“What’s that? I’ve never heard of it.”
“The Dark Sankomin is all that has been and all that can be. If you were here, right now, it couldn’t touch you.” She shook her head at Ash’s puzzled expression. “This is so difficult to explain. Mind-touch can heal, but it’s not practical at your age. And yet the mind must rest.” She spoke almost to herself.
“What does this Dark Sankomin have to do with me?”
“The illness brought it to you.”
“I don’t want it!”
“All souls suffer the Dark Sankomin. You at least are Delian, and can have mind-touch to heal when you marry.” Sartha’s face darkened and her hand went to her heart.
“Mother?” Ash said. “Are you okay?”
“Give me a moment,” his mother said, turning away from him. A minute passed and she finally faced him with a forced smile.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I am fine. Just a little tired.”
“What were you going to say?”
“I don’t recall.”
He frowned, studying her face. More lies. Ash knew he had missed something. He had been following the trail of conversation, but then it had unaccountably reached a dead end when she had mentioned marriage. What was she hiding now? His mother was acting so odd, so unlike herself. He remembered the illness and said, “So what do the off-worlders do? You know, since they can’t mind-touch.”
“Off-worlders don’t understand the Dark Sankomin. They call it melancholy or depression. It often leads to madness or suicide. They suppress it through drugs, alcohol or entertainment and it can be often diverted through powerful emotions such as love, revenge or rage. Some find sensation effective — physical activity, for example, or pleasure. Strong purpose can also be used. All of these will work on a temporary basis.”
“Will I have the Dark Sankomin for long? How do I get rid of it?”
“Go to the sports room, Ash. Listen to your favorite music. Exercise until your body is as exhausted as your mind — practice the Disciplines. If that is still not enough, watch something on Icom 3D. Distract yourself, then sleep. Sleep will free you in time. If necessary I’ll give you a draught. With effort the Dark Sankomin will recede.”
After her son left, Sartha sat motionless for some time. The transparent bluish holovid remained on, but although she appeared to be looking she did not see. Numb with shock, Sartha was unable to take in the magnitude of her loss. Her people, her love — all gone.
Ash, too, had felt them die.
Sartha had been stunned by her son’s ability. Thank the Goddess his mind had disengaged. They both had lost consciousness, but not their lives. Appearances can be so deceiving. Her son’s slight, frail body held a powerful gift. Ash had felt the asphyxiating gas, the death of their people. At his age it was ordinarily impossible for one to achieve such a connection.
An alarm flashed, but she was already aware of the problem. Sartha reached over, and disabled it manually. Assurance had been built so that one person could fly her, but as advanced as the vessel was it had no tolerance for human error. When the people of her world were destroyed, Sartha’s impulse had been to stop. Without thought she had hit the purge button had taken them out of Omni. Now they needed to alter course to the nearest corridor, but that could take weeks to reach. Without Omni they would be forced to travel slowly in normal space.
At least she could use this time to begin her son’s Trueborn training. Ash would rebel at learning the Testimonials verbatim, she knew. Tradition held that he must memorize and recite the Testimonials before he could read the Interpretations. If the Seer’s casting was accurate, she would need to teach him quickly. It may be years or only months before she, too, passed.
She couldn’t tell him about his people, or his father. Not yet. Sartha frowned. It was true what she had told Ash that “All souls suffer the Dark Sankomin.” She had also told him that off-worlders call it melancholy or depression and that it can lead to madness or suicide. What she hadn’t told him was that those born on Delian were prone to extremes of madness and empty despair that off-worlders were not.
The first colonists from Earth had begun to go mad about twenty years after arrival on Delian. The histories spoke of that time, a dark age, three-hundred years in their past. Innate human powers were magnified upon their world. Passionate and psychically powerful, they could be heavily influenced by the Dark Sankomin. Delians had been given a great gift, and like all such gifts it was balanced by a flaw. No Delian could avoid insanity without healing mind-touch. Mass suicides, war and sudden homicidal violence had been frequent occurrences. It was Meg Kloekat, an unconventional anthropologist and sociologist who came up with the theory and concept of the Dark Sankomin. Soon after, her wife Jacque, a physician and therapist, discovered healing mind touch. Without this evolution the people of Delian would have destroyed themselves.
