“You metamorphosed while you slept, baby sister. You’re a woman now,” Miranda said taking Tina by the hand into the bathroom.
Tina looked into the mirror with wide eyes. “That’s me?” Tina lifted the hand with the IV to touch her own face, “That’s me.”
Miranda examined her sister’s face in comparison to her own. They were nearly identical. Miranda's lips were fuller. Tina's eyebrows were bushier. Tina's eyes had shifted shade more towards the green away from the shade of pale blue they had shared. Miranda's face was slimmer and slightly more delicate, where Tina's was rounder suggestive of their cousin Angela’s.
“Am I a telepath?” Tina asked.
The question drilled into Miranda, and rattled around a while. Miranda felt pressured to answer, but couldn’t with her own telepathy on hiatus. “I couldn’t tell you, I still haven’t recovered my own.”
Tina slumped, “Hey no problem, there probably isn’t anything to tell anyway. So how long was I out?”
Miranda felt the pressure to answer on the telepathic count subside, drawing up the question; where had that pressure come from. She looked at her sister, suspicious that the answer to the previous question just might be yes. “You’ve been out most of the day.”
Tina nodded at the answer, “How’s Nick? Is he awake? Can I see him or maybe could he come and see me?”
“He’s okay, Gene has him under observation, just in case. That wound took a lot out of him,” Miranda began to answer.
“Yeah, but can I see him?”
“Hold the horses sis. I don’t think now is a good time. You don’t want to wear yourself out, you practically grew a whole person. Aren’t you tired?” Miranda tried to coax Tina back towards the bed.
“No,” Tina yawned, “ I want to see Nick, and it’s hold >your’ horses.”
Miranda shrugged, “The horses, your horses, doesn’t really matter. What matters is that you need to get some rest. Miranda managed to get Tina back into bed and sat down in the chair, suddenly aware of her own exhaustion.
Tina yawned again, “I just want...” Tina's head reached the pillow and her words tapered off. Miranda smiled and wrapped the blanket around her shoulders. She leaned back into the chair.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Ben opened the gate, flinching at its squeal of protest. Less than a month ago he would have found the sound a minor annoyance, but with the newly acquired sensitivity of his ears it became a symphony of discordant screeches most above the normal range of human hearing he had grown up with. Not for the first time in the last few days, Ben questioned the wisdom of trading in his human genes to become Briaunti. His thoughts called up the image of Miranda’s smiling face and all his doubts dissolved. He would have died to join her, in her hour of need on the plague world, but the transformation had made death unnecessary.
“Hey Bennie, are you just going to stand around holding the gate all day? Or can we go in and talk to this woman?” Daniel asked with a wry grin on his face, as he stepped into the yard. Ben followed Daniel through. He teleported a touch of oil into the rusty hinge before following and closing the now quiet gate behind them.
“Daniel, explain to me how it is that the baby’s grandmother can be calling us already. Erica barely left to return the kid let alone have the kid grow up to become -How was the message worded- >a problem too large for her to handle.’” Ben asked while he trotted to catch up.
“The child’s name is Yllera. According to the time tag attached to the message, seventeen years have passed here,” Daniel answered with an emphasis on the word >here’, to remind Ben of the temporal differential between Sanctuary and this dimension. “It’s been over twenty since you left.” Daniel continued.
“This is my home world?” Ben asked positively shaken by the figure, “My mother must be worried to death. She is still alive isn’t she?”
“We haven’t been keeping tabs on her. It’s safer not to draw attention to loved ones. If it makes you feel any better, she hasn’t filed a missing person’s report on you,” Daniel answered as he reached out and rang the doorbell.
“That’s supposed to make me feel better?” Ben grumbled under his breath.
A little old lady opened the door and smiled, “Ahh, you must be the boys about my Yllera. Do come in.”
Ben felt a flare of hesitation, a flicker of danger. He looked at the old woman. It didn’t seem to come from her. Ben reached out to Daniel telepathically and realized he’d felt it too.
“Thank you Mrs. Vllett.” Daniel smiled and nodded towards the door, telepathically indicating to Ben he figured it was safe.
