Catch the Lightning by Catherine Asaro Read Free Book Online Page B

back then. “What, is it such a big surprise I have a brain?”
    “No,” Althor said. “Many Kyle operators have a high, intelligence, a consequence of the increased concentration of neural structures in their brain.”
    “Kyle what?”
    “You are a Kyle Affector and Effector.”
    “Oh. Yeah. How did I forget?”
    “Tina, I not make this up.”
    I didn’t know how to respond. I thought if I asked questions and it turned out to be an elaborate game, I would look foolish. Or he might be crazy. He didn’t sound crazy, though. He was too outwardly directed, too aware of other people and interested in them. He also had a sense of humor about himself. Nor would that have explained the sockets.
    I spoke carefully. “What did that mean, the ‘upload’ and ‘download’ bit?”
    “You saw that? In English?” When I nodded, he said, “My web must be translating for you.” He rubbed his fingers over the back of my neck. Then he turned over my hand so the inside of my wrist faced the ceiling. “Yet you have no biomech enhancements.”
    “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
    “Gods.” He dropped my wrist. “It’s a crime.”
    “I didn’t do nothing wrong.” I made a frustrated noise. “Anything. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
    “I mean it is a crime you go unnoticed because no one here sees what you are.”
    “I’m no different from anyone else.” Back then, I was afraid that if I admitted otherwise, I would spend my life alone, an emotional freak too sensitive to tolerate human contact.
    “It’s true,” Althor said. “You are a Kyle transmitter and receiver.”
    “A what?”
    He told me that Kyle operators have two microscopic brain organs, the Kyle Afferent Body and Kyle Efferent Body. The KAB and KEB. We also have paras in our cerebral cortex, specialized neural structures that humans without our genetic makeup lack. Unique receptor sites in the paras respond to a neurotransmitter called psiamine, which only Kyle operators produce.
    If you are a Kyle operator, then essentially your KAB picks up electrical signals from the brains of other people and relays the data to your paras. The paras interpret it for your mind. Your KEB increases the strength and density of the signals your own brain sends out. More exactly, the quantum distribution of your brain couples more strongly than normal with the distributions of other people’s brains.
    “Your KAB receives signals,” Althor said. “Your KEB transmits them.”
    “What’s in the signal?” I asked.
    “Whatever is in your mind. Most Kyle operators don’t have the sensitivity to decode data as complicated as human thought. Perhaps simple thought, if it’s intense, and sent by someone nearby. But usually it is just emotion.”
    I hesitated. “Sometimes I see what people feel. Like a mist. Or sparkles. I hear it or smell it. Or taste it. Or feel it, not in my mind but with my skin.”
    “This is strange.”
    “Yeah. And everything you told me was normal.”
    He smiled. “I meant it’s unusual for Kyle organs to interact with sensory input. The neural pathways to your sensory centers must tangle with those to your paras. So the emotional input you upload triggers sensory responses.”
    Just like that, he made a strangeness that had bothered me my entire life understandable. “How can you think you know anything about me?”
    “You know how,” he said. “You feel it too. Why do you resist?” His voice gentled. “You are beautiful, like light. You shine, so lovely and bright and—and I don’t know the words. I am near you and I feel soothed. Healed. I had not known even that I am injured, yet now I am healed.”
    I squeezed his hand. “You’re okay, you know that?”
    “I didn’t do so much for you, though, did I?” He slid his hand between my legs. “I can still help. Just tell me what you like.”
    I couldn’t talk about it. “I’m fine. Really.”
    “You’re so tense.” Althor brought his hand up to cup my