Telepath (A Hyllis Family Story #4)

by Laurence Dahners

  Tarc’s ruminations came to an end when Sarno started sliding the end of the ladder down into the hole. Tarc and Daussie started to guide it on into the opening in the concrete wall, then Tarc stopped it, realizing they really needed someone down in the room to guide the bottom end of it. He was about to climb down the rope himself when he remembered what’d happened last time he left Daussie alone out here with a man. He looked up, “Um, Keller, can you climb down into the room and guide the end of ladder down?”

  Shortly they had the ladder down and braced against the wall just beneath the opening.

  Tarc had Sarno start cleaning dirt off of the wheelchair and gurney they’d freed up the last time. Meanwhile, he and Daussie went over to look at the door. After examining the mechanism with it empty which made the structure more evident, he had Daussie start porting oil into different parts of it. He used his ghirit to push the oil back and forth through the bigger sections and squeeze it around in between tightly fitting parts he thought were supposed to move past one another. It was difficult getting it squeezed in around the little tumbler pins, but he was able to get it in there after a little effort.

  He tugged on the tumbler pins but only two of the seven moved.

  Daussie said, “You still need me?”

  Tarc grinned at her, “I thought you were enjoying the day away from the grindstone back at the tavern?”

  “I like the sunshine.” She waved around the dim chamber they were standing in, “There isn’t much sunshine down here.”

  “Okay, keep your ghirit out on the way home.”

  “You can bet I will,” Daussie said, starting for the ladder.

  ~~~

  Tarc and Sarno spent the rest of the day digging out four more gurneys, then cleaning most of the dirt off of them. There’d been remnants of what Tarc thought had been cushions on top of the gurneys. Like the wheelchair, the wheels of the gurneys only had a few fragments of their original rubber by the time they’d been pulled free of the dirt. The remainder of the gurneys were made of stainless steel and aluminum and were in surprisingly good condition.

  The back wall of the big chamber was now piled high with dirt that had been shoveled away from the front wall.

  With Tarc pushing and Sarno pulling, they got the wheelchair and two of the five gurneys up the ladder and out to the wagon, though it was quite a struggle. The gurneys were so big and clumsy the wagon was full with those three items.

  Once they’d tied everything in place, Tarc paid Keller his twenty-five coppers even though it hadn’t been a full day. Since he didn’t want Sarno watching him put the bars back in place, and he didn’t want someone driving the wagon away while he was distracted, he asked the man to keep an eye on the mules and wagon until Tarc got the room locked up.

  Before putting the bars back, Tarc climbed down into the room and tried moving the pins in the lock’s tumbler. Encouragingly, he was able to move a few more and thought he could jiggle several of the other moving parts in the lock. Climbing out, he slid the pipes back in place to bar the entrance and used his ghirit to set the bolts that kept the pipes in place.

  A few minutes later, he was leading the mules back to Clancy Vail.

  ***

  The tavern was busy when Tarc got back, but with the extra workers, he wasn’t really needed. He got Daussie to port some grease in around the axle of the wheelchair, then spent a couple of hours wrapping and gluing leather straps around the wheels where the rubber had been.

  That done, he took careful measurements and went to one of the carpenters to get a seat made for the wheelchair. The original leather one had proved so fragile after all this time that it hadn’t even made it up the ladder out of the concrete room before it came apart in fragments. At least it held on long enough to show me this thing was a chair, Tarc thought.

  ***

  By the time of the next day’s late morning slowdown in the tavern’s dining room, the glue was dry and Tarc had the seat mounted. After a quick peek in the door, he pulled it open and wheeled himself into the dining area.

  Farlin and the few customers in there goggled at him, but everyone else seemed to be in the kitchen. He wheeled himself over and parked directly in the path of the servers while grinning at Farlin.

  In a few minutes, the customers and Farlin had gathered around him. “What is that thing?” one of them asked.

  “It’s a wheelchair. For people who have injured legs, so they can get around.” Tarc turned the wheelchair and pushed it a little way with his hands on the wheels, then pointed back over his shoulders with his thumbs. “And those handles back there are so when I get tired, or lazy, I can get someone to push me about.”

  “Oh!” one of the customers said. “Can I try pushing you?”

  Once Tarc gave him permission, the man delighted in pushing him around the room. One of the other customers pushed him around the room once himself, then asked for a ride. While pushing himself about, the man asked, “Do you have someone with an injured leg…? Someone who needs this thing?”

  “No,” Tarc said, recognizing an opportunity for advertising. “But, we think of ourselves as healers first and tavern keepers second. You may know we took care of Jimmy Nantz, the Guardsman that got stabbed a week ago. Hopefully, someday, if some patients come in with leg injuries we’ll be able to use this wheelchair to help them.”

  “Oh,” the man said getting quickly out of the chair. “Well, it’s fun to push yourself around in it, but not fun enough that I’d hope to need it someday.”

  Just as Tarc was beginning to think no one would ever come out of the kitchen, Eva herself opened the door on her way somewhere. She stopped to stare wide-eyed, then let out a shriek. In a few minutes, everyone who worked in the tavern was out there gawking at the wheelchair, taking rides and pushing themselves. Tarc found himself in the kitchen trying to keep any of the food from getting burned.

  ***

  The next morning, Tarc was able to go back out to the underground room with the wagon. Sarno wasn’t there to help him pull up the rest of the gurneys, so he turned his attention to the door. This time he was able to turn the lock and get into the rest of the rooms. He found a key for that door hanging on the other side of the wall. The other side of the door had a little flat knob that let him lock it from the inside without a key. Not wanting anyone to come in behind him, he locked it and set out to explore.

  The underground complex was enormous. Much bigger than he’d expected, even considering how Eva had detected another underground room so far away.

  Unfortunately, he’d only walked around a little bit when he heard Daum urgently calling his name.

  He ran back to the entrance, wondering how Daum had gotten inside since his voice had been clear, not muffled as if it had come through the door. But when he arrived, the door was still closed. He called through the door, “Dad?”

  “Yeah, your mom wants you back as fast as we can get there. Someone’s come in with a bleeding ulcer.”

  Tarc had been turning the knob to unlock the door while his father spoke. He closed it and locked it with the key; then they quickly climbed the ladder. For a moment he hesitated about barring the entrance, then decided it’d only take a few seconds. His dad handed him the pipes as he shoved them in place and used his ghirit to set the bolts to hold them.

  Then they were on their way back to the tavern. As they rode, Tarc said, “How come I could hear your voice so well when you were still outside?”

  Daum frowned at him. “I used my ghirit to send it to the other side of the door,” he said as if it were obvious.

  “But… I thought you couldn’t send your ghirit into objects. Only to where you can see.”

  “I can send it, I just can’t tell where it is once it gets there the way you can. But sending it to the other side of the door wasn’t position critical. If I’d sent it six inches or six feet, it’d still make sound you could hear.”

  “Oh…” Tarc said, pondering. Then he grinned at his dad, “We’ve got
to bring mom back out here. It really is some kind of medical facility. She’s gonna go crazy.”

  Daum grinned back at him, but they stopped trying to talk. It was hard to hear when the horses were making speed.

