by Jean Johnson
He tapped Li’eth lightly on the nose, smiling, then adjusted the cap with a soft frown. “This would be easier with shorter hair . . . thank you for unbinding it, by the way. The braid confines the locks, making it harder for the electrodes to touch the skin—we would normally just aim it at you, but I wish to eliminate the possibility of my own kinetic inergy signals being picked up, never mind those of anyone else on this station. That means using the cap and armband sensors. I will also not be able to touch the machine once it is working since sometimes the silly thing picks up inergy emanations right through the casing.”
Li’eth frowned and rubbed at his nose. The man was kind, but he was not used to being casually touched. “So if we’re not talking about someone untrained . . . ?”
“We usually talk about youths in these circumstances, since most psi abilities emerge in puberty; the stress of hormones, the final connections being made in our neural networks, that sort of thing. If they are given training right away, and are diligent about it, if one starts at the age of, say, fifteen and keeps exercising that ability on a regular basis, not just a casual one . . . peak strength will be achieved by age twenty-five. Or say we have someone of your age, a man in his early to midthirties who blossoms unexpectedly—usually out of a trauma of some sort—it would take anywhere from three to seven years to get you up to full strength in each and every ability. In your exact case, someone who has never had true training, it would take the same amount of time if you are diligent.
“But in every case, in every single one,” Sonam lectured with an upraised finger as he moved back to the machine, “unless they suppress their gift and refuse to use it—and it will atrophy if you don’t, though it will never completely go away—it will hit a peak natural ability within roughly five years of emergence and standard, diligent training. That is if you only use it casually, and have had that basic, standard instruction. It will improve from that natural, lazy baseline if you are diligent and consistent in exercising and training your gifts.
“You have not been properly trained, and so your rankings will be all over the place, unsettled for the next few years to come. It is the act of consistent, ongoing, willfully intensified training that can move your mental muscles from ‘realistic and reasonably fit’ to ‘muscleman’ of the mental world . . . which, for a prince, would give you a distinct useful advantage as you go along through your princely life.”
He flicked a switch, and Li’eth felt the machine next to him come to life. It took him several seconds to realize he was trying to read its history, and that the machine was reading his attempt to read it, which in turn was altering what he was sensing from the thing. Experimentally, he tried narrowing his search to just the armbands, to the history of the . . . people who had unpacked it and installed it in its cupboard on the station, one of them a shortish woman with shortish, curly hair, earrings in her lobes, a gray coverall with hints of a peach-pink shirt underneath—Gatsugi colormood hyper-in-the-face-oftension, oddly enough—and she was thinking about . . . meat loaf? Meat loaf on that night’s menu.
“Hm . . . Fascinating. Whatever you are doing, that is a Rank 8 ability. What are you doing?” Sonam asked him.
“The woman who unpacked this machine,” Li’eth told him. “She had medium brown skin, gray coveralls, a . . . light peach shirt. And she was thinking of meat loaf on the menu for the evening she put this machine into the cupboard.”
Sonam smiled for a moment, warm and proud. “Ah, your psychometry, your object-reading, has been activated. And I am pleased to see it is around the rank I thought it might be. Now, clear your mind, young man,” the monk added somewhat sternly. “Deep breath, relax your attention, relax all thoughts . . . think of nothing but a single flower from your homeworld.”
“I’m signaling Jackie to calm down and power down on this end,” Jonesy stated through the still-open monitor.
“Clear your mind . . . think only of a single, simple flower . . .”
Li’eth closed his eyes. He summoned up the thought of a crysollam, a delicate, many-petaled flower. The innermost petals were thin and transparent, sending the warmth of the sun’s light down to the seed chamber to warm the burgeoning seeds once they were fertilized; the outer petals were a more shimmery, translucent white. He had seen designs on clothing and some actual images for a chrysanthemum flower that were somewhat similar in overall shape, but its petals were solid, opaque, and apparently came in different colors.
