15 MIND-LINK

On the watchtower, Leo and Ivan carried their own conversation. Leo, with his particular purring quality fascinated Ivan. When he was a child, he had a favourite cat "Niki" and he could have sworn the cat could read his mind. The conversation with Leo reminded Ivan of his cat. Whenever a topic came to mind he thought about, Leo breached the subject before he could articulate it.

Curious about Leo's fragmented memories about the time in the ocean and what happened then, Leo began talking about it before Ivan asked him to tell him more about his ordeal of thirty-two hours. With his peculiar way of words and how he used them, Leo conveyed what little he could recall of his fantastic rescue as if he knew what Ivan wanted to know.

The early childhood experiences Ivan had with his cat "Niki" were the times when he came home from camps the Red Brigade had sent him to and his cat appeared at his home just minutes after he had stepped over the threshold. His parents had not seen the cat for weeks, but when Ivan came home, the cat showed up just minutes after his arrival.

Ivan's upbringing was anything but easy and his parents were not wealthy. He had left home when he was thirteen, became friends with an old Korean Hwa-rang-Do master and practiced with him this particular art while he worked in an ammunition factory, and learned more about fighting, guns, and bullets than the average seasoned soldier. When he was seventeen, he joined the army and rose quickly to the rank of Polkovnik (colonel), loved the martial arts, and started instructing Hwa-rang-Do at the age of twenty.

When the war started with Afghanistan he had a reputation of being the best combat instructor the military had. The Bureau sent him to Kabul to train government forces and he soon found himself involved with drug smuggling conducted by the government and wanted to get his own little deal going. It went very well and he made a lot of money.

The commanding officers thought he was too successful, did not like competition and tried to eliminate his little business and sent two men after him. Only two pairs of ears returned to the CO's.

Ivan managed to get the better of the guys, and sent their ears with a note to his superiors as hearing aids so they would be able to hear his message loud and clear. The message: "I quit. Spare your men," was hard to misunderstand.

He escaped thru Pakistan to India and then to Canada and was accepted as a political refugee in exchange for some delicate information.

Because he had seen the suffering that conflicts caused on civilians, he turned fifty percent of the money he had made through his drug dealings into good use, and a lot of war orphans and relief organizations wondered whom the anonymous donor could be.

Money was not a problem; he still had a lot to himself and did not lack funds when he needed it. Just the monthly interest the bank paid on his money amounted to over nine thousand Dollars per month, but nobody would guess it. Channelling a third of that toward Education in private schools that taught solutions towards peace and equality in their curriculum, he still had a pretty easy life and yet lived frugally. His visible account had grown considerably over the past twenty years because of his simple lifestyle. The money he sent to his parents was enough to allow them to live a good life in Kazan. His wife and his son dead many years ago, he remained single. When he moved to the West Coast and was free from governmental interest groups, he settled on the Sunshine Coast and lived a quiet life, fishing, and hunting. He had one rifle, a Remington bolt action .270, a Glock 17 handgun, and a compound bow with a 75-pound pull. He was deadly with all three. Regularly he went into the backcountry and into the mountains and came back with enough venison that supplied him with meat until the next hunting season.

He never talked with anybody about his life and now with Leo at his side, he felt like a mentor to this strange kid. Leo was five; going to be six in two months, but he was as high in his size as a cougar, and when he stood up, he was as tall as his mother, and he still grew. During their short time together in Canada, he displayed the maturity of a human of at least twenty and that intrigued Ivan to no end. He saw a huge potential in Leo and loved him.

Although his parents were humans, Leo could be a being from another planet, he thought, and an idea took shape in his mind. Humans could see him as an ambassador. All that he needed was a space suit and a ray gun and people would be more accepting of him. He looked at Leo from the side and Leo looked back at him. The stars, very bright with the absence of other light sources, gave enough light to make out facial features and the sky glowed with the Milky Way.

"Leo, when this is over, I would like to try something so people will be more accepting of you. Are you interested in hearing what I have to say?" Leo blinked slowly; which Ivan had learned to see as a nod in humans.

"They are not as bad as they seem, but live in fear of anything they don't understand, and from this fear, they act like idiots. I know how smart you are and I wish I'd known you from the very first of your life. It could have saved everybody a lot of headaches, misunderstanding, and disappointments.”

“Your mother is a great woman, I'm sure you know that, and so is your dad. They will do anything to protect you, but they were confused when they saw you changing into who you are today.”

