First Salik War 2: The V'Dan

by Jean Johnson

Reaching out with her own much stronger telepathy, Jackie smacked that tendril of thought. Superior Priest De’arth jumped in his seat, eyes widening.

  “Holiness De’arth, in the Terran culture, attempting to probe the thoughts of another person without their clearly expressed permission is beyond rude.” Li’eth held the startled priest’s gaze. “It is, in fact, considered illegal. Do I have to remind you that to probe the mind of a member of the Imperial Tier without our permission is also considered illegal?”

  “. . . I was simply attempting to ascertain the strange aura your mind now carries, Your Highness,” Superior Priest De’arth replied carefully. “Your mind appears to have been influenced by whatever it is that also covers the minds of some of these . . . Terrans.”

  “These Terrans,” Li’eth stated carefully, “are vastly more experienced in training and managing their holy abilities. They are as far in advance in their abilities as this space station is from a mud hut in the Q’oba region.”

  “Oh, come now!” Grand High Priest Suva’an protested. He gestured at the windowed view of the Terrans in question. “You expect us to believe these children possess holy secrets that far in advance of our own? When by all logic, they’d never even heard of the Immortal and Her teachings before meeting you?”

  “I remind you, Grand High Priest, that we are not children,” Jackie stressed, cutting through their argument. “Please stop thinking of us as V’Dan. We are not V’Dan. In some ways, your people are more advanced; we do not deny this, and are mature enough to know that if we set aside our cultural pride, we will be able to learn from you. In other ways, we are the ones who are more advanced. The sooner you in turn acknowledge this, the sooner your own people will be able to benefit from our vast experience.

  “We. Are. Not. V’Dan,” she repeated firmly when the older man drew in a breath to speak. “Please take a deep breath, and consider us to be on a par with the Gatsugi, or the Solaricans. We are not V’Dan, we do not share your culture, and we will only be patient with these inadvertent cultural insults for so long before they will start to have a negative impact on Terran-V’Dan interrelations.

  “I, for one, would like to avoid letting things deteriorate that far.” She managed a small smile. “I’m certain your people would like to avoid such a simple mistake as well. As for our skill in what you call holy gifts, where your people have continued to deal with such things from a religious standpoint, my people have long since turned them into a science.

  “As with all science, such things can be questioned, qualified, measured, quantified, and trained. I myself studied for several years at a special boarding school for the highly gifted, starting at the age of fourteen and concluding with an advanced education certification in what we call paralinguistics, the ability to communicate via telepathy, which is what we call speaking mind-to-mind. We have a ranking scale to indicate strengths of various holy abilities. My rank as a telepath, a mind-speaker, is 15, and my rank as a xenopath, a speaker-with-alien-minds, is 14,” she explained. Gesturing to her far right, she added, “Aixa Winkler, here, has a similar advanced certificate, specializing in xenopathy at Rank 11, the ability to communicate with non-Human minds.”

  Aixa raised her age-wrinkled hand. She had been deemed physically fit for the trip to V’Dan, but she was the oldest member of the embassy staff at fifty-nine, edging out the next oldest by four full months plus a few days. Jackie flicked her hand over her shoulder, not bothering to look; she could sense Clees’ position with her mind by the presence of his shields, and that was good enough for her.

  “Behind us stands Heracles Panaklion, who is busy with the hovering cameras, recording these events, and who has also specialized in mind-to-mind communication. His strongest gift is telepathy at Rank 13, though he also shares the gift of auramancy with His Highness, the ability to see auras of energy and emotion, focus and awareness. That’s Rank, what, 7?” she asked Clees.

  He nodded. “I am a Rank 7 auramancer, as well as a Rank 7 out-of-body practitioner, a Rank 9 in clairvoyancy and clairaudiency—the ability to see and hear things at a distance when there is no physical way to actually see those things,” Clees explained in an aside, “—and a Rank 13 telepath, as the Ambassador has said.”

