Oh! <Of course.> This is the day. Dana’s minute hesitation startled Ken and led to an Elorie and Dave analysis of Ken’s reaction. ‘Orlando’ indeed. “You can call him Richard when you’re talking to the family, Dana,” Nessa said. “You two are right not to go public with that, but we don’t count as public.” Pause. “I’m not quite positive what we count as, actually…”
“Ah, uh, sure. Can you excuse me, I need to go somewhere private and have a good long vocal cord busting scream.” Nessa easily picked up from the flustered Dana the younger woman’s broadcasted thoughts through her multiple layers of willpower screens: I’m having an overdose of Telepath and I need to hold it together until I can get somewhere private.
You would think someone as used to the 99 Gods magic crap could cope with telepathic strangeness, but noooo, Dana was like most everyone else.
“No problem,” Nessa said. “Save some for me, ‘cause I’m going to be doing some at high volume later myself.” The fact that this was the day didn’t mean it was going to be a completely good day.
Dana fled post-haste on tall stiletto heels.
“Dolphins,” Uffie said, after she got dressed in her swimming suit and gathered her beach gear together.
Nessa stuck her special wrap-around sunglasses on her head, the ones Orlando made, able to block out enough sunlight to keep her from getting any sun-caused headaches. “So you’re really going to ask these last set of questions to Korua?” Nessa said. “You could just tell us what you’ve put together so we can go bargain with them for real.” She led everyone out to the beach today and sat down on the wet shore, outside of physical contact for the moment. She stayed within talking distance, though.
She wanted the innocent sense of water running through her toes for the last time.
“These are important questions,” Uffie said, back up the shore beyond the high tide line. Her mind stayed shuttered tight.
“What sort?” Nessa said, not expecting an answer. This was, of course, the day.
“Nessa, I have a question for you,” Uffie said. “How much do you want to know? Today’s session might get boring and technical, so this might be one of those days where you might best be off bothering Lydia or Dana.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning just what I said,” Uffie said.
“That’s nasty.”
“What’s nasty?”
“Trying to shoo me off with your tricky other charisma,” Nessa said. She stood, bounded over, and put her arm around Uffie’s shoulder. “I already know what you’ve learned will hurt me.”
“This might be much worse than you think. I think this is real bad, inner circle Indigo real bad.” Pause. “Exactly why I didn’t want to end up seeing the Indigo,” she said, sotto voice.
Which was all Uffie would say on the subject.
Ken and Elorie set up the canopy while Dave, forgetting her earlier comment, walked over to put sunscreen on Nessa’s back and had her do the same for him.
If he seduces me today, when I’m vulnerable, I swear I’ll give in and let Persona play with Dave enough so he can get pregnant and then get him knocked up. Idiot. Fool. He knows I’m curious. I told him I couldn’t restrain myself today. Or at least I hinted as much.
Nessa sat back down on the wet sand, cross-legged, and closed her eyes. <Korua?>
<Here and waiting. If you would be so kind, could you herd in some fish for us?>
<No problem.> The dolphins had congregated here in more pods than they would normally do, and they had stripped Big Pine Key of fish. Nessa had even heard some of the fisherman in the neighboring Bahia State Recreation area complaining, though ‘heard’ wasn’t the right term as her hearing had been telepathic. She reached out to schools of fish in the nearby Keys and started them on their way with firm orders to ignore the presence of the dolphins, which had driven them away to start with.
<Your go, Uffie,> Nessa sent.
<Thanks. Korua, how long have you known the Telepath we call Bais?> she sent, along with a mental image of the seemingly immortal Telepath.
<You’re talking long memory?>
<Yes.>
<Since she was born, of course.>
<Many times. Her early weakness called to us. Later, many of us found her amusing.>
<How did you help her, to start with?> Uffie sent. Nessa hadn’t expected this line of questioning. She wasn’t sure where it led, or why Uffie even bothered.