Those colors were gold, and red, pink and yellow, purple, and even a few that were blue. Blue flowers that rose up on stems with dozens, seemingly hundreds, of slender, individual petals, not slender trumpet blossoms with lobed ends that dangled from tree branches, the flowers that Jackie said were what she was named for, the delicately inked ones surrounding the blunt, odd eye symbol on her shoulder, which in turn were surrounded by three rings of shark teeth, which she had said were a symbol of her protecting the Earth three times from Grey invasions, and yet she was the one who was back on Earth, safe and surrounded by everyone while he was stuck here on a gas mining station of all places with a bunch of strangers and he just wanted to reach out to her . . .
Sonam touched his nose. “What are you thinking about?”
The touch and the question interrupted his chain of thought. Li’eth opened his eyes. “. . . Flowers?”
“A bit more than flowers, I’d think,” Sonam chided lightly, pulling his hand back. “You were thinking about something that spiked the KI meter just now.”
“Sonam, what was the exact time stamp on that spike?” Jonesy asked through the commlink.
The monk moved over to the machine. “Since we have not established what time it is there versus what time it is here, I will simply say that it was . . . thirty seconds ago . . . mark.”
“We had a spike at that point, here. What was he thinking about?”
“Yes, what were you thinking about at the end of your meditations, young man?” Sonam asked.
Li’eth felt his face heating up a little. He hesitated on actually admitting it, though.
“Were you thinking about . . . her?” Sonam asked, his brows raised but no trace of censure anywhere in his tone or his expression. Li’eth nodded slightly, embarrassed anyway. “Yes, that would do it. I registered a Rank 5.4 at that point. Your end, Dr. Jones?”
Jones? Isn’t his name Jonesy? Or . . . oh. Nickname. Right.
“It was 3.4 on this end. A mere two ranks in differentiation would be fairly strong for this early on—presumably early—in a bonding,” Jones relayed, his tone suggesting he was distracted. “According to what Jackie told me, they haven’t done anything more than moderate amounts of telepathy and mild hand-holding. They should be at a three-rank separation at least, not merely two.”
“They did engage in a three-hour mutual-language-transference session,” the monk pointed out. “Then again, even for this early, she shouldn’t have gone up half a rank,” Sonam replied. He touched a couple controls on the machine, then instructed, “Initiate test 3a on subject one.”
Li’eth didn’t know what that meant. He leaned forward a little, catching a glimpse of the lever. It wiggled, then swayed up along its arc a little. “Three plus a bit . . . ? Is she thinking of me?”
Even as he said that, hope rising inside, the needle jerked and swayed upward, past five.
“And there it goes, he’s thinking of her,” Sonam sighed. “Calm yourself, Your Highness. What is your favorite rock?”
“My . . . what?” Li’eth, distracted by the non sequitur, realized after a second that the needle had dropped back down. He wasn’t thinking of—
“Type of rock. Crystals, sandstone, granite, hot glowing lava . . . your favorite kind of rock,” Sonam interrupted him.
“Ahh . . . crystals. Quartz,” he added, dredging up the Terranglo word for it. “Simple, common quartz. Smoke quartz, the gray-colored ones. And amethysts, when they’re found in a big geode. I like how they look like a cave from some magical children’s
tale.”
“It’s 3.4 on this end,” Sonam reported.
Crystals were easier to talk about, except . . . Bright Stone. Only she wasn’t bright stone, she was blue flower, indigo, bluish-purple . . .
“. . . And another spike. You really need to control your thoughts better, young man,” Sonam chided mildly. “Jonesy, implement test 17b on subject one. What temperature of water do you prefer to bathe in, young man?”
“Water . . . ? Fairly hot if I’m to soak. For a shower, I prefer to ease into it, mildly warm, then increase it toward the end. Unless it’s a cold day,” he added honestly. “If the bathing chamber isn’t warm, then the shower needs to be steaming hot to compensate.”
Sonam chuckled. “I think we all have that feeling. I know that as I get older . . .”
(Li’eth?)
