A "Winds of Change" Story

By Bryan Derksen

Janet was giggling again when I walked back into the conference room where I had left her with Kim, Tim and Dr. Pavan a few minutes earlier. They looked up as I entered, and Janet began unsuccessfully attempting to stifle her mirth. Dr. Pavan just shook his head in exasperation and I decided that I probably didn’t want to know what had set her off. Janet seemed a bit on the flakey side. Kim had apparently just got up to leave, and walked out past me with a nod as I entered. "Dr. Pavan?" I asked hesitantly. "Could I talk with you for a moment?"

"Bryan, wasn’t it? I thought you were going to see what was happening with Jon and Maxine."

"Brian went on without me. I need to talk with you about my own Power first." I glanced significantly at Janet, who apparently wasn’t paying much attention to me.

Tim made the connection, though, and frowned. "Did you tell her to do something?" He asked, concerned.

I nodded. "Yeah," I sighed resignedly. "I did." Tim scowled, obviously realizing the dangerous implications. ...herdmate angry... the echo of a whitetail buck’s voice whispered in the back of my mind, and I flinched slightly. Shut up, I shot back, momentarily forgetting the fact that I was talking to a part of myself. The remnants of Jon’s human mind and memories still lodged in my head were too diffuse to manifest themselves separately, but somehow that damned deerside of his had held enough coherence to occasionally speak out on its own. As if I didn’t have enough troubles from this Power debacle as it was...

"Excuse me?" Dr. Pavan asked, confused.

I broke out of my reverie. "Sorry," I apologized to Pavan, "My mind was on something else for a moment." I sat down at the table with a sigh, glanced at Janet to see if she was paying attention, and continued my confession. "I’ve got a mental power. I can tell people what to do, and they do it. Back in California I inadvertently gave Janet a small suggestion, just a trivial thing in passing, and her Power obviously got me in the process. Sorry." My second apology was directed to Janet, who was now giving me her full attention.

"What was it?" Tim demanded before Dr. Pavan could acknowledge.

"Huh? Oh, the suggestion." I was suddenly extremely nervous for some reason. "Um, it was just... I just asked her to go ahead with the others and leave me behind so I could talk with Jon about something. Nothing important, really." After a moment’s pause, Tim nodded and I relaxed again slightly.

"Well, I’m not sure if I can tell you anything more than I’ve already told the others," Dr. Pavan began. "I haven’t done much work specifically with telepaths before. What’s been going wrong with your Power?"

"That’s part of it right there, I’m not a telepath. I can’t send and receive thoughts. At least, I couldn’t. But since Janet’s power messed me up I’ve had at least two accidental ‘telepathic experiences’ of some sort, one of which was pretty major. Has Janet’s power ever changed the nature of the powers it affected before?"

Dr. Pavan gave an excellent impression of a puzzled frown considering his inflexible beak. "Not that I know of, it’s always been a question of magnitude and control. You weren’t perhaps just slightly telepathic, and Janet’s just magnified it?" I shook my head. "I don’t think so. I worked on learning about my Power with a telepathic friend for a while, and despite his help I couldn’t figure out how to send or receive thoughts on my own." Then I frowned too, also puzzled. "But I should have been messed up at that point already. I met up with Jack right after we left Janet."

"Holding the bar tab," Janet instantly added.

I sighed and pulled out my wallet, hoping to pay my portion so that Janet could move on to a more important topic for a change. I sighed even louder when I realized I didn’t have enough cash on me at the moment to cover it. "I’ll pay you when I find an ATM, okay?"

"Suuuure," she responded sarcastically. "Just don’t suddenly fly off to India looking for one, okay?"

"India?" I jumped as if I’d been pricked with a pin. "What-" "Excuse me, but can we get back on topic?" Dr. Pavan interrupted, sounding irritated.

"Sorry," I apologized as I turned back to him. "Uh, what were we talking about?"

Dr. Pavan sighed and shook his head. "Oh, it doesn’t matter. I wasn’t following it very well myself either; I’ve told you all I know about Janet’s effects and telepathy just isn’t my field. I suggest you go with Maxine when she talks with Mr. Sutton at Harvard, it sounds like you’ve got a somewhat similar problem."

I left the conference room again, confused and somewhat dejected. Dr. Pavan may have had the Power to analyze other powers, but he didn’t seem to have much skill at it; he had had nothing further to add. I found Brian waiting outside with Kim. "How’d it go?" He immediately asked.

My dejection was briefly joined with a flare of resentment. But I quickly quashed it, knowing that he wasn’t here because he distrusted me but because he was concerned about me. I grinned wryly. "Ask that guy at Harvard, Dr. Pavan doesn’t know much about the details of any of this. He suggested I go with Maxine when she meets him."

"Hmph. Oh well. Speaking of which, we’re supposed to be looking in on her. Shall we go?" Brian nodded, and we set off through the station in search of anyplace an emotionally distraught caribou might want to retreat to. Kim had never been to this particular station before, or at least she hadn’t come here recently, so she couldn’t help us much in that department; she instead excused herself to go follow up on some of her own professional duties.

We found Maxine sitting in the station’s small lobby with Jon, apparently over the worst of her distress. Jon was still holding her hand comfortingly, though, and in the back of my mind a small voice roused itself in anger; rival! herdmate challenging for mate!

Shut up, you idiot! I responded to myself. You’re in love with her, not me. I’m not Jon, remember? The whitetail’s voice faded out again, though it fumed as it went; it was just an animal, and couldn’t seem to understand the concept that it wasn’t in its right mind. I shook my head slightly in exasperation; Jon’s echo was still trying to make me jealous of himself.

