The Missing Link (15 page)

"But why does it have to hurt so much?"

"Come here." Hal scrunched over. When Carole squeezed into the chair with him, he
draped his good arm around her shoulders. "Why does it hurt? I guess because in a way something
is dying, that time of life we shared together. It was a wonderful time though, wasn't it?"

Carole nodded slowly and sniffed.

"It was a horrible time, too."

She nodded, vigorously this time.

"But it was our time, when I wasn't whole without you and you weren't whole without
me. We needed each other back then, baby multitasker and one armed monobrainer. But no longer.
You no longer need me, Carole. Yes, we love each other, but you, you're ready to tackle life solo, and
me, I'm ready to tackle death."

Carole couldn't hold back a horrified gasp.

"Hey, why should you have all the fun? I'm ready for another wild adventure, another
grand journey, and this useless body of mine is just in the way. It's time to chuck the thing and move
on."

She spoke barely above a whisper. "But I'll miss you...when you die."

"Hey, I'm not ready to check out just yet. Besides, part of me will always be with you.
But it's obvious you can't stay here, any more than we can live in the past, nor should you want to.
We lived our life together well, you and I, but now it's time for you to live another. That's why
you've been pacing all afternoon. You're ready to go."

"But not just yet." Hal got up stiffly. "I've got this newfangled camera. Margaret gave it to
me, and I want a few photographs to show her. Yes," he answered Carole's unspoken question,
"Margaret knows all about you and she'd never forgive me if I let you get away without a picture or
two. As it is, she'll be mighty miffed that you came and went without her getting to meet you." Hal
gave Carole a wink. "Though I'm sure she'll think it quite fitting that you arrived on the back of a
hurricane."

Zack and Lilly were in their cottage, facing a very perturbed Professor Philamount. "We
don't know," Zack said.

"I find it difficult to believe that Miss Sylphwood would go anywhere without letting the
pair of you in on her plans."

"She doesn't tell us everything. Try asking Runt."

"The hogs also claim ignorance. It seems no one has seen her since her abrupt departure
from the Sylphwood residence, yesterday evening. I'm afraid if she doesn't return soon, people will
begin to ask unwanted questions, and the last thing we need is for more eyes to be peering into
our--"

Carole appeared in the center of the room. "Not much fun when you're kept in the dark,
is it?"

Zack grabbed at his chest. "Geez Carole! Trying to give me a heart attack?"

"Would you care to explain yourself?" the professor said.

"Not at the moment." She turned to the twins and twitched an eyebrow. "You guys mind
if I bunk down here for awhile? My parents and I have had a...difference of opinion."

"Not at all." Lilly looked between Carole and Professor Philamount. "We can fix up the
loft?"

Carole smiled. "That'll be fine."

Professor Philamount cleared his throat loudly. "You missed an entire day of school,
Miss Sylphwood."

"After missing nine years of school, I don't think one more day will make a huge
difference, do you?"

His bushy white eyebrows furrowed into a deep V. "Shall I expect you in class
tomorrow?"

"Certainly. Usual time."

"And you will be telling your other instructors...?"

"That I was a little under the weather."

"Under what weather?"

"It's an expression. It means I wasn't feeling well."

"I see." Professor Philamount went to the door. "This isn't over Miss Sylphwood. We
shall be discussing your truancy more thoroughly tomorrow."

"You'd better believe we will," Carole said with such force, that he actually faltered on
the doorstep.

"Sorry," she said to the twins, once Professor Philamount had gone. "I didn't mean for
you guys to take the heat on my account."

Zack laughed. "It was worth it to see Philamount actually at a loss for words."

"Do you think talking to him that way was wise?" Lilly said.

Carole shrugged, as if it didn't matter. "I'm going to see if Runt found anything. Want to
tag along?"

"Aren't you going to fill us in?" Zack said.

"Sure. While we walk."

They reached the park close to sunset and were met by a group of concerned hogs. After
Carole assured them that all was fine, they returned to the business of preparing for sleep, leaving
only Runt and Smoky to showcase their discovery. The two pigs led the way to a half-buried tumble
of rock, at the base of the Celestial Nexus.

Carole looked up the mountain. She could see a narrow bridge spanning the cliff face. "It
looks like this is the right place."