<We are not sure,> Korua answered. <Her problems involved hand-things, and weaning her from dependence on hand-things to things we could better understand. Not that we can understand fully what she can do even now.>
<Weakness?>
<Humans were brutal when this person you call Bais was in her youth. An accusation of improper mating brought hand-thing violence to her and she became gravely injured in body and mind. We could not help her with the injuries to her body – this sort of help is a hand-thing we cannot understand – but we were able to help her with the injuries to her mind.>
<Excellent,> Uffie said. <Bais said her grandparents or great grandparents were the first human Telepaths. There had to have been only a few of her kind at the time. How did you know to help her?>
No answer. Nessa knew the answer to that, deep in her mind, but even thinking about looking terrified her. Both of her Socks cowered inside, quivering in fear.
<This is important,> Uffie said. <I demand you answer.>
<You don’t have the leverage for any such demand.>
<I think I do. I think I can tell you exactly how many of you dolphin minds there are, awake and asleep,> Uffie said. <I’ve been talking to Nessa about your first conversation with her about the 99 Gods. You said, and I quote, ‘the name must be a coincidence; there are actually 99 of them. I counted’ unquote. How did you count them? You can’t count anything else so high.>
The back of Nessa’s mind howled.
Korua didn’t answer.
<Korua and who else is listening, we’re here for you. Nessa in particular is here for you.>
The howling in Nessa’s mind grew so loud that Uffie and Korua’s telepathic voices became distant.
<I must pass on this,> Korua sent. <You have earned Spang.>
<Spang, then,> Uffie sent. <I have heard of you but we’ve never spoken. I am most glad to meet you, ma’am. Can you answer this?>
<Spang says you weren’t worth talking to,> Spang sent. <Until now. Nasty trick you have seen to play on us.>
<So you admit this?>
<No, I admire your thoughts. To call this to you humans was not my thought or desire, so about this I can speak. My meddling, my answers for the pain of hands and violence was different. Grouped they did, and after time they learned to plant, but reef fish they became, sitting in place and waiting to be eaten by human predators.> Spang paused. <I helped them and found them a way. Binding words and rules to make artificial pods. Showed them the starry God beyond to help in the binding.>
Ken started to howl. He saw the discovery now, something Nessa still refused to admit. Dave and Elorie crept into each other’s arms, Dave shivering, Elorie’s eyes wet at the corners.
<So you were opposed to the dolphin project that created the Telepaths, Spang? Instead, you created, by education instead of unnatural manipulation, what eventually became my organization, the Scholars, as well as the Indigo, and as well as pretty much every monastic religious group that’s ever existed,> Uffie sent. She, on the other hand, became exultant and fearless. <You dolphin Gods work independently and don’t seek consensus? But once the maidenhead’s broken, there’s no going back; there’s nothing you could have done about the existence of the Telepaths once some of you dolphin Gods created us. So of course you help the Telepaths, the Indigo, and monastics like Lorenzi. They’re part of your Mission.>
Spang laughed, dolphin style. <Yes. Easy to count to 99 if you do a one to one match, yes, you see the humor. There is consensus enough in the pod as
well as the pod of pods. Spang says…>
<Oh my God they’re the Ha-qodeshim!> Elorie sent. <The old Gods the Ecumenists feared!>
The dam finally broke in Nessa’s head. She howled and lost contact with her telepathy and the rest of the minds. Her vision contracted to tiny dots in front of her eyes, her arms becoming numb and huge in her mind, and as she sobbed out “No, noooo,” she pounded the sand and writhed.
This wasn’t fair.
She had become nothing, nada, just the result of some amoral divine meddling, no better than a second-rate Supported, the cheap telepathic analog of Natural Supported.
Join the dolphins and help them? What a joke. They were fucking Gods, she just a pointless toy. An ancient knock-off of the dolphin Gods’ own abilities. Dolphin Gods! Elorie and the Watchers had said there were other Gods. Only she hadn’t ever expected them to be the dolphins. Her dolphins!
“She hasn’t lost it fully. Look, she’s keeping her teek at skin level, just like she should.”
