Mindsearch

Chapter 2-1

Chapter 2

As always, the vision came without warning.

She was in a strange place that bore no resemblance to her reality. The ground was hard and flat, without the waving fields of thistlefruit she was used to on the farm. Vegetation grew sparsely here, hardy bushes that jutted up from the ground and defied wind and weather to work their worst. High craggy mountains on the horizon scraped at the rim of the sky—and that sky was not the familiar pale green of her native Iwagen, but a rich purple-blue like imminent nightfall even though it was broad daylight. Overhead the sun was not orange, but a small white ball, hot, intense, and half the size it should be. The air was warm and dry, and laden with dusty scents of some arid springtime.

There was life all about her, continuing on its business and taking no note of her presence. Small insects crawled, flew, or hopped. Strangely marked birds darted through the alien sky. Larger land creatures—some furred, some feathered, some scaled—moved about more slowly, always at the limit of her vision, never quite leaving the protection of the scant brush to give her a clear glimpse.

Mara made no movement, no sound to disturb the peaceful scene. She was not sure she could move even if she wanted to; always before she’d come to this exact spot and never stirred from it. Sometimes it was day, sometimes night; sometimes the weather was clear and sometimes it was cloudy or rainy. Mara had no idea how she came to be here or why the transitions occurred—if, indeed, there was any purpose behind them at all. The not knowing was what scared her most.

A breeze picked up, coming from her back. Mara did not feel it, exactly, but she could tell it was there by the way it blew the loose dust and the plants. Small bits of earth rose and fell in an aerobatic ballet, whipped around by the wind into eddies and dust devils. Overhead, a sudden gust caught a bird unprepared, and it squawked as it flapped about to right itself....

Mara sat up in the branchbed, eyes wide open. It was the dream again, of course, the second time she’d had it since Richard went away. She could recognize it perfectly well after the fact, but somehow she was always motionless, paralyzed, while it was actually happening. She coughed as a trickle of saliva ran the wrong way down her throat, and that reflexive act broke the stillness, setting the world in motion once more.

There were thoughts around her, minds touching and caressing her own—worried minds, caring minds. She was supposed to be the one caring for them, she knew, and yet ever since she and Richard had begun taking in their “patients” the farm had grown into a more cooperative venture, a commune in the truest sense.

Are you all right? Your mind was gone from us for a while. Was it the dream again? The thoughts were from no one person, but a distillation of concern from the eighteen other telepaths scattered about the farm.

Yes, it was the dream, but I’m all right now. Mara sent out the answer to calm their fears, wondering whether she could fool them that she’d calmed her own.

Stretching, she climbed out of the tangle of closely woven branches lined with downy “leaves” that comprised her branchbed. She stepped onto the spongy floor, took her simple blue frock off the gnarly peg where it hung and slipped it over her supple young body. She ran a brush quickly through her long black hair, removing the worst of the night’s tangles, and ran a tatsit leaf over her teeth to polish them and freshen her breath; since she wore no makeup, that simple ritual was all she needed to face the new day.

Fully awake now, she stepped outside her sleeping chamber and climbed down the knotty ladder inside the house-tree past the lower sleeping rooms to the common dining area at the base. Privacy was a strange phenomenon in a telepathic community; as long as everyone was within detection range, Mara could not prevent her thoughts from reaching them, nor theirs from reaching her. It was a background noise that was always buzzing in her head, and in a way it was comforting to know her friends were always there. A form of courtesy had arisen, however, that when someone was in his own room there was no detailed communication unless the person requested it. Mara’s strange dreams were more like an emergency, prompting the concern that led the others to invade her privacy. It didn’t upset her that they’d done so, and once she assured them she was well they’d left her to herself.

Now that she was in the common room, however, all privacy vanished. Thoughts swirled around her—busy thoughts, working thoughts—and she joined in the current as though born to it, which she was. There were always things that needed doing on the farm, and the more she and Richard had succeeded in bringing other telepaths here, the more mouths there were to feed. Since some of their new friends were in various stages of telepause and unable to care for themselves, that imposed an additional burden. It was a burden Mara and Richard welcomed, though, for it promised greater things to come.

The common room at the base of the house-tree was a large open chamber the full diameter of the bole. The “tree” itself was a system of stems from a single root stock, interwoven so tightly it kept out the elements. The wood was so hard there was little danger from the fire that was kept lit in the center of the packed-earth floor. Water ran through a clay pipe down from the treetop reservoir into a basin, where it could be used for cooking or for washing utensils. Smooth-hewn stumps of differing sizes were scattered about the room to serve as tables and stools, with a couple of stumps specially carved to fit human anatomy. The interior walls had been dyed with streaks of color to lend a festive atmosphere to the place, while smells of previous meals lingered in the air.

