Professor Moore was not a morning person, as previously established, but he had not been able to help himself that morning. Rising before dawn, he brewed himself a neat cup of black coffee and sat outside his office building on the steps, sipping and trying to contain his excitement for the tests that afternoon.

If he was correct in this theory, Triston's diablerie was something special; the privilege of putting her on the MAT machine was almost too great to think about. And he would have help from a trained nurse, and Khymarah was on his side, and he now had the funding to buy a Dream Machine...the world had opened up to him, and things were looking bright.

But as it always did when things were looking up, his mind flashed to something he felt guilty about. Wendy's face appeared in the depths of his vision, her pale face framed by dark hair and her eyes defiant, and that familiar little tug from her not-field just on the edge of his senses. Professor Moore bit his bottom lip. He was still hounded by doubts about her, wondering where she was and if she was even still alive. Although he wasn't sure why, he blamed himself for her running away. If he had only gotten to her sooner, if he had only solved the mystery of the diablerie, perhaps that poor boy wouldn't have died. Perhaps she would still be there.

He was fooling himself, of course. If he had cured the diablerie, if passives had been freed, there was no chance that Wendy would have stayed.

He shook himself, and decided to focus on the here and now. Here and now, he had the help of a surprisingly large group of people - Fred, Triston, Hr. Ixbridge, Devlin, Khymarah, and now the Ambassador from Mugrobi himself. Certainly he felt grateful to all of them. He only wished Devlin had stuck for another week to see him through the test.

At eleven exactly, he arrived at the door to his laboratory, having stuck a sign with directions on his office door. Horation would have to make do with the nurses that day. He had work to do. Donning his lab coat, he gathered his clip-board and waited for his two volunteers to arrive.

Healer Ixbridge was also not a morning person, but, unlike the professor, had not risen early. In fact, she had inadvertently slept in, after knocking her alarm clock off the dresser completely by accident.

The previous night, she stayed up late, studying into the wee hours. She had read all of Moore's brief, took notes, acquired copies of his other papers, and read them as well. By four in the morning, she was thoroughly reassured regarding his motives and procedures, and allowed herself to sleep. And sleep she did.

She awoke this morning to find her clock forlornly laying on the floor, spitefully telling her it was five minutes to eleven. A sudden flurry of clothes and papers erupted in the room, soon imploding about her person in a semblance of presentability. Her door burst open, and she flew down the dormitory stairs, speeding off directly for Parford Wing.

The night of studying had energized her, and she arrived at Laboratory Beta almost chipper. Out of breath and cheeks reddened from the sprint, she exclaimed, "Sorry I'm late, sir!"

She plucked her watch from her pocket, but, in her addled excitement, dropped it. Fortunately, it was on a chain, and remained unhurt. After recovering the timepiece, she opened it to view its sophisticated face. The healer trilled, "Ha! It's only eleven-oh-one!"

With a birdlike delight, she glanced about the room, and quickly seized upon a lab coat. Her glasses slipped as she donned it, and her bun was dangerously close to falling apart. She didn't seem to notice.

Eyes bright with enthusiasm, she asked, "So when do we begin! Right -- we need our subject, don't we! Where's Triston?"

" Here. " Triston said, waving her hand lightly. The passive had been patiently waiting at the door for almost twenty minutes, brought on by her obsessive fear of being late. It wasn't any surprise that either galdori didn't see the small blue form to their right, as it had been very quiet, and might have seemed like a coat hanger to their peripheral vision.

She'd have happily slept in like Abeline, but the passive's body would have none of it, and forced her awake at eight o' clock exactly.

Triston wished her internal body clock were a little more external, so she could smash it.

The passive's presence had surprised Abe so thoroughly that it struck her out of her manic state. An eerie calmness took over her body, overriding any panicky instincts to jump or clobber. This was for the best, as the MAT cave was cluttered with sharp instruments, and the professor probably would've been a bit put out if she'd blasted his test subject into the next century.

"Oh, so you are," she said blandly. How exactly does one greet a volunteer for someone else's experiment?

A strand of hair fell before her eyes, and she looked at it quizzically. The healer reconstructed her bun, fortifying the brownish blob with a few extra hairpins. Before placing the last pin, she waved it in Triston's direction.

"The needles we'll be using are much smaller than this. Less than half a millimeter thick. They won't hurt a bit, and I should know, I've tried it." She glanced at the chair, recanting, "Well, not this, but acupuncture. In general. Elsewhere."

