Tales of Midbar: Religious Intolerance

“You realize you haven’t turned her into an anavah and any children she has fathered by anavim will probably be nibeyim?” said Ice.

“I knew it wouldn’t make her an anavah,” said Breeze. “I don’t understand why the children of an anav and nibeyah will be nibeyim.”

“To be an anav, or anavah,” I said, “you need two nibey and two katchey alleles. Nibeyim have two nibey alleles but usually don’t have any katchey alleles. Therefore children of nibeyim and anavim, it doesn’t matter which is the father and which is the mother, will have two nibey alleles but will usually only have one katchey allele and will therefore be nibeyim. Do you understand?”

“Not really,” said Breeze.

I was shocked, I actually understood something she didn’t!

“It’s like having a noisy party in my head!” I complained. “I still don’t think you’ve done it right. Right now I don’t care what korbarim my children will be.”

“Does it hurt?” asked Ice.

“Not really, it’s like having several internet shows going on in my head at the same time.”

“This is a bit like what happens when people try to use drugs or nanites to increase their psychic powers,” said Ice.

“That’s exactly right,” I said, “not that I’ve ever done that.”

“The drugs usually wear off and the person has the sense not to try it again,” said Ice. “The nanites can drive people mad but usually, if you’re turning a hipsick into a nibey or something, people usually get used to it. However, they’ve never found a reliable way to turn people into anavim. That’s why we can’t just use nanites to turn everybody into anavim.”

I realized that she was referring to the prophecy that anavim would eventually take over the planet, or Earth or all human colonies.

“Yes nanites can be very dangerous,” I said. “There’s a convention that limits their use but it has sometimes been violated.”

“More simplifying,” said Ice. “I can give you a drug to calm it down but you should find that it gets better in a few hours or days. If you leave the Vineyard, there won’t be so many psychics around you and the few there are will mostly be nibeyim. That should also help.”

“Don’t I have to go back to school?” asked Breeze.

“I suppose so,” said Ice. “You’d better come up with a way to deal with Lishrashic. You should be able to kill him the way you destroyed Pardis’s arm but that would give away the fact that you’re a mage or at least have a bound associate, which many people consider to be the same thing.” Then she took a ring of transparent material, probably geodeserine, from her finger and gave it to Breeze. “This is a date rape, knock out and amnesia, artifact, just point at the target and say, ‘Itras’ but only use it if you really need people not to remember things. It will help if people do know you did it so they won’t go charging adults.”

“What’s the big secret?” I asked.

“What big secret?” asked Breeze.

We were walking through the Vineyard, taking the shortcut to the gates. Aleph had risen so it was now white day. My head was still swimming with images but I was feeling a little better.

“You only let Haprihagfen live here although you’ve let me sleep over a number of times. I keep feeling these explosions of psychic power. The first time was in Visitor Information just before River arrived. I felt a couple at the Cascade hotel about the time Lishrashic and Iandris had their memories erased. I felt one in the master’s office when his magic detector was stolen and somebody used a concussion spell on him. I think another Haprihagfen did those to stop Lishrashic and the master from knowing that you were an anavah magis. What happened the night of the meteor shower? Did you erase Lishrashic’s memory because he’d seen Oldriac but I saw him too and you didn’t erase my memory?”

“I don’t know. Well I know that we can’t let goyim live here because they’ll turn against us and take over. If we let you live here, your parents might want to move in or your husband, and they might let people in who are very korbarist and really hate anavim. I know about the explosions ...”

I didn’t hear the rest of her explanation. I was suddenly confused, everything suddenly felt wrong. Even my body felt wrong, it didn’t move the way I thought it should. I suppose it must have been like waking up while sleepwalking. “Where am I?” I asked.

“What?” asked somebody beside me.

I turned to see a most extraordinary looking person, about my height but with the proportions of a pre-adolescent girl. She had strange features, as if both her parents were racially mixed giving her some recessive traits. Her style of clothing was also strange, perhaps most reminiscent of the colonists on Shinim Shishot. Her signal was that of a pre-pubescent anavah.

“Are you alright Eleprin? I know you haven’t adjusted to those associates but is something else wrong?”

Her words were clearly comprehensible to me but I couldn’t identify the language she was speaking. I tried to analyse my surrounding. “Olives, figs, grapes, dragon fruit, kiwis. These look old. The sun looks like a red dwarf but, what are those blue lights in the sky? What planets ..?” Then I remembered I was in the Vineyard, taking a shortcut to the gates so I could get farther away from the anavim. “That was weird. I’m better now. Not completely better but I know who and where I am. It’s like I was somebody else and I didn’t know what was going on.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know, I think an adult psychic, I knew what korbar you were. The really weird thing was that I didn’t seem to know what planet I was on.”

“That’s very strange,” said Breeze. “I suppose we’d better get you out the Vineyard.”