Telepath Read online

  JANET EDWARDS

  TELEPATH

  Hive Mind 1

  Copyright

  Copyright © Janet Edwards 2016

  www.janetedwards.com

  Janet Edwards asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events or localities is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of Janet Edwards except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover Design by The Cover Collection

  Cover Design © Janet Edwards 2016

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Message from Janet Edwards

  Books by Janet Edwards

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Forge and Shanna led our group out of the lift into the forbidden territory of Level 1, the highest of the hundred accommodation levels in our Hive city. I stopped for a moment, dazzled by the splendour of the shopping area in front of us. The Level 1 shopping areas always had the finest decorations in the Hive, but this was the last day of Carnival, the annual Hive festival of light and life, so there were added gold and silver streamers everywhere.

  Shanna glanced back at me. “Come on, Amber!”

  I hurried to join the others under one of the giant overhead signs that said “Level 1”. We automatically formed into a circle with Forge and Shanna standing in the centre. Twenty-two of us, all wearing traditional gold and silver Carnival costumes, and carrying masks. Forge was the one exception, conspicuous for choosing a costume and mask in the red and black colours of Halloween, the ominous Hive festival of darkness and death. Forge had constantly been challenging Hive rules on Teen Level, and wearing a Halloween costume during Carnival was his final act of defiance.

  I noticed that a couple of men dressed in the blue uniforms of Health and Safety were standing nearby and watching us. On any other day, the hasties would have been scolding us, telling us that a group of teens had no business in one of the shopping areas reserved for the most important people in the Hive, and sternly sending us back down to Teen Level 50.

  This wasn’t any other day, because we were eighteen. Tomorrow the million eighteen-year-olds in the Hive would all enter Lottery. We would be assessed, be optimized, be allocated, be imprinted. The Lottery of 2532 would decide our future lives, what profession we would work at, and whether we would live in luxury on a high level of the Hive or in a cramped apartment somewhere in the depths.

  Shanna smiled at the rest of us. “We aren’t going to be like all the other teens. We won’t split up from our friends after Lottery. Let’s promise that we’ll all meet up two weeks from today.”

  There was a muttering of promises in reply, my own among them, but we all knew we were lying. We’d lived on the same corridor on Teen Level 50 for five years, and shared thousands of moments of laughter and arguments. Now the notoriously unpredictable verdict of Lottery would send some of us higher up the Hive and others further down, label some of us a success and others a failure.

  Shanna had boundless confidence. She was sure she’d be one of the successes, even be among the elite who lived in the top ten accommodation levels of the Hive. The rest of us felt far more uncertain about what lay ahead. We wouldn’t want to meet up again if we were among the failures. I knew I couldn’t face the others if …

  I fought back against the nightmare doubts. The verdicts of Lottery were unpredictable because of the sheer complexity of the automated decision process, but there was logic behind them. Everyone said I was bright and articulate, and I’d followed all the advice about spending my time on Teen Level doing preparation work. The Level 99 Sewage Technician, butt of all the jokes, couldn’t happen to me. Please, not to me.

  “Good luck,” said Forge. “I hope all of you will be high up.”

  This time the response was wholehearted. “High up, everyone!” we yelled in unison.

  There was a second of silence, and then twin chiming sounds as the doors of the two nearest lifts opened. More groups of teens were arriving, and the watching hasties were waving at us to signal that we couldn’t linger here any longer. Forge put on the Halloween mask that transformed his handsome face into something demonic. Everyone else put on the joyful masks of Carnival, and followed him across to the moving stairs in the middle of the shopping area.

  We jumped onto one of the handrails of the downway. Forge first, then Shanna, and then the rest of us in turn. Riding the handrail was the classic act of teen rebellion. The hasties usually intervened to stop it, telling us to travel sensibly and safely on the moving stairs instead.

  They wouldn’t intervene today. This was our last day as teens, and Hive tradition gave us the right to one last act of rebellion, starting to ride the handrail on Level 1 itself and continuing on down as deep into the Hive as we could.

  I caught a glimpse of us in the mirrored wall beside me. A proud line of twenty-two masked figures, spectacular in our glittering costumes. As the handrail plunged down from the Level 1 shopping area to the one on Level 2, Forge raised his right hand and shouted the ritual words.

  “Ride the Hive!”

  “Ride the Hive!” We yelled the words back to him.

  The shoppers turned their heads to watch us go by, applauded, and called their good wishes to us. “High up to you.”

  “Ride the Hive!” We yelled the words each time the moving stairs went down to the next level. We’d never be together again. We’d never be the same people again. Lottery would do more than assess our abilities, optimize our possible professions to give us the one most suitable for us and useful to the Hive, and allocate us our level. It would imprint our minds with all the information needed to do our assigned work.

