Telepath Page 6

  … physically ideal, we’ll hardly notice her weight carrying her, but how good is she at what really counts? Are you able to read me, Amber? Tell me what I’m thinking now. I was born in Red Zone. I have two brothers. I broke my right arm when I was twenty-three.

  I gave a startled laugh. Adika was utterly relaxed about me reading his thoughts. I chanted his list of facts back at him. “You were born in Red Zone. You have two brothers. You broke your right arm when you were twenty-three.”

  He gave an approving nod. “You’re doing well for this early in your training.”

  Part of Adika’s mind was comparing me to his memories of Mira soon after she came out of Lottery. I’d scavenged a scanty few pieces of information about the other true telepaths from Megan’s mind, and was eager for more. I focused on Adika’s thoughts about Mira, saw his memory of her talking to him, and was startled to see her face had the same distinctive features as those of my friend Casper from Teen Level.

  “I didn’t know Mira was born with a genetic condition,” I said.

  “I didn’t realize I was thinking about Mira,” said Adika.

  There was an incomprehensible patch in his thoughts. Something about an extra copy of a chromosome. The word chromosome was vaguely familiar, I thought I’d heard my parents say it, but I didn’t know its meaning. I made a mental note that it was possible to read someone’s thoughts but not understand them.

  “Mira turned out to be an excellent telepath, and always eager to do her best to help the Hive,” said Adika. “We just needed to protect her from too much pressure, and make sure she always had the same familiar bodyguards with her.”

  I listened to the words, but picked up extra details from Adika’s thoughts as well. I relived the echo of his old disappointment, when Mira’s preferences had put someone else into a deputy team leader spot, and he’d had to wait ten long years for a chance to fill that role for Morton. I resented that for Adika, but he’d never considered it an injustice. He had tremendous respect for how hard Mira worked and how well she did her job. If having someone else as deputy team leader made things easier for her, then that was for the good of the Hive, and …

  I realized I’d got caught by that old memory, swept up in the emotional overtones as if it was happening right here and now instead of seventeen years ago. I pulled myself away with an effort.

  “Since I can’t be imprinted, I’d like to meet the other true telepaths and learn from them.”

  “That’s not a good idea,” said Adika. “Mira couldn’t help you, Keith would be a very bad example, Morton wouldn’t agree, and Sapphire …”

  He hesitated for a moment. It was strange reading his thoughts. I could see he was inventing reasons why I shouldn’t meet the other telepaths, attempting to convince himself as much as me.

  I went a level or two deeper into his mind, and things got even stranger. Adika knew it was important that telepaths should be kept apart from each other, but not why. There were no memories associated to the rule, and there was an odd, impersonal quality to it. I’d met this sort of thing before in Megan’s mind, and discovered it meant it was imprinted data rather than something she’d learned personally, but usually rules like this included the reasons behind them.

  “Sapphire is far too busy,” added Adika finally.

  He was thinking that this first meeting had achieved its purpose, and he wanted to leave before I pushed the subject of the other telepaths any further, so I nodded at him. “Thank you.”

  He stood and went out of the door. I was still linked to his mind as he saw Megan sitting on a chair in the hallway. She stood up to greet him, her short skirt flashing a tempting length of thigh that …

  I gasped with shock, and instinctively pulled out of Adika’s mind. Waste it! I wasn’t attracted to women, and I didn’t possess the bit of anatomy that I’d felt responding to Megan.

  When she entered the room a moment later, I was deeply relieved to find I reacted to her as myself rather than Adika. Megan must have noticed something strange about my expression, because she frowned at me.

  “There’s a problem with Adika?”

  “No,” I said hastily. “He seems perfect for my Strike team leader.”

  She looked relieved. “Amber, you’re clearly finding this difficult and should rest now.”

  I barely heard her words. I was still thinking through what had happened with Adika. It might have hit me in a different way, but I’d really had exactly the same problem with him as with Megan. Fran too for that matter. Everyone was hurling their emotions at me like missiles.

