No Trigun ownership here. Go fish.
I seem to have run out of witty, so there will be no author's note today.
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Walking through the desert is boring, Kiley decided after hours of sameness. Sand dunes as far as the eye can see, littering the landscape, decorating the landscape, circumscribing the landscape. They are the landscape. You walk up one side of a dune, down the other, across the top of the next, then in a valley. But you are always walking on a sand dune.
She tried to look at the dunes as expressions of beauty. The sweep of the windward side, the faster drop on the lee side provided almost an hour's worth of contemplation on the nature of the sand, how it is picked up and deposited. A tiny grain that nevertheless provides the foundation for a monument to. . . dirt. She shook her head, dislodging the traitorous thought and continued.
From the vantage of the top of a dune, the world continued on in a series of waves, each moving in slow motion, like an ocean of land. If she could stand there forever, she would see the ground pass below her like waves in the sea, a tidal landmass. The dunes she saw were like a slow reflection of water, an instant of a wave captured in a form she could admire.
The problem was, she ran out of admire before she ran out of sand dunes. It was boring out here in the sun, it was boring walking when she'd rather run, and it was boring traveling with a man who never said anything. Of course, with Knives, silence was a blessing. She didn't know what a guy who would grab his brother's severed arm as a souvenir would consider polite conversation, and she didn't want to know.
The wind moved enough air to keep the heat from being stifling, but didn't make enough noise to provide relief from the silence. The only sounds were the whisper of falling sand as the wind pushed grains over the top of a dune and the crunch of their feet disrupting the sand.
Finally, Kiley reached her limit. With no preamble, she began to whistle a strange little tune. As entertainment went, it rather lacked the quality of being entertaining, but it broke the silence.
Knives broke his silence as well. "Quit that noise or I'll slice your lips off," he said.
She shot him a look. Yup, he was serious. Damn.
They walked along in silence for fifteen minutes. Kiley had the song stuck in her head now, which helped her ignore the silence around her, but finally she couldn't keep silent any longer. Mindful of Knives' threat, she didn't whistle. She hummed.
A moment later Knives had one hand on her mouth and the other on her spine.
"Shut. Up," he told her. She tried to nod, then made a noise of assent. Knives released her, and she stifled a sigh. This was just so boring.
They went back to the dreary trudging, up one hill and down another. Kiley resisted the urge to break into a run. She preferred running to walking, but she had a feeling that Knives' patience was wearing thin, and he didn't seem like the jogging type to her. Plus, he seemed to have a destination in mind, whereas she was merely wandering aimlessly. All things being equal, it was probably a good idea to stick by the guy with a plan.
So she walked. And he walked. And they walked together over the sand. The suns sank lower in the sky, and still they walked. And the song she had whistled and hummed was stuck in her head, repeating over and over. It reached the point where she would have rather listened to the silence.
Finally, she couldn't stand it any longer. Softly, almost under her breath, she began to sing.
I have the coolest bedroom
It's padded white, with little buttons on the walls
They keep it chained on the outside
Just to feel safe
Well ain't it great
To be alive?
She reached the end of the verse, then repeated it a couple more times, matching the beat of the music to her pace, then letting it trail off into silence. Having sung it, she was able to get it out of her head, and was happy.
She had been silent for perhaps a minute when Knives said, "Sing the rest."
"Huh?" she replied. She was surprised past comprehension for two reasons. One, this was the first thing Knives had said to her without being prompted by annoyance since they left town. Two, after threatening her life before, now he wanted to hear more?
"The rest of the song," he said slowly, speaking as one would to a very stupid child.
"Oh, thanks. That was the part I needed clarification on," she said, her voice laden with sarcasm. "I can't; that's the only part I know."
"Then sing it again," he said. She did. When she was done, he nodded firmly.
That was it. They continued walking, up and down the dunes, in silence. About an hour before sunset, Knives changed his course slightly. He veered off a few degrees to the right. Kiley paused on top of a dune, trying to spy some reason for the different path but could see nothing. She hurried down the hill after him and smothered the urge to pester him with questions.
She already knew the answers would be "you'll see when we get there" and "we get there when we get there." She didn't need to hear them laced with sarcasm and insinuations of stupidity. She'd had practice in you'll-find-out-when-we-get-there before, but it had been a long time since she'd been forced into the position of follower and she was running out of patience.
She was debating opening her mouth just for something to do when they crested a dune that was slightly higher then the ones surrounding it. Looking ahead, she could see a formation of rocks. They were pillars stretching ten stories in the air, standing in a crude circle. A smile flitted across her face as she congratulated herself. She had managed to keep from asking the stupid questions, and had robbed Knives of a chance to belittle her.
It really was the little victories that she got to savor.
They walked between two of the columns and Kiley looked around, craning her neck from side to side. There were twenty-six pillars of rock reaching towards the sky, scattered almost evenly in a circle one hundred yards across. The pillars were an average of ten yards across, which was substantial, but seemed impossibly slender when contrasted with their height. She couldn't really tell in the golden light of sunset, but they appeared to be almost painted with bands of color, blues, pinks, and browns contrasting strongly with the yellow sands beyond.
