Being of the Field (5 page)

‘And you’ve nicely avoided my questions, yet again,’ Zeven noted in conclusion.

‘There is nothing I can tell you that you cannot discover for yourself,’ Taren defended. ‘Your talent is more extensive than you realise, mark my words.’

‘Won’t you at least tell me which of the Powers you have?’ Zeven flashed his dimple in a simultaneous smile and a frown of appeal.

‘Are you afraid I might be sitting here reading your thoughts?’ Taren teased, disclosing nothing.

‘No, you’re not telepathic…as you most probably would’ve slapped my face and left by now,’ he said rather daringly. ‘However, you sure do read something about people.’

‘You’re very perceptive yourself,’ Taren granted, amused by his directness, although he was probably telling the truth about what he was thinking. The energy he radiated was very seductive, full of fun and allure. Should she put him out of his misery and tell him about her hidden talents?
Nah,
she decided. ‘How did you find out about my MSS history?’

‘You’re changing the subject again,’ Zeven objected.

Taren looked out the windows to view the anomaly in daylight. ‘Shouldn’t we be able to see our cloud of Starman’s stuff on the day side of the planet by now?’

‘It just blends with the cloud by day,’ Zeven filled her in.

‘Have you done a topographical scan?’ Taren wandered further off the subject of her Powers. ‘Is there anything but ocean under our anomaly?’

‘There’s a landmass typical of that left in the wake of volcanic activity,’ he advised her.

Taren’s eyes parted wide, her mind cast back to her history of
astronomy class. ‘The meteor that hit Oceane a couple of hundred years back must have cracked the crust on the ocean floor.’

‘That is Lucian’s theory also,’ Zeven concurred.

‘That could explain why the molecular and electromagnetic readouts in that area are vastly different to the rest of the planet,’ Taren posited. But it still didn’t explain the strange rainbow light cloud, however.

‘Is that a fact?’ When Zeven didn’t receive a response, he noted that Taren’s eyelids were beginning to droop. ‘Perhaps it’s time to pack it in for the night?’

The thought of sleep brought a broad smile to Taren’s face. ‘No perhaps about it.’

‘Argh!’ Taren returned to consciousness to find herself seated bolt upright in bed, gasping for air, her skin cold with the moisture of her own perspiration. Both her hands were wrapped around her throat, as if trying to protect it from attack.

The scare that woke her from slumber was a dream that someone had cut Amie’s throat. ‘Surely I wasn’t lusting after Lucian enough to wish his wife dead?’

In the dream, Taren had assumed the murderer’s point of view, but she recalled having distinctly masculine arms. It had been a long time since Taren had had a prophetic dream.

‘No, it wasn’t prophecy!’ She convinced herself that she was only experiencing some side effect of space travel. After all, she hadn’t really dreamt in weeks, so it was not surprising during her first few bouts of sleep here on the station that her dreams were a little intense.

There was something else she’d dreamt before the murder of Amie, but the recollection was elusive—a feeling of great desperation and bewilderment was all that remained.

‘A shower is sounding real good.’ Taren decided she needed to get back to work.

As the overhead jets in her shower-tube massaged her head and shoulders with hot, steamy water, Taren began getting flashes of someone in a bio-suit extracting a sample of Starman’s stuff from the lab. The vision was oddly clear for a procedure she’d never seen before.

Could it be future sight?

Precognition was one of the Powers she’d shown the most aptitude for. Taren’s heartbeat began to race as she recalled having taken an impromptu nap in the lab yesterday.

I could have seen the thief remotely, while I was sleeping?
she considered.
Or, I could have been sleeping with my eyes wide open!

This brought to mind her little session with Swithin Gervaise and the MSS hypnotherapist. What if she’d freely allowed the spy to take the sample? That would seem to link Swithin Gervaise and the MSS to the spy they’d sent her after. It was possible that what they had told her was a fabrication to allow her to be hypnotised into being, not a stooge, but a double agent!

Taren was out of the shower and dressed before she’d reasoned herself into maintaining an open mind about everything. Her troubling premise was built on a random vision, so it would be silly to get too alarmed at this stage.

It was a scary scenario that she hadn’t considered, but Taren would certainly bear it in mind from now on.