“Possibly I would have been the same if I were in their position. For an outsider, it's easier to accept your appearance because they don't know that your parents are humans, but your parents didn't expect you to turn out the way you did. As you are aware of your facade, you‘re not having exactly the looks of a human child…" at that, Leo lifted his head and yawned and Ivan laughed. That obviously wasn't news to Leo.

"What we are doing here is protecting you from people's own fear and also from acting out against you because of their ignorance. People need time, as your parents did, to get used to your exterior."

He paused for a few seconds to see if Leo was interested in hearing what he wanted to say. As always, Leo listened silently, only the position of his ears and the occasional slow blink of his alert and intelligent eyes indicated his full attention.

"We want to give you all that we know, so people will see who you really are and not what their ignorance tells them. For that, we have made this plan and we will be here for as long as it takes for you to face humans and for them to be ready for you. If the idea in my head works the way it should, we will succeed, if not, you will be able to take care of almost anything with our full support. Do I make any sense to you?"

Leo blinked slowly in addition to a nod of his head and Ivan kept talking.

During this long talk, Leo listened intently and watched Ivan. He felt the sincerity of Ivan and understood what he wanted of him. Nobody knew anything about the close encounter he's had with humans while he was out hunting last fall. He couldn't tell Helena because he couldn't talk enough to be understood and if he could talk, she wouldn't allow him to leave the house if she knew what had transpired. Gábor worked during the week, and every other day he came home late and was less inclined to listen than his mother. In addition, he was less sensitive than his mother in perceiving Leo's attempts to communicate, although he spent time with him in the woods often.

Nevertheless, he tried communicating with Gábor, but it was useless. He had witnessed his parents ‘dark times' and felt helpless. He understood their dilemma like a human would, but his nature was heavy on observing and letting them work out their problem on their own. He didn't take on a guilt complex but wished they would get over his appearance. He knew who he was and was aware of his condition since he was two years old.

During the times of his father's fitness program at home and on the bush path, he ran with him and kept up with him easily, but he had the advantage of being on all four limbs. Gábor was glum on those occasions, withdrawn and Leo's attempts to interact with him stopped. Often Helena walked with them and he attempted to have a conversation together with both of his parents the way he knew how, but without success. They were deaf or insensitive to his images he projected to them.

Conscious self-awareness came to him at the time his transformation began and he noticed his appearance changing, while neither his parents nor other people underwent the changes as he did. He understood that somehow he was different. However, Leo didn’t feel strange about himself. First, he thought this was the way of all humans until he found out that "normal" humans remained hairless and without a tail and had hairless faces. Realizing that to them he must look alien and strange, he allowed his parents to shave his face and hide him away from strangers, which was everybody, but he had not felt anger or hatred towards them. To him they just were just different. Other children only grew taller, but basically remained the same, he noticed.

That didn’t bother him, but his father's confusion did. He didn't talk to him, was reluctant to touch him and whenever Leo approached him, he began to do something. All conscious living beings need affection but Gábor moved away from him when he came close as if he carried some contagious disease.

Leo was as confused as his father because he felt his affection as well as his repulsion. Leo's father was a bundle of contradicting emotions and strange as it was, his father loved cats. He petted the two house cats and they often curled up on his lap, but with Leo, he was distant, yet deep down Leo felt loved by him.

Leo tried communicating, however, Gábor appeared immune to Leo's transmissions, but Leo's mother seemed more perceptive. Still, there was no communication other than a one-sided sensing Helena's intent and emotions and to a lesser degree that of his father. Leo read them, but they didn't read him. He had tried to use words, learning from the TV, but that proved to be a fiasco. His parents seemed not to use the same words the TV did and his sounds were not the same as on the TV. He needed someone to learn from.

Leo had no idea that his parents spoke their native language among themselves. How could he tell them, they only needed to think of him and he would understand? His own problem was that nobody taught him to use words. He listened to them and their conversation, watching their aura and without knowing, he understood their spoken native language, but he couldn't reply. The words were too hard to form the way his mouth and tongue were and without guidance and practice the words failed to sound as he intended them to sound. Knowing nothing about other languages he found out about them when Ivan came to the house and met with him. Leo learned a language called "English" without being able to know the difference in languages. ‘Reading' people's mind was not about language, but intentions and ideas put into words.

