The Psionic Thief

by Dave Renol

  “Destruction is supposedly the easiest way, but only if you don’t mind dying to do it.”

  “Thanks, but I think I’ll pass on that one too.”

  “Our best bet for now is to move them together until the edges are touching. This will keep the resonance effects to a minimum, since they won’t have any room to create a strong wave.”

  “Can’t we merge them?”

  “We’ll have to eventually, but unless you figured out how to handle lightning safely while I wasn’t looking then we’ll need to learn new skills. Just putting them together is going to be hard enough right now.”

  “It’s a lot of work to move them, but I wouldn’t exactly call it hard.”

  “From what I read, the more you move them, the harder it’ll become. All the thousands of tiny power lines feeding into it want to keep it in its proper spot. Uneven flows will move the node slightly but naturally; moving it any kind of distance will be hard unless we also learn how to break it free of the flows.”

  “It won’t be long before we’ve got a full moon again. That might be part of the key to viewing the hidden codex and I’m sure there’s a hint or two we can glean from it to learn the tricks.”

  “Hopefully,” I agreed. “We can spend the next few days slowly moving the nodes away from the house while we wait.”

  “What can I do to help? Can I move one of these node things?” Claire asked.

  “Moving a node is very difficult, and I don’t think you’re up to the challenge yet,” Mark said. “What you can do is practice building shields until they get strong enough, and also keep watch for us. We need a good lookout so nobody comes up here and sees flaming rings and flying people.”

  “I guess that makes sense.”

  “We’ll also have to teach you about pyrokinesis once you get a good grasp on shielding.”

  “It sounds like there’s a lot to learn about this stuff.”

  “More than you can possibly imagine. We’re still learning things ourselves,” he admitted.

  “Well, I’m willing to work hard so I can help y’all out.”

  “Glad to hear it, but be careful you don’t overextend yourself. This is dangerous stuff we’re talking about.”

  “I’ll be careful,” she promised.

  “Good, then I suggest we all get a good night’s sleep so we can be nice and fresh for our work tomorrow. This is not going to be easy.”

  ***

  I was drenched in sweat and panting like a dog by the time I paused to check my progress. I was well past the house now and it looked like I moved my node about twenty yards. It was a little better than I originally estimated, but still well short of the mark.

  I found myself wishing we had some of that rain from last week, since the hot summer sun was really baking my brains today and I would be lucky if I escaped without getting badly sunburnt. I would either have to start carrying an umbrella, or wait until evening if this heat kept up.

  I checked on Mark’s progress and found he moved his node about the same amount I did. At this rate, we wouldn’t even be close to finished by the time the moon was full. I guess it didn’t matter much since we could take months to move the nodes if we really wanted to, but I still wanted it done ASAP.

  Wanting it and doing it were two different things, though; I let my shield drop so I could cool off and rehydrate. Mark was looking my way so I pointed toward the house. He nodded and began dropping his shield as well.

  Opening the fridge, the cool air was a welcome bit of relief on my face and I stood there for a few moments enjoying it. I could have stayed there a lot longer, but Mark came in and prodded me to get the tea out. I sighed as I grabbed the jug and closed the fridge; the cool air was nice, but the tea would be even better.

  We had just started our second glasses when Carl interrupted with a panicky telepathic shout.

  “What the hell are you guys doing to the nodes?”

  Mark and I looked at each other for a second and then bolted out the door. Running into the back yard, I pulled the node into view and stopped dead in my tracks. It was pulsing and flaring, and I could swear it was even making noise out loud, sort of like feedback from a speaker.

  “Everyone get under shields, right now. Carl, you come to me, and Claire you go to Linda. Hustle!” Mark yelled, taking control of the situation.

  I thought it might be better if we sent Claire away, but she grabbed my hand in a death grip, planted her feet wide, and started building shields around us. Too late to change the plan, I began layering my own shields around us, hoping Mark knew what he was doing.

  “We need to get containment up around the nodes we were working with and move them now. They’re going unstable,” he shouted.

  I didn’t know if Claire could shield on the run, so I gave us a little lift and flew over to the node. As soon as we passed the boundary, I felt the change. It was like I was inside an electric generator and all the hair on my body started standing on end. This was not good.

  I let Claire keep going with our protective shields and turned my attention to rebuilding the containment field. It wasn’t anywhere close to easy this time, as the instabilities of the node were ripping into the containment layers and shredding them as fast as I could build them.

  I decided to go for broke. Dropping the shields I had built up around us, I took that power and sent it out to where I was trying to build the containment. I held it in place by pure force of will until it seemed to settle down a touch and then I dumped my remaining power into the pyro layer.

  Things were holding, but wouldn’t be for long; I lit it up and prayed. It was a relief to see the flames rise up around us and the node begin to calm down a little. I looked over to Mark in time to see his shield ignite, and I knew we had just bought some time.

  I wouldn’t call it crisis averted yet, though, as I could feel the pressure of the node pressing against both me and my containment shield. The concentrating effect of the containment gave me a bit of extra power to play with and I started reinforcing my efforts.

