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 Get back, dear, he s about to make it bigger. Go for it, Jodi.
I could, I realised, very quickly grow addicted to this power. Every time I used the
pyrokinesis for anything bigger than a candle flame, it stroked my pleasure centres the bigger
the flame, the bigger the rush, the more intense the thrill up my spine and into my cock. No
wonder Ronwe had fallen in love with his volcano. I wanted to ask him if it was the same for
him, but I didn t dare. Not today, at least.
 You re a natural, Ronwe finally declared.  Now remember you can shape any flame as
easily as the stuff you produce. It works exactly the same.
 Can you show me how to make a weapon?
 What? Lonin floated in front of me, his green eyes frowning.
 I want to know how to use my power to defend this place if I have to. I want to be able to
control it without having to think. I want not to be useless, Lonin.
Ronwe patted his lover s arm soothingly.  It s okay, Loni. He s got a point. It s not like we
don t all have potentially lethal abilities.
 Except Hermi.
Ronwe gave me a funny look and I wondered what else the government hadn t told us about
empaths.  Pay attention, Jodi. I m going to show you how to make a thermal lance, PK style.
If I thought making fireballs was fun, melting rocks felt like being a god. I terrified myself
what must the early peoples have felt, seeing one of their kind produce this kind of power? How
frightened had they been? And the Pindone government were worried about PKs who could just
about light candles with their talent? I felt like going to Vizinken and cutting Parliament House in
half, to show them I could.
And then five minutes later, I d be electrocuted, shot, and most likely bombed. No, not very
sensible. But tempting.
I said as much to Ronwe.  Yeah, it is. PKs have always had it the worst TPs creep people
out, but we flat out scare them to death. Even when we were legal, we had to keep things quiet.
Of course, it would be utterly unethical to use our powers to kill, so we ve tended to avoid being
used by governments when we could. Hasn t always worked.
 Are we unstoppable then?
 Hardly, Lonin answered tartly.  Watch. Throw a fireball at me. I did and he deflected it
without moving a muscle, sending it skittering off into the air until I made it vanish.  Something
harder, now.
Throwing fire at a real living person scared me more than the rock melting had, but Lonin
was equal to anything I sent at him, even when Ronwe joined in. We spent nearly an hour
duelling and messing around, until Ronwe put his hand to his ear and then held up his hand.
 Guys, we ve got to go back. They need Jodi again.
What now, I wondered.
Re-entering the refuge s stony prison felt harder than it should have been. I wondered if I
could somehow move to a less oppressive hideout. One less populated by people with whom I
apparently had so little in common.
To my surprise, Kir came to collect me from the elevator. He searched my eyes, seeming to
want to know how I was.
You ain t gonna like what we found, Jodi.
They re fast, aren t they?
The information wasn t that hard to find, once we knew what we were looking for. Come
with me.
Jeyle still after my head?
He managed a grin. Think a little lower down.
Ouch.
He started to walk on, but I touched his arm. I talked to Dede. She argues very prettily that I
should try to move past my anger for my own sake as well as yours.
Can you?
I don t know. I...don t want to feel this way forever. I need time.
I figured.
I thought he d be pleased I was prepared to make the effort to understand, but his reaction
was so muted, I couldn t imagine what he was thinking. After a moment or two, I moved on. This
wasn t the time or place for this conversation.
We went to another smaller meeting room with a viewcom and printer set up in the corner.
Wesejne looked as pleased to see me as I felt to see him. His girlfriend wouldn t meet my eyes at
all. Jeyle merely nodded at my arrival. Hermi smiled but not as warmly as before maybe afraid
his lover would cut him off. Or something off, anyway.
 Okay, what s the bad news? I asked as I took my seat.
 Nidinwe hon Malin and Kregan hon Sersa are brothers, Wesejne said.
I started in surprise.  But the names 
 Their parents split up when the kids were little, Kir said.  Kregan went with his Mam,
Nidinwe to his Da, and each took the name of the one with custody. Definitely a connection
between them, and Kregan with Nidinwe s school.
 So, that s interesting but why is it significant?
 The significance, Wesejne said,  is that Kregan lived in the Weadenal from the age of six
until he was twenty, when he returned to Pindone. While he was in the Weadenal, his mother
became the intimate friend of a telepath who had once been part of the Elected but who had left
when our group suffered a political schism.
 The Elected? I looked at Hermi.  You know, if people would come right out and tell me
the stuff I needed to know, I wouldn t have to ask so many stupid questions.
 The Elected, Hermi answered,  are paranormals who have similar beliefs to Spiritists, but
who differ from us in several key issues. They have, for many years, been able to promote the
welfare of paranormals, and in some cases, conceal them.
 We re the reason that the Weadenal is such an enlightened, benevolent place for our kind,
Wesejne added, glaring at me.
 If you re so benevolent, how come some of your people didn t want to stay?
 That s none of your concern.
I resisted making a rude gesture and turned back to Hermi to finish this tortuous explanation.
 The Elected and this schismatic group, all practice a highly sophisticated mental shielding.
Kir and Jeyle are the only ones of us here who ve learned the technique.
Kir broke in to explain more.  See, Jodi, to a telepath, most shields are like looking at a brick
wall. We can t see through them, but we can t not know they re there. What me and Jeyle got is
like a pane of glass only, it s more like a painting of a window, because what people see ain t
what s actually going on in our heads. It s camouflage. A telepath can look at me, never even
know I was a talent.
Understanding dawned.  Kregan s a paranormal.
 Highly likely, Hermi said.  Or he knows someone who is perhaps his brother and that
person s the one using Weadenisi techniques to suppress and replace memories in people like
you.
 In the school!
 Yes, Jeyle said suddenly. I jumped in shock when she spoke.  The perfect cover. And one
the Weadenisis use themselves. They also use secretly paranormal doctors to find such children
and retrieve them before they get into the official system. We ve been doing the same thing here,
but on a smaller scale.
 There s a numeric discrepancy, Hermi said.  Whatever you think about Spiritism and our
beliefs about spirits and talents, the fact is, the numbers of paranormals globally has always been
astonishingly constant, allowing for records being lost or not kept and so on. In Pindone, we re
missing over a hundred major rank paranormals, given our population size and given the numbers
before the terrors started. We re pretty sure we ve accounted for all who ve been arrested, jailed,
or recruited by Noret. We re still short.
 What if you re not the only unknown paranormal, Jodi? Kir asked.
I stared at them all.  Nidinwe s school was a front? And my fellow students...were all
paras?
 Probably not all of them, Hermi said.  That s why we need your help. How many of your
school friends are you still friendly with...sorry, before, you know...?
 Uh. Three or four. I know where others are working, but we don t maintain contact. Timo
Paltimo hon Darmo is one. He s my best friend. I met him at the school and we went through
the Academy together. He s two years older than me. Damn, and he s infertile as well, I said,
suddenly connecting it all in my mind.  He has the gene. We were tested when we registered for [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]