The old woman made her way to an old recliner and sat down with a relieved sigh. Daniel followed her, taking a seat in a chair across from the woman. Ben closed the door behind himself and sat in a chair nearer to the door, forming the third point of a nearly equilateral triangle.
Daniel got to the point, “So why did you contact us?”
“Yllera is a good girl, but lately. . .” The woman’s voice faded into an indiscriminate shrug as her eyes wandered toward a picture of a young woman.
“But lately?” Daniel prodded, after a few moments of silence.
“It’s not that she’s hanging out with a bad crowd, but. . . Well, she’s started mouthing off and money has begun disappearing from my purse, mind you it’s usually after one of those friends of hers has been over. Her school called, several times. She’s missed a lot of class but somehow her tests are always perfect. They talk about the consequences of cheating. I know she has some telepathy, but I can’t tell how much. . .”
“Mrs. Vllett, I’m not sure what you want us to do. It sounds like Yllera is putting you through some fairly typical teenage difficulties,” Daniel interrupted during one of the woman’s frequent pauses.
“Despite the fact that I’m far too old for the usual teenage shenanigans, that isn’t exactly why I called you. Mind you I don’t have much of a psi-rating, only around 6300 yavins. . .” The woman entered another thoughtful pause.
Ben looked inquiringly to Daniel, clueless as to what a yavin was. He was rewarded with a quick telepathic answer, “Yavins are the Tanerian units of psionic measure. Hers would be about 150 on the Everett scale.” Then Daniel verbally prodded the woman forward, “But?”
The woman shivered, and leaned toward Daniel. “I’ve had this lingering ache at the back of my mind, like before, when Lleana disappeared,” The woman hurried through the words in a whisper, like just saying them risked dire consequences.
Daniel sat up straight at those words. Glancing at Daniel, Ben felt around telepathically, for a more definite sign that The Dark was trying something. The sense of danger still hung in the air. Was it really more immediate, or had the woman’s words just made Ben paranoid?
“Yllera is just too much like her mother. Maybe I’m just being an old worry-wart. Perhaps I shouldn’t have called…” The woman mumbled, interrupting Ben’s thoughts.
Daniel shifted in his chair, settling in a new position with a better view of the room around them. “Mrs. Vllett, where is Yllera right now?” Daniel asked in what Ben knew to be a tone of false calm.
“Why, she’s upstairs, on that silly computer of hers,” Mrs. Vllett answered.
“Why don’t you call her down?” Ben suggested, definitely sensing the ambiguous threat on final approach.
Mrs. Vllett looked at Ben with a tense smile on her lips, before nodding. “Yllera, Honey, could you please come here?”
With the corner of his eye, Ben noticed Daniel retrieving a pistol from his factor pack. Ben followed his example.
“Awe, Gram! I’m busy!” came Yllera’s terse reply.
The old woman rose from her chair taking on some heretofore unexpressed level of dominance. “Yllera, I need you to come here now,” The words came out in a firm, but not demanding, tone with a telepathic echo which indicated an Everett rating greatly exceeding 150. As soon as the words were out, the woman deflated back into her chair.
Shortly the tall, plain girl from the picture trotted into the room. She wore a rumpled, blue t-shirt, faded jeans and a worried frown. Her mouse-brown hair was pinned up in an off-center bun by a well placed pencil and a closed laptop hung from her left hand. The girl rushed to her grandmother without a first glance at Ben or Daniel. “Gram?”
The old woman straightened from her slump and managed a weak smile, “I’m fine dear.” She patted her granddaughter’s empty hand.
Yllera frowned down at her grandmother then glared up at Daniel. Her face offered immediate threat to his person, “I don’t know who you are, but, so help me, if you don’t stop scaring my Gram I’ll. . .” An immense uncontrolled flare of anger momentarily eclipsed the building telepathic menace, clearly finishing the girl’s verbal threat.
Ben’s hand’s flinched to his ears, in an instinctive and futile attempt to mute what he >heard’ of the girl’s rage. When he did, he brought his pistol into her line of sight. Though loaded only with stun capsules, the girl clearly took it as a deadly personal threat. She flung her laptop at Ben’s head and leapt toward Daniel with the intent to maim. Fortunately, Daniel was prepared. He telekinetically caught the computer and the girl with little apparent effort.