  All our lives we’d known and accepted our minds would be imprinted during Lottery. We’d discussed it dozens of times, eagerly looking forward to being given a wealth of knowledge. Over the last few weeks, the tone of those discussions had changed from joyful anticipation to nervous whispers about exactly what imprinting would do to our minds.

  Now Lottery was upon us and we were terrified. The assessment stage lasted between three and five days. By this time next week, we’d all be imprinted and beginning our new adult lives
. We’d no idea if we’d be high or low level. We didn’t know what profession we’d be given. We weren’t even sure that we’d be the same people after our minds were imprinted. We were facing the black unknown, and we screamed defiance to block out the fear.

  I was fifth in line when we started on Level 1. Riding the rail was hard, so two of us had fallen before we even reached Level 5. As the overhead signs told us that we’d hit Level 18, I counted the figures reflected in the mirrored walls. We were down to fifteen now, and I was third in line. The ones who fell down from the handrail onto the moving stairs didn’t climb back on the handrail again. Custom decreed that the last ride was over when you fell.

  I focused my eyes on the two figures still ahead of me. Tall, heavily muscled Forge, his black hair matching his red and black costume. Slender Shanna behind him, her fair hair cascading down the back of her silver dress. She was perfectly poised and elegant, looking as if she could ride the handrail forever, but then her foot slipped as the rail made the bend to reach Level 46.

  Shanna flailed her arms, teetered wildly, and tumbled down onto the moving stairs next to her. She’d barely got time to stand up before the downway reached the Level 46 shopping area, where she stepped off and waved at the rest of us. I heard her final cry come from behind me.

  “Go Forge! Go Amber! Ride the Hive!”

  I daren’t look back as she called my name, but I held up my arm in salute and farewell, and blinked back tears from behind the fake smile of my Carnival mask. Shanna had been my best friend for all my years on Teen Level. I’d lived in her shadow, been alternately grateful to her for being my friend and jealous of her self-confidence, and now I’d never see her again.

  There was a faint chance that one of my old friends would come out of Lottery as the same level as me and we could stay in touch, but I knew it wouldn’t be Shanna. She was bound to be rated far higher level than someone as ordinary as me.

  I concentrated on the red of Forge’s shirt ahead of me, and the difficult job of keeping my balance as the rail flattened out, turned, and dived down again at each level change. We were below Level 60 now, I was shaking with the effort of the ride, and my legs stung from scratches as my silver sequinned skirt blew around them.

  We were still descending through shopping areas, because all the accommodation levels of the Hive had their shops, but they were plainer here, selling more functional goods. There were no fancy mirrored walls now, but I caught a reflection of us in some glass on Level 63, and saw there were only four of us left. By Level 70, there was no one behind me, and at Level 72 Forge fell and I was left alone.

  I kept riding the rail on down, all the way to Level 100 itself. There were no shops or people there, just dusty pipes to salute my triumph as I jumped to the ground, but I’d ridden the Hive.

  I only felt the briefest moment of celebration before depression hit me. I’d ridden the Hive, I’d screamed defiance, but it hadn’t changed anything. Tomorrow morning, I would enter Lottery, because there was nowhere else I could go and nothing else I could do. There were one hundred and six other Hive cities in the world, but I wouldn’t have the right to ask to move to one of them until after I’d been through Lottery.

  Even if I could ask for a Hive transfer right now, I wasn’t courageous enough, or foolish enough, to take that leap into a darkened lift shaft. I’d no idea what life was like in other Hives. Our Hive news sometimes mentioned their names, but never gave any details about them. The occasional malcontent claimed other Hives were far more luxurious places to live than ours, but they obviously hadn’t had enough courage in their convictions to apply to move.

  Moving Hive wouldn’t help me anyway. My problem wasn’t with my Hive, but with suffering the suspense of waiting helplessly while my profession, my level, my whole future life was decided for me. Every Hive would have its own equivalent of Lottery, and it was better to face it here than in an alien place.

  I yanked off my mask, turned round, and stepped onto the upway. I stood there, weary and defeated, letting it carry me back towards my sliver of a room on Teen Level 50. It would have been much faster to take a lift, but it somehow seemed appropriate to go back the same way that I’d arrived.

  I was on Level 56 when I heard the chanting ahead of me that warned a telepath was nearby. I was looking forward to changing out of the Carnival outfit that had been chosen by Shanna, and was far too spectacular and revealing for someone like me. I was thinking about packing my bag to take to Lottery. I was planning to have an early night so I’d be well rested tomorrow. There was nothing in my head that was incriminating, but I joined in the chanting just the same.

