Fervor (22 page)

“
Is that all you can do?”
he asked desperately.
“What’s happening to me, Sarah? Why does it hurt like this? Why am I feeling things again, and why can’t you fix me?”

“
She can’t fix you because there’s nothing to fix,”
Francis replied, joining the conversation. He clung to his own doorframe with gritted teeth, fighting his own agony.
“You were right, Sam. We’re going to have to explain a few things to Nathan, carefully. Your friend’s device appears to have had some of the effects that we discussed earlier, without anything in the way of a warning. Nathan, you and I are going to have a very private little-one-on-one. This is extremely important. I’m telling you to let only me in, once you have put your walls up with as much strength as possible. I want you to do that right away.”

The two young men seemed to go off into a world of their own making, their thoughts vigorously protected against any intrusion. Under the circumstances, Nathan normally would have not been able to achieve the level of concentration required for such effective walls, but the compulsion from Francis’s orders made it much easier, despite his pain.

Sarah rose from the floor and backed away until she was standing beside Sam again. She reached for his hand for some sort of reassurance. They could feel what their friends were going through, by means of the connection, but they were not living it themselves. It made them both feel sad and a little guilty that the discomfort from their transformations was mild in comparison.

The conversation between Nathan and Francis was a lengthy one. When they were done, Nathan rose silently and shakily to his feet. He staggered back to his room to get dressed, averting his eyes away from the others as much as possible.

“
What did you say to him?”
Sarah inquired.

“
I’ll tell you in a moment,”
Francis thought at her.
“Give him the time to set off on his circuit and I’ll explain everything. I don’t want to block him out until he is out of the house. Right now, I can’t predict what could happen around here, and I may need to preserve what I have left of my focus in order to deal with anything unusual that crops up. Once Nathan is gone, I can relax a little, and I’ll tell you what I told him.”

Although it was not showing as much as it did with the Watcher, Sam and Sarah knew that the Teller was going through some of the same torment as what Nathan had been experiencing. His stance was shaky and his face was drawn.

“
His circuit?”
Sam objected.
“He can barely walk. How do you expect him to complete his circuit?”

“
It will definitely take him longer than usual, but he’ll manage. The compulsion will help him force his way through any pain or discomfort, and I reinforced it when we were talking,”
Francis countered.

“
Did you want me to see what I can do to help you,”
Sarah offered.
“It won’t be much, but it may improve things a little for you.”

“
I
don’t think that there will be time for that, Sarah, but I appreciate the offer,”
Francis stated. The three of them watched as Nathan returned, moving with great difficulty, and made his way out of the front door. He did not look at any of them as he passed through the room, grimacing as he went.

After a few moments had passed, Sam turned to face Francis.

“
So what
did
you tell him?”
he asked.

“
Well, to sum it up, I shared with him something that maybe I should have shared with you sooner, but I was afraid of the consequences. Now that this Elliot of yours is here, there’s no
avoiding it anymore. I told Nathan that he was being used by the people that abandoned us here – that they wanted to keep tabs on all of us on Fervor, but for their own safety, they decided it was best to observe from afar. As long as he is a Watcher, anytime he talks to us without the proper walls, and anytime he looks at us, with the way that we are changing, or looks at Elliot, there’s the risk that one of the scholars will learn what’s going on here. For our sake, he’s going to have to keep his walls up the best that he can when he talks to us – no more open conversations with him anymore, and he will try to avoid looking at us if at all possible. He should even avoid looking at his own reflection, if he can.”

“
Oh, poor Nathan,”
Sarah murmured, distressed at his plight.
“It will be like he is blind by choice and isolated, too. He’ll be miserable.”

“
No, he won’t,”
Francis insisted, allowing himself to sink to the floor as sweat beaded across his face.
“He’ll be doing that to protect us, and as a Watcher, protecting us is as much a compulsion as following his circuit. He might feel a little lonely, but as long as we all make an effort to keep in touch with him behind closed doors, and make sure that he is kept abreast of everything that is going on in a way that the scholars can’t see, he’ll get by. It will only be temporary, I hope, until we sort things out with your technician friend.”

Sarah could not resist the urge to help their Teller any longer. She darted forward in a slightly clumsy manner and began looking for any relief that she might be able to bring him.

“
You don’t have to be so stoic,”
she chided.

Sam recognized that Francis did welcome her soothing touch, and that it was his own reaction to the contact that he was worried about. The responses from the Teller’s body were unpredictable at the moment because of the withdrawal of the stasis, and far beyond his control. If there was one thing that Sam could define as a solid trait when describing Francis, it would be the fact that he felt the need to maintain a certain level of control. He was not displaying it as outwardly as Nathan had been, but these changes were proving to be as hard on Francis, in a different way, as they were on the Watcher.

“
What did you mean when you said that they chose to observe us from afar for their own safety?”
Sam demanded.