In need of sustenance, Taren headed to the mess room, where she bumped into Kassa Madri, the ship’s doctor, having a late lunch.

‘How are you adjusting to life in space, my dear?’ The doc paused in her eating and motioned to a chair at her table to invite Taren to sit. ‘Any problems?’

‘Space life is great,’ Taren stated positively, setting her tray on the table and seating herself in the chair offered. ‘It’s the sleeping that’s proving difficult.’ Her smile faded to a frustrated frown as she admitted to having bad dreams.

‘That’s quite normal,’ Kassa assured, her smile comforting as always. ‘The pent-up fears of anticipating your stint in space are starting to surface via your subconscious now that you are here.’

Taren bit into her sandwich. She wanted to accept Kassa’s assurance, but something did not feel right.

‘You’re still concerned, however.’

Taren swallowed her mouthful and washed it down with tea while she figured how best to broach her subject. ‘Have you ever had a
prophetic dream, Kassa?’ she inquired of the doctor in a whisper, knowing that Kassa did not wish to advertise her psychic talents.

Kassa shook her head. ‘Have you?’ Her eyes crinkled with curiosity.

Taren nodded and forced a smile. ‘But I found a way to stop them a long time ago.’ She took another bite of her sandwich.

‘And the dreams you’ve had since landing on AMIE…’ Kassa prompted. ‘Do you want to talk about them?’

If she mentioned her dream about Amie, Taren felt she’d have to confess her concern that finding Lucian so attractive might have caused it. ‘Is there a small vacuum device that is used to sample substances that are being held in bio-molecular quarantine?’ Taren held her hands apart to indicate the size of the device. ‘Like a transparent tube inside a metal casing that plugs into the BM storage system in my lab?’

Kassa nodded. ‘Why, yes, there is.’ The doctor imagined this query to be somehow related to Taren’s dream.

‘Well, that indicates a clairvoyant perception if not a prophetic one,’ Taren mumbled, bringing her vision back to mind.
I could have perceived some future instance of legitimate sample extraction? But then, why would my subconscious be eager to bring such a scenario to my attention—it has to be a warning of some kind.

‘Surely the computer monitoring the substance in your lab will indicate whether it’s had a loss in mass?’ Kassa suggested, having perceived the vision Taren was entertaining. Taren suddenly stared at Kassa, obviously suspicious that she was using telepathy.

Kassa could have been making an educated guess as to her problem, Taren figured, but maybe Kassa’s telepathy extended beyond hearing inner dialogue to perceiving mental images as well.

‘You’re right.’ Taren stood, using the suggestion as an excuse to rush off.

‘You’ve barely touched your food,’ Kassa pointed out.

Taren gulped down her tea, and grabbed the remains of her sandwiches to eat en route. ‘Thanks, Kassa. ’Bye.’ Taren made for the door, desperately blocking any thought of Lucian from her mind.

Taren disappeared around the corner and Kassa smiled, now enlightened as to the real reason for the young woman’s hasty exit.

‘Oh dear.’ She shook her head slowly.
If you only knew how much Lucian admires you also.

Sure enough, when Taren checked with the computer in her lab monitoring the sample in the BM containment facility, it had registered a ten per cent reduction in the molecular concentration of the sample at around the same time in the early morning that Taren had dropped off to sleep.

‘Shit!’ she cursed under her breath. ‘I hate being right all the time.’

Someone had taken a sample and she had allowed them to do it. Her subconscious recollection of the event was useless when it came to identifying the thief, as he or she was masked by the BM suit they were wearing. If hypnotism had been used to put her to sleep, the thief would most likely have instructed Taren’s subconscious not to remember their identity.

‘I should never have allowed them to screw with my brain!’ Taren was starting to fume, finding the anger helped to subdue her panic. ‘But then I wouldn’t be here at all,’ she reasoned, and she was now somewhat wise to what was going on.

Taren leaned back in her seat and took a deep breath. How had she let this happen? For ten years she had left all her secrets behind her and it had been a hard slog to be taken seriously in her chosen field of endeavour. Now that she had finally achieved her dream posting, why was it all coming back to haunt her? She was so over the spying and lying, and being scoffed at every time she had used her psychic skills to obtain information. Science and reason had worked in her favour, because even if most were still sceptical about her findings, she did have data to back up her claims.

