The Adventures of Deacon Coombs (13 page)

She moved closer. “I am very flattered that you believe that I have a warm, broad, pleasing smile.” Deacon blushed. He could read her, and she could read his thoughts without a single word being spoken.

Schlegar interrupted them. “Ah, I see that you two have met. Lyanna will be your tutor during your short time here. There is no better expert teacher on the abilities of the mind. She has impeccable credentials in her past assignments. I hope you will become friends.” With that statement, he took their hands and sealed them together, looking alternately at them. That both pleased and frightened him.

This side of the moon Brebouillis was in perpetual darkness, and the low gravitational forces could not retain any atmosphere. Deacon examined the weightless workers from his vantage point on the observation deck as they fluently finagled to repair a malfunction on the landing dock. Their motions reminded him of an ancient form of dance that he had witnessed once on Earth called ballet.

It had been an exhausting day between the arrival procedures and the discussions with Schlegar and Lyanna. His role as one of a number of secret weapons was reinforced by Lyanna. In intricate detail, she explained his gift in scientific, medical, and emotional constituents until he grew weary. That signaled an end to the day’s teachings, so he retreated to the space deck to locate and admire celestial objects. He sought to forget his mission temporarily by studying the depths of space from this foreign perspective. Making use of the charts in front of him, he identified heavenly objects one by one. His head jounced to and fro as he searched the skies until fatigue strangled his senses and he collapsed onto the sill.

In his dreams, shadowy figures pursued the
Heritage
. As he summoned Jim, Gem, and then Lyanna, he discovered that they were not on the craft. Ships harkened for his surrender. In his hesitance, they fired, hurling him across the deck, his body jostled about as the ship was then rammed from behind. He awakened to find Gem towering over him, shaking him to his senses.

Temisori

“Master Deacon!” said Gem. Deacon wiped his eyes and inspected the serene surroundings. “Doctor Schlegar requires your presence immediately.”

His watch was still set on Earth’s time; he realized that he had been asleep for three hours. Groggy, still petrified by his nightmare, he stumbled down the hallway with faithful Gem leading the way. Gem’s canter was so fluid, the body frame so proportional, that the Owler’s walk and physique could have easily been mistaken for a human’s from behind. In Schlegar’s main lab, he found the doctor and Lyanna intently staring at a wall monitor that snooped into the den of Temisori. The scene was discomforting, as Temisori was screaming like a lunatic, his mouth open and his jaw extended as the word was expelled from his body cavity. A closer examination of the subject showed that Temisori was bobbing his head up and down rhythmically. His red eyes bulged from their sockets.

At the top of his lungs, he screamed, “Ur… zel! Ur… zel!” The beginning of the scream was a gurgle of “Urrrr,” reaching a crescendo with a succinct yell of “zelll!”

“What does it mean?” Deacon inquired of Schlegar.

“Don’t know. It is certainly not of Aralian derivation.”

“Not of Earth, that I ever learned,” Lyanna retorted.

The three stood paralyzed as the Aralian ranted. Deacon strained to hear every syllable, lest the figure spurt out another word as a hint to the chant. Now Temisori whispered, falling into a corner of the room where he commenced to weep. Immediately, Schlegar ordered Owlers into the cell to bind him. But his strength was enormous, and from the viewer Deacon saw how he fought the guards with every ounce of newfound force. Eventually he was subdued. The Owlers administered a drug, and he collapsed into a lump.

“Temisori finally speaks to us to utter a single word over and over,” said Lyanna, “a word foreign to the three of us.” Quickly Schlegar changed the channels on the monitor to view the other crewmates of the
Sleigher
. All were silent. Deacon turned and immediately ordered Gem to search the data files for a reference to this word they had heard—
urzel
. The Owler admitted that it was not in any universally programmed vocabulary.

Schlegar turned on the mind analyzer. A single repeated pattern obtained from Temisori blitzed the screen. Lyanna and Schlegar expressed surprise. Deacon waited for their analysis in suspense.

“He is thinking the one word, the sole thought. No doubt about it.”

“Perhaps a word he heard on Nix!” Deacon said.