“
Understand, I don’t know that much more than you do, Sam,”
Francis remarked
. “They only told us things that they thought were relevant to us as Tellers. They did want us to watch out for some dangerous behaviour. Apparently, one of the reasons they chose to try this with children in the first place is because when they had attempted this on a smaller scale in the past, with both children and adults on separate occasions, the children responded much better, and there were fewer problems. With the adults...supposedly, they could not adapt to being introduced abruptly to the connection properly. Some of them went insane, and the situation became violent. I was instructed to watch for that in all of you. They rarely saw similar effects in the children, and only the older ones, but they had been working with very small samples. It was still a possibility.”

“
And that was the reason for the stasis then. They were worried what would happen when we became adults,”
Sarah interjected, glancing up from her attempts to fix Francis. She had done what she could for the moment, and it had not helped the Teller anymore than it had Nathan. Sam noticed she seemed to be persisting with Francis, however, reaching for something more, when she had been willing to concede defeat fairly quickly with Nathan.

“
But Elliot was worried about what would happen when the stasis came down, and I got the impression that they wouldn’t be able to maintain it forever,”
Sam added
. “Like the longer that it was up, the harder it would be on us when they finally removed it. It has only been five
years, and look at what Nathan was going through. They didn’t really think things through, did they, Francis? We were just lab rats to them. They wanted to see if they could make this work, but they didn’t really care what the implications would be for us afterwards. How long were they planning to keep this going? What were they intending to do with us when all of this was over?”

“
I don’t know
,” the Teller admitted reluctantly.
“I told you, they didn’t share as much with me as you all seem to think that they did. I really have no idea why they were doing this, other than they wanted to test the connection on a larger scale. Maybe your Elliot can tell us more. He seems to have more clues about what exactly is going on.”

Francis paused and looked at Sarah, who was still fussing over him, with a frown. He pushed her away gently.
“That’s enough of that. Time’s the only thing that’s going to sort the rest of this out. Save your efforts for Fiona. I’m sure that she will need your help soon enough.”

Sam was not sure why, but he could see that Sarah was not satisfied with leaving things at that. She had been prepared to admit defeat with Nathan after limited success, but there was something else bothering her as far as Francis was concerned. Of course, now that the Teller had actually directed her to stop, there was nothing that she could do about it other than obey.

Deciding that he had more pressing matters to deal with, Sam instead decided to take advantage of the fact that Francis was being forthcoming, and ask him more questions.

“
What about the problems that we had with our senses, the ones that are gone now thanks to the Languorite? Can you explain those?”

Francis was in the process of shrugging, and claiming ignorance in this, too, when there was a terrible shriek that rang through both the house and their heads, filled with fear and pain. Fiona had always been the worst of them all when it came to controlling her thoughts and restricting her responses. She was the most likely of the five to push without focus or concern as to who would be hearing what she was saying or how loud and disruptive she was being within the connection. That had worked in their favour as far as attracting Elliot’s attention was concerned, but it was seriously threatening to expose them all at the moment. Francis leapt on this immediately.

“
Quiet!”
he commanded her harshly.
“Get a hold of yourself! Do you want to give us away?”
Fiona’s frantic cries instantly changed to subdued whimpers.

“
Francis...please,”
Sarah pleaded.
“Go a little easier on her. She’s going through something similar to what you and Nathan are, and we’ve all seen how she has a lower pain threshold than you two.”
She stood and was headed for Fiona’s door when there was a second disturbance as a now familiar figure appeared in Sarah’s doorway.

“
Loud...it’s so loud... make it stop...make it stop.”

Elliot stood swaying at the entrance to Sarah’s room, clutching at his head. His discomfort was even greater than Fiona’s, if that were possible. Sam realized what was happening. Until Elliot had made the trip to Fervor, he had only been exposed to the connection from a great distance where he could hear those who were strongest, such as Sarah, or the occasional outburst from those who gave exaggerated pushes without any control, like Fiona. Even though the connection was much quieter than it was when Sam had first been introduced to it, it was still proving to be very troublesome for the man. Francis had already explained the kind of risks such exposure could pose to mature adults, even a weak latent such as Elliot.

Sam knew that he had to act fast. He remembered how he had put up blocks for Fiona, the time that her extreme reaction had led Elliot to them. He wondered if he could do that again, but for Elliot instead of Fiona this time. It was worth a try if it would allow their technician friend to preserve his sanity. They still needed him in more ways than one, if they ever hoped to escape from Fervor and from the scrutiny of the scholars.

Sam threw up his walls around Elliot, giving the man a sense of reprieve. It was only a temporary measure, but Sam was depending on Francis to be able to give Elliot enough instruction for him to erect walls of his own in the interim, even if they would be a little flimsy. How strong they were would not matter that much as long as no one tried to push through them, and even if someone did, if they used sufficient restraint then they would not overpower the technician in the process.

Elliot gazed at Sam with his eyes filled with gratitude. The man had been exposed to a much smaller, much weaker version of the connection before, but he had never been taught to block others out, and had been completely unprepared for the overwhelming rush and chaos when he had first come into range of Fervor’s connection. That was what had caused him to crash his hover, and not the storm. Sam could pick this up from all of Elliot’s surface thoughts while he was sheltered within Sam’s walls.