Pale Siren’s eyes were brown.
Otherwise, nothing mattered.
Chapter 54
Pale Siren
Sorana practiced her meditation while on post at the brig. Her eyes were closed, allowing her eyes and brain’s visual processing center to rest. But she remained acutely aware of those around her. She could smell Guivan on the other side of the door. She received the delta waves of his deep sleep. Mammals were hardest to arouse during deep sleep. It was the best time to approach them for a kill. He would soon be dreaming. Dreaming sleep was the best time to wake a man if you wanted attention. It was a trick to use with men whose psychology prevented them from performing while fully awake. Properly applied, the trick was a reliable method of infiltrating an organization. Guivan’s breathing was drowned out by the creaking of Virtuosa and the movements of the nightshift on the main deck above.
Someone approached. The hesitant, delicate foot step pattern was that of a woman. When close enough, she could sense the brain activity. The beta wave intensity could only be generated by Visor or Ranie. Sorana’s hair follicles sensed variations in air flow as Ranie drew close. Ranie’s breathing, pheromones and bio-magnetic aura indicated benevolent intention. Sorana let Ranie come close and touch her face.
Sorana was on Mystique, riding through a cloudy night sky. She broke the cloud level to find a full, blue moon and thousands of stars. A grouping of stars coalesced to take the form of Ranie.
Ranie rode beside Sorana on a white horse, her hair stretching for light years behind them. Ranie smiled at her, the way life-long friends and close sisters would smile. “My friend, I need to see Guivan.” She removed her hand from Sorana.
Sorana led Ranie into the brig and awoke Guivan.
Ranie said, “Put him in that chair.”
Sorana grabbed and pushed Guivan into the chair.
Ranie walked behind Guivan and placed her hands on his head. She held them there for minutes, expending significant effort. “Pale Siren—what color were her eyes?” She asked the question three times.
He gave three different answers—‘blue’, ‘aqua’, and ‘perhaps violet’.
Ranie walked around in front of him, looked into his eyes, and asked the question again. He did not answer. He was confused and scared.
Ranie moved her hands toward his head, but he reflexively grabbed her wrists. She said, “Disable him.”
Sorana broke his wrists.
He cried out but quickly silenced himself, sparing himself a severely bruised throat.
Ranie put her hands on Guivan’s head. “Show me Pale Siren.” Beads of sweat appeared on her forehead. She stepped back and absently wiped her hands on her clothes. She touched Sorana’s face again.
Ranie hovered before her among billowing clouds, before a star light sky. The floating Ranie took Sorana’s hands in hers and said, “I know you, my friend. Thank you.”
Ranie left the brig.
Sorana took Guivan to see Ursula.
***************
“Donnie! Donnnnieeeee!”
It took a moment to wake up and recognize Evan’s voice.
She burst into commodore’s cabin seconds later. “Donnie! Something’s wrong with Ranie.”
Visor hopped up and threw on a tunic.
“This way!” Evan led him down to the promenade and looked around. “She was here a minute ago. She was babbling some of your math stuff—that we’re all dead. I don’t know what she said. Something’s wrong. Where is she?” Evan ran to the medical bay and searched frantically, awaking Finnur.
A crewman called from a corridor. “If you’re looking for that white-haired girl, she went up to the poop deck.”
“Oh, crap.” Visor sprinted up the stairs, across the main deck, and up the quarter deck to the poop.
Ranie stood at the rail, watching the Virtuosa’s wake dissipate.
The helmsman ignored the commotion, concentrating on his steering duty.
Visor spoke gently. “Ranie?”
Ranie turned to face him. “Even with an oracle in time, there is no solution in reality. The null set recycles. How can I be and not be?”
“Calm down, Ranie. Whatever it is, it’ll be fine.”
Ranie stared through him. “I could never play you. You are the constant … the origin. Then there is no need for me to be real. It is your dream, and I entered through the illusion of my mind.”
“Ranie! Come to me.”
She stepped closer to him. “If infinity collapsed, then would the dream expel me to reality? Do I even desire to leave? To watch you wither away while I weep? Or shall I stay forever suspended in a single moment, watching you drift from me?” She abruptly seemed relieved. “A moment that never ends.”
Evan whimpered. “Meole!”
Finnur called from behind him. “Rainaria, please!” He was out of breath.
Visor knelt as if in proposal. “Ranie.”
Ranie stepped up to Visor and clamped her palms on his temples. The wind, the creaking of the Virtuosa, and bird squawks faded, blending with the perception of another reality. Her eyes drew him in. Her whispered words seared into his brain. “I’m out of time.”
Ranie’s hair billowed out behind her as she flew through clouds in a night sky. She rode a white horse with two horns. The clouds parted to reveal pulsing Aurora lights against a solar sea of stars and planets.
She said, “As you once loved me, remember me now. You predicted Pale Siren and fused her into me. You are the Oracle of Deception. Pale Siren is what she is because of you, and you made her love you. And then you left her.”
