Being of the Field (29 page)

Now that there were so few crew, and only one cook on board, it was much more practical to have one set mealtime and not eat in shifts.

‘I like the idea of us all eating at the same table,’ he said to Kalayna, who was standing by with a decanter of wine.

‘More like family…yes,’ Kalayna commented, motioning Lucian to the spot at the head of the table.

‘Indeed,’ Lucian quietly confirmed, ‘and we haven’t felt that sentiment on board for quite some time.’

‘Smells like our little stowaway has outdone herself,’ Leal commented as he walked in with Kassa on his arm. Ringbalin and Ayliscia were right behind them, and they all expressed their delight and thanks as they were seated by Kalayna.

‘Should I wait for Starman?’ Kalayna consulted the captain, for she suspected the pilot would not be coming.

‘First in, best fed, I always say.’ Lucian was too hungry to wait, and Kalayna was happy to comply and moved to serve the food to them all.

With wineglasses filled, and people beginning to tuck in, Kalayna requested the captain’s permission to make a toast.

‘Permission granted,’ he allowed, much happier for having a few mouthfuls of pie in his belly.

Kalayna rose, with glass in hand, to say her piece.

If he wasn’t
so
hungry—
if he’d only learned to cook
—Zeven would not be heading to the mess hall, against his will and instinct. He really didn’t want to see Kalayna, much less eat anything she’d cooked. On
the other hand, even a deadly poison would be welcome in his gut at present, as he just couldn’t bring himself to eat one more cheesy puff.

He slowed as the smell of real food reached him out in the corridor. That’s when he heard Kalayna’s voice and stopped short of the door to hear what she was saying.

‘To the captain and crew of AMIE, who are the most
gracious
,
generous
and
forgiving
bunch of people that I have ever had the curse of disappointing.’ She caught her breath, and some on the crew tried to dispute her impression, but she spoke up to silence them. ‘I really haven’t had too many second chances in my lifetime, and even though I know I am
so very
undeserving, I am also
infinitely
grateful for the opportunity you are giving me to make amends.’

‘Cheers to that,’ the captain concurred, and the crew clinked glasses.

Kalayna’s words seemed so heartfelt that Zeven felt a lump form in his throat. Yet a thought for Aurora’s sad state of affairs made his resolve harden once more.
She’s a vixen…leading us all down the garden path with her sincere sweetness.
He swallowed hard to banish his sympathy and hold onto his prejudice.

Zeven walked into the room and noted a spare place set for him with food already on the plate. He headed straight there, picked up the plate of food and moved to leave.

‘Zeven,’ the captain called, ‘will you not eat with us?’

He looked around the table, at all his dear friends. ‘Aurora should be here.’ His voice went hoarse and he cleared his throat, to get the rest out. ‘I’m going to eat with her.’

Nobody argued.

The pilot backed up a few paces and looked at Kalayna’s expression of utter devastation. ‘Nice speech.’ He left them to their feast.

He got halfway up the corridor before Taren was at his heels. ‘Zeven,’ she called and he stopped to allow her to speak.

‘Hatred and fear will make you sick—’ Taren wasn’t given the chance to finish.

‘—and trust and kindness will get you killed!’ he spat back and moved off, but Taren threw herself in front of him.

‘What’s more important is that
your
hatred in particular has the capacity to injure others
very
badly, without you even realising it!’
Taren said firmly. ‘Before you kill this girl out of spite, bear in mind that we have two telepaths on this vessel, neither of whom have detected any secret agenda about her.’

That was a good point, Zeven conceded…and yet? ‘Nobody detected a secret agenda about you either.’

‘Which only proves that we all deserve a second chance. I got one, and you did too—’

‘Taren…’ Zeven spoke up over her. ‘You aim to see the best in people, and if I expect the worst that just makes for a nice balanced perspective, don’t you think?’

Taren shook her head. He still didn’t get it. ‘I need you to understand the extent of your own Power.’ She paused to think about how she was going to get through to him, and had a revelation. ‘Meet me in Module C tomorrow after breakfast.’

Zeven rolled his eyes. He just wasn’t ready to give his anger up. ‘If I must.’

‘You asked me to train you…’ He nodded in submission. ‘And
this is important
,’ Taren told him in a deadly serious fashion. ‘In the meantime, I want you to put Kalayna completely out of your mind.’

