Hidden Faults (24 page)

“
But I don’t know anything about it. I
told
the security investigators.” I leaned away from him a little, towards Kir, who put his hand on my thigh.

“Calm down, Jodi. We know you know nothing. But that doesn’t mean you can reveal nothing. Oh dear, you’re becoming distressed. Jeyle, enough for now. Jodi, finish your meal in peace, and then Kir can give you the tour. I’m sorry,” he said, bowing a little. “It’s been so long since I was freed from prison myself, I forget how long it takes to recover.”

Kir’s fingers gripped my thigh rather painfully.
Ouch.

Um, sorry.
He let go, but I felt the tension in his body. “Eat up, got lots to show you.”

Dede lifted a finger. “The clinic first, if you don’t mind, Jodi. Just a final check over. Won’t take more than a few minutes.”

I agreed to Dede’s request with a nod, but my thoughts were on Kir, and what I hadn’t been told. I sensed some murky undercurrents here, and I was aware that I was essentially trapped on a remote mountain with a group of people I’d never met before and knew exactly nothing about. I didn’t like the sound of these Weadenisis at all.

They’re fine, Jodi. Without them, we’d be fucked.

I turned to Kir, thinking the automatic rebuke for him listening to my thoughts, but not really blaming him.
Do you trust everyone here?

Yeah. But some of them don’t trust me. Some of them don’t like me much at all.

Why?

No one likes the garbage man sitting at their dinner table.

What?

But he bent down to finish his lunch and wouldn’t answer.

Neither would Dede when I asked her what the hell was up with Kir, after she’d finished her checks and assured herself I was fine.

“It’s his story to tell, Jodi.” She paused for a few seconds. “Okay, he says I can tell you a little. Quiz him about this and I’ll make your life a misery—just warning you.”

“Looks like the only person around here not allowed to have secrets is me.”

“Yes, I suppose that’s fair comment. But I’ve known Kir for nine years and I’ve known you less than nine days. You’re my patient. He’s my dear friend. Forgive me for caring more about him than you.”

For such a kind, smiling person, her eyes could look incredibly cold.

“At least that’s honest,” I said. “I don’t want to hear anything he doesn’t want me to know. But I feel like I’m walking through a minefield without a map.”

The fierceness in her expression died, and she smiled more genuinely. “You are, and that’s the truth. But it would have been so much worse nine years ago. Kir’s the youngest of us, except for you. There are three of us here who were imprisoned as children—all of them were very badly damaged, but Kir probably suffered the worst. When we were freed, he wasn’t sane, to the point where serious consideration was given to wiping him.”

“Wiping?”

“It’s a technique that was used sometimes on overloaded empaths, and more rarely, on paranormals who had developed such severe personality disorders that there was no helping them, and the choice was between erasing their personalities and memories back to infancy, or killing them. Kir was very close to being erased, just out of mercy. The Weadenisis suggested they try some of their advanced therapy techniques. None of us had that kind of knowledge, so it was that or erasure.”

She clenched her hands tightly on her knees, the memory apparently still haunting her after all this time. “He was in so much pain, it was excruciating for me to be around him, for Hermi, and our other mental talents. Anyway, he spent over a year in the Weadenal, and they performed an absolute miracle on him, made him functional, preserved the strength in him, while helping him to let go so much of what was hurting him. When he returned to us, Jeyle and Hermi more or less adopted him—understand, he’s thirty-two, but was nothing like that in his emotional development back then. Jeyle and Hermi educated him, helped him socialise, and he’s strong—he’s done so much to heal himself. If you’d seen him when he first got out of prison, you’d have thought he was a wild animal.”

I thought of Kir’s dark, emotionally open eyes and his generous soul, and cringed at the pain he’d endured. “He’s amazing. I don’t understand why people don’t like him.”

“
Because they’re
fools
,” she said, almost spitting. “Jodi, he’s improved remarkably, but he’s still a fragile personality.”

“Is he listening to this?”

“No. I’ve extended my personal shield around our thoughts.”

“What?”

She gave me a forebearing look. “It’s an advanced technique. Just take it that he can’t hear us, okay? Anyway, you need to be careful, don’t push, and respect his boundaries. Think about all the triggers prison has left you with in a few months, and imagine what it was like for him, in prison for sixteen years. I’d trust him with my life. You need to prove to me I could trust his with you.”

“I don’t want to hurt him. He’s done so much for me. I’m just...confused.”

She patted my arm. “I know. But I also know you’ve got a good heart and good instincts. Just don’t treat him like a freak. Too many people have done that,” she added darkly.

“Some of those people are here?”

“
Some. Now, he’s waiting for you. I’ll put a mineral supplement out for you in the living area. You’re anaemic as I thought, but not desperately. Just don’t skip meals, and make sure you use the daylight lounge. Kir will show you. Other than that, enjoy feeling well.”

“Oh, I do.”

“And keep an eye out for your powers returning. Jeyle will be most put out if you set fire to anything.”

I agreed to be careful, though it worried me somewhat that I could do exactly as she jokingly warned, and then she sent me on my way. I found Kir hanging around the door when I came out. I came up to him and wrapped my arms around him, so I could kiss him.

“She told you what a mess I am?” he asked, sliding his hands around my waist.

“I won’t ask about it. I don’t need to.” I kissed him again, savouring the taste and feel of his lips. “Okay, show me your playground.”

