Ch.7: Meet the Teacher
Anger was the key to my power. As I entered the Reneighd Klein, I knew I would be angry when I came out. There was no way a machine, even if it was a Goddess, would be able to respond. Around me the vision blurred and cleared, and suddenly I was looking at the ceiling across from the Goddess docking bay rather than at just a plain wall. Gathering my thoughts together, I called as clear as I could, "My brother was Ernest Cuore. Tell me, Reneighd Klein – did my brother know I would become this? Did he know I would become this controller or people?"
And silence answered. There wasn't any reply that I expected, after all. Furious, I did something very unlike me and very like Gareas – I hit the wall in front of me as hard as I could. The comm. links that floated around my head suddenly gave a tinkle and shattered from the amount of mental pressure I put on them. I could feel the anger build up, furiously wanting to be released, and I centered it around me, burning itself to exhaustion –
The cockpit door suddenly opened and I was ejected out. All anger, the aura around me, dissipated in front of me, and I fell to the ground. Mentally I told myself to work on concentrating when I had the chance, and hoped this wouldn't take too long. It was almost time to meet Ernest (or what was left of him) in the circular tree room. However, I wasn't expecting to see who I did.
"Instructor Azuma?", I said, surprised. "May I help you, sir?"
The usually angry Instructor (at least that was what I remembered him as) gave a slight grin and said softly, almost as he was remembering something of his own, "I knew you'd be here". At my questioning look he continued in the same absent way, "I used to come here too, when I couldn't find an answer to something. I did all of my homework at this desk right here." He patted the monitor in front of him. "I made friends with one of the pilots and he gave me the password in here. I liked this Goddess the best, and later this was the Goddess was the one I piloted. You know, all of the Goddess appeal to someone, or some type of personality. That's why everyone in G.O.A. can pilot a Goddess if they sync right with it and have EX to back it up."
I had a sneaking suspicion this wasn't the only reason the Instructor was here. "And just who did the Reneighd Klein appeal to?"
The grizzled face gave me a wry grin and stated simply, "Telepaths. It appealed to anyone with a special mental ability, especially to telepaths."
And suddenly it all fell together, the puzzle solved. Just when I was thinking of the question, the answer came: the teacher that had taught my brother was none other than Instructor Azuma himself. As the discovery thrilled through my mind for a few moments, jabbering questions made themselves heard in the core of myself, each debating the other in a furious struggle: to ask him whether or not if he could teach me anything. Perhaps I didn't have the potential to learn. Perhaps he was like my brother, holding the information back. Perhaps it was for some other far more personal reason.
"I never thought…", I started, still simply surprised to say anymore. The Instructor held up a hand to stall anything I was about to say and shook his head. "You never noticed because my EX was blocked. It grows on you so that you can control it when you get as old as I am. However, you never noticed it in me because neurologists have put a block on it. I can still use it from time to time if the block is temporarily removed, but I vowed never to use it after I hurt someone with it. I had the neurologists insert something called a "banlieue" that puts tabs on how much EX you use a day and stops you from using too much of it. Of course, that meant I had to resign, but by then I was already over twenty years old and the oldest pilot running, so I think many people were glad to see my position relinquished."
I stilled at his words. He gave up his powers because he had hurt someone with them. It made me feel incredibly guilty because I had hurt Rio and yet I had not stopped my use of them. The Instructor looked at me mildly, and I realized that he was probably reading my mind right now – as long as he didn't go over his EX quota, he could read my mind all he wanted. Apparently his EX ability was telepathical reading without an actual physical contact. Immediately I became embarrassed; he could read every thought right off of my head. The Instructor gave me an amused look at the last thought, and that only proved my suspicions.
"You are no monster, Erts", he said slowly. I looked at him steadily, and inside of me my heart quickened. How long had he been reading my mind outside of that door to Rio's room?
"And why is that?", I asked softly. "I am telepath. It is my job to use people."
