled with each step. When she looked down, her quick grace drew Sarah’s eye, reminded her of the day they left the Easter party to dance. But when Aliana caught her looking and raised her face, Sarah had to turn away, singed by just a glance. There was anger there, anger like Sarah felt at herself for bringing her friends into trouble. But there was a searching behind the anger, like Aliana was justifying events to herself, trying to invent good enough reasons, and Sarah was ashamed and fell back to let Emma take her place.
Emma drifted forward without apparent thought, absorbed in her own confusion and hardly noticing Aliana. Sarah tried to watch around them, calming herself for their sake, holding her mind like a trigger she was no longer afraid to pull.
The station, when they reached it, was a relatively modest building with rough concrete floors and old-style florescent panels. The crowds were not enough to hide the three women, even with the night train boarding.
“Emma, I want you to stay with Aliana. Go into the bathroom, and I’ll meet you there with the tickets. That way we won’t be remembered as a threesome. I’ll buy all four spots in a sleeping compartment if I can.”
“What if the assassin is already here?” Emma asked.
“Hopefully he doesn’t know we’re running yet, and he’d probably expect us to fly out. But I’ll keep an eye on you until you’re in the bathroom. You, well, just be open to anything that might mean trouble for us.”
Aliana stood passively now, a glazed expression in her eyes. Sarah cl
enched her teeth and headed off to the ticket counter alone.
Once the train was underway, Sarah felt the turmoil she’d postponed coming back with force. The lump in her throat had never eased, but it only limited breathing now that she had time to notice. Her upper body was beginning to shiver; she wanted the lights off as soon as possible. No one had spoken since they’d boarded the train, and Sarah knew she should say something, but couldn’t get the words out.
They’d had no problem getting a sleeping compartment to themselves, and once the ticket stubs were notched outside the door and the window shades drawn, there was a tangible sense of privacy. Sarah pulled down the upper bunk on one side and turned off the lights as she climbed up to take it herself. Aliana was sitting on the lower bunk across from her, and Emma scampered into the bed below Sarah.
Within minutes, Sarah gave in to terror. It vibrated through her as the train pushed along. Still in her clothes she wrapped the scratchy train blanket around her shoulders, even though she was boiling deep inside. What had she done? Now basically forbidden to leave Thailand, she’d made enemies among the teep community, enemies who wanted her dead. And while she’d tried to believe at first that it had been some fluke, that her telekinesis of Tom hadn’t really destroyed his telepathy, what she’d done to Aliana tonight proved otherwise. Somehow, being wrapped in Sarah’s cocoon could close a person off from telepathy, perhaps a gift of privacy to normals, but a mental mutilation to teeps.
Sarah was a weapon. Not the weapon she’d always worried about being, someone who could set fires or control objects without detection. She could apparently destroy telepathy. For those who might have doubted, what she’d done to Aliana would prove it. She could ask Emma not to tell, but that would just tie her into the trouble, and other teeps would wonder who had ‘taught’ Aliana to close her mind.
Just as Sarah was drifting through concerns for Aliana, the woman herself spoke, still clearly sitting on her bed in the clattering darkness.
“Sarah, did you drug me?”
“No,” Sarah said and shook her head pointlessly in the dark.
“What did you do?”
“Please don’t ask.” Sarah’s voice cracked as she said it.
“Sarah—“
“Please don’t ask now?”
“All right.”
Beneath her, Sarah could hear Emma’s uneven breathing, the sound of someone trying to cry silently into a pillow. Tears began to run down Sarah’s face, too. The train shook her as if she was crying even harder. What was she going to tell Aliana? This friend had shown such trust and patience toward her tonight; how could she refuse to answer her, refuse to take responsibility for involving her in this mess? How had she become the sort of monster who could risk what she’d done to Aliana on a hunch, and at the train station as well as in Cambodia, she’d been ready to kill people with her power.
As if sensing her concerns, Aliana said, “You have to tell me something.”
“What?”
“Anything. I feel—rather strange.”
“Does it hurt?”
“No. It might even feel good, if I knew it was the effect of some drug or something explicable. But, it’s not a way I’ve ever felt before. Could you explain, or—or could you sit with me?”
Sarah knew she should have talked to Aliana before this, made it clear that they could only be friends. Could going to her now count as leading her on? It was such a strange night, and Sarah’s body ached for physical reassurance as well. If she could give Aliana nothing else, surly she could give that. And Emma was still crying on her bunk. If all three of them held close tonight, wouldn’t that be okay?
“Maybe that’s a good idea for all of us.” Sarah took her pillow and climbed down to sit beside her friend. She put her arm around Aliana’s shoulder, felt the woman nestle into her. “Emma, would you like to sit with us?”
There were a few muffled sniffles. Then Emma silently cuddled in on the other side of Sarah.
An hour later, Emma was asleep with her head on Sarah’s thigh. Aliana curved against her on the other side, resting her cheek on Sarah’s shoulder and lightly stroking Sarah’s arm. From her own reactions, Sarah knew that stroking could well count as flirting, but she couldn’t find the will in herself to speak, and she didn’t really want Aliana to stop.
“You don’t want me to stop?” Aliana whispered. “It’s as if I hear you asking yourself even when you don’t speak.”
Sarah’s breath caught for a moment. Aliana’s insight seemed eerily similar to telepathy, similar enough to feel like a violation.
“Would it be a violation if I were telepathic?”