Initially, it made his task of learning to speak confusing, but then he picked it up rapidly with the help of his ability to ‘read' people around him. Ivan was the first person to teach him seriously to read, write, and articulate words and Leo began to connect the intentions of what a person thought with the corresponding sounds they made. He associated the sounds with thoughts and so his communication with his parents and Ivan started. Helena spoke to him before and he felt her genuine love and confusion about him and his strangeness and he had wondered what was strange about him.

He thought nothing strange of his looks, but apparently, his parents did. His father was hairy to some extent and loved him in his own way, he felt it, but he carried a feeling of shame and guilt within because of the way Leo looked. Why? His emotions were a jumble of love, and a desire for Helena, but his emotions toward him were confused. Only in the past few days, Leo felt the changes in Gábor towards him. He seemed to be more accepting and treat him in a kind manner, which he liked. Gábor talked to him more and seemed to listen. Leo thought independently and was intelligent, but his father had only in the last few days paid attention to him and opened up. Now he seemed to see him as he was.

A few days ago, there was a switch thrown, he listened more, not with his ears, but with his mind, and his mind became easier to follow. It was not easy to connect with him because Leo could not speak well and Gábor did not know how to listen or direct his mind outward, no communication happened.

Leo didn't know how to change that and now here was Ivan with whom he could hopefully interact. Ivan wanted to communicate and listen; he was open to listen to Leo's side of life.

"I know your nind," Leo vocalized with his deep, growling voice.

"Yes. That's good. So are you willing to learn from me then?"

Leo ignored Ivan's question. "Dink at nee."

"What do you mean? Think about you, you mean?"

"No. Direct dinking to nee."

"I don't understand."

"Close de eyes. See ny face. It will help. Focus, dink strong what you want to say." Ivan had no idea what Leo wanted, but he closed his eyes and made an effort to imagine Leo's face and for a few seconds, he couldn't think of anything because he had no idea what thought to formulate. Why did Leo want him to think about him?

It was dark around them, but Leo's face, visible in the weak light from the stars, was right in front of him and he wondered what time it was.

 "It's now, Ivan." Ivan had the clear impression he heard Leo in his head, but with a clear voice. Leo looked at him and his eyes shone in the night like green LED lights but his mouth-like muzzle didn’t move.

"What?"

"It's now Ivan. The time you wonder about. It's now."

The thought was as clear in Ivan's head as if Leo had spoken to him without moving his mouth or the characteristic rumbling sound when Leo talked. It was more like a strong thought in Ivan's mind. Ivan shook his head.

"What's this?! Are you reading my mind?"

"Yes, and projecting mine to you."

“Holy shit," he exclaimed vocally, suddenly excited.

"Not even close. I think you would call it mind talk, telepathy." Leo still looked at him without moving his mouth. There were no substituted or missing consonants as when he used his vocal chords.

"Let's try this again," Ivan said with voice, a bit shaken. If this was real...

"Okay. Ready?"

"Go." Excitement flooded him. This made a world of a difference.

Leo looked at Ivan as if he was in some contemplative state and began to transmit. His facial expression remained the same.

"I wanted to talk to you about your cat ‘Niki" you had in your country when you were young. Cats can link into minds."

"Wow. You're not kidding me, are you? Do Helena and Gábor know you can do this?" he focused his thoughts. He noticed how Leo's mind talk was clear, not as it was when he vocalized, no clipped sentences, growling, nor purring.

"I have tried, and I am new at this too, communicating, I mean. I could ‘read' them most of my life, but I did not get through to them. I thought a lot about it and tried hard, but their thinking does not include the possibility that I might have enough intelligence to communicate with them and can't imagine telepathy as an option to communicate. I noticed in you more willingness to converse with me. You're more open to the possibility.”

“Helena sometimes had been close to ‘hearing' me. I want to talk with them and make them aware of it and then I think they could be very good, especially Helena. They need to learn mind projection if they want to talk to me. I don't think my vocal cords are made for spoken words, your talking is hard for me to imitate, and my vocabulary is very limited. Words are very cumbersome. Ears are for listening to sounds, minds are for communicating clearly and the mouth to put food into it. Humans need to learn to listen with their hearts."

 "You are very wise for your age, Leo. Since when can you do this mind-stuff?"

"I always did ‘hear'. People don't really listen. You are deaf, but talk a lot."

Again Leo demonstrated his mature thinking and Ivan laughed.