Her hair shortened and changed from platinum blond to bleached white. Her skin transformed to a light tan and her eyes turned brown. She looked like Gwendolyn. He no longer heard Ranie’s voice, but the Pale Siren screamed in his mind with the booming voice of a cracking glacier. “You left me! I needed you! I did! And you are the only one who could have helped me!”
Ranie’s hands slid off his head.
He was back on the Virtuosa.
She looked weak and wobbled slightly. “I need sugar.”
Finnur caught and steadied her.
Chapter 55
All in Your Mind
Ranie took a goblet of fruit juice from Rapture. “Thank you.” Ranie’s hand trembled as she pulled a honey spoon out of her mouth and stirred the remaining bit of honey into the juice. She shivered.
Visor took off his cape and put it over her shoulders. “Take your time.” It wasn’t that cold in the medical bay. Ranie was just exhausted. She’d been up all night.
Ranie took a deep breath. “Obviously, I am a telepath. This is the first time I have shared that with anyone in seven years.”
Finnur said, “Understandable, given the stigma.”
Visor said, “Are people afraid of telepaths in Raykez? In WaterCrescent, they are highly sought after by the court and Viscount, among others. Usually, they can make a good living just reading for the court.”
Finnur said, “There is some superstition in the farmsteads and suburbs, but telepaths are accepted and sought after in downtown Raykez as well.”
Evan said, “It’s because stupid people think it makes you crazy.”
Ranie said, “And they are right, quite often. It is mentally draining. Most telepaths that read professionally burn out within a few years.”
Finnur said, “Luvia has been successfully contracting with Sheriff Kyle for years.”
“Vampires are different. They’re just detecting small pressure and electrical variations—enough to determine when someone is lying. They don’t share the experiences … see the things we see … feel the things we feel.”
Visor said, “But Evan knew?”
Evan said, “Yeah, and so do you but you forgot.”
“What?”
Ranie said, “If everyone would just give me a minute
.”
“Yeah, sorry.” Visor sat back.
“It is like this: You all know that Donnie is an oracle. What you didn’t know is that he is the Oracle of Deception. Deception is a prediction of Pale Siren—or rather the discovery and viewing of the receptacle of Wescott’s fourth Banshee prediction, Demise. Deception was predicted about eight years ago. Visor shared the image with me—we shared it, telepathically. She was a minor strain of siren with white hair.”
Visor said, “A Sky Head.”
“We thought it entertaining to transpose my features onto her.” Ranie huffed and held out a lock of her hair. “We lightened her skin to match mine, made her long-haired and, of course, heterochromatic. Her eyes were originally brown.
“Unexpectedly, Visor fell into the coma. I tried many times to make a telepathic connection with him, but it never worked, or so I thought. Then he awoke and had lost all memory of Pale Siren, and all memory of my being telepathic. And for some reason, I could no longer form a telepathic link with him. I never asked directly, fearing that something or someone didn’t want him to know—that somehow his knowing might lead to another coma. We went on with our lives. He moved to WaterCrescent. Here we are now, and what we thought was seven years later is all the same instant in Visor’s comatose dream.”
Finnur was writing in his journal. “Why do you say that, Rainaria?”
“Guivan showed me his vision. In the recording he saw, Pale Siren had heterochromia iridum—the same combination as mine.”
Visor said, “So we are in my mind.”
“It can only be that I was able to reach you in your coma, and we are still there. You are dreaming, and I exist outside of time.” Ranie shook her head. “I couldn’t reach you in the coma, and I could never reach you again after you awoke. I thought you were damaged, but now I realize that telepathy wouldn’t work because my own mind was blocking me to propagate the fantasy … or perhaps you were blocking us and you are just now dying in the real world. It doesn’t matter. Now that I understand the truth, I control the fantasy as a lucid dream, and I can reach you.”
Visor said, “Actually, Mer—”
Evan over-talked him. “I don’t get it. So what if the White Siren has blue eyes?”
Visor said, “According to Ranie, that would be impossible. The heterochromic version of Pale Siren—the one with a blue and a violet eye—only exists in the minds of Ranie and me. So if Guivan saw it, it would mean that he, and by extension all of you, are figments of our imagination.”
Ranie said, “Well, that’s not exactly true.”
Finnur underlined something. “Why is that not true?”
Ranie said, “As I studied more of the Dodelige and White Heart, I saw an opportunity. The White Heart needed a mystical figure, a hero, to be the human face for their religion. I shared the altered image with selected people, hoping it would catch on and become a part of the White Heart dogma. Then I would be able to expose a pillar of their faith as false at an opportune time. It worked, or so I thought.”
Finnur said, “So that’s it then. Someone told Guivan about the blue-eyed Pale siren.”
“Or, for all we know, some oracle predicted my prediction of Wescott’s prediction.” Visor scratched under his ear. “It still doesn’t work out. Guivan saw the image from the Demise receptacle. The receptacle was created during Wescott’s time, hundreds of years ago. We just created the heterochromatic Pale Siren a few years ago. She couldn’t be in Demise.”
Ranie said, ‘It was a complex fantasy. There were just too many variables to propagate it forever. A contradiction was inevitable.”