  “I’ll tell Lucas that you’ll see him tomorrow,” said Megan.

  I hurriedly shook my head. I didn’t want to delay meeting Lucas. He was my Tactical Commander candidate. The person who would give me answers to my host of questions.

  “I’m perfectly fine. Different people are … different,” I said lamely. “I needed a moment to absorb what I’d learned from reading Adika’s mind, but I’m ready to see Lucas now.”

  Megan hesitated.

  “I’ll see Lucas now,” I repeated.

  She sighed and gave in. “Lucas is only twenty-one, but he’s by far the best qualified choice for your Tactical Commander. He was deputy leader of Keith’s Tactical team.”

  “You worked for Keith too, so you must know Lucas well.”

  “Yes. I came out of Lottery with Keith thirteen years ago. Lucas joined us three years ago as a Tactical team member. A person has to be exceptionally gifted to be imprinted for a Telepath Unit position in a year when no true telepath is discovered, but Lucas’s Lottery assessment scores were incredible. A year later, the deputy leader of Keith’s Tactical team transferred to another post, and Lucas was given the position.”

  “I seem to be stealing everyone’s deputies,” I said.

  Megan smiled. “You’re our big chance for promotion, Amber. Openings as team leader in a Telepath Unit are incredibly rare. Moving from being deputy in a Telepath Unit to being a team leader in another area would be a downwards career move. Telepath Units are the highest prestige assignments in Law Enforcement. Even the team member positions on Strike, Tactical and Liaison teams are rated Level 1.”

  Megan left, and Lucas walked into the room. He had unruly, light-brown hair, surprisingly dark eyes, and an intense expression that abruptly changed into a grin as he looked at me.

  “Are you reading me yet?”

  I had to laugh. “Of course not. You’ve only just walked through the door. You haven’t even sat down yet.”

  He sat down opposite me, and leaned forward eagerly. “I’m sitting down. Please read me now. My chance of becoming your Tactical Commander depends on whether you like what’s in my head or not, so I’m desperate for your answer.”

  “Naturally, anything I see is confidential.”

  He shrugged, seemingly uncaring about his privacy. “I’ve no secrets.”

  I entered his mind, and it was like being in the centre of a whirling Carnival crowd. The thoughts glittered and shone, level upon level of them, racing past at incredible speed.

  … is confidential! So different from Keith. The way he teases people …

  … still no pattern at all. If there was only …

  … of the occipital alpha waves or even the cortical theta rhythm …

  … reaction to first reading of Megan was …

  … and the parental relationship differs totally from the previous …

  … body language looks favourable. Her first impression of me is …

  … want this so much! What will her approach be to …

  … love her legs, but her physical preference results from Lottery show I haven’t a hope of getting into her …

  When I first read Megan, I was sucked down against my will into a morass of dark, churning emotions. With Lucas, I was willingly plunging down through the levels of his mind, chasing one shimmering image after another. I finally hit some that were completely indecent, and surfaced, gurgling with laughter.
I couldn’t be offended when the images were down at the level that was more unconscious emotion than thought. After years of Forge ignoring me, I found it rather flattering that Lucas lusted after my legs and …

  I sternly reminded myself that I was supposed to be deciding whether I was happy with Lucas as my Tactical Commander, not nosing round his unconscious fantasies. He was obviously brilliant. His thoughts ran like multi-layered express belts, leaving me sprinting madly in pursuit. Better yet, he was young, friendly, and delightfully unconventional. For the first time, I realized how lonely I’d been since Lottery started.

  “You’re back out of my mind,” Lucas said. “Well? Yes or no?”

  I smiled at him. “Yes.”

  “High up!” He jumped out of his chair, punching the air with one hand, just like an over-excited kid on Teen Level.

  I laughed. “Now, if you don’t mind, Megan said you were the best person to answer my questions.”