The rocks themselves stood like silent sentinels, protecting a small spring of water near the center, and a few plants that clung stubbornly to its banks. Walking slowly, she reached the edge of the pool. Water lapped the edges of a basin of rock emblazoned with the same colors as the towers surrounding them. She dipped a hand in the water, amazed at its presence in the middle of this desert. She lifted her hand up and watched the drops fall off her fingers and back into the pool, entranced by the sound and scent of the drips. Her focus shifted to the plants that lined the edge of the pool, fighting for existence between the sand and the rock edge of the pool.
They were gorgeous, delicate, and like nothing she had ever seen before. The leaves were almost like a fern, but it would have been a fern that was more lacelike then any terrestrial fern she had seen. There were no spores on the backs of the leaves, though, and the way they attached to the stems was more like needles from an evergreen tree then a frond. This wasn't what she had been expecting, and while she had never envisioned an oasis like this one, she was entranced by it. She wanted to stick her head underneath a branch and watch the stars and moons rise though the living lace, but abstained. Instead, she turned and looked at Knives.
"This place is beautiful," she said softly, her voice conveying more emotion then the words she chose.
Knives had watched her closely, wondering at her reaction. He liked this place, but didn't know what a human would think of it. He had, well, worried might not be the right term, but he had been concerned that she would see this place and only wonder how to harness the water for profit, or see the plants and want to take cuttings to examine and dissect. He hadn't know many humans who would look at a place like this one and only see its beauty. Because he hadn't worried, he didn't relax when he heard her words, but the feeling was similar.
"It reminds me of a temple," she continued, "with the towering spires that hold up the roof of the sky. There's a peace to it, like you find in a church, of a place untouched by violence or care. Instead, it's like a shrine to life, life against all odds and possibilities, life that lies sheltered in this guarded oasis, surrounded by an ocean of dust."
He looked at her, started. She saw his reaction and grinned self-consciously.
"Sorry. I try to keep from waxing poetic, but sometimes it pops out." She shrugged, growing uneasy under his regard. She turned to the left to break eye contact and stuck her finger in her mouth. She tested the wind and moved to the lee of one of the pillars on the sheltered side. She set down her pack and set about making up a bed. She pulled out her blanket and some dinner, then settled herself on the sand to eat. During this, Knives had moved to the other side of the circle and was settling himself in as well.
After dulling the edge of her hunger, she returned to the pool and took a drink. She leaned in on her belly, careful to keep from harming one of the plants. She slurped the water up, then watched the surface grow calm. The tops of the towers were visible around the edges of the pool, but what she was watching were the reflections of the stars as they came out. One by one she saw them, then, as the suns sank below the horizon, dozens, then hundreds popping into existence below her.
Then, without warning, the silhouette of Knives' head appeared right above hers. She jumped and yelped, and the force of her breath created ripples on the water, shattering the reflection.
"It's a wonder you're still alive with those reflexes. Would it help if I told you every time I took a step?" Knives asked snidely.
Kiley rolled over and looked at him. "If you were actually a threat, you wouldn't have been able to sneak up on me."
Knives loomed over her, his features obscured in the falling darkness. "Are you saying I'm not a threat?" His voice was cold, and Kiley imagined the look of distaste that most likely graced his features.
"Not at the moment, no," she replied calmly. "That's not to say you won't be one in a minute or two, but at the moment, you weren't planning on killing me."
Knives snorted and Kiley rolled out of the way. He leaned down on one knee and drank from the pool like a sensible being, by cupping his hand in the water and bringing it to his lips. She sat up and watched him, watched the play of the muscles in his shoulder and back, their movement under his skin, entranced. He needed to wear a form fitting shirt every day, she decided absently.
Knives had turned and sliced the area she had been sitting in, cutting the air with a blade that seemed to steal the remaining light from the day. There had been no warning, no movement in her direction prior to the lunge, but she had managed to slip out of the way.
"Sorry, Knives," she said as he paused, extended in the lunge. "I have a very finely honed survival instinct. I know when there's a threat. It was a nice test, though."
He looked up at her, his face showing no trace of surprise. A moment passed, and then he stood up and made the knife disappear. Kiley couldn't tell where it went, but didn't worry about that. Knowing that he carried one was better then just assuming, and figuring out where he kept it could be a problem for later.
"Where the hell did you come from?" he asked. He had tried to keep his voice impassive but a note of wonder crept in all the same.
Kiley chuckled. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you." And that was the last thing she said to him that night.
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Kiley awoke before the dawn again. The air was cold, nipping at her nose and trying to convince her to stay wrapped up in her blanket. It worked for a few minutes, luxury winning out over deprivation. The warmth was comforting, a big hug that saved her from the freezing nature of the desert night. The soft, regular beat of her heart echoed throughout her body as she relaxed in the heat. Thoughts drifted slowly through the warmth, and she wished that she could ignore the world forever.
Nice as it was, she didn't want to fall asleep again. The world wasn't going to ignore her, so it was best to meet it on her terms. Stretching, she slowly pried herself out of her warm cocoon. Her skin cringed away from the air, which only served to wake her up further. She blinked a few times, chasing the sleep from her eyes. She looked around the circle of spires. They stood almost invisible against the sky, a patch of black that blocked her view of the stars.
