Discovery (Science of Psionics Book #1) (5 page)

I walked back toward the house and motioned
Linda toward the patio. I pulled out a chair for her before
flopping into my own. Talking about the last test, Linda agreed
that distance seemed to matter in regards to difficulty. “Let’s try
something a tad different,” I said. “Why don’t you reach out and
get us a couple of beers.”

“Hmm …” she started, “Not having line of
sight might make it a bit tricky, but I’ll try.”

It took about three minutes before I saw the
patio door slide open and the two bottles of Newcastle float out
and toward us. As they neared, their paths diverged slightly, one
heading toward each of us. Beads of sweat stood out on her forehead
as she frowned in concentration.

“That was trickier than I thought,” she
admitted. “Finding the fridge, opening it, trying to grab bottles
that I couldn’t see, and then doing all the steps together was
tough. I had to get a sort of mental ‘echo’ from things before I
could interact with them.”

“You did great,” I said with enthusiasm.
“Multi-tasking at its finest, but you did screw one thing up.”

“What was that?”

“You forgot to open them,” I said, giving the
bottle caps a mental
flip
to pop them off.

“Smart ass,” she replied, taking a long swig
from her bottle.

We sat and relaxed for a while and enjoyed
the cold beer in the warm sun. Once finished, I asked “So, do you
think you can figure out the telepathy bit from your morning
adventure and show me how to do it?”

“I’m not sure. At the time, I didn’t even
realize what I was doing,” she admitted.

“Give it a try. Read my mind, send me a
message, or maybe pretend you’re Snow White and summon up some
bluebirds to flutter around your head,” I said smiling. “While
you’re working on that, I’ll try and duplicate your beer fetching
feat and see if I can feel that mental ‘echo’ you mentioned.”

I’ll give it a try,” she said, throwing me a
dirty look for the ‘Snow White’ comment.

I waited a couple of minutes for some form of
mental communication, and when nothing seemed to be forthcoming,
turned myself to my own task. I immediately encountered the
difficulties she mentioned, but soon learned to pick up that echo
of the objects centered on my search. It took me a minute or two
longer, but I finally managed to bring us the bottles. Objective
complete, I turned to Linda and asked her how she was making
out.

“Apparently, not so well,” she said with some
frustration. “I’ve been trying all sorts of things, but without
much luck so far.”

“Don’t sweat it,” I said. “We can figure it
out later if need be. I just thought it would be something nice to
know.”

“Yeah,” she agreed glumly. “What else did you
want to do?”

“Let’s put the tests aside for a bit. I
wanted to talk to you about who you think we can trust with this. I
was thinking that Carl Hagar could have some valuable insights, and
I know him well enough to feel that he’s trustworthy. He was my
physics lab partner in grad school, and we’ve done a lot of work
together since we both graduated. He’s got one of the best
scientific minds out there, next to me, of course. He also owes me
a big favor right now since I just helped him set up his new test
lab in Edmonton.”

“Carl might not be bad,” she agreed. “If I
had to trust anyone else with this, I would probably pick my best
friend Sara Jensen and her husband Sid. I’ve known them for ages,
and they certainly proved their courage with tours in both Iraq and
Afghanistan.”

I thought about what I knew of her friends.
Sid was the epitome of what you thought of when someone said the
word
warrior
. Six foot four and about two hundred and twenty
pounds, he seemed easier to picture as a medieval barbarian
swinging a battle axe than as a soldier with a rifle. However, he
was
a soldier in the truest sense of the word. Fiercely
loyal to his country and friends, he would never consider letting
any secrets entrusted to him slip out. I felt that Linda was right
and he would never be one to run to the press with a juicy story
like this, as long as he gave us his word.

If Sid was the textbook warrior, Sara would
be better described as a killer. Cold and calculated, I could
easily picture her shooting down her enemies with a sniper rifle,
then calmly talking about her slaughter over breakfast. Of the two
of them, she would scare me more to have as an enemy.

