The Psionic Thief Read online

  “Exactly. I wanted a chance to study some of those old nodes to see if I could find out anything new. I hit up Chichen Itza first, but there’s so many tourists wandering around that I couldn’t concentrate. The very next day I changed my plans and went off to find a smaller set of ruins with a node. I picked one that was near Campeche.”

  “Uxmal?” Linda asked.

  “No, I picked a smaller place to the south of Uxmal that had no tourist traffic at all. To be honest, that whole area was just jam-packed full of powerful old nodes so I had lots to choose from. I’m still puzzled over why they don’t interfere with each other, but that’s a topic for another day.”

  “Let’s not get sidetracked then.”

  “I’m trying to get to the meat, but having a little gravy helps. Anyway, I told you last night how I basically dropped my ass on a node for a week before the locals decided to make contact. There isn’t much more to add to that part of the story, so I’ll skip ahead a bit.”

  I refilled my cup and grabbed a Boston Cream before carrying on. “Once I was able to get across that your node was in three completely separate sections, he became extremely agitated. Apparently it’s something that’s only happened a few times in the entire history of the Mayans.”

  I paused for dramatic effect but they didn’t bite. Bummer. “Skipping ahead again, once he made the gravity of the situation apparent, he gave me what little instruction he could from their verbal history. He also gave me a written account of the last time it happened and how they fixed it.”

  “Whoa, back the truck up a minute,” Linda said, bolting upright. “There are barely a handful of Mayan books that survived when the Spanish rolled over them. Are you telling me you have an actual Mayan book?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Gimme, gimme, gimme!”

  “I don’t actually have it with me, since I figured the fine customs officers at the border might frown at me if they found it in my luggage. Lucky for me, though, Mexico has a lot of reasonably priced equipment which I can use in my lab back home.”

  “You smuggled it out of the country?”

  “I only have it on loan. I couldn’t read it so I stuffed it inside a spectrometer and shipped the equipment north to your address. After you translate it for me and make a copy, I’ll find out the equipment I ordered was ‘damaged in shipment’ and return it to Mexico. Now wipe the drool off your chin and agree to return it after you read it.”

  “I’m surprised you’re actually going to send it back… a genuine Mayan book could be worth millions.”

  “That much?” I asked, shocked.

  “Easy. I wasn’t kidding when I said how extremely rare they are. That being said, as long as you let me read it and copy it, I have no problem agreeing to send it back to the proper owners.”

  “Millions of bucks, eh,” I said under my breath. I had to shake my head to get back on track. “To wrap up this part of the story, once we get the book and you translate it we’ll be able to figure out how to save your house. I don’t have a clue what it says, but I was assured it’s straight forward.”

  Whatever she was about to say was cut short as an air horn from the road announced the arrival of the delivery truck with her new furniture. “To be continued,” she said. “It sounds like my furniture is here, so you boys are about to become busy.”

  I had no doubt she was right.

  ***

  “Now this is what I’m talking about, boys,” Linda said with relish, as she relaxed in her new recliner with a glass of sparkling wine.

  I could usually find a way to make myself comfortable anywhere, but I had to admit she had a point; her new furniture beat the folding chairs by a country mile.

  “To your new home,” I said, raising my glass in a toast.

  I gained a new appreciation of good champagne as the icy bubbles trickled down my throat. I raised the footrest on my chair and took another sip; yes, this really was quite nice. Calling it champagne was a bit of a misnomer since it was a domestic product, but I wasn’t about to split hairs when it was this tasty.

  “This Biltmore stuff ain’t bad,” I said.

  “It’s not Dom, but it’s pretty good and it’s also a local product. I thought it would be appropriate.”

  “It sure is. By the way, I checked the tracking on my shipment and it’ll hit town on the day after tomorrow. If you can tear yourself away from decorating, then it’s all yours to go through.”

  “As much as I want things finished here, the chance of seeing a previously unknown Mayan codex is too exciting to pass up. There are only four surviving codices that I know of, and only three are fully authenticated.”

  “Will you be able to read it?”

  “Not easily,” she admitted. “I brushed up on my Yucatec after our honeymoon, but written text is a completely different thing. Translation won’t be easy.”

  “I’m sure you’ll get a handle on it. After all, you’ve got some serious motivation to figure it out.”

  “That’s the understatement of the century, hoser.”

  “No doubt,” I chuckled. “I want to sit down with Mark tomorrow and start examining the node in detail. I was thinking we could do house and yard work in the mornings, then do node research after lunch. This way we can get a bit of everything done while staying fresh.”

  “That works for me,” Mark said. “I’ve always found that having a second project helps to prevent me from getting stuck in a rut. Also, the yard is going to take a lot of hard work that I wouldn’t mind spreading out over a month or two.”

  “I second that motion… I’ve heard too much work all at once is bad for your health.”

  “Not doing the work could be even worse for your health, but I’ll have no complaints as long as it all gets done.”

  “Getting the yard work done will be extra motivation to solve the node crisis. After all, if we fail at the node then we’ll have to redo the yard again and there’s no way I’m going to let all that hard work go to waste.”

