The V'Dan (16 page)

“Next is Superior Priest De’arth of the Open Mind. He is here as the Winter-Ascendant assistant to the Grand High Priest Suva’an of the Winter Temple, who graces us with his presence,” the Imperial First Lord finished, bowing to the man
with the golden-brown skin, shoulder-length gray-and-burgundy hair, his skin boasting occasional burgundy crescents scattered here and there. Including one that caught the corner of his left eye, turning it half dark red, not just brown. In turn, the Grand High Priest lifted his chin slightly, acknowledging the introduction.

Li’eth took up the Terran side of things, now that his cousin had finished. “Your Holinesses, I present to you Grand High Ambassador Jackie MacKenzie, third-highest member of the Terran government. Beside her is Assistant Ambassador Rosa McCrary . . .”

Jackie lifted her hand slightly and nodded at the introduction, then sat still while Rosa and the others were introduced one at a time. This meeting was a little bit more formal in its introductions than the previous ones, but then these weren’t adjuncts or assistants or protocol officers and news reporters. These were the movers and shakers of the most prominent religion in the V’Dan Empire.

For all that her body was quiet, her mind was active. Jackie looked with her inner eye at the three with the fanciful names, the chief priestesses and the junior priest from the Winter Temple. None of them had the mirror-smooth mental shield of Dr. Kuna’mi. It was interesting to note that the two who did not have names suggesting the presence of holy gifts had similar shielding to the other three. Unfortunately, all of their psychic walls were the equivalent of walls made out of scavenged, unmortared rubble by comparison.

More than that, the powers of the three flared unevenly.
Not grounded, just like Li’eth. They have no concept of centering themselves, no understanding of grounding, and without those for a very necessary level of conservation of energy and effort, plus a solid foundation from which to brace everything and a way to shunt aside energy spikes from both within and without—what the . . . ?

The assistant Winter priest, De’arth, moved on the psychic plane. She blinked and stared, switching her focus to an attempt to evoke the auras that Li’eth could far more easily see. It took her effort, but she was learning, catching up to him . . . and she could see the orange-and-greenish-blue tendrils following the priest’s glance. They wound through the
glass or whatever it was the layers of the observation window were made of, and pressed against Li’eth’s shields.

Li’eth faltered a little in his introductions. He cleared his throat and continued but didn’t seem to realize he was being probed. Annoyed, Jackie debated what to do. In Terran terms, what the priest was doing was illegal, unethical, and immoral. In V’Dan terms . . . she had no idea what the laws were. There was one thing, however, she could guess: It probably was not politically correct to probe at the mind of a member of the Imperial Family unasked . . . and she knew perfectly well that none of the V’Dan on the other side of the glass had asked.

(
Li’eth,
) she interjected softly as he faltered again. (
The High Priest of the Winter Temple, De’arth, is trying to probe his way into your mind. Do you want me to smack his mental fingers, like I once di—
)

(Yes
, please!
) he returned swiftly, breaking off his introductions to fix the other man with a glare.

Reaching out with her own much stronger telepathy, Jackie
smacked
that tendril of thought. Superior Priest De’arth jumped in his seat, eyes widening.

“Holiness De’arth, in the Terran culture, attempting to probe the thoughts of another person without their clearly expressed permission is beyond rude.” Li’eth held the startled priest’s gaze. “It is, in fact, considered illegal. Do I have to remind you that to probe the mind of a member of the Imperial Tier without our permission is
also
considered illegal?”

“. . . I was simply attempting to ascertain the strange aura your mind now carries, Your Highness,” Superior Priest De’arth replied carefully. “Your mind appears to have been influenced by whatever it is that also covers the minds of some of these . . . Terrans.”

“These Terrans,” Li’eth stated carefully, “are vastly more experienced in training and managing their holy abilities. They are as far in advance in their abilities as this space station is from a mud hut in the Q’oba region.”

“Oh, come now!” Grand High Priest Suva’an protested. He gestured at the windowed view of the Terrans in question. “You expect us to believe these children possess holy secrets that far in advance of our own? When by all logic, they’d never even heard of the Immortal and Her teachings before meeting you?”

