Being of the Field Read online

  ‘Questions that must wait for the morrow.’ She closed her folders, and switched off any system that was not needed. ‘I guess I have earned a rest.’ She yawned—her brain may have been on overdrive but her body sure needed sleep. ‘Now all I have to do is remember where my living quarters are.’

  Out through the windows in the flight deck the only thing to be seen was the steam rising from the hot-water surface of Oceane fogging any other view. And night was closing in.

  On her way to get some rest, Taren stopped to admire Zeven at work, battling high seas and zero visibility to lock onto E module and fish it out of the water. Lucian had obviously been distracted from his date with a pillow by the action. Amie and Leal were also present.

  Zeven struggled with the hand controls, trying to line up the module’s hatch with the corresponding hatch on the bottom of AMIE. ‘These waves are really pissing me off,’ he grumbled, remaining focused on the targeting monitor in front of him. ‘Maybe we should submerge for pick-up?’

  ‘You’ve achieved dry dock in worse, Zeven.’ Amie encouraged him to keep trying.

  ‘There’re some serious currents that are going to cause you just as much grief underwater,’ Lucian added. Airborne, they had better manoeuvrability on their side.

  The seals on the hatch were magnetic, set to attract each other, but with the rise and fall of the steamy waves, it was proving rather hard to get the right approach angle.

  ‘Sonofabitch!’ Zeven took the craft up with the rise of the wave and prepared for the next decline. ‘This time I’m in for sure,’ he announced, very determined about his aim.

  ‘That’s the spirit,’ Leal encouraged.

  ‘I’m going down,’ Zeven informed one and all, whereupon Lucian, Amie and Leal looked at the second targeting monitor at Leal’s station.

  ‘You’re looking good, Starman, hold it steady,’ Leal urged, although Zeven could clearly see how he was doing. Leal found that Zeven performed better when egged on. ‘And he takes aim and…he scores!’ the co-pilot cheered, as the hatches locked together and sealed.

  ‘We’re outta here,’ Zeven advised, engaging AMIE’s automatic pilot to take the ship up and into the outer atmosphere of the planet.

  In Taren’s experience there was always something incredibly attractive about watching someone engaged in an activity they excelled at, as this was when many people were most in tune with the field.

  ‘You are a legend, Starman,’ Lucian told Zeven, before waving goodnight to everyone.

  As Amie accompanied Lucian from the flight deck he kissed her. ‘Have fun with your analysis,’ he told his wife as they parted ways.

  ‘I might see you in a few days,’ Amie replied in all seriousness. She blew her husband a kiss and headed off to meet with her marine crew.

  Taren sighed. What she wouldn’t give for a man who was willing to be a lover but then leave her alone to do her work for days on end.

  ‘I didn’t realise I had an audience.’ Zeven left the flight deck to speak with Taren.

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Taren felt uncomfortable being caught watching him work twice in one day. ‘I was just on my way back to my living quarters…I’m afraid I haven’t found a short cut yet.’

  ‘Well, I’m just about done here.’ Zeven looked over to Leal, who smiled and waved to imply he’d finish up if Zeven wanted to go. ‘I’ll escort you if you like. We’re neighbours, after all.’

  ‘Sure,’ Taren replied, feeling she had no reason to protest. ‘I’m still a bit lost when it comes to the layout of this ship.’

  ‘Would you like to get something to eat first?’ Zeven led off.

  ‘Um…’ She was a bit hungry, but Taren didn’t want him getting the wrong idea. She wasn’t on AMIE looking for romance. She was here to look for answers to the riddles of the cosmos. Still, they were working together.

  ‘I’m not asking you for a date,’ he clarified, when Taren couldn’t decide. ‘Just if you’re hungry.’

  ‘I am,’ she smiled, pleased he had cleared that up.

  ‘Do you prefer to eat alone?’ He entered the lift down to Module A.

  ‘Only when I’m working,’ Taren replied, foreseeing where the conversation was headed.

  Zeven liked her honesty. ‘Then would you mind very much if I joined you for something to eat?’

