by TylerRose.
“No, you don’t,” he said when she jerked hard, trying to physically get away from him.
A lamp went flying by. He ducked and it smashed against the wall.
“We’re not doing it like this,” he decided, activating his booster to go back to the hospital room on the station.
Empty save for a bed, there would be nothing of her own energy to mentally grasp onto and hurl at him. He didn’t bother putting her on the bed, instead remaining on the floor with a knee raised, lifting her backwards over it. Her ability to fight back restricted, she could not as easily do him bodily harm in her lashing out. She was proving to be, by far, the most violent of the emerging Doyen he’d dealt with.
“Get better physical control over her. Slip your arm between her upper arms and her back and grip her left forearm on the other side.”
Julian looked up to see Vaughn standing beside him.
“I can’t touch either of you but I can coach,” Vaughn said.
Julian followed the suggestion and had her all but immobilized in a matter of seconds. She stopped the physical struggle.
“Now go into her mind.”
This time, the soft and vulnerable Yin, that infant spark of an infinite goddess that could eventually grow to become a world-creating Immaculate, was drawn to him. He held her like the baby she was, wrapping his peaceful core around her like a cocoon to protect her from the rampaging Yang. With the Yin safe, he helped the Yang finish what it had started.
The wild, endless goddess of the Yang, already a fully formed adult, wanted to be free. She could not be reasoned with at this stage, like one cannot reason with a trapped dragon. He could only be calm and prevent her from destroying the body that contained her and the mind that gave her a home.
Thinking, envisioning, he sliced a partition into their space to cut the area she roamed in half. Then again and again. Eventually they stood face to face and there was silence. She was still. Not quite calm but no longer lashing out. She had nowhere to go.
“I hear you,” he said, reaching out a hand to her. “But not yet. You have to wait for the Yin to grow up. You have to protect her from those who want to kill you.”
She took the hand, a most reluctant dragon, and he brought her into the fold of calm he’d created around the Yin. Releasing them both out together, the infant goddess was now a child a year and a half old. The Rage looked at the oblivious child in the golden sphere that protected her, and picked it up. She gave the sphere a tossing push into the blank universe, sending the child off to a peaceful place where she would not be disturbed until next time.
Julian gestured to the blankness. “With what would you fill it, if you could create your own universe to your own liking?”
She turned away to look around that vast space of empty. Julian left her there and emerged from her mind drenched in sweat and shaking with an uncommon weakness. Hands took her from him and moved her to the bed. A hand around his arm took him to another place entirely. A soft bed with a warm blanket and comfortable pillow under him, he crashed at once.
When he woke, Vaughn was there with cool water and a plate of simple foods. They discussed the event while Julian ate.
“Has she come to yet?” he asked at the end.
“Not that I’m aware of. It was a lot of work for her too. I’m sure you want to get changed and go see her, be there when she does wake,” Vaughn said.
“I do, yes.”
“Your father wouldn’t let me stay on the station. You’re in the Confederacy house, in my apartment.”
He’d not been undressed, just his shoes removed. Pulling them back on, Julian made ready to leave.
“Thank you, Vaughn. For everything,” he said.
“It is my pleasure and my honor. To assist the Immaculate is an honor no one ever gets and we both know it. You have my help whenever you need it. She will test your patience and your strength. I’m here to help you.”
They grasped hands in goodbye. Julian used the booster to get back to the station. Tyler was still asleep though it was ten hours later. She’d been exhausting herself for months and this was her chance to finally get some rest.
Tyler woke with a startand a pounding headache, groaning and pressing a hand to her temple.
“That’ll go away once you eat.” Alen’s voice. He was in a chair beside the bed in the stark room.
“Where am I?”
“In a quiet room on the AASTT station. It has machinery that can keep out the psionic noise of people until you’re ready to learn how to deal with it.”
“Well, I’m not going to be staying here,” she said, getting out of bed.
She was wearing a pajama-like thing not her own.
“Where are my clothes?”
He got up and poked his head outside the electric sliding door. A moment’s wait brought a man in uniform pants and shirt came in, a small tray with a cup of water held between fingers and thumb.
“I am Dr. Dheez. I’m from Sistair. I’ve been helping to take care of you while you’ve been here,” he introduced himself to her, handing over a pill. “For the remaining headache. Take this first and we’ll bring you a tray of food. Once you eat, you’ll be free to go.”
“I’m not hungry,” she said, but took the pill and drank the water.
“Maybe not, but you should eat. You’ve been here for over fifteen hours and had not eaten for some hours before that. Appease a doctor who fusses like an old hen, will you? It will be food you are familiar with, I promise.”
A press of a wall panel and a piece of the wall slid down to reveal a viewing screen.
“We have your Earth television. I said you are free to go, but I would feel better if you would stay another full day just so I can be sure you’ve not been adversely affected by your Widening.”
He left.
“Adversely affected?” she questioned.