Taren glanced to the handheld FFRD monitor that had been the tool to support many of her theories over the past few years and was shocked to find the needle was at the outer limit of the negative range—a reading Taren thought she’d never ever see.

Her heart leapt into her throat as her logical mind was thrown into panic.
Am I dreaming again?
Taren pinched herself. ‘Ouch!’

Nope, definitely not dreaming.
Her gaze turned to the sample in her lab and she gasped when she saw the intensity the colourful explosions
inside the gassy mass had reached. She looked at the computer monitoring the sample but the readouts didn’t indicate any fluctuation at all. The computer wasn’t reading the increased activity that was so apparent to the eye and her FFRD.

‘Are you the driving force behind this negative quantum flux?’ Taren felt a little silly asking the sample a question…until the needle bounced immediately into the positive and then back into the negative.

The blood drained from her face as her brain struggled to digest the phenomenon. It was too much to ask—an intelligent being that did not have solidity!

‘Are you distressed?’ she asked, as the FFRD reading seemed to support this conclusion.

Again the needle swung briefly into the positive.

‘Are you in danger or pain?’

Twice the needle bounced into the positive.

‘Is there something I can do to assist?’ Taren was concerned. She didn’t want to cause another being pain.

Positive.

‘Let you go?’ Taren guessed, and was surprised when the needle wavered at the negative end of the readout.

Taren closed her eyes to focus her telepathic knowhow on the sample. Telepathy was not one of Taren’s strengths; she was sensitive to energy fields, body movements, emotional states and suchlike, but she was not a true telepath. ‘I need Kassa,’ she decided when she kept sensing the same desperation and bewilderment that she felt every time the vision of the sample being stolen came to mind.

If someone had stolen a sample, they had breached quarantine and Taren needed to reclaim the misplaced substance, as exposure to the gas could be disastrous!

Outside the mess room door Taren spied Kassa chatting with Leal. Knowing that the co-pilot was rather sweet on the doctor, Taren was loath to interrupt, but couldn’t count on their conversation stopping any time soon.

‘A thousand apologies,’ Taren said to Leal and then looked at Kassa, ‘but I urgently need your assistance, Doc.’

‘What is it?’ Kassa was intrigued by the turbulent energy of Taren’s inner panic, which was not apparent enough to the eye for Leal to be concerned by it.

‘I’ll catch you later.’ The man’s disappointment at losing Kassa’s undivided attention was reflected in the weak smile on his face when he waved and departed into the mess. Kassa must have been aware of how Leal felt. Why was she torturing the poor guy by pretending not to notice?

‘I’m not sure it would work,’ Kassa whispered as she kept pace beside Taren.

Shocked by just how telepathic Kassa was, Taren paled. ‘But you’re interested,’ Taren ventured, picking up on the whimsical tone in the woman’s voice.

‘He is a little young for me, and we are very different people.’ Kassa shrugged noncommittally. ‘How about you tell me what’s so urgent?’

‘Wait until we get to the lab,’ Taren replied.

As soon as they were locked inside, Taren spilled her guts about everything, including her vision regarding Amie, which she was sure Kassa would pick up on before long anyway. She was careful not to even think about anything that occurred before landing on this ship, but told of the dialogue that had passed between herself and the anomaly sample in quarantine via the FFRD. ‘And as I can only ask it yes-or-no questions, I need you to see if you can telepathically perceive what this entity’s problem is? It might even be able to identify the thief.’

Kassa, although stunned and rather concerned by Taren’s claims, was eager to help if she could. ‘You ask the questions and I’ll tell you if I perceive any answers.’

‘Do you mind if I tape this?’ Taren suspected this might be a sticking point.

Kassa considered the request a moment. ‘On the provision that you consult me before you make anyone else privy to it. I can’t hide forever and I’m not sure I want to any more, but it’s a big coming out for me, so I want to be consulted should it come to that.’

‘I understand completely.’ Taren gave a nod in agreement. They both turned as one to confront the anomaly in the lab and Taren instructed the computer to record.

‘What can we do to assist you?’ The FFRD needle again wavered about in the negative range, but the fluctuation wasn’t detected by the computer systems monitoring the sample.