“I
remind
you, Grand High Priest, that we are
not
children,” Jackie stressed, cutting through their argument. “Please stop thinking of us as V’Dan. We are
not
V’Dan. In some ways, your people are more advanced; we do not deny this, and are mature enough to know that if we set aside our cultural pride, we will be able to learn from you. In
other
ways,
we
are the ones who are more advanced. The sooner you in turn acknowledge this, the sooner your own people will be able to benefit from our vast experience.

“We. Are. Not. V’Dan,” she repeated firmly when the older man drew in a breath to speak. “Please take a deep breath, and consider us to be on a par with the Gatsugi, or the Solaricans. We are not V’Dan, we do not share your culture, and we will only be patient with these inadvertent cultural insults for so long before they will start to have a negative impact on Terran-V’Dan interrelations.

“I, for one, would like to avoid letting things deteriorate that far.” She managed a small smile. “I’m certain your people would like to avoid such a simple mistake as well. As for our skill in what you call holy gifts, where your people have continued to deal with such things from a religious standpoint, my people have long since turned them into a science.

“As with all science, such things can be questioned, qualified, measured, quantified, and trained. I myself studied for several years at a special boarding school for the highly gifted, starting at the age of fourteen and concluding with an advanced education certification in what we call
para
linguistics, the ability to communicate via
telepathy
, which is what we call speaking mind-to-mind. We have a ranking scale to indicate strengths of various holy abilities. My rank as a
telepath
, a mind-speaker, is 15, and my rank as a
xenopath
, a speaker-with-alien-minds, is 14,” she explained. Gesturing to her far right, she added, “Aixa Winkler, here, has a similar advanced certificate, specializing in
xenopathy
at Rank 11, the ability to communicate with non-Human minds.”

Aixa raised her age-wrinkled hand. She had been deemed physically fit for the trip to V’Dan, but she was the oldest member of the embassy staff at fifty-nine, edging out the next oldest by four full months plus a few days. Jackie flicked her hand over her shoulder, not bothering to look; she could sense
Clees’ position with her mind by the presence of his shields, and that was good enough for her.

“Behind us stands Heracles Panaklion, who is busy with the hovering cameras, recording these events, and who has also specialized in mind-to-mind communication. His strongest gift is telepathy at Rank 13, though he also shares the gift of
auramancy
with His Highness, the ability to see auras of energy and emotion, focus and awareness. That’s Rank, what, 7?” she asked Clees.

He nodded. “I am a Rank 7
auramancer
, as well as a Rank 7 out-of-body practitioner, a Rank 9 in
clairvoyancy
and
clairaudiency
—the ability to see and hear things at a distance when there is no physical way to actually see those things,” Clees explained in an aside, “—and a Rank 13 telepath, as the Ambassador has said.”

“Yes, and Darian Johnston, here—his military rank is equivalent to your military’s leftenant superior—has a degree, an education certification,” Jackie explained, gesturing to the other side behind her, “in cryptography and stenography based on his abilities as a polyglot telepath. Next to him is Min Wang-Kurakawa. Her military rank is the equivalent of a leftenant, her telepathic rank is 12, and like the leftenant superior, she has engaged in mind-to-mind combat with our enemy on the far side of Terran space from your Alliance, a highly advanced race we call the Grey Ones.

“The
only
thing keeping the Greys from assaulting our worlds and kidnapping our people is the mental strength imparted by our training programs. Those programs,” Jackie continued briskly, “come with a great deal of responsibility, including a heavy set of ethics, a code of honor if you will, which all psychics must abide by under Terran law. Those ethics include
not
probing or scanning anyone else without their permission, save only by sheer accident . . . as physically touching someone has been known to trigger abilities inadvertently.