Turning, she looked at the tower behind her. Light from the moons illuminated this side; the colors she had seen in the setting sun were cast in a silver light. Pale pinks, blues, and yellows climbed up the side, not in bands of color, but as if some huge hand had painted them, stripes of color overlaying each other as far as she could see.
She rested her hand lightly on the side of the rock, trying to absorb some of the beauty. She held it there for five slow breaths then moved it around, her fingertips searching for imperfections in the smoothness of the column. Finding some, she grinned, took off her shoes, and began to climb. There weren't many crevices, and they weren't large, but she was patient, strong, and capable, and she slowly made her way up the side. She tried to stay on the lit side of the tower, but there were a couple times where she was forced to climb the black side, finding her way by touch alone.
Aside from that little challenge, the climb was a fun diversion. She reached the top of the spire forty-five minutes after starting. Her shoulders and legs burned with the exertion, and she sprawled gracelessly on the stone littered top of the spire. After her muscles relaxed enough to agree to move again, she sat up and looked about. The top of the tower was almost perfectly flat, as were the tops of all the spires in the circle. A loose clutter of pebbles and rocks were scattered over the top in a strangely random pattern. She spent a few minutes idly wondering why there were rocks here, and not blown off into the sand below, and no sand picked up by the wind from the desert below. Unable to come to a conclusion, she quit worrying about it. The rocks were there. The sand was not. Live with it.
Kiley began exercising. The hazardous loose gravel underfoot wasn't cleared away. Instead, she used it as a challenge. Not only did it make footing precarious, which tested her balance, she tried to keep from moving a single pebble, which tested her precision. The exercise was silent again, the only noise the odd click of stone on stone as she failed in her mission. The dance ranged over the entire surface of the spire, dashing across the middle to linger on the edges. She dared the edges of the pillar with abandon, daring gravity to take her and smash her to bits on the ground below. A half hour passed before she slowed. She hadn't tired, but the suns were rising, and she wanted to watch light paint the land.
As light seeped back into the desert, the horizons expanded. Looking out to the edge of the world, she could see for miles. Miles, miles, and miles of sand, of dunes stretching before her in a drab beige sameness. But as the first sun crested the edge of the world, the spine of the dunes were etched in gold. A pattern of gold fire, reflected from the dunes, danced before her eyes, growing from a fine line to a bold stroke in a matter of seconds. The effect didn't last even a minute, but it was gorgeous while it lasted.
Below her, she could hear Knives awake. Well, she didn't actually hear him awake, but his bellow when he saw her discarded sleeping area echoed between the pillars and up to her. She sighed, turned, and walked over to the edge. Nothing like prickly plant people to ruin a perfectly good morning.
"Hey sleepyhead," she cried, waving. She could feel the fury of Knives' stare from way up in the air, and was glad she wasn't on the ground. "Sunrise is beautiful from up here!" she yelled cheerfully.
Which it was. The dust that was perpetually in the air refracted the light into a glorious array of golds, yellows, purples, and reds. They took over the sky, making it a bold painting of stripes of color. It was like the spires were a pale reflection of the glory of the morning sky, a permanent likeness. Unfortunately, the colors faded from the sky all too quickly, leaving the day to be baked brown by the light of the suns.
Skygazing done, she climbed down the pillar. Knives ignored her as he ate breakfast. She walked over to the pool and took a drink of water, then returned to her pack and folded up her blanket. She tousled her hair vigorously to dislodge the sand that had taken up residence between the follicles, then tried to smooth it down again. Absently she worried that it was growing too long, but dismissed the thought as she grabbed herself some food.
She ate in silence, not thinking of anything much beyond the food she was shoving in her face. Bite, munch, chew ten times, swallow. Repeat until finished. She was well-practiced at not thinking anything at all, and now seemed like a time to renew old skills.
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Knives stared over at the world's most obnoxious woman. She seemed to be trying to destroy his remaining shreds of patience. When he woke up this morning and could not find her, his first reaction was one of justifiable rage. Then she stuck her fool head over the edge of that tower and had the audacity to be chipper. She must have known that he was upset. She should have climbed down from that damn rock, but instead she mouthed some blather about watching a sunrise, and prettiness.
Looking at her, he wondered what was passing through that weak excuse for a mind. Most likely, plans to drive him even crazier. As if it wasn't bad enough that he had to keep her mollified for her to teach him, he had to put up with all the crap she decided to put him through. Infuriating.
He looked at the blank expression on her face and wondered what it hid. The expression itself was a work of art, giving away nothing even to his practiced eye. The eyes didn't move about, but stared down at the ground about ten feet ahead of her when she wasn't taking a bite. She didn't blink, save as an automatic response to the drying of the membranes. No muscles tensed or relaxed, save those she used while chewing. It was as if she wasn't thinking of anything at all.
He wondered where she had learned such an all-encompassing poker face. Such studied lapses of animation are hard learned, accompanied by suffering and pain, and suppression of personality. One doesn't have to keep all emotions and thoughts hidden if they conform to the norms and standards of those around you. Only the different, and then the twisted, need to learn such control. If he could only learn what she kept hidden, he could make her dance to his tune.
Thinking of tunes brought the one she had sung yesterday to mind. Isn't it great to be alive? Indeed. Words of despair, not hope. Words that are flung out as a last futile attempt to pretend that life is actually worth the time it takes to die. Words, words, words. It was a catchy tune, and one he had never heard before. New, just like so many things about her.
