Sensitive

by Dan Donoghue

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  Chapter 3

  He was named Wolf, for that almost mythical hunter of the ancient world. Wolf Carthar, hunter, showing early the signs of the super ones. They argued over him, mother and aunts, and father and men. He was not as they were. They were the out-people, semi-nomadic, living in small hidden tribes by the great rivers of central Australia, living by hunting in the endless forests, by gathering the bounty of the trees, and growing such quick-maturing crops as their lifestyle would allow. They accepted no government from outside their tribes, and no law other than their own, except that which prohibited the cutting of the trees that grew where once the land was desert. They fought to the death when the land they claimed as theirs was invaded, and they left no booty but their bodies. There was nothing but death to be gained by attempting to rule them. The great coastal cities accepted what trade they offered, what contact they allowed, but largely ignored them.

  On the average, they were a little people, as silent and swift as the beasts they hunted. Generally, they were dark-skinned with some of the old aborigine blood still running in their veins, but Wolf was different. He was paler in colouring. He grew taller, faster. He ran swifter, heard sooner, saw clearer, leapt quicker, and the hunting spear flew from his hand like the rain-fire of the Gods.

  So, they argued. Some claimed soldier blood, others sportsman turned hunter. None really knew. His seed came from the bad times, when no woman walked safely, and many knew not the fathers of their children.

  Though isolated, and shunning technical aids, they were not ignorant. Each tribe had its listener-sender, and the news of the world spread swifter than radio could send it. They knew the world, but had no want of it. They read and wrote, they had their own music and art in a primitive kind of way, and they had their own songs and dances.

  These were to be Wolf's downfall. For twenty years he had grown in the tribe, head and shoulders over his tallest companion, greatest hunter, fiercest guardsman, deadliest spearman, but different. In his difference was his isolation. When companions of his youth were fathers of children, he was without a woman. He was not repulsive, physically he was attractive, but they were people close to nature, and they sensed something that was not natural. No member of the tribe dared to speak against him, but none could afford to join his blood with theirs in case the product was too strange to live.

  So he was a lonely man when the sensitive announced that a party from the city wished to visit the tribe to see the dances and hear the songs. It was put to council, and some were suspicious, but all had a part to play in the great dance of hunting, and always men seek an audience to that in which they excel. The party was given permission to enter the land of the people.

  One was amongst them, a woman, too worldly, it seemed, to play so simple a role, no dancer herself, but she met the eyes of Wolf across the firelight, and set his heart aflame. She was listener who delved beneath the words of the songs to find the heart of them, but she knew not of his love until the last evening of their stay when he told her, and, being listener, she believed him not, for who could hide his love from such as she?

  He was grieved, and rashly opened his mind a little to her, forgetting in the quickness of his blood that many of her party were listeners, and that his own tribe's listener was near, The woman was impressed, her father, soon informed, was not, and the listener of the people stunned, dismayed, and outraged. In his own tribe there was another sensitive, and he had not known. What fool they thought him then. He read their scorn as clear as shadows in the early morn, and the blood within him curdled.

  Events moved swiftly. Soldiers pounced on one too full of love to read his danger. Wolf found himself arrested as an army deserter. He was not alarmed. He had never been in any army. The listener in the court would only have to hear him say so to know it to be true. With the patience of the hunter he was, he relaxed, and sought not to inquire further. For the short time he spent in prison, he dreamed of the woman, and knew not the importance of her father and connections.

  Then, inexplicably, the listener had lied, the judgement had gone against him, and, when he sought belatedly for understanding, he had glimpsed conspiracy, and also the knowledge that sensitives could not survive on high America.

  Exile, there, for a sensitive, was nothing short of a delayed death sentence, and the world was left asking if it was possible for a sensitive of such power to remain unknown unless he was indeed shielded. Stupidly, the Government rushed in soldiers to examine his background and to get breeding materials. The tribe resisted. They fought to the last man, woman and child. Only two infants, whose mother had failed in her attempt to kill, were captured. They were found to be not sensitives.

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  Chapter 4

  He crouched, dark and silent, in the cells of the Star-bird. There were no listeners to suffer the brooding hate, but it dwelt in his eyes for all to see. In time they came to see.

  For some weeks he was left severely alone. The impression of sanity barely maintained, the soldier size and strength of his body, and the cat-like swiftness of his movements when he snapped out of the utter stillness of his crouch, were all a constant threat to his fellow convicts. They had tried to sound him out at first, but had been savagely rebuffed, so they watched the sullen rage that burned within him, and kept their silence and their distance. As for the passengers and crew, their first weeks were busy with settling in, in finding out about each other, and in finding their place in the small but complex social structure of ship life. Soon, however, boredom, the first curse of star travel, set them looking for anything of interest. There were questions concerning the lone, and glowering convict.

  They knew the Star-bird had been held up on its last port of call before spacing. The trial must have been bought on to coincide with the departure. Who's money had paid for that? There were only a dozen or so men in all Earth who could spend that sort of money just to get rid of an enemy. Why would anyone spend so much when a simple blaster bolt was so much cheaper, and left only a drift of ash as evidence? Was it really true that money had no power in the lands of the Out-people—that an assassin could not get in there?