As she was staring a whirring sound drew her attention to the area just beneath the
bridge. A cloud of birds was rising into the evening air. Almost without realizing it, she relaxed her
vision and was astonished to see hundreds of tiny, fluttering rainbows. The birds really were
multicolored, at least when she looked at them with her subtle sight.

"Wow!" Zack said. "Funny I never noticed them before."

"We've never been down here at sunset," Lilly said.

"Still, that's a lot of birds."

"It is," Carole agreed, feeling she was missing something. "What color do they look to
you?"

Lilly squinted at the departing flock. "Just plain gray."

Zack hopped onto the jumble of rocks. "So do you think this pile is actually the remains
of the original Hall of Records?"

Carole examined a nearby stone. It was extremely weathered but a fluted pattern was
still visible on its surface. "Some of these rocks have definitely been quarried."

She crawled over the mound looking for other quarried rock, but the sun had dipped
below the horizon, and the shadows were deepening by the minute.

"It's getting kinda dark to be exploring," Zack said. "And I really don't know what you
expect to learn by examining a bunch of old rocks."

"I was just hoping for something." Carole sighed. "Maybe we can check the place out a
little more tomorrow, say over a picnic lunch."

Professor Jadehur Jazpur was a full-fledged multitasker with many years of leaping
experience. She was also one of the most talented multitaskers to have graced the corridors of Hub
Central in a long while, and was considered as gifted as Professor Philamount. However, unlike
Professor Philamount, Professor Jazpur seemed to genuinely enjoy teaching.

Her dimension of choice was a world where the inhabitants communicated entirely by
way of scent. Consequently she usually reeked of the strangest fragrances. One could always tell
when Professor Jazpur was approaching, because of the chorus of sneezes that announced her
passage. Sitting in the front row of her class was to be avoided if one didn't want to spend the rest
of the day with a stuffed nose and runny eyes.

Carole was actually early for a change and she managed to get a great seat near the
back. As the classroom filled, she watched the latecomers fight for the remaining chairs at the edges
of the room. Suddenly Professor Jazpur, wearing a billowing gown of gold, sailed into the room. The
nauseated expressions on the faces of the luckless few sitting in the front row, told Carole that her
teacher was drenched in an especially pungent perfume.

The professor rounded her desk, flipped through her attendance book and squinted up
at the class. Her gaze lit on Carole. A warm smile spread over her face. "Feeling better this morning,
Miss Sylphwood?"

Carole looked a question at her.

"Professor Philamount informed me that you were, how did he put it, 'a little under the
weather.' A curious phrase. monobrain origin?"

Carole nodded, hating that she was now the center of attention.

"Intriguing, and no, Mr. Joelson." Professor Jazpur focused on a boy trying to slip
unnoticed into the room. "Your being under the weather today, does not excuse you from
yesterday's telepathy translation homework."

"Could've at least given me a chance to ask," the boy muttered. He slid into a chair,
amidst a smattering of laughter.

"But I did." Professor Jazpur beamed. "Your thoughts rang out loud and clear. A chiming
bell could have done no better. Remember class, true language is transuniversal, while the spoken
word is merely...?"

"Species specific." The students spoke in unison.

"Yes, species specific. Every species thinks at some level. Even a primitive coldwater
crustacean has rudimentary thoughts, mostly about finding food while not becoming food. Tap into
those bubbles of thought and what need have we for words? Indeed it is my humble opinion that
meaning is mercilessly mutilated, when we try to stuff thought into such limited, sharp-edged
things.

"Words!" She made a face. "Disgusting, trivial things. How can you possibly convey the
essence of a Mourning Lute's spine tingling call to the hunt, by saying, 'it has a warbly, melancholic
voice?' Yet here we all are, forced to communicate with the vile things.

"No, not the Mourning Lute, Mr. Gillis. Words! We are forced to communicate with
words. But you, sir, couldn't have demonstrated my point more perfectly. See the confusion words
generate. Polluting the very air we breathe with noxious and noisy exhaust.

"Make no mistake. Words are treacherous, diabolical devices, not to be trusted. Never
turn your back on a word of unknown origin. It could very well be the last thing you do.

