Inheritance

CHAPTER 30

Reese thought she had prepared herself to see David on Saturday, but when he emerged from the ferry, she realized she was fooling herself. He was the first off the ramp, followed by his sister, his parents, and Reese’s dad.

“Welcome,” Nura Halba said, stepping forward to help them with their luggage.

Reese wished she had waited back at the ship, because now she had to greet David in front of their families, and this was the first time she had seen him since before the attack on her house. She didn’t expect him to drop his backpack and duffel bag on the ground and pull her into a hug.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” she mumbled into his shoulder. Her hands slipped tentatively around his back. She smelled the faint tang of his hair product layered over the scent of his shirt. Fresh laundry.

I’m glad you’re not hurt, he told her.

She tried to prevent herself from sinking too deeply into him as they touched. She wanted to let herself go, but she was acutely aware of the fact that they weren’t together anymore. She let herself feel his relief that she was unharmed, but nothing more. She knew he was holding back too, and the sensation of his carefulness—as if he were tiptoeing around the edges of her consciousness—made her feel so awfully distant from him, even though the whole length of her body was pressed against him.

She pulled back before she got carried away. “I have so much to tell you,” she said.

He smiled faintly. “Okay.”

For a moment, Reese thought she saw something in his brown eyes that made her heartbeat quicken, but then she noticed Chloe in the background, watching surreptitiously. Reese lowered her gaze self-consciously. Out of the corner of her eye she saw their parents loading the bags into the SUV.

“We should go,” he said.

“Yeah.” She followed him toward the vehicle, where she greeted their parents.

At the ship, Nura Halba escorted them to their rooms on the third level. Chloe was wide-eyed and a little frightened; Reese heard her quick intake of breath as they passed through the atriums with their floating globes. When they arrived in the living quarters, Reese’s mom came out to meet them. There was a second round of greeting and hugging as everyone jostled through the corridor. Reese waited until they were all settled into their rooms and beginning to unpack before she pulled David aside.

“Can we talk for a minute?” she asked. She heard Chloe’s excited voice floating down the corridor as Halba explained how the voice-operated commands worked.

“Sure. You want to come in?” He gestured to his room and they went inside, closing the door. The space was identical to hers, but with a view of the whitewashed officers’ quarters instead of the hillside. She still thought the boarded-up buildings were a little creepy.

“There’s something else you should know,” she began. She had planned this part out. David was standing beside his bunk, one hand on his duffel, and she crossed the room and reached out to touch his arm, her fingertips grazing his bare skin. She sensed defensiveness in him like a rapidly rising shield, and she knew he thought she was going to tell him that she and Amber were together again. It’s not that. I told Amber I can’t be with her either.

David’s surprise was palpable. Really?

Yes. And then she admitted: I do have feelings for her, but I also still have feelings for you. There’s no other way to deal with it. It’s over. “I want to move on from this,” she said out loud. Her voice sounded remarkably steady. “We have to work together, you and me and maybe even Amber. All of this—” She gestured at the ship around them. “It’s important. It’s more important than us. I know I hurt you and I’m sorry. I didn’t want to but I screwed up. You said that you hoped we could be friends again and at first I didn’t think I could do it, but—” She realized that her fingers had slipped down his arm and he was holding her hand now, and it almost undid her.

“We never stopped being friends,” he said when she didn’t continue.

She squeezed his hand. His fingers were warm and strong in hers. She felt regret like a shadow stretching between them, but at the same time, she felt his love. It was clear and startling: a gift she had yearned for but never expected to receive. She couldn’t understand how she could be so happy and so sad at the same time. When he let go of her hand, she missed him.

“Tell me what Amber told you about the Imria,” he said, unzipping his duffel.

The abrupt change of subject felt almost like a rejection, but she knew it wasn’t. It was David trying to do what she asked: to move on. She had known that talking to him wouldn’t miraculously erase all the hurt, but the reality was harder to bear than she had anticipated. It was going to take time for them to figure out how to make their friendship work again, when they both knew they wanted more.

“Okay,” she said, and as he unpacked, she told him everything.

Eres Tilhar began the day’s lesson by walking David and Reese through the mapping practice again. Reese was beginning to be able to shape her own consciousness into more of a contained presence; she was no longer a mass of conflicting emotions.

When they finished, Eres said, “There is much improvement. I am very glad to see that. At this point we can continue with the same practice—that is what we would normally do—but because you’ll be meeting with Akiya Deyir this afternoon, I want to ask you: Is there anything you’d like to tell me?”

Reese tucked her hands beneath her thighs and glanced sideways at David. They had discussed this earlier; today was the day. Go ahead, she told him.

“We know you’ve already guessed,” David said to Eres. “Today we’re ready to talk about it.”

Eres nodded. “Good.”

