“Doc disagrees,” Karl said quietly. “I talked to him about it right after we returned from the canyon. He believes the ability is deeper than you realize. You’re not only blocking sound. You’re probably blocking other things that help the collectives sense us. In effect, you make yourself and anyone behind your shield invisible to others.”
“It will not block out neurochemical signatures,” she objected.
Karl studied her face. “Are you sure? Have you ever tried?”
Tenessa looked like a deer caught in someone’s headlights. Karl didn’t know if she only feared what he said, or if perhaps that was guilt because she’d lied about what she could do.
He shook himself. “Either way, it will be a barrier against physical detection. We need that, Tenessa. You said you’d help us and in return, I’ll help you return to the collective. Are you reneging?”
She stared at him a long time, her hawkish gaze boring into his. Karl returned the stare calmly. Tenessa dropped her eyes first. When she did, she folded her arms and walked slowly toward him, eyes on the floor until she stood directly in front of him. Then she raised her gaze.
“The Separatist asks us to allow a Cupola bond,” she said quietly. “They’re forbidden because they’re indissoluble. We’ve already discussed with the Separatist that they may be a form of quantum entanglement.”
Karl frowned. “Quantum Entanglement is a form of Cupola bond. We think. Not the other way around. You’re twisting things.”
“It’s forbidden!” she shouted again. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “How can the Separatist ask this of us?”
Her eyes held earnestness and fear, and Karl felt compelled to console her. He dropped his face closer to hers and matched her soft tone. “I’m not going to hurt you, Tenessa. If collective living is superior to individuality, this shouldn’t be a big deal. Once I release you from the bond, you’ll go back to the collective and everything will go back to normal. Right?”
She shifted her eyes sideways. Her chest heaved, and he sensed her barely-concealed terror beneath the stony expression.
He used his thumb and index finger to tilt her chin, forcing her to look him in the eye again. “Or do you now admit it’s more complicated than that? That perhaps emotions transcend—
She flinched—hunched her shoulders and closed her eyes, as though he’d slapped her—before whirling away from him. She walked all the way across the room, stopping only when she’d reached the far wall.
“I’m sorry,” Karl said quietly. “I don’t like the idea of forcing you into something you’re uncomfortable with. If you want to be left with the collective, you must come with us. If you’re coming with us, we must protect ourselves. This is the way it has to be. Of course, if you’d rather stay behind, wait until after we get the orb to be sent back to the collectives, then the bond wouldn’t be necessary. I’d prefer than anyway.”
He waited.
Seconds ticked by. Tenessa abruptly took a deep breath and straightened her spine. When she turned calmly to face him again, she appeared to be her usual self: arrogant and in control. Karl wondered how much of her demeanor was always a façade.
“Very well,” she said calmly. “We shall endure the indissoluble bond.”
“Indissoluble,” Karl tested out the term. “Interesting way to put it. Do you mean that you, specifically, can’t dissolve it?”
Her eyes hardened again. “The Separatist should learn his definitions. Indissoluble means no one can destroy it.”
Karl rolled his eyes. “I know what the definition of indissoluble is.”
“Quantum entanglement is a universal constant. Once two things are quantumly entangled, they will exert an influence on one another forever.”
Karl thought he detected a tremor in her voice, though she obviously attempted to keep her tone detached and scientific. He crossed the room to stand in front of her again, wanting to look into her face. “I’m not going to Quantumly Entangle us, Tenessa. I wouldn’t even know how to do this. I’ll be linking us with the lightest possible bond.”
She didn’t look convinced.
“Are you afraid this bond will make the collectives less likely to take you back?” While he didn’t think they’d take her back at all, it hadn’t occurred to him this might be a worry for her.
She peered up at him and dropped her voice to a whisper again. “What else have we to fear?”
Karl breathed deeply, considering that. “The bond will act as a protection for you, Tenessa. I know you still think the collectives will welcome you back with open arms. I don’t think so. I have a hunch you might be as important a target in their eyes as Maggie is. This bond will help protect you.”
