A Lunatic Fear

by B. A. Chepaitis

  The voice went away, and Jaguar turned back to Stan.

  When she saw his face, she chuckled. “Well,” she said. “At least now I know how to make you smile.”

  * * * *

  Jaguar walked the few blocks between the training center and the Supervisor’s building, enjoying the warm sun on her back and the scent of growth in the air. Springtime on the Planetoid, she thought. Lovely. Perfect.

  Although winters were not quite as cold or snowy as on the home planet, and summers weren’t as hot as she liked them, spring was just about perfect. Stan told her once that more moderate weather was inevitable in their kind of system, explaining in great detail how the mass generator created atmosphere in the first place. She listened to some of it, then lost track and amused herself by seeing if she could set off his intercom with a telepathic message.

  The Planetoid, constructed from the base of a large asteroid and shuttle-loads of material from the home planet, was enough like earth that the prisoners they brought here could be fooled into thinking they hadn’t left home. Unlike the first bubble dome Planetoid, here there were cities such as the Toronto replica she worked in, eco-sites and the rivers and lakes they’d created in the holes and valleys of this small world. They’d brought thousands of extra tons of dirt from the home planet when they learned this made residents healthier, and less prone to depression. Carefully placed buildings and mountainous structures created the illusion of horizon, and wave shields put the right stars and a moon of the right size in the night sky.

  They hadn’t put in the mesa lands that Jaguar loved, but shuttles ran frequently enough for her to get home when her blood and bones cried out for the baking heat and limitless views of New Mexico. And though there was sometimes a sky island sense of boundaries here, she knew she would stay.

  She’d been working in the prison system as a Teacher for more than six years, her job to create and run programs that led criminals to face and overcome their deepest fears, going on the post-Killing Times theory that all evil, and therefore all crime, grew from fear. It was work she considered important, and work she happened to be very good at.

  She also knew that in spite of suspicions like Stan’s and the Board governors’, it was much easier to live as an empath on the Planetoid than on the home planet. Although attitudes there about psi capacities were shifting, the pace was glacial, and many people still saw empaths as either ludicrous freaks or dangerous lunatics. Only in places like 13 Streams, the New Mexico village where she was born, were the empathic arts seen as normal. In their terms, and in the terms of Jaguar’s Mertec people, the arts were just medicine, used badly or well depending on the skill and integrity of the empath.

  She didn’t realize anyone thought differently until she went to live in Manhattan with her grandparents. There, during the Serials, identifying and killing empaths grew to be a popular sport. At least on the Planetoids she wouldn’t be dragged into the bushes and bashed for who she was, no matter how nervous she made them. In fact, some people appreciated her talents.

  Alex, for one, who was a highly skilled empath in his own right. He had the arts of the Adept, which allowed him to see through days in ways she couldn’t. Time unfolded for him differently, which might explain his supreme patience, and the way his eyes sometimes shifted focus to see beyond the walls she tried to build against him. Spider Magus, she called him, weaving multilayered webs of finely interconnected lines, then waiting within them to see what would fall his way. In spite of that, she’d come to see him as trustworthy in almost all areas.

  Almost all. There were still one or two places where the jury was out.

  She didn’t knock on his office door before she entered, and it took him a few minutes to realize someone was in the room with him.

  He looked up from his files and saw her standing there, dressed in a black jumpsuit, sleek and shining as the cat whose name she bore. She held her hands palm up toward him.

  “What?” she asked.

  He gestured at the chair on her side of the desk. She coiled herself into it, leaned back and raised her legs, resting the heels of her boots on the corner of his desk.

  He tossed her a file folder. “Your next case. Let me know what you think.”

  She opened it and read.

  He sat and watched her, swiveling his chair back and forth, taking in the sheen of honey in her walnut hair as it slipped like silk over her shoulders, enjoying the motion of her hand as she curled it behind her ear. Her face remained neutral, even when she lifted it and stared beyond him, considering what she’d just read.

  She paid no attention to him when she focused on her work. He could caress her hair, or kiss the back of her neck and she wouldn’t notice. He enjoyed the notion, and turned it this way and that in his mind as he continued to stare.

  Recently he’d made it clear that he wanted to share more with her than work and the empathic arts. It was equally clear she wasn’t ready to risk what that would mean. He knew why. She could acquire lovers anywhere, but a trustworthy friend and a supervisor she could actually work with were rare commodities in her world.

  He wouldn’t pressure her. His innate courtesy, the respect he had for her and for himself prevented that. Besides, he understood that people fell just as hard when they tripped over their own feet. Lately, he had the sense she was keeping a close watch on hers, as she walked around the question in ever-widening circles.

  When she was done reading, she flipped the folder closed and slid it back across the desk to him.

  “What did you read, Dr. Addams?” he asked.

  As was their custom, she fed him back the information she’d picked up from the file, in lucid and succinct form.

  “We’ve got three new female prisoners, from the same Connecticut town. Three homicides, all bizarre enough that the women are being called the Death Sisters. They have no previous criminal record, and their testing routines show none of the core complex of fears usually associated with their crimes. And their cortical scans show a positive slewing of beta weights.”

