You must tell me about it, she said.
“I will—” He hesitated, then said, “If we do talk about it. I don't want to use telepathy all the time.”
Whyever not? the girl 'pathed.
She was wearing deerskin shorts that fit her well and emphasized the smoothness of her blue-green legs and a thin brown blouse against which the nubs of her nipples pressed in fine detail. She was stunningly attractive, and her beauty not only pleased him, but upset and confused him. He had never reacted like this to a tainted woman. It seemed wrong and sinful to covet
“I'd… just prefer talking aloud,” he hedged.
But telepathy is much simpler than speech, so direct, so—
It disgusts him, Tedesco 'pathed.
For the first time Jask realized that he was the center of attention. Chaney and Kiera were watching him with undisguised curiosity.
Disgusts him? How? Melopina asked.
Tedesco 'pathed, He no longer looks much like a Pure, with his new strength and his tan, but he was born and raised in an enclave. He still thinks in some ways as they taught him to think, despite the fact he is now tainted himself. He finds telepathy too intimate a means of communication. Especially with tainted creatures like us. He gets ill at the idea of having us inside his head.
“This is true?” Melopina asked.
Jask nodded.
She let go of his hand. “I see.”
For a long moment everyone stood in the middle of the road in embarrassed silence.
The grazing horse whinnied.
That familiar sound broke the awkward spell and set them into motion once again. “Share lunch with us,” Kiera said. “Then we'll decide how best to outwit the waiting soldiers.” She turned without waiting for a response and led the way toward the gypsy wagon, the muscles in her sleek haunches moving with oiled precision, bunching and relaxing, bunching and relaxing with every step. Though she resembled a wolf more than a woman, Jask could understand why Chaney might find her quite attractive. Her grace was purely feminine, her attitude sensuous.
Tedesco and Chaney walked side-by-side, the wolf-man tilting his head to look up at the powerful bruin now and again. It was evident that they were conversing telepathically, though Jask could not hear anything they said without making a special effort to penetrate the courtesy shield they had established to spare his sensitivity.
Melopina walked just in front of him, talking neither normally nor telepathically. Her spritely, friendly attitude had changed. She had withdrawn into herself, a brooking expression on her pretty face, and she pointedly avoided looking at Jask Zinn
He knew he had hurt their feelings.
That couldn't be helped.
He did not know whether to be relieved by Melopina's change in attitude toward him, or whether to be disappointed. As he watched her walking in front of him, he decided that he was a little of both.
Lunch was an ordeal. The food was good enough, but hidden conversations coursed all around Jask. Often the espers broke into hearty laughter at some expression of wit. Each tune this happened, Jask felt, irrationally, that they were laughing at him, for he had not heard the silent joke that had triggered their mirth. He ate in silence. He did not look at them, but stared at his plate — except for a few furtive glances at Melopina, who was curled most deliciously on the lush green grass, like a fairy sprung from its roots. She returned none of his glances. The others left him to his meal as well. He felt like an unwanted guest who had arrived at an inconvenient time and had been given only minimal courtesy.
He was aware, for the first time now, that his ordeal was not to end with the crossing of the Chen Valley Blight. It had only just begun, in fact. And there might never be a conclusion to it.
18
They decided to remain in the Wildlands, skirting the edge of the civilized places until they had traveled to the extreme southwest corner of the triangular Blight; that place was so remote as to make more than scattered patrols unlikely. They rode atop or inside the gypsy wagon if the land were level or inclined downhill, and they walked when the way was uphill, in order to make the horse's load less crippling. They covered more kilometers by night than by day, for they did not want to be spotted by a Pure with binoculars and thereafter monitored on their trip to the southwest.
Jask said little.
The others spoke even less to him.
He slept badly and often dreamed about returning to his fortress on the cliff and taking up life where it had ended for him. Sometimes, as they creaked along the narrow lanes in the wooden-wheeled vehicle, he stared up the Ashtokomans, wondering how close he was to others of his kind, Pures, people he could talk to and understand…
On the fourth day of their journey the barren hours finally got to him while he was sitting atop the wagon, leaning against its safety rail, watching the stars and the clouds that occasionally obscured them. Melopina was there with him. Kiera was in the wagon, lying down. Tedesco and Chaney were up front, at the reins, speaking without sound. He turned to Melopina and said, “Do you really believe in this Black Presence?”
“I do now.”
“Tedesco convinced you?”
“Yes.”
“How?” he asked.
“In many ways.”
“Specifically.”
She did not respond, as if she held secrets he had not earned. The possibility that this was so irked Jask.
“Listen,” he said, “you're acting like children, all of you. Before you got your esp powers, you talked aloud. What harm does it do? What exertion does it really cause you?”
She looked at him more directly than she had in a long time, her green eyes radiant in the darkness like the eyes of some wild animal. “Vocal communication allows deception,” she began.
“You know I don't want to deceive you.”
She ignored him and went on. “Vocal speech permits a distance between communicants, permits lies and evasions and the reserve of self. Telepathy, on the other hand, soon requires complete communion of the soul as well as of the mind. It allows no secrets, no lies, no evasions. It forces a giving of the self and an intimacy that, once experienced, makes all other relationships seem silly and undesirable by comparison.”
“Fine!” he said. “Have your soul-sharing relationships. I'm not against that. But be civilized enough to extend me a little kindness, a little companionship.”
“You are the uncivilized one,” she said.
“Oh?”
“You're damned lucky to be one of the new breed of mankind, but you reject your powers and continue to act as a primitive.” Her voice was full of scorn.
Shocked, he said, “You consider your telepathic talents to be a blessing — not a curse?”
“Of course.”
“How wrong you are!”
“Really?”
“Don't you see how your power has made you a fugitive, a hunted animal, how it's taken away your dignity, your peace of mind, how it's denied you the company of other people?”
She turned away from him.
He said, “If we're a new breed of men, a step up the evolutionary scale, why have our powers showed up at different points in each of our lives, so suddenly, like magic? If we were meant to be a new breed, why weren't we