He gave a snort. "You don't look like a monster, for one. You don't sprout tentacles and whip-like tails and sharp teeth, Erts." His face changed to a more serious look. "And a monster wouldn't feel guilty if he used people."
"It's not a coincidence all of the telepaths use the Cerise Klein in my time, the Luhma Klein in Ernest's time, and the Reneighd Klein in your time. All of the telepaths that have come through G.O.A. are drawn by the Goddess within, and that attraction only builds with each telepath that passes through the training station. Neither is it a coincidence that, for the short time a telepath is one of the five Goddess pilots, the Reneighd Klein becomes the leader, and takes over for the Ernn Laties. Each telepath becomes the core of the five pilots for a time, even if the pilot of the Ernn Laties is considered the leader."
It made sense. All of the Goddesses appealed to a specific kind of person: brash like Gareas, conservative like Yu, comical like Rioroute, leaderly like Teela or soft and unsuited for battle at all, like my brother and me. Therefore, all of the leaders to ever pass through would sync best with the Ernn Laties, so on and so forth. It also made sense that the telepaths were the ones who held everyone together, and played 'leader' for a little while – he could mentally appeal to the people around him. It made sense that the leader of the pilots would be the person who could use them the most efficiently, and a telepath could read actions and movements better than any other person. It made perfect, logical sense, and I hated it.
As much as I didn't want to be that 'leader', even for a little while, I could feel a stirring of anticipation. I liked a challenge, and this was large one. The challenge was to stay on top for as long as you could, which wasn't easy because thinking wore a telepath down critically. As I thought of this, a question occurred to me.
"Instructor, then why did my brother not become this telepathic leader for a while? In all the times I remember, Teela has always been in command."
Instructor Azuma shook his head. "Ernest never had a chance. He was cleanly broken in for only two years. He didn't have a chance to grow on the other pilots." Here he gave a humorless smile. "He got killed too fast. But the leadership was there, Erts – the other pilots trusted him to some extent. Teela was only their leader because she was the pilot of Ernn Laties, and that pilot was naturally in command."
"But Instructor, if I know Teela, she will not give up that leadership freely."
"It won't matter. This is out of her hands. Even if she has leadership, she has lost it to you already." He gave me a long look. "Haven't you noticed that you are more respected out of all of the pilots, not because your marks are so high but because you can smoothly accomplish anything you put your mind to? It's a gift, Erts. Use it. Plus, your 'new brother' as you've started calling him – he'll know when Teela will die. He's got a sense of psychic-ness around him."
I was nicely surprised. I had not thought that anyone else had felt Rio's apparent oracle nature, but I should have guessed before that the Instructor had apparently been hiding this piece of information from the world as well. How the Instructor came to find I could not be sure, but even as that thought came to mind I reminded myself he could hear every thought I was thinking. Giving me an enigmatic smile, the adult said nothing.
Great, I thought miserably. Even as a telepath, this isn't helping me.
"You said…you said that telepaths are attracted to the Reneighd Klein. What happened to them?", I asked hesitantly. "They only remain 'leaders' for a short time, if I read your signs correctly. So what happened to them? They didn't…die, did they?"
The Instructor looked off into the distance, and I knew the answer was 'yes'. Of course – common of telepaths was the want to be absolutely perfect. They were pessimistic perfectionists, as Gareas had once described my brother. That explained it…because telepaths wanted everything to be perfect, they could not stay on top for very long because they would constantly blame themselves for every little mistake. It was a trait my brother possessed as well – when Gareas dove in on a suicide run, Ernest kept me up with soft, miserable waves of pain that kept me awake the whole night. And because of that, I could tell my brother's concentration was just about at 'sleep' when he climbed into the cockpit the next morning. As I could determine from Gareas' kidnapping, Victims controlled minds very well – it would not take much to inhabit a sleeping mind and draw it towards them to tear it to pieces before they could rightly know they were being controlled.
