The Elders (Mind Dimensions #4)(24)

“I’m glad you’re here,” George says, looking up at her. “I was just about to teach Darren how to Teleport.”

Kate’s eyes widen for the briefest moment, but if she has a problem with this development, she doesn’t voice it.

“Do you want to partake in his first practice?” George asks. “Or are you hungry?”

“I already ate.” She crosses her arms in front of her chest. “I’ll help.”

I swallow the last of my sandwich and look at George. He appears either thoughtful or constipated; it’s hard to tell the two apart.

Then everything goes silent. Instead of sitting on the ground, I’m now standing off to the side. The warm tropical breeze is gone, and I realize I’m in the Quiet. So that’s what that look was about; he was Splitting.

George is looking at my feet calculatingly. “Okay. I’d say about a meter. Do you agree?”

“I don’t understand the metric system,” I say, “but even if I did, a meter from where to where?”

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’ve been told I’m a terrible teacher. From your body, of course.”

I look at my frozen self. He/I am still sitting on the blanket. We’re about three feet apart, plus or minus a couple of inches.

“Why does it matter?” I ask.

“You’ll see,” he says and walks up to his frozen self. Before I can ask any more questions, he phases out.

“Kate, be a dear and bring out a few crates from the plane,” George says.

I hear the sound of a cricket coming from the grass. As Kate walks toward the plane, she purposefully steps on where the sound is coming from. The little guy is silenced. Is that her way of hinting at her disapproval? I sure hope it’s George, and not me, whom she symbolically crushed.

“Don’t move,” George says when I try to get up.

Complying, I ask, “Why not?”

“All will be revealed in a moment.”

Kate returns with a couple of plastic boxes, exactly like the one that housed our breakfast.

“Over here, right?” George asks, pointing to a spot three feet away from me.

“You mean where I was standing in the Quiet? That is, the Mind Dimension?” I ask.

“No, he means the place where you had a gynecological exam,” Kate says, earning a stern look from George that stops her from chuckling.

“Just an inch to the right, I think,” I say to George, directing him to where I materialized.

George places the crate in that spot and looks as though he’s concentrating. In the next instant, I’m in the Quiet again, only this time it’s different.

I’m not standing where the crate is; I’m standing a foot away from it.

“Let’s make a note of that,” George says and phases us out again.

The next crate goes to the new place my body ‘chose’ to phase into.

After he pulls me in, I show up three feet away from the last place.

“So I show up in different places,” I say on the fourth crate. “How does this teach me Teleportation? Cool term, by the way.”

“You’re already Teleporting on a subconscious level,” George explains. “What else could be preventing you from showing up with your legs inside these crates? Let’s keep doing this and see what happens.”

I have noticed that showing up in the Quiet always had a convenient quality to it. In a crowded room, I always showed up in an empty spot rather than inside someone’s immobile body. I never gave it much thought, though. Maybe I should have.

I let George continue with the lesson, if that’s what this is. With each crate, I show up elsewhere. Ten crates later, I’m ending up around fifteen feet away from my frozen body. It’s a record of sorts, but it by no means gets me closer to controlling the skill.

“Let’s move on to the next phase,” George says. “Kate, would you be so kind as to help?”

Kate looks me over, then reaches for her sword. Weapon unsheathed, she walks around the crates in a random pattern. She stays within a tight six-or-seven-foot radius.

“I’m about to pull her in,” George says. “She’ll continue walking aimlessly with her sword in the Mind Dimension. If you show up in its range, you’ll be made Inert. Good luck.”

“Wait,” I say, but the world goes silent again.

I look around. Kate is in the distance. She stops waving her sword when she sees me. My frozen self and the pairs of Georges and Kates are a good twenty feet away from me. The animated version of George smiles at me as I cross the distance.

“Your range is increasing,” he says when I reach him.

“But I just randomly showed up there. I didn’t control it.”

“This is how it starts,” he says. “If you do this sort of thing for a while, you’ll learn to control it.”

“About how long before I can actually do something useful with it?” I ask.

“The distance you can travel and how fast you can master this skill all depend on your Reach.” At the mention of Reach, George looks as uncomfortable as I do when I say hello to someone at work and that person just keeps walking past me. I guess even among Ambassadors, the topic of Reach is outside polite conversation.

“Look over there,” Kate says, pointing at something in the distance.