Defender

  “It would be helpful if you could hold my hand just a little longer.” Buzz looked embarrassed. “Insights are a bit random.”

  “Since I’m in a committed relationship, and my girlfriend is watching us, I’m putting a five minute limit on this hand holding,” said Lucas. “Perhaps we can use the time productively by covering some basic details. We’ve allocated you an apartment in the unit, so you can move in as soon as you wish. I’ve also arranged for you to have access to our Telepath Unit case records.”

  Buzz shook her head. “I don’t need access to your records. Previous attempts at counselling Amber have failed, and I haven’t had an insight from you yet, but Amber has made it … Ah!”

  “Insight?” asked Lucas.

  “Insight.” Buzz let go of Lucas’s hand. “I was right. Whatever went wrong with the counselling before, it wasn’t your fault. Underneath your comedy act, you’re desperately keen for this to work.”

  “So we can stop playing mind games now?”

  Buzz nodded. “As I was saying, Amber has made it clear that she doesn’t want our relationship to be one of an expert professional counselling a patient, but that of two friends discussing problems. That means I won’t be reading your unit records on Amber’s past cases, or asking other people about them. I will only know what Amber chooses to tell me. I won’t be recording information she tells me either. Anything she says to me will remain strictly private between the two of us.”

  She turned to face me. “Are you happy with me working like that, Amber?”

  “Yes.”

  “If we want to discuss things like two friends, then it’s best if you avoid reading my mind during our sessions. I work by instinct rather than rigidly following any standard method of psychological counselling, but I do sometimes think about them, and you might find those thoughts disconcerting.”

  “I agree,” I said. “I’ll try not to read your mind, but using my telepathy is so automatic to me that I may do it accidentally.”

  “I understand that.” Buzz looked at Lucas. “Are you happy with that approach too?”

  “Yes. The standard professional methods failed, so I agree with you trying a different angle, but I need to warn you about Fran.”

  “No!” Buzz waved both hands at him. “Absolutely no interfering. If Amber wishes to talk about something, she will do so. If she doesn’t, she won’t.”

  “I was just trying to help.”

  “If you want to help,” said Buzz sternly, “you should go away right now.”

  Lucas pulled a face of mock despair, turned, and walked off towards the operational section of our unit. Buzz stood watching suspiciously until he was safely on the other side of the security doors.

  “What did your insight show you of Lucas’s mind?” I asked eagerly.

  Buzz shrugged. “Just what I already said. He’s worried about you. He wants this counselling to work.”

  I blinked. All the glowing magnificence of Lucas’s mind, all the glittering multitude of thought levels, and Buzz had just seen that he was worried about me. It seemed unfair that Buzz was so close to being a telepath, but could only glimpse fleeting shadows of the world as I saw it.

  “Where should we go to talk, Amber?” asked Buzz. “It should be a place where you feel comfortable and relaxed.”

  “The park.” I led the way along the corridor to the unit park, and paused to open the storage cupboard just inside the door and take out a small box. I gave it a shake to check it was full, then walked down the path to the picnic area. I sat at one of the tables, and gestured that Buzz should sit opposite me. “Watch this!”

  I opened the box, grabbed a handful of birdseed, and threw it on the ground. There was a flurry of wings as multicoloured birds flew down from the surrounding trees to feast. I threw another handful of seed, turned to smile at Buzz, and was startled to see she was watching me rather than the birds.

  “You love it here,” she said.

  “Yes. I find the park a restful place. Do your insights let you hear the Hive mind?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean by the Hive mind.”

  “The Hive mind is the thoughts of the hundred million people in the Hive,” I said. “I hear it all the time. It’s like I’m sitting next to a giant fountain, and hearing the sound of all the falling droplets merge together into one roaring noise of water. Our unit is in an isolated area, so the Hive mind is quieter here, but it’s still there day and night. Mostly it’s comforting, but there are times when it gets louder and has a rough edge to it.”

  “You find that rough edge disturbing?”