"And you, Instructor Azuma, how did you escape that fate? I take it was some lucky stroke." I looked up expectantly, and was a little apprehensive when he opened a mental link to me and vibrated several colors at me. A touch of red, a bit of a dark navy that I determined to be perseverance, and then a bit of light green to signify indignity. I could laugh at the combination – apparently it had not been HIS intelligence that had saved him, but someone else pulling him out before he could push himself far enough to reach exhaustion.
Dr. Rill, to be exact, the Instructor's voice quipped to me. She got the big man in charge to drag me screaming and kicking from the cockpit. She managed to convince me I wouldn't be needed in this skirmish. It was only a bit later I found out I had been released as a pilot. I sensed a bit of hurt at this, and tried my best to soothe his temper. I didn't have any other place to go, so I stayed here at G.O.A. and generally helped out, and then I got sent a year later to a teaching station and I became an Instructor here on G.O.A.
I grew silent. In my mind came the question: "Will someone save me?" The question sounded selfish to my ears, but I held it in check, and closed my eyes and tried to pretend I had said nothing. The Instructor heard, of course, but refrained from saying anything. A soft, twinging, uncomfortable silence settled over us like fog.
Just when I was about to thank him for the new questions and the old ones answered, I suddenly remembered a question I should ask. "Then you…you hear them too, don't you? The songs they sing, the Victim songs. You hear them, now and then, even though your abilities are blocked…", I trailed off, not knowing quite how he felt on the subject. The Instructor looked a bit strange, distant, for a moment, then looked back at me. I felt a shiver, a trembling of a touch against my senses, and I was relieved to feel he wasn't too angry at me for asking the question.
"Yes. I hear them…once in a while. Beautiful, aren't they? I used to hear them when I was on my colony as well, and be comforted by them while they fought our own troops outside. They have a special kind of magic in those tones. Not quite lyrical, but not quite instrument either." I waited for more, but the Instructor fell silent and I deemed that was the extent of that subject. Softly I thanked him with a hue of soft blue and made my way out of the docking bay with one last look at the Telepaths' Goddess. The tree room would provide some solitude, I thought absently. I needed that – there was a lot to think about.
Anger was the key to my power. As I entered the Reneighd Klein, I knew I would be angry when I came out. There was no way a machine, even if it was a Goddess, would be able to respond. Around me the vision blurred and cleared, and suddenly I was looking at the ceiling across from the Goddess docking bay rather than at just a plain wall. Gathering my thoughts together, I called as clear as I could, "My brother was Ernest Cuore. Tell me, Reneighd Klein – did my brother know I would become this? Did he know I would become this controller or people?"
And silence answered. There wasn't any reply that I expected, after all. Furious, I did something very unlike me and very like Gareas – I hit the wall in front of me as hard as I could. The comm. links that floated around my head suddenly gave a tinkle and shattered from the amount of mental pressure I put on them. I could feel the anger build up, furiously wanting to be released, and I centered it around me, burning itself to exhaustion –
The cockpit door suddenly opened and I was ejected out. All anger, the aura around me, dissipated in front of me, and I fell to the ground. Mentally I told myself to work on concentrating when I had the chance, and hoped this wouldn't take too long. It was almost time to meet Ernest (or what was left of him) in the circular tree room. However, I wasn't expecting to see who I did.
"Instructor Azuma?", I said, surprised. "May I help you, sir?"
The usually angry Instructor (at least that was what I remembered him as) gave a slight grin and said softly, almost as he was remembering something of his own, "I knew you'd be here". At my questioning look he continued in the same absent way, "I used to come here too, when I couldn't find an answer to something. I did all of my homework at this desk right here." He patted the monitor in front of him. "I made friends with one of the pilots and he gave me the password in here. I liked this Goddess the best, and later this was the Goddess was the one I piloted. You know, all of the Goddess appeal to someone, or some type of personality. That's why everyone in G.O.A. can pilot a Goddess if they sync right with it and have EX to back it up."
I had a sneaking suspicion this wasn't the only reason the Instructor was here. "And just who did the Reneighd Klein appeal to?"
