An Officer’s Duty (65 page)

Nodding, the Gatsugi picked up one of the sterile razor packets on the table. Opening it with his upper fingers, he made a small, careful cut on the palm of one of his lower hands. Ia cupped his injured hand in hers and focused, pouring some of her personal energy into his biology. The bleeding slowed and the centimeter-long wound clotted faster than it would have on its own, but not by much.

“Rrank 5,” the technician asserted. “Test your ownn biokinnetics, pllease.”

Picking a fresh packet, Ia obediently cut her own hand. Compared to the headaches induced by the Salik machine, the pain was a minor annoyance at best. She had it sealed and headed toward pink in half the time of the other cut, giving her a rating of Rank 9.

The technician remained unaffected by the sight of her blood. Undoubtedly he was used to it. The technician was an honorary member of both the Seer’s Council of the Solarican Empire and a technician in the employment of the PsiLeague of the Terran United Planets. Mostly because both organizations’ charter rules stated that a non-psi should be the one to operate the testing machinery, guaranteeing non-interference with the results.

Of the thirty-plus beings occupying the chamber, only Chaplain Benjamin and four of the Solaricans—the technician, the two guards at the door, and a male felinoid who had come in with a cart loaded with fresh cups and pitchers of water—were not there as gifted representatives of the various psychic organizations in the Alliance.

To test her telepathic abilities with the minds of her own species, another volunteer took the place of the Gatsugi, a Human clad in the dark red uniform of the V’Dan Empire. This was a gift she had exercised even less than her xenopathy, and it showed during the testing. With a touch, it was a 7; without, it was merely a 5.

“Annny otherr gifts?” the Solarican technician asked her.

Razor still in hand, Ia nodded. “Pyrokinesis, telekinesis, battlecognition, electrokinesis, postcognition, and precognition.”

Scoffing noises erupted across the room. Even the chairwoman of the meeting, Meioa Nik’ikk, chittered skeptically. Her translator box obligingly emphasized her disbelief in
modulated Terranglo. “That would be three more gifts than the greatest of us! No one has just one ability,
yes
, but no one has
that
many!”

Ia let go of the flat, rectangular blade in her hand. It floated upward. So did Meioa Nik’ikk, the Human volunteer still seated across from her, a dozen other startled aliens, several tables, assorted chairs, and all the unopened packets of razors. This was one she had definitely exercised over the years, pushing it as high and hard as she could make the gift grow. Sheer survival had demanded she develop it to its fullest.

“Rrrank 17,” the technician stated phlegmatically, though the tip of his tail twitched. “Is that sheer strrength, or manipulationn as wellll?”

Not wanting to exhaust herself, Ia set everyone and everything back down gently, sending the used razor into the biohazard bin. “Sheer strength. Manipulation…I used fifty, sixty glass shards to slit the throats of various enemy combatants back on Sallha. I could even play a full symphony on a concert wall harp, if we had one available.”

Craning his neck, the technician looked around the room. He pointed at the cart. “Lllevitate those cups, meioa. Individually.”

Ia nodded. Three of the stacks of cups on the water-cart lifted up, separated, and whirled around the room over their heads. Four pitchers of water followed. Water sloshed and poured, angling in long arcs that made the sentient below them flinch, though every drop hit its target. Ia brought the display to a quick end, pouring the water back into the descending pitchers as the fifty or so cups came back to a rest on the cart. All save for one, which she topped up and floated her way.

“It is still Rrank 17,” he confirmed while she caught the cup, sipping from it. “Next?”

She held up her left hand, and the air above it caught fire. That was gauged at Rank 8. She followed it, still drinking from her cup, by a crackle of miniature lightning that consumed her arm down to the elbow and glowed brightly enough to make everyone wince.

The technician, his fur fluffed by proximity to the static energy she was arcing, phlegmatically announced her electrokinesis as “Rrrrank 19.”

The V’Dan male shook his head, staring at Ia. “That’s impossible. Even Mama Mishka is only a Rank 18 at the highest. Is that thing calibrated correctly?”

The technician didn’t even flick an ear at that. “We have alrrready ascertained that it is callibrated, meioa.” He glanced at Ia. “Though I wonnder how her otherrr gifts rrrank, if these arre her weakest.”

