by Clara Ward
“I’m not really an artist or even very creative. I mean, I’m a gymnast, and maybe a dancer, but neither of those is really useful right now.”
“You could answer a question for me,” Doug spoke as if seizing the opportunity.
“Depends,” Sarah said.
“Yesterday morning, Aliana’s mental speech was fading. I wasn’t sure she’d make it to the full moon. Then you two went away for the afternoon, and tonight she did not need what we did.”
Sarah felt her face flush, but realized she might be able to learn as much from Doug as he hoped to learn from her. “I don’t know how much of what you do here is ritual and how much you think is necessary. But I accidentally triggered Aliana’s telepathy by wrapping her with my telekinesis for a few seconds several weeks ago. We knew the effect might wear off. So when she felt it fading, she asked me to do it again. Doesn’t anyone else do it that way?”
Doug looked at Oliver, who shook his head and sat up.
“We didn’t know that was possible,” Doug answered. “How do you do it?”
“I just wrap the person up, like applying direct pressure to a cut, but over the entire body.”
“Can you show me how?” Oliver asked, suddenly awake and eager.
“Want me to wrap your hand?”
“Sure.” He thrust his right hand forward. She enclosed it for half a minute, long enough for him to try to flex his fingers and then use his own telekinesis to try to remove her wrapping.
“That’s great, do all of me.”
Sarah looked to the others, feeling a little uncomfortable. But they all seemed fine with the situation. So Sarah wrapped up Oliver, just as she had wrapped Aliana, just for ten seconds or so.
Oliver’s face broke into an open-mouthed smile afterward. “I’m sure I can do it. Let me practice on myself first.” He started staring at his hand.
Doug asked Sarah quietly, “You do this to yourself, too?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have to plan ahead, to do it before your energies ebb?”
Sarah bit her lip and sighed. “I’m not sure that happens to me the way it does with you guys.”
“Meaning?” Doug asked gently.
“I went years without wrapping myself up like that, and my abilities never changed. Also, well, Aliana says her sensitivity to touch fades in between times. Mine doesn’t. I always just thought I was oversensitive that way.”
Doug’s eyes were off to the side, his brows tensed as if thinking rapidly. His voice retained a practiced calm, “Maybe when you’re asleep?”
“Could be, but I don’t think so. Do all of you have to bury yourselves in dirt every few weeks to keep your abilities?”
“I’ve heard of some very old movers who can go long periods in between. But if they use something like this, no one’s told me of it. You don’t go scuba diving or anything?”
Sarah laughed, “Does that work too? No, I’ve never been scuba diving. Do you know,” she wondered how much they already knew from when her mind spoke unprotected, “Do you know if scuba or these other things affect the telepaths who aren’t like you?”
“You touch here on matters usually left to Druids and planners. But given what we all know of your past,” Doug paused and Sarah saw some uncomfortable shifting from all except Oliver, “I think I could tell you a little.”
Doug leaned forward, pushing the sleeves of his white robe back to his elbows. His arms looked like dark wood against the white. “Our people sometimes joke that there are a curious number of Irish folk teaching scuba around the world. Mostly, they try to help those who discover their abilities in that way. But occasionally, they find a newly unshielded mind terrified at the loss of the other kind of mental speech. What happens then depends on certain details.”
Doug seemed to have come to the end of what he would say. There was an awkward silence, broken when Oliver said, “I’ve got it figured. Can I try it on you now, Sarah?”
Sarah nodded obligingly and Oliver went ahead. He held the pressure a bit longer than necessary, and Sarah realized she couldn’t breathe. But before she had time to worry, he let her go. Sarah tingled all over with the sensation of having been touched by another teek that way. Some feeling lingered, almost like afterglow.
Sarah blushed and said, “You’ve got it, but you don’t need to block the nose. It’ll work anyway, and then the person knows they can still breath.”
“Sorry, but I can do it! Doug, can I try it next time, instead of the dirt, to see if it works when I do it?”
Doug gave an almost paternal sigh and said, “Probably we should have you try it on yourself and one other person. But let me think on it first.”
There was a pause, then Sarah said to Doug, “Could I ask you a question?”
“I expected you might.”
“You say there’s a network of some sort. Do you know if there are scientists, people working out the genetics of all this?”
He looked her in the eye, “That’s not what I expected you to ask. But yes, there are some. It’s not something most of us inquire about.”
“But you’ve got to be curious. You say all movers are part of your people. But the other teeps aren’t, except when they’re also movers, and then they aren’t as good, but is that just because they don’t renew their energy every so often? And just from talking to a few people, it seems like there might be patterns in your abilities. Movers seem to always have one mover or mind reader as a parent. Spotters seem to show up more randomly. And why aren’t there any of the animal people here?”
Doug closed his eyes and shook his head. “You’ve clearly never lived around an animal person. If even one were here we’d all be coated in cat fur or supporting a barn full of hurt wild creatures. As for the rest, if you really want to learn, I can make inquiries, see if there is someone who might teach you.”