"Of course quite the opposite can be said of thoughts. Magnificent creatures, billowing
out like clouds; ever changing, ever expanding, ever inclusive. True they have a double-edged
quality to them. Thoughts can lift you up or pull you down, but when in the midst of one, you always
know where the thinker resides.

"Yes, thoughts are language in its most purest form. And if true language is
transuniversal, than thoughts are nothing but...?" She looked around, encouraging the class.

"Vibration," they spoke as one.

"And vibration is nothing but..?"

"Energy."

"Yes, yes, the energy of vibration, the vibration of energy. And no Miss Trudle, it is not
just a confusing pile of cripcrap. In fact, as I've been trying to explain for weeks now, it's quite the
opposite. Else how could I have telepathically translated your reference to a cripit's compost pile,
just now?"

"But you're you." A dark-haired girl with a ponytail scowled. "No one else can do what
you do, not even the other professors. So how can you expect us to?"

"Not true. Not true at all." Professor Jazpur spoke in a sing-song lilt. "Perhaps you do not
think as enthusiastically as I, but all of you possess the ability. Still dormant perhaps, still
slumbering peacefully within, but I assure you the awakening can occur at any moment. And it must
occur!" Her shout caused all the students to jump. "Because if left untended, if allowed to remain
asleep, in time the ability to
think
will shrivel to nothingness.

"Why look at our own dear professor, Rizzo. On the surface one might easily dismiss
him as a man without the slightest inclination towards telepathic translation, and yet is he not able
to converse with giant cave crabs?"

"Not very well," a boy said with a snicker.

"Certainly you've never misread another's intentions, have you Mr. Tillspur? Wasn't
there a certain young woman who shall, for the sake of propriety, remain nameless."

Turning bright red, Ronald Tillspur, slouched deep into his seat.

"All of us experience numerous misreads here in our very own dimension. It is part of
the path of learning, and I would expect nothing less. So, when you consider that those crabs
communicate by pincer snap and eye stock sway, it is a wonder any of us can converse with them at
all. Telepathy translation. Professor Rizzo translated their thoughts through learning their
motions."

Professor Jazpur pirouetted about the room, flooding the air with her eye-watering
scent. "Thoughts, emotions, feelings, conveyed by a look, an action, a scent; by the very vibration of
one's brain. And our own Carole Sylphwood--"

Carole jerked alert. She'd been thinking about the Dark Realm, wondering how that evil
presence had been able to force its thoughts into her head. She looked anxiously at the professor.
Had the woman read her mind just then?
Please no,
she prayed.

Jazpur ceased her spinning and, brushing hair from her eyes, faced the class. "On your
wild journeying last spring, did you not sense things? Interpret things? Were you not forced on
many occasions to feel your way?"

"Yes." Carole sighed with silent relief. "All the time."

"Well there you have it." Professor Jazpur beamed. "What some might dismiss as simple
intuition, Miss Trudle, is in reality an advanced form of telepathy translation. You take a passing
bundle of energy and tease it into a form that you can understand. Remarkable. Astounding, in
fact."

"But how?" Shelly Trudle whined.

"It might do you some good to review your class notes from our first week," the
professor reprimanded gently. "However, judging by the fog of confusion filling the room, I see that
you are not alone. It seems words have won again. So very quickly..."

Professor Jazpur danced over to the blackboard and sketched the profile of a figure with
a watermelon-like brain inside its head. "Now then, we are blessed with physical and energetic
receptors covering our entire form. Both Mr. Mertroid. Both." She sighed, and looked towards a
short boy who was in the process of raising his arm. "As our bodies are both physical and energetic,
does it not make sense that our receptors would also be physical and energetic? Do you remember
nothing from last year? From last month, in fact?"

Red faced, the boy rifled through his notes.

"Our physical receptors, Mr. Mertroid, are easily recognized are they not? Sight, touch,
taste, and so on. Our energetic receptors, though more subtle, are just as easy to recognize:
intuition, telepathy, prescience and the like. They might require a little signal boosting, but of
course our ears do the very same thing by directing and concentrating sound waves to the
eardrum." Professor Jazpur drew a circle on the forehead of her sketch. "So it is with the mind's eye,
and similarly with the heart's eye." She drew a second circle on the chest.