“The remainder are considerably stronger,” Ia stated. She nodded at the Salik machine. “If you don’t want your KI machine short-circuited from an input overload, you’ll have to plug me into
that
thing first.”

“Well, aren’t
you
just full of yourself?” the Human quipped. He started to say more, but subsided under the weight of Ia’s steady gaze.

“I think we’ll have to forgo testing my battlecognition for now,” Ia said once she was sure he wouldn’t scoff any further. “I’m in no shape physically to get into a fight, just yet. Suffice to say, it’s stronger than my electrokinetic abilities. Which leaves us with postcognition and precognition. I’ll need a volunteer to help me test those abilities.”

Meioa Nik’ikk addressed that. “Postcognition can be verified through object-reading, but precognition is…nebulous,” she chittered. “Why would you need a volunteer?”

Ia looked at the arachnoid. “Come with me, and find out for yourself.” She looked back at the technician and lifted her chin at the array of salvaged headgear sitting on the table behind him. “Hand me one of the Human-sized helmets, and plug me in. Set the machine to full strength. I’ll try to make it quick for the sake of the others, but you’ll definitely want it running before I begin.”

He shrugged and twisted in his seat, selecting one of the wire-draped crowns. Taking the metallic, clunky circlet from the Solarican, Ia settled it on her head. She strapped it in place, then glanced at the K’katta heading the meeting.

“Well? Aren’t you going to come over here?”

“I should remain neutral in these proceedings,” Nik’ikk demurred. “Do we have another volunteer?”

The Solarican by the now quiescent water cart sneeze-laughed. “I will volunnteerr.”

“
You
will not interfere with these measurements,” Ia
countered sharply. She pointed at the Solarican server. “Guards, make sure that male does not leave this chamber. Keep your eyes on him at all times.”

“You are rrrather presummptuous, Human,” one of the higher-ranked Solarican psis countered, lacing her clawed fingers together as she stared at Ia. “What makes you thinnk you can give orrders, here?”

“Aside from the fact I am now a War Princess of Solarica, and we
are
technically in a war zone? You’re asking the wrong question, meioa. You
should
be asking how
he
got into a closed meeting,” Ia retorted dryly. “But that can wait. Right now, I need volunteers. Preferably more than one, so you can countercheck with each other on what you’re about to see.”

“Fine,” the Human across from her offered, the one who had subjected himself to her attempts at same-species telepathy. “I’ll do it. Nothing quite like a skeptical witness, wouldn’t you agree? I’m certainly strong enough to think through the anti-machine, provided we don’t take too long. Anyone else?”

Two others volunteered, a Tlassian and a K’kattan. They moved up close enough that the K’kattan could touch Ia’s blue-clad leg with a foreclaw and the Tlassian could touch her shoulder with his callused, scaled fingers. The Human scooted close enough to grip Ia’s left hand. Nodding at the technician, Ia braced herself for the pain.

“Postcognition first,” she stated, and winced as grey mist stabbed through her head the moment he turned it on. Gritting her teeth, she grabbed the minds of the three touching her and dragged them onto the timeplains, aiming each one into a point in that particular person’s past. Specifically, a strong memory from each one’s childhood…and then she swapped them, dunking the Tlassian into the Human’s stream, the Human into the K’kattan’s, and so forth…and followed them with a third swapping.

When they were reeling from that, she dragged them far, far into the past. Into the dawn of V’Dan civilization. Only for a few moments, though; mindful of her reserves, Ia didn’t join them herself. She also let them see only a few moments of the event she had targeted before she pulled them out of the river-scene. A lift of her hand and a slash of her finger instructed the technician to turn off the anti-psi machine.

Her gaze wasn’t on the volunteers, however. It was on the Solarican cart-pusher, who had slumped against the back wall, eyes wide and ears flat. If he had been Human, she knew he would have been pale and shaking. As it was, he did not look well.

Of the three volunteers surrounding her, the V’Dan was the most shaken. He gaped at her. “That…That was the Valley. That was the Exodus! I saw the
Exodus
…Everyone coming through the Gate of Heaven, animals, people…It was as clear as I see this room!” he exclaimed. “This wasn’t holokinesis, was it? Some sort of illusion? It
had
to have been…”

Ia shook her head, looking at her fellow Human. “No illusion, meioa. Just pure postcognition, projected directly into your brain. Or rather, with your brain pulled into Time itself. You
were
there, seeing it through the eyes of one of the overseers of the Exodus from Earth. His name was…?”

