Romlar came in and closed the door behind him. "Hi, Lotta," he said cheerfully, and sat down. "I hadn't expected to see you again."
She smiled. "I hadn't expected to be here again. How have things been going?"
"We're doing battalion exercises now. And good old 2nd Platoon's been hogging the command posts. Coyn Carrmak and I have been switching off as battalion commander and battalion EO. And Jerym is A Company exec under Eldren Esenrok, when it's not the other way around."
"Well! Congratulations! Did you have a good supper this evening?"
"Always. Almost always."
"Good. Did you get enough sleep last night?"
"Yep."
His aura reflected good health and good spirit. "All right. We'll start the formal interview then. I want you to sit back and relax. Get nice and loose. You can close your eyes if you'd like."
He did.
"All right. Now just let your mind relax too. Let it drift if it wants to. And if you feel anything strange happening, it'll be all right. Just let it happen and ride along with it. It'll be no big deal."
He didn't nod, didn't move, just let himself go. For almost all his life, it would not have been possible except while falling asleep; resentments, worries, and thoughts had tended to crowd his mind. Now letting go was easy. An idea drifted through and he watched it pass, was aware of watching it, then aware of its absence, all very relaxed and unimportant.
Then something else was there that for a moment he couldn't identify. His awareness sharpened a little with curiosity. Of course! [Hello, Lotta! What are you doing?]
[It's called a meld. Our minds join.]
[What do we do next?]
[Relax and let things happen. Or not happen.]
His awareness softened again. Another thought came to him. His thought? Or hers? He decided it didn't matter. After that, for a while, nothing seemed to be happening, and he lost track of time. There was time, but he had no real notion of how much was passing. His main awareness was of a sense of intimacy and dormant power, power that was his and that he hadn't recognized before.
Then he saw his own face, as through Lotta's eyes, and the thought was there, her thought, that it was time to separate. [All right,] he thought back to her. And felt her withdraw slowly, gently, till his mind was alone.
Alone but not the same. He was aware of himself at a depth beyond anything he'd experienced or suspected. In spite of so little having happened.
He opened his eyes. "Thank you," he said. "Thank you very much." And when he left the room, it seemed to him he was bigger, had expanded, was seeing the floor from a foot higher than before.
Wellem Bosler awoke gradually, uneasy in the dark of his small room. It struck him then why. [Who,] he asked, [is in my mind?]
[Lotta, Wellem.]
[Huh! Where are you Lotta? Physically I mean?]
[In my room.]
[You can meld at a distance then.]
[I thought I could. After I melded with Artus. I felt such power when we were together, he and I. So did he. Wellem, you need to have a session with him. To know where he's at. At what level. He's not just a 5; not now anyway.]
[All right. And I need to do an eval on you, to find out what level you're at now. You've changed too, I'm sure of it. Huh! I've melded with Konni, and with others a few times, and never got any personal change out of it. Never before heard of anyone getting any.]
She didn't respond, seemed relaxed. After what might have been a minute or two, her mind stirred. [I'm going to leave and go to sleep now,] she thought to him, and he felt her disengage.
When she was gone, he lay awake for a while. Remarkable, he thought. He'd heard of a few Iryalans—Masters like himself, and Experts—who could contact friends at a distance, perhaps on another continent, and might even meld with them. The T'swa of course had a long history of producing seers who could meld at a distance with almost anyone, as if distance didn't exist for them. But the entire population of Tyss knew the T'sel—or ninety-nine percent did, something like that—and had for millennia. They'd long since needed no procedures to gain it. And every T'swi who was born to Wisdom/Knowledge was trained as a seer. It wasn't terribly remarkable that some, a few of them, could find and meld with someone hundreds of parsecs away.
And now— His psyche quickened. Could Lotta learn to? Learn to find the T'swa seer? Or even the Klestronu flagship and its captain? He'd have to look into this, even if it required slighting his work a bit as project leader.