Chapter 2: The Healing

If you had mental abilities it wasn't like a smorgasbord or cafeteria, or even the extreme specialization like the old stories suggested. If you had 'talent' then you were pretty much guaranteed a set of 'core services'--TK, or manipulating matter at a distance was the central ability. From there came the ability to heat or cool matter, cut matter, move matter and rotate matter. It was usually joined with sight at a distance. Once you got the rotation thing down and you could 'see' the flywheel, you could motivate a vehicle. Once you got the sight and the cut/move thing down you could plow a pretty big field in an hour--a lot faster than any tractor and plow ever could. With the proper intuition, empathy and small sight one could be a psychic surgeon. A surgeon working with a teleport could instantly remove tumors from a body without making a single incision.

Anyone that had been trained could walk along one of the old roads and use their mind to crush the cracked rubble back down into a very thick, very durable smooth road once again. Some folk worked faster, some slower. I could jog along and watch the road fixing itself in front of my feet. That, my finding ability, my strength and constitution got me the job of a ranger. I kept a journal of my activities and had to report in at least twice a year.

Then came the specialty talents that only expressed occasionally. "Finding" was one of them. "Teaching" was another--a teacher could impress knowledge directly onto another's mind. That was a rare one. Teleportation was the mailman's dream--even with just line-of-sight jumps a teleport could go from hilltop to hilltop, covering close to fifty miles in an hour. I'd been taken on a trip by a TP once to reach my assignment. I lost my lunch when we stopped. Traveling that way is not for everyone.

There were other talents out there but they were fairly rare. I had one of them besides being a finder. I could manipulate metal and ceramic with far more control than any pre-collapse technology. For example, I'd taken a crappy display saber and turned it into something almost identical in structure to a section of a Japanese Katana that I'd seen in a museum. Some folk were fast enough with their TK that all they carried was a handful of small rocks. They'd punch holes in animals or thieves out to as far as their eyes could focus. You knew when one of them was around because of the characteristic whip-crack sound their rocks made. I couldn't get that much acceleration out of my talents, but I could get around 350 to 400 miles/hour reliably. That was fine for a crossbow bolt. It was about twice the velocity that a good crossbow could deliver. I carried a bandolier of a couple dozen of them.

One unusual talent was feeling when talent was used. I called it the witch-hunter talent. Another odd-ball was talent-snuffing. If someone with this ability was around and concentrated, nobody could use any talents. As you can imagine, they weren't very popular folk. They weren't snuck up on much though, I have to admit. That's why I kept practicing with my flights and throwing stick. As a ranger I had to be able to finish any argument, settle any dispute and put a stop to any battle or take out any warlord.

When we left the village we needed to find some place to hold up for a while. Josie needed some time to heal. She directed me to her folks' holding. The door was bashed in by the feral pigs and the inside of the cabin was a mess. I sat her down on a log and cleaned the place. I got her comfortably laid out on her back then we tried an experiment. "Close your eyes. Breathe deeply and evenly, in and out, in and out. Just listen to my voice. In and out. Now feel your hands. Feel the bones. Feel where the bones rub together. Now move your attention to your wrists. Feel the bones. Can you feel where the problem is? Make it like the other side. Gently suggest. Wouldn't it feel better if it was like the other side? Just keep it in your mind. Watch it heal. Watch the bruised tissue go back to normal. That's it. There. Now you can relax. Let sleep take you. Sleep."

It was amazing. She had a good hand on healing. I watched the bones re-align and the swelling go down before my eyes. The bruising visibly improved before she slipped into dreamland.

She'd be starving when she woke. I used my skills to press and form a slab of wood into something like dried hackberry--tougher than the hinges of hell. I was able to drop it in place of the old door which I carved into firewood. A pair of beams were propped up in the corner behind the door. I secured it and crawled out the window six feet off the ground. Then I pulled the shutters closed so that it looked like they were bolted closed.

I had some hunting to do. Feral pigs were very dangerous. They grew to quite a size. Not even a full sized bear would seek one out for food. Many lives were lost to them every year. I cast out my thoughts. Quiet, seek, quiet. There! I found at least six. I started out in their direction. While loping along I removed a few bolts and held them in my hands.

I found where they'd laired up. It had been someone's stone cabin. I figured that once they caught wind of me they'd try to charge, and in one assault try take me down, all attacking at once. I looked around for a big tree to fell and use as a rampart. I found a tree that would do the job and started whittling the branches into four-foot-long spears before I felled it. I cut the branches off that would face my side and used my skills to form them into sharp spears. I collected them to lay at my feet while I dug holes in the trunk a foot deep and large enough to receive my impromptu spears. I made the holes about a foot apart. I used my skills to quickly fell the tree and cause it to drop where I wanted. Then as quickly as I could I forced the spines into my 'porcupine'. The impact of the tree landing shook the ground, riling up the pigs. They charged out looking for something or someone to destroy. As I figured, they caught my scent and charged. As soon as I got a good view I took them out with crossbow bolts, bam, bam, bam. When you can stand off and drive a steel-tipped bolt through the animal's eye at sixty paces it hardly seems like hunting. No matter, this was pest control.