She smiled tranquilly, though she could feel some of her giddiness returning.

Science!

The professor leaned out of the walk-in wardrobe, smiling and waving to Abeline and Triston. He was carrying a large box.

"Good morning, all," he said cheerfully. He was practically bouncing. "What a relief to finally be able to begin again! Triston, how are you feeling about all of this? Are you nervous at all?"

"Good morning, Professor and Triston," she said with a blithe smile. He looks about ready to bounce off the walls. One of us is going to need steady hands, and I suppose that will have to be me.

She exhaled slowly, envisioning a metronome. The steady tick, tick, tick served to lower her heart rate psychosomatically. After a few moments of concentration, she entered the partially meditative state she normally used for healing.

Pushing up her glasses, she calmly said, "This is potentially monumental research, sir. I'm very grateful for the opportunity to be here."

She truly was. While she wasn't entirely convinced that chronic null field syndrome was pathological, per se, she did want to know why it occurred and what biological mechanisms governed it.

Still, if the research was successful, if they could find a way to grant passives the monas' ear... the so-called 'scraps' would effectively be galdori again, and there'd be no excuse for keeping them locked away any longer. What a relief that would be.

Additionally, the breakthrough could be a springboard for further research. Perhaps there was a way to amplify a wick's power... perhaps even a way to bring the mona to humans.

The only way to achieve lasting equality was to abolish the difference in power -- and taking magic from the galdori was an untenable solution. Abe knew well that magic was not the answer for everything, and that humans got along well enough without it, but the mona were useful. Why destroy a perfectly good tool when there was a chance, however slim, you could give it to everyone?

"Good morning, professor and healer ixbridge."



"Oh, I don't think I'm nervous, so much as eager" to get this over with. The passive said with a smile. Seeing Moore so happy made her want to be happy, even if she wasn't really that happy. It was a complicated emotion.



Triston felt a spark of jealousy light up. She wished she had some concept of how important the research was, or how it might affect other peoples lives. However, she couldn't even fathom how it might effect her own life. The feeling of envy died out quickly, but an ember of it lingered.

Professor Moore beamed at Triston.

"I see no reason why we shouldn't begin, then," he said briskly. "Professor Ixbridge, the acupuncture equipment is in that cabinet there. Would you mind sterilizing the needles while I prepare the MAT machine?"

He pointed to a cabinet set into a long wooden desk in the corner; it looked secondhand. Inside, she would find a set of fine solid needles a centimeter in length, each attached to a long, thin zinc wire. There was a small glass bottle of alcohol beside them.

The professor began pulling levers and performing some kind of complex mechanical ritual on the MAT machine, involving banging hard on its side, humming the Ballad of Rosie Rook and whistling into the valve opening of a pneumatic pipe.

"Old girl's a little finicky," he said, explaining his actions. "Triston, could you roll up your sleeves and lie down in the chair please? I promise, you won't feel a thing. The needles are as thin as a strand of hair, and Healer Ixbridge knows where the pressure points are."

I hope, he thought to himself. He reminded himself that he did have a map in case she didn't.

"Basically, this is a Quantitative procedure to test your reaction to low-level monic stimuli," he explained. "The needles are inserted into meridians in your ley lines, and the machine records any field fluctuations caused by the minor forces that I plug into the machine. You might feel a tingling sensation along your spine. It's quite normal." He glanced at the Mat machine, which was making its usual clunking noise. "And, er, don't worry about Matty here. It's nothing but a glorified typewriter."

Triston did as she was told, slightly reasured by the small backround noise provided by the Mat machine.



The passive glanced at "matty" then back to professor Moore. She didn't quite understand what he had said, but reasured herself that this was one of the rare times he knew what he was doing.

"Right. Tingly spine is normal, matty is a typewriter, something about fields and lines." The passive smiled, trying to joke about her own ignorance and failing. It was hard to joke about something that made her so unhappy.

Did he just call me a professor? Coming from him, that's quite the compliment -- even if it was only in error. Seeing as the man was on a roll, the healer decided not to correct him, and instead quietly went to the desk.

There, she did find the needles and the alcohol. A whiff from the bottle proved it to be one-hundred proof. (One of the senior healers at the infirmary, who shall remain unnamed, liked to 'take a little off the top,' in his words, when sterilizing equipment; to avoid getting caught, he replaced the lost fluid with water, thinking no one would notice. In order to assure she sanitized things properly, Abe had to learn to determine alcohol content by smell. She was surprisingly accurate.)