  There had been rumours of old man Pa'Lar and his money-spoiled daughter, and the convict was tall, and darkly handsome enough to turn a woman's head, especially one as universally hated as Leeli Pa'Lar. Could Leeli have fallen for a man at last, and he, one of the most ineligible of all the men on Earth? Romance and mystery, scandal and drama, what greater antithesis of boredom?

  The guards tried to stop them, but that only increased their curiosity, and there are always passengers of great influence on the Star-birds. They came at a time when Wolf had begun to realise that hate was destroying only him. In his anger at this invasion, he delved a little into their minds, but found no malice in their thoughts, only curiosity, and a certain sympathy.

  He told his story, and it was so simple—so obvious to the most naive amongst them, that they marvelled. It had been a mistrial organised by a man so rich and powerful as to be unafraid of any consequences, and possible, only when the victim was so child-like as to be incredibly stupid. They went away shaking their heads to seek other diversion.

  Wolf was left brooding. He had listened to their thoughts, and had burned with mortification at the verdict in them. They had marvelled at his simplicity—some, the more sympathetic, named it merely childish; others, and these made up the majority, thought of it as crass stupidity. All came to the same conclusion. If he had insisted on living like some modern day cave man, it was his own fault if he had been treated as such. There was nothing they could do for such a fool, and, if Leeli Pa'Lar had really fallen for him, she must have gone sendi-mad. That he was himself a sensitive, he had not revealed.

  So once more he was left to himself. At first he wasted more hours in impotent hate of old man Pa'Lar. On the subject of Leeli, he had mixed feelings. She had been his first
love, and he badly wanted her to fit the mould of the woman of his dreams, someone of value to give meaning to the coming sacrifice of his life, but he had read the opinion of her in every mind that knew her, and it seemed that she was far from that.

  At last, after days, or what went for days in the artificial life of the ship, he came to accept that both she and her father were lost in a past to which he could never return. The other thing—the simplicity they despised—that he could do something about. Although it was contrary to all the teachings and tenets of his people, he took one person at a time, from the captain down, and invaded their minds, delved deeply into their knowledge and memories, read them as he had never read a human mind before, and lost his innocence in trauma, as man had done but once before, in the age old teachings of the church.

  The officers, passengers, men of the crew, and, at last, his fellow convicts and his guards, he read, and he read in the minds of twenty political prisoners, and the guard they had bribed, of a plan to mutiny. The plan was simple. The guard would supply weapons on his next tour of duty, release the prisoners, and they would take B deck. It would cut the ship in two, gain the passengers as hostages, and separate the officers from the food and water. They would then demand that the Star-bird return to Earth, and deposit them in one of the countries sympathetic to their cause, and eager to get hold of a SACQ engine.

  It would have suited Wolf very well to join them, but for a couple of significant factors. Firstly he did not like them or their cause, and secondly, they intended to kill him. Part of their plan was to threaten to space the passengers one every hour until the Star-bird altered course. It seemed probable that it would be necessary to carry out the threat at least once to show their determination. They had decided on Wolf as the first victim. They would dress him appropriately, and, after his body had exploded in the vacuum of space, he would not be recognisable as human, let alone as a convict, and his death would be least likely to stir up a furore on Earth to cause complications in their political aspirations at a later date.

  Wolf had a word with a loyal guard, was taken to the captain, and related only enough to convince him that a plot was under way. Then he offered to try to discover the rest of the plan in return for a retrial aboard ship. He had no difficulty. When you watch a mind working you know just what to say, and when to say it. The captain agreed.

  On the Star-bird the captain carries almost ultimate authority. On him rests the responsibility for every life on board. His word is law usually unchallenged by either world. When he received the rest of the plan, and had acted accordingly, he ordered the retrial, and himself presided. The make-shift court was held in the passenger lounge, and every member of the ship's company except those members of the crew who were on essential duty was there.

  Wolf was called upon once more to tell his story. He was examined at some length by the officer of the guard who had compiled a number of trick questions designed to discover if he was familiar with army life. Though Wolf had become aware of the army meaning of the terms through his reading of the soldiers, trick questions were a total waste of time when he could read the intention behind them, and the officer stated his opinion that Wolf had never received army training in any accepted sense. He illustrated his point with a sudden roar of, “Ba-Right!”

  The guard hit the floor, their weapons sweeping wildly. Women screamed. Men panicked to clear the zone of threat. Wolf moved only with the passengers. The officer snapped an order, and the guard scrambled upright hastily adjusting safety catches, suddenly embarrassed to have been threatening men and women of high status. “He was never in any regular army. I'd stake my next pay on it.” the officer declared with a slightly contemptuous glance in Wolf's direction.