He wondered where on this world she could have come from, that she would be so foreign to him. He hadn't heard of any killers that fit her description, and while he had been a bit--indisposed--recently, he would most likely have heard something of her. She appeared to be in her early twenties, which would mean that whatever traumas were in her past, they were not long buried. And yet, she had a stillness to her that spoke of acceptance of her deeds, and that was not something he expected in someone her age.
That she was a killer he had no doubt. There was something in her eyes, an acknowledgement of mortality, perhaps, that no one who hasn't seen death possesses, an acceptance of the fragility of life, and an acceptance of personal violence. Her dance of the morning before assured him that she was more then capable of killing another, she was probably an artist. And if she was an artist of death, he should have heard of her, should have some inkling of why she ended up in his ship, and why she ran from him. But he hadn't, which meant what?
He needed to find out what shaped her into the person she was now, so he could shape her into the person he wanted her to be. Everyone has a key to their psyche, and though some may hide the key, or defend the locks, the key is still there, and so is the weakness. If he could only find the key, he knew that he would control her. Her self-control was a credit, but he would find out what he wanted in time.
And thinking of time, it was high time she started teaching him those little tricks of hers.
"You will teach me now," he said.
"In a minute," Kiley said. "Let me finish breakfast first."
"Now, girl. You've put this off long enough," he said, walking over to her.
"Knives," she said, looking at him as he walked closer, "this is going to take a lot of energy. Now, energy drain probably won't be a problem for you, but it's not going to be helpful if I pass out in the middle of a link."
"Then eat faster," he told her, now standing in front of her. She rolled her eyes and made a show of chewing, big exaggerated motions that slowed down the mastication. He nudged her firmly with his foot. "Stop fooling around."
"Sorry," she drawled after swallowing. "Fooling around is part of my plan to piss you off. It's integral, I can't just stop, especially since it's working." She smiled up at him with an empty smile and empty eyes, the food in her hands momentarily forgotten.
Knives looked at her, his face almost expressionless, but still managing to betray his anger. Kiley could tell she was pushing her luck, but perversely, that made her only more inclined to try annoy the crap out of him. If ever a man needed to learn how to deal with the fact that life pisses you off, it was the one before her.
"You do not want to make me angry," he said finally. His voice was quiet, yet managed to convey a feeling of doom. Which might have actually meant something to her if she hadn't said the same thing time after time.
"Actually, I do want to make you angry. I want to make you so mad you explode with rage, do one of your little energy-blasting tricks and rearrange the landscape. Or the moonscape, or whatever sort of scape you fancy. I want you to get so mad you do everything you can to get rid of the annoyance. And then, when I'm still around after your little temper tantrum, maybe you'll try to find a new way of dealing with the things that irritate you. 'Cause let's face it: you have a teensy tendency to overreact." That said, she picked up the last bite of her breakfast and popped it in her mouth.
Then she looked up at Knives. The look of apoplexy on his face was absolutely precious. She would bet that no one had ever said anything even remotely like that to him before. Of course, most people were a lot more impressed with his potential for planet-destroying power then they should have been. She flashed him an impish little grin, and said "Now, before you work yourself into an aneurysm, let's get to the interesting part. It's time for you to learn a few tricks."
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Knives wrestled his with his anger, but finally got it under control. At the moment he didn't care about the human. Her taunts were making her expendable. What he didn't want to do was hurt this precious oasis. The life that was so precariously poised on the edge between existence and disaster would be destroyed if he indulged in his desire to annihilate this pest. His eyes darted to the spring and the plants that managed to cling to the edges, and he absorbed the sight, using it to calm him and remind him that there were things in this world worth saving.
Finally he bled off enough of his rage to be able to look at the human again. If she had any sense, she would cower before the anger that still remained in his gaze, but instead she smiled. Smiled, as if his anger was something she could dismiss! For all her tough words, Knives knew that he could destroy her utterly. He decided then that her blithe dismissal of that fact was her error, and need not concern him. Allowing her to make him angry didn't serve his purposes.
Kiley stood and walked closer to the middle of the oasis, stopping about twenty feet from the spring. She seated herself in the same position as two days ago, and Knives followed suit. He knew she wouldn't need to correct his posture this time, and put out his hand for her to do that link thing.
Kiley looked at his hand like it was something foul. She lightly grabbed his wrist and placed his hand in his lap.
"We'll start with theory," she said, "and get to linking later."
"Theory?" asked Knives. "What are you talking about?"
"What? Did you think that this sort of thing is all flash and no substance? All action and no thought?" she asked, incredulous.
Knives responded, "All you need to do, human, is teach me the important things. I don't need a human teacher--"
In a fraction of a second Kiley went from an amused girl sitting in front of him to a killer. Knives barely had time to note the change in her eyes before he was throwing himself backward, out of the reach of the knife that appeared in her hand. She swept it around in an arc that would have torn out his throat if he were a human. As it was, a thin line was beginning to sting high on his chest where the blade had caught him.
He had never seen a human move that fast, had never seen a human prepare themselves to kill that fast. He got his hand to the gun at his hip and had pulled it out of the holster, but noticed something that stopped him from pulling the trigger. Aside from that first attack, she hadn't moved. He arm was still suspended at the end of the arc that would have killed him. He glanced at her eyes and saw nothing; they were as empty as the eyes of a corpse.