"Heya, Bryan. Brian." Jon greeted us, apparently not noticing the brief flicker of odd expressions across my face.

"Jon. Maxine." Brian returned. "We were just checking with Dr. Pavan about something..."

"My Power’s been screwed up by Janet too" I told them, not wanting to put Brian on the spot. "He suggested I go with Maxine when we visit that guy at Harvard that he mentioned."

Jon sighed. "That explains even more of our problems, I guess. This is one situation where having lots of extremely powerful people in our group turned out to be a bad thing..."

I nodded ruefully. "Now all we’ve got to figure out is how you got affected by Janet’s Murphy Power."

"Huh?" Jon flicked his ears in surprise. "I didn’t know that I was affected." Brian and Maxine looked at me with equally puzzled expressions. "Where did you hear that?"

"Um, I thought it was a pretty obvious deduction considering the circumstances" I explained, suddenly uncertain under their scrutiny. "Jon meets Janet. A short time later, he inadvertently absorbs the kinetic energy of an entire earthquake and nearly blows Carlsbad off the map releasing it. That didn’t seem like the behavior of a well-controlled Power to me, but he hadn’t had any big problems like that before. That I know of, anyways."

Jon and Maxine looked at each other in astonishment. "It sounds reasonable," Jon admitted. "But when did I ever use my Power on her? I don’t think I ever used my shield on her, and I certainly never blasted her..."

"Maybe you did, though," Brian mused.

"What, blast her?" I asked.

"Hm... I guess I’d better go have a talk with Dr. Pavan myself, then," Jon mused. "We might need to set up an appointment for three with the Power doctor." Jon stood up, then turned to Maxine. "You want to come?"

Maxine smiled and sniffed. "No, that’s all right. I think I’m feeling a bit better now, I’ll stay here if you don’t mind." Jon smiled back, and then with a final squeeze of her hand he headed back to the conference room. Brian followed, and I wondered if he was worried that he might have bumped into Janet hard enough to be affected himself at some point. His Power was normally quite passive, I don’t think it’d had much opportunity to exhibit any symptoms since meeting Janet.

I almost tagged along, but I hesitated and decided not to. Instead, I went over and sat in Jon’s vacated seat next to Maxine. "So, it looks like we’ve both been bashing ourselves unnecessarily over our screw-ups recently," I said to her with a grin.

Maxine returned my grin, though with a hint of ruefulness in it. "Yeah. But at least you made an effort to not use your Powers when they started acting up. I just kept on playing with them." I sighed. "Yeah, I guess so. But it’s still not really your fault, you know. Our circumstances were different."

Maxine snorted. "How so? We’re both pretty dangerous. Just look at what those inducers did at the rest stop. I could have done that! I almost did, to Brian."

I smiled and nodded. "Exactly. But you only saw the worst your Power could do just recently. I saw what mind powers like mine could do when used inappropriately only a few weeks after the Change, and I lived among the results for months trying to undo the damage. Do you think you’re likely to use your Power frivolously now, after all these bad experiences?"

Maxine shook her head. "No. But I should have learned by now already! I just kept on risking people..."

I patted her hand gently. "It’s okay, Maxine. No one holds it against you." She looked down with a somewhat surprised expression at my hand, and I instantly yanked it back. "I’m sorry. Was that a Sleeperism?"

"He said almost the exact same thing a few minutes ago," Maxine replied.

"Sorry." I repeated, and wracked my brain for a moment trying to hunt down the stray echo that might have caused my reaction. It seemed that the universe somehow required that I be uncertain of my own actions; as soon as I had come to terms with my power, I wound up with this. But at least Jon was more pleasant company in my head than thoughts of Reimer.

"What’s it like, having part of Jon in your mind?" Maxine asked me.

"It’s like I keep seeing him out of the corner of my eye, or sometimes hearing whispering and not being able to make out all the words. I can understand why Jon wanted my own echo out of his head, at least." I thought for a moment, wondering whether to go on, but then decided I trusted Maxine and continued. "I also seem to have wound up with some of Jon’s split personality, that ‘voice of his animal side’ he hears in his head. Frankly, I’m not too pleased about that; I spent a long time trying to come to terms with the fact that I wasn’t split. I’m not a sheep and a human fused together, I’m just one organism who isn’t really either. But fortunately that voice is weak in me, and fairly easy to ignore."

Maxine frowned. "Sounds like you didn’t like being him," she said uncertainly.

I chuckled. "I apparently liked it enough to convince both you and Jon that he was me instead," I assured her. "And really, I don’t think I mind too much now. I’ve already settled one dichotomy, my sheep/human split, and come out of it feeling much better. If I can’t get these echos erased, then I guess I’ll just have to accept them as a part of myself instead. I’m sure I can learn a lot from Jon, despite hearing voices in his head he’s one of the best-adjusted people I’ve encountered since the Change. I think he loves being part deer."

Maxine nodded. "I know so."

Maxine and I spent a while longer chatting about deer, caribou, sheep, and life in general until Jon and the rest returned from talking with Dr. Pavan. She seemed to have put her guilt at least temporarily behind her, and my pleasure was only momentarily upset by an angry twinge from the whitetail in my mind as Maxine returned to Jon’s side. Shut up, I warned the buck’s voice before it could speak up. You can’t have her, but at least she’s happy with the one who does. Let that be enough for you. The buck hesitated, and then to my surprise grudgingly allowed itself to be submerged into my subconscious again. I shook my head with a quiet grin; animal attraction was one thing, but Jon’s feelings for Maxine must be very strong to make his animal side listen to reason about it.

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