(Jackie!) He reached out to her, seizing her mind in his as he would have seized her hands had she been physically there. (I’ve missed you. I need to—)
(You need to calm down and focus your thoughts,) she sent to him, her mental fingers shifting to his mental shoulders. Somewhere in the real world, outside his head, Sonam was making observations, but Li’eth didn’t care. He strained to listen to Jackie even though her sending wasn’t the happiest thing in the world. (We both need to keep our minds focused during these tasks. I have missed you, too, but . . . I am under orders not to accelerate any bond between us.)
(I . . . I realize that. But . . . I feel like everything is too foreign without you here to reassure me,) he confessed, shifting his own hands to her waist. (Like I’m on a spacewalk outside a ship, but without a tether or a maneuvering pack.)
She smiled, one hand touching his cheek. It wasn’t an entirely happy smile. (I know. I’m showing some signs of anxiety, too. But you must be strong. Meditate, strive to calm yourself, and follow Master Sonam’s testing instructions as exactly as you can. Now, I am going to end this conversation, and then . . . I think Master Sonam will ask you to speak telepathically with him. Do not reach for me. And do not worry; when the tour is over, we will be together again. There won’t be such a great distance to try to bridge. Can you let go, so we can begin?)
Hesitating, Li’eth pulled her into a hug. A mental embrace, knees to shoulders, arms spread across her back. She returned it after a moment, and for one beautiful, peaceful mo—something zapped through him, jolting him back into his own physical body. Blinking his eyes open, Li’eth found the monk withdrawing an odd, ridged rod.
“Mild electrostatic shock wand,” Sonam enlightened him. “It’s useful for pulling students out of a trance without giving them any actual damage, just a little zapping pain to ground them back in their bodies.” He nodded to a tray on a cart that had been rolled over. On the tray were some gauze pads, a scalpel sealed in a packet, and antiseptic spray. “Are you ready to begin demonstrating your biokinesis?”
A sigh escaped him. Li’eth nodded. This, he was familiar with by now. Sonam had forced him to practice on himself both in quarantine and on the journey here.
Biokinesis, according to Terran techniques, was often trained in a major medical facility, where the students worked under close supervision to “. . . encourage the body to do what it would normally do on its own, which is to heal itself and return to good health.” Injuries and illnesses often made the job harder for the tissues in question to handle everything; the energy to heal had to come from somewhere, and if the injury or illness was severe, it meant resources got tied up, slowing down the healing process. Biokinesis sped that process by giving extra energy to that system, among other things, but like every gift, it had to be practiced to strengthen and speed the ability.
Reaching for the antiseptic spray, a move he had performed dozens of times in the last few weeks, Li’eth squirted it onto the top of his forearm and started rubbing it into his skin. He suspected he wasn’t going to be asked to do anything other than shallow cuts, the sort one got from a pet g’at, or cat in Terranglo, but the top of his arm would hurt less than most other locations. It just needed to be cleansed of the potential for infection, first.
MARCH 5, 2287 C.E.
ALOHA CITY, EARTH
“. . . But that means we’re still not sure what the rank cap will be, since Li’eth’s own abilities haven’t reached their fully trained potential. It’s highly probable that both of us may turn out to be Rank 16 or even Rank 17 as telepaths when acting individually. An increase of two ranks, on my part . . . which, when you get into the teens, is pretty powerful, since the scale is somewhat logarithmic.”
“Somewhat?” Callan asked. “I’m getting thirsty. Would you like some water?”
“Yes, please,” Jackie agreed.
He rose to fetch two cups of water from the dispensary unit in one of the square corners of his office. Today’s wall-windows at the other end were showing a view of Gibsons Beach, South Isle, New Zealand. The great, surf-rounded rocks near the cliffs contrasted with the fine gray grit of the sand near the waterline. A man and his dog were running along the firm-packed sand halfway to the surf’s edge. It might have been past sunset up in the Hawai’ian Islands, but daylight still reigned down there, and the slanting summer sun of the southern hemisphere looked refreshing.
Pulling her fingers apart, Jackie murmured her thanks as she accepted the water. Today’s dress, or rather, a skirt and sleeveless top, was another black ensemble, this time decorated here and there with hibiscus flowers. In an odd coincidence, one of the blush-pink flowers on her outfit went with the Premiere’s shirt, though his slacks and the jacket thrown over the back of a nearby chair were a muted purplish gray, not basic black.
