Mindtouch (The Dreamhealers 1)

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  “Are all Seersa thus?” Jahir asked. “So easy with language?”

  “Oh yes,” Vasiht’h said. “Though that man they had playing the lead was amazing. But definitely a production that could only have come out of the brain of a Seersa. They grow up learning languages, making them, preserving them. They even have to add at least one word to the dictionary before they grow up. It’s part of their coming-of-age.”

  “Is there no Seersa that has no talent for it?”

  Vasiht’h glanced at him, curious. “Oh, I’m sure there are some that are better than others. But I think it’s a little like a Glaseah or an Eldritch without the esper profile.”

  “Surely not,” Jahir said. “I would imagine the language predilection is culturally fostered, not biological?”

  “Well, sure,” Vasiht’h said. “But at what point is culture so unavoidable that you just soak into it? If you’re born hearing a dozen languages spoken, you’re going to grow up differently than someone hearing one.” He looked at the Pelted passing them. “The Seersa were given the task of language preservation and creation during the Exodus. They made and maintain Universal. They keep records of Meredan, the secret language the Pelted developed among themselves on Earth and that was spoken on shipboard after they fled. They made the languages whole-cloth for the Pelted who wanted them… the Harat-Shar, the Hinichi, the Tam-illee, all us third-generation engineered. Language is part of their identity. Even if you’re not so good at it, you can’t help but be a part of it.”

  “And is it your duty, then, to use that ability?” Jahir wondered.

  Vasiht’h looked at him sharply, then passed under his arm as he held the door to the gelateria open for him. He ordered the mascarpone and watched Jahir waffle over the flavors before deciding on pistachio and espresso to go with it. They sat outside to watch people go by, and once they’d settled, Vasiht’h… waited, wondering if he would be rewarded, if he was reading his roommate right.

  And he was. “Does your religion have aught to say on the subject?”

  “On your duty to use an ability?” Vasiht’h said. He mantled his wings. “The Goddess is not fond of idleness.”

  “No one is,” Jahir said, lifting a hand in what looked like a dismissive gesture, one Vasiht’h hadn’t seen yet. “It is the matter of special talents that I wonder at. If you are born with an unusual ability, does that obligate you to use it?”

  “Why would She have given it to you if She didn’t intend you to do something with it?” Vasiht’h said. “Anything else would be a waste, wouldn’t it?” He tilted his head. “What’s this about, anyway? I can tell it’s something.”

  Jahir grimaced over his coffee. “I do not know how you divined that—”

  “You’re too intent on it,” Vasiht’h said. “Come on, tell me. If not me, then who, right?” And then held his breath, realizing that he didn’t want to know the answer if there was someone else.

  “No, it’s a matter you might have opinions on yourself,” Jahir said after a moment. “Healer KindlesFlame has suggested to me that to practice therapy without the use of our abilities may not be… ethical? Moral? That it comprises a lost opportunity.” He glanced at Vasiht’h. “Do the Glaseah have counselors amongst themselves, and do they use their abilities?”

  “I guess they must?” Vasiht’h said. “Since we talk mind-to-mind as often as mouth-to-mouth. We were always a little lax about language; the Seersa made us one but we mostly abandoned it, and switch from Universal to telepathy when it suits us. But I’ve never been to a counselor, so I don’t know.” He glanced at his roommate. “But you know, my research is based on accidents that we stumbled on, using our abilities to treat people. Even if it was just their dreams, and even if it was just to help them sleep better… we could have just woken them up. Or sung them a lullaby until they calmed down. But we didn’t, did we? We used the tool to hand, the one that came to us by nature.”

  Jahir frowned, resting the brim of the cup against his lips but not drinking, his eyes distant. Finally, he said, “Some would suggest that the use of a power that a patient can’t defend against is immoral.”

  “Well, a patient can’t defend themselves against a surgeon’s scalpel,” Vasiht’h said. “And they certainly don’t know how to use one themselves.”

