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By now, the expected population would be approaching the half-million mark, with small cities scattered all over the globe. A triad of Minbari cities on a river delta, here a Drazi city, there a scattering of Vree towns, human settlements in a few places, almost a dozen towns that were mostly Centauri. Nearly every Centauri telepath alive had made plans to visit or settle. They'd all left Centauri Prime within a few days of the first Shadow-Ships arriving. They knew that trouble was brewing. All the species, mixed together, mostly peacefully, each with their own places but trading calmly, a miniature Alliance model.

No translators were needed in the mainlands, with telepathy, and it also provided an indistructable bridge that helped cross cultural rough waters. What one species might consider polite, another might consider a deadly insult. However, teeps could express the intention behind the act, saving fights before they began. Explanations were frequent, and everyone was doing a lot of learning.

Not all telepaths would want to come, however, to a world being deliberately kept low-tech. No electricity, even, outside Port Alexander. But it was both wanted and needed. Wanted because without power, there was no interference to the mindsongs that flowed freely across the planet. Needed, because the dozens of modified-for-shadow-use telepaths who'd been altered to be turned into central cores for shadow cruisers could then live in relative peace. No power sources equalled no program activation to join with 'the machine'.

No recording devices were going to be permitted on the mainlands, no complex machines at all. Any reporters who managed to get permission to visit (closely supervised by at least a P9, and with many areas still off limits) had to be good artists to leave with a visual record, because only paper and canvas were not confiscated.

Work animals, though, were in hot demand. Horses were the most populous species imported, by a wide margin. They were friendly, useful, strong, and gave some of the best fertilizer of any animal brought in. Plus they were easy to keep tame, without fear of going wild and overpopulating. Horses adored telepaths, preferring their company to solitude. Even in herds, horses would search out the nearest person with Psi abilities, even latents. Much to the frustration of lovers who wandered off to get privacy, when some four-legged critter would seek them out and stand next to them most distractingly. But parents loved this fact, it kept their young ones behaving.

Lyta didn't meet any of the colonists. By then, her powers had climbed to the point where she feared hurting the others. When they started to arrive, 3 months after the wandering pair had first set eyes on the world, Lyta had gone off on foot. With only a pair of horses along to carry her papers and inks for company, she traveled to a nearby mountain range that needed a precise map done, and a catalogue of local lifeforms filled. Her 'mindwalking' ability, totally unique, made it easy work. Travel down the main valleys, use her talent to scout out all the side valleys.

Two months and a lot of written/drawn information later, the familiar shape of G'Kar's scout vessel had suddenly cleared the mountains in front of her. She knew there was only one reason the 'no powered ships or machines outside Port Alexander' rule would be relaxed. The Narns had caught wind of the location of their 'Most Holy'. G'Kar had wanted to leave, quickly. He asked her if she was willing to go with him again, and after a sleepless night of thinking over the options, she'd agreed. Pausing just long enough to free her two companions and implant a mental map command into their minds to ensure their safe return to other people, she packed her few belongings into the ship. They landed briefly, on the outer edges of the main city on Port Alexander, just long enough to 'borrow' a pair of horses and strap on the crates of Map information, and a proof-read copy of G'Kar's new book which gave a record of the journey and the building of Teep to date. The final line was to remind others that the journey was far from over, to keep learning and helping as much as they could. Lyta instructed the furred animals how to get to the central survey building, and to wait there until their load was taken inside to be read. Then they could return home. They were branded anyway, so their return to their master was gauranteed. Nobody lied or stole on Teep. There was no point, you'd always get caught!

G'Kar and Lyta had started Teep, finding it, getting permission and sanctuary status. Anyone there, or going directly there, was under Alliance protection and the Psi Corps, or any other controller of telepaths, could not interfere. They'd personally started construction, plans, the surveys. They'd given it enough inertia to follow through, and then the two of them had again left for the stars.

"How many systems are left to clean?"

"According to this console, 19. All minor. Maybe 12, 14 hours. Then we can go. Unless you want to see another sunrise?"

Lyta thought for a few moments. "I would like to check out that magnetic field's lightshow from orbit."

"So. It's a date?"

Lyta laughed. "If your car works, I'll be on my front porch at 6."

"If my what works?"

"Just help clear the systems, G'Kar, just help clear the systems." They worked in quiet contentment for several minutes, the Lyta suddenly stood up. "I'll be back in a little bit. Keep working, I'll be back in just a little bit." Then she disappeared into another part of the ship.

Over half an hour passed before she wandered back, smiling, with dirt on her hands and a dark smudge on one cheek.

"Where'd you go?"

"I buried something." She turned her attention to a console.

