Free Wild Thing by L. J. Kendall Page B

relative emotional index range.  That would provide excellent connective strength for a new stress source.
    'Uncle!'
    Harmon nodded to himself, tapped the search button, and held the end of the stylus near his lips, still unaware of Sara's presence.  'Perichoresis near concept acquisition.'
    Sara stomped right up to the desk and slapped her hand down onto the slightly-raised dome of the holo projector, interrupting the stylus's communications.  'Uncle!'
    Harmon looked up, startled and annoyed.  Couldn't the girl look after herself for five minutes?   'What is it?' he snapped, moving her hand off the display node and triggering a redraw to refresh it.
    'My last arrow got lost up a tree.'
    'So?  What do you expect me to do about it?'
    'Can't you magic it down?'
    'I'm busy.  You may be surprised to learn that I have more important things to do with my time than telekinese toy arrows out of trees where they were shot by careless little girls!'
    She just stood there.  'But I'm hunting it .'
    'There is no-'  Harmon stopped himself.  'No need to use the arrows.  It is in fact better if you fight it with your bare hands.'  Which would be true, were it a genuine inorganic being or spirit.   After her account of battling what sounded like a spirit in the woods, he had given her a simple “panic button” to use if it happened again.  Indeed, two weeks later she had triggered it.  Quickly leaving his rooms, he had tracked her via a simple Sending and shadowed her at a distance, mindmeld linked. Of course, as expected, there had been nothing – apart from an odd backlash she'd somehow induced at the end.  So convincing had been her charade as she'd stalked the creature, though, so deeply involved in her imaginative play, that for a time he himself had thought he sensed something near her, invisible even on the Imaginal plane.   Impossible, of course.  The Imaginal was the dimension of magic that overlapped the mundane world, perceptible to mages.  The magic itself was what was perceived.  The idea of a magic that was invisible made as little sense as a silent noise.
    Beginning to regret the whole “invisible creature” stressor, he drew his mind back to the present, where Sara looked back at him doubtfully.
    'Play something else for a change.  Now go away, I'm busy.'
    With a sigh, he picked up his interrupted thought and returned to work.  He didn't see her stubborn expression as she stomped out.
    Harmon was studying his revisions with a satisfaction bordering on smugness when the sound of a wailing child broke into his train of thought.  Dammit, what now , he thought?
    The wailing grew louder before fading out.  But less than a minute later there came another knock at the door.  This time, it was the head of his irritating colleague Simmons that appeared in the gap.
    'Your girl's had a bad fall.  Probably broken a leg, that's my guess.'
    Harmon swore and got up, following Simmons into Sara's room where she lay crying on her bed.
    'I hurt my leg!' she wailed.
    'Let me see.'
    His probing fingers provoked a scream of pain.  He stopped, looked at her coldly.  'Try to be a little less cowardly , Sara.  Tears are for weaklings.'
    A light went on in Harmon's mind.  H ow obvious!  Slipping into the Imaginal, he tapped into her pain channel, carefully adding it as another input to the original stress Source he had first constructed back in the orphanage.   Returning his perception to the physical, he spoke to the now-silently shuddering girl.  'This is going to hurt for a moment.  But you must lie still.'
    He turned to his co-worker.  'Simmons, come here.'  Simmons approached, looking a little ill.  'It's a simple break.  I'm going to set it back in position, then I want you to hold it firmly while I heal it.  Remember: hold it firmly.  And Sara: don't move, or it will heal crookedly and you'll be a cripple ,' he said, distaste dripping from the word.  'Are we all ready?'
    The other two nodded,