  “They could be trained—”

  “I don’t think it matters.” Vasiht’h shook his head. “Without the training it’s as inaccessible to a layman as our abilities are to people born without them. And who’s going to train to be a doctor just so they can argue their own treatment with a surgeon? Time and opportunity are just as big a barrier as biology.”

  “Are they?” Jahir grimaced. “It doesn’t seem plausible.”

  Vasiht’h snorted. “You want to sign up for a fifteen-year-schooling to be a doctor? Toss your responsibilities, upset your family, maybe go hungry, just on a whim, or against chance? Who can afford that kind of detour?”

  Jahir looked at him suddenly, face set, and Vasiht’h blanched under his fur. “All right,” he said. “Maybe you could. But I’m sure even you would think twice about it, if you were involved in something that needed you every day.”

  The Eldritch looked away, and Vasiht’h felt it like a bandage ripped off a small wound: a pain, quick and intense and gone. Not his, he knew, but Jahir’s, and he was still reading him after all. He smoothed the fur down on his arm surreptitiously.

  “This research you’ve embarked on,” Jahir said finally. “It will result in a methodology that will be available to very few practitioners, given its requirements. Do you feel that you are in some way obligated to employ it, because you are one of the few?”

  “I don’t even know if it works—” At Jahir’s skeptical look, and how did he do that by barely moving his brow? he said, “All right. I know it works on seven people. But seven people don’t make a repeatable clinical study.”

  “What does?” Jahir asked. “If you get some forty or fifty people at the hospital, will that be sufficient to prove it?”

  “Maybe as a potential,” Vasiht’h said, staring at his ice cream and fighting the slow sink of his gut as he worked it out. “After that, I’d have to expand it, try to get a thousand people, maybe.”

  “A thousand people.”

  “Yes,” Vasiht’h said, trying to imagine managing all that data.

  “A thousand people, whom you would have to personally test yourself,” Jahir said, “given the lack of other esper psychologists to aid you.”

  “I’ll find someone,” Vasiht’h said.

  “And if you do? That only leaves five hundred to each of you apiece.” Jahir glanced at him.

  “We’ll manage.”

  “And if you do, how will you know that the study is measuring the effects of dream intervention, and not the effects of your dream intervention? If you are the only one giving the cure?”

  Vasiht’h stabbed his ice cream and drew in a shaky, determined breath. “The problems,” he said, “are surmountable.” Because if they weren’t, he finished to himself, he would tear his own fur out.

  Jahir’s first session of the Pharmacology class startled him: he’d grown accustomed to classes of under twenty people, so to end up in a lecture hall among a hundred was unexpected. It was so large, in fact, that the professor had four assistants. The one assigned to his section was a young Tam-illee male in the loose, unisex garments that seemed to make up the uniform for those in the medical profession. After the general lecture, he drew them aside and said, “I’m Jander, and I’ll be your teaching assistant for the semester. Professor Aredi’s available for your questions, but you’ll get quicker answers from me. My job’s to grade your work, and to help you figure out how to remember it, because it’s a lot. Twenty percent of you are going to have to retake this class.” He looked at them. “But anything I can do to help you prevent that, I’m going to do. We’ve got several different mnemonic systems, and they’re as old as this school. They’ve helped generations of students fix a
ll this stuff in mind, and they’ll help you.”

  “I don’t know why we have to learn them, when it’s all in the u-banks,” someone said.

  “Because if someone’s dying in front of you, your first instinct won’t be to consult a computer,” Jander said. “Sometimes seconds matter. When you have the leisure to double-check your memory, you should. But when it counts, you should know. I’ve used all these mnemonics myself, though some of them work better for me than others. I’ll teach you all of them, and you can keep the one that helps you.”

  Jahir was writing notes as he started the list, and stopped abruptly when the Tam-illee said ‘music.’ They went over the visual techniques first, and started on the linguistic, and didn’t get to the rest; so after the class was dismissed, Jahir stopped near the Tam-illee and waited for him to look up. Which he did, and started. “Iley bless, I didn’t see you. And… wow.” He straightened his shoulders. “Ah, so, how can I help you—”

  “Jahir,” he supplied. “You said something about music?”