“Yllera, we aren’t what’s frightening your grandmother. We are here to help,” Daniel informed her as he gently moved her back to her grandmother’s side.
“It’s true Honey,” the old woman quickly confirmed.
Yllera subsided and Daniel returned her laptop. “Ben, locked red compartment, small silver pins get one on each of them!” Daniel whispered telepathically to Ben.
Ben retrieved the pins, from his factor pack, as instructed, unlocking the compartment by unzipping it holding the thumbprint sensor on the red zipper pull. He quickly placed the pin Yllera. As he bent over the arm of the chair to pin her grandmother there was a flash of green light. Ben felt warmth inches from his eyes, and realized the light came from a particle beam weapon that had missed his face by inches. He turned to look at Mrs. Vllett and, for an instant, saw a blackened hole where her left eye had been. Then he saw nothing, and felt stomach churning turbulent motion.
At first he thought the beam had found him too, that perhaps he was dead. Slowly he recognized the sensation of the emergency transport system teleporting him back to Sanctuary. Daniel must’ve triggered it. Ben felt the fabric of Mrs. Vllett’s shirt between his fingers, which wouldn’t move. He realized he must be pulling her along too, what about Yllera? Ben pushed that worry aside. Daniel probably handled it. Or maybe that was what the pins were for.
More time passed, Ben realized far too many realizations had come and gone during what should have been instantaneous travel. Panic began to surface he wasn’t breathing, he didn’t hear his heart, or anything telepathic or otherwise. The only thing he did hear, see, smell, taste or feel, other than turbulence, was the fabric of Mrs. Vllett’s blouse and she was probably dead. Still more time passed, enough that Ben wondered just how long he could survive without breathing, before finally they arrived, somewhere.
All sensation returned and Ben unnecessarily gasped in breath after breath before looking to see where he was. The first thing he checked was for Yllera and Daniel, they still stood in the same relative positions they had in Mrs. Vllett’s house, but the surroundings had definitely changed. They were in a plain room, with very little furniture, that seemed strangely familiar to Ben. Daniel looked surprised at their destination. Yllera stood stunned at having made a trip and Mrs. Vllett sat, not quite dead, in front of Ben in the room’s only chair.
“What in all the worlds of creation!” Daniel not quite mumbled, not quite to himself as he examined their surroundings in more detail.
“Okay, who the hell are you people!” Yllera shouted.
Ben didn’t hear either of them, he was too focused on trying to find Mrs. Vllett’s pulse. He found it, weak and erratic though it was. Her breathing was shallow and fading. Ben forced himself to examine the bloodless wound. A pinprick of light shone through from where the particle beam had. . . Ben took off his jacket and covered the old woman’s head before Yllera noticed there was anything wrong with her grandmother. Ben shook off the image; not quite dead, but not likely to make it either. In covering the woman’s face Ben drew attention to himself and to her.
“Oh my god, did that laser thing… aaaaeeeeee! Gram!” Yllera moaned, dropping the computer she still held to reach to uncover her grandmother. Ben gently stopped her and telepathically pressured her not to look.
“No, she’s not dead,” Daniel confirmed from across the room. He was busily tapping away at his pop-pad. His voice and manner suggested a decisive lack of concern, but telepathically he leaked frantic distress.
Trembling, Yllera stood up straight and turned towards Daniel, “I demand to know who you people are, and why people with blasters or phasers or whatever shot my Gram.”
When Daniel, too absorbed in his pop-pad, didn’t respond, Ben braced himself for the attempt to satisfy the girl. “We’re here to protect you two. Your grandmother called us. We’re the people that rescued you and your mother from the men that kidnapped her. Those people are the ones that shot at us.”
“Protect us! Rescued my mother! Oh man am I screwed if your record up to this point counts for anything, cause you don’t seem to have done a very good job at either! Mom’s been dead for like seventeen years and Gram!” Yllera yelled waving at her grandmother.