I’d said it lightly, but it was truer than I realised. It really was like some giant’s folly, with secret nooks and treasure caverns, and so many unexpected things. The pride and joy, and essential to the health and wellbeing of the residents, was the huge daylight lounge. It slightly resembled the hydroponics area in the prison with the large daylight-simulating lamps and high ceilings, but this was a haven. Huge exotic ferns grew in massive tubs, cosseted by gentle water sprays that kept the air humid and pleasant without becoming foetid. Several long leather sofas and low tables invited the visitor to rest, read, sleep if they wished. To one side, a fountain played water over a figure of a duga, its fins outstretched as if to splash through the ocean spray. Glass sculptures nestled in cunning nooks on the wall, and flat growing plants trickled down it. I wanted to sit and rest for a while, and Kir happily allowed it, taking the time to tell me what other things this ancient and apparently endless facility concealed.

We’d only seen part of it, Kir explained. Naturally occurring lava tubes and fissures had been patiently excavated and expanded over centuries, the refuge inhabited, abandoned, but always remembered, the knowledge passed down by telepaths and never written down.

“S’what’s so dangerous about them locking all the paras up,” he said. “We got no continuity going. We were lucky the Weadenisis preserved this for us, but if they hadn’t, we’d have lost it. Paranormals got to have a sanctuary, cos governments turn on us all the time. But they ain’t ever got rid of us completely,” he add with a flash of white teeth.

“Not for want of trying,” I murmured.

Wind supplied the energy in this enclave, though some others drew on geothermal generation. Energy and water were plentiful, but everything else had to be brought in. They had learned lessons from the prisons, at least. A thriving hydroponics garden operated on one of the lower levels. It made me shiver as we passed it after our little break in the daylight lounge. Kir didn’t suggest we go in there, but he showed me everything else—workshops, a distillery, huge stores of food and non-perishable, and freezers full of meat and dairy products.

“Where does it all come from?”

“
We get supplies every couple of months. Comes up through the mountains, and the TKs move it up here. All happens at night so we don’t ping no surveillance. We have to be careful. Can’t let our heat signature get distinctive. We cool everything before it gets vented. We don’t throw anything away. All the water’s recycled, all the organic waste is composted, and the inorganic stuff gets reused or burned.”

“And you have communications?”

“Oh yeah. That’s what the Weadenisis set this place up for. We got connections all over the planet. But we ain’t got into some of the key systems, like the prison records. They tightened all that stuff up after we was sprung. Come on, I want to show you something. This is my place.”

We travelled along more narrow corridors and took three sets of metal stairs before we reached ‘his place.’ It turned out to be a fully equipped carpentry workshop, complete with lathe and other power equipment all carefully stored. Furniture in various stages of construction stood around—chairs, a chest of drawers, a table like those used in the daylight lounge—and on the workbenches I saw smaller objects probably intended for kitchen use. Timber and boards were stacked neatly at the far end of the room. There seemed to be enough to supply a small settlement with all its needs.

I stared at all the beautifully carved wood, the sheen luxurious in the bright yellow lighting, the smell of shavings rich, fresh, seductive. Kir seemed to find them seductive too, because he ran his hands through a metal tin full of them as we talked.

“You make furniture.”

“Yeah. Other things too. Bowls, containers and stuff.” He waved at the workbench where such things sat waiting to be finished. “Whatever needs doing. I learned in prison. One of the TKs in the other group taught me some more. He’s got a shop over their side. Ferige’s one of my friends.”

“So not one of the ones who don’t trust you?”

“
No.” He picked up a handful of shavings and let them trickle from his fingers. “They use these to make stuff smell nice. If I let them, they’d turn all my wood into shavings. Here.” He walked over to a cupboard and opened it, pulled out a box. “I make these sometimes. Don’t know why. Ain’t no kids here to play with them.”

I lifted one of the objects out—tiny carved animals, some naturalistic, some whimsical, all delicate and finely finished.

“Marra’s tits, Kir, these are gorgeous. Where did you get the ideas for them?” They had to have taken hours each, and there were a dozen in this box, all carefully packed in wool.

“Um, when I was little...before prison, I had books and books of animals. Loved them.”

“And you remembered them from all that time ago?”

“Yeah. Got total recall.” I looked at him in surprise. “Ain’t always a gift,” he said, shrugging. “That’s what them Weadenisis helped me with. Forgetting. I ain’t real good at forgetting, and sometimes I have to.”

I cupped his cheek and kissed it. “You’re amazing.”

He flushed. “No, I ain’t. You can keep one of them, if you like it. No one seems to care about them much. Jeyle, she and Hermi got a few. Dede has some in the clinic. They’re kids’ things.”

“They’re really not,” I murmured. I chose a baby barchin, curled up asleep on its wool bed, the detail simply astonishing. I swore I could see its eyelashes. “It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. The most exquisite gift anyone’s ever given me.”

His eyes smiled more than his mouth did. Were people here so dull they couldn’t see what a treasure they had?

“You’re looking tired, Jodi.”

“I am, a bit. I might lie down for a couple of hours.”

“Uh...want some company? You might faint or something.”

“Subtle, Kir,” I said, and he grinned. “Yes, quite right.”

He started to tug on my arm but I resisted. “Wait....”

“What?”

“You’re okay with sleeping with me? I’m not sick any more.”

“I know. Come on, you need the rest.”

I let him lead me out of the room. It was all...so cosy, so easy with him. It bothered me a little but he seemed sure, and it wasn’t like I hated being with him, so why not go with it and see where it led me?

My little barchin sat on the side table where I could see it as I lazily stroked Kir’s hair, both of us languid and comfortable after sex.

“Six months ago, I was a doctor. I knew exactly what I wanted to do with my life. Now what am I?” I murmured.

His hard, clever hands cupped my backside as he stared into my eyes. “What do you want to be?”

“A doctor. I always did want to be one, even when I was small. Don’t see you needing me that much.”