Mindtouch

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  “Do you think?” Vasiht’h asked.

  “Oh, absolutely. No question.” She smiled. “It won’t cure them, but every little bit.”

  “Yes,” Vasiht’h said. “Thanks again for the advice.”

  “No problem.” As they left, she called, “And I was serious! Sign me up!”

  Glancing over his shoulder, Jahir said, “What is Healer-assist Berquist wanting to sign up for?”

  “I thought I’d base my research project in the hospital, since we already volunteer there,” Vasiht’h said, waiting for his roommate to don his coat and gloves before they headed outside. According to the calendar the first week of the Seersan year was also the first week of spring, but in practice it was usually soggy and cold and not much different from the last week of winter.

  “And you have a topic, then?” Jahir asked, once they’d gotten outside and on their way to the apartment.

  “Oh, yes. You’d be interested, actually. On whether active manipulation of dreams can have a positive psychiatric effect.”

  Jahir glanced down at him. “This being on your mind since Lucrezia’s stay, I am guessing?”

  “And what we do with the kids,” Vasiht’h agreed. “My major professor was over the moon. He thought it was a promising topic.”

  “I should certainly like to know the results,” Jahir said.

  “Me too. Jill suggested running the tests on the staff, since it’s easier to do that than get permission to work on patients,” Vasiht’h said, working it out in his head as they walked. “I think that’s a good idea. The staff’s probably underserved anyway; there’s psychological support for the patients everywhere, but I’m betting the staff forgets to take care of themselves.”

  “So, you will spend time on this project as part of the curriculum this semester,” Jahir said. “Is that right?”

  “Yes,” Vasiht’h said. “We take directed studies, that’s basically just an excuse for me to get together with my major professor and work on this.” He glanced up at the Eldritch. “Did you decide yet?”

  “On a track?” Jahir shook his head, something that looked less like a negation and more like… some kind of animal shying. “I asked my advisor to suggest classes relevant to either medical or clinical concentrations, and took half from each. Perhaps more direct experience with the subject matters will help me choose.”

  Vasiht’h grinned. “So did they put you in Patient Assessment in the Clinical Setting?”

  “Yes?”

  He laughed at the Eldritch’s expression, which he could read as surprise and concern despite how little his face changed: something about his eyes. “You’ll like it. It’s a lot of information and you’ll have to learn it quickly to keep from falling behind, but it’s fantastic. A big favorite.”

  “I look forward to it,” Jahir said. “I also have Clinical Management of Acute Care Cases, which is part of the medical track, Pharmacology, an Abnormal Psychology Overview, and Mental Diseases of the Exodus.”

  Vasiht’h wrinkled his nose. “The Exodus class is harsh. Actually the whole thing sounds like a heavy load. Are you sure about taking it all at once? The drug class is going to be a lot of chemistry.”

  “That should be the easiest part,” Jahir said. “I am more concerned about the practical work. But if it’s too much, best to know now.” He folded his arms behind his back and said, “Your thesis does interest me. How do you plan to study it?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Vasiht’h said. “I’m writing a few drafts on how to go at it, and hopefully Doctor Palland will have some advice.” He sighed. “It feels sort of fuzzy, to be honest. My mother and father are always doing research projects, but hard science seems a lot easier to test than people’s reactions. You figure a molecule’s only got so many ways to react to things. But people?”

  “That’s what makes people so endlessly engaging,” Jahir said. “One never knows.”

  Which made Vasiht’h wonder, suddenly, whether he ever would, and if not, why he was bothering.

  He asked Sehvi about it later. She snorted and said, “You’re the one who decided you were destined for psychology research.”

  “Not for research,” Vasiht’h said. “Teaching. Research is just what you have to do to get to a teaching position.”

  “Uh-huh,” Sehvi said. “You’re going to have to do six more years of research if you want to end up in front of a college classroom. What are you going to study when you’re done figuring out if dreams help people work out their problems faster?”

