CHAPTER THIRTEEN
They broke for lunch. Anthony was peeling a banana when he heard a soft rustling coming from the bedroom. He broke away from the group to investigate the noise. Peering into the room, he saw that the light was now distilled and particles of dust were floating in the air. One of the two sisters' eyes were open. "What is your name?" he whispered quietly.
Speak with your mind, she said. He felt his heart leap in anticipation. He edged closer to her.
"Come and sit on the bed," she said noiselessly. "It's alright."
Hesitantly, he came closer, then sat down gingerly on the edge of the bed. He shook his head from side to side. "I can't," he whispered. "I'm not like you. I'm a human. I speak with my voice."
She was old; that was for certain. How old, Anthony couldn't tell. Her pale skin was crinkled and whiter than most of the others, as though it had been bleached. Her hair was thin, showing patches of pink skull in stripes.
"Try," she said.
"How old are you?" he whispered.
"Speak with your mind, Anthony. I know you can do it. Humans have the capacity for such communication. You have it in you, you just have to turn it on, like choosing to raise your right arm."
He squeezed his eyelids shut, focusing his mind. He thought, Tell me how old you are.
A silence then stretched out for many long moments. The old woman raised a feeble hand to her mouth. "I'm four-hundred and seventy-two Earth years."
Anthony gasped. She had read his mind! It was beyond anything he could conceive. "How can you be so old?" he said out loud.
"In your mind, Anthony. Remember that."
He closed his eyes again. She said, "You don't need to do that. It doesn't take intense concentration to perform mental telepathy."
He opened his eyes; and instead focused his eyes on the bed across the room which still held another sleeping figure. "Tell me how you got to be so old," he thought.
She scrunched up her face into a weak smile. "Novacadians live much longer than humans," she explained. "In the older days, though, it was different."
"How so?" he thought.
"We did not live as long. No one knows why, it just was. And there were more of us, too. No one knows why our numbers have diminished, either. Part of it has to do with the climate, we think."
Anthony felt flushed from the sensation of being able to talk to someone just with his mind. It was so freeing, so invigorating, like rushing through the air at blinding speeds. It was like he was always meant to do this. "Tell me, what is your name?"
"Sarah," she said. "I am one of the oldest ones here. They say I am a prophet. On Novacadia, people treat their elders with respect. They see us as bearers of wisdom."
He realized that this must be one of the prophets that had said that Eve was the messiah--destined to die a horrible death in order to free the Novacadian race.
She had read his mind. "You think of Eve," she said. She sat up a little bit in her bed. "She is very special to us, Anthony. I hope you don't think that we are feeding her to the lions."
He had thought that, but out of respect, he didn't say it.
"I know you're skeptical, Anthony. But it's our religion, not yours. And when time comes for the prophecy to come to pass, you may find that there's not anything that anyone could have done to stop it."
"But I can stop it," Anthony said. He opened his palms. "Surely there's another way that your people can be freed. Our research will not last forever, and sooner or later the humans and the Novacadians will be communicating with each other just as we are communicating right now."
"It's not simply a matter of our physical imprisonment," she said, looking at him with large, pale eyes. "We fight a Spiritual battle, one that cannot be solved simply if we are able to telepath with your fellows."
He said, "Tell me, when we speak to each other in our minds like this, can you read all of my thoughts? Do you know everything that I am thinking right now? Or do I have some privacy?"
She placed a pale hand on his knee. "Nothing I see or hear is not given to me by God. He doesn't reveal everything to me, and so there are parts of you that I do not know. But I sense things about you, deep within you. Like right now, I sense great concern for Eve, but also love. She told you that that was how you were able to hear our voices, did she not?"
He nodded his head, feeling with even more certainty that it was true. "So why wouldn't it help for you to be able to speak with the rest of us?" he asked. "You could tell them why those men disappeared, and you could tell them that you have no intention of harming anyone in the future. They might release you from your homes and stop torturing and killing you."
"But our love for them, the love necessary to make a connection, might leave us vulnerable to their vibrations of hatred. And this hatred can be very seductive. About half of us in the town have already fallen victim to it."
Anthony gave her a serious look. He said softly, "Eve told me that there was hatred in me. Is that true?"
She looked at him sadly. "You are a human. You have the nature of a human being. But you are different from the others; yours is hidden deep down inside--and Anthony, yours is justified."
The power of that statement hit him as though it were a lightning bolt. So he was different, then. But even so, when had he ever had hatred or felt hatred for anyone? He couldn't remember a single time. Sure, he wasn't the best Catholic in the world, but he thought of himself as basically a good guy. But hatred--even justified hatred--when had that ever happened?
But he couldn't get the sense that he had known this woman for a long time out of his head. She had known his name even before he spoke it, and it was as though she knew him intimately, not just right now, but in the past.