“By somewhat logarithmic, what did you mean?” Callan repeated, expanding his question as he reseated himself across from her.
“The power scales aren’t a simple base-ten progression, each following number being ten time the value of the number before it. I’m not an expert, but I believe the way it was described back in my classes years ago is that it’s more like a base-six logarithm tied to a foundation of base-eight mathematics. Which I didn’t study,” she clarified. “I was more into actually using my gifts, learning new languages. Practicing the occasional feat of holotelekinetic legerdemain, but mostly focused on being a polyglot translator like my father.”
“Did you ever think you’d follow in your famous ancestress’ footsteps? The stage-magician ones, not necessarily the Lunar ones,” he clarified.
Sipping on her water, Jackie shook her head. “Father says I look more like Jesse James Mankiller than I do Mother—Hyacinth, my sister, looks more like our mother than I do—but while I entertained the thought a brief couple of times, holokinesis has always been more of a hobby. Languages and learning about cultures, that has been the big fascination. Some people keep trying to tell me I’m wasting myself on civil service when I could be earning a fortune as a stage magician, but that’s just not what I want in my life. I have it, I train it, I use it from time to time, but it doesn’t define me. And it shouldn’t have to define my choices in life.”
“Well, it looks like you could be learning and speaking a whole slough of languages and cultures, soon. We can’t exactly endanger the emotional and mental well-being of the son of the head of an entire major government by denying him the presence of his Gestalt partner,” the Premiere allowed. “At the very least, you will go to V’Dan in one capacity or another, because of that.”
“Thank you.” She didn’t take offense at being placed lower on the priority list, the way he put that. It was the truth, after all. Terran government hadn’t been parted from autocratic-government styles nearly long enough to have forgotten how territorial those autocrats—monarchs included—could be over the well-being of their nearest and dearest. She looked down into her mug, plain white on one side, stamped with the seal of the Premiere of the United Planets Council on the other side. “However, the big question remains. Am I the Ambassador, or am I just a tagalong?”
“Oh, never just a tagalong,” Callan dism
issed, briefly lifting his hand in denial of that thought. “At the absolute very least, since you’ve conducted yourself ethically, I could arrange to have you listed as an official translator for the embassy. Or even appoint you to the V’Dan government as an adjunct linguistic-and-cultural translator, offered to their royal court or whatever for their edification.”
“Don’t play with my career aspirations, sir,” Jackie said flatly. She set her mug on the table and rose, pacing. It was bad enough she missed Li’eth. That brief telepathic connection, which required trance-concentration, hadn’t completely eased her separation anxiety. She caught herself midpace, stopped, breathed deep, and apologized. She didn’t have to be empathic to know what she had said was inappropriate. “. . . I’m sorry. I know you’re not playing with them. I know without scanning you in any way that you are honestly trying to offer viable suggestions.”
“Is your career more important than the well-being . . . ?” He trailed off when she turned to face him sharply.
“No. Ask for my resignation, and I will give it. As I gave it to your predecessor,” she reminded him. “Rosa McCrary? Last Premiere? Your mentor? I’ve already been through this pain once. I can endure it again.”
“Pain . . .” He narrowed his eyes, studying her.
“Failing to serve. I honestly thought she was right, that enough of my constituents had complained that I should step down, that they had legitimately complained. That’s a failure. A failure of the trust my people placed in me,” she added, thumping her chest with her fingertips, “to represent them.”
She flung out her hand at the monitor-windows. At New Zealand, which only failed to be a part of Polynesia because it had a large enough population base to be its own province, with its own representative in the Council. Technically, the Maori, the original inhabitants, were a part of Polynesia. Many had called her an “honorary Councilor” for her willingness to stand up for aboriginal rights and needs, too, as a neighbor to their Councilor’s constituency. But that was then. This was now . . . and now she had her place as an Ambassador, the ultimate in representatives, being toyed with . . .