They took turns explaining to Eres about their ability to speak to each other telepathically. They told the teacher how crowds affected them, how sometimes they sensed not only waves of emotion but snatches of thought, and how their abilities had developed differently in each of them.

“To be clear: Reese, first you only sensed emotions, while David, you only heard broken thoughts?” Eres asked.

“Right,” David said. “But we can do both now.”

“Why do you think it happened that way?” Reese asked.

“It may simply be the way the adaptation affected you. We didn’t think it had been completely effective in David at first. We’d have to do more testing before we know for sure. Tell me more about how it feels when you sense a crowd’s emotions or thoughts.”

“It can be really confusing and overwhelming,” Reese said. “These lessons have helped. I try to block them out now—the crowds.”

“And how close to the crowd are you when this happens?” Eres asked.

“I think we have to be pretty close,” David said.

“Yeah,” Reese said. “I couldn’t sense them when I was inside my house and they were in the street.”

“What about your telepathic communication? You said you first discovered this when you were at Project Plato, separated. Have you communicated that way since then?”

“No,” David said. “We tried, but it hasn’t worked.”

“We’ve had to be able to see each other to communicate that way,” Reese said.

The teacher regarded the two of them thoughtfully. “I see. Perhaps it has something to do with your level of mental focus. You may have been more desperate to reach out to each other when you were at Plato. That situation could have forced you to focus your consciousness in a way you haven’t done since then.”

“Maybe,” Reese said. “It was a pretty intense experience.”

“Do you think we could do it again?” David asked.

“There’s no reason why not. If you could communicate from a distance before, I think you’ll be able to do it again. I do believe it will require practice on your part. Have you been able to hear the thoughts of any other humans? Or Imria?”

“No,” Reese said.

“Only in crowds, and that’s not the same at all,” David said.

“David and I are the only two humans who have gone through the adaptation procedure, so maybe that’s why?” Reese said. “Maybe if you adapted other humans, we’d be able to hear their thoughts too.”

“Perhaps,” Eres said. “The crowd sensing is interesting. How big do the crowds need to be?”

“I’m not sure,” Reese said. She and David had never formally tested their abilities; they had only muddled through on their own, trying to avoid becoming overwhelmed.

“These things occur when you are not touching another person, right?” Eres asked. “This is not susum’urda—not the way I’ve been teaching you.”

“No, it’s not susum’urda,” David said. “That sort of makes sense to me now. But this other stuff… it still feels random. Like I don’t really know how it works.”

“Why do you think we can do it?” Reese asked. “You can’t do it, can you?”

“No. None of the Imria have this ability. Susum’urda is predicated on physical connection. This is certainly different.”

“So this wasn’t meant to be part of the adaptation,” David said.

“No.” Eres looked pensive. “I suppose we could have suspected this was possible. There have always been humans who exhibited signs of being able to do things like this. You’ve called them psychics or mystics. And telepathy has always been a source of fascination for your people. It would make sense that humans were fascinated by it because some of you have been able to do it.”

Reese was skeptical. “So the adaptation procedure has turned us into psychics?”

“Not exactly. For a long time, we attempted to analyze the DNA of so-called psychic humans and compare it to our own, to determine why certain genes were turned on and others weren’t, but it was very slow, painstaking work. Those psychic abilities turned out to be mutations that were usually irreproducible in offspring—or at least so random in occurrence that it was impossible to predict. Our scientists stopped testing psychics decades ago, believing that those psychic skills were side effects of the fact that humans did have the ability to share consciousness in their genes, but that ability was never properly developed. The adaptation procedure was supposed to correct that. It was supposed to awaken your latent abilities and to make them heritable so that they will be passed on to your descendants. Apparently the adaptation procedure has awakened abilities we did not expect.” Eres leaned forward. “Will you show me how it works?” The teacher extended a hand to Reese.

“How?” Reese asked, confused.

“Take my hand, and David can send you a thought. Allow me to experience it as it happens to you.”

Reese glanced at David, who nodded. She took Eres’s hand and immediately felt the focus of the teacher’s attention like a lens trained on her. Reese took a breath. David? She sensed Eres in the background of her consciousness like a shadow presence.

Yes, David thought. I’m right here.

Eres’s consciousness seemed to flash in surprise. Again, Eres told her.

Got any other thoughts? Reese asked David.

What should I say? Testing, testing?

Reese smiled. Ten four.

Eres dropped Reese’s hand and said, “I have never encountered that before.” The teacher sounded unusually breathless. “This afternoon when we meet with Akiya Deyir and the others—you will tell them, won’t you?”

“We were planning to,” David said.

“Good. They should know. It is right that they learn it from the two of you.” Eres studied them, as if seeing them for the first time.

Reese shifted uncomfortably. “Is it totally weird?” she asked.

The teacher looked astonished. “It is not weird. It is… beyond what we had ever dreamed of. I only hope that Akiya agrees.”