Turning Point

by Lisanne Norman

  “I can’t go any farther without food, Kusac!” Carrie exclaimed, sitting down heavily on the remains of a tree trunk. “I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”

  “Fair enough,” said Kusac, setting the rucksack down beside her. “I’ll get some firewood rounded up. You can begin getting some food and coffee ready. I refilled the flask at our last campsite.”

  “We’ve got the stove,” said Carrie, delving into her pack. “There’s no need for a wood fire.” She pulled a sealed foil pack out. “I don’t much fancy emergency rations, do you?” she asked, pulling a face as she waved them in Kusac’s direction.

  “No, but there’s no point in trying to hunt just now. The noise we’ve been making will have scared away the game for miles around.”

  Carrie grunted in reluctant agreement.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed, taking out the first aid pack. “Your arm. I meant to put a dressing on it this morning. Let me see it.”

  Kusac held out his left arm, trying to remember if he had been aware of it hurting. They both examined it to find that in a couple of places the scab had fallen off to reveal the brighter pink flesh of a newly healed wound.

  “Um, I don’t think you need a bandage after all,” said Carrie, putting the pack away again.

  She busied herself lighting the stove.

  Kusac sat back, totally nonplussed. He flexed the arm, not even a twinge. There was no doubt about it, one of them was a healer—but which one? He filled the kettle and gave it to Carrie to put on the stove.

  Carrie began to unpack her rucksack, refolding every item as she took it out. He knew she was just making work for herself. He leaned forward and caught her hands in his, stilling them.

  “I need to explain to you about Telepath links,” he said.

  “I suspect that if you know about it, then so do I,” she said.

  “Probably, but knowing and understanding are not necessarily the same.”

  “True,” she conceded, her hands finally relaxing in his.

  “Our people have only the one mental Talent compared to the several I have already discovered you possess. That’s the ability to transmit and receive thoughts.

  “We understand this Talent well, and those with a greater degree of it would train to become interpreters for Alien trade, to help in the law courts as truthsayers or even as judges, to work with the mentally ill—all manner of professions are open to us with our Talent. Each profession involves working with others by means of a greater or lesser mind link.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “Obviously we cannot be totally at the mercy of the criminal or insane mind, so we build in our own protections to keep out those thoughts we do not want.

  “I will need to teach you how to do this. We are lucky, we start training at the Telepaths’ Guild in early childhood. You are rare among your people so there was no such training for you.

  “Now is neither the time nor place, but I promise I will teach you as soon as I have the opportunity.”

  He released her hand and leaned forward to brush her cheek with his fingertips. Her eyes took on an extra depth, becoming heavy lidded. Abruptly, he pulled back, leaving her dazed as if she were coming out of a trance. He’d been about to take her in his arms before he realized what was happening to them.

  Taking advantage of her confusion, he swiftly created a mental barrier behind which, for the moment at least, he could think. Thank Vartra that she hadn’t yet figured out that their Leska link involved a sexual compulsion. That was all he needed. At least she appeared to be less affected by it than he.

  Anger flared briefly inside him. He needed to know that what they felt for each other was real, not the product of their link. It might not even be that, it could be the attraction of two different species for each other, but that was equally biological.

  “What is it?” she demanded, shaking his arm. “What happened?”

  “Nothing, I just felt dizzy for a moment. Look, the kettle’s boiling. Let’s make the coffee while I explain some more.”

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” she asked, concern written on her face and in her mind.

  “I’m fine,” he assured her, giving his equivalent of a smile.

  She nodded. “I’ll do the coffee, you do the talking.”

  “This is the hard bit, Carrie,” he said, handing her the mug and settling down on the ground beside her. “Like all the other students, I took a tour of experience with the Medics as well as the other departments. I’m telling you this so you understand that I do know what I’m talking about.”

  She glanced up at him as she stirred the coffee. “You sound as if it’s serious.”

  “I’m afraid it is. I was worried about your link with Elise, so I took a long look at your memories of it. Because your people don’t recognize Talent, as your link with your twin developed it got twisted out of true. What should have been a bond of shared joys as well as pain, became a nightmare of pain for you.”

  “Let me get this straight,” she said quietly, passing him the mug first. “You’re telling me that the link Elise and I shared was twisted.”

  “That’s right. You were only experiencing the negative side of what a link should bring.”

  “And just how do you think this happened?”

  Kusac took a drink and handed her the mug. “Elise was the dominant twin. She led, you followed, essentially. At a very young age when morals don’t exist, she discovered that she could do what she liked without it hurting her, so she did. As she got older she realized this was wrong and did try to modify her behavior, but the pattern was set by then.

  “Without knowing it, you had created a feedback loop so that when your twin got hurt, you automatically took the pain away from her, and she, understanding that you did this, was happy to send it to you.”

  Carrie was silent for a moment. “Elise would never do that!” she said angrily. “You’re saying she used me! She wouldn’t. What do you know about it anyway? You’re picking apart secondhand memories—I was there, I lived with it!”

  She threw the rest of the coffee out and stuffed the mug back in her rucksack.

