All-Patron Reward: Demons of the Past, Old Draft: Baptism of Fire, Chapter 8

Varan had discovered he was a psi, but what did that MEAN?

In this old chapter, things work out rather differently in detail than the final version, but the basic elements are still there. And I noticed this time through that I had a symmetry  in these last two chapters in their ending lines.

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viii.

One thing combat training is good for. You don't spend time fighting against accepting shocking or undesirable situations; you just take them as they are and work from there.

I was a PSI. Ok. So what did that mean?

Well, first off, I wasn't what I'd been brought up to believe PSI's were like; I wasn't plotting to overthrow the Empire or twist minds to do my bidding. I felt just the same as I did before. Except for this glacier-damned headache, of course.

Take it a step at a time. The headache started this whole thing, let's examine it. 

First off, there was no way that this was a normal state for a PSI. You couldn't concentrate for any length of time with this kind of pain. Besides that, how could you read minds with this constant babble? There had to be some way of screening it out. The trick was for me to figure out how.

Well, there weren't that many instruction manuals for new psionics around, and I'd never even met a psionic before, so I'd have to figure it out myself. It was internal, first off. That meant purely physical stunts were out. It had to be a set of thoughts or a state of mind, and only one possibility occurred to me. 

I let myself relax and prepared myself as if beginning the ritual meditation of Tor. I concentrated on my old instructor's words: "The true master of Tor will be aware of all things around him as though they are his hands or arms; they will truly be a part of him. But before you can hope to master the art of the Space-That-Is-I, you must first know yourself as intimately as any mortal can hope to achieve. Concentrate only on yourself, therefore. See your hand. Observe it in every detail. Every bend, shading, the pattern of veins, every crack and wrinkle, every scar; look more closely, and see the very pores that cover the surface. Now look away, but exclude all the world but yourself. Visualize yourself, every move and feature. When you can achieve the detail of your finest vision in visualization, and keep that perfect image of your self before your mind's eye, down to every pore and reflection and shifting of muscle under skin, then -- and only then -- may you begin to consider the space that surrounds you. Until then, exclude all other things, save only yourself. "

I opened my eyes. The headache was gone. I was alone in my visualization, and in my head. By concentrating on it, I could feel the constant chatter, but now I could see where I was and where this separated from everyone else. I don't think I ever felt more grateful for my Tor training. Maybe other kinds of meditation would have worked... but I wouldn't have bet on it.

Slowly I relaxed the control, let a tiny fraction of the gabble through. It was something like my old muscle-control drills, except instead of relaxing one muscle at a time I was releasing a single strand of my thoughtwall with each passing second. Where I had gotten the knowledge to do this I couldn't be sure; the only explanation I could think of was that Vick's "templates" were even more effective than I'd expected.

I stopped opening up before the babel of voices rose to a level that could cause pain. Now that I could "listen" without headache blinding me, I could pick out individual thoughts. Isolated, but at least it proved that it was possible to make some sense out of the constant roar of thoughts. I had to assume that with practice I'd learn to select a single mind and "hear" only that mindvoice.

Suddenly a chill washed over me as I remembered the only mind I had ever seen into. My pain, and then my discoveries, had driven that memory into the background. But now it returned, full and terrible. Whatever the Prime Monitor was, it was something that was only human in form, because no human being could have a mind like that. On Xaltine, with Jearsen, I'd seen a victim of fungal plague; a mass of twisting, black, slimy growths that moved in a sickening mockery of a man. That was Shagrath.

I heard footsteps coming down the corridor. I began to settle back into the cushions, when my gaze landed on the inhibitor headband, lying across the room where I had flung it. I leaped out of bed, and my knees folded under me like a collapsing flattent. With pins and needles jabbing every inch of my legs, I forced myself upright, scrambled to the headband, stumbled back and hung up the headband, plugging it back into the wall at the same time. Just then, Nurse Vanya came in, a floater with food on it drifting just behind her.

"Captain Varan!" she exclaimed, and dashed to my side. "You should not be walking yet, sir." she said, the "sir" said in a tone usually reserved for young children.

