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from you as you are from it."
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"That's saying a lot!" Rish added cheerfully. The others laughed again, and
Gikkes looked annoyed.
Telzey had been giving only part of her attention to the talk. She felt shut
down, temporarily detached from her companions. It had taken all afternoon to
come across the wooded plains from the entrance station, winding slowly above
the rolling ground in the three aircars which had brought them here. Then,
after they reached Cil Chasm where they intended to stay, she and Rish and
Dunker, two charter members of her personal fan club at Pehanron, had spent an
hour fishing along the little river, up into the canyon and back down again.
They had a great deal of excitement and caught enough to provide supper for
everyone; but it involved arduous scrambling over slippery rocks, wading in
cold, rushing water, and occasional tumbles, in one of which Telzey knocked
her wrist-talker out of commission for the duration of the trip.
Drowsiness wasn't surprising after all the exercise. The surprising part was
that, in spite of it, she didn't seem able to relax completely. As a rule, she
felt at home wherever she happened to be outdoors. But something about this
place was beginning to bother her. She hadn't noticed it at first, she had
laughed at
Gikkes with the others when Gikkes began to express apprehensions. But when
she settled down after supper, feeling a comfortable muscular fatigue begin to
claim her, she grew aware of a vague disturbance. The atmosphere of Melna Park
seemed to change slowly. A hint of cruelty and savagery crept into it, of
hidden terrors. Mentally, Telzey felt herself glancing over her shoulder
towards dark places under the trees, as if something like a lullbear or spook
actually was lurking there.
And then, in that uneasy, half-awake condition, there suddenly had been this
other thing, like a dream-
flash in which somebody desperately ran and hid from a mocking pursuer. To the
terrified human quarry, the pursuer appeared as a glimpsed animalic shape in
the twilight, big and moving swiftly, but showing no other details.
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And there had been the flickering of psi energy about the scene . . .
* * *
Telzey shifted uncomfortably, running her tongue tip over her lips. The
experience had been chillingly vivid; but if something of the sort really had
occurred, the victim had died moments later. In that respect, there was no
reason to force herself to quick decisions now. And it might, after all, have
been a dream, drifting up in her mind, created by the mood of the place. She
realized she would like to believe it was a dream.
But in that case, what was creating the mood of the place?
Gikkes? It wasn't impossible. She had decided some time ago that personal
acquaintances should be off limits to telepathic prowling, but when someone
was around at all frequently, scraps of information were likely to filter
through. So she knew Gikkes also had much more extensively developed
telepathic
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awareness than the average person. Gikkes didn't know it and couldn't have put
it to use anyway. In her, it was an erratic, unreliable quality which might
have kept her in a badly confused state of mind if she had been more conscious
of its effects.
But the general uneasiness Telzey had sensed and that brief psi surge if that
was what it was fragmentary but carrying a complete horrid little story with
it, could have come to her from
Gikkes. Most people, even when they thought they were wide awake, appeared to
be manufacturing dreams much of the time in an area of their minds they didn't
know about; and Gikkes seemed nervous enough this evening to be manufacturing
unconscious nightmares and broadcasting them.
But again what made Gikkes so nervous here? The unfamiliar environment, the
frozen beauty of the starblaze overhanging the sloping plain like a tent of
fire, might account for it. But it didn't rule out a more specific source of
disturbance.
She could make sure, Telzey thought, by probing into Gikkes's mind and finding
out what was going on in there. Gikkes wouldn't know it was happening. But it
took many hours, as a rule, to develop adequate contact unless the other mind
was also that of a functioning telepath. Gikkes was borderline a telepath, but
not functional, or only partly so and if she began probing around in those
complexities without the experience to tell her just how to go about it, she
might wind up doing Gikkes some harm.
She looked over at Gikkes. Gikkes met her eyes, said, "Shouldn't you start
worrying about that dog of
Gonwil's? He hasn't been in sight for the past half-hour."
"Chomir's all right," Telzey said. "He's still checking over the area."
Chomir was, in fact, only a few hundred yards away, moving along the Cil River [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]