  Kusac let her fumble with the stove and kettle, only too aware of the blazing anger directed at him. Damn! Why hadn’t he left it to one of the Counselors on the Khalossa to deal with? He couldn’t just leave it, he had to say something.

  “Carrie, I’m not trying to apportion blame. I just wanted you to appreciate that a link can be positive, too.”

  “Look, I don’t want to talk about it. Leave it alone.”

  “I know you’re afraid, I can feel it ...”

  “Kusac, drop it,” she said, picking up the rucksack and stomping off along the path.

  Carrie continued to guide them, despite her misgivings and even though the atmosphere between them remained chilly for several hours, by dusk, she was prepared to talk to him in more than monosyllables. They stopped for the night only when the light filtering down through the dense canopy was insufficient for Carrie’s human sight.

  While Kusac went to track down some supper, Carrie began to search for the exact location of his crew mates. Her mind reached out through the forest looking for the natural barrier of the Sholans. Once she found it, it was an easy matter for her to penetrate it without alarming any of them.

  Her view of the location was poor due to the darkness, so she touched the nearest mind lightly, discovering what she needed to know. She withdrew, but before she did she felt the mind she had touched leap toward her.

  Kusac? Is. that you?

  She returned to her own body slightly surprised by the faint contact with the stranger’s mind. Hadn’t Kusac said he was the only telepath on the ship? Filing the thought away for the future, she got to her feet and began to search for firewood.

  The next morning, Carrie gave Kusac a mental picture of the cave in the cliff face where the Sholans were living.

  “It isn’t far, Kusac,” she said as he led the way.

  �
��Good. The sooner we get the initial meeting over with, the better,” he growled. “Just remember to be careful. I want to avoid giving them the slightest inkling that we are Leskas.”

  “All right,” she agreed. “By the way, I forgot to mention that someone noticed my presence last night and thought I was you.”

  “Are you sure? None of the others have any Talent, of that I am positive.”

  “Someone reacted to my touch,” she insisted.

  “Let me know when you recognize who it is and I’ll check it out. The last thing we need is a partial or wild Talent around us. They go around broadcasting at random without realizing it. I can block it out once I know who is responsible.”

  Carrie let the matter drop, but she was still slightly perplexed by the whole incident. Despite the mistake in identity, the mind that had touched hers was obviously used to Kusac’s mental touch. It bothered her and she resented that. However, there were more important things to concern her at the moment.

  Within a couple of hours they were approaching the cliff face. At the edge of the trees, Kusac halted.

  “You wait here. I’ll meet them alone first. My reappearance will be enough of a shock for them.”

  “No,” said Carrie firmly, taking her knife back. “We go there together. It would be better if they meet both of us now. It will be only one shock instead of two.”

  “Very well,” he said, “but stay behind me. They’ll be armed and may shoot at you instinctively.”

  Carrie’s eyebrows disappeared under her fringe. “You do make them sound friendly.”

  “You’re an Alien, remember? They may not yet have seen any Terrans, or they may have been hunted by them. There are many reasons why they could feel threatened by your presence.

  “Do you still want to come with me?” he asked, his head cocked to one side in amusement.

  “Just lead the way and stop the delaying tactics,” she answered acidly, poking him in the side with the knife pommel before she returned it to its sheath.

  Kusac advanced into the clearing with Carrie behind him. The cliff face was steep but rugged, with many outcroppings of jagged rocks. Stunted trees and small bushes perched here and there among the lichens and ivy.

  “I can’t see a cave,” he murmured after a few minutes. “Are you sure this is the right spot?”

  Carrie turned a withering look on him. “You know damned well it is. You sensed the direction through me. The cave is behind those bushes,” she said, pointing above them and slightly to the left. “You’d better call to them. They know we’re here.”

  Kusac called.

  She had never heard him talking in his own tongue before. The words had a slightly guttural sound but were delivered in a singsong tone. Aware of his speech only peripherally, she listened with her mind, hearing not only him but the Captain’s answering call. Part of her noted with an academic interest that when she and Kusac had merged, along with all his experiences, she had acquired a knowledge of his language.

  “Kusac! What in Vartra’s name are you doing bringing a native with you?” The Sholan who stepped from behind the bushes was as forbidding as his voice.

  Ignoring the gun pointing in her direction, Carrie moved forward a few paces.

  “I brought him here, Captain,” she said, stumbling a little as her tongue tried to form sounds that were truly Alien to her. “Perhaps you would have preferred him to remain among my people masquerading as a forest cat—like you.”

  The muzzle of the Captain’s gun wavered slightly.

  “She speaks our language!” His voice was almost a whisper.

  “Of course,” Carrie replied, her intonation a little surer now. “May I suggest that we join you? There are guerrilla bands of my people roaming these woods, plus the odd detachment of Valtegans. We have no wish to meet either of them, even if you have.”

  The Captain’s tail began to switch violently from side to side as he peremptorily motioned them forward.

  They clambered up the incline, Carrie edging her way into the cave first.

  Kusac was held back briefly.

  “You had no business allowing her to accompany you,” said the Captain, ramming his gun back into the holster he wore strapped to the belt of his sleeveless jacket.

  Kusac shrugged the restraining hand away.

  “You did not need to let her enter the cave,” he replied amiably.