  The pilot may have been young, about twenty years younger than Taren, but he had ‘how to be charming’ down to a fine art.

  ‘Some company would be great,’ she concurred.

  The food was good, the view was excellent and the company wasn’t too bad either. Zeven was proving to be a rather pleasant bloke: he told great stories, was fairly open-minded and had a good sense of humour. An hour after they’d finished eating Taren found herself still sitting there chatting with him.

  ‘I want to know more about the Powers.’ Zeven raised the topic again. ‘Which ones do you have? And how many are there? Has anyone ever had all of them?’

  ‘Everyone has the Powers to a differing degree.’ Taren grinned, shy of the topic. ‘And after seeing the way you fly these craft, I know why you’re so interested.’

  Zeven grinned also. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘You displayed one of the Powers during the pick up of the marine module today.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Psychokinesis,’ Taren advised before defining the term to rid Zeven of his frown. ‘To deliberately change the position, form or elements of objects of a specific energy field, with disciplined concentration of the conscious or subconscious mind. To direct one’s will to act on elementary atoms of the third dimension in an intentional manner.’

  Zeven scoffed, amused. ‘No offence, Taren, but what happened was just technical training, skill and a lot of luck.’

  Taren shook her head to disagree. ‘I don’t believe that there is any such thing as luck, just the force of probability versus the will of intention. If my theories prove correct—and they will—genius and talent are just a greater ability to access the infinite field of creation. Our intellect, creativity and imagination exist due to our degree of interaction with the field and our ability to exert our will, consciously or unconsciously, over circumstances. The way I saw events unfold is, once you got determined about the hook-up, your will came into play and exerted your influence on the quantum field of probability in favour of obtaining your desired outcome. The fact that everyone around you also desired the same outcome would have contributed to the success. But as the pilot, it is your will that would have affected the outcome the most. The unified field is a reasonable force that usually favours the will of the most influential motivating energy.’

  Zeven smiled; he liked what she was implying but…‘That’s going to be hard to prove.’

  ‘I have research data to support my theory.’ Taren was very confident about her premise, and whether or not anyone else believed it didn’t matter. Taren was the greatest authority in the field of quantum fluctuations and unusual phenomena, and she challenged any fellow scientist to prove her wrong. Her peers were too afraid to test her theories, or try and duplicate her experiments, as they were afraid they’d discover she was right. Then they’d be forced to rethink and rewrite the time-worn theories that had been the cornerstones of scientific investigation for a long time.

  ‘And you’ve nicely avoided my questions, yet again,’ Zeven noted in conclusion.

  ‘There is nothing I can tell you that you cannot discover for yourself,’ Taren defended. ‘Your talent is more extensive than you realise, mark my words.’

  ‘Won’t you at least tell me which of the Powers you have?’ Zeven flashed his dimple in a simultaneous smile and a frown of appeal.

  ‘Are you afraid I might be sitting here reading your thoughts?’ Taren teased, disclosing nothing.

  ‘No, you’re not telepathic…as you most probably would’ve slapped my face and left by now,’ he said rather daringly. ‘However, you sure do read something about people.’

  ‘You’re very p
erceptive yourself,’ Taren granted, amused by his directness, although he was probably telling the truth about what he was thinking. The energy he radiated was very seductive, full of fun and allure. Should she put him out of his misery and tell him about her hidden talents? Nah, she decided. ‘How did you find out about my MSS history?’

  ‘You’re changing the subject again,’ Zeven objected.

  Taren looked out the windows to view the anomaly in daylight. ‘Shouldn’t we be able to see our cloud of Starman’s stuff on the day side of the planet by now?’

  ‘It just blends with the cloud by day,’ Zeven filled her in.

  ‘Have you done a topographical scan?’ Taren wandered further off the subject of her Powers. ‘Is there anything but ocean under our anomaly?’

  ‘There’s a landmass typical of that left in the wake of volcanic activity,’ he advised her.

