Telepath (A Hyllis Family Story #4)

by Laurence Dahners

  Eva grinned at Tarc, “I’d already made the bread dough and cooked the beans all day.” She jerked a thumb at Daum and his crew, “They come along, cook a little bacon and bake a little bread, then act like they’ve been doing the work of Sisyphus.”

  Tarc glanced at their three rescuees and saw them smiling. He thought they were happy to be proving their worth, though the look Nylin gave him was odd—just a glance and, then away, as if she didn’t want to look at him. He thought to himself, I really like the way she looks… I wonder what I did that made her so angry. He shook his head, It’s a good thing I’ve got Lizeth or I’d be heartbroken to have a girl that cute hate me.

  In short order, Tarc and Kazy were dishing up food for the caravaners. Farlin was collecting money. Tarc realized he hadn’t seen Daussie. Thinking about how he wanted to give Daussie the stainless-steel wheel holder, he asked after her. Kazy said, “Daum found her some more agate.” She shifted her eyes over to Farlin and produced a minute shake of her head. Tarc realized she didn’t want him to ask any more questions.

  He subsided, realizing the agate Daum had given her was almost certainly rough and it wouldn’t do for Farlin to wonder how she converted it into pretty little balls.

  ~~~

  It was later that evening that Tarc caught up with his sister. She was walking ahead of him on her way to the big fire where the caravan’s musicians were tuning up. “Hey Dauss,” he said running a few steps to catch up, “I’ve got something for you.”

  When she turned, his eye immediately caught on a new necklace. A slender black string Tarc thought might be leather suspended a pink striped agate with an elegant teardrop shape. Its highly polished surface—Tarc immediately realized it wasn’t actually polished, simply cut out of the original stone with the perfectly smooth exterior Daussie’s teleportation produced—gleamed in the light from the fire. “Whoa, that’s nice. How much are you thinking you’ll be able to sell it for?”

  She shook her head. “I’m keeping it,” she said emphatically.

  “You are?”

  She glanced around, then quietly said, “I hollowed it out and filled it with finely ground chili pepper.”

  Tarc frowned, “Why?”

  “You wouldn’t ask why if I teleported a little bit of it into your nose.”

  “You’re thinking it’s a weapon?” Tarc asked, astonished. He wasn’t sure whether he was surprised by her ingenuity or by its uselessness.

  Daussie gave him a firm nod.

  “But why? I mean, if you were attacked, you could cut their spinal cord, their aorta, or their femur or humerus. Chili pepper seems kind of… wimpy.”

  “Because…!” She paused what had obviously been an angry response and continued in a measured tone, “I don’t want to kill, or disable someone who… who doesn’t deserve such a horrible fate. But there’s still a lot of people who do… mildly bad things, bad things that aren’t so unspeakably terrible they deserve to be crippled or dead.” She stared off to one side. When Tarc followed her eyes he saw she was looking at Farlin. “I want to be able to do something to stop somebody without ruining their life.”

  Tarc shook his head, “Farlin had a knife in your back. You had to break his humerus so it’d be impossible for him to kill you.”

  “I know,” she said softly. “What you told me to do… That was a stroke of genius and exactly the right thing in that situation.” She gave Tarc a hard look, “But I want to have more options in the future. And if you tell me it’s wimpy again, I’ll put a little bit in the corner of your eye.”

  “Oof,” Tarc said thoughtfully. “Did you come up with this just so I’ll be afraid to tease you anymore?”

  She arched a superior eyebrow at him, “I think it’s about time you grew out of that, don’t you?”

  Tarc gave a little laugh, “I guess it is.” He paused, “Um, that, what you did for Susie… that was amazing.”

  “I didn’t do it. You did.”

  “You figured it out. All of it. That was the amazing part.” He drew his head back and produced an astonished look, “Especially for you.”

  Suddenly a tiny spot in the back of his nose started burning. His eyes widened, “You didn’t!” Then he sneezed violently.

  Daussie sniffed, “You were teasing. Besides, it was only one flake of pepper and I’ve already removed it.” She peered at his watering eye and smirked, “Now you won’t think chili pepper’s all that wimpy, right? I could’ve put in a whole lot more.” She turned and started walking toward the musicians, but then paused and looked back over her shoulder, “I do graciously accept your compliment though. Thanks.”

  He transmitted his voice to whisper right next to her ear, “Don’t forget. I carry knives.”

  She was pretty far away, so he had to use his ghost to hear her quietly respond, “You need a wimpy weapon of your own.”

  Suddenly he remembered the stainless steel. “Daussie, wait,” he called as he trotted after her.

  She watched him approach with some suspicion, but her eyes lit up when he said, “I got you some stainless steel,” and held out the forked tube.

  “Oh!” she said taking it and holding it to the light. She gave him a big smile and a little hug, “Thanks! I forgive you for making me pepper your nose.” She turned and continued on around the fire toward the musicians.

  Tarc snorted and watched her walk away. He expanded his senses for a moment and realized a woman was walking up behind him. Thinking it was Lizeth, he turned with a smile of anticipation. Instead, it was his mother.

  “Oh-ho,” she said, grinning at him. “I’ll bet you were expecting Lizeth. Is that why seeing me’s such a disappointment?”

  “No, no. I was excited to see you, but then remembered I had some important stuff to tell you. That’s what sucked the joy out of the moment.”