As she dipped the needles in the bottle, she watched the professor go about his merry way. She smiled fondly, thinking, He reminds me of my father. Granted, in a Wilbur Ixbridge look-alike contest, he'd end dead last, losing even to an elderly hen. He's just not old or fat enough, but he would get points for style.

She had to admit, the absent-minded professor was rather endearing, in a familial kind of way. From now on, I shall think of him as a kooky uncle.


Abe smiled at Triston's joke, but she thought she noticed something of the girl's sadness. She could recognize a deficit of knowledge for what it was, and did not think any less of the girl's intelligence. Passives had, after all, limited access to education, something which Abe never approved of. As much as injury was the healer's foe, the willful perpetuation ignorance was her nemesis.

She shot a concerned look at the professor, seeming to say, 'We'll have to do something about that.'

With the needles cleaned, she approached the MAT chair and the girl within. A cotton ball was dabbed in the alcohol, and she hovered it above Triston's wrist, exactly over one of the right points.

"Shall I, Professor?"

The professor, fair-minded as he was, didn't pick up on Triston's emotions; he was deep in his own fascination with the study. He seemed to stare at her left hand for a few seconds, preparing himself to know things about her monic equilibrium that few others would ever know. Few of his test subjects felt the same way about the tests, but he had always felt there was a certain cosmic intimacy that came from reading another's ley lines.

He didn't catch the glance from Healer Ixbridge, either.

"Proceed, Healer Ixbridge," he said presently, and suddenly his face was all business. The MAT machine rumbled like a distant thunderstorm, and he too took comfort and a meditative, introspective calm from the sound. He wanted to be perfect and precise. There could be no error in his casting, and he knew there wouldn't be; he was almost a magister, after all. But he spared a moment to reassure Triston one last time. "If you feel anything besides a very light pinprick, Triston, let me know immediately."

"If I do this right, you shouldn't even feel that," she said, gently rubbing the cotton ball on Triston's wrist. She added, trying to reassure herself as much as the passive, "And I will do this right."

The internal metronome started up again, and her movements fell in with the measured rhythm. Three ticks for the cotton, one tick to get a needle, three ticks to place it, and one to locate the next point makes eight. Three ticks for the cotton...

As she focused on her work, she began humming an obscure, soothing piece for the oboe.

Before long, she finished placing the last needle. Her meditative state dissipated, and she felt a twinge of disappointment. There wasn't much else for her to do.

The healer nodded to the professor, and withdrew to stand next to the MAT. It was a marvelous contraption, and soon she would have a chance to see it in action. Her field pulled in, as though holding its breath with anticipation.

Triston nodded, not wanting to speak incase it brought any fears rushing back. She was glad Moore reassured her again, it made her feel like less of a scientific lab rat, and more like the volunteer she was.



The passive did her best to smile without looking directly at the healer, trying not to jump as she felt the cotton ball on her skin. She forced her mind to follow the tune Abeline was humming, not allowing herself to look at where the needles were going.

As the last pin was placed, Triston looked. The passive was amazed at sheer number of them, but even more amazed at the lack of pain. She was sure that even the smallest of needles should have caused at least a little discomfort, but it hardly felt like there were any there.

Professor Moore gave her a brief encouraging smile before taking the long thin wires attached to the end of each needle and bunching them into a strange, cylindrical device, which he then plugged into a hole in the side of the MAT machine. The wires were covered with a metallic sphere labeled INPUT.

"Now, the forces I'm using here are quite weak," he explained to both Abe and Triston. "They'll pass through Triston's ley lines, where her natural monic frequency will amplify them. Then they'll output into the machine, which will record the vibrations and frequency. This measures the strength of...well, it's what I call a non-field. I discovered it last year. It's a nearly intangible frequency that passives have, similar to our fields, but susceptible to very mysterious forces. It's my leading theory at the moment that these non-fields are somehow protective barriers, and that diableries only manifest themselves when the non-field is thrown out of its equilibrium."

He paused, realizing that it was quite likely that neither of them understood what he had just said. "If either of you can come up with a better name than non-field," he added, "please let me know. It sounds awful. I'm going to start casting now."

Assuming Healer Ixbridge and Triston knew not to interrupt a galdor when he was casting a spell, Professor Moore began to cast silently, keeping one hand on the input sphere. He didn't even have to think to remember the sequence: electrical pulse, then radio wave pulse, then lightless light, then dark, then a dozen other obscure forces. The MAT machine hummed pleasantly, its shutters and pumps working full time as it began to record the results. A needle somewhere in the bowels of the machine scratched back and forth, and Abeline and Triston could see a thin length of paper beginning to crawl out of the printing tray.