The grizzled face gave me a wry grin and stated simply, "Telepaths. It appealed to anyone with a special mental ability, especially to telepaths."
And suddenly it all fell together, the puzzle solved. Just when I was thinking of the question, the answer came: the teacher that had taught my brother was none other than Instructor Azuma himself. As the discovery thrilled through my mind for a few moments, jabbering questions made themselves heard in the core of myself, each debating the other in a furious struggle: to ask him whether or not if he could teach me anything. Perhaps I didn't have the potential to learn. Perhaps he was like my brother, holding the information back. Perhaps it was for some other far more personal reason.
"I never thought…", I started, still simply surprised to say anymore. The Instructor held up a hand to stall anything I was about to say and shook his head. "You never noticed because my EX was blocked. It grows on you so that you can control it when you get as old as I am. However, you never noticed it in me because neurologists have put a block on it. I can still use it from time to time if the block is temporarily removed, but I vowed never to use it after I hurt someone with it. I had the neurologists insert something called a "banlieue" that puts tabs on how much EX you use a day and stops you from using too much of it. Of course, that meant I had to resign, but by then I was already over twenty years old and the oldest pilot running, so I think many people were glad to see my position relinquished."
I stilled at his words. He gave up his powers because he had hurt someone with them. It made me feel incredibly guilty because I had hurt Rio and yet I had not stopped my use of them. The Instructor looked at me mildly, and I realized that he was probably reading my mind right now – as long as he didn't go over his EX quota, he could read my mind all he wanted. Apparently his EX ability was telepathical reading without an actual physical contact. Immediately I became embarrassed; he could read every thought right off of my head. The Instructor gave me an amused look at the last thought, and that only proved my suspicions.
"You are no monster, Erts", he said slowly. I looked at him steadily, and inside of me my heart quickened. How long had he been reading my mind outside of that door to Rio's room?
"And why is that?", I asked softly. "I am telepath. It is my job to use people."
He gave a snort. "You don't look like a monster, for one. You don't sprout tentacles and whip-like tails and sharp teeth, Erts." His face changed to a more serious look. "And a monster wouldn't feel guilty if he used people."
"It's not a coincidence all of the telepaths use the Cerise Klein in my time, the Luhma Klein in Ernest's time, and the Reneighd Klein in your time. All of the telepaths that have come through G.O.A. are drawn by the Goddess within, and that attraction only builds with each telepath that passes through the training station. Neither is it a coincidence that, for the short time a telepath is one of the five Goddess pilots, the Reneighd Klein becomes the leader, and takes over for the Ernn Laties. Each telepath becomes the core of the five pilots for a time, even if the pilot of the Ernn Laties is considered the leader."
It made sense. All of the Goddesses appealed to a specific kind of person: brash like Gareas, conservative like Yu, comical like Rioroute, leaderly like Teela or soft and unsuited for battle at all, like my brother and me. Therefore, all of the leaders to ever pass through would sync best with the Ernn Laties, so on and so forth. It also made sense that the telepaths were the ones who held everyone together, and played 'leader' for a little while – he could mentally appeal to the people around him. It made sense that the leader of the pilots would be the person who could use them the most efficiently, and a telepath could read actions and movements better than any other person. It made perfect, logical sense, and I hated it.
As much as I didn't want to be that 'leader', even for a little while, I could feel a stirring of anticipation. I liked a challenge, and this was large one. The challenge was to stay on top for as long as you could, which wasn't easy because thinking wore a telepath down critically. As I thought of this, a question occurred to me.
"Instructor, then why did my brother not become this telepathic leader for a while? In all the times I remember, Teela has always been in command."
Instructor Azuma shook his head. "Ernest never had a chance. He was cleanly broken in for only two years. He didn't have a chance to grow on the other pilots." Here he gave a humorless smile. "He got killed too fast. But the leadership was there, Erts – the other pilots trusted him to some extent. Teela was only their leader because she was the pilot of Ernn Laties, and that pilot was naturally in command."