"Yeah, Now I see what you mean. I understand everything you said and it seems even concepts are more precise."

"There can be no misunderstanding."

"Can I keep my privacy and stop you from reading my mind if I don't want you to pick up what I think?"

"Just direct your thoughts away from me and I can't ‘read' you any longer."

"What if you wanted to?"

"I would only get a vague image, like a dense fog. And by the way; if you tune down the intensity of your thoughts by relaxing and focusing on what you want to ‘think', I still can ‘read' you and you don't come across ‘yelling' at me."

Ivan just looked at Leo and thought himself very privileged. For the first time in his life, he had a telepathic conversation with someone and the experience was phenomenal. It was clear as a bell, all he needed to do was to direct his mind and imagine Leo, and the link was there and remained stable as long as he focused his attention on Leo. He wanted to test it. Averting his attention from Leo, he looked at a tree; ‘A coconut tree is as dangerous as the stupid sleeping under it,' he thought, but there was no sign of Leo ‘listening' but this was not conclusive, so he looked out to sea and thought: ‘There is a boat coming.'

This would galvanize Leo into action, but there was none. He did it again. Focusing his mind on Leo, imagining talking to him, he projected the image of a boat on the water coming towards the shore.

"There is a boat coming."

Leo's head turned and he looked out to sea.

"Where?"

Ivan laughed out loud with glee. This was too incredible and marvellous.

"Sorry comrade, it was a test. I'm practicing. No boat, don't worry."

"You learn quickly, Ivan." Leo was happy to have this break-through in telepathy. It opened up possibilities. A nagging point that had pestered him for a long time came unbidden to him, but with Ivan communicating telepathically he felt it was okay to bring it up.

"I want to tell you about an encounter that I've never told anybody. Don't tell my parents until I do, okay? Lena would never let me leave the house ever again. She worries too much about me and thinks I'm a child."

"Well, you are. You’re only six, Leo."

"I'm mature as it is. Just don't tell them what I'm about to tell you, okay?"

"No problem." Ivan wondered how mature Leo felt he was and from where he derived his self-evaluation. The mind-link experience with Leo changed his view about him dramatically from being a child to a young adult, but just how mature Leo was, remained to be seen.

"I tell you this because you might wonder where I got the experience about others from and because I need to understand why me being different makes others want to hurt me. It is important to me, so this is the story. I hope you can help me to understand." Ivan opened his mind and became receptive to Leo's account on past events.

"On my way back home from a hunt, I saw two men hunting with rifles about half way from your house to ours. The men saw me because I just crossed the road and one of them raised his gun, shot at me, and would have hit me if I hadn't moved. Then he must have seen me better and I felt him becoming agitated. Then he fired again, but missed.

“I heard the other shouting 'Get him!' and seeing him raising his gun, I dropped and he hit the tree behind me. I took off. When he fired again, I was in the woods. The other man fired many times and it was close, but nothing hit me. I lost Gábor's parka and I saw the man pick it up when I looped around to get it. They talked and tossed the jacket in the pick-up and sat inside the cab, putting something smoking in their mouths, passing it fore and back between them. I went to the truck and took the parka but they must have seen me, jumped out, and started shooting at me as I ran into the bush. But again, they never hit me but I was scared of being near a road since then. For sure they must have had the idea that I was more than what they thought when I went for the jacket. Tell me, why did they want to kill me? I have an idea but want to be sure."

To Ivan's astonishment, the conversation with Leo was flawless, crystal-clear and carried far more information than verbal conversations ever could. He felt every nuance of emotion; he saw the scene that Leo described as vividly as it happened in his own head. Even the queries in Leo were coming through clearly.

During the story Ivan saw the area clearly, the pick-up and the two men, he knew them, Donny and Ricky, two useless dope addicts from Gibson's; trouble makers like the books talk about. The file the RCMP had of them was more of a catalogue than a file and Ivan vowed to have a word with them when he got back to his house. Twice those two came to his home to steal; his car first, and the ski-doo the second time, and both times they got off on technicalities. This time, when he finished with them, they would not be able to use a rifle again without considerable effort. The hands of the law were tied, not his. Ivan became aware that Leo ‘heard' him thinking.

"How can I answer your questions as clearly to you as you are conveying yours to me, Leo? I want to be able to give you my thoughts on this matter without any misunderstandings. Now that I see much better who and what you really are, we can have a real informative education going. This mind-link is the ideal way to communicate, but some things I want to keep for myself."