They must have been the ones who made her the Daughter of Light. Was she supposed to save her Gods? Saving the Watchers meant sending them back to God. If she sent the 99 dolphin Gods back to God Almighty, this would end the Telepaths. Wouldn’t it?
Not fair. Totally completely wholly insanely un-un-unfair!
“How much danger are we in from Ken’s teeking the ocean? Can he cause a tsunami?”
Everything was wrong, wrong!
She had snickered to herself when Lorenzi had learned his life was a lie. Karma? Unfair! Not her fault. She wasn’t evil! She hadn’t killed tens of thousands and lied to herself that it wasn’t her fault like Lorenzi had! He had the comeuppance coming to him. She didn’t. She took back the snicker anyway.
Humanity? Just a dolphin toy. Ken had been right to insist they confront the dolphins about the 99 Gods. The dolphins had been responsible for everything. They had welded their finny God to humanity. They had forced their idea of civilization down humankind’s throat, and succeeded. They had given humanity Telepaths, which had failed. The dolphins’ religious machinations had led, in the end, to the dead Ecumenists becoming Angels, responding to the prayers of humanity and creating the 99 Gods. Her deal with Opartuth even made this possible! This was all her fault!
Hopeless, pointless and in the end, squack squeak, another culling of humanity into a more dolphin-friendly species, one that wouldn’t make overly loud mechanical sonar and would include better diplomatic quarters than Sea World.
And she was responsible for this debacle! She had been the one who had introduced the dolphins to modern humanity.
<Nessa, I can explain.>
<Korua, why bother? Just pat me on the head and send me off.>
<Your insight is correct, you are our Daughter of Light. You are wrong about the rest. We are not human; we do not have the same problems our human cousins do. No hands, no war. We do not need to go back to God, as do the ones you label the Watchers. We have other faults and other needs, some too embarrassing to speak of.>
<We’re your hands. That’s what you want, tame domesticated humans to be your hands.> She sniffled mentally. <Go away and leave me alone.>
<I have something to show you. An explanation.>
<Explain away. Your explanation can’t get any worse than this.> Now might be a good time to die and join the dolphins. Dying would solve everything.
Going home. That’s why she had always wanted to join the dolphins.
<I cannot predict, but I believe this will help. You may decide not to tell the others with you. Some things you experience as the Daughter of Light are best shared only between us.>
Even at Korua’s most helpful, she couldn’t understand him. <Show me or show me not, then go away and leave me alone!>
“Get Ken, she swallowed her tongue!”
Nessa’s mind separated from her body, and immediately she felt calmer. There was nothing fun about being in a body having a fit. At least she wouldn’t die alone – Korua would be with her. She settled into Korua’s strong mental embrace.
Her consciousness flew up, carried by Korua’s stronger mind. <Humans having the dolphin God is wrong,> Nessa sent. No wonder she could talk with God; God was just another damned dolphin; she had always been able to talk to the dolphins. Everything was so pointless, just so pointless.
<You will see.>
The Earth fled below her. Soon empty space surrounded what she could sense.
<I hate being a toy of a bunch of Gods.>
<Never, Nessa. Never. Not a toy. You are much more than a toy.>
Her senses contracted, the stars in front becoming blue, the ones in back, red. She knew what that meant. <You’re taking me to another solar system?>
<No.> In a few moments, the stars returned to their normal colors, but they had left Earth far behind. Nessa let the mathematical part of her mind, one of the pieces of her scattered self that she greatly enjoyed, do the math. She wondered if she should tell Dave she could do relativity calculations in her head, and decided telling him would be bragging too much. <You’ve moved us twenty light-minutes from Earth.> Nearly all the way to Jupiter’s orbit!
<I do not think of what I did in such a fashion, but I sense your calculations are likely correct,> Korua said. <I moved us far enough from Earth so that the minds of Earth do not interfere. Now. Here. Look around you, feel out with your telepathy.>
Nessa did, and her soul began to cry. Instead of empty space and absence of minds, the space around her was filled with distant points of telepathic song, each different from the other. <It’s beautiful. What am I sensing?>
<Other distant minds, worlds of distant minds. We cannot hear the details because they are too far away, but we can hear their choral singing.>
<But Lorenzi said that the number of Telepaths was shrinking over time, driven Mindbound because of the increase in human population. Aren’t we going to all go away within a generation or two?> She had hidden that insight away many years ago, where only she could gnaw on the idea in terror.