  ~~~

  Once they were back at the tavern, Tarc understood the urgency. A pale woman lay on one of the tables in the back corner. As he walked in she convulsed up to vomit blood. There was a crowd of people around.

  Eva pulled him aside, “We can’t get her family to leave so we’re trying to do our best with them here. This woman’s got an ulcer in the lowest part of her stomach and it’s eroded into the side of a vessel that’s bleeding.”

  Tarc looked around and saw that Vyrda was there. Eva said, “Vyrda’s been trying, but her telekinesis isn’t strong enough to cauterize the vessel. She’s been cooling the vessel, trying to make it spasm and slow the bleeding. That seems to have slowed the bleeding some, but not enough.” Eva glanced at the woman and shook her head, “If you can’t cauterize it, she’s going to die.”

  Tarc knelt by the woman for a moment, found the vessel that was bleeding and tried to cauterize it. Unfortunately, it was a small artery and enough blood was flowing out of it to carry away the heat he generated.

  He used his ghirit to stop the flow in the vessel for a moment while he tried to think of something else to do. The obvious thing was to hold the flow back and cauterize the vessel, but cauterizing took all the energy he had. He turned to Vyrda, “Ms. Soh!” he whispered urgently.

  She turned to him from the conversation she’d been having with Eva.

  As soon as he saw he had her attention, he used his ghirit to whisper in her ear, “Can your ghirit push back to stop the flow in the vessel? I can’t cauterize it because the blood flow carries away the heat.”

  She was obviously surprised to hear his voice directly in her ear canal, and even more surprised by the request. Tarc realized she’d never considered the possibility of just pushing back on the blood flow and Eva’d forgotten about it. She didn’t speak, just stepped over, gave him a sharp nod and leaned down to put her head right next to his—mere inches from the woman’s stomach.

  Moments later, the blood flow slowed to a trickle, then immediately resumed. Vyrda’s eyes sought his. “I can do it,” she whispered, “but I won’t be able to hold it for long. Are you ready to cauterize now?”

  Tarc nodded and she closed her eyes. A second later, the blood flow stopped and Tarc immediately heated the vessel. He felt it shrivel and dry up. The pressure came back on the cauterized part of the artery moments later when Vyrda couldn’t hold it any longer.

  The woman cried out, evidently feeling pain from the cauterization. Tarc looked up at Kazy. Her eyes were wide. She turned them down to the woman and seemed to concentrate. A moment later, the woman was asleep.

  Tarc turned his attention back to the vessel he’d cauterized. He got the distinct impression that the burned tissue wasn’t going to hold, though it was only leaking a tiny bit for now. He tilted his head curiously. The pulsations aren’t as strong now, he thought. Oh, probably because when Kazy relaxed her to sleep it also lowered her blood pressure.

  He sent his voice into Kazy’s ear, “Relaxing her is lowering her pressure. If you can relax her even more, I think that’d be good. He stood and turned to Eva and Daussie. “It’s cauterized,” he whispered, “but I’m worried it’s not going to hold. I think we should put a stitch around it.”

