Daughter of Destiny (3 page)

"You mean the shattered
glass, the black scorch marks on the walls and the fire retardant
spray stuff coating everything? I'm not likely to ever forget
that."

"I was the one who
overloaded; not the circuitry in the house."

"Oh." The memory of that
day floated in Naia's head and she felt stupid for buying such a
flimsy lie. She knew what Katarina could do. She quite possibly
owed her life to Katarina's strange abilities, but it never
occurred to her that Katarina might lose control.

"Now do you
understand?"

Naia stared at the bottom
of her empty mug, feeling like a fool for pushing Katarina. "I
think I'm beginning to. I'm sorry I didn't listen this morning when
you tried to explain. Contacting that telepath is a stupid
idea."

Katarina set her mug on a
coaster. "You're right. It is a stupid idea, but doing the smart
thing all of the time hasn't really done much for me."

"You're going to go through
with it? Why?"

Katarina sighed. "I'm tired
of fumbling through this alone. Maybe he'll know something about
something that will explain why I can do the things I can do. Maybe
he won't. In either case the only way to find out is to contact
him."

"You're sure?"

Katarina's lips curved in a
lopsided half smile. "No. Still, I have questions and no answers.
It'd be more foolish to pass up the opportunity to find out if
there are others like me."

"So, what now?"

"Now? I do something I have
never done. I drop some telepathic walls and try to find
him."

"Can I do anything to
help?" Katarina leaned over and fiddled with the candle. Naia
spotted a telltale tremble in Katarina's hand. "You don't have to
do this now. You can wait." The vivid memory of meeting Katarina at
middle school orientation swam to the forefront of her mind. The
preppy girl begged her not to fetch a grown up, even as she puked
into a toilet. Two very different souls, they bonded over their
mutual desire to avoid unwanted adult attention. For years after
that as Katarina battled to learn control over the empathic
abilities which caused the migraines, Naia helped her hide the
effects and present the image of a normal teen.

Naia feared seeing Katarina
reduced to that kind of pain again.

Katarina took a deep breath
and leaned back. "No, it's better to do this before I talk myself
out of it. I've never actually dropped any of my walls before. If
anything, I've added more and more layers." She glanced at Naia and
curved her lips in a tiny smile. "Don't worry, I have way better
control than I used to."

Naia reached out and took
Katarina's hand in hers. "Are you a hundred percent
sure?"

"I'm sure. To be safe, I
want you to monitor my pulse, and if it changes or I start looking
very pale, give me a shake to bring me back."

Naia squeezed Katarina's
hand and offered a smile. "Will do."

***

Katarina settled back into
the enveloping comfort of the cushions. Thoughts and emotions
whirled in her head. Anxiety and nerves lengthened the familiar
process of quieting her mind by several minutes beyond the handful
of heartbeats it normally required. She focused on the flame of the
candle on the coffee table. She slowed her breathing and let
awareness of her physical surroundings drop away. Distant sounds of
the city faded first, followed by the closer sounds of her
neighbor’s washing machine thumping from an unbalanced load, and
finally even the soft steady sound of Naia's breathing faded into
the silence of her mind.

The flame lit the darkness
of her mental fortress. A beacon shining with warmth and comfort,
she turned from it and created a door in the imaginary walls which
protected her mind. Katarina envisioned walking through a maze of
connected hallways. She knew better than to just fling open a door
to the outside. She spent years building each layer through iron
determination, finally learning to keep out the mind crushing pain
caused by other people's thoughts and emotions. Katarina left each
door open and although the light grew dimmer as she walked, it
continued to light her path. As she neared her outer walls, voices
and images bombarded her. She shrank back and slammed a door shut
and the din muffled, but remained. She took a deep breath and
reopened the door a tiny crack. Naia's presence blazed strong and
Katarina turned away from Naia's private daydream. Katarina
possessed no desire to intrude on her thoughts.

Katarina mustered courage,
flung the door wide and stepped into the onslaught of minds. She
pressed forward, but a tide of thoughts swept her this way and
that. As she floundered, she tried focusing on individual
thoughts.

Four apartments to the
south, a mother worried over her sick child. A floor below and two
apartments east, two lovers quarreled. Three floors above a bored
husband attempted to tune out his wife’s nagging. A junky in the
alley behind the building obsessed over how he was going to score
his next hit. Down the street a cab driver cursed at losing a fair
and counted the hours until he could crawl into bed with his wife.
At the convenience store around the corner a young woman made plans
to run off to California with her boyfriend and become an
actress.

One person's thoughts
became crystal clear as Katarina focused on it and then faded again
into the background as another person swept into focus. Katarina
struggled for some sense of direction, but the volume of
individuals swamped her as they swept over her like high tide. Her
heart sped up as she thrashed and fought to stay above the tide,
but to no avail. Desperate, she summoned from her memory the
impression of Mr. Meditation's psychic energy. She imagined tuning
her mind to his and sent out a wordless call, a plea for him to
answer. She waited, clinging to his memory like a buoy tossed in
turbulent waters. Failure loomed over her as her call went
unanswered and the chaos around her threatened to pull her
under.

Katarina didn't believe in
failure.

She tried again. This time,
she pictured the brown eyes that made her want to sigh, the sensual
full lips, and the sleek curtain of raven black hair she imagined
brushing against her skin. She sent out a question…
"Who are
you?"

At last his presence filled
her mind. Again she asked,
"Who are you?"