Tenessa’s voice became hard. “We thought the Separatist constructed the bond so we couldn’t run away.”
“Well, it is. I mean, I suppose you can run away, but I’ll feel where you’ve gone and Travel straight to you. This isn’t exclusively about us, you know.”
“I did not ask for your protection,” Tenessa snarled.
The change in tone and volume came so suddenly, Karl jumped. Instantly anger darkened his vision. He hated being caught off guard. “You don’t have to,” he said, anger clipping off each word. “I’ll do it anyway.”
The two of them glared at each other for another second before Karl took a deep breath and tamped his anger down. He knew her antagonism stemmed from fear. It probably always had. Something she’d said stuck out to him. “…they will exert an influence on one another forever.”
“Do you believe in forever, Tenessa?”
The suspicious glare returned. “Time will always go forward.”
“True, but you didn’t say ‘time.’ You said ‘forever.’ Forever is an emotional word, not a scientific one. Kind of a romantic notion for a collectivist.”
The line of her jaw clenched. “The Separatist twists my words.”
Karl shook his head and took a step back from her. “No. The meaning is the same. Your word choice is what’s interesting. You’re using individualistic words, Tenessa. Even if it’s unconscious, it says a lot. Especially if it is.”
A rap came at the door before Tenessa could answer.
Karl took another deep breath. “Come in, Marcus,” he called, sensing Marcus’s neurochemical signature in the hallway.
Marcus stepped cautiously into the room, eyes darting between Karl and Tenessa.
“What’s the Healer doing here?” Tenessa snapped.
Karl held up his hand. “Marcus is going to mediate. To help me.”
Tenessa snorted. “Why would the almighty Separatist need help?” she growled. “And why the Healer?”
“Because he’s my best friend,” Karl said calmly. “I don’t mind letting him into my mind.”
“We do,” Tenessa shot back.
“You have a problem letting me in too, and as I said, we have no choice. I only halfway know what I’m doing here. Marcus has done this before. I don’t think I can hurt you by messing up the bond, but it might take hours for me to figure it out on my own. With Marcus’s help, it’ll take ten minutes. Please sit down.”
She glared at him, but turned and walked to one of the ladder-backed chairs in the room. Oozing defiance, she lowered herself into the chair. Karl caught a hint of tremor.
Marcus came to stand beside him and dropped his voice. “Everything okay?”
Karl shrugged. “Yeah. Excellent timing.”
Marcus arched an eyebrow. When Karl didn’t elaborate, he shook his head. “You sure you want to do this? It’ll be like letting a viper into your head.” He studied Tenessa. “She’s terrified. Even I can tell that.”
Karl sighed. “I know. I wish we had another way. We need to leave too soon to establish real trust. There isn’t time.”
Marcus nodded. “You’re not worried she’ll undo it?”
Karl shook his head. “Nah. Like you told me, she’d have to let me in completely first. Take the bond a level deeper, and she doesn’t want that.
She’s afraid she and I will end up quantumly entangled, like you and Maggie. Besides, she’d have to construct the deeper bond herself. Creation takes too much individuality. She won’t lower herself to create.”
Tenessa snorted. “Of course we won’t. Creation is forbidden. And we don’t appreciate being spoken about as though we can’t hear.”
Karl studied Tenessa. “You said you’d done something forbidden before. I thought you were just lashing out. Have you created something before, Tenessa?”
She blinked warily at him, and he couldn’t read the answer in her expression. He seriously doubted she’d ever created anything in her life, but the parallel to their earlier conversation jumped out at him.
Marcus’s eyes shifted between the two of them. He looked half uncomfortable, half curious.
“What have you created, Tenessa?” Karl asked.
Tenessa turned away.
Karl snorted. “That’s what I thought. Creation is the ultimate form of freedom, Tenessa. You aren’t individual enough to wrap your head around it.”