  “What happened?” I sent. “Things were fine one minute and then all hell broke loose for no apparent reason.”

  “No idea,” Mark replied. “I was inside with you, remember?”

  “I would guess you guys moved the nodes too far, too fast, and left them at a bad spot in relation to each other,” Carl added.

  “Then tired or not, I guess we have to finish what we started. New plan; drive the nodes together and meet up at the third one.”

  I felt my shoulders slump as I realized how hard this was going to be, but I nodded my head and tried to pull in more power from somewhere. To my surprise, I found a surge of energy wash through me. It was coming up my hand where Claire was still holding it in her death grip.

  “How are you doing that?” I asked.

  “I dunno, I’m just taking this power and pushing it your way like it was a pile of sand.”

  I relayed the revelation to the boys and hoped they could figure it out as easy as our newest psionic did. Feeling stronger now, I began pouring it all into moving the node. It was definitely harder to make any kind of progress now, and it almost felt like I was at the end of a bungee cord. I prayed it didn’t snap back.

  On my next big push, it snapped.

  It snapped, but not back and the node moved a good five feet all at once. I fell on my nose. Rising, I found I could now move the node by simply walking it over to where I wanted it. We had somehow broken it free.

  I still wasn’t sure why it worked now, but I wasn’t about to argue. I ran it over to the third node and turned back to Mark. He was still straining.

  “Claire, talk to Carl and get him to understand what you did. He needs to feed power to Mark like you just did for me.”

  With my node free and in position, we were both able to relax and turn our attention to giving the boys advice. It didn’t look like it was working, since Mark’s forward progress had all but come to a halt. Then in the blink of an eye, it did. The no
de jumped forward and he fell on his face just like I had.

  He shook his head as he slowly climbed to his feet. After gathering himself for a moment, he walked his node over and into the gap waiting for him. As soon as the three nodes were positioned in a triangle with their edges touching, all the flaring stopped.

  We held our shields ridged for several more minutes, but everything was calm and the nodes seemed stable again. Mark let his containment field drop but I could see he kept the power ready so he could fire it up again if anything looked wrong.

  “I think we’re ok,” he finally said. “Go ahead and let yours loose, but be ready in case anything seems wrong.”

  I reluctantly did as he asked, thinking it was too early to tell if it would remain stable. The second my shields dropped I felt an almost physical snap; it felt sort of like a dislocated shoulder popping back into the joint. Things felt better than ok… they felt right.

  We stood there for almost an hour, watching the nodes to make sure they weren’t about to go rogue again, but everything seemed perfect. Somehow we had gotten lucky and not only moved the nodes together, but by doing so created something that was completely in balance.

  “If this is a typical day around here, then y’all are crazy,” Claire said into the silence. “Is anyone else besides me hungry? C’mon, hoser, let’s go fix some grub.”

  I watched them walk back to the house before turning to Mark. “And she calls us crazy?”

  “Crazy is as crazy does. She has the right idea, though; I’m hungry.”

  “I’m surrounded by lunatics,” I muttered. I didn’t admit it, but I was actually starving myself. We kept a link open with the nodes to make sure they didn’t go haywire again, but went inside to see what they were fixing. It was back to business as usual.

  28 – Epilogue

  Mark:

  It was a habit now to check on the stability of the nodes every time I stepped into the yard. They seemed perfectly fine, but my paranoia level was high after our little emergency maneuver the other day. We had kept a close watch on them for the first twenty four hours, taking it in shifts among us, but could see no change. We were lucky, but things worked out.

  “Stop daydreaming and grab your end, eh!” Carl said, interrupting me before I could get lost in thought.

  “I wasn’t daydreaming, I was just checking on the node. I’m a little paranoid about it right now, for some strange reason.”

  “Gee, I wonder why?” he chuckled.

  I grabbed my end of the plywood and helped him set it up on the trestles. It was a clear night and close to the full moon, so we figured viewing the hidden codex was worth a try. It didn’t take long to set things up, so like usual, it was time to wait.

  “I’ll bet ya dinner that we get it this time,” Carl said.

  “You’re on. But to be honest, I hope I lose this time. I really want to see the ancient vision.”

  “You and me both, buddy. I’ve got to head back to Edmonton soon and take care of some business. It would drive me crazy if I have to wait until my next trip to see this thing.”

  “Short drive, but I know what you mean.”

  Our conversation fell silent for a while, as neither one of us felt much like idle banter. Claire came out to join us, but sensed our mood and kept to herself. She fetched herself a stick and began whittling on it to pass the time. We were still silent an hour later when Linda finally emerged with the codex.

  We followed her down into the yard and watched as she carefully unfolded it along the length of the table. As soon as there was room, Carl and I pounced on it like a pair of vultures. It’s a good thing it was so long, or Linda would have chivvied us off for crowding her.

  Neither one of us tried to touch the spot that would unlock the vision yet, but we both wanted to see the glowing runes appear. We didn’t have any better luck than last time, but I wasn’t too upset since the runes were just the pre-game show anyway.