For Triston, the feeling was indescribable. It was neither painful or uncomfortable, but she could feel the forces at work within her own body, feeding power into her ley lines. The feeling was similar to flying in a dream; she knew it could not really be happening, but it was exhilarating and it felt incredibly real. She felt as though she had a field, or at least what she assumed having a field would be like. The mona hummed around her, and she imagined she could sense them like a galdor would have. A light tingling feeling rushed up her spine, like Professor Moore had said it would, but it was nearly unnoticeable.

While admiring the MAT, Abe listened to the professor's disclosure, already familiar with most of it. She had read the brief, after all. The barrier theory was new, though, and that caused her to look up.

Moore had the sad little look of a teacher who'd asked a question to which no one raised their hand. She was sorely tempted to provide a long, astute-sounding, and entirely apt phrase for the non-field, just to help the man out.. and possibly to impress him. As much as she admired the MAT, she admired its creator more, and she did so love to sound smart to professors. They taught you more when you did.

That same genius which she admired, unfortunately, would make impressing him a challenging, uphill climb. It might be too much work for a self-serving end, and she suspected she'd feel guilty about it.

Presently, he began casting, making the internal conflict moot.

The healer discarded her ego-centric worries in favor of Triston-related worries, whom she then thought of as her patient rather than the professor's volunteer. She watched with intense interest, wondering what the girl was experiencing with a shudder of sympathy. Fluctuating behind her clinical feelings, however, a hint of baffled envy stalked her good intentions. She tried to ignore it, glancing down that the coiling paper serpent of cryptic results. She couldn't read it.

Triston lay speachless, somehow afraid and ecstatic at the same time.
Feeling like she had a field, like she was a galdor, it was so strange...So incredible. It was as if Triston was surrounded by warm water, or air, almost like her blood had been replaced with it. Frantically, the passive's mind searched for a way to properly describe what she felt, but couldn't. There was nothing it could hold a candle to, nothing in estuan that could explain it for her. Triston mused that, perhaps in other languages, a proper description could be found.

She saw the strip of paper coming out, and Abeline looking at it. She wondered if Abe could read it, if she would know things about her that even Triston herself didn't know. It only then occurred to her that Harper would learn the same things, and she felt glad she hadn't realised that sooner, or she might have backed out out of embarrassment.

Professor Moore kept casting, however, not even taking his eyes from his hand as he cast a carefully measured succession of forces into Triston's body. The entire spell took only a few minutes; he didn't want to overdo it on her first day. When it was over, he slumped into a chair beside the MAT machine, utterly exhausted from the effort. He always felt drained after that.

"The results are coming in," he said, panting a little. "We have to let the forces finish flowing out through the body. It should only be a few moments more, Triston, then we can take the pins out. How are you feeling? It's all right to speak."

Triston, realising Harper had finished, breath out a tiny sigh. "Its very, very odd." She said, smiling anyway. "Is that what a field feels like?" Triston asked, still looking quizically at the long, thin paper. She wondered what it said about her.

((SFSR))

Abe produced a glass of water, though how and from where was not quite clear. As she wordlessly held the glass before Harper, her eyes were on Triston.

She seems to be alert and unharmed. No signs of confusion or disorientation...


"I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage there, as I don't know what the MAT feels like. But you bring up a good point." She looked down at the exhausted man before her, not quite wanting to disturb his recuperation. The words came out anyway, against her will.

"Professor, have any galdori been on that thing yet? It's important to have a baseline; an experiment without a control is an exercise in futility."

Clocks, why did I say that? Of course he'd know to have a control, I'm practically paraphrasing his lectures! Her head turned away sharply, and she blushed furiously at a wall.

"Yes," replied Harper to Abeline. Despite his near-constant distraction, he had begun to recognize how suspicious she was of him and the project, and though he was quite used to it by now, he still felt a twinge of resentment. "Myself, and Professor Devlin have both been in the chair. I'm using Devlin for the project control, since he has a high field stability factor." He glanced at Triston, who seemed somewhat hopeful that she had just experienced a field.

"It's not quite the same," he answered her. "I can't explain properly what field feel like, but the effects of the machine are more like what it feels like to cast a spell, minus the adrenaline rush and the internal side effects. The rush is called a monic transfer. It's the feeling of being able to sense the mona's presence and their will in close proximity."