Tenessa glared harder, and Marcus raised an eyebrow at him. Karl knew it sounded harsh. He didn’t care. The time for games had passed. “She won’t do it,” he lowered his voice. “If she did, I’d know it the second she started and can pounce on her. I honestly think there’ll be too much going on for her to think of it.”
Marcus nodded. “Okay. Let’s do this.”
The two of them moved chairs in front of where Tenessa sat, so the three of them made a circle.
“I need to be touching you, Tenessa,” Karl said. “Your hand will do.” Still glaring, she held her hand out to him, palm up.
In truth, he was surprised she didn’t object more. He’d expected her to kick and scream and bite to keep him from bonding the two of them. Now she held her hand out, almost as though she wanted the bond. Telling himself not to be ridiculous, he lay his palm over hers, wrapping his fingers around it. Then turned to Marcus. “Do you need to be touching her?” Tenessa tensed. Where Tenessa didn’t like Karl much, she hated Marcus for some reason.
Luckily, Marcus shook his head. “No. I’m not entering her mind directly. Only piggy-backing on yours. You’ll need this, right?” He dug a shiny gray rock, roughly the size of a compass, out of his front shirt pocket.
“Yes.” Karl took the conduit stone from him. Creating this kind of link was complicated. According to Marcus, once you’d done it, it became infinitely easier. Once created, one could feel their way to the link without entering the mind, as David and Marcus did on the island. But this first time, he’d have to enter Tenessa’s mind to complete the link.
Except for Traveling, his strengths lay more in physical, brute force than in neurochemical manipulation. Trying to do this without help would be like asking a toddler to Travel.
As Marcus had instructed him earlier, Karl reached out into the universe and gathered neurochemical energy, funneling it into the conduit stone, which enhanced and magnified it. Scooping up particles of Marcus’s consciousness to drag along with him, he reached into Tenessa’s mind. After searching for several minutes, he found it. Marcus reported finding something similar in David: a severed tether, made of evanescent energy, coming from inside the brain. It’s what had linked Tenessa to the collectives. They’d cut it when they left her for dead.
“Good,” Marcus said, as soon as Karl identified it. Marcus could probably feel and identify it better than Karl, but as this link would be between Karl and Tenessa, Karl had to forge the connection.
“Now use Constructive energy to connect it to your mind,” Marcus said.
“I don’t have a tether like this,” Karl said quietly.
“You’ll have to create one.”
“And it doesn’t matter what part of my brain I base it out of?”
“Not really. Your logic or emotion center would work well. Whatever you feel will work best for your brain is the right answer.”
Taking a deep breath, Karl gathered constructive energy. He pulled molecules of earth, various elements of the periodic table, and electromagnetic binding elements from the atmosphere, and wove them into a column of pulsating energy.
The part of his cerebral cortex that controlled his Travelling ability was the strongest by far. He’d already decided to use it as a base. He molded the energy at his fingertips into a tether similar to Tenessa’s and fused it into the Travel center of his brain. After that, he merely had to use constructive energy to connect the two tethers.
He used the energy to build onto the end of her tether at the same time he built on his. The two ends worked toward one another like two double-helixes of DNA being constructed and conjoined.
It took a surprisingly short amount of time. Once he started, it couldn’t have been more than ninety seconds before the two sides came together and fused, becoming one.
A flash of purple light blinded Karl and thud jolted him to his feet. Vertigo took over and he stood still and blinked for several minutes, willing the room to stop spinning. It was then that he realized he no longer stood in the same room.
His eyes swept a space smaller than the one he’d linked with Tenessa in. The walls were a dark gray, as was the smooth floor. No carpet, no stone, certainly not the sand and rocky walls of Interchron. Instead, utter grayness. Utter nothingness. No furniture decorated the room. He couldn’t make out any doors or windows. No lights decorated any part of the structure. Karl squinted, trying to see better in the murky lighting. For a room with no furnishings, the space felt oddly cramped. Almost claustrophobic.
“Karl.”
Karl jumped to find Marcus right beside him.