  “Well aren’t you the sweet talker?” Eva said with a little laugh. “No wonder all the girls are falling for you.” Before Tarc had a chance to wonder what that meant, she veered off in another direction, “I want to tell you how proud I was of you for what you did for Susie. That was amazing.”

  Tarc grimaced, starting to feel a little embarrassed. “All I did was what my little sister told me to do. She’s the genius.”

  Eva grinned and tucked her arm into Tarc’s elbow, pulling him on toward the fire. “You’ve had your moments. Teaching us all how to use our ghosts to sense danger, figuring out how to use your telekinesis to hear and speak at a distance, telling Daussie to cut Farlin’s humerus so she could safely—”

  “Those were all simple things,” Tarc interrupted, shaking his head. “Nothing like figuring out how to tie off that PDA.”

  Eva squeezed his arm, “Since no one else had figured them out, I’d beg to differ about how easy they were. Genius is often nothing more than an ability to connect dots no one else realized were related. Even if, afterward, people roll their eyes and say ‘of course.’” She took a breath, “Now, what was the important stuff you wanted to tell me about?”

  “Oh, you know Mr. Roper hired me to try to get him some salvage from that underground ancients’ room the little girl fell into, right?”

  Eva nodded.

  “It’s a big room with a really tall ceiling, and it’s partly full of dirt that’s been falling through the hole the little girl fell into. I found some tools for Mr. Roper and he let me keep a piece of stainless steel that had a rotten wheel on it.” He glanced at his mother, “I gave it to Daussie so she could make needles.”

  “Oh, that’s great Tarc. I really appreciate it.”

  “The thing I thought you’d be interested in is that, mostly buried in the dirt, there’re a bunch of things made out of tubes. The parts I could see were metal, probably stainless steel since they hadn’t rusted out. The one that was sticking the farthest out of the dirt looked like a chair with a wheel on each side. The wheels were pretty big, with spokes like a wagon wheel. Mr. Roper said he thought it was probably what he called a ‘wheelchair’ back in o
lden times. Apparently, the ancients used them for people who had problems with their legs. They could sit in them and be pushed around, or even push themselves around. Have you ever heard of those?”

  “No, but it sounds like it’d be a really great thing for somebody with a broken leg.”

  Tarc gave her a nod, “Or, someone with paralyzed legs.” He shifted topics, “The tubes that were completely buried under the dirt seemed to me like they’d been used to build things shaped like skinny beds. At least, they had what seemed to be a flat area up at the top that was about the right size for a person to lie on. They were kind of tall… I mean, high off the ground as compared to regular beds. I didn’t notice any big wheels on those, but I didn’t spend a lot of time trying to figure them out either. Do you have any ideas about what they were for? Could they be like the wheelchair, but beds? I guess you’d call them wheelbeds?”

  His mother looked pale. She grabbed his arm, “Tarc, they used to push patients around hospitals on skinny little beds mounted on wheels. They called them stretchers, the same as the way we call two poles with a sheet stretched between them stretchers. Both of them do the same thing—let you move patients from one place to another.”

  “Okaay,” Tarc said, “you’re hurting my arm.” He tugged a little bit to get it free of her grip. When she let go, he said, “Why’re stretchers such a big deal?”

  “Come on, Tarc. Stretchers, a wheelchair, a big room with shelves everywhere. It might’ve been a storeroom for one of their hospitals.”

  “Oh,” Tarc said thoughtfully. “Hospitals had basements?”

  “I’ve been told most big buildings had basements in the old days. They had to dig down to hard rock anyway, so they could put big buildings on solid foundations.”

  Tarc looked thoughtfully off to the north, the direction of the big concrete basement. “There wasn’t a building on top of this basement.”

  “Maybe it fell down.”

  He shook his head, “When that happens, there’s still a lot of broken fragments of the building lying around. Well, unless someone cleaned everything up to build something else, but this is just out in an open area. People were picking berries.”

  Eva tilted her head, “So… You think this was a basement without a building?”

  Tarc shrugged, “I don’t know.”

  “Neither do I,” Eva said. Getting an eager look on her face, she said, “Do you think there might be some medical stuff on those shelves?”

  “Maybe? There were a lot of piles of crud. I think most of the stuff that was on them has broken down. I only had a minute or so to look around though, so I could have missed some stuff you’d really want.”

  Eva closed her eyes, “Oh, I so wish I could get down in there and look around.”

  “Do you want me to take you back out there tonight? We could poke around and make sure I didn’t miss anything good.”

  “Do you know who we’d have to ask for permission?”

  “Um, no. That’s why I was thinking we’d do it at night… without permission.”

  “I really would like to find some interesting old technology, but,” she snorted, “I think one arrest was enough for me, at least, enough for this year.”

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you my ghost let me sense a big door in the wall, buried under the dirt. It would’ve opened into what I’m pretty sure was a hallway. Across the hall was another big room. I couldn’t tell much about what was in it, because everything in there was pretty much the same temperature, you know…” He glanced at his mother thinking—because she mostly used her ghost to look inside people or to check for threats—she might not recognize how difficult it was to sense inanimate objects that were all the same cool temperature.

