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Matty turned his head and all his awareness funneled down onto that pink ball of jelly. In an instant he locked onto it, feeling himself pass down its beam like signals across a high-power line. Suddenly he was inside the animal's head, resonating with its primitive instincts of desire, fear, hunger. In a few seconds he held himself there, probing the strange scintillations. But what astounded him was how through the sheer flex of his will he could manipulate those instincts, blow on them, cross them, twist them as he chosemaking Jazzy rise from his squat to munch his pellets, standing him on his hind quarters like a circus-act dog, turning him round and round and round until he had the animal racing in circles, kicking up scraps of paper, pellets and droppings until the floor was littered and the animal flopped over, panting. |
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Matty wasn't sure how he did that or if it could work on all animals. Maybe he was psychic, like those people on Unsolved Mysteries. He couldn't read people's minds, just the urges of animals. The doctors had asked him lots of questionsany strange dreams, hallucinations or odd mental experiences? They asked about his sense of smell, putting him through a mess of tests. He had apparently impressed them, because they remarked on his "extraordinary olfactory sense"how, as they explained it, he had highly developed powers of smell, the ability to "read pheromones" beyond the normal human range. Then there were the vision experiments that got them even more worked up, because he could see things in the dark where other people were blind. About these powers he was upfront, admitting he could find his way through a blackened room even blindfolded or make his way through the woods in the dark. He did not mind that they knew. But about the psychic stuffhis animal telepathygetting into Jazzy's mindhe was mum. He knew it was part of his "condition," that he should have fessed up. But he held firm. This was his special secret, and there was just no way he was going to let that out. No way were they going to kill that. |
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He stretched out on the futon, yawned and opened his mind to the symphony. |
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Creatureslarge and small, winged and furredthey were all around him by the hundreds, quietly letting him finger their awareness. But, odd: he sensed a low-grade edginess in their music, a subtle, cautious treble. Maybe because he had been away. Maybe |
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