  Chapter 5

  Mark: Back in the Saddle

  They say that no plan survives contact with the enemy. Today’s enemy was rain, and it forced us inside after a mere two hours of work in the yard. I couldn’t really complain, since I wanted to get a head start on the node research. The sooner I knew what Carl discovered down south, the sooner I could let it percolate in the hind-brain.

  From what Linda had been saying, it could take months to translate the ancient Mayan text. If Carl was right about us only having three months, then our timetable didn’t have much slack. I didn’t even want to imagine the consequences of failure, so we needed to come up with a solution as soon as possible.

  After cleaning up and grabbing some leftover pizza, we met in the new attic room to start our node work. Linda hadn’t done too much up here yet, but I added a few extra recliners to our furniture order so we could put them up here.

  We didn’t need anything fancy up here, but we did need something we could be comfortable in for long stretches at a time. From the little I had done with our node I knew nothing would come easy, so I wanted to safeguard both my back and my butt.

  “Alrighty, hoser,” I began. “Where shall we begin?”

  “Before we get any further into this, I’d like to organize my thoughts. I want to study the node for a while so I can see if some of what I learned makes more sense than it does right now.”

  “Ok, I’ll do the same so I have a fresh view of what the node looks like and see if there’s been any change since the last time I studied it in detail.”

  “I also want to mark the exact location of each node fragment so we can accurately track their rate of movement. If we can figure out how fast they move, then we should be able to pinpoint the exact date when they’ll converge.”

  “Assuming it has a constant rate of movement.”

  “Even if it accelerates, we can plot it on a logarithmic curve and calculate the convergence date.”

  “True,” I
agreed. “We can plot constant motion or constant acceleration, but what if it is a semi-random movement rate?”

  “Then we make a SWAG.”

  “Linda’s not going to be pleased if we have to make another scientific wild ass guess, when it comes to her new house.

  “We do what we can, and that’s all we can do. If she complains, tell her to crank up the voltage on her clairvoyance and give us a better answer.”

  “I’ve always been a little freaked out by that,” I admitted. “Psionics doesn’t make a whole lot of scientific sense at the best of times, but clairvoyance is the absolute weirdest out of all the abilities we’ve discovered.”

  “True, but I think that’s only because we’re usually looking for logical explanations in the physical realm. Seeing the future would fall into Einstein’s relativistic realm.”

  “Trying to wrap my mind around relativistic concepts like that comes close to causing a meltdown.”

  “I hear ya, bro. I love thinking about things like that in generalities, but trying to focus down on a specific point makes my brain hurt.”

  “Ok, before we get too far off topic, let’s get back to the node,” I said. “I want to get a good read and then go mark today’s location. It’ll take us quite a while to get some accurate movement data, so we shouldn’t let it slide.”

  “I remember when I found the three nodes the last time I was here, so I can add some pretty good data points to help us refine a preliminary estimate.”

  “That’ll be a good start, and while it won’t tell us if it’s constant or accelerating, it’ll be a good baseline to help us determine it. We’ve got several blank copies of the survey blueprints for the lot. I’ll take a copy to use for our research.”

  “Good idea,” he said, pulling the lever on his chair to raise the footrest, making himself comfortable. “Now let’s stop rambling on about it and get to work already.”

  “I’m with ya… I shudder to think on the carnage that would result if we let Linda’s house blow up again.”

  “Don’t forget, it’s also your house now, as well.”

  “True, I’m just in the habit of referring to it that way.”

  “I may not be an expert on women, but one thing I do know is that you don’t want Linda hearing that. Women take exception to things that reduce their claim on their man, or things that might suggest the man isn’t fully committed.”

  “Point taken,” I agreed, setting my own chair back. “Now let’s get started. I may not have clairvoyance yet, but I feel it’s safe to say this isn’t going to be easy.”

  “Amen, brother,” he fervently said. “Amen.”

  ***

  “That could have gone better,” I said, once we came up for air.

  “It could have been worse. We didn’t learn anything new, but we got confirmation on what we suspected. The most important question is if you got a proper feel for the node and the power flows into it?”

  “I think so,” I replied, after thinking about the nuances his question covered. “The first look at it showed natural power flowing into the nodal area. Looking closer, I could see that power flow being tugged toward one section or the other, independent of proximity.”

  “I saw that too, and I’m sorry to say that it’s not good news. From what I was taught down south, a proper node takes in all power and channels it into a homogenous form. If the various power flows don’t meld, then they can set up a sort of harmonic resonance with each other.”

  “Sort of like an opera singer shattering a wine glass with a high frequency resonance?”

  “Precisely,” he agreed. “In this case your house is ground zero on the crystal glass analogy, so I think it’s safe to say it’s a ‘bad thing’.”

  “No kidding. So now that you’ve gotten a look at the node, how does it compare to what you learned so far?”

  “The Mayan’s related the different type of nodes to the basic elements. A ‘normal’ node is an air node, and yours is a variant on that theme. The key difference is that a normal node is anchored, while yours is free-floating, so to speak.”

