The Apogian War

Chapter 58

would have to improvise. I made brief fire flame up twice and die down. "Careful," I said, "don't put it out. It's cold in here." At least he could receive my thoughts; though the test was elementary, it qualified him as part of the circle. He looked up, delighted with himself, and smiled. contact. The fireplace. Make the The stone reflected blue glimmer on his childish features as he bent, his forehead wrinkling up with the effort of concentration. The light grew; the fire flamed high, sank, flared again, sank down, down... princess's eyes met mine. I looked quickly away. Damn it, it's never easy to make contact with a woman you're attracted to. I'd learned at Ausburn to take it for granted, for psi work used up all the physical and nervous energy available. But princess hadn't learned that, and I felt shy. The thought of trying to explain it to her made me squirm. In the safe quiet of Ausburn, chaperoned by nine or ten centuries of tradition, it was easy to keep a cool and clinical detachment. Here we must devise other ways of protecting ourselves. sia's eyes were cool and amused. Well, she knew. If she and Kage had been working together, no doubt she'd found it out al ready. I didn't like her and I sensed she didn't like me either, but thus far, at least, we could touch one another with easy detachment; her physical presence did not embarrass me. Where, working alone, had she picked up that cool, knife-like precision? Was I glad or sorry that Mar jorie showed no sign of it? "Belt," I said, "what can you do?" "Children's tricks," he said, "little talent, less skill. Rafe's trick with the fire." He repeated it, more slowly, with somewhat better control. He reached an unlighted taper from a side table and bent over it with in tense concentration. A narrow flame leaped from the fireplace to the tip of the taper, where it burst into flame. A child's trick, of course, one of the simplest tests we used at Ausburn. call the fire without the Patrix?" I asked. "Can you "I don't try," he said. "In this area it's too great a danger to set some thing on fire. I'd rather learn to put fires out. Do your tower telepaths do that, perhaps, in forest-fire country?" "No, though we do call clouds and make rain sometimes. Fire is too dangerous an element, except for baby tricks like these. Can you call the overlight?" He shook his head, not understanding. I held out my hand and focused the Patrix. A small green flame flickered, grew in the palm of my hand. princess gasped. sia held out her own hand; cold white light grew, pale around her fingers, lighting up the mom, flaring up like Jagged lightning "Very good, I said, "but you must control it. The strongest or brightest light is not always the best, princess She bent over the blue shimmer of her Patrix. Before her face, float ing in the air, a mall blue white ball of fire appeared, grew gradually larger, then floated to each of us in torn. Rafe could make only flickers of light, when he tried to shape them or move them, they flared up and vanished. Belt could make no light at all. I hadn't expected it. Fire, the easiest of the elements to call forth, was still the hardest to control. "Try this." The room was very damp; I condensed the moist air into #small splashing fountain of water drops, cach sizzling a moment in the fire as it vanished. Both of the women proved able to do this easily, Rafe mastered it with little trouble. He needed practice, but had exce lent potential. Belt grimaced. "I told you I had small talent and less skill." "Well, some things I can teach you without talent, kinsman," I said. "Not all mechanics are natural telepaths. Do you read thoughts at all?" "Only a little. Mostly I sense emotions," he said. Not good. If he could not link minde with us, he would be no use in the Patrixcircle. There were other things he could do, but we were too few for a circle, except for the very smallest matrices. I reached out to touch his mind. Sometimes a telepath who has never learned the touching technique can be shown, when all else fails. I met slammed, locked resistance. Like many who grow up with minimal laran, untrained, he had built defenses against the use of his gift. He was cooperative, letting me try again and again to force down the bar rier, and we were both white and sweating with pain by the time I finally gave up. I had used a force on him far harder than I had used on Regis, to no avail. "No use," I said at last. "Much more of this will kill both of us. I'm sorry, Belt, I'll teach you what I can outside the circle, but without a catalyst telepath this is as far as you can go." He looked miserably downcast, but he took it better than I had hoped. "So the women and children can succeed where I fail. Well, if you've done the best you can, what can I say?" It was, on the contrary, easy to make contact with Rafe. He had built no serious defense against contact, and I gathered, from the case and confidence with which he dropped into rapport with me, that he must have had a singularly happy and trusting childhood, with no haunting fears. sia sensed what we had done; I felt her reach out, and made the telepathic overture which is the equivalent of an extended hand across a gulf. She met it quickly, dropping into contact without fum bling, and... A savage animal, dark, sinuous, prowling an unexplored jungle. A smell of musk ... claws at my throat Was this her idea of a joke? I broke the budding rapport, saying tersely, "This is no game, sia. I hope you never find that out the hard She looked bewildered. Unconscious, then. It was just the inner image she projected. Somehow I'd have to learn to live with it. I had no idea how she perceived me. That's one thing you can never know. You try, of course, at first. One girl in my Ausburn circle had simply said I felt "steady." Another tried, confusedly, to explain how I "felt" to her mind and wound up saying I felt like the smell of saddle-leather. You're trying, after all, to put into words an experience that has nothing to do with verbal ideas. I reached out for princess and sensed her in the fragmentary circle ... a falling swirl of golden snowflakes, silk rustling, like her hand on my cheek. I didn't need to look at her. I broke the tentative four-way contact and said, "Basically, that's it. Once we learn to match reso nances." "If it's so simple, why could we never do it before?" sia de manded. I tried to explain that the art of making a link with more than one other mind, more than one other Patrix, is the most difficult of the basic skills taught at Ausburn. I felt her fumbling to reach out, to make contact, and I dropped my barriers and allowed her to touch me. Again the dark beast, the sense of claws... Rafe gasped and cried out in pain and I reached out to knock sia loose. "Not until you know how," I said. "I'll try to teach you, but you have to learn the precise knack of matching resonance before you reach out. Promise me not to try it on your own, sia, and I'll promise to teach you. Agreed?" She promised, badly shaken by the failure. I felt depressed. Four of us, then, and Rafe only a child. Belt unable to make rapport at all, and Kage an unknown quantity. Not enough for Belt's plans. Not nearly enough. We needed a catalyst telepath. Otherwise, that was as far as I could go. Rafe's attempts to lower the fire and our experiments with water drops had made the hearth smolder; princess began to cough. Any of us could have brought it back to brightness, but I welcomed the chance to get out of the room. I said, "Let's go into the garden."The afternoon sunshine was brilliant, melting the snow. The plants which had just this morning been thrusting up spikes through mow were already budding. I asked, "Will Kermiac be angry if we destroy a few of his flowers?" "Flowers? No, take what you need, but what will you do with them? "Flowers are ideal test and practice material," I said. "It would be dangerous to experiment with most living tissue; with flowers you can learn a very delicate control, and they live such a short time that you are not interfering with the balance of nature very much. For instance." Cupping Patrixin hand, I focused my attention on a bud full-formed but not yet opened, exerting the faintest of mental pressures. Slowly, while I held my breath, the bud uncurled, thrusting forth slender sta mens. The petals unfolded, one by one, until it stood full-blown before us. princess drew a soft breath of excitement and surprise. "But you didn't destroy it!" "In a way I did; the bud isn't fully mature and may never mature enough to be pollinated. I didn't try; maturing a plant like that takes deep intercellular control. I simply manipulated the petals." I made contact with princess. Try it with me. Try first to see deep into the cell structure of the flower, to see exactly how each layer of petals is folded.. The first time she lost control and the petals crushed into an amor phous, colorless mass. The second time she did it almost as perfectly as I had done. sia, too, quickly mastered the trick, and Rafe, after a few tries. Belt had to struggle to achieve the delicate control it demanded, but he did it. Perhaps he would make a psi monitor. Non telepaths sometimes made good ones. I saw sia by the waterfall, gazing into her Patrix. I did not speak to her, curious to see what she could do unaided. It was growing late we had spent considerable time with the flowers-and dusk was falling, lights appearing here and there in the city below us. sia stood so still she hardly appeared to breathe. Suddenly the raging, foaming torrent next to her appeared to freeze motionless, arrested in midair, only one or two of the furthest droplets floating downward. The rest hung com pletely stopped, poised, frozen as if time itself and motion had stopped. Then, deliberately, the water began to flow uphill. Beneath us, one after another, the lights of Caer Donn blinked and went out. Rafe gasped aloud; in the eerie stillness the small sound brought me back to reality. I said sharply, "sia!" She started, her concentration broken, and the whole raging torrent plunged downward with a crash.