  “What’s that tell you?” he asked.

  “Long version, or cut to the chase?”

  “Cut to the chase, by all means. Then we’ll go back and fill in the gaps.”

  She turned her gaze fully up to him. He felt the pull of her eyes, as she drew him into subvocal conversation, where it would be more difficult for him to evade or hide.

  You plan on handing me the ticking bomb?

  She’d already leaped ahead of him by six or seven steps. No surprise there. She knew what this was.

  Not quite yet, Jaguar.

  A moment of silence while she made deeper empathic contact, probing his words, his tone, the shape and texture of his mind, sniffing out hidden agendas or dangers.

  Empathic contact was different than simple telepathic communication. The empath shared experience directly with the person they were in contact with. It could be uncomfortable, like running through a rainstorm skinless, or a dream where you’re not sure if you’re falling or flying. Your emotions and thoughts and soul were not your own during the interaction. At such times, your only control was your capacity to block, or your willingness to consent to an absence of control. Alex believed that was why most people didn’t practice the arts, though they could be learned with varying levels of skill by anyone who made the effort. But the necessary trust, the fearless relinquishment of control, and the quiet discipline it took to practice them well took too much time, patience, and moral courage for most people to bother with.

  Jaguar was the most skilled empath he’d ever met, and this made contact with her easier, but sometimes she stalked him the way a cat stalked new territory, measuring all of him against the blade edge of her suspicions. He was willing to let her, but the feel of her investigation was pretty damn intense. As if an angel raked his face with taloned fingers and asked him if it hurt. Can pleasure hurt? Is desire painful? He’d withstand both her inner and outer gaze, but she had to know it was a form of exqu
isite torture to him.

  Jaguar, is licking my soul really necessary?

  The motion of her investigation ceased. Her brief laughter moved through him and exited smoothly. She sat across from him, looking all business except for the shadow of a grin that disappeared before it could be remarked on.

  “The women have phase psychosis,” she said out loud. “Exogenous. They’ve been exposed to Artemis compounds. Nothing else explains both the beta weight anomalies and their crimes.”

  Alex rubbed at his chin. Okay, he thought. She read it just like he did. Now he’d take it for a test run.

  “Manufacture or possession of Artemis compounds is illegal except in restricted research settings,” he said judiciously.

  “Right,” she replied. “And I know a lot of pigs with little pink wings, too.”

  He bit back on a smile. “Even if someone is manufacturing Artemis, there’s no absolute proof that it causes Phase Psychosis.”

  “You need to hear me say it, Alex? I’ll oblige. When moon mining was legal, crime rates for women who lived near the processing plants went up almost 20 percent. Most of them used the same defense these three women did – exigent PMS or post-partum depression - and the medical tests proved them right. The term Phase Psychosis means maxxed out trouble in hormonal phases, and we haven’t seen anything like these women since they banned lunar mining.”

  “And that’s your proof?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “But you are.”

  He folded his hands. Waited.

  “Why take me off training exercises if you don’t think it’s Artemis?”

  “Maybe because I count on you to tell me when I’m wrong.”

  “I won’t,” she said. “Not this time.”

  He felt the muscles at the back of his neck tighten. Someone was moon mining and processing the products into Artemis compounds. They both thought so. If they were right, they’d be in for it.

  The Hague had imposed a moratorium on moon mining two years ago, after lots of trouble on many fronts. Their ruling was up for either repeal or extension in six months and corporations were lobbying hard to lift the ban, already lining up to stake claims on the lunar resources they wanted to exploit.

  That was the word they used. Exploit. Alex heard it on the news, saw it on the net, had been in rooms where actual humans said it without hesitation or shame. Every time he heard it, he winced. Given that exploitation of natural resources almost brought the planet and the human species to its knees more than once, how could anyone use the word so cheerfully, as if it was a good idea. More than a few hundred years ago, Lakota leader Black Elk said that white men came to find the yellow metal they worshiped, which made them insane. Moon mining was the new lunacy, quite literally.

  And it was also big money.

  Lunar dust contained minerals readily available on the home planet, but the refining process had unexpectedly created a new grouping of synthetic chemicals with the high molecular charge useful in shuttle fuels, and some unique electrochemical qualities associated with laser memory bank systems. There was speculation about its use in regenerative medicine, too. Artemis compounds, the byproducts were called, and they were hailed as the next techno-savior of the world. Research and production plants were up and running with the speed of light.

  But female workers in the plants and women who lived around the plants began miscarrying, hemorrhaging to death. A few went on mad killing sprees. One woman burned her home with her family in it. Another set fire to the plant she worked in. A third took a gun to a grocery store and opened fire. Workers and Unions lodged complaints. Neighborhood coalitions formed to keep plants out.

  Corporations, backed by their own researchers, claimed there was absolutely no connection between the women’s problems and Artemis. The numbers weren’t statistically significant, and other variables could have caused the trouble. Many were survivors of the Killing Times and suspect for PTSD. And, as the scientists pointed out repeatedly, none of the men had any problems.

