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The heavily forested region around them teemed with birdlife and dozens of small mammal species, one of which had already sent Futhai into fits of ecstasy, since it was a completely unknown type.
"A black-and-white chipmunk! Gods and thunders, a black-and-white chipmunk! And look?there are dozens of them, so it's not an isolated deviant individual!" Over the course of their three-day march, that had become Futhai's favorite cry. "They're everywhere! It's not an isolated population! Black-and-white chipmunks! A true new subspecies!"
Braiheri Futhai was a man whose fastidious nature showed itself not so much in the way he carried himself, or engaged his surroundings?he was every bit as good a woodsman as any other member of the team?but in the way he thought, down deep at the core of his Ternathian soul. Futhai was not Braiheri chan Futhai, for he'd never served in Ternathia's military. Not because he was unpatriotic, but because soldiering was not a gentleman's occupation.
Futhai was a very good naturalist, with a veritable treasure trove of scientific information stored in memory. His knowledge ranged from geology to meteorology, from zoology and botany to physics, and the mathematical precision with which all worlds?including their beloved Sharona?whirled through the ether in their journeys around duplicates of Sharona's sun. He had a keen eye and a keen mind, and a gift for detailed observation that made him a valuable member of the survey team.
Unfortunately, those excellent qualities shared brain space with all too many notions about proper attitudes and behaviors for a certifiable (by birthright and exalted pedigree) gentleman of Sharona's most ancient, prestigious empire. Worse, he expected others to treat him with the deference he, himself, believed he merited, as the grandson of a Ternathian duke. And he treated everyone else in accordance with those same social rules, as carefully learned as his science. He wasn't demanding or petty, or even rude about it, which only made matters worse, as far as Shaylar was concerned. He was insufferably polite, in fact, particularly with her, treating her to an unending barrage of courtesies, looking after her every need … whether she wanted him to or not.
But the thing that drove Shaylar craziest was his unshakable conviction that his notions and customs were as unalterably and exclusively correct as the physical laws of the University so delighted in studying. It had simply never occurred to Braiheri Futhai that not everyone on Sharona thought the Ternathian way of doing things was the best way. He possessed just enough Talent for Shaylar to realize he truly believed, in his i
Not that there weren't profound similarities between most of Sharona's great societies. With psionic Talents ru
So she gri
She also laid out her field notebook, and one of the piston-fill pens she and countless other survey crew members?not to mention ordinary clerks and officials?blessed on a daily basis. She filled the pen from a metal flask of ink she'd carried with her through three virgin universes, made sure the flask's cap was screwed into place, and carried it back to her tent.
By the time she returned to her work table, Jathmar had hiked far enough to start picking up new terrain features. When Shaylar reached out to contact him?the nature of his Talent meant she had to contact him, since he could See but wasn't able to transmit to her or anyone else?the pictures in his mind started flowing into hers. The process was second nature to her, now, although she paused now and again to reflect on how dull life must be without any Talent at all to turn the multiple universes into a maze of fascinating playgrounds.
The glorious, crisp morning and the sunshine that glowed across her shoulders combined to keep her contented with life. She hummed under her breath, not even really aware that she did so, and concentrated on what Jathmar was seeing?and on what he was Seeing, since there was a distinct difference. When she'd first begun her training, Shaylar had found it difficult to sort out the images Jathmar saw with his two physical eyes from those the Saw with his "third eye." The screen in Jathmar's brain Saw a far wider slice of terrain than mere eyes could take in, and that screen was what Shaylar tapped when establishing her link with him.
Her husband was actually looking at a bend in the creek that already existed on their chart, since it was well within his five-mile radius from camp. Although that image was the stronger of the two, she ignored it with practiced ease and focused on the other, ghostlier image he was Seeing.
For Jathmar, the mechanics involved seemed to be a sort of looking "up" and then "out" along an invisible gridwork that registered as faint threads of light. He Saw terrain superimposed across that gridwork, like shadows glimpsed through mist. For Shaylar, the mechanics of her Talent took the form of a sudden gestalt, a totality of impressions that simply appeared, complete, in her own mind's eye. She Saw what he did as a whole, complete image?like a stage play containing nothing but scenery. Had Shaylar been in contact with another Voice, the images would have been far sharper, more like seeing it with her own eyes, rather than catching shadows that had the look of a watercolor painting left too long in strong sunlight.
She had to reach out consciously to pluck the images from Jathmar's mind, which took concentration. But he was close enough to camp that it wasn't particularly taxing. The further apart she and Jathmar?or another telepath?were, the more concentration it took to make contact and maintain it. Shaylar's maximum range was just over eight hundred miles. That put her in the top ten percent of all Voices, although at that distance it took every ounce of concentration she could summon to hold contact.
Other Voices had even more limited ranges, which gave her team a distinct advantage. When she and Darcel had first been assigned to the same team, Darcel had been startled at the range she achieved. Startled and a little worried, since his own maximum range was barely two-thirds as great as hers. It was entirely possible for Shaylar to go far enough out of his range that he could pick up her transmissions, yet be too far away for him to transmit a reply back to her. They'd worked carefully together in a well-established colony world before heading for the wilderness, using the railroads in a very serious game of leapfrog to gauge effective distances at which they could both make contact. In the end, they'd found that he could Hear her at up to eight hundred miles, whereas she could Hear him at almost six hundred and fifty. Unfortunately, at anything over five hundred and eighty miles, he could Hear her only if he knew she would be trying to contact him and went into Voice trance to Listen for her, which limited their effective maximum range to that figure.