CHAPTER SIX
She had come to see if her family was alright and she had seen with her two eyes that they were still alive, but barely. Her father had been beaten to unconsciousness, but she prayed that he would heal and rise to his former strength. She had done what she came to do, and now she knew she must leave again.
This man, this human, even at first glance she knew that he was different. He was receptive to her telepathy from the start, which made him unlike all the others. His aura indicated great passion and suppressed bravery. There were two ways this man could react: either he would take her back to camp, where she would again become a prisoner of savages, or he would let her go, and relying heavily on her intuition, she made a plea for the latter.
"Take me with you," he said again, again grasping her wrist.
She twisted free. "Why should I trust you?" she said with vehemence.
"Because I haven't turned you in to the authorities. Why would I offer to help you simply to lead you back home afterwards and then turn you in?"
She lowered her long lashes. "You are a human. Your ways are evil and poisonous to us. As soon as you have the information you want from me, you will report it right back to your commanding officer."
He looked at her with tenderness. "That's not what I'm going to do." He then looked at her more closely. "What is your name?"
She trembled a little bit, looking defensive. "What is it important to you?"
"I'm only wondering how to address you," he said. "I have a name. It's Anthony."
She stood up straighter. "They call me Eve. I was born on the eve of a great holiday."
He extended his hand, but she only stared at it. "Tell me, Eve, why is it that that old man I saw was able to overpower seven men?"
To that question she stayed silent.
"You don't trust me, do you?" he said.
She answered in a smooth voice. "You have not yet given me a reason to." But he had. Simply the fact that he could hear her voice within his mind was an indication of a bond between the two of them, but Eve wouldn't dare tell this human man that.
The winds swept through the gigantic ferns, rustling their leaves as the two of them stood there, standing silent.
"We'd better get going if we don't want to be seen by the astronauts."
She hesitated. "What will they say when they see that you are missing?"
"I'll tell them I'm going on a scientific expedition."
Just then an officer came close. "Harding, what are you doing back there?" he shouted.
He pulled away from Eve and shouted, "Just taking a piss, officer!"
Eve, then, was drowned with thoughts of her father. The strength he had displayed earlier came from emotions closer to hatred than to love, of that she knew. Hatred, when mixed with intense intellectual concentration, could create fireworks. Her father's tremendous strength was just one of the ways it could be manifested. Other ways, when the hatred was very pure, were enough to kill a man and more, but the aftermath...the aftermath of it would weaken and destroy the person from whom the emotions had come from.
Love, when mixed with intense intellectual concentration, created powers--but not of the destructive type. It created telepathy, longevity, health, peace, harmony. All of the things that the Novacadians needed to survive. But her father was dangerously teetering on the fence between the two opposing forces, and Eve knew that hatred could be as seductive as a glass of water to a man dying of thirst. She knew all too well. She had seen three of her friends succumb to hatred. Within hours, all three were killed by the astronauts.
The man was shaking her lightly. "Well, should we go? Or do you want to go back to camp after all?"
She snapped back into consciousness. Taking a last look at the village in the distance, she said, "Let's go."