  Lucas instantly sat down, leaning forward in his chair again, his eyes fixed on me. “Go!”

  “What does a Telepath Unit do? What am I supposed to do?”

  “Good question. Needs a history lesson. Let’s go back in time. People used to live, dotted all over the world, in communities of various sizes. Bigger communities grew into pre-Hive cities. Homes close together, mostly two or three levels. You’re following me?”

  “Vaguely.”

  “Imagine the transport issues. Problems providing things like rapid specialist medical care are obvious. People gravitated into larger cities where these things were available. Cities got bigger, buildings taller, closer together. Natural progression into first proto Hives.”

  He was speaking in partial sentences, as if speech couldn’t match the speed of his thoughts. I dipped into his mind to help me keep up, and suddenly what he was saying really was obvious. I could actually watch the process in his head, as humanity clustered together into cities.

  “Old lifestyle heavily affected by threat of crime and risk to personal safety. Children watched every second due to perceived threat of abduction and injury.”

  “What?” I was shocked by a brief, graphic picture in his mind.

  “Also major pollution-related health issues and danger from high speed transport vehicles. Anti-crime surveillance measures everywhere. Cameras, facial recognition devices, tracking devices, even automated drones and orbital satellite thermal imaging.”

  I shook my head in disbelief. Children under ten wore tracking bracelets as a safety precaution, but the thought of adults having their every move tracked and recorded was unbelievable. “People really accepted living like that?”

  Lucas shrugged. “People traded privacy for increased safety. Their acceptance of camera surveillance seems strange to us. Current public acceptance of nosy patrols might seem as strange to them.”

  For eighteen years, I’d believed the nosies were genuine telepaths. I’d hated the idea of them reading my mind, but accepted that nosy patrols were necessary to keep the Hive a safe place. “You’re probably right.”

  “Now!” Lucas startled me by shouting the single word, before babbling on in speed speech again. “First true Hives relatively small, but major impact on society. New enclosed habitat available. All amenities immediately accessible. No pollution. No danger from vehicles. No criminals allowed entry. Hives perceived as superior, safer environment, huge demand to become residents.”

  I was checking his pre-vocalized thought level now, patching in the missing words that he wasn’t saying aloud, to help me make sense of his shortened sentences. “Yes, but …”

  Lucas kept relentlessly jabbering on. “Phase of extending prototype Hives to become mega Hives. Design variations. All in geologically stable areas, mainly underground, 70 to 210 levels. Other communities gradually abandoned.”

  I had another try at interrupting him. “Yes, but I still don’t see where I …?”

  Lucas raised a hand to stop me. “Approaching that. Hives now sole major environment. Existing undesirable elements not allowed entry, but new ones appear within Hives. Vast numbers of people packed close together, hugely vulnerable to predatory natures. Crime and murder rate soared. Society panic defence response.”

  I didn’t understand the last sentence at all, because he was talking too fast and leaving out too many words. Then something happened. Lucas’s pre-vocalized thought level seemed to blur, merge with the images in the level below, and come abruptly back into focus again. Had my mind made an adjustment to read both levels at once, or was it his that had changed? I didn’t know, but I could understand what he was saying now without consciously filling in the missing words.

  “Hive society responded in panic, instituting oppressive defence measures. Trivial breaches of rules resulted in the offender being classed as a criminal. Children were screened for factors considered a potential danger to society. Undesirable elements were controlled, medicated, even genetically restricted.”

  Lucas’s speed speech wasn’t an issue any longer, but there was still a problem if I didn’t understand the words in his mind. “What does genetically restricted mean?”

  He rephrased it at my intellectual level. “People classed as criminals or socially undesirable were not allowed to have children.”

  I missed the next couple of sentences while I absorbed that. The implications of it were huge. “Hold on. Go back to the not allowed to have children bit. I’ve never heard of anything like that happening.”

