John Dalmas - Homecoming

Alpha sledded swiftly through the night sky.

“Indeed, my Lord, I was surprised at their rage,” Yusuf was saying. “I’d read them as a hardheaded people, men with control of their passions, or indeed with little that we ordinarily think of as passion at all. I tell you frankly, I never expected that they would agree to your offer. That act of Draco’s cut some very deep taboo.”

Ahmed’s mood swelled with grim pleasure. “They’ve shown a weakness. I see them differently now. Perhaps when it is over we will stay after all. At any rate the die is cast.”

Yusuf withdrew into contemplation and they rode briefly in silence. “My Lord,” he said finally, “let me offer unasked advice. Be careful of the Northmen. When the star woman told them what had been done to their hero, their anger was not ordinary rage that destroys wit and logic, however reckless their decision seems. There was a terribly deadly intention; they reeked of danger. They felt like the storm from the steppe that sucks up men and horses and spits out broken rags.”

Ahmed pursed his lips in the darkness. “You are always somber, my friend, but now you dramatize. That’s not like you. The Northmen are nothing to trifle with, I grant you. That’s why even their small numbers will make the difference and assure us victory. But angry men, vengeful men, make mistakes.”

Yusf stared gloomily into the night as if watching something. “It wasn’t hot anger to thicken the wits. Their rage was cold, with an edge like a razor.”

Now Ahmed brooded also. After all, Yusuf was psychic, and there were many dangers. What whisper might he hear from the future?

The barbarians had grinned in battle-laughed and crowed aloud and fought with the strength and vigor of the possessed. And they always won. Now perhaps they were possessed. Gooseflesh rose on his arms and crawled across his scalp. He wondered if they’d grin in the battle to come, and what their laughter might then be like.

Yusuf was right. He would take no liberties.

Her world was bright and clear and detailed. Her senses were more than sight and hearing, more than touch, taste, heat and smell, more than awareness of orientation and gravitic vectors-the usual data sources. With her, even the ordinary senses were more sensitive, more aware.

Her mind lacked some of the usual barriers; she was less constrained by past pain and hurtful emotions, more open to data at variance with general beliefs.

Hers was a world of discovery and growth. Possibilities became accessible to her.

Her eyes had closed; she felt no need for visual input just then. The fetus moved within her body, shifting uncomfortably in the cramped quarters, found a new position and became quiet again. She was aware of it but gave it no attention.

She did not grieve at the blinding of Nils, although at first the knowledge had shocked her. And she did not worry over what might happen next, although she was by no means indifferent. Simply, she would see what she could do. Now her attention focused on a question and remained there, examining.

Celia Uithoudt knocked lightly on the cabin door, waited, then knocked again.

“Ilse?”

Her waiting reflected uncertainty. By now the whole crew knew what the young Earth woman had reported to the surface. After a moment Celia turned the knob and looked in. Ilse sat on a small folded rug, her straight back to the door. Celia’s eyes rested on her briefly. Softly she closed the door again and went down the corridor to the dispensary.

As a safety margin the Phaeacia carried two physicians. So far they’d had little to do. She leaned back in the dispensary reading chair, punched in the novel she’d begun, and relaxed. For a while she read quietly with only the small movements normal to sitting, but before long became restless. Finally she put the tape on hold and turned to scan the room. She was alone.

She got up, stepped hesitantly to the door of the small laboratory-pharmacy and peered in, then looked into surgery. No one. Shaking her head she went back to the chair and began reading again.

The possibility had occurred to Ilse and she’d tried it. It turned out not to be difficult for her. She’d done something a bit like it before, in healing, when she would focus her attention on the sick or injured part and concentrate on its wholeness and normal functioning. In this case she’d focused on Celia, concentrating on being beside her. Suddenly she’d been there, surrounded by white enamel and stainless steel, next to the woman who’d become her friend.

She’d been surprised when Celia sensed her presence. Although the woman had shown no sign of being even a latent telepath, she had sensed the psychic presence.

Then Ilse was back in her own cabin, in her still erectly seated body. It had remained upright, the heartbeat slow and regular. But it seemed to her that, without her attendance, the body might not long survive.

And Celia had felt her, although she had not known what it was she felt. So presumably would almost anyone except the totally psi-deaf. Apparently the psyche was sensed more strongly when away from the body.

Again she put herself in the dispensary with her friend. Celia’s mind was composed, absorbing the lines of print. Gradually Ilse impinged more strongly, until the mind beside her showed hints of disturbance. The eyes did not scan as rhythmically. A grain of unease irritated the mind, which tried to shut out the irritation.

Ilse withdrew again to her body and examined results. She could enter the space of a non-psi and be noticed or not noticed at will, according to impingement, intention. But could she enter the presence of telepaths and be unnoticed? Or be noticed selectively, by one and not another? Nils would probably be guarded by a telepath.

Ram was the only telepath on board besides herself, a fitful and very limited one who could provide only a limited test. Subconsciously he still tended strongly to reject what his talent picked up.

Carefully, lightly, she focused on him. He sat in his command chair, glancing back and forth from computer screen to keyboard as his index finger moved deliberately, punching out questions from a checklist. His mind was restless, only a trivial part of it occupied by the routine task. It reflected a sense of futility, and the tinge of paranoia she had noticed.

His unconscious awareness of her was so vague that she recognized it only because she was looking for it. It was not an awareness of another being in his space, but simply of something not quite right, warily ignored.

She withdrew to her body again, for a few moments monitoring its functioning, then focused her attention away again, this time on a place. The tent was gone, and she was on its site, in a circle of yellowed grass around a bull’s eye of wood ashes. Tiny huts hunkered around her, low and drab in the long rays of evening sunlight. There were no voices or any trace of human minds.

She hadn’t tried to move about disembodied before in any way analogous to walking. She found now that she could, and looked into a nearby hut. It was stripped, as she knew it would be.

She conjoined again, instantaneously but softly, raised her body from the rug and drank at the washbowl. So she could project to a distance, to either familiar people or familiar places, and “move around” while there, but she did not feel safe to stay away from the body too long.

She needed experience, she decided, and to test herself against competent psis. Perhaps Hannes was still alive; she hadn’t heard of her brother since the battle at Doppeltanne, a thousand miles and eight months ago. He was an excellent telepath, as sensitive as almost anyone, and no harm would be done if he discovered her.