  “Yes, and Darian Johnston, here—his military rank is equivalent to your military’s leftenant superior—has a degree, an education certification,” Jackie explained, gesturing to the other side behind her, “in cryptography and stenography based on his abilities as a polyglot telepath. Next to him is Min Wang-Kurakawa. Her military rank is the equivalent of a leftenant, her telepathic rank is 12, and like the leftenant superior, she has engaged in mind-to-mind combat with our enemy on the far side of Terran space from your Alliance, a highly advanced race we call the Grey Ones.

  “The only thing keeping the Greys from assaulting our worlds and kidnapping our people is the mental strength imparted by our training programs. Those programs,” Jackie continued briskly, “come with a great deal of responsibility, including a heavy set of ethics, a code of honor if you will, which all psychics must abide by under Terran law. Those ethics include not probing or scanning anyone else without their permission, save only by sheer accident . . . as physically touching someone has been known to trigger abilities inadvertently.

  “Despite its existence, that exception does not qualify for this moment . . . as it is obvious His Highness is beyond your physical touch.” She dipped her head politely. “Perhaps it was inadvertent. You do not, after all, have the benefits of our rigorous Terran training. But now that you are aware that we are aware, please try to consciously avoid probing anyone in our presence. We take our vows very seriously when it comes to our ethical mental behavior.

  “I apologize for startling you, High Priest, with my telepathic slap . . . but it is our first and foremost instinct to watch and warn each other in such ways, in order to make sure those ethical behaviors are maintained.”

  “If she hadn’t done it first, I was about to do it myself,” Clees stated from the back of the room. “Pushing your way into someone else’s mind uninvited is as legal in our society as breaking into someone else’s house. Which is to say, it isn’t legal. It’s breaking the law.”

  “Only it’s worse than just breaking into someone’s house,” Min added, joining the conversation. She tucked a lock of her chin-length black hair behind her ear. “Our minds are our last refuge of privacy, the only place where we can think anything and everything without being condemned or censored for it. Only when thought and action are combined to commit a crime can a mind be probed, and only to ascertain whether what is being said in a court of law is a truth or a falsehood.”

  The High Priestess for the Temple of Spring nodded. “That is how my own holy powers are used. I can discern if someone is speaking a truth or a falsehood—I do not need to go into the mind’s depths to see the truth or the lie in a person’s aura. And you are all telling the truth . . . though I cannot sense anything deeper than that.”

  “Of course we are. We are adults, ethically trained and highly experienced in such matters. Only the youngest of children barge into another person’s home uninvited,” Aixa stated shrewdly. “Such things might be forgivable once, perhaps twice if the person is very young. But we Terrans are adults. We presume politely that you are also adults. Now that you know such things are beyond rude . . . you will refrain from doing it again in our presence, yes?”

  The Grand High Priest, Suva’an, smiled in a benign sort of way. “We would not presume to do it to one of your people. But His Highness is—”

  “—His Highness agrees with the Terrans,” Li’eth said flatly. “My thoughts are my own. They belong to no one else and are entirely my property. I will treat anyone attempting to steal into my mind and read them the same as I would treat a thief breaking into my chambers.”

  “My point, Highness, is that these Terrans have unknown motives and unknown methods. Ho
w can you possibly trust them?” Suva’an asked, flicking his hand at the Humans seated across from him.

  “I trust them because I have spent months living among them, seeing for myself how well their words and their actions match. They are honorable, they are ethical, and they are vastly superior in their holy training than even the best of us can claim,” Li’eth told the Grand High Priest. “More than that, I have been blessed through a holy pairing with the Grand High Ambassador, a bond that at times brings us closer than thought. But even with that for permission, she does not invade my thoughts carelessly or casually.”

  That caused a stir among the V’Dan on the other side of the observation window, a mix of startled coughs and disbelieving splutters. High Priestess Be’ela narrowed her gaze, sitting up even straighter in her chair than before.

  “You expect us to believe that you and she are a Holy Pairing?”