“Nahmed Ik Mann,” the Tlassian confirmed at her prompting. “He wasss counnting flockss of sssheep…but thinnking about the earthquakesss back home. The tectonnnic shifting mentioned in the Book of the Sssh’nai. But before that, we sssaw our hatchling yearsss. The day I broke my firssst tooth, the meioa-e’sss firsst hunnt…”

The V’Dan shook his head. “No…no. It’s a trick. It
has
to be a trick—holokinesis, telepathy, some sort of combination—well, not the first part, not my seventh birthing-day. I remember that day very clearly. But surely…”

Ia shook her head again, a slow back and forth that countered his denial.

The technician looked up from his portable workstation. “Based on the interferrrence from the Salik machinnne…my calculations place that gift, whateverrr it was, at approximately Rrrank 54.”

“Confirrrmed,” agreed another voice. It was the female Solarican a few tables away, the one who had double-checked his earlier calculations on the suppression rate of the anti-psi machine. “Her Postcognnnitive Rrrank is 54.”

That caused an instant commotion. Ia endured it up to a point. When the noise threatened to give her a non-machine-induced headache, she grabbed for their attention with a short, sharp shout.

“
Enough!
…Calm yourselves, meioas. The KI machine
is
calibrated, the calculations
are
accurate, given the anti-psi machine’s fully demonstrated interference capabilities, and I
am
that slagging powerful. Now, if you don’t mind, my
strongest
gift has yet to be tested. So, if we could kindly have some peace and quiet?”

“The KI monitorr registerred her gift at 13.7,” the technician stated in the silence that followed her words. “At the calculated suppression rate of approximately 3.9, the math places her Rrrrank at 54. These nnnumbers are slllightly approximate, meioas…but they do not llie.”

“I saw the meter move that high myself, even with the anti-psi machine fully active,” Nik’ikk agreed, shifting restlessly on the table serving as her podium, “but I do have difficulty believing it. Meioa Ia, you say this is
not
your strongest gift?”

“No, Meioa Nik’ikk. It is merely an offshoot of my strongest gift, like how xenopathy is often an offshoot of telepathy, or telepathy an offshoot of empathy,” Ia confirmed.

“Demonstrate your strongest gift to us, then,” the K’katta instructed her.

“Turn on the machine again,” Ia instructed. The Tlassian touched her shoulder and the other K’katta her leg, but the V’Dan hesitated when she held out her hand. Lifting one brow, she challenged him. “Or are you afraid of what else you might see?”

Tightening his mouth, he placed his fingers once more in hers. Waiting just long enough for the machine to spew its counteracting waves, Ia plunged them back into the timeplains. This time she brought them in carefully, yanking them out of their streams quickly and sending them racing high over the streams, like a quartet of birds flying over a swamp-soaked briar patch.

This time, she showed them everything, if from a distance. Starting with their own mist-shrouded streams, she pulled back, and back, and back, revealing the near-infinite tangle of intertwining lives, and all their side-possibilities, in near-endless configurations.

Something
banged
at the farthest edges of her awareness. The mist vanished, giving them an even clearer view of all the interwoven pathways. Diving back down, Ia dropped each of them into their immediate future, giving them a glimpse
of three memorable moments, of conversations later on that day, moments that would convince them beyond a doubt that she was indeed able to foresee what would and could happen.

Pulling back from those intimate views, she released each mind in turn. In turn, they each drew in a shaken breath, releasing her from their grasp. They also coughed. The circuits of the KI machine had exploded, overloaded when the buffering of the anti-psi machine had been switched off. A smoky haze now permeated the room. Ia looked at the technician, who was calmly rechecking his calculations on his workpad.

“Well?” she asked him, trying not to breathe too deeply. They were lucky the fire suppression system hadn’t activated, but the smoke was dissipating. “What’s my ranking?”

“I am…not completely surrre. The meter onnly goes up to 20,” he informed her. “The needle smacked the farr side of the window. A baseline guess would be…84? Prrrrobably higher, though. You, Meioa,” he added, directing his next comment at the K’katta overseeing the meeting, “owe me a nnew KI monitorrr.”