This chapter reveals the extraordinary telepathic abilities of David’s younger sister, Petra. This discovery came about when Petra, having fallen in a river and almost drowned, sends out an extremely powerful, almost blinding, telepathic cry. Both Rosalind and David run to her rescue, but David arrives first, saving her from death just in time. David tells Rosalind who was able to do that, to cry out telepathically like that. Rosalind replies by saying something quite interesting, after David says that he had no idea that Petra was one of them, ‘She isn’t. Something like us, but not one of us. None of us could command like that. She’s much more than we are.’
After returning to the fields where David had been harvesting, questions arise as to how the two of them could have both arrived at the same moment. Rosalind puts the suspicions to rest momentarily by telling them that they must have been crazy to not have heard her screams. David fends off the Group's questions until he and Rosalind were alone. David and Rosalind decide not to tell Petra about her ability until she is old enough to understand. Petra threatens the Group’s safety because she’s too young to control or understand what she can do, which may lead to their discovery.
A while after the incident with Petra, David starts to talk about the year’s high deviational rate with an elderly member of Waknuk, Old Jacob. Jacob believes that God had been sending more deviations to punish Waknuk society because people had been particularly lax about their morals. David later asks Axel about this. Axel’s opinion is that the deviation rate is directly affected by gales from the Sout-West; the Badlands. The Badlands are the area directly beyond the Fringes where nothing is accountable for. In reality the gales suggested by Axel are carrying what we know to be as nuclear fall-out.
Chapter 10 - "Love, Marriage, Murder, Suicide”
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