“You brought me with you,” Marcus said.
“Where?”
Marcus swept his gaze around the room. “Pretty sure we’re in Tenessa’s mind. Lovely place.”
“How do you know?” Karl asked.
“Something similar happened with Maggie. Maybe it’s a woman thing.”
Karl registered vague alarm and peered suspiciously into the more shadowy corner of the room. “Like a monthly cycle kind of thing?”
Marcus stared at Karl. “No. I mean it’s a vulnerability thing. She’s closed us off from her mind. Created a barrier of sorts.”
“Oh,” Karl said. He grinned at Marcus. “All people are vulnerable, you know. Not just women. Kind of sexist, Marcus.”
Marcus ignored him, instead studying the room.
Karl’s grin faded. “But collectivists don’t create.” For the first time, he wondered if Tenessa might be capable of unlinking the tethers he’d just created.
Marcus shook his head. “Everyone creates at least a little bit. This is simple. A child could do it. It’s not the complex creation the collectives are against.”
Karl nodded. “And you said this happened with Maggie?”
“Yeah. Maybe it’s an automatic response. What happened with Maggie was…different.”
Karl grinned. “In a bow-chica-bow-wow sort of way?”
“NO.” Marcus threw Karl an aggravated look. “I mean it looked different. Maggie is warm and open and friendly. She’s a trusting person. With her, it was a room, but open to the sky. There were colors and furniture, and the doorway only had a partition, like a curtain. Tenessa is much more closed-off than Maggie is.”
“You think?” Karl muttered.
Marcus ignored him again. “Interchron may be cave-like, but his place is a tomb.”
“I don’t see any doorways,” Karl said.
“Over there.” Marcus pointed.
Frowning, Karl crossed the room in the direction Marcus indicated. As he moved closer, the door materialized for him. Made of the exact same material and color as the walls, it had next to no differentiation from them. “How did you see it?”
“I didn’t,” Marcus said, eyes still sweeping the room, as if for threats. “I felt it. I scanned as soon as we arrived.”
Well, that was one of Marcus’s strengths. Karl turned back to the door. No knobs. Certainly
no windows. “I wonder how—”
He moved toward the door, planning to push it inward. A young girl suddenly stood between him and it. The child appeared so abruptly, Karl jumped back.
The girl couldn’t have been more than seven or eight years old. She looked exactly like Tenessa. Same midnight-black hair and olive skin. Same hawkish, pale green eyes. Same angry, judging stance.
Realizing he towered over the child, Karl stepped back.
Marcus grabbed his arm. “This is Tenessa’s defense mechanism. You have to convince her,” he nodded toward the child, “to let you through that door.”
Karl nodded slowly, mind whirring as he considered what the best tactic would be. He fell into a squat and peered into the child’s face. For the first time, he realized she was sobbing. Tears glistened on her cheeks and her eyes looked red and swollen.
“What’s your name?” Karl asked.
“What do you want?” The girl demanded, more angry tears sliding down her face.
“I want to go through the door,” Karl pointed.
“No. You can’t! Why are you here? You can’t be here.”
“Why not?” Karl asked calmly.
“Because you aren’t everywhere else.”
Frowning, Karl glanced up to Marcus for help.
Marcus looked as confused as Karl felt. “Yeah, Maggie never said anything like that.”
Karl turned back to the child. Tenessa in miniature. “What do you mean I’m not everywhere else? Why would I be?”
The girl’s expression turned to confusion. “The world must be equal and uniform. You cannot enter my door alone. It is forbidden.”
“Why is it forbidden?” Marcus asked, squatting down beside Karl.
“It would make me special,” the girl answered.
Marcus looked even more confused, but Karl thought he understood. What an extremely collectivist response. The kind that had been programmed into Tenessa. It was okay to let him into her mind, as long as he entered the minds of everyone in the collective. Letting information enter only one mind in the collective would create an individual mind. Unique. All things must be identical for a collective to function.
Dark Matter (Interchron Book 3) Page 26
