Freakling (2 page)

Uncle Fierre gasped. “You go too far, Wiljamen! That’s blasphemy. What possible reason could the high priest have for going against the will of the Earth?”

Taemon was just as curious as Uncle Fierre to know the answer to that question. But before Da could respond, Mam, ever the peacemaker, spoke up.

“Why don’t you boys have a look at the unisphere?” she said. “I’ll call you when it’s time for dessert. Is that all right, Fierre?”

“Sure,” Uncle Fierre said, obviously grateful for the distraction. “You can even sit on it if you like.”

“Is it safe?” Mam asked.

He nodded. “It’s stable enough with the emergency brake in place.”

Yens was instantly out of his seat, heading for the back door, which was already opening with the help of psi. Taemon followed.

Uncle Fierre called out after them: “But you don’t have permission to start it.”

Yens reached the unisphere first and planted himself on the seat. “Ever seen one of these up close?” he asked.

Taemon shook his head.

“I have.” Yens leaned forward and squeezed the hand grips. “Andon’s brother has one. He showed us how it works.”

Taemon took a moment to admire the machine.

The tire, if it was even called a tire, was a big black rubber ball with a tread that was patterned after alligator skin. The tire-ball had a cap on top, like an upside-down bowl that covered more than half the ball. The sun gleamed off the shiny chrome of the cap, except for where an alligator symbol was etched in black on the sides. The fierce emblem made the unisphere look dangerous even when it sat in the driveway. On top of the chrome cap was a black leather seat that had a slight curve to it.

But where was the engine?

Even a unisphere had to have an engine of some kind. You couldn’t just roll the ball forward. It wouldn’t go very fast, not unless you exerted a lot of psi. And you’d get tired in a minute or two, just like with running. Psi engines didn’t need fuel like in the old days, but there had to be gears and cams and springs to transfer the energy so a person didn’t have to exert himself so much. There had to be an engine somewhere on this thing.

Taemon frowned. Usually he could figure out the general idea behind a machine, even if he didn’t know enough details to operate it. But this unisphere had him stumped.

Of course, that was the whole point of psi. You had to know how something worked. You had to picture in your mind exactly what the machine looked like, parts and all, and then tell those parts what to do. If you didn’t know clearly and precisely how something was to be done, you couldn’t use psi to do it.

The more he stared at the unisphere, the more Taemon had to know how it worked. He was tempted to do something he hadn’t done since he was a little kid. He was tempted to let his mind wander.

When Taemon first learned to use psi, he used to send out a small tendril of his mind to explore the world, like an ant scouting things out. It wasn’t quite the same as using psi, because it could only explore, not move or change anything. But Da had made it clear that mind wandering was bad. Never to be done, never to be spoken of. He had been strict about it, so much so that Taemon had never told anyone else about it, not even Mam or Yens. Now that Taemon was older, he had figured out why. It was different. And different was suspicious. And suspicious was dangerous.

So Taemon stood there staring at the unisphere, wishing he knew where the engine was and how the crazy thing worked. If he used his mind wandering, he could figure it out. As long as he never acted on that knowledge, no one would ever know.

And that was the whole point, right? No one should ever know.

Taemon closed his eyes and let his awareness drift across the hard, rough concrete that was the driveway. Along the ridges and patterns of the unisphere’s ball tire. Skimming the smooth surface of the chrome. He let his mind wander under the seat, where Yens sat tall and proud, as though he owned the thing. No engine there. Just thick padding and springs for shock absorption. He sent his mind lower, exploring the underside of the chrome cap. He could see it all in his head. Nothing there. He went deeper, inside the ball itself.

So there you are,
thought Taemon.

Such a clever engine it was, too! Springs coiled tightly so the driver could release the energy as fast or slowly as needed. Tread on the inside of the tire as well, which fit perfectly with the cam. Only this was more complicated because —

“Hoy, freakling,” Yens said sharply. “You getting on or not?”

Taemon nodded and scrambled up behind Yens. The seat was made for one, but they were both skinny and the inward curve of the seat kept them pressed together.

“Bet I could drive this thing,” Yens said.

“We don’t have permission.”

That was the great safeguard of psi. You couldn’t do anything that was outside of your authority. If you tried it, the internal conflict inside you blocked psi. So it was pretty much impossible to use psi to do anything that went against your conscience even in the slightest.

“So?” Yens said.

A bad feeling was growing in the pit of Taemon’s stomach. What was Yens planning to do?

“He said we didn’t have permission to start it. He didn’t say we couldn’t release the emergency brake.” Yens’s voice was quiet and frightening.

“Why?” Taemon asked. “So we can roll down the driveway and fall over? That would just be stupid.”

Instantly Taemon regretted the last part of that comment. He had probably just multiplied Yens’s determination to do whatever insane thing he had in mind.

“I’m getting off,” Taemon said. He tried to swing his leg over the seat, but Yens leaned back, pinning Taemon in place.

“Not yet,” Yens said. He reached down with his left hand and released the brake. Immediately they began to roll backward.

Taemon gasped. He pulled his legs up as high as he could. When they fell over, he’d prefer not to get crushed between the ball and the ground.

But they didn’t fall over. They kept rolling. Yens must have been using psi to balance the seat above the ball.

Now they were past the driveway and into the street. Yens couldn’t start the engine without permission. So they were just going to roll the whole time? Taemon began to relax. Their street didn’t have much of a slope. They wouldn’t get far.

“Now comes the fun part,” Yens said.

The bad feeling in Taemon’s stomach was back in an instant. A quadrider was coming toward them on the street, and Yens seemed to be steering toward it.

“Uh, Yens?” Taemon tried not to sound terrified. “Shouldn’t we try to avoid the quadrider?” His voice cracked.