  “Oh!” Yes.” Jander chuckled. “Music’s how I did it, actually. It’s something of a tradition in medical schools, to come up with songs to remember things—it started with a Karaka’An way back forever ago who made up the ditty for the Exodus diseases.” He canted his head. “For the pharma stuff there are a bunch of different songs, using different taxonomies. Some start with the species and organize the drugs into verses based on which affects which and how. Others start with drug class and then name the drug and then talk about the different species and how they’re affected by it; that one’s clever, actually, because it uses a different scale for each species—” He broke off. “I’m not boring you?”

  “I don’t suppose there’s sheet music?” Jahir asked, hopeful.

  “Oh is there!” he laughed. “I’ll send you a note. There’s a publishing press that does nothing but put out books of the teaching music.”

  Jahir said, “Jander-alet, I believe you have assured my grade in this class.”

  The Tam-illee grinned. “We’ll see, we’ll see.”

  That went entirely better than Patient Assessment, which with each passing session grew more uncomfortable. The material itself was fascinating, and when the professor demonstrated body language or behaviors, or when he played them solidigraphs, it was deeply engaging, and Jahir could see how Vasiht’h had called it a college favorite. But the practices with other students were painful. He dutifully made the observations and was often correct, but they never seemed to know what to make of him. The exercises always had the same pattern: his partner would be eager and intrigued, and then increasingly frustrated or discouraged, until at last they stopped trying.

  He’d thought this was going unnoticed; the class had some forty people in it, and the professor couldn’t listen in on all the exercises.

  But he’d been wrong.

  “Mister Seni Galare, if you would come up here with me a moment?” Professor Sheldan called.

  Startled, Jahir froze. Then, reluctantly, he set his materials aside and went to join the older male at the front of the classroom.

  “You’ll indulge me a moment, please?” the Seersa asked him, and what could he do but agree? Sheldan nodded, then said, “Very good. How are you finding the subject?”

  “Fine, thank you?” Jahir answered, perplexed.

  “No trouble incorporating the tails and ears on the Pelted? You don’t have them.”

  “No, not at all.” He kept his growing discomfort tightly reined, wondering what the point of this exercise was.

  “Very good,” the Seersa said. “Could you bring me your textbook? I’ve forgotten mine.”

  This from someone who could call up the text at any point and project it for the class seemed utterly nonsensical, but he retrieved his book anyway and set it on the podium. Sheldan said, “Thank you,” and picked it up, leafing through it. “Now then. Can you tell me, Mister Seni Galare, what it signifies when the crest of a Phoenix flexes?”

  “I fear I have not read so far in the text,” Jahir said.

  “Nothing about the nictating membranes of the Naysha either, then,” the Seersa said. “You were assigned that last class.”

  They manifestly had not, but Jahir said, “I’m afraid not, sir.”

  Sheldan nodded and slammed the book shut with a noise so abrupt several students in the front row jumped. Jahir flinched but didn’t move.

  “Superb!” Sheldan said, and his demeanor went from remote to gleeful in a heartbeat’s time. He addressed the class now. “What you have here is the result of deliberate training to minimize tells. Most of you have had a chance to have Mister Seni Galare here as a partner, and have been puzzled as to why you can’t read him. You won’t be able to without a great deal of experience, because he’s had deportment classes. This isn’t a failing in yourselves or your nascent ability, but an example of something beyond your skill level at this time.” He grinned at Jahir, and his body language suggested something unpleasant, a superiority that suffused his satisfaction. “We would save something like this for a second or third class. But you’ll observe that even when made uncomfortable by pressure or lied to or even scared, we saw almost no change in body language, yes?”

  A murmur of agreement, as Jahir fought not to flush.