He watched her, finger on the trigger of his gun, ready to fire if she made a move. Her eyes stayed empty, seeing nothing as time began again. First one heartbeat passed, then two, each stretching out in an adrenaline fueled expansion of time.
Then she blinked, and life came back in her eyes all in a rush, filling them so completely that Knives almost began to doubt that they had been empty at all. She looked at her hand and seemed surprised to see it hanging there, holding a knife. She blinked hard a couple times, visibly trying to accept what she saw, then replaced it in her boot sheath.
"Um," she said, clearly at a loss for words. She didn't look at him, but interlaced her fingers and started at them.
Knives waited for her to say more, perhaps an explanation, or an excuse, or anything to fill the taut silence. But she didn't. She just stared at her hands, folded tight as if she was trying to keep them from betraying her again.
What the hell set her off? He cast his mind over the conversation, trying to find a clue as to what could possibly have elicited such a dramatic response. It couldn't have been his attitude; compared to some of the things he had said he was being polite. He looked at Kiley quizzically, then decided to experiment.
"Teacher," he said quietly, prepared for anything.
Except, perhaps, what happened. She exploded out of her seat and rushed him, somehow managing to knock his gun out of the way before he could fire. She grabbed his neck and started to squeeze. To say that Knives was shocked would be an understatement. She had moved so fast that he couldn't react. It was impossible for a human, and he would have spent more time denying what had happened except he needed to pry her fingers off his neck.
He grabbed her wrists and pulled them away from his neck. Looking in her eyes, the empty expression was back, but he decided absently that it wasn't so much empty as if her mind was looking at something else and didn't need to use the eyes at the moment. As soon as he felt her grip begin to loosen he threw her off of him. She landed hard on the sand, making no effort to break her fall.
This time when sense returned to her eyes they didn't show shame, but anger.
"What the hell are you doing?" she asked, rage causing her to shake.
Knives leaned over to pick up his gun but didn't take his eyes off her. He held it loosely in his hand and didn't respond. Instead, he sat down cross-legged in the sand and waited.
Staring at him, Kiley couldn't believe what she saw. After she just tried to kill him, twice, he wanted to her to continue the morning's lesson? She fumed for a few moments, mentally raging at what he had done, but keeping her mouth shut because she was ashamed of her reaction. Finally, she acceded to his silent demand and sat before him, ready to pass on some of what she knew. Maybe she could pretend that nothing had happened, and that would make it true.
"We will," she started, then paused to clear her throat. "We will start the morning with some theory. It's just as important to know why something works as knowing how to do it."
The rest of the morning was fairly uneventful, at least in the matter of physical events. Mentally, it was another story altogether as Knives was introduced to a world he hadn't known existed. He had used his mental powers like a child, and now he was being shown the wide world of the possible. Kiley talked at length on the basics of her mental tricks, of energy waves, bonds, and links. These were the elements that the mind could affect, and it was the various ways of manipulating them that multiplied the number of things one could do.
There were almost no known limits to what the mind could achieve. There were a few things that could not yet be done, but it was not some much because they were impossible as they had effects that could not be controlled. It was a lot like fusion in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. It was possible, but uncontrollable, and therefore a rather pointless endeavor, at least until a means of regulating the energy output was discovered.
What the mind could not do was overrule the most basic laws of thermodynamics. Energy could not be made or destroyed, which meant that every action had some sort of consequence. For instance, you could potentially stop the air molecules before you, thus creating an invisible wall. It would, however, be a very cold wall, as stopping the motion of the molecules would decrease the temperature of the molecules to absolute zero. Then you would have to do something with the energy that you pulled from the molecules. Otherwise, you would make your mind explode. The amount of energy it had to pull from the air to stop it was more then it the mind could hold, but wasn't more then it could redirect. Plus, the super-cold wall of air quickly attracted the water vapor in the air, making a instant, but fragile wall of ice. If the ice shattered, it was often bonded strongly enough to the air to shatter the wall as well.
After listing the various problems, Kiley gave a solution that would fix them. Undoubtedly, things grew more complicated then they would be at first glance, and Knives began to understand why they were starting with theory. She explained that the most common answer to that particular problem was a doubled trick, or one where you pull the energy from one plane of air and use that energy to supercharge surrounding molecules, and separate the two by a creating a small vacuum. That gets rid of water vapor, uses the energy, and keeps your mind intact.
Kiley described many problems like that one, and gave solutions to most of them. Some of them, like flying, had not been figured out yet, and she told him that as well, pointing out the facets of the problems that still were unanswered. It wasn't so much that there were laws of physics that could not be broken, but that the energy levels involved were great enough to overwhelm the mind before the energy could be transferred elsewhere.
Knives began to realize that there was a lot more to be learned then he had anticipated. When she had opened the morning with her comment about theories, he had assumed that she was going to be making up nonsense to drag out the instruction. He had never found it hard to manipulate the things around him, and had always figured that was because he was a plant, and not because what he was doing was unsophisticated. There were so many more elegant ways to manipulate the world if her theories were true.