Schlegar alerted the Owler at Temisori’s station. “I want to be awakened again if Temisori starts to chant.”

“Yes, sir,” was Owler’s curt monotone reply.

Deacon moved closer to the screen. He thought,
Could
this
be
the
single
thought
that
occupies
his
brain?
He turned to find Lyanna staring at him. Quickly, he replied to her, “A dangerous habit around here! Thinking to myself.”

“What are you mumbling?” she asked. He remained silent. Temisori’s outburst had concluded, so the threesome each retired to other duties while Gem and Jim performed their analytical functions.

Upon waking

Deacon was submitted by Lyanna to a series of tests to determine the absolute strength of his mental powers. Passing from headset to obtuse contraptions, to discs glued to his forehead, Lyanna scribbled down copious notes as a printer spit out chart after chart and graph upon graph. Later, at his favorite locale, the observation deck, she confronted him with the day’s analysis. “You seem to enjoy fixing your gaze on the heavens.”

“My home in Anglo is perched on the precipice of the southern shores, overlooking the straits toward Euro, but it pales in comparison with the panorama stretched out in front of me. Aren’t you captivated by it? Look.” He pointed. “There is the Donut Galaxy, there the Crab Nebula. These are but specks from Earth. But here… well. How incredible! What glorious detail!”

She caressed her hair and then, leaning on one elbow, positioning herself beside him, peered and pointed. “I know that one over there, fourth to the right of that expansive nebula. That tiny, bright whitish-yellow star. Solus. Home.”

Home
, he thought to himself.
I wonder if I shall ever set foot there again.

“Yes. You will,” Lyanna said.

“Can’t you stop intruding my thoughts? That was a private matter.”

“I’m sorry, Deacon. I only meant to reassure you. It is just that your thoughts of insecurity reigned strong today and I wanted to provide you confidence.”

Lyanna changed the topic quickly. Shuffling her papers, she said “I want to review the test results, which confirm you have an unusually high reception ability that requires little effort. Few Earthmen, if any, have ever approached these scores. Come and take a seat over here, away from distractions.” He did so, and she sat directly next to him in his space. “It is time that someone explained to you what we measured today. I have studied the brain for the past ten years. To put a definition on it, I would respond by saying that it is the organ that receives stimuli from the other organs and senses and interprets them to formulate a bodily response. It is the organ of thought, intelligence, learning patterns, and responses; it is the most vital part of the nervous system.”

Deacon guessed her age to be in the early thirties. That warm, soothing voice took on impish overtones when she flaunted her intelligence. She had a relaxing influence on him. “The three vital functions, then, are to receive impulses, interpret them, and then respond correctly—sometimes incorrectly, but respond in some manner. As the brain goes about its business, electrical impulses are generated. This in turn creates a magnetic field around the brain.”

She displayed images to him on her computer of an aura surrounding his head. “Look, here you are with your energy emanations. This is your personal magnetic colored image.”

Deacon scrutinized oblong bluish hues encased in orange and greens.

“The second way that we can measure and illustrate this energy field is by brain scans. Our machine captures the energy packages and then converts this energy back to ideas. The patterns that we witness on the scan profile or in the aura depend on the function being performed. Let me explain.

“Every brain emits brain waves.” She manipulated herself closer beside him and then turned inward to him, touching her knee to his. “The amounts are so miniscule that it took even the Aralians thousands of years to devise the machines that we use now to measure this energy. The total field is a product of the functions that the brain is performing at any given time. These emissions are most intense when one is thinking to oneself—that is, when one is focused on a single thought. Look at your profiles.” Deacon did not understand the squiggles. Lyanna had marked the charts by writing/speaking, receiving, thinking, reading, and shouting.

“Deacon, I must emphasize to you that the energy from the brain is dissipated in all directions when leaving the body and is a miniscule amount. Therefore, whether you are an Earthling, an Aralian, or a Medullan, you must be in proximity to receive this energy.”

“But… my neighbors? Sometimes—”

“They must have been trespassing, or on a stroll on your property, or perhaps you dreamed these situations. They don’t have to be in the same room, but in some proximity.”