“Yes, please. But with animal people, do they all have to be buried in the earth, too? There were people where I lived who seemed to have a way with strays, especially cats—“
“You’re speaking of someone close to you, a relative?” Doug was using his trained, soft voice again. “All of our abilities can emerge in limited ways without renewing the energy. Movers are usually the only ones who suspect. The mind readers think it’s intuition or empathy. The spotters are drawn to certain people without knowing why. Animal people do well with animals, especially smarter species.”
“I think my mother, and some of her friends might have had that.”
“She’s passed away?”
“Before I knew what to ask.”
“I’m sorry.”
Sarah stopped, looking away, then asked, “The spotters, do they ever spot the other kind of telepaths?”
“Some do, why?”
“Just a suspicion.”
Chapter 25
July 24, 2025 – Bangkok, Thailand
“Parasites!” James thought to no one. His toes bounced up and down as if he wore tap shoes.
He saved the thesis he’d been failing to read for an hour. Somehow, a treatise on “the genetic vulnerabilities in dopamine production among subjects with high pain tolerances” was not moving him today.
He pulled up a window with the new genotype Sarah had brought him last month. How had she known? She’d asked him to check for the sequence he thought was a predecessor to modern telepathy. The sample had been homozygous for that rather rare sequence.
“How did you know?” he’d asked.
“I did what I’d done to Tom, and she could read my mind.”
“But you’re silent to the rest of us.”
“This is big, isn’t it? You didn’t know there were others.”
“Was this part of some experiment?”
“No, and don’t say anything about me. That’s the deal.”
Sarah’s “deal” had been that he could have a blood sample from someone who might be a different kind of telepath. In exchange, he had to tell Sarah if the sample contained the presumed telepa
thy predecessor sequence, he had to promise not to help anyone identify who the sample came from, and he had to not mention that Sarah had anything to do with bringing it to him. The strangest part was that Sarah cared so much in the first place. Maybe he should encourage her to study genetics.
James hadn’t seen Sarah since he gave her the results, and there were rumors she’d disappeared. He spent days mining the new data, trying to solve a puzzle still lacking many pieces. He used genetic comparisons to predict common ancestors. The usual telepaths in his database needed two copies of the new telepathy sequence which may have only developed three or four hundred years ago. So he’d known they were all closely related. Most of the Thai telepaths had emigrated from China in the last two generations, usually as family groups, so there were all sorts of confounding factors when he analyzed their DNA.
But when he compared the new sample to the rest of the telepaths, they’re last common ancestor was probably four thousand years ago. Doing the same comparison with Reggie’s DNA and the Thai telepaths gave an estimate of eight thousand years, about what he’d expect for random samples from across the globe. But if he compared the new proto-telepath sample to Sarah’s or Reggie’s DNA, the estimate moved down to a thousand years, or less. They weren’t kissing cousins, but they shared some heritage. The new sample had the bipolar correlate the U.S. wanted to buy, too. He was glad Alak had let him refuse to sell, but not glad enough to tell Alak the news, at least, not yet. He still wasn’t certain if the sequence Minerva wanted was related to the other telepathy. Did all the other world players know about both types already?
What if the simple genetics of telepathy weren’t so simple? James ran tests on all his samples looking for any commonalities he’d missed. He searched and scanned with every computer in his lab. He almost didn’t hear the woman who asked about sandwiches. He typed hard and fast until his fingers hurt, but neither his hands nor his feet made any diverting movements.
In time, he found every telepath sample he knew was homozygous for neurochem prime on chromosome thirteen. A websearch showed prime was the dominant allele for the sequence, with thirty-five percent of people homozygous. That wasn’t unusual enough for him to notice when he was analyzing his tightly related sample. But now he took a closer look. The public DNA index showed two functionally different variants had been identified at the site. There were scans showing slightly different neuroconnectivity related to each variant. Those homozygous for the prime variant were statistically more sensitive to light touch, but apparently not enough to affect daily life. There was no evidence of genetic selection for or against prime in the last three thousand years.
James searched for more recent articles on the subject and found only a few. Clearly it wasn’t a hot topic. But one of the articles caught his eye. The author was Leonard Knockham. James had seen the man at genetics conferences, but he was a parasitologist, so they’d never had reason to speak. Knockham did have a closed mind, but that was common enough at conferences.
James pulled up the article. It was a study of subjects with colitis or Crohn’s disease. This was outside James’s usual specialties, but the lure of the puzzle kept him reading. He managed to deduce that both conditions involved an overactive immune system, which only became problematic when previously endemic intestinal parasites were removed from a community through sanitation. This appeared to be old news in the field. What Knockham had discovered was that all known cases of colitis and Crohns disease were in subjects homozygous for neurochem prime. The discussion in the paper pointed out that this vulnerability hadn’t mattered until the parasites were controlled; so there hadn’t been time for natural selection against the prime allele on this front.
James hadn’t heard of anyone in their teep community having colitis or Crohn’s disease. Given the rarity of such conditions and his limited sample size, that wasn’t unreasonable. Even if one or two teeps had either problem, Dr. Yu would know, not him. But if he called with this question, politeness would require an explanation. It wasn’t worth the bother, and suddenly James had a better idea.