He had not spent much time figuring out why his mind could affect the world around him, but her explanations of energy manipulation made sense and meshed with his experience. That he could have harmed his mind had never entered his thoughts. A trickle of uneasiness made itself felt as he contemplated some of the actions he had taken, and how lucky he had been to have not destroyed himself. He comforted himself with the knowledge that he had a superior mind, and could obviously handle much more then a human could before burning himself out.
For the most part, though, he dwelled only on what she said. For all her hatred of the word, she was a good teacher, intelligent, thoughtful, and concisely delivering information in a easily digestible stream. She kept the lesson paced evenly, dwelling on subjects perhaps a little longer then he needed to hear, but not annoyingly so. She was used to dealing with humans, so he didn't make an issue of the fact that she was teaching him a little too slowly. That day.
Knives was also surprised to find himself interested. He had believed that whatever this human might know would be of little real interest to him; that she would know a few tricks that he could strip from her and a lot of boring information that he wouldn't care about. That seemed to be the pattern for humans, a few bright sparks that made them interesting, smothered by the minutia of boredom they surrounded themselves in and called their lives. Instead, she stayed frightfully interesting the entire morning, capturing his interest and not letting it go.
It wasn't only the subject matter, although that was captivating enough, warnings and basic theories as it was. The basic theories alone were enough to set his mind aflame with the possibilities of greater things. There was so much that was possible, so much that he had never dreamed was possible, that he could hardly believe it. Whatever stroke of fortune had placed him in his ship, whatever had made it possible for him to sit here and learn from this girl, he blessed it. With even today's lesson he was going to have a much easier time wiping out the vermin. But no, it was more then just what he was learning. They way she taught it, the way her face came alive with the love of her subject served to draw him in even deeper. She taught him, and he knew that somehow he not only was learning such wonderful things, but that she was an expert in this field. For the first time in a very, very long time, Knives was more then interested in something. He was actually excited.
Yes, with the possibilities introduced by today's lesson, and finding her key, this morning was quite profitable indeed.
They stopped the training for lunch, both returning to their respective "sides" of the oasis. Knives spent his time thinking over what she had said, his nimble mind making leaps of logic that he ached to put to the test. That he didn't was a testament both to his intelligence, and Kiley's strenuous warnings. But he didn't let the inability to practice slow his imagination. With just the little he had learned that morning, he was already trying to refine the techniques that he had used to bind the Gung-Ho Guns to him. With any luck, he would be able to avoid any more incidents like that one with Chapel. Lost in his thoughts, he missed the inner turmoil on the other side of the oasis.
Kiley wasn't thinking very swiftly at all. Depression laced her thoughts, dragging them through her mind as slowly as possible. Every concept seemed weighted with lead, and only her anger with herself kept her from lapsing into despair. As much as she tried to ignore what had happened that morning, it would not leave her.
Dammit, she was sure that she was over that. Why couldn't that have been just one more of the things she had left behind? Why did it have to follow her here, to a place where she finally had a chance to build a future? She knew that it was her fault, that her reaction was symptomatic of a hole in her psyche. She could blame her reaction on stress, could say that she had only been falling into an earlier pattern of behavior, but that would be a lie.
She wasn't better. The veneer that she has laboriously built over that gaping hole in her soul wasn't as thick as she had thought it was. Instead of being a strong foundation on which to build a life, it was thin ice, and cracking beneath her weight already. Much as she ached to blame her reaction on the events of the past few months, she was at least strong enough to not lie to herself. She was still cracked, still not quite right in the head.
She wished she knew why it was so hard to get better, to heal the part of her that was still so raw, even after all this time. She was trying so hard to get better, but what good were her efforts when a single word could undo then all? A single word. She couldn't even force herself to think it.
Come on, she thought. Come on, you can do it. It's just a word. Not only is it just a word, but it's a word with a completely different meaning here. Not only that, but he couldn't touch you anymore years ago, you made sure of that. She tried to convince herself that the word was harmless, that it was just a name for a simple occupation, but she couldn't. Her mind danced around the word, trying to protect itself from it my throwing up synonyms, by embracing the concept wordlessly, but in the end it was overwhelmed by the need of the conscious to confront a personal demon.
Teacher.
Her mind drew away from the word as quickly as possible. Cold sweat broke out of her body as the syllables echoed between her ears. She kept herself from shaking, but only the indomitable willpower that had allowed her to think the word could control the reaction. With the single-mindedness of a child picking at a scab, she returned to the word, determined to confront her demon before it could be used against her.
Teacher.
Her stomach turned, and she set down her lunch. She wouldn't be eating for awhile. Fixing this problem wasn't going to be won with a battle, but with any luck she would be winning the war before Knives had a chance to do that to her again.
Her anger tried to turn from her shame to the way that Knives had manipulated her, but she wouldn't let it. She knew when her mind was trying to avoid an issue, and also knew that getting mad at Knives would be a waste of time. He was only being him horrible self. No, what she needed was to concentrate on her own problem. Her problem was what she needed to focus on, her problem. . .
Crap.
She dragged her mind back to the word it hated so much, forced it to think it twice in punishment for wandering.
Teacher. Teacher.
She couldn't control the shakes this time, but she did keep them in her hands. By folding them and placing them in her lap, she could pretend she was the problem didn't exist, but she was finally moving beyond lying to herself that much. Her gorge rose, even though her stomach was empty, and she spent a minute keeping the bile in her stomach, then cursed as she realized that her body had stopped her from confronting the problem again.