"But Instructor, if I know Teela, she will not give up that leadership freely."
"It won't matter. This is out of her hands. Even if she has leadership, she has lost it to you already." He gave me a long look. "Haven't you noticed that you are more respected out of all of the pilots, not because your marks are so high but because you can smoothly accomplish anything you put your mind to? It's a gift, Erts. Use it. Plus, your 'new brother' as you've started calling him – he'll know when Teela will die. He's got a sense of psychic-ness around him."
I was nicely surprised. I had not thought that anyone else had felt Rio's apparent oracle nature, but I should have guessed before that the Instructor had apparently been hiding this piece of information from the world as well. How the Instructor came to find I could not be sure, but even as that thought came to mind I reminded myself he could hear every thought I was thinking. Giving me an enigmatic smile, the adult said nothing.
Great, I thought miserably. Even as a telepath, this isn't helping me.
"You said…you said that telepaths are attracted to the Reneighd Klein. What happened to them?", I asked hesitantly. "They only remain 'leaders' for a short time, if I read your signs correctly. So what happened to them? They didn't…die, did they?"
The Instructor looked off into the distance, and I knew the answer was 'yes'. Of course – common of telepaths was the want to be absolutely perfect. They were pessimistic perfectionists, as Gareas had once described my brother. That explained it…because telepaths wanted everything to be perfect, they could not stay on top for very long because they would constantly blame themselves for every little mistake. It was a trait my brother possessed as well – when Gareas dove in on a suicide run, Ernest kept me up with soft, miserable waves of pain that kept me awake the whole night. And because of that, I could tell my brother's concentration was just about at 'sleep' when he climbed into the cockpit the next morning. As I could determine from Gareas' kidnapping, Victims controlled minds very well – it would not take much to inhabit a sleeping mind and draw it towards them to tear it to pieces before they could rightly know they were being controlled.
"And you, Instructor Azuma, how did you escape that fate? I take it was some lucky stroke." I looked up expectantly, and was a little apprehensive when he opened a mental link to me and vibrated several colors at me. A touch of red, a bit of a dark navy that I determined to be perseverance, and then a bit of light green to signify indignity. I could laugh at the combination – apparently it had not been HIS intelligence that had saved him, but someone else pulling him out before he could push himself far enough to reach exhaustion.
Dr. Rill, to be exact, the Instructor's voice quipped to me. She got the big man in charge to drag me screaming and kicking from the cockpit. She managed to convince me I wouldn't be needed in this skirmish. It was only a bit later I found out I had been released as a pilot. I sensed a bit of hurt at this, and tried my best to soothe his temper. I didn't have any other place to go, so I stayed here at G.O.A. and generally helped out, and then I got sent a year later to a teaching station and I became an Instructor here on G.O.A.
I grew silent. In my mind came the question: "Will someone save me?" The question sounded selfish to my ears, but I held it in check, and closed my eyes and tried to pretend I had said nothing. The Instructor heard, of course, but refrained from saying anything. A soft, twinging, uncomfortable silence settled over us like fog.
Just when I was about to thank him for the new questions and the old ones answered, I suddenly remembered a question I should ask. "Then you…you hear them too, don't you? The songs they sing, the Victim songs. You hear them, now and then, even though your abilities are blocked…", I trailed off, not knowing quite how he felt on the subject. The Instructor looked a bit strange, distant, for a moment, then looked back at me. I felt a shiver, a trembling of a touch against my senses, and I was relieved to feel he wasn't too angry at me for asking the question.
"Yes. I hear them…once in a while. Beautiful, aren't they? I used to hear them when I was on my colony as well, and be comforted by them while they fought our own troops outside. They have a special kind of magic in those tones. Not quite lyrical, but not quite instrument either." I waited for more, but the Instructor fell silent and I deemed that was the extent of that subject. Softly I thanked him with a hue of soft blue and made my way out of the docking bay with one last look at the Telepaths' Goddess. The tree room would provide some solitude, I thought absently. I needed that – there was a lot to think about.