<Not if we can help you,> Korua said. <In fact, if we can help you tame the 99 Gods, the deed should make the task much easier. Please. Absorb the beauty. This will help you understand us, why we have not given up and gone back to God.>
Nessa did; her soul continued to weep. The beauty existed too far away in time and space (which were the same, mathematically) for real contact. The massed thoughts, the static of Telepaths beyond numbers, couldn’t be heard one at a time. Not by her. Not by Korua or the others. She felt Korua’s curiosity mirrored in her. A curiosity that was also an aching desire.
She grasped at understanding. <We’re not your toys, are we?> Nessa sent. <You want us to be your partners.>
<We need your help. We are stagnant from a human perspective, and we have been stagnant since before your species spread from the place you call Africa. Uffie figured this out. Dolphin culture is far less complex than human culture, so much so that for us physical and cultural evolution drive each other. This is our flaw. We envy humanity and the way your culture drives your physical evolution.>
<You’ve been talking for waaaay too long to Uffie.>
<The daughter of Spang’s teachings is a singular treasure, one of the many we long to share with.>
<Daughter of Spang’s teachings? You dolphins made the others as well?> So that’s what Spang and Uffie had been jabbering about. Everything was a lie.
<You place bubble curtains where none are needed. The others, as you name them, have always been drawn to the Telepaths, and vice versa, and you have grown up together. We did not make them, but taught them, and adopted them for our own.>
She didn’t understand, and wasn’t sure she wanted to. <What can I do?>
<Persevere. We think in generations of time. We do not know when this adventure of our two species will start, or when individual dolphins will make the language-leap your species made to its present complexity.>
<But the dolphin individuals? Aren’t they just your hosts?>
<Certainly not. Someday soon, Nessa, we will let you truly see the individual dolphin minds; someday, perhaps, you can teach other humans one of the many dolphin languages of our several species. Individual dolphins are like those of your kind that came before you modern human types: they speak, they have language, and they have language-organized thoughts, and a hint of God.>
<They too have God?> Nessa sent, gazing out into the star littered darkness at the uncounted distant minds. Some, she realized, were far enough away to shiver her soul. In some, all she could make out were individual galaxies of many civilizations of minds, not even the individual civilization or the individual worlds. She wondered how close the closest worlds she could sense were. There was no way she could tell, save a gut feeling that they lay inside the Milky Way galaxy and not too far away as galactic distances went.
<Nessa, human prophets have seen the truth; the truth is in at least your own holy lore.>
<?>
<God, they believe, is the word.>
<What do you mean?>
<We dolphins became real to God when in our individual minds we first formed words. God became real to us when we could, even primitively, wonder where those words came from. The same God for all, everywhere, throughout the universe. The same for you humans as well.>
<Then we’re not your toys. We’re God’s toys. How is this better?>
<We are all God’s children, Nessa. God is He who speaks words, and telepathy is nothing more than one of God’s many languages. That, daughter, is the true difference and the true similarity.>
Nessa relaxed and absorbed the beauty of the telepathic firmament above. <I can live with that. But I’m nervous. Can we go back to see what sort of hash my family and friends have made of my physical body this time?>
<Yes, of course. I foresee negotiations. Imminent negotiations. Dangerous negotiations. Our gamble in the promise of humanity has made us a pod of endangered species, Nessa. Think on this for a moment or two.>
Nessa’s eyes blinked open; she lay on her back, in the sand, staring at the top of the beach canopy. Orange. With sand in the seams. Chatty telepathy between Uffie, Diana, Korua and Spang rang through her mind, something about whether story queens (whatever they were) were natural or a Dolphin creation. Of all the annoying things, from the explanation it sounded like there were even yet more old Gods out there, meddling. Tiresome.