  “My people call it Gestalt,” Aixa stated, speaking before Jackie could. “The word means ‘the end result is greater than the sum of its parts.’ We have tested the Ambassador and the prince, and they qualify on all measurable counts.”

  “I was informed that you, Ambassador, were among the crew members of the ship that rescued His Highness and his fellow officers,” High Priest Sorleth-ain stated, nodding at Jackie. “Do you really expect us to believe that one of the first holy ones of your people to meet one of the first of our own were somehow spontaneously blessed by the Saints in a Holy Pairing?”

  (I was hoping to avoid bringing up this subject this early,) Jackie sent to Li’eth.

  He answered the high priest instead of her. “Is it not written in our own holy books that when the Motherworld reaches out to our people, that there will arise a Holy Pair of exceptional power, who will save one of the cities of the Chosen People? Our meeting was foretold . . . and I was forewarned that I would be involved in a different prophecy, a warning that prevented me from the sensible choice of committing suicide when my ship was boarded,” Li’eth stated bluntly. “Because I obeyed that prophecy, I was in a position to be rescued, which in turn allowed me to make peaceful contact with the Terrans, here.

  “One prophecy has led to the next, resulting in my still being alive and thus able to stand before you today . . . but those are only our own prophecies. The Terrans have foreseers of their own, and were able to predict not only that they would encounter that same Salik warship, but were able to see the Ambassador’s face as one of the prominent players in that First Contact encounter.”

  “I myself thought the odds were astronomical,” Jackie offered when he finished. “But one of our teachers of psychic abilities, holy gifts, reminded me that between the prophecies of your faith and the precognition of my own, those odds were not so much astronomically huge, as guided into taking place.”

  “Is that how you got this position of Grand High Ambassador?” Grand High Priest Suva’an challenged her. “Purely by prophecy? Or is it simply a means to assert undue influence upon Her Eternity through leveraging the moods and thoughts of her son?”

  Jackie wasn’t the only one to stiffen. For a moment, Heracles and Min and Aixa and Darian all tried to voice their protests to Jackie, wanting to give her support and— (Quiet, all of you,) she ordered. Out loud, Jackie stated in a calm, measured tone, “That is a serious accusation. It is, however, one born from complete ignorance of Terran ways.

  “To reassure you, our highest levels of government studied that exact possibility. They determined that it would not happen. If you wish to press the matter, we will make the Council session in question available to everyone. After you have learned more of Terran values, Terran customs, Terran laws, and Terran ways. But not before,” she warned firmly, letting her expression turn a bit stern, even chiding. “A half-informed opinion is just as bad as an uninformed opinion. Until you know us better, you will have my personal word that I have zero interest in influencing the thoughts of Imperial Prince Kah’raman Li’eth V’Daania, and the word of my government that they place their faith in me to behave ethically in all such matters.”

  “You insist that we are supposed to take the word of a foreign government on how their representative will behave around the son of our leader?” Suva’an challenged.

  Rosa addressed that question. “The penalty for crimes committed via psychic abilities—your holy gifts—involves something we call lobotomy. It is a surgical procedure that scars, destroys, or even removes sections of the brain. It is done in stages as needed until the person ceases to be able to use their abilities.” She paused, then stated softly, “Naturally, this tends to leave the person mentally and even physically crippled for life. It is, I assure you, a penalty that all sane psychics strive to avoid, including the Grand High Ambassador. Her rank would not save her from that punishment if she were to ever lose her wits and commit such a crime.”

  (Should I mention . . . ?) Li’eth asked Jackie, hesitant.

  Knowing he meant his own near brush with the law, she negated it. (Not at this time. That would be too much for them to understand; they would misread the severity and the salvation of it and focus on the wrong things. They just don’t understand us yet.)

  (It will eventually have to be addressed. Your Terran psychic system is vastly different from V’Dan expectations,) he pointed out.

  (We won’t lower our high standards for ourselves.) Jackie smiled faintly. (But we will try to be patient while your people bring themselves up to our level.)

  “How can you prevent such a thing?” the Truthspeaker was asking.