  Then, scientists from environmental groups appealed for a moratorium on moon mining while unbiased researchers studied the issue. That wouldn’t have gotten far, but the Pagan and Indigenous People’s Coalition appealed for preservation of the moon as a sacred site. A Coalition spokesperson was murdered, and politicians threw themselves into the fray.

  Finally, the Hague imposed a two year moratorium on moon mining while independent investigations were conducted. At the end of the first year, there were no conclusions either way. Though the ban continued, watch-dogging on dive-and-carry pirating of lunar surface material grew lax, and the corporations who wanted to be ahead of the game when the moratorium ended took advantage of that. With only six months to go before a decision was reached, illegal processing plants were bound to start cropping up.

  Alex assumed any Artemis exposure would come from such plants, more than likely run by powerful companies, supported by their powerful political sidekicks. If he and Jaguar made a connection between these new prisoners and illegal mining, none of them would be happy. A few might want that connection buried, perhaps along with the people who made it.

  “If it’s Phase Psychosis,” Alex said, “and it still is ‘if’, we need proof.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Give the women to me together. If we’re right, I’ll know pretty quickly. Can I get a home planet site?”

  That, Alex thought, was just like her. She leapt over any considerations of danger, any possible complicating factors, and went right to the job at hand. “Why home planet?” he asked.

  “They’re out of phase. They need to kiss the earth.”

  He considered the difficulty of a home planet rehab, and quickly decided against it. “Right now, I want you close. Besides, we’ve got our share of the Mother here. It’ll have to act in loco parentis. What’s your program for the women?”

  Jaguar ran a hand through the walnut and honey-streaked length of her hair. “If I can’t go to the home planet, I’ll want something in the old forest eco-site. I’ll do a series of sweats to clear them.”

  He raised his eyebrows at her. Sweat lodges with women in Phase Psychosis. She’d be literally breathing in what they released. If he knew her, she’d use empathic contact at the same time.

  “The sweat lodge?” he asked. “Isn’t that risky?”

  “Necessary. The ceremony creates a container. A safe place to open up while they detox.”

  “How do you avoid eating the toxins?” he asked.

  “The same way you avoid eating any shadow. Block what you can, release the rest. You know the routine. Besides, I’ll be sweating, too. “

  Yes. He knew the routine. In fact, she’d taught him a few of her own blocking tricks, learned from her shaman grandfather, from Jake and One Bird at 13 Streams. Exceptionally skilled and trustworthy teachers showed Jaguar how to preserve her integrity, and she’d kept her spirit inviolate all these years, in spite of the criminals whose psyches she’d touched. She allowed just what she wanted to come in, and nothing or no one else. He sighed.

  “What’re you looking at for core fears?”

  She shook her head. “I’m not going for fears. I’m going for desires. If they have any big fears, I’ll find them in the same place “

  Now that was interesting, and unexpected. The Planetoid system was based on the premise that crime grew out of fear, and prisoners needed to face the fears that generated their crimes. Desires weren’t usually a part of the program.

  “Explain, please,” he invited her.

  “These women don’t have any criminal background. Most likely they don’t have the deadly fears we usually see here, either. And you know what Phase Psychosis does. All emotions get maxxed out.”

  “Then why not focus on joy, or rage or – anything at all? Why, specifically, desire?”

  She pulled in breath and let it out. “It’s complex. Elusive of linear explanation. A three body problem, like the orbital relationship between moon, sun and earth. Or Planetoid,
moon and earth, in this case.”

  “What’s the triangle?”

  “Fear, desire and power,” she said. “You know this quote - ‘True power gives birth to desire and true desire is the walkway to power.’ “

  “Davidson, The Etiquette of Empaths, writing about how to avoid shadow sickness. ‘But fear chokes desire into greed, and greed is a washing of blood over power,’ ” he finished the quote for her.

  “That’s right. These women ate too much power, and that made their real desires visible, but they’ve got nothing to ground them in and it’s scaring the hell out of them. That’s my working premise. The program will work, if I’m right.”

  He swiveled back and forth, seemed to engage in discussion with himself. “If you’re right, Jaguar,” he said.

  She turned her sea-green eyes to him. Pieces of gold light swam endlessly there. Crescents of moon-gold, caught forever in her eyes.

  What will you do if I am, Alex?

  She couldn’t have asked an easier question.

  I back you. All the way. Don’t you know that by now?”

  She let the answer settle in, then pulled back from contact. “Okay,” she said, “but maybe the most important question is what the big boys will do.”

  That, meaning the corporations, the politicians, the pirates. He swiveled his chair away from her and stared out the window.

  “One step at a time, Dr. Addams,” he said. “Get it rolling. I’ll call in the eco-site people and set up a spot for you.”

  “Good,” she said. “I’ll start tomorrow if it’s ready.”

  “It will be.”

  He paused, checking to see if he’d left anything out. Nothing, except to remind her that working with Phase Psychosis was tricky. Unpredictable, especially for empaths. And especially when the psychosis ran as strong as it did in these women. If she didn’t block it, she risked getting caught in their illusions. He swiveled back around to face her, and looked blankly at an empty room. Silently, without even the sound of breath, she was gone.

  He drummed his fingers on his desk, shook his head and went back to work.