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Stories from the Verse
In Version
Chapter 101: Kondor 245
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Brown 270
“Zeke”, Joe said, “I need your help, I think. I’ve got a bird trapped under the rubble but still alive--but I don’t think we can dig him out by conventional means before he dies. I’ve found him by clairvoyance, and I’m going to try to work my way straight up to the top of the debris pile and move something so that you can see where he is. Then we have to figure out how to work together to get him out of there, shifting stuff telekinetically, maybe creating a force shield over him, to get him out safely. Are you with me?”
“Sounds dangerous, Cap; but if you think it’s best.”
“Well, I think we might kill him, but I don’t think he’ll live if we don’t do it, and face it, doctors have been making those kinds of decisions for centuries: take the chance that what you do might kill the patient because he will certainly die if you don’t do it.”
He refocused on the trapped parakeet, and carefully shifted his vision to look straight up. Slowly his sight passed through several feet of debris and passed the tub, which was sticking up out of the top of the rubble. Could he move that? Would that disrupt the pile? He decided to start with something smaller--but he had never attempted to move something telekinetically that he couldn’t actually see. However, he could see the tub--barely.
“There’s a bathtub up there. I’m going to attempt to pull it up out of the debris; watch for it, and see if you can prevent things from collapsing somehow.”
Trepidatiously he reached out with his thoughts and latched on to the visible end of the tub. Slowly, carefully, he raised it straight back along its own length. The debris and water resting in it shifted with it.
“Are we good?” he asked.
“Far as I can see,” Zeke replied, and he realized that Zeke couldn’t see much better than he could. However, in a moment the tub was clear, and he floated it down to the clear ground around them.
“That’s the spot,” he said. “Our victim is directly below there. It’s too bad we can’t get above it--we would be able to see to dig a hole. We’re going to have to clear our way through the debris in a sort of path, but not destabilize it. We’ll bring the debris down here as we go.”
So saying, Kondor began to cut a path telekinetically, beginning at the top where he had removed the tub and slicing downward and toward himself. Sometimes he grabbed several small pieces at once; on one occasion he moved a very large piece of a wall. Zeke was doing much the same, and the way was opening.
Kondor suddenly realized that they had attracted a crowd. He should have anticipated that. After all, he wasn’t certain whether any of the birds were aware that they could do this, and couldn’t remember having done it since they arrived, although at some point he thought they had talked about what did and didn’t work in this world. Pausing in his work, he turned toward the awestruck observers, and addressed them in their own language.
“Zeke and I have located a survivor under the debris in a place that can’t easily be reached by ordinary means. We are attempting to create a path to remove him. The rest of you need to get back to work--there might be other survivors.”
Not waiting for their response, he returned to his work. He thought he could hear the crowd slowly dispersing. He worried that the rumors that they were gods were going to be exacerbated by this event, but that didn’t matter as much as trying to save the limited mortal life of one of their people.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #493: Verser Engagements. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