  “Through yearly, and in some cases, twice-yearly, psychic examinations by neutral parties. Enough strong telepaths working in concert can overcome the natural defenses of even a very-high-ranked telepath such as the Ambassador,” Rosa explained.

  (Looks like Rosa has this in hand. Except we meant to discuss the religious aspects first.)

  (I also failed to introduce the last two people.) Clearing his throat, Li’eth stepped into the conversation again. “. . . As much as these things need to be discussed, I was not finished with the introductions on this side of the observation glass. If you will please be patient and polite, I will return to doing so. The Terrans have their protocols, and we have ours.”

  “Of course. Our apologies, meioas,” Ksa’an stated. Beside him, the five priests settled back in their chairs, some looking a little impatient but all willing to acknowledge that the interruption had been somewhat rude. Grand High Priest Suva’an nodded to the Imperial First Lord, who gestured in turn at his protocol counterpart. “Please continue introducing them to us, Your Highness.”

  Dipping his head slightly, Li’eth did so. Jackie made more mental notes. It would be wise to plan out how to reveal the various psychic differences, as well as what and when. Half-answered questions could lead to the wrong conclusions all too easily. Everything starts with our political processes, I think, and the history underlying our choices in being this way. Once they grasp how much we revile corruption and revere personal accountability, then maybe these people will grasp why we insist on being so ethical.

  CHAPTER 5

  MAY 3, 2287 C.E.

  DEMBER 26, 9507 V.D.S.

  “So, that’s that?” Jackie asked Maria, Qua, and Kuna’mi. All three doctors nodded. They had requested that Jackie and Li’eth meet them in one of the conference rooms, but no one had bothered to sit down, since Maria had said in her message that the meeting would be brief. “There’s nothing left to test?”

  “That is that,” Maria confirmed aloud. “The vaccines and antigens have passed medical testing and are being replicated for distribution . . . and the first of the modified jungen recipients have passed the initial forty hours of close observation with flying colors. A bit of fever as expected, and general aches and pains, but those are subsiding right on schedule.”

  “We’ll inoculate the rest of you in waves, wait a week for caution’s sake after the last o
f you gets a batch of my modified virus, then you should be free to leave quarantine,” Dr. Kuna’mi confirmed.

  “Have you told Imperial First Lord Ksa’an?” Li’eth asked.

  Qua shook her head. “It’s still night down at the Winter Palace—remember, our days are slightly longer. You’ve been trying to lengthen yours, but you’re still offset by a few hours at the moment. He wouldn’t be able to reach anyone important for another four, five hours, so I thought we’d tell you the good news first. You Terrans have been keeping yourselves carefully occupied, but we know these are tight quarters. If you have a goal to wait for, it should help ease the constricted feelings.”

  “Rosa and I have been doing our best to keep everyone occupied and not thinking of all that, yes,” Jackie said. “The recreational facilities in your quarantine facilities weren’t meant to keep two hundred people physically occupied, but we’ve at least kept everyone mentally on the move.”

  “At the rate of processing thirty of you a day—with monitoring assistance from your own medical staff—we should get the last of your people through their fever danger zone by the eighth day, then just add seven days to that,” Qua agreed. “As soon as Ksa’an can arrange things with Her Eternity’s Court, you’ll be able to head down to the capital by day sixteen, if all goes well, get settled into your ambassadorial quarters, and be introduced formally with full ceremony on day eighteen.”

  “It’s just as well replication and distribution will take roughly two weeks,” Kuna’mi mused, her tone thoughtful. At Jackie’s quick look, the calm, composed, markless doctor explained. “It’s only three days to Janva 1, which is the start of the new year. Everyone will be celebrating the turnover, and they won’t have room in their schedules to add you to the lists—no insult is intended, of course, but New Year’s Day is the day when many worthy souls gather up their family’s merit certificates and petition for placement among the lowest of the nobles of the Second and First Tiers. But it’ll be well before Janva 29, which is the first official holy day of Winter.”