  There was a general relaxing around the room, some grins from those who had not looked into the black maws of blasters, some angry frowns from those who had. The captain turned his gaze from one of his crew who was climbing to his feet as unobtrusively as possible, and nodded. “I thought as much. There is far too much reliance on sensitives in the courts on Earth these days.” He turned to Wolf. “As far as this ship is concerned, Wolf Carthar, you are a free man. Your papers will be so adjusted. I have no doubt that my ruling will be upheld on High America. If you can raise the fare, you can return with this ship to Earth, but I would advise against it. You seem to have earned the malice of a very powerful man. If I were in your position I'd make my home on High America. They have need of strong men there, and it can be a good place for those who are willing to work.”

  Wolf smiled bitterly. “Thank you, Captain.” he said. “I have no money to pay my fare, and I doubt if I could raise any. I know no one on High America, and my people at home do not use it. We have a belief that it creates greed and evil.”

  He had intended to say more, but no one appeared to be listening. The verdict given, the passengers had begun to move out. If the captain heard him, he did not feel obliged to make reply. He smiled vaguely, and watched the legs of one of the few really good looking female passengers disappearing through the door, then sighed and turned away. Neither his position nor his charm had prevailed with her. No one came forward to offer congratulations. There were a few tentative smiles and nods, but generally the movement was away. They were aware that he had done them a considerable service, as the plot had become generally known, but, now that their well-being was no longer threatened, they could not help looking on him as a traitor to his fellows.

  He came from a totally inexplicable culture which, being unable to understand, they branded inferior, and, for all his apparent innocence, his eyes seemed to look through theirs into the hidden places of their minds, and know them far too well.

  Wolf watched them, feeling their half formulated thoughts, knowing a terrible sense of loss and loneliness. The change in his status was but a small degree. He had changed the prison of his cell to the wider prison of the ship. He gained the freedom to mix with his fellow travellers only to find them unwilling to mix with him. He had earned the malice of the convicts, but not the friendship of the guard, and, in the end, he faced the same doom as before. Free or enslaved, sensitives died on High America.

  With the crew, he had more success. Though they formed a tightly knit community to which he could never gain full acceptance, they were mostly High American with a frontier spirit that cared little for differences between men, and less for social backgrounds. In them too the breeds were mixed. Soldier stock, and sports stock, and even some brain stock, were mingled with the bloods of a dozen nations of men. The only significant lack in them was in the area of the sensitives.

  To a large extent Wolf was no longer a sensitive. He had managed to keep his powers secret, and now, after his anger had eased, he felt both remorse and guilt whenever he thought of his reading of the minds of his fellow travellers. He kept his mind closed, for that was how he thought of it when he did not listen and he did not send.

  That was how he had grown up, for a long time he had not realised that he was a sensitive. He had not really known what being a sensitive meant. In the days of instruction it had been described to him, but always in the description of the powers there had been mention of compulsion. The listener could not help but hear the thoughts of the senders, the senders could not help but broadcast their thoughts for all listeners to hear. True, the sender had some control over the power of his output, but he could not damp it out completely. If he was conscious, he was imposing his thoughts and emotions on the hapless listeners, who lived in a constant babble of noise, and who could find no peace. Sensitives sought isolation. They could not survive long in crowds. They did not live very long in the best of conditions, for traditionally their bodies were weak and prone to illness, and the constant noise in their heads tore at their nerves. The strongest listeners were doomed to dampening drugs, and early insanity. Almost invariably they broke and tried to kill senders. The strongest senders generally died by violence before they had a chance to grow up.

  Wolf had not been lik
e that. He could shut out the noise or open his mind to it. He sent only when hunting, and that to cloud the senses of his prey. So he had rapidly become the greatest of the tribe's hunters, and, listening to his fellows’ comments on that, he had early learned to hide his other powers. He was not only shielded from the efforts of a listener, but he could send, or not, receive, or not.

  He had other powers also, powers that were still maverick even to sensitives. He had early learned to expand his awareness in a kind of seeing beyond his eyesight. Each morning of the hunt, before the light was strong enough to allow a start, he had lain as though still sleeping, but his mind had been casting out, sweeping the forests as far as an hour's march, locating the groups of animals, noting their numbers, and the way of their travelling. Then he had led the hunt unerringly to them. His companions had accepted it only as the skill of his hunting, and the only time a listener had happened to be close enough to fall within the carefully controlled sweep of his search, he had felt the touch of a mind so strange as to be unrecognisable.

  Not that expansion of awareness was unknown. It was only by a type of it that the listener could read the common man as opposed to the sender. Others before had claimed a visual awareness, but these had been super-sensitives, and they had not lived long enough to pass on their powers. Their minds had been blasted into insanity by the constant uproar within them, and they had quickly died.

  Little wonder then, that Wolf's powers went unsuspected amongst the simple people of his tribe. They went unsuspected by the travellers of the Star-bird, the most sophisticated citizens of two worlds.

  One other power he had that even he hardly knew of. His aim with the hunting spear was deadly, but there were times when he felt that it was off the mark, and yet the spear seemed to change direction slightly, and follow his eye to his prey.