  “Ok, I’m with you so far.”

  “When a node fragment isn’t anchored, it can be steered and moved using a combination of two things. The first is by touching on the feeder lines and using them to push on the node they run into.”

  “I tried moving the node by pushing and pulling on it directly, but there wasn’t anything to get hold of.”

  “That’s why you interact with the feeds. The other part that you do in conjunction with it is to make a ‘hole’ by blocking off the feeds in the direction you want it to move.”

  “That sort of makes sense, but saying it is easier than actually doing it. Let’s say we learn how to steer the nodes… what then? How do we merge them?”

  “That’s the part I’m not quite clear on,” he admitted. “We’ll have a better idea of what’ll be needed once Linda translates the book. All I was able to gather so far is that it’s difficult, dangerous, and requires a ton of power.”

  “Great, it’s been months since I last had the opportunity to try frying my brain.”

  “Sarcasm aside, I think we’ll have a pretty good chance of pulling it off. Look at how much we’ve accomplished without any sort of training or instruction.”

  “You’ve got a point,” I admitted. “If the book actually translates into something like an instruction manual, then it should make things a lot easier for us.”

  “That’s the theory, anyway. Speaking of easier, I think you should put a beer fridge up here so I don’t have to go so far when I want a refill.”

  Hearing him finally crack a joke put a smile on my face and I decided to fetch him one from downstairs. It was a bit hot up here so I brought one for myself along with it.

  “After we get the main house and yard finished, I was thinking of making this into a little suite. We even have plumbing roughed in so we can install a little kitchenette and bathroom. There’s only the one vent from the central air system, though, so we’d probably have to add a wall unit if we wanted to make it bearable in high summer.”

  “That’s all easy to do, and if you add a wall unit up here then it’ll have its own thermostat” he said, after taking a long pull on his brew. “If you fix it up like that then you might want to consider adding an outside entrance and stairs.”

  “That’s not a bad idea. If we put the stairs on the back side, it should come out right next to the deck.”

  “Speaking of outside, it stopped raining about an hour ago so we can get some more work done out there. I would prefer to get the mundane crap out of the way so it won’t interfere when we start working on the node for real.”

  “You’re just overflowing with good ideas today. I also think that’s the first time you’ve ever volunteered for work.”

  “Ha, ha,” he said, giving me the one finger salute. “If you don’t hear me volunteer that often, then that’s because I’m usually the one who has to organize and delegate so things don’t get screwed up, eh.”

  “We better get outside fast before it gets any deeper in here”

  We kept up the banter in that vein for quite a while, and the work went surprisingly fast. It was good to joke around and temporarily forget about the impending node crisis while we could. We didn’t have much time left to do it.

  Chapter 6

  Claire: Homeless Help

  “You’re getting pretty good at this telekinesis stuff,” Joey said, squeezing mustard onto his hot dog.

  “It’s not too hard as long as I don’t get distracted by some idjit.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that, but I wasn’t expecting you to lift me and fly us back here.”

  “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  “Oh, it was a super idea, and it got us back to the flop in record time. It just took me by surprise and if I’m gonna be honest, it kinda scared the crap out of me when I starting moving but I wasn’t doing it.”

  “I’ll try to give you
a warning next time, but I didn’t have a chance at the store. Someone was coming so I had to move fast,” I said, defending myself.

  “At least we got what we went for. I haven’t had new shoes in as long as I can remember.”

  I looked down at my own shiny new boots and had to agree it was pretty nice to have something new, even if they did pinch my toes a bit. Pa would rise from his grave to whoop my ass if he found out I was stealing luxury stuff, but he had a pretty broad mind when it came to necessities.

  Not only that, but that rich old skinflint who owned the store had more money than he could spend in a dozen lifetimes. Heck, he owned so many places in town he would be hard pressed to even visit them all in the same day.

  He would never miss a few pairs of shoes, and our friends at the shelter could put them to good use. Thinking about it longer made me realize that while he would never miss the money, he would definitely raise a fuss over any missing stuff.

  I took a second look at our clean new footwear and decided we had a problem. “Our new shoes are too darn clean and new looking, especially when compared to our ratty old jeans. We need to make them look a little old and worn or we’re gonna get picked up by the law for stealing.”

  “You might be right,” he agreed, after studying his shoes for a moment. “It’s a shame to scuff them up, but they do look totally out of place on us like this. You can bet your new boots that old man Murphy will report his missing stuff to the sheriff and badger him into watching for it.”

  Without another word we both took off our shoes and got to work on making them look old. Looking at my old boots I saw that the outside part of the sole had worn down far more than the inside, so I made my new pair look somewhat the same.

  I scuffed up the toes and sides a bit, and then rubbed in some dirt for good measure. Comparing old to new, I was happy to see the new ones looked worse than my old pair, at least on the surface. Satisfied they would pass muster, I looked to see how Joey was doing.

  “That’s not bad,” he said, rubbing his thumb over the newly roughed up toes. “I wonder if that’s good enough, or if I should wear it even more.”