  Just beyond the entrance the tunnel turned at right angles and widened out, forming a natural cavern of adequate proportions to house a dozen Sholans.

  At regular intervals around the three walls were placed jury-rigged lighting systems. The glow they gave off, though soft, was bright enough to see by. The floor had been covered with dried grasses and bracken which crackled slightly underfoot as Carrie walked farther into the den.

  A sibilant hiss from behind sent her reaching instinctively for her knife. Before she could draw it, her hand was clamped to her side by an iron grip and she was swung round to face a powerfully built Sholan.

  “An Alien!” he growled. “By what right does Kusac bring one of these carrion here?” His grip tightened, the nails digging into her flesh as he yanked her hand away from her belt knife.

  Helpless, Carrie looked up into a face contorted with hate. She sensed his inner fear of strangers and knew that he was capable of crushing the life out of her with as little compunction as she would have in destroying a cockroach.

  “Look at it!” he mocked, forcing her round to face the other Sholans, “Hairless as the insects that crawl in the dirt on this Godforsaken planet.”

  “Guynor, let her go.” Kusac’s voice was deceptively quiet.

  Contemptuously, Guynor raked Kusac with his gaze.

  “I see you’ve gone native, too. Don’t you believe in clothing any more? As for this creature,” he shook Carrie, making her lose her balance and stumble, “what use is it to you or anyone?”

  Seconds later, Guynor was lying sprawled on the floor nursing his head.

  Kusac took Carrie’s hand and looked briefly at the blood coursing down it. He glanced toward a small Sholan standing nearby.

  “Vanna, do you have a medikit? Carrie’s wrist needs attention.”

  As he led her over to the roughly made table and benches, the rest of the crew relaxed visibly.

  Vanna went over to the far corner of the cavern to rummage through some boxes, returning with a small case.

  “What is your name?” she asked kindly, indicating that the girl should sit, then taking her arm and examining the puncture wounds around the wrist.

  “She’s called Carrie,” interrupted Kusac. “The cuts look deep. Will you be able to close them?”

  “You know I have coped with far worse, Kusac. Just go and get me some warm water. I need to wash this blood away so I can see the extent of the damage. Do you know if her system can cope with our drugs?”

  “I suffered no ill effects when they treated my wounds. I suspect our systems are not very different.

  “Will scars show? She has no fur to cover them.”

  “Kusac, fetch the water,” Vanna said sternly. “She could bleed to death while you stand and chatter.”

  Carrie looked at her wrist in fascination. Vanna was holding it just above the wounds and the slow flow of blood had almost stopped.

  Kusac hesitated, then moved off to where one of the others was calling him.

  “Our males are all the same,” smiled Vanna. “Not very practical when it comes to the aftermath of a fight.

  “Are your males just as bad?”

  “Most of them,” said Carrie wryly, thinking of her brother’s panic over a nosebleed he’d collected in a fight with one of the other youths.

  Kusac returned with a bowl of water.

  “Thank you,” said Vanna, taking the bowl from him with her free hand. “Now go and do something useful instead of hovering around me. I’m sure the Captain will want a report on your activities these past few weeks. You might as well do it now, before mealtime.�
�

  Kusac shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

  “Are you sure there is nothing I can do?”

  “Nothing except report to the Captain,” said Vanna briskly as she began to clean Carrie’s wounds with some dampened gauze. “Go and do it now before you ruffle his fur any more.” She nodded to where the Captain stood at the entrance to the den, hackles raised, glowering over at them.

  “You’ve caused quite a stir, you know. We haven’t had so much excitement for days. Not only do you return as if from the dead, but you bring an Alien with you.” Her eyes, a deep green, glanced up humorously at Carrie. “Not content with that, you round it off by besting Guynor—for the moment.”

  Her tone became serious. “I don’t need to warn you to be careful of him, do I? Both of you,” she emphasized, stopping for a moment. “No one beats Guynor, least of all you, Kusac, since your caste of Telepaths forbids personal combat.”

  “I take your meaning,” nodded Kusac.

  “Then scat, and don’t antagonize our Captain any longer,” she ordered, reaching into her box for a canister from which she liberally sprayed a clear liquid over Carrie’s wrist and hand.

  “It’s easier treating you than it is one of us,” Vanna said. conversationally to the girl. “I don’t have to cut back any fur before I can start treating the wounds. You only have vestigial hairs and not enough of them to cause any concern, except on your head.”

  “Our ancestors were once covered in body hair,” murmured Carrie, watching the wounds as Vanna released her grip. The bleeding had stopped and so had the pain. “We are descended from primates. Was that a coagulant spray?”

  “Yes, and an analgesic. I’m afraid I will have to close the wounds. You seem to know something of medicine. Have you had any training?”

  “No, but I’ve picked up bits and pieces. My job was to teach the children.”

  “You’re the first of the natives we’ve seen up close,” Vanna said. “I thought no sentient life was found when we did our first survey twenty years ago. How did you manage to avoid being seen by our scout craft?” she asked curiously, placing an object resembling a staple gun over one of the punctures. A slight click and she moved to the next wound, leaving the previous one neatly tacked closed.