I didn’t know her as well as Sid, but as they
both lived by the same creed, I could probably trust her as well.
Decided, I said “Ok, let’s get hold of them and see who’s willing
to come down here. We’ll tell them all that it’s just to get
together though, and then feel them out before springing the
news.”

“That works for me,” she said with a
satisfied nod. “I was trying to think of how to approach the
subject on the phone and was coming up blank.”

Laughing, I replied “That’s the kind of phone
call that would get them to send the friendly folks with the
butterfly nets to come and take us away to a nice comfy padded
room. Let’s set it up like a casual little party and take it from
there.” In agreement, we both went inside to get the ball
rolling.

Linda: Party Surprises

We had gotten lucky with our invites. Carl
was at loose ends until his next project began in a month, and was
looking for something to do. The Jensen’s were just finishing their
lectures for the latest class at the Ranger Training school in Fort
Benning, GA. They had all agreed that a little gathering at my
place would be a nice change of pace, and everyone would be
available starting next Monday.

We spent the time until they arrived getting
the house ready for guests. We cleaned all of the common areas, put
fresh linens on the spare beds, and laid in an extra stock of food
and drink. Some work we did by hand, and some we did the
other
way. When the day finally arrived we were both
nervous, but willing to see things through. Carl arrived at the
airport first, and we both drove out there to pick him up. Mark was
going to lend Carl his truck for the duration of his stay, but Sid
was planning to rent a vehicle, so they would simply come down to
my house when their flight arrived later tonight.

We had a big steak dinner planned for
tonight, but stopped off for a quick snack on the way back since
Carl had just spent the last eight hours in various airports and
was starving. With a couple of beers and a few dozen hot wings
under our belts, we arrived back home in good spirits. Mark and
Carl immediately claimed spots around the patio table and began
swapping stories and news. Men liked to claim that women spent all
of their time gossiping, but here were these two chattering away as
if had been years since they had talked, rather than weeks.

Knowing that Mark would return the favor
later when my friends arrived, I made myself busy preparing a small
tray of snacks for us and brought it out with some drinks. Deep in
a conversation too technical for me to easily follow, I went and
laid out some wood in the fire pit. Getting that started occupied
me for a few minutes, and once I had a cheerful fire going, I
called the boys over to join me. Abandoning the remains of the food
tray, they quickly complied.

Settling down into the canvas chairs around
the fire, they continued their technobabble geek speak, only
occasionally remembering to throw me a conversational bone. After
about an hour of nodding my head to discussions like ‘friction loss
effects on mass flow ratios’, I was glad to hear the sound of tires
rolling up the gravel of my driveway. It sounded like Sid and Sara
had finally arrived and I quickly got up so I could greet them.

The rest of the evening was much more
enjoyable, as I now had people around me who knew how to talk
outside of a lab. After dinner, stuffed full of steak, lobster and
all of the fixings, we gravitated back to the fire pit with fresh
drinks and resumed our friendly banter. I was at a loss at how to
introduce our little ‘surprise’ into the conversation, and waited
for Mark to make the first move. Hopefully he would wait until
tomorrow so I could just relax tonight and enjoy both company and
conversation without the fear of someone having a heart attack.

Several hours and several drinks later, we
mutually agreed that it was time to crash for the night and
dispersed throughout the house. Once the guests were all settled, I
went back to our bedroom and gratefully shed my clothes. Mark,
being clueless on the etiquette of proper hospitality, was already
in bed, figuring that a vague wave saying, “Rooms over there.
Night.” was good enough.

I crawled into bed and snuggled up until we
were spooning, relaxing for a few moments before asking when he
thought would be a good time to broach the subject.

“Tomorrow,” he replied groggily. “We need to
pick the perfect moment, as we’ll only have one shot at this. If we
blow it, they’ll either run away, burn us at the stake, or head
straight for an interview with the tabloids.”

“Alright, I’ll trust you on this to make the
first move, but if I see you chickening out and passing on good
opportunities, all bets are off and I’m taking lead.”