"You did it just a minute ago. Just relax and turn your attention away from me and I will not ‘hear' you. As long as you're holding your mind steady on me, I will see and perceive all that is going on in you," Leo reminded him.

"Okay then, let's give it a whirl. You were lucky to get away from those two. I had some run-ins with them as well, and they are the kind that makes all humans look bad. There are many others that aren't like them, most people are just misguided or don't know any better. In any case, until it changes, we have to be wise and stay away from them and not become like them. It is too easy to retaliate likewise and that will only perpetuate the situation. The wiser path is to cultivate compassion in us and become role models for them. We may positively affect some people in that way, and that might change their behaviour, but if it doesn't work, then drastic means are justified. However, don't be carried away with punitive actions or allow yourself any culmination in unjustified reaction. We are responsible for our actions and the resulting consequences. If we inflict injury, we must aid in the full recovery of the adversary. In my view, violence is the last resort and rarely solves the problem. I know from experience. On occasions, something more than modeling is necessary, like a strong action or even a violent one, and in some rare cases, one has to speak their language or they will not understand. Once you have delivered the message, actions have to follow that are harmonious with the message. Am I explaining it well enough? Can you follow my ideas?"

"I can see very clearly what you mean, yes, and what about the man who tried to hurt me on that ship? Is he a bad man?"

"I don't know Leo. Misinformed about what form of life is intelligent, maybe. He could have thought you were a Stowaway. Perhaps he thought you got aboard somehow and he wanted to see what the Captain had to say. Then he saw your face and that must have scared him. Your appearance is that of a predator, you know that. Many people would perceive you being dangerous but you resembled a human standing upright.  You would have had a very hard time convincing them otherwise, not to mention the problems your parents would have had, had he found out who and what you are. Misinformation and ignorance are a dangerous mix, Leo. That is why we try to shelter you until we can deal with it."

"You are a good man, Ivan. Why not others?"

"I don't know what a good person is, Leo, but I can tell you, I did not always think like this. I learned from my mistakes and live a different life now. I was not always like this. Before I started meditating and read some books on philosophical issues, mainly Eastern ones like Tao, Zen, and others, I did things I'm not proud of. Many of those books were helpful, but in the end, you will have to find your own truth. You can't find truth in books; they can only point at it. Action is truth. Anything else is hypothetical and interpretation of what is perceived. Western thoughts, Voltaire, Meister Eckhart, Herman Hesse, and Plato, etc., expound these ideas to a great extent. Be that as it may, they serve as a guideline only, but beware of letting them become a dogma or the absolute truth as most of the world's religions claim their books are. But that is not what I want to talk about now. Your parents would want to know that you can see into their minds and would want to be able to communicate with you, as we do now. Do you want me to talk with them or will you?"

"Would it not be easier for them to understand you? You speak their language after all."

"You are very perceptive, Leo and far beyond the level of intelligence any of us would have thought. You're too young to have this knowledge. Where does it come from?"

"If I was as intelligent as you say, I'd know. I want to learn what you know, Ivan."

"You honour me, Kitty. Your parents will be ecstatic when they find out about your ability to communicate with them."

"I hope they have the kind of ears that you have and I'm not talking about the one which that coconut tried to rip off you."

They had a good mental laugh at this and were silent for a while. Ivan drifted off a bit, allowing his thoughts to flow and Leo soaked up as much as he could. This concept of telepathy would thrill Leo's parents and be very useful to link with him on that level. Ivan hoped that they would be able to communicate with Leo as he did. For a while, his mind whirled around thinking about all kinds of ideas and then the day caught up with him and he fell asleep without noticing. Two hours later, he sat up abruptly and said aloud:

"It's time for you to sleep, Leo. I'll take watch. Is everything okay around here? No sneaky nuts to jump us?"

"No nuts," grumbled Leo, "just we. I go to join them. Yourrogay." This time he made an effort to pronounce the ‘m'.

Ivan, nodding approvingly, watched Leo descending down to the two sleeping figures, and softly snuggled up to Helena. She stirred and in her sleep put an arm around Leo's upper body. Leo wanted this closeness with his mother more often and hoped one day to be close to his father too. On this trip, it appeared he was getting closer to him and Leo sensed a shift in his attitude. He would welcome his Dad's affection. A closed door had suddenly opened and nothing seemed impossible.