  “Hopefully by then I’ll have come up with another topic,” Vasiht’h said. At his sister’s arch look, he said, “I’m committed to this. I’m going to do it.”

  “You are running,” she said.

  “I am not running from clinical,” Vasiht’h answered, flicking his ears back.

  “No, you’re running from your roommate and from clinical,” she said. “Basically, away from everything that’s making you realize that you can be troubled by your own feelings. Where do I send my psychologist brother to get psychologized?”

  “That’s not even a word,” Vasiht’h growled.

  Sehvi huffed. “You need therapy, ariihir.”

  “What I need is support!” Vasiht’h said. “And that’s what I’m not getting! Even my major professor thinks I’m going to end up in practice. How can I give my heart to something that no one will take seriously?”

  “Maybe it’s because we don’t think you’re taking it seriously,” she said. “But I won’t harangue you about it anymore. Tell me instead if the mindline’s still trying to manifest.”

  “Ungh,” Vasiht’h said, and dropped his head into his arms. “As if I didn’t have enough problems.”

  “I guess that’s a yes?”

  “We both dreamed about singing a few nights ago,” Vasiht’h said, shoulders drooping. “Which ordinarily I wouldn’t think anything of, but I’m beginning to question whether my being able to read his body language so easily is me just being used to Eldritch minimalism, or if I’m reading his aura without trying to.”

  “And he’s still getting something off you,” she said.

  “Little bits here and there,” Vasiht’h said. “At least he doesn’t seem to have realized that’s what’s happening.”

  “So when are you going to tell him?”

  “Tell him!” He looked up at her, aghast. “Why would I ever tell him?”

  “So that maybe he can decide whether he likes the idea?” she asked, folding her arms.

  “No, no, no, never,” Vasiht’h said, shaking his head. “Never. He’s Eldritch, and they hate the mental touch of other people, and even if he doesn’t mind it from me in emergencies it’s not something they’d do. He told me himself it’s something out of crazy mythical stories with grand and tragic and doomed relationships. Did I mention they’re tragic?”

  “It is sort of implied by the doomed part,” she said. “Don’t you owe it to him to explain why he’s tasting your feelings?”

  “If it becomes obtrusive, maybe,” Vasiht’h said. “But for now?” He shuddered. “No. I like things the way they are, Sehvi. I don’t want them to change.” He flushed, grateful that his fur hid it. “He’s teaching me to sew. Because he noticed that my bags are coming apart, so he bought me a repair kit for the new year.”

  Her brows shot up. “He bought you a year-gift! Did he understand?”

  “I… think so. As much as an alien can, anyway.”

  “And you got him something too, I bet,” she said, and grinned at his look. “You did! What did you give him?”

  “Concert tickets for the season,” Vasiht’h muttered. “For both of us.”

  She shook her head. “Oh, ariihir. I don’t know why you’re still fighting this. You’ve already lost.”

  Jahir wasn’t sure what to expect from the Clinical Management class. He’d read the précis, but he’d been imagining more study; certainly he’d been assigned a textbook. But the first day of class, their instructor—Lasare
issa Kandara, a short gray Seersa with pale eyes—had given them an overview and then led them from the classroom to a large empty hall, their footsteps echoing. She barked a command, and the emptiness was replaced, instantly, with the frenetic bustle of an acute care ward. Jahir had fleeting impressions of people racing by with floating beds, and a cacophony of noises: the warble of machinery, the groaning of people in distress. It was so real that he froze, his skin pebbling beneath his clothes at the breezes he imagined he felt each time someone ran past him. And then he realized the breezes were real, and the projections were solid when one brushed him on the way past.

  “When we’re done with this semester,” Kandara was saying, “you won’t be standing here staring at this like people petrified by an oncoming train. You’ll be in the thick of it, managing your particular patients. I’ll give you reading, and once a month we’ll get together to discuss it. But our classes will take place in this lab. Those of you here for nursing will go on to do two more semesters of this class. If you’re here for medical psychiatry, you’ll get this one class, but we’ll have specialized scenarios for you.” She looked around, meeting their faces as around her the activity swirled. “This simulation is solidigraphic and it’s been built from data taken from actual acute care facilities all over the Alliance. You won’t find a better preparation for the real thing.”