  It seemed like it took forever, but Linda finally had it laid out proper and gave us the nod. I looked at Carl to ask which one of us would get to go first, but he just grinned and raised his fist. Fair enough, I thought; I raised my fist and on the third pump, threw out a flat hand.

  “Paper wraps stone… you lose, hoser.”

  “Yeah, yeah, hurry up already,” he said with a twisted grin.

  Smiling, I stepped up to the corner and found the proper spot. I took a deep breath and pressed my thumb down on it. Nothing happened. I swore to myself, but stepped aside to let Carl try it; he had no better luck, and his swearing wasn’t kept to himself.

  Linda couldn’t get it either, and we came together in a group to try and figure out what we were missing. We tried every idea anyone could come up with, but the vision remained hidden. Claire came down after a while to see what was so interesting about a smudged piece of paper, but didn’t try to touch it.

  “You didn’t want to try and see the hidden vision?” Linda asked.

  “Naw, I gather your old comic book is kinda valuable and I’ve got sap and blood on my hands.”

  My head snapped up to look at her as revelation struck.

  “Could that be it?” I blurted.

  “Could what be it?” Linda asked.

  “Remember that night when you got the vision to work? You were whining about getting a splinter from the table.”

  “Of course I remember… and I’ll remind you boys that you still haven’t finished fixing it yet.”

  “The finger you touched the spot with… was it the one you got the splinter in?”

  “Now that I think of it, yes… yes it was. You think the blood is what unlocked the vision?”

  “It has to be. Claire, can I borrow your knife for a minute?” Carl asked.

  “Sure,” she said, handing it over.

  “Hey, that was my idea.”

  “I’ll remember to give you credit for it in my memoirs, now take off, eh!”

  I stepped aside and let him have his chance. He carefully grabbed the knife near the tip and made a tiny cut on the index finger of his left hand. Passing the knife to me, he stepped up to the codex and touched the smudge. His body went instantly rigid.

  It looked like it worked so I took up position behind him in case he passed out like Linda did. After a minute he released his touch and slumped down, but didn’t lose consciousness.

  “Holy crap, that was intense,” he said. “It was like I was really there; hundreds of years ago, but it seems like only yesterday.”

  “Move over, I want a go.”

  I repeated Carl’s actions and soon found out what he meant; it was like I was there, living out that day instead of the young shaman. Intense was definitely the word for it. I didn’t faint and neither did Linda when she took her turn, so I guess it was the unexpected shock that did it to her last time. Claire didn’t want to try, saying she thought it was all a little too freaky for her.

  Once again we had managed to blunder our way through to success. It seemed like our luck was either really bad or really good, with nothing in between. It didn’t matter; tonight was one of the good nights and everything worked out in the end.

  ***

  Carl:

  What an amazing vision. I had no idea something like that was even remotely possible, and I began to wonder about how much there was for us to still learn. I wasn’t sure how to classify something like this, but I guess it could be filed under psychometry, retrocognition, or weird ancient crap.

  We stayed up late into the night talking about the vision, comparing notes and sharing details that some of us missed while focusing on a different part. There was something nagging at me that I knew I was missing, but I couldn’t quite get a handle on it… all I knew was that it was important.

  I should have taken another crack at it while we still had moonlight, but there was always tomorrow. One thing we all seemed to have focused on was the lightning. It would’ve been nice if our vision was from the high priests point of view so we could have seen how it wa
s done, but we would probably figure it out eventually.

  As our pool of knowledge started running dry, Linda shifted the conversation over to the details of the Mayan buildings. She was quite excited about it from an archeological point of view, since only the largest structures survived to be studied.

  We were the only living people who actually knew what things looked like when the city was occupied. Too bad we could never tell anyone. As she got into more and more detail about the layout of the temple grounds, it finally hit me.

  “I know that temple,” I blurted.

  “What?” she asked.

  “The temple in the vision… I know where it is. I should have seen it before since I sat my ass on top of it for more than a week, but things look very different these days. The temple in the vision is the same one that the elder found me on.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive. There were distinctive marks in the temple stones and the smaller buildings in the area match up to piles of rubble and broken walls today.”

  “Well now, isn’t that interesting,” Mark said. “I wonder if we were meant to figure it out so we could continue our lessons.”

  “What do you mean lessons?”

  “Doesn’t it seem strange to you that the elder you met down there gave you what amounts to a holy relic, and that relic gave us the knowledge to take care of our nodes, and now leads us back to him?”

  “You think it was some kind of test?”

  “Maybe,” he said, looking deep in thought. “The codex gave us some knowledge, but not enough to actually do the job. If we didn’t have the strength or ability to figure things out, then we wouldn’t be worth wasting time on.”

  “It’s possible, but I can’t confirm or deny; there’s only one way to know for sure.”

  “Yup… it looks like we need to take another trip down south.”

  ***

  Linda:

  I had mixed emotions about our upcoming trip. On one hand, I was excited at the possibility of finding out more lost information on the Mayans, but I also didn’t want to leave my new home while we were still finishing things up.