Depression crashed in again. Who was she kidding? If she could fix this problem, it would be gone by now. Years, years she had been trying to kick the killing rage, to confront the fear that the word inspired in her, and it obviously hadn't worked. She was broken, a broken excuse for a human being, unable to be fit into polite society. . . No.
She stopped the self-pity. Maybe she wasn't fixed yet, but she wasn't broken. Not while she could still fight. Determination hardened her, gave her what passed for hope in her life. More people then she could remember had tried to break her, some over a period of years, some over a period of months, and none of them had succeeded. She would rather die then let Knives break her with a word, after less then a week in her company. She would break when she said so, not before, and certainly not because of a word. She was stronger then that.
In her resolution, she forced herself to think the word again. Teacher. It came out easier this time, with a little less pain. Now she relaxed, and let her mind shy away from the word. She called the battle a win, but knew that there was still a lot more of the war ahead. Most importantly, though, she again began to believe that it was a war that could be won.
Still shaky, but determined to go on, Kiley walked to the center of the oasis and waited for Knives. She stood there for a minute, waiting for him to notice her, then sat down and got ready to wait for a while. He was lost in thought, and she took the time that his preoccupation offered to watch him.
She wondered what person, where, had decided to make plants so damned cute. Looking at him, seeing his eyes sparkle with delight, it was very hard to imagine that he was a murderous monster who lived only to exterminate the human race. He looked more like a child who has just been informed that wishes really do come true. The curve of his jaw, the arch of his nose, the height of his cheekbones, all combined to make him physically gorgeous.
His mind was obviously moving at great speeds. She watched him smile, a brief flicker at the corners of his mouth that turned into a soft frown as whatever idea that had caught his fancy was seen flawed. He ate absently, chewing slowly, precisely, sometimes forgetting to swallow for a moment. It was so incredibly cute she found herself lost in enjoyment, merely watching him.
Nothing made her want to smile as much as seeing someone else innocently happy. While it wasn't likely that there was much that was innocent about Knives' happiness, what she could see seemed innocuous enough. She could have obsessed, tried to figure out just what he was so darn happy about, but after a moment's heavy thought decided that she had been through enough today. If she could sit here and pretend that things were alright for a minute or two, it would probably be ok. She didn't need to destroy herself trying to stop a monster quite yet. Now, now there was time for her to pretend that he was happy to be learning, and that she was happy to be helping him learn, and that it was just a beautiful day in the desert. No harm anywhere, no harm now, no harm in the future. She leaned back on her elbows and watched Knives, her eyes half-lidded against the glare and the heat, a smile touching her lips as she wallowed in reflected joy.
The day grew a little older, the suns moved a degree in the sky, and Knives finally tore himself out of his reverie. The first thing he saw was that woman smirking at him, and anger instantly rose, tainting the happiness he had felt a heartbeat before. How dare she sit there and laugh at him? He rose slowly and stalked towards the center of the circle. She didn't move, but stayed smiling at him as he approached.
He drew nearer and noticed that she was sleeping.
How interesting. After what had happened this morning, he wouldn't have thought she would fall asleep with a smile on her face. He settled back on his heels and looked at her. He hadn't had much of a chance to actually look at the human yet, and was curious. For such an interesting vermin on the inside, she looked normal enough on the outside. A few freckles had formed across the bridge of her nose that hadn't been there when he first saw her in the ship. She was too skinny, her cheeks a little hollow, her skin a little too tight over her face, but that was no change. Looking, he wasn't sure if there was any fat on her body. Everything he could see was skin stretched tight over muscle and bone. Her sandy brown hair was short and unfashioned, and looked like it was growing out of a crew cut, all shaggy follicles the same length. Her mouth was relaxed, the lips full and pink with a little gap between them.
All in all, not completely ugly, for a human, but definitely could have been better. He shifted on his heels and she woke up.
"See anything you like?" she asked without opening her eyes.
"Like to kill, perhaps," he replied absently. "But that can wait until later."
"It's good to know you have your priorities straight," she said, then opened her eyes. He was still very close, looming over her.
"You were smiling," he said, slightly accusing.
"You were cute," she responded, rolling her shoulders and stretching before sitting up. "I'm just a sucker for seeing people who look happy."
Knives looked at her oddly. "You smile when other people are happy?"
Kiley's brow wrinkled. "Most of the time. Why? Do happy people make you sad?"
"No," he said shortly. A pause, then "I don't see many happy people."
"Well, most people fighting for their lives aren't happy. Or at least, most sane people," she amended quickly. "There's always a few twisted souls who think that fighting for their lives is some sort of proof of adequacy. Are they the sort of happy people you see?" she asked solicitously.
He shot her a look she couldn't quite read but interpreted as dirty. "I only know one person, my brother. Things like you are vermin, not people."
"Oh, ouch," she said, laughing. "Stop that. You and your prejudices need to come to an understanding with the real world. Humans may not be the best of people, but we are people. I'm sure, somewhere out there in the big, wide universe there are better people, and there are worse people. And here on this planet, well, we have plants as the better people, and humans as the worse people, but just because we aren't as sublime as you are doesn't make us not people." She said the whole thing with a smile, but watched sadly as Knives grew angrier throughout her speech.
