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.Rodelphia had been an incredible sophisticate for that place and time, with any man’s mind wide open for her to see, and she had rocked with laughter, watching the humbling of her enemy, but that same night she and Grandfather had moved again, crawling higher up the white slopes of the cold Sierras, plunging ever deeper into the lonely mysteries of the deep backwoods.After turning twelve, she had never seen another human being in the flesh except for Grandfather until yesterday when she caught the floater.When she was fourteen, seeing the turn of the old man’s thoughts, she had allowed him to seduce her one warm red night when the whole of the sky was ablaze with a thundering fire.Afterward, bawling painfully upon her bared chest, he pleaded to be forgiven, admitting that he wasn’t really her grandfather and couldn’t very well be expected to help himself.“Go ahead and tell me,” she said, knowing it had to come.His tale poured out of him: “Hell, I was only thirty-three when I got away and couldn’t have been your grandfather even if I’d’ve wanted to.I’m not a bit of your blood, my darling.I wish I was closer to you, but when I left the Free City with them yipping ‘Mutie, mutie, mutie!’ at my heels and came sneaking along various cold back roads, I passed this huge white house with gables and turrets and a million lights, green willowy grass out front and trees in the yard like a miniature forest.I thought it could have been a real country mansion and I stopped, almost thinking I saw a cow grazing in the yard, freezing through and through, hungry enough to gnaw at my own hand, and I started listening to see if I might find a receptive welcome.Instead, near knocked this old head off of its supporting shoulders, on account of what I got was kids—these thousands of kids—all blaring back at me in a horrible cacophony and I started to shut off in a dreadful fright when suddenly I realized there was something more to this than simple noise alone.I listened again, as keenly as I knew how; near panicked realizing that it wasn’t only me listening, but there was another in that house who was listening right back at me.I tell you, I shivered, and it wasn’t only for the cold night.And it was you, my dumpling granddaughter.You, who was then eight years old and pretty as a roving butterfly, locked up in that awful home of a prison, declaimed as an orphan of the state.You had the power, and it was so darn strong I couldn’t believe it, stealing around the house that night, moving on the tips of my toes as I watched out for them phony watchdogs, not seeing a one, grabbing you out of that bed, and running with you, just running.I think we were lucky to get away.And I decided, sleeping that night in a ditch, with you laying on top of me so as not to get damp, that I’d tell you how I was your grandfather and we both had the power on account of our blood.But it was never so, my darling.I don’t know why you’ve got it or even why I’ve got it.But we do.”And he continued sobbing, and she held him warmly, their relationship at last upon an equal and mature footing, and she stifled a laugh.Not because she was cruel: the laugh was because everything he had just told her, the words pouring out of him like fire from a dragon’s mouth, she had plucked piecemeal from his mind years before, knowing the whole story long before she turned ten.Grandfather’s powers had always been minimal compared to hers, and he never heard a thought of hers she did not intend for him to hear.But she loved him.Later that night he admitted he had only come to the Free City as a refugee and had lived there less than four years before his exposure.He had, in fact, been born someplace called Nebraska.But she knew this, too, and could never understand why it shamed him so.After that one occasion, he never touched her body again, but when the old man died, Rodelphia gently tore his body apart molecule by molecule and took the component parts lovingly in the grasp of her mind and then heaved them spinning, high, high, tossing them straight toward the blazing disk of the noontime sun.It was a grand funeral.She loved him that much.After spending one more night inside the cabin, she blew it down the following morning and then hopped down the mountain to the nearest floater station.From there, the Free City was less than two hours away.Now her tail end was getting sore from sitting.She began to thirst for action.She was tired of walking and also hungry.This place drove her screwy, the way they kept switching the weather every five minutes.Right now a brisk wind was madly blowing.The children, gathered around her in a loose circle, shouted what she guessed were obscenities, but not a word made any real sense to her.But then, abruptly, a hand snaked around her mouth and another enclosed her jaw
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