Pantheon - Michael Jan Friedman [224]
Gardenhire had always prided himself on his ability to stay cool, to perform calmly under pressure. But after just a month of such close confinement, his nerves had frayed to the breaking point. He was tense, irritable, ready to lash out at anyone who looked at him sideways.
Then came the change.
It was subtle at first, so subtle that the navigator had to wonder if he was losing his mind. But as it turned out, he wasn’t losing anything. He was gaining something remarkable.
He could hear the thoughts of his fellow crewmen.
Not all of them, of course—just a stray reflection or two. But it distracted Gardenhire from his misery. It gave him something to think about as he lay prone in his padded shock bunk and waited for his appointed exercise period.
The navigator wasn’t oblivious to the fact that telepathy had been one of Agnarsson’s talents too. In the back of his mind, he knew he might become what the engineer had become.
But somehow, he felt confident that it wouldn’t happen. After all, it had been weeks since the crew was exposed to the Big Red phenomenon. If Gardenhire was going to be altered to the same extent as Agnarsson, if he was going to mutate into a gray-haired, silver-eyed superman, it seemed likely that it would have happened already.
Besides, it was different when the individual undergoing the transformation was oneself. For obvious reasons, it made the prospect seem a lot less chilling.
Then, one day when the navigator was skimming Coquillette’s thoughts, he felt an awareness there—a facility capable of not only recognizing his intrusion, but responding to it.
He was afraid that the medic would balk at his invasion of her privacy—for clearly, that was what it was. And in a tinderbox like the escape pod, that was the last thing they needed.
But as it happened, Coquillette didn’t mind his trespass at all. In fact, she seemed to welcome it.
It made her feel less lonely, she told him—communicating not in spoken words, but in precise and evocative thoughts. It let her know she wasn’t the only one who was experiencing some kind of transformation.
It made Gardenhire wonder…if he and Coquillette had changed, was it possible that some of the others were changing as well? And like the medic, were they too uneasy with the situation to speak of it?
Both of them wanted to discuss the matter with the group. However, they were concerned…if they were the only ones who had been affected, how would their companions look at them? Would they see Gardenhire and Coquillette as threats to the welfare of their miniature society—threats that had to be dealt with in a harsh and immediate manner?
Then, while they were wondering what to do, O’Shaugnessy responded to their telepathic intrusions as well. And a day later, Williamson did the same. It was Williamson who insisted that they let the others in on what was happening to them.
As Gardenhire had expected, the revelation didn’t go very well. Santana didn’t say much, but his thoughts were decidedly frightened ones. And though Daniels made a joke about it, it didn’t take a telepath to see he was every bit as scared as Santana.
The atmosphere in the pod became taut and uneasy. No one said anything more about the transformations, but they were a subtext in every conversation, a stubborn and nettlesome ghost haunting them every hour of the artificially induced day and night.
Until Santana and Daniels found themselves with telepathic powers of their own, their discoveries coming less than a day apart. At that point, the air of suspicion went away. They were all equals again, working together toward a common goal.
But there were other surprises in store for them. One day, when Williamson was delving in a locker for a hard-to-reach nutritional packet, he saw the thing move obediently into his outstretched hand.
Apparently, he had developed a knack for telekinesis. Announcing his discovery to his podmates (as if he could have