A scream rose and choked in Sarah’s throat. She took a deep breath and said, “If you were telepathic, would you know what poem I was thinking of?” Then very hard she thought, “I’ve never seen a purple cow. I never hope to see one. . .”
As Aliana spoke the words, “I’ve never seen,” Sarah wrapped herself instantly in her own cocoon, then asked, “And now?”
But as Sarah thought it Aliana recited, “The hydrogen dog and the cobalt cat, side by side in the armory sat . . .”
Sarah released the telekinetic pressure from herself and thought, “What will happen if I can create telepaths?”
“You’re thinking, what will happen if you can create telepaths. I’m right, aren’t I? I’d never even heard that dog and cat poem before. Did you do this to me? Can you explain what’s going on yet?”
Sitting on a rumbling train in the dark, Sarah was frozen with a skull shattering pressure inside her ears, not worse than she’d felt before, but it wasn’t waiting until she was ready to deal with it. “I should wake up, Emma,” she said. “She—this affects her too.”
“You were going to say she’s a telepath, too. But you’re not—you were trying to make me unreadable, and this—“
“Stop, please. I probably deserve it. But none of the rest of them could read my mind. I don’t know why you can, or if the rest can now, too. But, I need a minute.” Tears were pouring out of Sarah now. She turned her head so they wouldn’t fall on Emma, who somehow still slept with her head on Sarah’s leg.
“Don’t wake Emma yet. We need to talk first. I’m sorry if this seems like such a bad thing to you.”
Aliana’s touch was no longer provocative. One arm held protectively around Sarah’s back, while the other held the hand draped over Aliana’s shoulder.
When Sarah’s tears had stopped, Aliana spoke. “I think we’re past whatever you wanted to discuss about my sexuality. A few minutes ago, I sensed you liked what I was doing, but thought you should say something to stop me. I avoided touching anything more than your arm, even though my whole body is crying out for touch in a way I’ve never felt before. My mind wants to say I feel this because I’m falling in love, but my feelings for you are not new, and the intense desire of my skin started somewhere in the confusion of this evening.”
Sarah wanted to pretend confusion, to slow down, but that wasn’t possible. “You’re asking if the change in how you feel touch is caused by what I did tonight? It’s possible. I’ve always been unusually sensitive to touch, and what I did to you, I’ve done to myself many times. But I shouldn’t have tested it on you. I think I’ve crossed some line.”
“The idea that you might feel things the way I’m feeling them now, is unbearably attractive. So if you’re going to say no, maybe you’d better say it.”
Sarah couldn’t believe where this was going. She couldn’t believe how much she wanted comfort and acceptance from someone who by rights should condemn her. “We couldn’t do anything with Emma here.”
“But you want to.” Aliana used the arm holding Sarah to stroke lightly down her side, along her ribs. Not touching her breast, but close enough to set off an intense erotic reaction.
Sarah wanted to; she also wanted to cry. “But I wouldn’t. Much as I might be tempted, I’m already involved with Reggie. We may not be married, but I love him, and our lives are so entangle
d that he gave up everything to come to Thailand with me.” It sounded weak, even to Sarah. No matter how much Reggie tried to be the perfect boyfriend, Sarah could see him distancing himself, see him disapproving of her power and what she was willing to do. If Reggie truly loved her and wanted to stay with her, would he have been so distracted lately with his new PAD and all his business calls? Would she be responding to Aliana this strongly? But Aliana had affected her, since the first day they danced, and now she could hear Sarah’s thoughts. Still, Reggie had stayed with her through so much—
“I’m not trying to displace Reggie. But couldn’t you love me, too?” Aliana’s breath struck moist sparks against Sarah’s neck and ear. In the same instant she wanted more but also felt it was unfair of Aliana to manipulate her that way, especially if Aliana could hear her thoughts. And it hurt to think she was probably hearing these thoughts too.
“Do you know how I’ve felt for you since we first met?” Aliana answered her thoughts. “Is it so unfair to make you deal with similar feelings?” The fingers on Sarah’s side were no longer tempting, but clinging.
“I wouldn’t have hurt you on purpose, you know?” Though now I hurt you and maybe Emma and Reggie too, because my thoughts betray me. “I can’t defend what I’ve done up to this point, but please, let this stop now. Let it wait ‘til I’m not tired and overwhelmed.” Sarah’s voice squeaked as she almost drowned in waves of emotion. Aliana’s hand stopped moving, settling platonically on her shoulder. Relief washed through Sarah like cool water, easing a few stubborn traces of desire.
“I’ll stop because I don’t like to hurt you either, and even if you haven’t handled yourself well, I still have my standards. Nevertheless, pain and all, I hope neither of us forget this.”
They sat together, not speaking, not moving, a still spot in a humming, vibrating metal train. Sarah fiercely battled to keep her thoughts from forming words, knowing she couldn’t. And she tried to console herself with the thought that it was her friend Aliana listening, and she could at least give Aliana trust. So as she calmed down and the fear receded, she carefully thought through what she figured Aliana had a right to know. She thought about how she had fled the U.S. because she was a teek, and how she had used her telekinesis to stop Tom, a teep, from giving her to the Chinese. She thought about how Tom had lost his telepathy and how that had given her the clue to stop Aliana’s mind from being read, to keep them all hidden from the assassin. Then she thought about James’s research, about the genetic precursor to telepathy that he didn’t understand. And suddenly she hoped that Aliana’s telepathy might be different than Emma’s, and maybe her own thoughts were still protected from other teeps.