  “Two ones are two.”

  “Two twos are four.”

  “Two threes are six.”

  The upway reached Level 55, and the people in the shopping area here were shouting it.

  “Two fours are eight.”

  “Two fives are ten.”

  “Two sixes are twelve.”

  I saw the crowd of shoppers move aside to let through a figure dressed in grey and wearing a matching grey mask. That was the telepath, the nosy, with their escort of four blue-clad hasties following behind to guard him or her.

  “Two sevens are fourteen!”

  “Two eights are sixteen!”

  Everyone was screaming it now, and I was yelling as loudly as any of them. People said that filling your thoughts with numbers stopped a nosy from reading your mind. I didn’t know if that was true, but it was worth a try. I didn’t want anyone seeing my private thoughts. I wanted the nosies to catch the criminals, to keep me safe, but I hated the idea of someone snooping inside my own head.

  The nosy seemed to be looking at me now. The bulging shape of the grey mask, and the hint of strange, purple eyes behind it, showed that the wearer wasn’t entirely human. I was grateful that the upway was carrying me to safety on the next level.

  Once the nosy and the chanting crowd were left behind, I rode on in silence again. I finally reached Level 50, scurried along a couple of corridors, and made it into my room without seeing any of the people who’d once been my friends. We’d said our goodbyes, and Carnival and our teen life was over. Tomorrow, Lottery would begin.

  Chapter Two

  I woke the next morning, gasping in panic. I’d been trapped in a nightmare where I’d overslept and got lost on my way to Lottery. I couldn’t read any of the signs. I was running along the belts, asking people which way to go, and none of them would help me. When I eventually reached my assessment centre, a man stood blocking the doorway.

  “Too late,” he said, and handed me a card saying Level 99 Sewage Technician.

  I hadn’t overslept, it had just been a ridiculous dream, but my taut nerves refused to relax and I could only eat half my breakfast before my stomach rebelled. I threw the remains of the food down the waste chute, with inevitable thoughts about whether I’d be joining the low-level workers who ran the waste system, and then concentrated on getting everything I needed inside the one large bag I was allowed to take to Lottery.

  Bag packed, I started hurling the rest of my possessions into the storage locker next to my room. I was aware that someone further along the corridor was loading things into their storage locker too, but didn’t turn my head to look at them. I couldn’t face yet another pointless conversation of goodbye and good luck.

  Once my room was empty, I used its built-in comms system to call my parents. Their faces appeared on the wall, smiling anxiously.

  “I’m ready to go,” I said.

  “You’ll do brilliantly.” My mother turned to my father. “Won’t she?”

  “Definitely,” he said. “I know it’s hard, Amber, but try to relax during the assessment process.”

  “And we’ll still be here for you afterwards,” said my mother. “No matter what.”

  My father nodded.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  I knew they meant what they were saying. The Hive encouraged new adults to make a fresh start after Lottery
, breaking free from old teen friendships that would fuel discontent in those that were lower level, but it recognized that it could be psychologically damaging to break close ties between parent and child.

  Families keeping in touch whatever the Lottery result was accepted, even encouraged, but many parents would still dump an embarrassingly low-level child. Mine wouldn’t. Whatever Lottery decreed for me, whatever new life I was thrown into, I’d have the comfort of one link to the past. My parents would still keep calling me their daughter, and I’d be welcome to visit their home.

  They’d have to follow the social conventions though. My Lottery result would decide whether my photos stayed in one of the public rooms of their apartment, or were hidden away privately in their bedroom.

  My parents were Level 27. Lottery would have to rank me at least Level 29 for it to be socially acceptable for them to keep my photos on public display for their friends. If my photos vanished, then those friends would know what it meant and do the polite thing. Never ask how I’d done in Lottery, or mention my name again.

  If I did very well, the situation would be reversed. The photos would be proudly centre stage, and my parents would glow with pride and talk of my success.

  Right now, I had a gut feeling there was little chance of that. My photos were heading for the bedroom.

  “Gregas!” my mother called. “Come and wish your sister a good Lottery result.”

  There was a pause before my brother reluctantly came to join them and muttered something inaudible. He was looking pretty strained himself, and I could understand why. Gregas was thirteen. In four short weeks, he’d be moving to Teen Level.

  “Good luck to you too, Gregas,” I said. “Moving to Teen Level, living on your own in a small room, will seem strange at first, but you’ll soon get over that. There’s no more school, you can try out all the activities on offer in the community centres, join any sports team you like, go to parties and have a great time.”