Finnur said, “But with the image out, another possibility opens up. Another telepath could have transferred the image to Guivan, or someone could have described it to him in detail. He could be fabricating the part about the Wescott’s receptacle. He may be confused.”
Ranie said, “It doesn’t work like that. He believed it to be real. Sharing a telepathic image is just another form of communication. It is like talking, but it can be with pictures instead of words. Regardless, if a telepath passed the image to him, he would recognize that it was shown to him in that manner.”
Visor said, “Just like Ranie showed me images of Pale Siren up on deck. I am aware that I was kneeling on the deck when that happened, and that all of you were around me. And now that she’s told me that I had seen the images before, but it’s not like I suddenly had my memory altered to think I saw them years ago.”
Finnur said, “What if a more powerful telepath, or say an exceptional vampire—”
Visor said, “It can’t be a vampire. They don’t—”
“I have done study on the subject, and it is not possible.” Ranie’s voice quivered.
Rapture held her hand.
Ranie took a drink. “I had to. It was only natural to wonder if I had caused Donnie’s coma or memory loss. With all of the linking, could I have destroyed his prediction ability? But every telepathic experience I could find referenced is just like mine. It’s just a connection, not control.”
Rapture patted Ranie’s shoulder.
Finnur said, “I would point out that your physiological response to this recounting indicates that you are not yourself positive that we are living inside Visor’s coma.”
“Yet it remains the only explanation to avoid contradiction. I am conscious within Visor’s mind, and my mind is creating the physiological responses to propagate the fantasy.”
Evan scoffed.
Finnur said, “Okay, but in my mind, and in the minds of Visor, Evan and Rapture, no contradiction exists other than what you are telling us. Is the likely conclusion that reality has collapsed? Is it possible that your mind has become confused? Perhaps in a complex telepathic exchange?”
Ranie said, “I am human, and my mind is fallible like any other. But this is not something that is unclear to me. I don’t have any traumatic triggers that could explain such a divergence from reality … no sudden losses.”
Visor said, “What if—”
“You weren’t that good.”
Finnur said, “Visor is the only one that could confirm your theory, but …”
“But the precise portions of his memory that would confirm my reality happen to be missing, conveniently. And yet, it remains the only solution.”
Finnur leaned over the table. “I’m sorry to beat this dead horse, but what if there was some kind of combination of hypnosis with telepathy? While in a vulnerable state, could the image be transferred and believed real?”
Ranie said, “Look, it’s a moot point. Guivan had never been linked with before.”
Finner asked, “Oh?”
Ranie said, “When a human that isn’t an oracle or telepath links for the first time, it is a long and draining process. You have to wake up part of the brain. I suppose it’s like teaching them a new language.”
“Ah, I see.”
Visor asked, “Would linking to someone in a coma cause any special consideration? I mean, along the lines of getting trapped in a permanent dream.”
Finnur said, “From what understanding we have, which is limited, coma patients have reduced brain activity. They appear to continue to experience periods of unconsciousness and consciousness. They usually claim not to have dreamed. The few who do usually report nightmarish dreams—a sense of being trapped. Considering how little we know about dreams in the first place, it is hard to say whether they are actually dreaming and forgetting, or thinking they dreamed due to confusion during the process of pulling out of the coma. Unfortunately, a number of coma patients die from dehydration before awakening. They normally awaken soon after being healed by a siren, or not at all.”
“I was lucky, somehow.”
“As far as dreaming, Ranie could probably tell you as much on this as I could.”
Ranie said, “Attempting to link with someone while dreaming is like listening to someone speak vardal who
does not actually know vardal. It just comes across as a confused jumble—same as with hypnosis experiments. You can sometimes guide dreams with a telepathic link, in much the same way one might with words or sound.”
Visor said, “When you awaken to a crash, you might dream of a door’s slamming in the instant before you fully wake up.”
Ranie said, “That’s what I’ve found, at least as far as dreams. But we don’t have any data specific to comas. In any case, there is no reason to suspect that linking to dreaming or comatose people would cause any risk to anyone.”
Rapture asked, “You linked with Don while he slept?”
“Sure, Donnie among others.”
Visor said, “It could have been a fake—the viewing, I mean. Say that an oracle told the Paragon we’d one day interrogate Guivan. And so, for whatever reason, the Paragon faked the viewing to trick Guivan. They could just hire a pixie to reproduce the scene—or more than one if needed. They have the secrecy and organization to execute that kind of a conspiracy.”
Finnur said, “And they could hire the best telepaths to transfer the image from anyone, or from any group, who thought up the scene.”
Ranie said, “I would know.”
Finnur said, “What do you mean?”
Evan said, “She said she would freaking know, dork ass! What do you mean?”
“Ev, they are not attacking me.”
Visor said, “We are just trying to establish the existence of any reasonable method by which Guivan could have actually seen the heterochromia Pale Siren from the receptacle. We want to find a conceivable alternative to being trapped in my coma.”
“How is picking at her going to make her get better, Donnie? She needs to rest. It’s this damned boat—and all the other crap going on.” Evan squinted and rubbed her temples.
Ranie finished her drink. “I do think this is the best way to help, whatever the truth is.”
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