“Define proximity.”

“Three hundred yards maybe. That would be extraordinary.” She moved to the next topic. “On Earth, we have always had those strange instances we explain as telepathy or extrasensory perception or clairvoyance. It was only when we joined the Alliance that we truly understood the complexity of the brain and how to read and measure its energy. It was only then that we realized that in proximity a person can intercept the energy field of the brain of another person and can interpret this energy.”

“As man’s brain evolves, is the so-called receiver area evolving?”

“Exactly, but at an incredibly small pace. In our brain, this area is named the Uscher zone, after Hergund Uscher, who first recognized it in primitive form. You are an exception to even Uscher’s laws on Earth.”

“Lucky me!” he said with a hint of sarcasm.

“Our progress toward the development of a receiving area in the brain is the least of that of all the species.”

“Is that because we have the ability and don’t know how to use it? Or because the organ’s physical potential has not evolved?”

“Good question. The Uscher zone has not evolved fully in Earthlings. Oh, some people capture an occasional thought and dismiss it as an intuition. These are early signs of development. Then there are specimens like Deacon Coombs, in whom the gene is well developed and retained. Both your mother and father passed this to you genetically. Pure breeding progresses this trait. You are no fluke. Your father in particular had very strong powers.”

Deacon’s interest was piqued. “An area in the brain has evolved to recognize energy patterns that it intercepts. Like learning, it stores this information. As genes get passed on, the amount of information builds. Through pure breeding, the information base aggregates.”

Lyanna nodded. “Exactly. Only on Zentaur is this gene totally regressive.”

“Xudur would be irritated for the rest of her life if she ever found that out.”

Lyanna laughed and said, “I have met her once before. She is quite a woman! She doesn’t need any more weapons in her arsenal, believe me.”

“You haven’t told me exactly how this works.”

“That’s the next step. The brain comes to recognize patterns. It is the changes in these patterns that are stored. Let’s do a test. I will send you a well-known tune. Concentrate as I send it to you.”

He sat back, eyes closed, and recognized it immediately as a love ballad. It told of two intellects in love. Was she teasing him? She giggled, touching him, and explained that she had no chance of keeping that ballad a secret from a strong mind like his.

“Now I shall change the tune in mid-song to another classic. See if you can recognize it.”

Deacon comprehended the first tune; likewise the second.

“Excellent. Let me tell you what functions the brain just performed. You identified the changes so rapidly. Like weight, height, and intelligence, which evolve over time in man, the brain started with the primordial chordal wavelengths. Then it evolved to identify changes in the energy field.”

“But I identified the changes as fluently as the initial tune.” He answered his own puzzle. “So I must be as versatile in the changes library as I am in the basic knowledge function.”

“Correct. The Uscher zone is made up of two areas. The first is where the basic response to external stimuli from other brains is stored. The other area is called the treasure bank; here the mind adjusts to the changes in wavelengths that it is subjected to.”

“Lyanna, let me take a guess how it works.”

Lyanna nudged him on the shoulder, beaming broadly. “Sure.”

“I would say that it takes time for the mind to adjust to the fluctuations in energy and wavelength. By the time the brain reacts, previous patterns have disappeared, so no thoughts are captured. So I would guess that the major difference between me and other Earthmen who have mental abilities is that my mind reacts instantaneously?”

Nodding her head, she applauded him. Deacon asked of her, “Can you teach me to turn off my mind?”

“All in good time, Deacon, but that is highly unadvisable for this assignment.”

“How did you ever nurture an interest in the brain?”

Lyanna folded her arms, crossed her legs, and leaned back. “My father died when I was very young. Unfortunately, he left little security for my mother and me. My mother became a professional socialite. She could be very persuasive and talked a good game. She ran a circle of friends obtaining invites to key social gatherings. She was not a con artist. She was, however, a master of self-preservation and became the benefactor of gifts, dinner invites, theater seats, and my education. I promised my mother that I would see my education through and support both of us. Unfortunately, when I made this solemn oath, I promised her that I would become a brain surgeon.”