This was why the Testimonials and the Interpretations were so important for every Delian to understand. Studies had been made, and results published in the Interpretations. Without healing mind-touch, the Dark Sankomin closes in. First the individual becomes unable to sleep; their rest becomes filled with active, anxious dreams and then nightmares. They stop eating and drinking, and stop taking care of themselves. They become preoccupied by unnatural ideas and overpowering emotions. Passions rage up and down the scale, extremes of hate, guilt, anger and despair. Jealousy, envy … what may in small degrees be rational rapidly grew out of all proportion. Some Delians were able to hide this process, appearing quite normal, until without warning they took their own lives — or someone else’s.
“All become marred in time,” the Testimonial warned. And it was true. Once Ash was trained, he could mind-touch her and free the rivers of her mind, providing release from the Dark Sankomin. It could take years for him to learn, however. It would be difficult for her to wait for such mental and spiritual healing. It had only been a matter of hours and already she was so burdened that she found it difficult to think clearly. Worse, if she honestly faced the truth, she knew she would welcome her own death when the time came.
When she felt a bit better, with Ash’s permission she would at least be able to mind-touch him in order to clear his mind. But what would become of her son if she died?
She would have to teach him effective ways to suppress or divert the Dark Sankomin. Without healing mind-touch, Ash’s powerful gift would turn against him. Sartha trembled with dread at that thought. When she perished he would be the last Delian alive. Without a healing touch Ash would, in time, be condemned to madness and despair. Delian born, such an outcome was inevitable. Had it all been for naught? Had Ash been saved in order to suffer worse trials before he, too, died?
Her people, her love — all gone.
She recalled her thoughtless comment to her son, “You at least are Delian, and can have mind-touch to heal when you marry.” There would be no Delian bride for Ashton. He may know love, but he would never know the joy and completion of healing consummation. He would spend his life alone. It seemed impossible to comprehend. Desolate, Sartha went to bed but slept little, working to push her own Dark Sankomin away. Grief and despair overwhelmed her. Too many painful emotions were firmly blocked in the river of her mind. She thrashed restlessly in her sleep and ground her teeth. In her dreams she ran and ran, unable to escape.
Someone was trying to kill her.
“No!” Screaming, Sartha woke, sitting bolt upright with shock, heart pounding. She trembled and swallowed and smelled fresh blood. That nightmare had been so vivid, so real! She felt death still upon her, and in her dream she had intentionally slit her own throat.
Sartha’s soul was burdened, crushed by the Dark Sankomin. And like Ash, Sartha had no one who could provide a healing touch.
3. Mind-Touch
Mind-touch is a secret ability unique to those that are Trueborn of Delian. This gift is the power to contact another’s thoughts, to be inside another individual’s body, to in fact
BE another person. Mind-touch is also a healing tool used to relieve the Dark Sankomin.
— Prof. Chris Lampton, The Interpretations
Three weeks passed while they traveled in normal space. During that time Ash made no attempt to press his mother for more information.
In normal circumstances he would have been determined to find answers to the mystery of the strange illness, but instead he had let it go. He feared a return of the Dark Sankomin — it had taken days to be free of it. Luckily his mother had started his Trueborn training, and that unexpected novelty demanded all his attention.
Ash had read the Testimonials and had begun to memorize them. Today was the first day he would attempt mind-touch. His mother had warned him that it took some students years to master the skills necessary to be in another person’s mind and body, to know another’s soul. Would it be like slipping into Tynan’s skin? His mother would help — after all, it was she that he was attempting to touch. But the skill and power to do so would need to come entirely from him.