"Mala omea, zi esta
orine?"
The alien words echoed in her mind. Impatient to get
past the language barrier, she opened just enough of her mind to
him to allow the exchange of language knowledge.
"Merge with
me."
She sent a mental image of two brains overlapping. She
cringed at the crude method of communication, but it worked. Within
moments his mind touched hers. She didn't allow him enough access
for a full merging. Rather, like two computers exchanging files,
they shared only information essential to communication. He gained
her understanding of English as well as the smattering of Spanish
and French she picked up over the years. Over a dozen different
languages poured into her mind. She suspected he meant to share one
language, and instead sent everything he knew.

He might have meant to
share all of that, but Katarina got the impression his telepathic
filters lacked the fine tuning she placed on hers. She tried to
pinpoint a language she recognized. She worked with enough
international colleagues to spot most of the major languages, but
not a single one of his languages rang a bell. Some of the
languages consisted of highly complex grammatical systems, so she
pushed those aside for later analysis. His main language held
enough grammatical similarities to English without much effort her
brain picked it up and a translation of his earlier comment formed
in her mind.
"My god, you’re real?"
Before they could make
any further attempts at conversation, the telepathic connection
snapped. One second they stood face to face in the imaginary
construct of her mind and the next the doors in her mental walls
slammed shut as Naia thrust her back into the real
world.

Naia shook her shoulders.
"I said are you okay?"

A part of Katarina wanted
to send her mental avatar running to reestablish the connection,
but Naia brought her out for a reason. She blinked and focused on
Naia's face. "I’m fine." She let her gaze wander as she wondered at
the strange sensations the man stirred within her. Through her
empathy, she understood via Naia and others the emotions one felt
when attracted to a member of the opposite sex, but not once had
she felt anything stir within herself. The moment she saw his face
in the mirror something inside her shifted. In contrast to the
utter silence of her libido since she hit puberty, the attraction
burning inside her made the emotions she felt in others seem like
tame hearth fires. The thrill of finally finding another telepath
filled her with giddy anticipation at perhaps at last answering
questions which haunted her.

She frowned at the candle
as she tried to figure out why every cell in her body felt a
magnetic pull it demanded she obey.
Is it amplified by his
emotions, or have I discovered one more way in which I'm a
freak?

"I’m sorry I intruded. Your
pulse increased a few minutes ago and hadn't slowed yet. You were
zoned out for almost two hours and I got worried"

Katarina shook her head and
focused her gaze. "What?" The candle puddled wax on the plate
beneath it, attesting to the passage of time. She looked at Naia.
"Two hours?"

"Yes. What happened?" Naia
scooted around on the sofa and folded her legs under her. "Did you
find him?"

Katarina laughed and heaved
a deep breath. "Yes, yes I did." A rush of adrenaline surged
through her as a sense of accomplishment and relief settled inside
her. Until Naia roused her, she did realize how far from her body
she sent her psyche. When her empathy progressed to telepathy, her
mother warned her that if one reached too far beyond their limits
they might not find their way back. An image of herself in a
perpetual catatonic state flashed in her mind and she suppressed a
shudder. She bit her bottom lip, deciding not to explain that
danger to Naia.

Naia bounced up and down on
her butt. "And?"

Katarina chuckled. "Most of
that time I spent getting out of my head and figuring out how to
contact him out of all the other millions of people on the
earth."

"You can do that? Contact
someone in like, Africa?"

Before today Katarina would
have laughed at such an absurd suggestion, but recalling the minds
she encountered, at some point she went far beyond midtown Memphis.
She scrubbed her hands over her face. "Yeah, I think so, but it is
insanely tiring."

"Wow. So what did he say
when you found him?"

"He asked whether I was
real."

"I thought you said he
doesn't speak English."

"He doesn’t. We merged just
enough to exchange our knowledge of languages."

Naia eyed her. "You learned
an entire language in less than two hours?"

Katarina shrugged.
"Probably more like minutes. As I said, I refining my filters and
searching for him."

"That's all he
said?"

"I hate to be
anti-climactic, but yeah."

Naia pouted. "Now I wish
I'd waited another five minutes." She sighed and plopped back
against the couch cushion. "I suppose it was good for starters,
right?"

"Yep." Katarina smiled
despite her exhaustion and the unease which accompanied the near
obsessive urge to seek out the man.
I refuse to succumb to the
whims of hormones.
With that though held firmly in her mind,
Katarina stood, and a yawn claimed her. "Gah! I'm not sure which is
sleepier, my body or brain. Maybe you hit the nail on the head,
Naia. If I do more of this kind of stuff, maybe I can actually
sleep every night like a normal person."

Naia grinned. "See? My
ideas are always good."

Katarina shook her head as
she pulled an afghan of the back of the couch and handed it to
Naia. "I suppose you'd rather I not remind you of the infamous soda
bread incident, or how about you thinking we could navigate Europe
without a GPS?"

Naia swatted at her with a
throw pillow. "Fine. Most of my ideas. Now, shoo. I'm in need of
beauty sleep."

Katarina laughed all the
way to the bedroom doorway. She paused and glanced over her
shoulder. If not for Naia she wouldn't have anyone, let alone a
reason to laugh. "Naia?"

"Hmm?" Curled up under the
afghan, her head resting on a fluffy throw pillow, Naia didn't even
open her eyes.

"Thanks for convincing me
to do this."

"Welcome," Naia
mumbled.

"Zane! Watch
out!"

The inertial compensators
threw Zane against his seat in response to his co-pilot’s sudden
course correction. As his vision cleared, Zane's stomach clenched
at the site of a large asteroid receding in the forward view
screen.

"Are you trying to get us
killed? Since when do you nap while piloting?"

Zane swallowed the bile in
his throat.
Note to self, no telepathic conversations while
piloting the ship.
"Sorry. I wasn’t sleeping, but nonetheless
it was stupid to zone out without putting the computer guidance
system on first."