“Despite its existence, that exception does not qualify for this moment . . . as it is obvious His Highness is beyond your physical touch.” She dipped her head politely. “Perhaps it
was
inadvertent. You do not, after all, have the benefits of our rigorous Terran training. But now that you are aware that
we
are
aware, please try to consciously avoid probing anyone in our presence. We take our vows very seriously when it comes to our ethical mental behavior.

“I apologize for startling you, High Priest, with my telepathic slap . . . but it is our first and foremost instinct to watch and warn each other in such ways, in order to make
sure
those ethical behaviors are maintained.”

“If she hadn’t done it first, I was about to do it myself,” Clees stated from the back of the room. “Pushing your way into someone else’s mind uninvited is as legal in our society as breaking into someone else’s house. Which is to say, it isn’t legal. It’s breaking the law.”

“Only it’s worse than just breaking into someone’s house,” Min added, joining the conversation. She tucked a lock of her chin-length black hair behind her ear. “Our minds are our last refuge of privacy, the only place where we can think anything and everything without being condemned or censored for it. Only when thought and action are combined to commit a crime can a mind be probed, and
only
to ascertain whether what is being said in a court of law is a truth or a falsehood.”

The High Priestess for the Temple of Spring nodded. “That is how my own holy powers are used. I can discern if someone is speaking a truth or a falsehood—I do not need to go into the mind’s depths to see the truth or the lie in a person’s aura. And you are all telling the truth . . . though I cannot sense anything deeper than that.”

“Of course we are. We are adults, ethically trained and highly experienced in such matters. Only the youngest of children barge into another person’s home uninvited,” Aixa stated shrewdly. “Such things might be forgivable once, perhaps twice if the person is very young. But we Terrans are adults. We presume politely that you are also adults. Now that you know such things are beyond rude . . . you will refrain from doing it again in our presence, yes?”

The Grand High Priest, Suva’an, smiled in a benign sort of way. “We would not presume to do it to one of your people. But His Highness is—”

“—His Highness
agrees
with the Terrans,” Li’eth said flatly. “My thoughts are my own. They belong to no one else
and are entirely my property. I will treat anyone attempting to steal into my mind and read them the same as I would treat a thief breaking into my chambers.”

“My point, Highness, is that these Terrans have unknown motives and unknown methods. How can you possibly trust them?” Suva’an asked, flicking his hand at the Humans seated across from him.

“I trust them because I have spent months living among them, seeing for myself how well their words and their actions match. They are honorable, they are ethical, and they are vastly superior in their holy training than even the best of us can claim,” Li’eth told the Grand High Priest. “More than that, I have been blessed through a holy pairing with the Grand High Ambassador, a bond that at times brings us closer than thought. But even with that for permission,
she
does not invade my thoughts carelessly or casually.”

That caused a stir among the V’Dan on the other side of the observation window, a mix of startled coughs and disbelieving splutters. High Priestess Be’ela narrowed her gaze, sitting up even straighter in her chair than before.

“You expect us to believe that
you
and
she
are a Holy Pairing?”

“My people call it
Gestalt
,” Aixa stated, speaking before Jackie could. “The word means ‘the end result is greater than the sum of its parts.’ We have tested the Ambassador and the prince, and they qualify on all measurable counts.”

“I was informed that you, Ambassador, were among the crew members of the ship that rescued His Highness and his fellow officers,” High Priest Sorleth-ain stated, nodding at Jackie. “Do you really expect us to believe that one of the first holy ones of your people to meet one of the first of our own were somehow spontaneously blessed by the Saints in a Holy Pairing?”

(
I was hoping to avoid bringing up this subject this early,
) Jackie sent to Li’eth.

He answered the high priest instead of her. “Is it not written in our own holy books that when the Motherworld reaches out to our people, that there will arise a Holy Pair of exceptional power, who will save one of the cities of the Chosen People? Our meeting was foretold . . . and I was forewarned that I would
be involved in a different prophecy, a warning that prevented me from the sensible choice of committing suicide when my ship was boarded,” Li’eth stated bluntly. “Because I obeyed
that
prophecy, I was in a position to be rescued, which in turn allowed me to make peaceful contact with the Terrans, here.