  Taren’s eyes parted wide, her mind cast back to her history of astronomy class. ‘The meteor that hit Oceane a couple of hundred years back must have cracked the crust on the ocean floor.’

  ‘That is Lucian’s theory also,’ Zeven concurred.

  ‘That could explain why the molecular and electromagnetic readouts in that area are vastly different to the rest of the planet,’ Taren posited. But it still didn’t explain the strange rainbow light cloud, however.

  ‘Is that a fact?’ When Zeven didn’t receive a response, he noted that Taren’s eyelids were beginning to droop. ‘Perhaps it’s time to pack it in for the night?’

  The thought of sleep brought a broad smile to Taren’s face. ‘No perhaps about it.’

  ‘Argh!’ Taren returned to consciousness to find herself seated bolt upright in bed, gasping for air, her skin cold with the moisture of her own perspiration. Both her hands were wrapped around her throat, as if trying to protect it from attack.

  The scare that woke her from slumber was a dream that someone had cut Amie’s throat. ‘Surely I wasn’t lusting after Lucian enough to wish his wife dead?’

  In the dream, Taren had assumed the murderer’s point of view, but she recalled having distinctly masculine arms. It had been a long time since Taren had had a prophetic dream.

  ‘No, it wasn’t prophecy!’ She convinced herself that she was only experiencing some side effect of space travel. After all, she hadn’t really dreamt in weeks, so it was not surprising during her first few bouts of sleep here on the station that her dreams were a little intense.

  There was something else she’d dreamt before the murder of Amie, but the recollection was elusive—a feeling of great desperation and bewilderment was all that remained.

  ‘A shower is sounding real good.’ Taren decided she needed to get back to work.

  As the overhead jets in her shower-tube massaged her head and shoulders with hot, steamy water, Taren began getting flashes of someone in a bio-suit extracting a sample of Starman’s stuff from the lab. The vision was oddly clear for a procedure she’d never seen before.

  Could it be future sight?

  Precognition was one of the Powers she’d shown the most aptitude for. Taren’s heartbeat began to race as she recalled having taken an impromptu nap in the lab yesterday.

  I could have seen the thief remotely, while I was sleeping? she considered. Or, I could have been sleeping with my eyes wide open!

  This brought to mind her little session with Swithin Gervaise and the MSS hypnotherapist. What if she’d freely allowed the spy to take the sample? That would seem to link Swithin Gervaise and the MSS to the spy they’d sent her after. It was possible that what they had told her was a fabrication to allow her to be hypnotised into being, not a stooge, but a double agent!

  Taren was out of the shower and dressed before she’d reasoned herself into maintaining an open mind about everything. Her troubling premise was built on a random vision, so it would be silly to get too alarmed at this stage.

  It was a scary scenario that she hadn’t considered, but Taren would certainly bear it in mind from now on.

  In need of sustenance, Taren headed to the mess room, where she bumped into Kassa Madri, the ship’s doctor, having a late lunch.

  ‘How are you adjusting to life in space, my dear?’ The doc paused in her eating and motioned to a chair at her table to invite Taren to sit. ‘Any problems?’

  ‘Space life is great,’ Taren stated positively, setting her tray on the table and seating herself in the chair offered. ‘It’s the sleeping that’s proving difficult.’ Her smile faded to a frustrated frown as she admitted to having bad dreams.

  ‘That’s quite normal,’ Kassa assured, her smile comforting as always. ‘The pent-up fears of anticipating your stint in space are starting to surface via your subconscious now that you are here.’

  Taren bit into her sandwich. She wanted to accept Kassa’s assurance, but something did not feel right.

  ‘You’re still concerned, however.’

  Taren swallowed her mouthful and washed it down with tea while she figured how best to broach her subject. ‘Have you ever had a prophetic dream, Kassa?’ she inquired of the doctor in a whisper, knowing that Kassa did not wish to advertise her psychic talents.

  Kassa shook her head. ‘Have you?’ Her eyes crinkled with curiosity.