‘That won’t be easy. Every time I look at Rory—’

‘—you should find a happy place,’ Taren advised. ‘Think about the good times you’ve had and will have again. That is the most constructive thing you can do for her. Dwell on the negative and she’ll just go on sleeping. As I keep telling you, intention has great power.’ Taren backed up towards the cafeteria. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow morning.’

‘Can hardly wait.’ He forced a smile and resumed his course to Aurora’s recovery room. ‘Find a happy place,’ he grumbled, ‘and how in the universe does she expect me to do that?’ What did he have to be happy about exactly? His career was in tatters, he was wanted by the USS, and if anyone found out about his Powers he’d be a complete social outcast. He felt like he could cope with all that, if only Aurora was still around adding sunshine to his life.

‘That’s it!’ Zeven figured out how he could comply with Taren’s request. Every time he got mad about Aurora’s situation, he would just imagine how his world would be right now if Aurora’s abduction had not happened and Kalayna had stayed on Frujia.

Zeven entered Aurora’s recovery room. Seeing her motionless form, he suppressed his urge to direct anger at Kalayna, and instead imagined eating dinner with Aurora. ‘In my quarters, perhaps,’ he said, speaking his fantasy out loud, ‘where we could be alone and be ourselves…’ Zeven smiled with delight at the notion. His imagination was on a roll.

The set-up was a very simple form of an experiment that Taren had carried out many times. Usually the effects of the experiment took a few weeks to become obvious, but as Zeven’s psychic skill was so advanced, she believed the results would be instantly noticeable.

Ringbalin had donated the three plants they planned to use as test subjects and each had been placed in a separate lab apart from one another. Alongside each of the plants was a vial of fresh spring water. The labs had large windows in the dividing walls, through which you could see all the labs from inside any one of them.

Zeven had undergone his first meditation session with Ringbalin that morning and so was calm, relaxed and focused.

The pilot was led into the first lab where he observed the plant, a healthy specimen whose flowers were yet to bloom. Ringbalin then invited Zeven to look at the vial of spring water that sat alongside this plant. It looked just like normal water.

‘What’s the water for?’ Zeven queried.

The botanist poured half the contents on the plant. ‘You will note there is no noticeable reaction in the plant after being watered,’ he said to Zeven, who nodded in agreement. ‘This represents the normal state of reality before you become wilfully involved,’ Ringbalin explained.

As Zeven seemed to be in a good mood, Taren decided to start with the positive test first. She requested that Zeven focus all the loving energy he could muster on the plant in the second test room for just one minute.

Zeven found this easy. He just thought about Rory and the force of his loving intention caused the plant to instantaneously burst into bloom, which stunned him beyond belief. ‘Did I do that?’

‘You certainly did,’ Ringbalin confirmed, ‘and check this out.’ He poured half the water in the vial onto the plant and its colour vibrancy intensified threefold.

‘Whoa!’ Zeven had to rub his eyes, thinking he might be seeing things. ‘The colour is even more vibrant.’

Taren nodded. ‘Such can be the state of matter when you become involved with a positive intent.’ With a finger she beckoned him to follow her into the third lab.

Zeven didn’t have to be a genius to work out what the third part of the test was. ‘You want me to try and kill this one, don’t you?’

Taren nodded. ‘But I need you to do that
without
using Kalayna as inspiration.’

Zeven let out a long, heavy exhalation. ‘I’ll do my best.’

‘Lives depend on you being able to master your focus,’ Taren cautioned him. ‘You asked me to help train you, but your base desires will never aid you to be constructive. It is therefore imperative that you learn to put them aside, or better still, release them altogether.’

Zeven nodded more decisively, so Taren hit the release on the stopwatch.

‘Go.’

Zeven looked at his victim.
Die, you little weed,
he thought, finding it incredibly hard to feel angry without Kalayna slipping into his thoughts.
I hate and despise your very existence. You make me sick!
At the same time, he instructed himself to focus only on the words, on the objective, and not to let anything from his own life enter into it.

The plant began to wilt and die; the water in the vial became murky and began to turn brown.

‘Stop!’ Taren and Ringbalin chimed together.

Zeven had been so focused on not screwing up that his conscious mind hadn’t even noted what he’d done to the plant. ‘Well, bugger me,’ Zeven commented as he viewed the devastation that one minute of his hate-focused intention could do.