"You are not people. You are evil, destroying, horrible monsters that destroy everything you touch. There is no excuse, no justification for your continued existence."
She contemplated that, then stuck her tongue out at him, then poked him in the side.
"Feeling destroyed yet?"
Knives growled, and Kiley was a little sorry, but it passed.
"Sorry," she apologized anyway. "Let's get back to the learning."
Knives sat down in front of her, his anger disappearing into that disquieting calm of his. Kiley looked at him closely before deciding that he was safe enough to talk to for the moment.
"Now we're going to link," she stated. "We aren't going to do anything fancy, but what we will do is explore some of the concepts I introduced this morning."
He put his hand out and she gingerly took it, touching fingertips to fingertips as lightly as she could. Slowly, she reached out with her mind and established the link. Carefully, she manipulated the energies of the world and coaxed the air into a small breeze that blew against their faces. After a few seconds she finished and broke the link.
Knives opened his eyes and started at her incredulously. "That's it?"
"That's it what?" she asked. "That's it, it's easy, or that's it, it's tiny?"
"Both," he said.
"Yeah, that's it then." She looked at him, daring him to say something more.
Knives was learning lots of things. He wisely changed the subject. "Am I learning anything else today?" he asked impatiently.
She leaned back and ran her fingers through the sand, rubbing the feel of his skin from her fingertips. "That depends."
"It depends on what?" he demanded.
"It depends on whether or not you can do what I just showed you."
"Of course I can," he replied indignantly. He started to show her, only to realize that creating a breeze wasn't as simple as it had seemed. He tried to grasp the air and push it in the direction he wanted, but the harder he tried the more it slipped away. He knew how to do this, he remembered how it was done, but now that he attempted to perform the simplest of tasks he was stumped.
But he would rather wrestle with the problem for an hour then ask her to show him again. He closed his eyes, then stopped trying to grab onto the air, realizing its current futility. Instead he took a moment to review what she had done. First, she defined an area that she wished to affect, then. . . how to describe what she did? It wasn't grabbing the air, but more. . . what?
He stopped and tried to put into words a concept he only barely grasped. The memory existed in his mind, but it was a memory out of context, out of his ability to define. She hadn't tried to grab the air, she hadn't grabbed anything at all. Instead, she wove the energies into a net and pulled that in the direction she wanted the air to move. The net pushed the air ahead of it, and a breeze was formed.
With a snide little smile for the easiness of the answer, and the speed with which he arrived at it, Knives attempted the trick. He found the energy of the air and squished it together into something that almost looked somewhat like a net and pulled it towards him. Or at least, he tried. The stupid mess wouldn't move. He stared at it with his mind, tried to force the energies into a net, then let them go when he realized that all he had was a useless tangle.
He tried again, this time taking more care with the initial weaving of the energies, and as he pulled it towards him, he was rewarded with a faint breath of air. Opening his eyes, he was surprised by what he saw.
The first thing he noticed was that the woman was no longer sitting in front of him. He craned his neck around, looking for her, and finally caught a glimpse of her near the spring. The second thing he noticed was the lateness of the hour. The suns were already near the horizon. The shadows of the pillars streaked across the oasis like bars on a window, the light beginning to take on an orange hue that heralded the end of the day. What happened?
"What did you do?" he called out, accusingly.
"Nothing," she hollered back. "You went into a trance. It's normal; don't worry."
It took Knives a couple tries to stand up. His body was stiff, and he realized the importance of the seating position. When he finally made it to his feet he walked over to where she was sitting.
"It's not normal for me," he said.
"How many times have you learned from a link before?" she asked, turning from the castle she was building in the sand. Knives shot her a withering look but said nothing, so she continued. "You learned how to make an energy web in a trance, a link trance. The most common way of accessing the information is in a trance as well. The mind tries to replicate the learning situation to facilitate the retrieval of information."
"Are you saying that I'll be falling into these trances after every lesson?" he asked.
"That is entirely up to you," she said, turning again to her sand castle. "It depends on how hard you fight to stay out of trance. If I were you , though, I wouldn't worry about it. Most people stop falling into a trance as they progress in learning. It's only while the mind is wrestling with massively unfamiliar concepts that it focuses all energies on the learning process."
"Why do some people continue to trance?" he asked, grasping at what she had only implied.
"Some people have a very difficult time with the concepts. Their waking mind might not be able to accept them, or they just might need to devote all their energies to the formation of the trick," she said.
"Do you need to trance?" he asked, looking at the castle she had made. It was all straight lines, perfectly straight, parallel lines without a grain of sand out of place, save for a lopsided circle placed carelessly inside the layers of walls.
"Did I look like I was in a trance when I put those people in stasis?" she asked waspishly. "I haven't needed to trance for a very long time."
Knives didn't respond. He didn't like the vulnerability of a trance.
"Did you trance?" he asked instead, preferring to keep her talking, if only to keep from obsessing over the potential problems of a trance.
"Once," she said softly. "I tranced once."
"Are you so smart?" Knives asked sarcastically.
"No, just motivated," she responded before sweeping the castle to the ground.
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Song copyright The Lawnmowers. I think it's The Goat, but I could be mistaken.