Psychisylph
That was about when we had a very different guest on the show.
A plane went down somewhere in the mountains to the north of our Valley.
A governor’s kid was one of the passengers, so there was quite a lot of effort put into trying to find the plane. In the end, they brought in a psychic. The exciting part was that the psychic was a sylph.
The young woman had apparently not had psychic powers until the day she shrank. She now belonged to a police officer in a southern state, where she helped solve crimes and missing person cases.
They flew her and her owner into Pocatello, and she was pointing in a direction before they even landed.
I have no idea how Mark managed to get the deputy on his show, and Number Three on Electra’s, but he did.
We sat quietly in Mark’s studio as he sat Deputy Markham next to him, with a rugged sylph carrier on the coffee table between them. They talked about how he came to own Number Three, how his department came to trust her visions, and how the department referred to her as their Search And Rescue Authority, or SARA.
When that was over, he carried his sylph over to our studio and placed Number Three carefully on the couch. Electra sat at the far end.
“Hi.”
“Hello.”
“Okay, first of all, which do you prefer? Number Three or Sara?”
“I’ve been Number Three for a long time,” the guest said with a smile. “It’s what Markham calls me. Sara, that’s mostly just the other officers. But they’re really proud of it.”
“Okay, Number 3,” Electra nodded. “Second, I usually welcome people to the show with a hug. But sometimes touch sparks visions for you, so I don’t want to force you into anything.”
“I like hugs,” #3 said. She started to lift her arms. Electra started to stand up. “Wait.” Electra froze, half-crouched. “Have you ever been murdered?”
“Noooo,” my pet said slowly. “I don’t think so.”
“That’s okay, then.” They stood and embraced. #3 flinched backwards looking shocked. “You had a boy read Wuthering Heights to you!? WOW!” Then she looked straight into the camera lens. Straight at me. “AND Clan of the Cave Bear!? I can’t get Markham to take me to Terms Of Endearment!”
They laughed and sat back down. Deputy Markham stood beside me, watching the monitor. He gave a snort of amusement.
“So, #3. What’s that about?” Electra asked.
“On the Day, I was in the hotel room of a fake psychic, trying to contact my dead sister. I sylphed, he touched me, and I… I found my gifts.”
“You saw he was a con man?”
“I saw that he was a felon. Anyway, he used my powers to solve violent crimes, for hefty fees. He wanted a name that minimized my role in the process.
“Number One sounded too obviously like he’d just started. Number Two sounded like we were still experimental.
“Anything higher than Number Four would make people wonder why they’d never heard of us before. He settled on Number Three. Usefully past the prototype stage.”
“That’s awful!” Electra said.
“Sure is,” #3 agreed. “Five is my lucky number.” Electra figured out that it was a joke even before I did and laughed accordingly.
“What was your real name, on The Day?” she asked. I heard Markham breathe in sharply. Was this sensitive information?
“That’s off limits,” #3 said easily. Electra shrugged.
“So, what’s it like for you, being spooky?”
“It’s a lot like being a sylph,” #3 said. “People don’t want to touch sylphs because we’re weird and might be contagious. They don’t want to touch me because I’m weird, and they have no control over what secrets I might reveal.”
“Do you?”
“Reveal secrets? Not usually. Although sometimes the officers come up with party games that involve me peeking into someone’s head and revealing a truth and a lie and they have to guess.”
“No, no, I meant, do you have control?”
“No,” #3 said sadly. “Like, the plane crash? They gave me the kid’s toothbrush. When we flew in, I knew EXACTLY where his shaving kit was, in the wreckage. The survivors were another mile or two away from there, but the rescue team drove past them on the way to the site I triangulated.”
“Weird…”
“Yeah…”
“So, they really trusted your vision?”
A shrug from #3. “They were desperate. I think the marshal was looking forward to grousing about the expense when I proved to be wrong.” She smiled. “Whoops.”
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Index
53. The Emergency
55. Rip-Off On The Field!