“Fair enough,” he replied. “But give me a bit
of slack before jumping in with both feet. We’ll have all week to
scare the crap out of them, so planning the proper time is not
something we need to rush into.”

With Mark in my arms, and those words in my
ear, I gave myself up to sleep, confidant that everything would go
according to plan.

***

I woke up suddenly in the morning, foregoing
my usual lazy ritual. For one of the few times over the last couple
of years, I was out of bed before Mark. With guests in the house
and Mark sawing logs in here, I decided to postpone my morning
shower and slipped into a sweat suit so I could go make some
coffee.

Quietly making my way to the kitchen, I was
surprised to see that someone had already started a pot. I glanced
out onto the deck and saw Sara sitting there with a book in one
hand and a steaming mug in the other. Fixing up my own cup of
coffee I stepped outside, shivering slightly in the cool morning
air.

“Morning,” I said to her.

“Morning,” she replied, looking up from her
book. “I thought I was the only one who got up at a normal hour of
the day.”

“If one solitary retard gets up at some
stupid hour, said person could hardly claim normality,” I shot
back.

“In that case, welcome to the stupid hour,
retard!” she retorted.

“Love you too, hon,” I replied with a grin as
I sat down in the chair across from her and took a sip of coffee.
“How have you been these days?” I asked, “The men were shoveling
their stories too fast and furious last night for us to get
properly caught up.”

“We’ve been doing pretty good I guess,
although I still have the impulse to kill some idiot driver every
time I need to go into the city proper. Atlanta has too many
assholes for my liking.”

“I know what you mean,” I laughed, “Sometimes
I think they follow me since I run into them everywhere.”

“So tell me, what’s the reason for suddenly
calling us here?” She asked, throwing me a sharp stare.

“Do we really need a reason?” I evaded.
“Can’t people just get the urge to want to meet with friends once
in a while so they don’t become strangers?”

“Some people maybe, but not you and Mark. You
two do nothing without six months of planning.”

“We’re not quite that bad,” I replied,
injured.

“Almost,” she riposted. “I can wait I guess,
but you should know that Sid and I have a bet going.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, I bet that he’s going to propose, and
Sid figures that you got knocked up. So whatever the big
announcement is going to be, don’t drag it out too long before
spilling it.”

“You’ll be the first to know,” I said with a
wink.

We made small talk for a while, catching each
other up on current news, and then decided it was time to get the
others up and have some breakfast. I simply turned the bedroom
light on as I passed by on the way to my shower. Mark could never
easily sleep with the light on, so I was confident that he would be
up by the time I was finished.

Toweling my hair dry, I stepped past Mark who
had just finished shaving and gave him a peck on the cheek on my
way out of the bathroom. Once dressed, I headed to the kitchen to
get started on breakfast for us all. As everyone else finished
getting ready, they slowly trickled into the kitchen to lend a
hand. With all of the extra help, breakfast came together
surprisingly fast and we were soon sitting around the table
devouring our feast.

Finished, Sara and I both volunteered to do
the cleanup so the boys could head out to the golf course where
they had a morning tee time booked. We didn’t mind, knowing that
the boys would take their turn cleaning up after dinner. Waving
goodbye to the guys, we made short work of the cleanup and settled
down back outside on a couple of lounge chairs. I tried to keep our
conversation generic, but had to evade tricky little questions
periodically as Sara tried to pump me for information. I smiled at
her attempts. She was good, but all I had to do was to keep
ignoring them and continue on with inane chatter.

Shortly past noon we went inside to change.
We planned to meet the boys after their golf round for lunch at the
clubhouse. They were still out on the course when we arrived, so we
grabbed a couple of drinks from the lounge and picked a table
outside. Shortly thereafter we saw them heading our way, talking
animatedly about their game.

Mark and Sid sat down with us after giving us
our respective hello kisses, while Carl detoured to the bar to grab
a round of drinks. The loser after eighteen holes always had to buy
the first round of drinks at the
nineteenth hole
.