sia tumed angry eyes on me, I took her by the shoulder and drew 189 her back from the edge, to where we could hear ourselves speak above the torrent. "Who gave you leave to meddle-1" I deliberately smothered my flare of anger. I had assumed respon sibility for all of them now, and sia's ability to make me angry was something I must leam to control. I said, "I am sorry, sia, had you never been told that this is dangerous?" "Danger, always danger! Are you such a coward, Lno?" I shook my head. "I'm past the point where I have to prove my cour age, child." sia was older than 1, but I spoke as to a rash, foolhardy little girl. "It was an astonishing display, but there are wiser ways to prove your skill." I gestured. "Look, you have put their lights out; it will take repair crews some time to restore their power relays. That was thoughtless and silly. Second, it is unwise to disturb the forces of nature without great need, and for some good reason. Remember, rain in one place, even to drown a forest fire, may mean drought elsewhere, and balance disturbed. Until you can judge on planet-wide terms, sia, don't presume to meddle with a natural force, and never, never, for your pridel Remember, I asked Belt's leave even to destroy a few flowers!" She lowered her long lashes. Her cheeks were flaming, like a small girl lectured for some naughtiness. I regretted the need to lay down the law so harshly, but the incident had disturbed me deeply, rousing all my own misgivings. Wild telepaths were dangerous! How far could I trust any of them? princess came up to us; I could tell that she shared sia's humilia tion, but she made no protest. I turned and slipped my arm around her waist, which would have proclaimed us acknowledged lovers in the val ley. sia sent me a sardonic smile of amusement beneath her meekly dropped lashes, but all she said was, "We are all at your orders, Dom Lno." "I've no wish to give orders, cousin," I said, "but your guardian would have small cause to love me if I disregarded the simplest rules of safety in your training!" "Leave him alone, sia," princess flared. "He knows what he's doing! Lno, show her your hand!" She seized the palm, turned it over, showing the white ridged scars. "He has learned to follow rules, and learned it with pain! Do you want to learn like that?" sia flinched visibly, averting her eyes from the scar as if it sickened her. I would not have thought her squeamish. She said, visibly shaken,