“Brain damage can occur,” Alen replied. “Trouble with motor skills or sudden speech difficulties. It’s not very common, but common enough to be a legitimate concern.”
A team of three people came in at once. One carried a small table, another two chairs, the third a tray of food he laid out at one place and set a second cup at the other. She smelled coffee.
“I hope you like your meal,” the server said before leaving.
“Come on. Won’t stay hot forever,” Alen said with a sideways jerk of his head.
Lifting the lid on the plate, she found sausage, a cheese and green pepper omelet next to a pile of buttered toast. Okay, maybe this place wasn’t so bad.
“If you’re feeling better, I’ll take you home,” he said when they’d finished off the coffee.
“What, no possibility of bad things happening again?” she asked.
“You’ve had the Widening. It’s done. You probably won’t ever have another. Only about two Doyen in fifty thousand years have two Widenings. One in a hundred thousand years might keep having them and eventually turn into world-creating gods. But most of us are just ordinary telepaths who don’t do much of anything.”
“World creating gods?” she echoed.
“There are dozens of worlds on which life was created by an Eminent,” he told her.
Skeptical, thy name is Tyler, she thought.
“I know it all seems crazy. You’ll find out I’m not lying.”
He took her directly home to her apartment using a booster bracelet.
“If you want to get hold of me, just call this number,” he said, handing her a business card. “Julian’s number is also there. But I suggest you take a few days to yourself and think about your life. You can stay here on Earth and do…something. Or you can come to the space station and join the galactic society that is actually doing things.”
“Like what things? I know nothing of other worlds,” she scoffed.
“Of course you don’t. None of us did until we went to the station to work. We have a house in Iowa that we share, out in the middle of nowhere, where it’s much quieter than the big cities.
But we all work through the station. We’re sent around Gamma quadrant as messengers, diplomatic envoys, to meet new peoples who want to join the Congress. You can be a secretary in an office just as easily on the station as down here but it’s far more interesting up there. The station has a market and a theater and an arboretum. If you don’t call me, I’ll call you in a few days. If you want, you can come up to have a look around.”
“I will think on it,” she said.
He gave her a kiss to the cheek and was gone. That was it? Not even a cursory discussion of what the Widening had meant? What it had actually done to her? Somehow that didn’t sit right.
Thomas was on the machine telling her he was going to be gone for two weeks and couldn’t bring her along this time. He could have, she suspected, but chose not to. Not even a mention of being worried about her as he usually would.
Showered, into fresh clothes, she sat herself at the table and worked out how to do things with some of her new abilities. Whatever they might be. She already knew she could teleport on her own if she really wanted. Thinking about bringing something across the room to her, she had items sailing to her consistently within half an hour. Then how to make it appear out of nothing. She brought the pack of cigarettes, the ashtray, her lighter.
She remembered that she had taken herself home from the station in her anger, and worked on teleporting herself across the room or into the bedroom and back. It took a lot of effort, but she was able to do whatever she wanted to do.
She decided to let it be and not practice too much, to let it remain more instinctive for now. When she needed to use an ability, it would be there for her to use.
She packed a bag and was in her car heading southeast within another hour. A long drive to Louisiana to see Gramma Addie sounded like the best medicine.
Chapter Six
Driving downthe narrow dirt path,past the brushy, scrubby meadows that used to be fields, past the two rows of abandoned cabins that had once been slave quarters, looking left and right in the darkness just as dusk turned to night, Tyler saw the shadows of long dead people. Black folks working in the fields, slaves endlessly tilling and harvesting the land they’d died on.
She’d known they were there but had never seen them this clearly before. Dozens of people in different phases of their work across the land. Seasons and crops not in sync with each other, some were planting and harvesting sugar cane and others indigo.
Indigo plants still grew wild all around the region, so she recognized them. To the rear of the estate, half a mile downstream was the abandoned and collapsing building where the plant had been processed into dye. When the indigo market had collapsed, the owner of the land had quickly turned the crops to sugar cane. She knew that much of the history of her grandmother’s land.
Energies disconnected from each other by their own miseries, trapped in that moment of tightest confinement, forever working the plantation. She saw a soul setting fire to a stand of sugar cane, explaining why she so frequently had smelled fire when visiting.
The only unifier was the song they were singing. She couldn’t quite make out the words, but the sounds were the same. Dozens of voices droning on, carrying the same tune.
Here and there someone paused their work to stare as she drove by, as they would have stared at a carriage or wagon during life. They weren’t seeing her. They were doing what they had always done, seeing someone coming onto the property. She heard the clanging of a triangle, and then another closer to the house. The same sound she’d heard dozens of times growing up and had told Gramma about and Gramma had only smiled at her, said she was joining the family business.
Now she knew what she’d been hearing. Now she understood those half-shadows and odd sensations.
In life, someone in the fields announced arrivals with a triangle. Someone closer to the house rang theirs. The house would hear and someone would be at the door to greet the visitor.