Ash lay on the bed in his room with his eyes shut, concentrating. His mother, Sartha, sat nearby. They had started with relaxation exercises until he had become calm and hyper-aware. His body was a light weight on the bed — it seemed far away, almost detached from him. Sartha had been giving instruction for some time now, speaking in a soft, quiet voice. The tone and rhythm of her voice was hypnotic. The subtle scent of her perfume lingered. It was a safe, familiar smell that gave him confidence.
“Detach yourself from the physical, son, as you do when practicing the Disciplines. In order to mind-touch me, you’ll need to become me. Ignore your body, Ash. Reach for your power. Can you feel the energy of it? Some perceive it as water; some sense it as air. It could even be an impression of time or dense matter.”
“I feel it,” Ash whispered, an echo of an answer to her murmured directions. He knew this flame that burned within him. He had felt it before. His voice was strange to his ears: a high-pitched whisper that seemed separate from himself. His power was enormous, like an endless heated ocean, an immeasurable … something. It felt larger than his insignificant childish flesh … or Assurance or even space itself. It was vast. Limitless.
“Very good,” Sartha said. There was a delicate hint of surprise and excitement in her voice. “This is your gift, Ash. It waits only for your command.” Her words became distant, like sound reverberating from far away, down a long, narrow tunnel.
“Yes,” Ash thought. Warmth. Heat. A flowing vibration came from the ocean within him. He consciously pulled on his power, something he’d never attempted to do before this moment, this timeless moment. His gift reacted like water, a fluid quicksilver sensation, pouring a burning wave of flame over his skin. Heat cascaded through him.
He began to feel good — really, really good. Ash knew that if someone asked, he would be unable to describe it. He had felt a glimmer of this with the seer. He knew moments of it when he slid into Tynan’s skin. For the first time he really examined the sensation. It was unique, something he had never really known before, yet it was an impression and awareness as familiar as his own right hand. Exquisite pleasure rippled through him. This was the opposite of the Dark Sankomin. There was a lightness of spirit to it. It felt … right.
“Command it, son,” his mother directed, her voice echoing with an abnormal musical precision. It was as if he used more than his ears to hear her.
Hyper-aware yet completely relaxed, he thought of his mother, a simple thought: “I want to be there.”
Contact was immediate.
His viewpoint shifted and his entire world changed.
Ash became his mother. He was in her body. Within her skin.
It was an entirely new experience for him to feel such human physical vitality. His mother’s body, compared to his own, was strong, yet it was so soft, so womanly. He breathed with her: inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. He felt the rise and fall of her breasts. Breasts! They seemed so foreign to him and yet, while he viewed the world from within her flesh, they seemed familiar and right. Her physical form was quite unlike his own. Such superior size and strength! She had just had a coffee, and while Ash thought the taste of coffee was bitter and unpleasant, on her tongue that same burnt flavor tasted good.
Ash was looking through her eyes, still awed by the differences in height, in weight — in the entire experience. His mother sat in a chair next to his own resting form, legs crossed with a feminine grace. Together they watched the holovid wall beyond, at a view set to a dark, star-filled, moonless night. Sartha was dressed in a soft blue bodysuit. It was made from a fiber that molded for comfort and would have been almost common, but Ash knew she had had it specially designed. His mother loved the feeling of synthetic silk. She wore it with her usual casual elegance. Ash had seen her in such garments before.
The difference this time was that he was her. He was aware of the silk as it caressed her skin. So extraordinary. Descriptions filled his mind: feminine, graceful, alluring, light, delicate and beautiful. Ash, of course, was none of these things, but within his mother’s body he was. Time passed while he savored the experience. And always, while he was within her, he knew the now familiar background of white noise, the ocean of his power, the fire and heat that surrounded him. Breathing. Inhaling and exhaling. The rise and fall of breasts. The taste, the smell, the feel: the sensations that were her essence. He had thought he knew his mother well. But now, from within her flesh, he understood her better than he ever had before.