  Taren nodded and forced a smile. ‘But I found a way to stop them a long time ago.’ She took another bite of her sandwich.

  ‘And the dreams you’ve had since landing on AMIE…’ Kassa prompted. ‘Do you want to talk about them?’

  If she mentioned her dream about Amie, Taren felt she’d have to confess her concern that finding Lucian so attractive might have caused it. ‘Is there a small vacuum device that is used to sample substances that are being held in bio-molecular quarantine?’ Taren held her hands apart to indicate the size of the device. ‘Like a transparent tube inside a metal casing that plugs into the BM storage system in my lab?’

  Kassa nodded. ‘Why, yes, there is.’ The doctor imagined this query to be somehow related to Taren’s dream.

  ‘Well, that indicates a clairvoyant perception if not a prophetic one,’ Taren mumbled, bringing her vision back to mind. I could have perceived some future instance of legitimate sample extraction? But then, why would my subconscious be eager to bring such a scenario to my attention—it has to be a warning of some kind.

  ‘Surely the computer monitoring the substance in your lab will indicate whether it’s had a loss in mass?’ Kassa suggested, having perceived the vision Taren was entertaining. Taren suddenly stared at Kassa, obviously suspicious that she was using telepathy.

  Kassa could have been making an educated guess as to her problem, Taren figured, but maybe Kassa’s telepathy extended beyond hearing inner dialogue to perceiving mental images as well.

  ‘You’re right.’ Taren stood, using the suggestion as an excuse to rush off.

  ‘You’ve barely touched your food,’ Kassa pointed out.

  Taren gulped down her tea, and grabbed the remains of her sandwiches to eat en route. ‘Thanks, Kassa. ’Bye.’ Taren made for the door, desperately blocking any thought of Lucian from her mind.

  Taren disappeared around the corner and Kassa smiled, now enlightened as to the real reason for the young woman’s hasty exit.

  ‘Oh dear.’ She shook her head slowly. If you only knew how much Lucian admires you also.

  Sure enough, when Taren checked with the computer in her lab monitoring the sample in the BM containment facility, it had registered a ten per cent reduction in the molecular concentration of the sample at around the same time in the early morning that Taren had dropped off to sleep.

  ‘Shit!’ she cursed under her breath. ‘I hate being right all the time.’

  Someone had taken a sample and she had allowed them to do it. Her subconscious recollection of the event was useless when it came to identifying the thief, as he or she was masked by the BM suit they were wearing. If hypnotism had been used to put her to sleep, the thief would most likely have instructed Taren’s subconscious not to rememb
er their identity.

  ‘I should never have allowed them to screw with my brain!’ Taren was starting to fume, finding the anger helped to subdue her panic. ‘But then I wouldn’t be here at all,’ she reasoned, and she was now somewhat wise to what was going on.

  Taren leaned back in her seat and took a deep breath. How had she let this happen? For ten years she had left all her secrets behind her and it had been a hard slog to be taken seriously in her chosen field of endeavour. Now that she had finally achieved her dream posting, why was it all coming back to haunt her? She was so over the spying and lying, and being scoffed at every time she had used her psychic skills to obtain information. Science and reason had worked in her favour, because even if most were still sceptical about her findings, she did have data to back up her claims.

  Taren glanced to the handheld FFRD monitor that had been the tool to support many of her theories over the past few years and was shocked to find the needle was at the outer limit of the negative range—a reading Taren thought she’d never ever see.

  Her heart leapt into her throat as her logical mind was thrown into panic. Am I dreaming again? Taren pinched herself. ‘Ouch!’

  Nope, definitely not dreaming. Her gaze turned to the sample in her lab and she gasped when she saw the intensity the colourful explosions inside the gassy mass had reached. She looked at the computer monitoring the sample but the readouts didn’t indicate any fluctuation at all. The computer wasn’t reading the increased activity that was so apparent to the eye and her FFRD.

  ‘Are you the driving force behind this negative quantum flux?’ Taren felt a little silly asking the sample a question…until the needle bounced immediately into the positive and then back into the negative.