  Falling in behind the woman on the way back to their classroom, Jahir fought his unease. He wanted, very much, to believe her, but he feared that the only thing the class would prepare him for was a false confidence in his ability to handle the environment. The solidigraphic nurse who’d brushed past him had had weight, volume, even a smell.

  But no emotional presence at all.

  He’d been hoping that Patient Assessment would be better; he’d glanced through the text before class and found it all intriguing. Who would have thought the position of someone’s feet could tell you so much? But he was alarmed when the Seersan professor declared, with amusement and a fine sense of dramatics, that they’d be practicing their skills as they acquired them… on each other. This excited everyone but Jahir, who had not entered into the psychology program to be analyzed, and had a responsibility to maintain the Veil of Secrecy that had been part of Eldritch culture since its founding besides.

  “You have to have known it would come up,” KindlesFlame said. It was their first lunch of the new year; there were hints of buds on the trees, but no flowers yet, and it was still cold enough to make hot coffee as much a matter of warming his hands as enjoying the flavor.

  “That we would become our own test subjects?” he said.

  “That you would be subject to the curiosity of your classmates,” KindlesFlame answered, breaking off a piece of his millberry scone. “It’s a psychology program, and you’re a rare alien.”

  “I am a rare alien who would prefer not to be studied,” Jahir said. And sighed. “I suppose there is no delicate way to have myself removed from the process.”

  “Without becoming the object of even more intense curiosity?” KindlesFlame snorted. “Not likely.” He stirred his coffee and said, “You could always disturb them by reading their minds. I doubt you’ll find many willing partners after doing that one too many times.”

  “I would never,” Jahir said.

  “Never?” KindlesFlame lifted his brows. “Now there’s an intriguing comment. You plan never to use your abilities on other people?”

  “They are not something to be used,” Jahir replied, finding even the process of putting it into words distasteful. “And certainly not on people, without consent.”

  “But with consent?” KindlesFlame pressed.

  “Even with consent, it is not so light a matter.” Jahir flexed his fingers on his cup. “And not a comfortable one for me.”

  “We often have to do uncomfortable things in the course of our duties.”

  “That’s different,” Jahir said.

  “Is it?” KindlesFlame’s mien had turned decidedly professorial. “If your abilities can help save someone, what then?”

  “Surely that is a hypothetical, and not likely to happen,” Jahir said. “How many esper therapists can there be in the Alliance? And if their abilities were so powerfully useful, then would not all therapists be espers, or at least a greater percentage of them?”

  “Ah-ah.” The Tam-illee wagged a finger. “No wiggling out of it. What I’m doing now is no different from your Clinical Management professor’s doing with her simulations. We are simulating a patient whose mental state can be healed with the intervention of your mind. Would you?”

  “If there was any other way—”

  “And if there’s not?”

  Jahir looked away.

  “Let me phrase it a different way,” KindlesFlame said after a moment, his voice gentler. “You have abilities that your peers don’t have. Doesn’t it behoove you to use your unique talents? Why were they given to you, except to be used to add to the positive energy of the universe?”

  “This is straying onto rather philosophical ground,” Jahir said.

  “Of course it is. If you have no philosophical ground for your work, you have no place to stand from which to make decisions. Ethical ones, moral ones. You won’t know the boundaries of your duty, and what you owe your gods—assuming you have any—the world, and your fellow men and women.”

  “And if you, Healer KindlesFlame, had a touch so sensitive that trailing it over fabric gave you friction burns, would you go about touching everything?” Jahir asked, looking up at him.

  “No,” KindlesFlame said. “But I also wouldn’t throw myself into a profession that required sewing.” He lifted a brow. “You’re going into a field of the mind, with an ability to touch minds that very few people share. Doesn’t that suggest something to you? A lost opportunity, perhaps?”