Ringbalin poured half the putrid water onto the wilted plant and it burned through the remains like acid. ‘Would you like to try a few drops on your skin?’ he asked the pilot.

‘No, thanks, I get the picture.’

‘Do you?’ Taren turned him about to view the plants in the previous two labs. The perfectly healthy specimens had also wilted. ‘The human
body is ninety per cent water.’ She wondered if he was able to take this in yet.

‘Holy smoke!’ Zeven panicked, as did Ringbalin, who scurried out into the main greenhouse to find that everything in Module C had suffered.

‘Damn, Zeven. Your hatred is intense! I would never have held the experiment here had I known the result would be so catastrophic.’

When Zeven saw the damage even he wanted to cry. ‘I’m so sorry, Ringbalin. I feel terrible.’

‘Ah,’ the botanist said, as he held up a finger, ‘that is a point worth noting.’

‘I can fix it,’ Zeven vowed.

‘I know…’ Ringbalin gave a weak smile of faith.

‘So, you also see that it is not just the target of your bad intention who suffers,’ Taren added to get the message across.

Zeven backed up, feeling overwhelmed. ‘We need to get Kalayna away from here. I’m going to kill her and everyone!’

‘Or you can choose to send her your love and heal her—’ Taren began, but Zeven shook his head. He believed it was beyond his capability right now.

‘Zeven, you can’t do both!’ Taren reasoned. ‘You cannot hate and love at the same time and expect to be in control. Either you love unconditionally and choose not to judge people, knowing that those who are truly evil cause exactly this sort of devastation within themselves. Or, you choose to become one of those people who perpetuate evil, so that your hate inflicts this kind of damage on others…at the same time damaging yourself. I’ve shown you the evidence and now the choice is yours.’ Taren threw her hands up. ‘Here ends the lesson.’

After his eye-opening experience in the lab Zeven was feeling very numb. It was as if his emotions could not decide which path to take, and thus had settled in a place of complete indifference. Ringbalin’s magic touch had helped Zeven to regain a positive and loving perspective, long enough for them to move through the greenhouse and right the damage his bad intentions had caused in Module C.

Now the pilot was almost afraid to engage any emotion for fear of what it might do. He had work to do in any case—if he felt nothing, maybe he could focus and not cause any damage?

On the way past the cafeteria, Zeven spied the captain and Leal reading through some printouts over lunch. Kalayna was nowhere to be seen, so the pilot decided it was safe to speak with them. ‘Are those the schematic readouts for the launch bay I asked for?’

‘The very ones,’ Leal confirmed, and Zeven took a seat to look them over. ‘But you don’t have to get a headache trying to read them, as the launch bay doors were fixed this morning.’

‘Sure they were,’ he laughed. ‘You couldn’t possibly have done the job on your own.’ Zeven realised what Leal was implying and his mood darkened. ‘You let Kalayna work on my ship.’

‘Actually, Zeven, I believe AMIE is technically my ship,’ Lucian corrected him. ‘Kalayna was the only one qualified to do the job.’

‘But she’s not qualified!’ the pilot argued.

‘Then why is the launch bay door now working?’ Lucian asked and Zeven lost the argument.

‘She did an excellent job,’ Leal reported, ‘and knew exactly what she was doing. The spacewalk made her a little woozy, but then it scared the shit out of me the first time I had to—’

‘Kalayna got sick?’ Zeven was a little disturbed by the news. ‘How long ago?’

‘About an hour,’ Leal replied, confused by Zeven’s sudden concern.

Zeven stood and stepped away from the table, rather mortified by the news. ‘No,’ he protested, quite resolutely. ‘I don’t want to be responsible for this. You think I would have learned after what I went through with Taren—’

‘You’re not responsible. We sent her out there.’ Lucian didn’t understand the pilot’s rambling.

Leal was confused too, and concentrated to assess his crewmate’s state of mind. ‘Kalayna will be fine—’

‘You are absolutely right about that,’ Zeven stated, all fired up, and made a hasty exit.

Lucian looked at Leal in the wake of the confrontation. ‘Do you think I should be worried about that lad? He seems a little…confused.’

‘On the contrary, captain.’ Leal grinned and raised his eyebrows. ‘I do believe our young friend just had an epiphany.’