“Nerasim veranti aruk!” Daniel exclaimed, freezing Yllera’s mouth as it began to open to continue her ranting accusations. Ben knew from Daniel’s telepathic tone that the exclamation had been as much an oath as the vocal escape of his surprise. Daniel shook his head oblivious to the others, “It just isn’t possible!”
Ben stepped over to him and took the pop-pad from him. A glance told Ben that he would learn nothing from the indecipherable graphs, but the action freed Daniel to express his shock with both hands too. “Nerasim veranti aruk! Asim rucnoti pasu aruk! Taki pasi mas tanu sumpernovu!” Daniel’s mouth spouted the words in a language that made sense of the accent that Ben had always wondered about.
Ben grabbed Daniel’s face between his hands and made forcible eye contact. “Hey Danny, are you going to mumble around in a weird language all day, or are you going to speak English at some point?”
Daniel batted Ben’s hands away and took a deep breath. “I activated the emergency >porters, and we started for Sanctuary, but we ended up here. I thought maybe it was the filters,” Daniel paused for another deep calming breath.
Ben thought of the filters, they kept dangerous pathogens and dark agents out of Sanctuary. If they had bounced them all back away from Sanctuary that meant they were totally infested with something nasty. Ben started to understand Daniel’s panic, and to feel some of his own.
“Anyway, I thought it might be the filters. So I ran a diagnostic, that’s where it got weird. The >porter never made contact with the filters, we’re okay. I think. We were deflected by some kind of power surge through the fabric of space time. The >porters, the datalinks, all completely fried, like if lightning struck a computer- fried.”
Ben relaxed after Daniel let him off the >filter’ hook. “Okay so we teleport ourselves in right?”
Daniel shook his head, “Yeah, we can get home, no problem, but you aren’t quite getting it. The energy released during a supernova couldn’t do what that surge did. A supernova would look like the static shock you get from shuffling across the carpet in tennis shoes compared to that surge.” Ben shivered at the explosive image of power Daniel shoved at him.
“But we can get home, right?” Ben asked feeling Mrs. Vllett slip even further away.
“Yeah,” Daniel flared frustration at Ben before noticing the object of
Ben’s attention, “Oh, yeah, you take Yllera. I’ll get her,” Daniel nodded to the dying woman, “to Gene. Maybe he can…”
“Make her comfortable?” Yllera asked when Daniel’s voice faded.
Ben swallowed hard and nodded to the girl, “Come on we’ll go make sure you’re taken care of, Daniel has your grandmother.” He bent and picked up the computer the girl had all but forgotten, and handed it to her. The poor girl clutched it to her chest, half without seeming to comprehend it, half like it were her security blanket. Ben let the girl have one last glance at her grandmother’s covered face before he took her by the arm and reached out to home.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Tina awoke so suddenly it came as a nearly physical shock. One microsecond she was asleep. The next she was fully and irrevocably awake. She listened trying find what woke her. All she heard was the sound of soft breathing out of rhythm from her own. The lights were out, except for the ever-present sensor readings on the wall behind her. Dimmed though they were, they provided more than enough light for her newly sensitive eyes to find and identify the room’s other occupant.
It was Miranda, asleep in a chair. She looked cold, even before Tina saw her shiver. The doctor-in-training within Tina rose and found a Miranda’s blanket, which had slipped to the floor. Tina gently tucked it around her sister. Miranda mumbled an unconscious thanks and snuggled down. How much had happened since the night she had first spoken with her sister? How much had changed?
Even though Tina was technically the patient and, Miranda the watcher, it seemed so much the same. Here she was, wakened by Miranda stirring in her dreams, only to comfort her. Now to follow the script she should go back to sleep to wait for Miranda to waken her later. Wait, had Tina really been woken by Miranda’s dreams? Miranda slept quietly, not thrashing, not like the time Tina remembered. Tina rolled the thought around in her mind. She couldn’t have been awakened by Miranda’s dreams, but a deep gut conviction told her she had been. Tina closed her eyes and listened, she heard their breathing, not quite in sync. She listened harder and heard-felt a trembling aloneness of… fear, vertigo, darkness. Miranda moaned fiercely.
Eyes Love & Water Page 40