  Daussie immediately turned and walked away.

  Eva frowned, “The suture’s going to be contaminated by food where it comes out into the stomach. An infection could be as bad as more bleeding.”

  Tarc blinked, “I was going to put the stitch around it about a centimeter before it gets close to the inner surface of the stomach.”

  “Oh, good idea.”

  Daussie was already returning with one of her little suture packets and some moonshine. Tarc took the packet, saying, “This has a really short needle so I can make a sharp turn with it, right?”

  Daussie nodded, opening the little jar of moonshine and pouring some onto the packet.

  Tarc knelt by the woman again laying the suture packet on her abdomen, and sending his ghirit in to check on the artery. It was already leaking a little more. He turned to Vyrda.

  She gave him a meaningful look and whispered, “Yeah, it’s leaking already. I’ll try to hold it back.”

  Tarc gave her a sharp nod, then used his ghirit to pull the needle through the cloth of the packet, through her skin, and down through the fat and muscle into the abdomen. It seemed like every time he did this, he got better at it. He was able to pull it unerringly to the stomach. He paused for a second to map out the artery with his ghirit, then plunged the needle into the wall of the stomach, around the artery and back out. In another second, he’d made the first throw of his knot. He cinched that one tight, then looked at Vyrda. He sent his voice into her ear, “Ease the back pressure and let’s see if my stitch has stopped it.”

  She nodded and he felt the pressure increase a little bit but the bleeding was completely stopped from the direction where he’d tied the artery off. Unfortunately, there was some backflow from the artery beyond the ulcer and that blood was still leaking out.

  Tarc made the second throw of his knot, went back to the first one and cinched it a little bit then tightened the second throw. With that secured he put in a couple of more throws to be sure it didn’t come undone. He glanced up at Daussie who was leaning over his shoulder. “Cut,” he whispered the suture immediately fell free. He guided the needle over and took it around the artery on the other side of the ulcer. When he tightened that one, the bleeding stopped completely. Several more throws on the knot and it was done.

  Daussie cut the suture.

  Tarc pulled the needle and the tail of the suture up out of the woman’s abdomen and back into the packet. With a relieved sigh he sat back and nodded to Kazy.

  Then he had an idea. He sent his voice into Kazy’s ear and said, “Keep her asleep another few minutes.” He turned and sent into Daussie’s ear, “There’s still a lot of blood in her stomach. I’ll bet it’ll make her feel like throwing up, and if she does it’d be unpleasant. I think if you ported it out into a pan, it’d make her feel a lot better.”

  Daussie nodded again, standing and heading for the kitchen. Eva leaned down in her place. After a moment for her ghirit to scout around, she squeezed Tarc’s shoulder and whispered, “Awesome job.”

  Tarc got a warm and fuzzy feeling. He’d felt good about what he’d done, but hearing Eva say it really drove it home. Eva asked where Daussie’d gone, and when Tarc explained she said, “That’s a great idea. You sure have an awful lot of good ideas for someone who isn’t interested in medicine.”

  Tarc snorted, “Not a great idea. I was just stating the obvious…”

  ***

  That evening, a popular caravan pulled into the marketing grounds. Vyrda promptly predicted that business would be slow in the tavern as many of the townspeople would go out to explore the offerings at the caravan.

  The next day, Daum shooed Eva, Tarc, Daussie, and Kazy out the door, telling them that he, Farlin, Nylin, and Grace could handle the tavern that day. They’d take the next day off.

  When Tarc came around the corner with the mules and horses, Eva’s reaction was, “I don’t need a horse to go down to the caravan grounds!”

  Tarc shrugged, “But it’s quite a bit farther out to the underground rooms.”

  Eva gasped, “You got them open?!”

  He nodded and turned back toward their little stable, “But, if you want to walk, it probably would be good exercise.”

  After a brief argument about who had to ride the mules, they were on their way. They pestered Tarc most of the way about what he’d found, but he shrugged them off with claims that he’d been called back before he’d been able to do more than get the door open and seen a long hallway.

  ~~~

  They removed the bars and cli
mbed down the ladder. Tarc showed them all how to use the key, none of them having ever seen any keys except the clumsy ones that could be made by blacksmiths. Then they were inside, gasping at the length of the hallway they could see fading into the darkness beyond where their lamps reached. They immediately wanted to run off, but Tarc made them wait long enough to learn how to unlock the door from the inside using the little flat knob.

  Kazy and Daussie ran off down the hall. Thinking it was a good thing they brought four lamps, Tarc walked a short distance behind his mother delighting in her gasp as she came to a room that appeared to have been a laboratory. It had benches and large quantities of failing plastic objects. But, there was a lot of glassware as well. There were also some of the ancient devices that Henry had told Tarc were thinking machines called computers.

  Then Eva’s voice squeaked as she saw a shelf lined with books. With trembling hands, she pulled down the first one, carefully laying it on the bench and gently turning a few fragile pages. Tarc had spent a few moments with them on his last trip so he knew that most of the books seemed to be manuals of some kind related to the lab.