"Sorry," I gasped, sinking back onto the bed. "I hate being confined."

She nodded knowingly. "You and all the other combat officers I've had to watch. You may be wonderful at surviving battles, Captain, but if you don't follow doctor's orders you'll be in that be a lot longer than you think." 

I nodded agreement, to overwhelmed by another discovery I'd just made.

I could hear her thoughts. At this range, her mindvoice was so loud that it separated from the general mental hubbub. I was caught in the sound of the mindvoice and swept inward.

Lorri. That was the first word I caught, and it took me a moment to realize that it was her name. Lorri Vanya. Made sense that would be the first word I could make out; the identity must be the most predominant part of anyone's mind. I opened almost involuntarily to listen.

It was like walking in a sunlit meadow. Sparkles of good humor and kindness, and a genuine concern for her charges, including a stupid but good looking Navy Captain who didn't have sense enough to stay put for five minutes... Hey, that was me! Like a meadow, of course, there were the more messy areas. Like what she was thinking about a certain doctor in the...

I snapped back into my mental shell. Torline's Swords, this was disgusting! I didn't have any right to do this... this spying into her private life. Or anyone's. By the Seven Towers, no wonder most people wanted PSIs dead! PSIWars aside, this kind of prying was more than enough reason to fear anyone with this power. And it was insidiously tempting. I already felt the urge to explore her line of thought about my looks a bit further. I opened my eyes and returned my attention to her words, hoping that my pause hadn't been too long.

That was when I got my next shock. Lorri had barely moved from where I'd last seen her; she hadn't even started talking again.

Everything - from my sensing her thoughts as separate from the babble about me to my fit of disgust - had taken perhaps a second.

In a way, that was even more frightening. That kind of speed... I'd always thought that a charged TASER would make me a match for any PSI who didn't have an energy shield, but this showed just how wrong I'd been. If the PSI had a mental attack ready, he could smash an unprotected mind before the other even realized the PSI was there.

In a way, though, these successive shocks were fortunate ones: that last frightening thought drained the blood from my face just in time to cancel the blush from what I'd seen in Lorri's mind.

"See?" she said, oblivious to what had just happened. "Look at yourself; you're whiter than my uniform. Now stay there, Captain."

I forced a smile. "Yes, Nurse. And call me Sasham, please; Being called Captain makes me feel either old or on duty."

She grinned. "And you are neither, Sasham. Call me Lorri. But only after you eat." She indicated the plates on the floater, then turned to go. "Just yell if you need anything."

I started eating, but my mind wasn't really on the food. Her own words had proved that my mental powers were no delusion or hallucination. I had read her name from her own mind.

I knew now that I had very little time to sort out a course of action. I also had better get some handle on just what I could do. I strained my memory to recall what I knew of PSI talents. Well, to start with there was telepathy. That I knew I had. Then there was pyrokinesis, mental control of heat or flame. The Black Dragon had had that in spades; my great-grandfather had recounted the tale of finding the battlecruiser Poised Fist adrift, its entire crew of two thousand reduced to ashes in a time the ship's log showed to be less than ten minutes. But that was a rare talent and I'd better stick to the more likely. Telekinesis, moving objects by concentration; clairvoyance, seeing across distance, or its hearing analogue clairaudience; illusion-casting; perception, seeing without eyes or light; and enhancement, the increase of normal abilities through an infusion of psionic power. There were others, dozens, maybe hundreds of talents, but that was all I could think of offhand. I realized that I had no way of knowing which ones I had, and precious little hope of learning to handle them in the time I had left anyway.

Then it struck me. If I wasn't a PSI, I was no use to Shagrath; he'd just put me back where he found me, and I'd be free in one stroke. Since no one but another PSI could tell, all I had to do was pretend that I'd gained no powers from the treatment, and I'd be off the hook.

"Good morning, Captain." a deep voice said from the doorway. Shagrath stepped into the room, smiling urbanely. "Glad to see you awake at last."

My guts seemed to turn to water, and a column of ice-ants marched down my spine. A pulse of mental power had accompanied his words.

The Prime Monitor was a psionic.