The letters on the keyboard rattled as he thumped through them, following a hunch. He searched for biographical information on Leonard Knockham. There it was. He’d been at Oxford in 2013 and 2014, while James was still there. Why hadn’t James remembered him, recognized him in all those years of conferences? Then he saw a reference to “Loopy Lenny,” and suddenly it all made sense.
Loopy Lenny had been an undergraduate known for his shaggy hair, bottle green overcoat, and eccentric ways. He left diagrams on classroom whiteboards without any explanation. Usually silent, he’d occasionally flash into the spotlight with moments of brilliance. James had noticed back at Oxford that Lenny’s mind was closed to him. He’d wondered if Lenny’s insights came from probing the minds of his professors or admirers. But James was just breaking away from his father and the American telepathy program at that point. So he never tried to identify himself as a telepath to Lenny, and Lenny had never broadcast anything to him.
Then James remembered the day terrorists destroyed Heathrow. Thousands had died. All of Britain was filled with hurt and angry thoughts, and most of them were broadcast.
Universities and other possible targets were officially evacuated, but the country lacked the people or organization to forcibly empty the schools. So James snuck back to his office in the Oxford biology building. He worked quietly all day outside the telepathic range of seething public thoughts.
Then, while he foraged in the lounge, putting together crackers and cheese to eat as dinner, Loopy Lenny came in. If Lenny was usually a clown, today he was a sad mime. He bought a candy bar from the machine and drooped into an armchair.
“Luncheon on the Isle of Lost Souls,” Lenny sighed.
“I’ve never gotten so much work done, no interruptions.”
“You ever heard of mock apple pie? I think it’s an American snack, made with crackers?”
“Don’t know it.”
“Ah well, we probably don’t have the spices.”
James remembered being glad then that Lenny’s mind was closed. Maybe he’d even wondered if Lenny was escaping other people’s thoughts the same as him. He hadn’t tried to ask, and Lenny hadn’t either.
As James left the snack area that day, Lenny said, “Sometimes it’s best to be alone with your thoughts.”
Once safely back in his office, James tapped his hands and feet with uncertainty, but when the feeling passed, he put his suspicions away.
Perhaps because Lenny had been so obvious with his crazy mane and green coat, James had dismissed him. When he later saw Leonard Knockham at professional conferences - short hair, dull suit, closed mind – he hadn’t connected him to loopy Lenny. James sighed at his oversight and brought up every article he could find by his former colleague. If Knockham was a teep, he almost certainly worked for some government, and even if he didn’t, anything overtly related to telepathy would be censored by the powers that be. But James knew how often his own published work touched on areas he’d researched for classified projects, and the paper on the prime allele suggested Lenny might be playing similar games.
Soon James found a paper by Knockham on skin parasites related to arthritis. Two different strains of the parasites were discussed, but there was no mention of human genetics in the article. James was not equipped to isolate and study such specimens. But Sarah had managed to deactivate Tom’s telepathy for weeks by applying telepathic pressure to his skin, and she seemed to have triggered latent telepathy in someone else through similar means. James’ fingers, on both hands, began to tap rapidly up and down, so lightly they didn’t press letters on the keyboard.
Now he knew why none of the cells he’d tested reacted with the protein produced by the telepathy sequence. He’d tested against a standard panel of all human cell types grown laboratory-clean from stem cells. What if his protein triggered activity in a parasite? What if the parasite produced a protein critical to human telepathy?
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br /> Knowing he was on the right track, James tugged at his ear, then his other ear, in frustration. How long would it take to develop the skills needed to prove this? Would Sarah resurface, and if so, would she provide skin samples from herself and the newly created teep? Did he need to figure this out by July 28th?
James dredged up records from the four conferences where he’d received notes. Sure enough, Leonard Knockham had attended every one. James brought up his calendar and gave himself a dot for deciphering who sent the note. Funny how he’d solved that puzzle only after he thought he’d given up. He wouldn’t take credit for the new genetic links or the connection to skin parasites until he had more proof.
A knock interrupted his thoughts.
“Hi, James!” It was Lisa, all bright and cheerful in a spaghetti-string dress, traipsing in with Robert in tow. “I brought lunch for Robert; so of course I brought some for you. Should we eat outside or in here?”
James decided there was no option but to thank Lisa and give up on working for at least half an hour. He cleared off most of his desk, and Lisa unwrapped sandwiches poorly protected by parchment paper. James refolded his paper in half with the edges aligned and only the clean side facing out. Then he lifted one triangular half of the sandwich and bit off a side point.
“So what have you been working on?” Lisa asked before James took a second bite of his sandwich.
“Nothing. Just failing to answer questions.”
“Such as?”
James sighed. He hadn’t told anyone about the notes, and he wasn’t ready to tell Alak about his scientific suspicions. But there was little reason not to tell Lisa and Robert. He was supposed to be working with Robert, and Lisa kept making an effort to be friends. He switched to tight telepathy.
“There’s a scientist in Britain. I’m convinced he’s studying telepathy, knows things I don’t, and wants to share the information. He left me a note that said, ‘Be ready on July 28th,’ and I have no way of communicating with him before then.”