  “The policy of genetic restriction proved to have immensely damaging consequences.” Lucas pulled a pained face of disapproval. “It resulted in large population drops that seriously weakened Hives. Many valuable qualities were mistakenly labelled as negative. The elimination of diverse characteristics harmed the gene pool. Some Hives suffered horrific epidemics due to their populations having reduced disease resistance. Hives became isolationist, banning all casual travel between Hives as a disease containment measure. Changing Hive, either by individual choice or as part of a Hive personnel trade agreement, became an irrevocable lifetime commitment.”

  He waved his hands in despair. “Genetic restriction was abandoned two centuries ago. Hives reabsorbed their seed Hives, or merged with neighbouring Hives to restore their populations. New approaches were developed to keep Hives safe. Eighteen-year-olds were tested to assess their abilities, and allocated to professions that were personally rewarding and useful to the Hive.”

  He smiled. “Qualities previously seen as negative were proven to be highly productive when correctly channelled. The nosy system was instituted to deter criminal activities. Social changes were made to limit conflict with authority arising during the peak danger years of adolescence.”

  “Social changes,” I repeated. “That’s why teens all live on Level 50?”

  “Yes.”

  I had a sudden new insight. “We really are bees. Tame bees.”

  Lucas tipped his head on one side. “We live in Hives, but …?”

  “My parents work in genetics. They told me all about bees. Wild bees have stings. The ones in the parks and hydroponics don’t. They were specially bred from the wild bees, to be friendly and hardworking.”

  Lucas’s face lit up, and he clapped his hands. “Yes! Our Hive is full of tame bees. Well fed, comfortably housed, with different types of workers all happily making their contribution. Luxury differentials between levels are carefully limited to avoid fuelling discontent. People are deterred from committing crimes by the nosy patrols, but …”

  He grimaced. “Various factors can result in a wild bee appearing. An individual with a potential for harming others. Most get spotted in annual development checks or in Lottery screening, treated where necessary, and channelled by Lottery into being productive members of the Hive. In rare, extreme cases kept securely confined.”

  “Most get spotted,” I muttered, ahead of him for once.

  “Some are very intelligent and fake their way through screening. In other cases, behaviour gradually es
calates. They’re surrounded by potential prey. Imagine, for example, if one of them is a danger to children. In this Hive, children roam freely to the park, to the nursery, wherever they want to play. Hasties keep them safe from accidents, but think of the tempting opportunities for a wild bee. Hence.” Lucas pointed his finger at me. “You!”

  “I catch the wild bees?”

  “Yes. Old style surveillance could only catch a wild bee after they’ve committed a crime, but a true telepath can catch them before anyone gets hurt. You have a whole unit to help you. Tactical, Liaison, and Strike are the operational teams.”

  “What do they … I … do?”

  Complex sentences involving incomprehensible words flashed through Lucas’s mind, but I didn’t need to ask him to explain what they meant. He knew I wouldn’t understand psychological definitions, and was trying to rephrase them in simple terms.

  “The biggest problems come from those who have no concern for the wellbeing of other people. They feel that indulging their own wishes is far more important than the rights, safety, even the lives of everyone else. The only thing limiting their behaviour is their fear of harmful consequences to themselves. They cautiously push the limits, testing how much trouble they can cause without their behaviour being challenged by a nosy patrol. The Liaison team monitors the Hive, feeding information to the Tactical team who analyze it for a whole range of early warning signs. Things like complaints about unsociable behaviour or harassment, patterns of suspicious accidents, or outbreaks of vandalism.”

  I thought of Reece’s behaviour on Teen Level. “Or bullying?”

  Lucas nodded. “There’s often an obvious guilty party. If they’re identified before the behaviour pattern becomes too established, then the Tactical team can simply arrange for a nosy patrol to intercept the culprit and frighten them into better behaviour. More entrenched cases have to be referred to specialist units for treatment.”