Yens laughed and stayed his course. “That’s the ticket, Tae. Put your life on the line, and you can do anything you want with psi.”

Life on the line? Holy Mother Mountain!

The quadrider honked frantically. There was no room for it to pass — not with the unisphere in the middle of the street.

“Yens!” Taemon cried.

Just then, Taemon felt the engine starting up underneath him. The unisphere jerked and whined. Suddenly Taemon realized what Yens had done. In urgent danger, the survival instinct sometimes became stronger than a person’s conscience and psi could be used if the person kept a calm head.

Sometimes.

They picked up speed. The unisphere sputtered. Lurched. Wobbled. This is exactly why psi was such a tricky thing. Authority, knowledge, state of mind — all of these played against each other and you could mess things up if you didn’t stick to what you absolutely knew you could do.

Yens was losing control.

The quadrider honked again, mere feet away from them.

Before Taemon knew what was happening, Yens launched himself from the unisphere and tumbled into the grass at the side of the road.

Taemon wobbled, but even as he did so, he could feel his psi taking over. Once he made the decision to stay on the seat, all anxiety left him. His mind was clear and calm.

He knew how to drive the unisphere.

In one complete image, he pictured it in his head. The spring releasing the stored energy. The gears moving forward in a burst of speed. The steering mechanism pulling hard to the left. The seat staying balanced above the ball. It all came to his mind precisely and instantly. He gathered his psi and directed it toward the unisphere.
Be it so!

Taemon hung on as he rocketed forward off the road and onto the grass, missing the quadrider by inches. He righted his course, then bounced back onto the road, flinging dry pine needles behind him.

He exhaled slowly. It wouldn’t do to crash now. He had to stay calm a little longer.

He drove around the block and willed himself to be at peace.

The wind had smeared purple and gray across the twilit sky.

A squirrel bounded across the road.

The crickets began their song of darkness.

And Taemon parked Uncle Fierre’s unisphere in the driveway.

Once he put the emergency brake on and withdrew his psi, the fear came back in a rush. He had come within a breath of dying. He started shaking.

Taemon stumbled off the seat. His legs felt too weak to stand. But before he could steady himself, Yens yanked him sideways and shoved him up against the splintery rough wood of their fence. He wedged his forearm across Taemon’s neck. Even stronger than the pain and fear was the humiliation of being manhandled. Yens was attacking Taemon, which meant he had to do it with his hands. To use psi against another person, you had to be defending, assisting, or showing affection. And Yens was doing none of these.

“How did you drive it? You said you’d never seen one before.”

“I had to do something.” Taemon choked out the words. “You almost got us killed!”

Tiny splinters dug into his scalp as Yens pushed harder, forcing Taemon’s chin up and his head back.

“Tell me what you did just now,” Yens said, a terrible fierceness in his voice. “You shouldn’t be able to do that.”

His brother let the pressure off long enough for Taemon to gasp out a few words. “I can’t. I don’t even know what I did.”

“Taemon! Yens!” Mam called from the house. “Time for nut cake!”

Yens slammed him against the fence again. “You’ll tell me. I’ll make sure of it.” He let go and walked away.

Taemon sucked in short breaths and forced his tears back. He never should have allowed his mind to wander. It was bad, like Da said. What about what Yens had done? Placing yourself in danger so you can act outside authority?

Cha. That was bad, too.

Taemon sat in the backseat of the quadrider, with the luggage under his feet. Da was driving, Mam sat next to him, Yens and Uncle Fierre sat in the middle seats, and Taemon sat facing the back. It was just as well. Last night’s argument had picked up again, and he could steer clear of the bickering by sitting all the way back. At the moment, Yens was badgering Da.

“One of these days, you’re going to have to admit that the old ways don’t matter anymore.”

“Strength comes in many forms,” Da said. “Psi is only one of them.”

Yens snorted.

Taemon turned back to the view from the rear window, letting the others argue to their hearts’ content. They drove east toward the shore, passing the farmland that fed the city. In the backseat Taemon faced west, watching the city wall grow smaller in the distance and admiring the mountains that rose behind Deliverance. At their base they were green and lush with the early summer rain. Higher, the peaks were craggy, a row of spikes that protected the city from the rest of the world.

It had been Taemon’s own ancestor, the prophet Nathan, who had yanked those mountains out of flat ground. Talk about some powerful psi. Nathan was the one who discovered it. Only Da wouldn’t use the word
discovered.
Da said that the Heart of the Earth granted psi to the prophet Nathan because he was so righteous that he would never use it to hurt anyone or do anything selfish. Either way you look at it, Nathan was the first one to have the power to visualize something and make it so.

It had been over two hundred years since Nathan had fled from the Republik with his family and friends during the Great War. You’d think a person with psi would be revered, but the opposite was true. People had feared Nathan, despised him. The Republikite army had wanted to use him as a weapon in the Great War, but Nathan refused. He and his followers moved to a wilderness area by the coast and built the city of Deliverance. Nathan passed psi on to his children and his followers’ children, charging them to use it for good. Before long, Deliverance became a city of psi wielders. They tried to keep to themselves, but the Republik still harassed them. So Nathan used his psi to make the very mountains Taemon was staring at right now, the mountains that kept them separate from the rest of the world. The world finally got the idea and left them alone. Even now, there was no contact at all with the psiless cities of the Republik and the powerless people that lived on the other side of those mountains.

Taemon wondered how people lived without psi. Their lives must be so primitive. Did they even have running water? How would you turn it off without psi? It would have to have a lever of some kind that would move up and down to control the flow. Or maybe something like a screw would work better. But how would you turn a screw without psi?