  Jahir grimaced. “If it was so simple…”

  “If it was so simple, the rewards probably wouldn’t be worth the effort,” KindlesFlame said, and sipped from his cup. “You’re going to have to suffer some discomfort to grow into your new role, alet. You can choose to do so in a way that minimizes that discomfort… or you can in a way that maximizes the growth. But you can’t have both.”

  CHAPTER 19

  The first concert of the spring term was in fact a comic opera, and Vasiht’h wasn’t sure if his roommate would want to go given the subject. But Jahir vanished into the bathroom to dress the moment he returned from the afternoon lecture, and exited it in one of his more formal outfits, cinnamon tunic over white shirt and brown trousers and boots. Heartened, though he still couldn’t imagine an Eldritch at a comedy, Vasiht’h went and found one of his few short vests, the red one with the fringed tassels. When he appeared in it, Jahir said, “And I had no idea. You do wear clothes?”

  “Sometimes,” Vasiht’h said. “For decoration mostly. Or if the weather’s severe. Female Glaseah usually wear clothes out of courtesy to the Pelted. Most of them have nudity taboos.”

  “I admit it hadn’t occurred to me they might not,” Jahir said, reaching for his coat and gloves.

  “Oh, some of them don’t; the Aera and the Harat-Shar would wander around nearly naked if you let them, and the Phoenix don’t care either. But the Pelted were originally designed as companions for humans, which meant, in effect, that they were used for sex.” Vasiht’h saw the pause that interrupted Jahir’s sliding the coat on, so short it was like a hiccup. “You’ll get into that in the Exodus course. A lot of the circumstances surrounding the design and flight of the Pelted still affect us all, though it’s been hundreds of years.”

  “Yes,” Jahir said, subdued. “I imagine it might.”

  “Anyway. I have a few of these for semi-formal occasions,” Vasiht’h said. “And a sari for the nice ones. Maybe if we end up going to one of the concerts with visiting musicians… those tend to be more formal.”

  “I should like to see it,” Jahir said, pleased, and opened the door for his roommate, and they went.

 
; The opera was in the larger of the student concert halls, with several projections set up behind the stage, high enough to be seen by everyone in the audience. The cast was all Seersa, save for a few brave Tam-illee, and the comedic aspect involved the fact that operas were traditionally sung in languages that the audience couldn’t understand. The protagonist of the opera was trying to set up a tryst with a lover who was committed to someone else, and they’d agreed to meet at a masquerade, but the protagonists’ unfortunate accomplices were all very, very bad at their jobs, and there were constant eavesdroppers hoping to spoil the protagonist’s plans.

  But the true humor involved the cast constantly hopping off stage into the audience and dragging up a member of it, and the protagonist hurriedly switching languages, improvising the lyrics in the new one to make it incomprehensible to them. The projection behind him kept a running translation, with often hilarious effects—the music had been written for the Seersan language, and the improvisations were often very low art. At one point, someone scrabbled nearly to the back of the audience and started pulling at the wing of an Akubi, which suffered itself to be led with a gaping grin up to the stage.

  The protagonist stared at it and lost three or four of his lines to laughing—the Akubi were infamous mimics, and finding a language that could confound them would have taken a Seersan specialist. He finally managed a few hoots and whistles, figuring the only language an avian mimic wouldn’t understand as a language would be… fake bird noises. Even the orchestra had to stop until they could catch their breath, the woodwinds faltering while the strings labored creakily on until the other sections could compose themselves. The Akubi preened, obviously pleased, and flew off stage to return to its seat.

  Vasiht’h surprised himself by laughing all the way through it, to the point of having to wipe his eyes, and if Jahir was more restrained he could feel the Eldritch’s delight radiating off him like summer sunlight. His skin kept the memory of it as they walked to the gelateria afterward, a short trip from the music hall.