mentatic subtlety. His clumsy mental surgery might have destroyed Cody's mind. Desperately, Tach prowled the darkness, but it could not match the stygian blackness within her mind and soul. From their first meeting, he and Cody had formed a telepathic bond that Tachyon had shared with only one other human woman. Surely that power would tell her if Cody lived. But the power was gone. So the darkness was filled only with silence and her grim fears.
Six times they had fed her. Did that mean three days had elapsed? Impossible to tell. At times her hunger was so great that it felt as if a small animal were chewing at the walls of her stomach. So perhaps they weren't feeding her every day. It was a blow to discover that her method of telling time proved to be as useless as everything else she had tried. This final loss of control over even the most meager part of her environment had, her blinking back tears.
More time elapsed, and eventually the silence became too much. One day she found herself talking to herself. Silverware was the catalyst for this latest bizarre behavior. She had been hoarding it, and she now possessed three spoons and a fork, which she obsessively counted and rearranged a hundred times in the hours between each sleep period.
"In an adventure novel or a cheap spy movie, our hero always constructs some devilishly clever device from ordinary household utensils," said Tach aloud. "But our hero's been reduced to a heroine, and she doesn't have a clue." The laughter hit the low ceiling and fell dully back on her ears.
Tach clapped a hand over her mouth to still the hysterical sound. Exhaustion dragged at her limbs.
Forcing herself to her feet, she made six quick circuits of her prison, and in time to her steps she recited: "A constant and overwhelming desire for sleep. Unspecified attacks of anxiety. Mind-numbing exhaustion. Bouts of hysterical laughter. All classic symptoms of acute depression." She paused for a moment, conceding that this rambling oration was also abnormal behavior. Then, with a shrug, she shouted at the invisible ceiling. "But you won't drive me crazy, Blaise. You may imprison me, starve me, destroy my eyesight with constant darkness, but you will not drive me crazy."
It helped to say the words. But then she went to sleep.
Somber reflection in the cold blackness of morning left Tachyon with the decided feeling that she had to do something. Waiting for rescue hadn't worked. She had to find a way to communicate, to inform someone of her plight. There was only one way she knew, and that would require an intimate study of the fleshy prison in which she now found herself.
For several minutes she paced the length of the cellar. She hated this body as much as she hated the damp concrete walls of the basement. But now she had to inspect the primitive mind. Search for the connections that might be trained and honed in mentatics.
It could be done. Long ago, she had trained Blythe to construct bulky unsophisticated mindshields. Granted, Blythe had been a wild card, but her talent had not affected the physical linkages of her brain, and she had learned. So this body could learn.
"Will learn," Tach growled.
She settled herself comfortably on the floor. Closed her eyes, began with the feet, tried to make her cramped muscles relax. And behind the darkness of her lids her mind began to whirl like a frenzied animal chasing its own tail: What have they done to my clinic? Why is no one helping me? Furious at her own lack of discipline, Tach sat up abruptly. "If you train this body," she said aloud, "the possibility exists that you can communicate with Sascha, or Fortunato, or some other as yet undetermined wild card telepath. You can escape and come back with many, many powerful aces, recover your body, and level this miserable island."
She spent a few moments picturing the scene. The images of death and destruction had a very salubrious effect. As Tach lay back down, she decided that despite forty-five years on earth, she was still a Takisian to her fingertips.
She was walking in the mountains. The mountains looked Takisian, but the sky was earth's. A flying fish skimmed the tops of the dark pines like an intricate Chinese kite, but for some reason none of this was confusing.
"Does this count as a meeting?" a young man's voice was asking.
Tach searched for the source but saw nothing