  “You’ll see variations of control over body functions all the time,” Sheldan said. “But rarely something this extreme.” He nodded to Jahir. “You may sit.” He went, grateful to go and fighting his embarrassment. Behind him, the Seersa finished, “For now, we’ll excuse you all from practicing on him.”

  At the end of the lecture, Jahir stayed at his desk while his classmates walked past him, many with speculative looks. When they’d all exited, he gathered his books and stood, and looked at his professor.

  “Yes?” the Seersa asked, and from his casual air of waiting, Jahir thought grimly, he’d been waiting for this.

  “That was uncalled for, sir.”

  “Tell me, Mister Seni Galare,” Sheldan asked. “Are you a sociopath, a military operative, or an abuse victim?”

  Speechless, Jahir stared at him.

  “None of the above?” the professor said, gathering his materials. “Probably trained in a culture where everyone moves the way you do, yes? Let me tell you something, alet. How you present yourself will see you judged, whether you want to be or not. Your body language is so closed off that it comes across as a flat rejection of everyone around you. People’s curiosity about Eldritch will carry a lot of them past that barrier—at least superficially—but you’re turning a lot of people away at the door. If that’s intentional, that’s your business. If it’s not, you might try using some of what you’re learning to your benefit.”

  Jahir stared at him, trembling with anger and mortification. He forced himself to calm and said, “Sir, you had no cause to call me up before the entire class and use me that way. Without even asking my consent to the experiment.”

  “Is that how you really feel about it?” Sheldan said. “Because most people would have been delighted to be singled out as special.”

  “To be singled out as special is one matter,” Jahir said. “To be called out as, essentially, a freak in comparison to ‘normal’ people….”

  “I did no such thing,” the Seersa said. “I told people the truth: that you’re a special case because you’ve been trained to lie with your body.”

  That was so shocking an accusation that he could not move, nor draw breath to defend himself.

  “That’s what it is,” the Seersa said in response to his silence. “You feel something and you hide it from us all.”

  “That is the barest courtesy due to others,” Jahir said. “To keep from discomfiting them with histrionics.”

  Sheldan snorted. “It’s not histrionics to be surprised by loud noises, or to frown when you’re accused of not keeping up with your schoolwork.” He shook his head. “You can frame it however you want. People are going to read it as you hiding things from the
m… or lying. If you haven’t learned that yet, consider yourself warned.” He lifted his brows. “Is that all?”

  “That,” Jahir said, “is quite enough. Yes. Thank you.”

  The professor nodded and left him in the empty room. It was a long time before he could compose himself to leave, and even then he could feel his heart racing, so violently it could be felt all the way down in the veins of his wrists.

  For someone who’d been trained to lie with his body—he thought the words bitterly—Jahir reflected he could not use the same techniques to lie very well to himself. He barely made it through his afternoon lecture; certainly he remembered very little of it, and when he left he found himself trembling so much that he had to find a bench and rest for a while until he could gather himself to go back to the apartment. He arrived to find Vasiht’h already there, making use of the morning’s produce to make dinner. The sounds were soothing, even if he felt raw from nape to heel, and he drew his bag off slowly, and his gloves more slowly yet before allowing himself to sit on one of the chairs.

  He did not expect Vasiht’h to miss his agitation. For someone with such supremely trained comportment, he seemed very easy to read to his roommate. And… he found he was in some part waiting for the sound of paws approaching, and for the warmth of that now familiar voice. When it came, he let out a shuddering breath, glad. If Vasiht’h could read him, and wanted to, he was surely not so completely closed.

  “Alet? What happened? You look….”

  “I look what?” Jahir lifted his head, wanting to know if Vasiht’h could tell.

  “Shattered,” Vasiht’h said, eyes widening. He hurried in front of Jahir and sat, leaning a little toward him; Jahir could tell the Glaseah would have been touching him if he’d been allowed. “What happened?”

  Jahir said, low, “Professor Sheldan decided to exhibit me to the class as an example of that rare animal, someone trained not to reveal themselves through body language. Which he did by calling me to the front and attempting to unsettle me while everyone watched.”