Teleporter (a Hyllis family story #2) (28 page)

“Did he say where they went?”

Lizeth shrugged, “I don’t think so. Maybe he wasn’t there when they left?”

Prichard said, “Well, they seem to be gone all right. There’s blood here and there as if maybe they got in a fight, maybe with one another, but…” He looked off down the road, then back at Lizeth, “It seems pretty out of character, them leaving the women behind. They also left a lot of weapons behind.” He shook his head doubtfully, “Mercenaries leaving weapons seems about as likely as a bank robber leaving money!”

Lizeth pursed her lips, “What do you think happened?” Inside, she was thinking about how well Tarc threw knives.
Could he have killed
all
of them?
It seemed impossible.

Prichard blew out a breath, “Hell,
I
don’t know. I guess we should just be glad they’re gone, huh?” He looked around at the men with him. “Assuming they really are, that is. I suppose the sons of bitches could have just moved on to another farm.”

The men nodded back at him, though several glanced back toward the farm, obviously puzzled. One said, “If they moved to another farm, why didn’t they take the women? Or that big stack of swords?”

Prichard shrugged. After a bit he turned back to Lizeth, “Are the girls ready to go yet?”

She shrugged, “I’ll go see.”

Lizeth paused at the fire and studied Tarc. He sat leaning back against the tree his eyes closed. Lizeth would have thought he was asleep, except the expression on his face made it look like he was brooding. His eyes opened, pointed right at her as if he had known exactly where she was standing despite his closed eyes.

His brilliant blue eyes.

Eyes that suddenly seemed much older than they had a few days ago. Lizeth had been thinking of him as just a boy, but somehow… now he looked like a man. A surprisingly handsome man.

Lizeth blinked and reined in her thoughts, “Is the tea ready?”

“Daussie just came and got it,” he said in a quiet voice, sounding ineffably sad.

“You upset about killing all those guys?”

Tarc’s eyes widened as if in dismay, but a moment later calmed again, “Night before last?” His expression returned to the sad look he’d held before, “Yeah.”

Lizeth squatted down in front of him, caught his eyes and held them. She tilted her head, “And last night too,” she whispered huskily.

Eyes suddenly hollow, he whispered back, “How… how did you know?”

She shrugged, “Those kinds of guys wouldn’t have left the girls behind. Leastwise, not alive.” She quirked a sad smile, “Our guys found a bunch of weapons they’d ‘left behind’ too.”

Tarc stared at her, a dismayed look on his face. “So now
everyone’s
going to know?”

She gave a quiet little snort and a sad smile. “No, they’d never even
consider
the possibility that
you
killed those guys, and, if you told them you did it, they wouldn’t believe it.
They’ve
never seen you throw a knife.” After a moment she continued, “And your secret’s safe with me.”

“Oh,” he said, looking immeasurably relieved. “Nyssa said she wouldn’t talk either.” After a moment, he said, “I used to think I didn’t want to be a healer. But, I
really
don’t want to be a killer. I’m going to dedicate my life to helping people and…” he glanced away and his eyes focused as if looking into the distance, even though he couldn’t see past the nearby trees and underbrush, “I’m
never
going to kill again.”

Lizeth studied him for a while longer, then picked up his hand, “I don’t know Tarc… some people just need killin’… For instance,” she grinned sadly at him, “those sons of bitches you’ve been killin’ the past couple of nights.” She squeezed gently. “They
really
needed it.”

After a moment, Tarc squeezed back and gave a little shrug with the other shoulder.

The End

I hope you liked the book!

If so, please give it a positive review on Amazon.

Try the next in the series, to be published someday soon.

This is a comment on the “science” in this science fiction novel. I have always been partial to science fiction that posed a “what if” question. Not everything in the story has to be scientifically plausible, but you suspend your disbelief regarding one or two things that aren’t thought to be possible. Essentially you ask, “what if” something (such as faster than light travel) were possible, how might that change our world?

So, in this story the central question is, “What if someone really could teleport something with their mind? Certainly, teleportation is a staple of science fiction. Many of the stories posit someone who can move themselves or other large objects from one location to another. This story asks, “What if only small objects could be teleported? And they couldn’t even be teleported very far?

The answer to that question is, to my way of thinking, “Wow!” You could do a lot of amazing things, especially some amazing medical procedures. Like anything, there is potential to not only help others, but to do harm as well.

One thing that giving much thought to this question makes evident is that, unfortunately, no magician can actually move a pea from one inverted cup to another with their mind. If they really could do that, surely they could find more amazing, wonderful and remunerative things to do with their power than showing off for audiences. 

Some readers have been interested in the “rules” I’m trying to follow in these stories. As implied in the story, the capability of Daussie’s teleportation drops off (linearly) with distance, both the distance she is from the teleported object and the distance she is teleporting the object. Below are some examples to give an idea of what she can do at which distances.

If she’s 1 foot away she can move a 3.4 gram object (a nickel weighs 5 grams) one foot after she focuses for one second. If she’s four feet away it would take four seconds

Thus at a distance of one foot she can move-

0.034g 100ft in 1 sec

0.34g 10 ft. in 1 sec

3.4g 1 foot in 1 sec - 2ft in 2 sec -4ft in 4 sec

34g 1 foot in 10 sec

340 g 1 ft. in 100 sec

3.4 kg 1 ft. in 16.6 mins

34 kg 1 ft. in 2.8 hrs.

During this story, she’s still learning to do teleportation, so is only about 1/10
th
to 1/5
th
as effective as the list above would indicate.

Tarc and Daussie’s sensory abilities diminish with distance and are better for warm objects than for cool ones. Thus Tarc can feel human temperature objects out to about 200 meters and Daussie out to 225 meters. They can sense room temperature objects weakly at 135 meters (the “image” they get is much higher quality when they are close) and fires at 400 meters. The sun is really hot so they always know where it is, even though it’s incredibly far away.

For fun I’d like to point out that Daussie could have undone the bonds on her wrists by using her talent to remove little pieces of rope until she could break it. But this is just the kind of thing a person won’t think of in the heat of the moment (most people, when their brakes fail, don’t think to put on their emergency brake, down shift, or turn off the engine). Some of you were probably gnashing your teeth because you
did
think of it though.

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the editing and advice of Gail Gilman, Nora Dahners, Elene Trull, Mike Alsobrook, Hamilton Elliott, Kat Lind, Jan Mattei, and Abiola Streete, each of whom significantly improved this story.