As he spoke, the printing device ceased to hum, and the machine made a heavy sighing noise. Hefting himself up from the chair, Professor Moore tilted his head to the side and tapped his temple as if he was trying to dislodge water from his ear. He crossed over to the MAT machine and began lifting the delicate paper from the print-off.

"Ms. Ixbridge, would you mind taking out the pins now? Here..."

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of wax paper, out of which he pulled a sort of metallic cloth pad.

"This should negate any residual energy over the insertion points," he said, handing it to her. "If you could just run it over the pressure points once the needles are out..."

Not bothering to finish the sentence, he suddenly did a double take and stared intently at the printout. Something had caught his eye.

"Good grief," he said in a shocked voice, sitting back down. A cloud of dust rose from behind the chair. His eyes were wide, and he seemed to be momentarily struck dumb by whatever the results were telling him.

Her shoulders sagged, and she rubbed her sinuses. "Devlin. I knew that. I must have read that part of the brief between my second and third pot of tea last night..." The fragmentary nature of her sleep schedule was suddenly catching up with her, and it showed.


"Of course," she sighed, drained of enthusiasm. Even her calm had been smothered by a haggard woolly blanket.


Had Abe been more awake, this would have received a more emotive response. As it was, it only got a series of groggy blinks.

"Sir...?"

"Oh..." She said, face falling momentarily. It lit back up when she realised the needles were coming out soon, and that she'd be able to cover up the hideous tattoo on her arm again. Only part of it peaked out through the rolled up fabric of her sleeves, but Triston still felt exposed.



Shock registered on her face as Harper once again fell into the chair, looking rather manic. "Whats wrong?" Triston asked fearfully, her mind automatically jumping to the conclusion that something had gone badly. Maybe ink got spilled on the paper, or the MAT was broken, or she had broken it.

Professor Moore flattened the printed sheet out on the lab table, ripping the perforated end out of the MAT machine. He bent over to study it, steadying his glasses on the tip of his nose. His mouth was agape.

"I...whoa," he said, leaning back after a few moments and patting down the front of his lab coat, presumably looking for something to drink or smoke. Instead he pulled out a quill pen, leaned back down and began scribbling at lightning speed.

"Triston..."

He stopped. There was a leaden weight in his stomach. He remembered the way she had been so evasive the first time he asked her about his diablerie; at the time he had thought she was ashamed, deeply ashamed of what had happened, but it had occurred to him later that she simply didn't know that she had killed her mother and the baby. But the strength of it, the sheer power that she possessed...how could he tell her now? It would probably break her heart.

He could recall the first time he'd read her file, over two years ago. It seemed like an eternity had passed since then, but he recalled the horrifying details as though it was yesterday.

"You are..." He struggled for a way to say this. "This is the strongest reading I've ever gotten." He swallowed, still not looking over at her for fear that she'd see his expression, trying to sound calm. "It's...about seven times as strong as the readings I've taken from my other volunteers. This accounts for the...the odd resonance in your non-field. It explains why I can sense yours, but not others."

There was no doubt about it - they were directly connected. Which meant...

"Oh dear," he said quietly to himself.

Triston's expression changed from mild shock into something akin to pure horror. It was all she could do to keep from ripping the needles out and running over to look at the paper herself. She may even have done it if she weren't sure it would be a futile effort.

The passive was glad she couldn't do much with her arms as they were, because she wouldn't know what to do. They'd have been everywhere, clenched and unclenched, mixed between trying to cover the tattoo she hated so much, and desperately scratching it, willing it to come off.

What did all that power imply, what did it mean? Did it make her even more dangerous? Was that even possible?

Triston looked at Harper for a long time, as if wishing he would realise he'd made some mistake, or that the MAT machine really had broken.

She didn't speak.

She wouldn't speak.

...She couldn't speak.

She just lay there, looking like some small, frightened animal.

A mouse, that wanted to be an osta, and was just told it was a hatcher.

"... oh dear?" Abe quietly echoed the professor. She didn't like the sound of that. It could mean anything.

Anxiety finally broke through her momentary languor, and she stepped to Triston's side. She raised a hand to place it on the girl's shoulder, but halted before contact. Abe wondered if the passive may have been too tense to accept comfort... though she looked like she needed it. Her hand closed in a pleading gesture, and she looked from Triston to Moore and back again.

The healer spoke softly, not sure it was right to break the silence. "Are you ready for me to take those out now?"