Helix Wars by Eric Brown Page B

our world, New Earth, of the kindness the Phandrans showed Olembe. Now, we have reason to give thanks again.”
    She turned her right hand in a modest gesture. “Thanks are not necessary for actions which, in the circumstances, are the only ones possible.”
    “Even so...”
    She was silent for a while, regarding him. In normal circumstances, if the person watching him had been human, he might have felt uncomfortable. The odd thing was that, in this girl-child’s watchful presence, he felt entirely at ease.
    “You were near death when the yahn-fahrs brought you in. You had eaten gan-fruit, which are poisonous. They saved your life in giving you ker-berries. Without them, you would have died within hours.”
    “They also saved my life when they cut me from the pod-tree.”
    “They are yahn-fahrs. They harvest the yahn-pods every twelve-day. The meat within is considered a delicacy among some of my kind.” She turned her hand again. “Also, the yahn-pod had burned you. But your skin is healing now.”
    He smiled. “Thank you.”
    “You arrived here five days ago –”
    “Five days?” he said. “Five? I thought I’d been here a day, two at the most.”
    “Five days, and our world turns more slowly than your own. So perhaps ten of your days elapsed while you have been in our care. You were unconscious for much of the time, and you were beset by nightmares and hallucinations.”
    “I can’t remember anything,” he admitted.
    “You are mending well, now. You will live.”
    He said, “I am Ellis. Jeff Ellis.”
    She inclined her head. “And I am Calla-vahn-villa,” she said. “You may call me Calla. I am a Healer.”
    “We call people of your profession doctors,” he said.
    Again the calm turn of the right hand. “Healing,” she breathed, “is not my profession. I was born to heal, like my mother and her mother before her. It is a... a calling. It is what I was destined to do. Just as I was destined to minister to your needs.”
    He stared at her. “Destined?”
    “I was told by Diviner Tomar that I was to help you, and by helping you as my people helped Olembe, many generations ago, my actions will bring peace to Phandra and to the Helix.”
    He laughed to himself, then fell silent. Who was he, having benefited from the succour of her people, to call her beliefs superstitious nonsense? He had the urge to question, to gently chide her beliefs. But all he said was, “And how might your helping me bring about that peace, Calla?”
    No facial reaction at all, just the turn of her palm. “ That I am not wise enough, nor privileged enough, to know.”
    She slipped from the stool in one fluid, graceful movement, and drew her robes about her.
    He reached out, his hand falling short. “One minute. Please, don’t go. Can you stay and talk? There is much I would like to know about you and your people, about what is happening to your world.”
    She stared at him; long seconds elapsed. At length she resumed her seat. “You are still ill, and must rest, but I can talk for a little while longer, yes.”
    He nodded, smiled, and considered his words. “My people believe that you, the Phandrans, are able to read the minds of others. This is an ability humans do not posses, and find hard to understand.”
    She considered his words, staring down at her alabaster hands. She looked up, into his eyes. “We cannot read minds, so much as feel emotions, intentions. This I do not think is the same as reading thoughts, exactly. Certain amongst us are able to sense the moods of others, the dominant emotions. From these we can extrapolate intent.”
    He paused, then asked, “And are you able to do this with members of an alien species?”
    Her cobalt eyes fixed him with an unreadable expression. “Your emotions, moods, are there, like fish in a river... observable. However, you are alien, you are formed by influences I have no hope of understanding. So many of your moods and emotions are... are fish unidentifiable to