Telzey Amberdon by James H. Schmitz

There was no reason to tell him she was fifteen. What Telzey wanted to know just now was whether he also had been aware of a disturbance in Melna Park. She asked, “Where are you?”

He didn’t hesitate. “At my home. Twelve miles south of Cil Chasm across the plain, at the edge of the forest. The house is easy to see from the air.”

He might be a park official. They’d noticed such a house on their way here this afternoon and speculated about who could be living there. Permission to make one’s residence in a Federation Park was supposedly almost impossible to obtain.

“Does that tell you anything?” the voice went on.

“Yes,” Telzey said. “I’m in the park with some friends. I think I’ve seen your house.”

“My name,” the bodiless voice told her, “is Robane. You’re being careful. I don’t blame you. There are certain risks connected with being a psi, as you seem to understand. If we were in a city, I’m not sure I would reveal myself. But out here . . . Somebody built a fire this evening where the Cil River leaves the Chasm. I’m a cripple and spend much of my time studying the park with scanners. Is that your fire?”

Telzey hesitated a moment. “Yes.”

“Your friends,” Robane’s voice went on, “they’re aware you and I . . . they know you’re a telepath?”

“No.”

“Would you be able to come to see me for a while without letting them know where you’re going?”

“Why should I do that?” Telzey asked.

“Can’t you imagine? I’d like to talk to a psi again.”

“We are talking,” she said.

Silence for a moment.

* * *

“Let me tell you a little about myself,” Robane said then. “I’m approaching middle age—from your point I might even seem rather old. I live here alone except for a well-meaning but rather stupid housekeeper named Feddler. Feddler seems old from my point of view. Four years ago, I was employed in one of the Federation’s science departments. I am . . . was . . . considered to be among the best in my line of work. It wasn’t very dangerous work so long as certain precautions were observed. But one day a fool made a mistake. His mistake killed two of my colleagues. It didn’t quite kill me, but since that day I’ve been intimately associated with a machine which has the responsibility of keeping me alive from minute to minute. I’d die almost immediately if I were removed from it.

“So my working days are over. And I no longer want to live in cities. There are too many foolish people there to remind me of the one particular fool I’d prefer to forget. Because of the position I’d held and the work I’d done, the Federation permitted me to make my home in Melna Park where I could be by myself . . .”

The voice stopped abruptly but Telzey had the impression Robane was still talking, unaware that something had dimmed the thread of psi between them. His own screen perhaps? She waited, alert and quiet. It might be deliberate interference, the manifestation of another active psionic field in the area—a disturbing and malicious one.

” . . . On the whole, I like it here.” Robane’s voice suddenly was back, and it was evident he didn’t realize there had been an interruption. “A psi need never be really bored, and I’ve installed instruments to offset the disadvantages of being a cripple. I watch the park through scanners and study the minds of animals . . . Do you like animal minds?”

That, Telzey thought, hadn’t been at all a casual question. “Sometimes,” she told Robane carefully. “Some of them.”

“Sometimes? Some of them? I wonder . . . Solitude on occasion appears to invite the uncanny. One may notice things that seem out of place, that are disquieting. This evening . . . during the past hour perhaps, have you . . . were there suggestions of activities . . .” He paused. “I find I don’t quite know how to say this.”

“There was something,” she said. “For a moment, I wasn’t sure I wasn’t dreaming.”

“You mean something ugly . . .”

“Yes.”

“Fear,” Robane’s voice said in her mind. “Fear, pain, death. Savage cruelty. So you caught it, too. Very strange! Perhaps an echo from the past touched our minds in that moment, from the time when creatures who hated man still haunted this country.

“But—well, this is one of the rare occasions when I feel lonely here. And then to hear another psi, you see . . . Perhaps I’m even a little afraid to be alone in the night just now. I’d like to speak to you, but not in this way—not in any great detail. One can never be sure who else is listening . . . I think there are many things two psis might discuss to their advantage.”

The voice ended on that. He’d expressed himself guardedly, and apparently he didn’t expect an immediate reply to his invitation. Telzey bit her lip. Chomir had come trotting up, had been welcomed by her and settled down. Gikkes was making cooing sounds and snapping her fingers at him. Chomir ignored the overtures. Ordinarily, Gikkes claimed to find him alarming; but here in Melna Park at night, the idea of having an oversized dog near her evidently had acquired a sudden appeal—

So Robane, too, had received the impression of unusual and unpleasant events this evening . . . events he didn’t care to discuss openly. The indication that he felt frightened probably needn’t be taken too seriously. He was in his house, after all; and so isolated a house must have guard-screens. The house of a crippled, wealthy recluse, who was avoiding the ordinary run of humanity, would have very effective guard-screens. If something did try to get at Robane, he could put in a call to the nearest park station and have an armed ranger car hovering about his roof in a matter of minutes. That suggestion had been intended to arouse her sympathy for a shut-in fellow psi, help coax her over to the house.

But he had noticed something. Something, to judge from his cautious description, quite similar to what she had felt. Telzey looked at Chomir, stretched out on the sandy ground between her and the fire, at the big, wolfish head, the wedge of powerful jaws. Chomir was not exactly an intellectual giant but he had the excellent sensory equipment and alertness of a breed of fighting animals. If there had been a disturbance of that nature in the immediate vicinity, he would have known about it, and she would have known about it through him.

The disturbance, however, might very well have occurred somewhere along the twelve-mile stretch between the point where Cil Chasm split the mountains and Robane’s house across the plain. Her impression had been that it was uncomfortably close to her. Robane appeared to have sensed it as uncomfortably close to him. He had showed no inclination to do anything about it, and there was, as a matter of fact, no easy way to handle the matter. Robane clearly was no more anxious than she was to reveal himself as a psi; and, in any case, the park authorities would be understandably reluctant to launch a search for a vicious but not otherwise identified man-hunting beast on no better evidence than reported telepathic impressions—at least, until somebody was reported missing.

It didn’t seem a good idea to wait for that. For one thing, Telzey thought, the killer might show up at their fire before morning . . .

She grimaced uneasily, sent a troubled glance around the group. She hadn’t been willing to admit it but she’d really known for minutes now that she was going to have to go look for the creature. In an aircar, she thought, even an aircar throttled down to thirty miles an hour and a contour altitude of a hundred and fifty feet, she would be in no danger from an animal on the ground if she didn’t take very stupid chances. The flavor of psi about the event she didn’t like. That was still unexplained. But she was a psi herself, and she would be careful.

She ran over the possibilities in her mind. The best approach should be to start out towards Robane’s house and scout the surrounding wildlands mentally along that route. If she picked up traces of the killer-thing, she could pinpoint its position, call the park rangers from the car, and give them a story that would get them there in a hurry. They could do the rest. If she found nothing, she could consult with Robane about the next moves to make. Even if he didn’t want to take a direct part in the search, he might be willing to give her some help with it.

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