The Girl Who Loved Animals and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page A

difference—your gift, your curse, your talent, whatever you would like to call it but you can’t as easily accept the fact that so many others might have the same thing, am I right, Mary—may I call you Mary?” 
    I don’t like the way he says it but I say yes. 
    “We’ve identified three hundred like you, Mary. That’s what I’m saying.” 
    I stare at him. I don’t know whether to believe him. 
    “I’m only sorry, Mary, that you came to our attention so late. Being alone with a gift like yours isn’t easy, I’m sure, and finding a community of those who share it—the same gift, the same curse—is essential if the problems that always accompany it are to be worked out successfully, am I correct?” 
    “Yes.” 
    “We might have lost you, Mary, if Lieutenant Balsam hadn’t found you. He almost didn’t make the trip, for reasons that will be obvious later. If he hadn’t met you, Mary, I’m afraid your hospital would have sent you back to the States for drug abuse if not for what they perceived as an increasingly dysfunctional neurosis. Does this surprise you?” 
    I say it doesn’t. 
    “I didn’t think so. You’re a smart girl, Mary.” 
    The voice is gentle, but it’s not. 
    He waits and I don’t know what he’s waiting for. 
    I say, “Thank you for whatever it was that—” 
    “No need to thank us, Mary. Were that particular drug available back home right now, it wouldn’t seem like such a gift, would it?” 
    He’s right. He’s the kind who’s always right and I don’t like the feeling. 
    “Anyway, thanks,” I say. I’m wondering where Steve is. 
    “You’re probably wondering where Lieutenant Balsam is, Mary.” 
    I don’t bother to nod this time. 
    “He’ll be back in a few days. We have a policy here of not discussing missions—even in the ranks—and as commanding officer I like to set a good example. You can understand, I’m sure.” He smiles again and for the first time I see the crow’s-feet around his eyes, and how straight his teeth are, and how there are little capillaries broken on his cheeks. 
    He looks at the Coke in my hands and smiles. Then he opens the file he has. “If we were doing this the right way, Mary, we would get together in a nice air-conditioned building back in the States and go over all of this together, but we’re not in any position to do that, are we? 
    “I don’t know how much you’ve gathered about your gift, Mary, but people who study such things have their own way of talking. They would call yours a ‘TPC hybrid with traumatic neurosis, dissociative features.’ ” He smiles. “That’s not as bad as it sounds. It’s quite normal. The human psyche always responds to special gifts like yours, and neurosis is simply a mechanism for doing just that. We wouldn’t be human if it didn’t, would we?” 
    “No, we wouldn’t.” 
    He’s smiling at me and I know what he wants me to feel. I feel like a little girl sitting on a chair, being good, listening, and liking it, and that is what he wants. 
    “Those same people, Mary, would call your dreams ‘spontaneous anecdotal material’ and your talent a ‘REM-state precognition or clairvoyance.’ They’re not very helpful words. They’re the words of people who’ve never experienced it themselves. Only you, Mary, know what it really feels like inside. Am I right?” 
    I remember liking how that felt— only you . I needed to feel that, and he knew I needed to. 
    “Not all three hundred are dreamers like you, of course. Some are what those same people would call ‘kinetic phenomena generators.’ Some are ‘tactility-triggered remoters’ or ‘OBE clears.’ Some leave their bodies in a firefight and acquire information that could not be acquired in ordinary ways, which tells us that their talent is indeed authentic. Others see auras when their comrades are about to die, and if they can get those auras to disappear, their friends will live. Others experience