Tyler saw these ghosts as never before, vividly, down to the color of the wraps on their heads. Their clothing, the tools used, little babies on their backs or toddlers playing in the brush. Their facial expressions. Hard faces, passive…all of them practiced in being unreadable and hiding the intelligence within. She had felt their presence and caught brief glimpses all through her childhood.
Now she could see how many there were on this part of the property. Dozens, just on the long drive to the house. Her heart went out to them, aching with a wish to help them be at peace.
Approaching the manor house at the end, the only surviving building still in good repair, she saw another slave on the corner of the porch rocking and suckling a white baby about six months old. Lightly singing to it, the voice clear and gentle but words unintelligible.
One light was on, in the front parlor room. Parked and up to the porch, Tyler rang the bell. Gramma didn’t always hear a knock anymore. Half a dozen voices responded that they were getting it, but Grandma was alone.
That small, old frame opened the big door and pushed the screen for her granddaughter to come in.
“Tyler! I was hoping I’d see you soon. Your mother says she doesn’t know where you are, ‘ceptin you went to California.”
“I have been living in California, Gramma. I needed to get away from…him.”
“I know you did, child. And you were right to do so soon as you could, even if you didn’t quite make it to legal age first. I told your mother to leave you go and not involve the police, that you are better off. I told your father the same thing when he called me.”
“Dad called you?” Tyler asked, and then snorted at the ridiculous notion.
David Brooks had not taken much of any interest in his only surviving child.
“Come in and I’ll get another cup. There’s a fresh rhubarb pie I’m about to cut into.”
“I’ve not had supper yet.”
“Pssh, since when do you have to have supper before rhubarb pie?” Gramma scoffed, heading for the kitchen.
Into the ornate, gaudy parlor Tyler went and…was at once at peace. The familiar arm chairs, the paper flower trim edging the fireplace mantel, a room entirely devoid of the energies of the world. Infused with that of Gramma, as if her own energy was so potent that no other dared intrude. A huge and heavy sigh exploded out of Tyler, releasing all the energies she’d been holding onto too tightly. Her shoulders slumped for no longer having all that to prop up.
This was the one place she didn’t have to be on her guard every minute and she ate the best rhubarb pie she’d ever tasted in her life.
“So it seems you needed a little peace and quiet from whatever has been chasing you these last weeks. What’s going on, child?” Gramma asked when the piece of pie was nearly gone and she was pouring a second cup of white tea.
Tyler rarely found herself at a loss for words. In this moment her tongue was frozen solid and her brain couldn’t decide on anything to say. Another heavy sigh, eyes falling to the cup in her lap, to the bits of leaves congregating at the bottom. She could read other people’s leaves but never her own.
She held the cup in her palm, concentrated, and took her hand away to let the cup hover in midair. She brought it to her lips to sip, then lowered it to her hand in her lap.
“Oh my,” Gramma said in her quietest voice of acceptance.
“There’s more but I don’t know what all more there is. They didn’t tell me or help me learn or teach me anything about control. I practiced myself.”
“When did this happen, child?”
“Couple days. I cannot tell anyone or show anyone or let it be known. You know how our government is. If they knew about this…”
“No, you’re right. You cannot trust very many people with this. Where did it happen?”
“Would you believe me if I told you there’s a space station behind Pluto?” Tyler asked.
“I would. Because it is you telling me and you do not ever lie to me. You never have,” Gramma said. “If you say it, I know it to be true in your perception.”
“I’d been getting headaches. Then this guy Julian showed up while I was in a church lighting candles.”
“A church? Which one?”
“Immaculate Heart of Mary, or something like that. In northern Los Angeles.”
Gramma only nodded. “You find it comforting to go there and light candles?”
“I did, yes. Now I’m too concerned he’ll show up again when I don’t want him to. I go there for solitude, not to be pestered.”
“Then tell him to go away and leave you be. I’m sure he will respect your sacred space if you enforce that it is your sacred space. There’s an Immaculate Heart of Mary in Lafayette. We’ll go there tomorrow. I have some things I want to do and you can light a couple dozen candles.”
Besides Gramma wanted to ride in the Porsche. They had lunch at the shopping center. Then Gramma told her to go on to the church and come back to the mall when she was done.
“I have some shopping to do anyway so you take your time,” Gramma insisted.
“I’ll only be an hour or so.”
Looking at the address, looking at the building, Tyler decided to drive around the block and see what she would find. Two right turns and there was the actual church, not the side buildings. White, with a curving drive and an arching entry. No other cars in the immediate area, she parked on the exiting side of the drive and walked back to the door. It was open, no one around.
One long aisle up the center with pews to either side. She went around to the right and up the side instead, the candle area being to the rear of the central pulpit. Not as many candles as in other churches, but she dropped a fifty in the box all the same and began to light.
Adelaide sat on a benchnear a potted flower and tapped her cane on the floor twice, strident with intent, reaching through the chaos of energies to call the one person she wanted to speak with. He appeared in front of her, bowing slightly, her command to appear not one to be ignored.
“Madam.”