"What?" He asked, curious.

"The past, G'Kar." She smiled at him. "The past." She touched her necklace once more, breifly. Thousands of hours of work, in her fingers. Because he thought she was worth it.

She was supposed to meet with Garibaldi very soon. Much sooner than it would take to get to Mars. Her appointment to remove the asimov, begin to destroy the Psi Corps, was once the driving force behind her wanting to keep going. But her anger was gone. The information he'd dug up to help her had alerted so many others to the atrocities the Corps had done. Like why no-one ever saw, or worked with, a telepath over 70-plus years of age. When their talent began to fade as a result of aging, the confused telepath usually turned to the Corps for guidance and help. The Corps cared for you for life . . . but when you weren't a telepath anymore, you were put down. The Psi Cops, immune to this 'retirement', considered it more humane then letting them suffer as mere mundanes.

But when ISN caught news of the sleepers . . . the bloodbath began.

The fact that a family member is a telepath was a source of shame, disgust. Not to be spoken of. If they didn't get sent off to the Corps for whatever reason, the Grey-suited men who came once a week to give injections were a taboo subject: you don't see them, you don't talk about them. The person taking the drugs just faded away while the rest of the world stopped noticing. Some lasted just a few years. The strongest lastest maybe a decade. No one had ever checked to find out, or come forth with the information that the sleeper drugs were not kept constant. They were slowly altered, over the years, into psychotrophs. Severe depressants. Highly illegal ones, in normal conditions.

After one of the new board of directors at Edgars industries buried his youngest daughter, Allisa, 12 years old, vibrantly alive until 3 years before when she went from latent to active telepath to 'Sleeper #7833092', the head of the company realized he'd never heard of anyone who was on sleepers living very long. They either killed themselves, such as Ivanova's mother, or went rogue and were killed, such as some of the charred corpses during his last year on B5. The company did a poll on it's employees. Did they know anyone, ever, who was on sleepers. How long were they on sleepers. Where were they now? If deceased, how?

When they got the results, the researchers looked further.

Not a single person lasted even twelve years after being started on the drugs. Over 80% were clear suicides. Some of the others were accidents, most of which had seemed totally preventable. Some . . . they just didn't know, like the ones that went rogue. The Corps was not willing to list names and numbers of 'dropped blips'.

That's when the families of employees in Edgars Industries who had members taking sleepers were all, every single one, transferred quite abruptly into the Edgars grounds. No trespassers allowed, Grey-suits included. The employees and their families were given re-training into a choice of new professions, and those who wanted to had been moved a.s.a.p. to their new homeworld. Micheal didn't want any more preventable deaths on his hands. Lise had been horrified, giving her full support to builting Teep. She even visited it, at least once, at 6 months after founding. She knew Lyta had saved Micheal's life more than once, which was enough to start the trust fund. But this new information had turned her, and much of humanity, dead set against the Psi Corps.

The ISN feed Lyta had last seen, several months before, showed some of the trials against the Corps. It was beginning to crumble, and the Psi Cops, unwilling to give up their power, were fighting every step of the way. So many deaths . . . Lyta did and didn't want to know what had happened since then.

She'd given her promise to Micheal, however. She had found a way to help him, afterwards she could sever the final tie to her bloodstained past life, continuing without a harness. She had been practicing sending her mind (her soul?) through hyperspace, through jumpgates to planets, scanning people, fiddling with minds through their dreams. REM sleep made it easy to plant, or remove, things in a mundane's mind.

An asimov was a hell of a lot harder to remove than the habit of twitching. And the vast distance weakened the connection considerably. Micheal woke up just once, screaming, after a dream with the terrifyingly familiar image of Lyta Alexander sitting cross-legged on the end of the bed, her hair much longer and let down freely, watching him and Lise sleep with eyes lit like twin suns in the darkened bedroom.

"Will you stop fighting me on this? I'm trying to help!" Her voice had echoed, hollow.

And he woke up, scaring his beloved Lise awake as well. He had a nosebleed, a bad one. He hadn't been sleeping well for several nights, and didn't for several more nights. He never told Lise about the dreams. He just knew, one calm morning, that Bester's days were numbered.

But Lyta . . . Lyta's future was without as many boundaries, without as many regrets. It was filled with hope.

~~~~

(note: I was gonna have more stories here on these two intrepid explorers, but before I could get 'em going, Aubrey came out with his "(The) Adventures of Lyta and G'Kar", and blew my own thread right out of the water. Not that I'm complaining, since it's a *great* story he's got. :) But I moved my plans for the telepath homeworld to a different universe, and will start posting them soon. Stay tuned! - Gok

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