Luose had already prepared breakfast for the workers, and Mara was one of the last to arrive. Dur-ill and human chemistries were similar enough that a common diet sufficed for both, though Mara occasionally ate some things her Dur-ill friends disliked to supplement the regimen. She ate quickly now, steeling herself for the ordeal that was to come. Then, as was her habit, she set out for her early morning check of the hospital compound.

The farm had grown rapidly in just the past year. One house-tree had served as home for the Cheney family all her life; she still thought of it fondly as the house-tree, even though they’d brought in others and transplanted them to hold the increasing population. As she walked through the arched bower of branches that served as a canopied entrance to the house-tree, she could see her friends working in the fields tending the thistlefruits. Mara had worked there for many years herself when the farm was just a family endeavor; now that it was something greater, she had little time for such simple labor.

Emerging from the bower, Mara turned left and began the long walk to the tree that housed the telepausal patients. That tree had been planted as far from the main complex as possible, both for the patients’ comfort and for everyone else’s. Even so, it was not quite far enough; the pain and the heightened powers of the patients could be felt by all the others on the farm. No one liked it, but it was a necessary evil; it was the reason this whole project existed in the first place.

The Javier daPaz Memorial Hospital—Richard had insisted on naming it after the doctor who’d sacrificed his life to save Alain Cheney—was the smallest of the three house-trees on the farm. At present there were six patients, two of whom were in the late stages of telepause. This bothered Mara, since there were as yet no children for them to move to. A couple of the other women were expecting at any time; it was simply a question of making the telepausal patients hold on as long as possible, even though Mara knew how difficult life was for them right now.

The hospital was Mara’s special province. She cooked for the patients, tended to their needs, kept the house-tree neat and tidy, and—more than anything else—provided the moral support these people desperately needed. Even though she was barely seventeen, Mara’s mind provided balm to cool the fires of their telepause.

Even before she entered, Mara knew that two of the patients were having s*x in one of the upper chambers of the house-tree; the passion of their coupling was so strong it sent delightful shivers through her own body. s*x was not discouraged at the hospital. Quite the reverse, in fact; it was an indispensable part of the telepause treatment, and one of the few benefits that condition had to offer.

Mara entered the hospital and went about her chores, trying to ignore the s****l activities above although she occasionally had to stop and gasp as an echo-orgasm rolled through her mind and body. Dur-ill s*x was not too different from human s*x although their body parts were incompatible, and it was impossible not to strike a mutual chord now and then. At last the couple upstairs became too tired to continue and came down the ladder into the common area. Mara smiled at them and continued with her work.

Halfway through her morning chores Mara felt the approaching minds. They were still a good way off, but she had a greater range than anyone else on the farm and could detect things even farther away than her brother could. She stopped for a moment to focus on the approaching pair.

Nisoth’s returning, she broadcast when she recognized one of the approaching people. He’s got someone with him. She seems strongly telepausal. Who’s near the south fence?

Me, Karonal-ess, answered a thought.

Go help Nisoth with our new guest, Mara ordered. I’ll get a branchbed ready here.

Mara was all prepared by the time the new patient was brought in. The Dur-ill woman was middle-aged, but Dur-ill seemed to enter telepause later than humans. Despite the fact that Nisoth must have warned her, the patient was startled at the sight of Mara, a human, and her mind was filled with confusion about whether she’d done the right thing by coming here. Mara reached out with her own mind to form a blanket, wrapping the woman’s fears securely and not allowing them to run riot through her head.

“Welcome,” Mara said aloud, using her mind to amplify her speech. The Dur-ill, like all newcomers here, was not a trained telepath, and could not be expected to converse solely by mental images. “We’re your friends,” Mara continued. “We want to help you. What’s your name?”

“Tatada-go,” the woman answered with hesitation.

“My name is Mara Cheney; everyone calls me Mara. Did you have a nice trip here with Nisoth?”

“I—Yes, it was pleasant, but my head, it always felt funny when I was with him.”

Mara smiled. The physical gesture was lost on Tatada-go, who was not used to the facial expressions of humans, but Mara projected a smile with her mind as well and the meaning penetrated. “Things will feel that way from now on. What seems funny at first will soon feel perfectly normal, and then you won’t even want to do without it. Did Nisoth explain anything to you?”

“He said I was reading other people, their minds,” Tatada-go said, and the confusion returned. Instinctively she believed that, but the common sense part of her mind didn’t want to accept such a thing.

“That’s true. There are a very small number of people who can sense the thoughts of others, and you’re one of them. You’ve had the power since you left childhood, haven’t you?”

“I don’t know. I think so. That is, I could always tell, me myself, when someone, he was lying or if he was angry or happy even when he himself pretended he wasn’t. Sometimes I could see things that I knew weren’t coming through them, my eyes. I don’t like to be around a lot of people, it makes it hard for me, myself, to think. There’s such confusion in the air.”