Kiss of Snow

RECOVERED FROM COMPUTER 2(A) TAGS: PERSONAL CORRESPONDENCE, FATHER, ACTION NOT REQUIRED

FROM: Alice

TO: Dad

DATE: November 5th, 1971 at 11:14pm

SUBJECT: re: re: JA Article

I protest! I did very much enjoy your paper in the Journal of Archaeology, and it has nothing to do with being your daughter—I totally agree with you about your interpretation of the newly discovered glyphs. Cho is wrong. I know it and you know it.

Dad, I wanted to talk to you about something else, too, something that’s troubling me. I now have four Xs enrolled in my study (Gradients 3 through to 4.2), and from everything the Psy academics tell me, it means I’ve done astonishingly well. The designation is so rare that if there were ten living X-Psy at any given time, it would be considered a miracle.

That isn’t what worries me. Of the four I’ve located, none are over the age of sixteen. There was a fifth known X, one of the boys tells me, a girl he met on the PsyNet. I got the impression he had a crush on her. The heartbreaking thing is, she died just short of her nineteenth birthday when her power consumed her.

I don’t want to see my Xs die.

Alice