Sartha’s face turned toward his own slight form. Ash was incapable of controlling his mother’s body, but his viewpoint moved as hers did. He shifted his vision within her and saw his own motionless form, slight and undersized on the bed before him.
I look so frail. This thought caused a physical reaction. Anxiety. Ash felt his mother’s heart speed up, her pulse pounding, and he became aware of a sense of longing, of a vital need. He was drawn to his own small, childish form as it lay alone on the bed.
He tried to puzzle out these potent feelings. I’m worried about my body, he realized. He wondered if those were his own thoughts or his mother’s. Was he reading her mind?
“You are not reading my mind, Ash. These are your own thoughts, but you are having them as the result of being within my body.” This communication came to him directly from his mother, mind to mind.
Sartha had given birth to him. Her genetic imperative was to reproduce, then to nurture and protect. He was within her flesh and he knew the feelings of her body, but they were being filtered through his own thought processes. “Ah, I see,” he reflected, remembering the teachings. “Body, mind, soul: all three distinct and separate, with purpose and plan unique to each. Every individual is a composite of being.”
“Yes, son,” Sartha thought. “You understand.”
Minutes passed as Ash listened with his mother’s ears, touched surfaces with her hands, smelled, tasted … these senses were all similar to his own. It was her womanly body that felt so different.
Ash had studied anatomy, so the female body held no real mystery. But his mother’s emotions and physical sensations — they awed him. There was an innate quality within this feminine form. The yearning that it communicated: womanly softness and kindness combined with that compelling desire to be a mother, to love and nurture a child. Ash’s reaction to this was simple and it surprised him. He thought, “If this were my body, then I should be glad to be a woman and a mother, too.” It was so obvious, yet it was an astounding realization. He knew now that his true self was separate from the masculine identity of his own boyish flesh. He had always assumed that maleness was a part of his essence, of the soul that was uniquely his, yet he now understood that this was simply not so.
It was the body he inhabited that made him male, a boy even now growing into manhood.
But this fleshly form he wore was not his true self.
“Yes,” his mother responded, “Very good, Ash. You know my body, now learn my mind.”
&nbs
p; Ash concentrated, shutting mental eyes, putting away the distraction of his mother’s scent, the feel of being within her skin, and her feminine yet robust physical form. With effort he focused. Many minutes passed.
He heard nothing.
There was nothing there.
He wanted to know his mother’s thoughts. He wanted to push against the barriers that separated him from them. He began to experience a growing bubble of discontent and aggravation which built and built and grew out of all proportion. Instinctively he sensed that struggling wouldn’t help. He waited for these overwhelming feelings to pass, and when they finally did, when the frustration had at last finished flowing through him and ebbed away like a receding tide, he found that he was left with nothing.
Nothing.
He was surprised at how liberating this was. Awash in the heated ocean of his power, he did nothing. He thought nothing. Freed of emotion and freed of thought, he allowed himself simply “to be.”
It was like opening a door.
Words from Sartha’s mind flew into his consciousness, her thoughts filling his awareness like billions upon billions of air molecules being sucked into a vacuum. It was as if she were shouting, “My son, my son, my beautiful son.” The love his mother felt for him! He knew she loved him, but there was no way he could appreciate the nearly infinite depths of her affection until this one mental touch showed him. Ash knew an awkward need to pull away. The intensity of it was thrilling, yet at the same time embarrassing.
“Enough, son. We’ll do more tomorrow. Imagine opening your eyes.”
Ash’s eyes opened and he found himself back in his own flesh. Small, weak, male. The astonishing difference between the two physical forms struck him, as well as his extraordinary achievement. His smile was so big he jaw almost hurt. I did it. I can mind-touch.
“Mother,” he said. “That was amazing! Much easier than I imagined.” He stood up and found he was a little dizzy. He sat back down.
WOLF DAWN: Science Fiction Thriller/ Romance (Forsaken Worlds) Page 4