  She was staring at him with widened eyes. “So, this place was really big?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s just two big rooms with a hallway between them. But, the few buildings I’ve been in that were big enough to have hallways, the hallway was usually a way to get to even more rooms.”

  “Take me out there! We don’t have to go inside or take any salvage. Nothing we could get arrested for. We’ll just wander around the site, letting our ghosts tell us how many rooms there actually are.”

  Chapter Five

  Vyrda Soh had developed her reputation as a healer because she could lance an abscess with a single stroke—a skill highly cherished by those who had a collection of pus that needed to be drained. It hurt badly enough being stabbed once, going to a healer who had to stab you several times before they broke into the collection was agonizing.

  Vyrda’d actually been surprised to realize other people couldn’t send their spirits into someone else’s body to see an abscess. She’d realized this while watching another healer attempt to lance an abscess in one of Vyrda’s friends. Instead, he’d stabbed the lance into a nearby blood vessel which bled so much she’d been afraid her friend would bleed to death. She’d started to ask the man why he’d stabbed the blood vessel rather than the abscess when she’d seen the look of horrified frustration on the man’s face. He doesn’t know where the pus is! she’d suddenly apprehended. He can’t sense it.

  A week of careful observation later, Vyrda’d realized that if anyone—other than her—could sense the inside of another person, they were hiding it well. Realizing that lancing boils was one thing she’d be much better at than almost anyone else, she’d apprenticed herself to the healer. Because her master, like most other healers, couldn’t support himself as a healer alone, she’d also apprenticed herself to him in his role as a clothing fabricator. First as a seamstress, then later as a tailor.

  Her spirit sense let Vyrda divine the causes of many illnesses. However, she’d gradually come to realize that her master had few successful treatments. Sadly, she’d come to realize many of his treatments made patients worse.

  Draining pus was the one thing he did that made a big difference, and, though it broke his heart, he soon realized Vyrda was so much better at it than he was—able to strike her lance quickly and precisely into the abscess every time, without ever hitting significant blood vessels—that he soon began having her lance all his patients with infections.

  Even more importantly, she knew when there was no pus to be drained and didn’t lance anyone unnecessarily.

  It wasn’t until her master himself became ill that she found something else she could treat with her spirit. Vyrda would sit with him through his episodes of chest pain. He’d been complaining of the pressure in his chest, and when she sat with him, she used her spirit to investigate the interior of his chest, comparing it to her own. She soon realized his heart was the problem. A portion of the heart wall was stiff and didn’t move when the rest of his heart contracted. The blood vessel that went to that part of his heart was crusted and clogged so badly that no blood flowed through it anymore. She’d already realized that blocked blood vessels could cause patients terrible problems. She’d come to think of the vessels as providing food to the parts of a body.

  She decided that the stiff part of her master’s heart had starved and died when the vessel clogged.

  Before she pulled her spirit out of his chest, she realized that the flow in one of the neighboring vessels was, though still present, very sluggish. Next, she realized that vessel was also crusted and mostly clogged. Perhaps, she thought, his heart’s hungry and he feels that hunger as the pressure he describes in his chest. As her spirit investigated the clogging, she thought to herself, Here’s one more condition that I can detect, but can’t treat—

  Her thoughts broke off as she realized that she’d been frustratedly imagining herself to be tugging on a little prominence of the crusted material. It’s broken loose! she thought in an amazed panic. She’d never realized she could move something with her spirit, but the tiny fragment she’d imagined tugging on was floating free, yet not flowing downstream with the blood going past it. What am I going to do with it? she wondered, realizing that she was somehow holding it against the flow of the blood
but that holding it was making her tired. If I don’t do something soon, it’s going to get away from me and flow on down the vessel. Not knowing whether that would be bad she examined the vessel and realized that, like most of the ones that had pressure in them, the flow proceeded down into smaller and smaller vessels until they were so tiny she couldn’t sense them anymore. If I let it go, this little chunk’s just going to travel on down until it blocks a smaller branch of the vessel. She wondered whether that might not be better than having it partially blocking the big vessel, but couldn’t know the answer.

  Without giving it much thought, she started pulling the fragment upstream, against the flow, into bigger vessels and then into the huge vessel that left the heart and went to the rest of the body. She thought, The heart’s the most important organ. If I let this fragment go and it blocks a small vessel in some other organ, that has to be better than letting it block a vessel in the heart. Realizing she couldn’t hold it longer, she let it go, following it with her spirit. It shot up into the curve in the big vessel at the top of the chest, then down through the chest and abdomen and into her master’s thigh. There it slipped into one of the arteries feeding the big muscles and eventually blocked a small vessel inside one of the muscles on the front of the thigh.