  “Sometimes. When I’m tired or stressed. I’m less aware of it here in the park though. When I had a headache as a child, I found that sitting somewhere quiet in the park would help ease it. I think the minds of the birds and animals, possibly the insects too, soften the impact of the mass of human minds. The effect is even stronger when I’m Outside. The sound of the Hive mind is still there like background thunder, but there’s a whole host of animal and bird minds too.”

  “Outside?” Buzz’s eyebrows shot up in alarm. “You mean you’ve been outside the Hive?”

  “Yes. Even the mention of Outside used to terrify me until a couple of months ago, but then I had to beat my fear of it to go out there to solve a case.”

  The birds were giving me hopeful looks, so I threw them more seed.

  “Tell me more about your headaches,” said Buzz.

  “There isn’t much to tell. I had occasional headaches when I was a child and when I was on Teen Level. My telepathic abilities were blocked back then, but maybe the headaches were something to do with the pressure of the Hive mind. I certainly had dreadful headaches when the special Lottery techniques were bringing my telepathic abilities to the surface, but then they stopped.”

  “You don’t have headaches at all now?”

  “I’ve had a few slight headaches since Lottery. The only really bad one was on our last emergency run. Things got a bit difficult.” I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to talk about that or not, so I changed the subject. “Did the Lottery processes trigger your borderline telepathy too, or did you have it as a child?”

  “I used to have intuitions as a child,” said Buzz. “There were people I didn’t want to be near, and people I instinctively liked. The triggering processes in Lottery made that … Well, it was as if a blurred image suddenly came into focus, and I could see the insights that gave me those feelings.”

  Buzz’s eyes widened, and she pointed at something behind me. “Are we under attack?”

  I turned and saw a mob of men running along the path towards us. “No, that’s my Beta Strike team doing laps of the park for training.”

  “The deliciously handsome young man in the lead looks strangely familiar.”

  I laughed. “That’s one of my two deputy Strike team leaders. Forge is in charge of the Beta Strike team. You met him on Teen Level.”

  “I did? When?”

  “Forge lived on the same corridor as me on Teen Level. Some hasties caught him exploring the vent system, and you made him wear a child’s tracking bracelet for weeks.”

  “Oh yes.” Buzz gurgled with laughter. “I remember his look of outrage. I was trying to teach the boy not to take risks, but I wouldn’t have bothered if I’d known Lottery would give him a Strike team position. Forge must love chasing criminals through every hidden place in the Hive.”

  “He does.”

  The Beta Strike team were running past us now. Forge turned his head to look at us, his face changed to a ludicrous expression of dismay, and he accelerated to full sprinting speed. His team were taken by surprise, but hastily chased after him.

  Buzz gave another gurgle of laughter. “I think Forge recognized me.”

  “He’s got very vivid memories of you and that tracking bracelet.” I frowned at Buzz. “Forge, Adika, Lucas, and I are the only people in the unit who know what happened back then. You mustn’t mention it to anyone else. Adika had the whole tra
cking bracelet incident removed from Forge’s record when he was promoted to deputy Strike team leader. If the Beta team members found out the story, it could undermine Forge’s leadership authority.”

  “I would never do anything to undermine Forge’s ability to do his vital work for the Hive,” said Buzz solemnly.

  “Good.”

  “I remember you talking about how Forge had a weird effect on you on Teen Level. Did you ever find out why?”

  “Yes, I did.” I grimaced. “I’ll tell you the whole story one day. The short version is that Forge doesn’t have a weird effect on me any longer.”

  “You started dating another boy back on Teen Level. I forget his name.”

  “That was Atticus. We only went on one or two dates in the end. We decided it would be a mistake to get involved with each other when we’d have to split up before going into Lottery.”

  “So you’re living with Lucas now. Does Forge have a partner as well?”

  I was avoiding reading Buzz’s thoughts, but I couldn’t miss the way her mind had changed its colour and brightness. “Forge is still getting over breaking up with Shanna. She was his girlfriend all through his years on Teen Level, it ended disastrously, and I don’t think he’s ready for another relationship yet.”

  Buzz grinned. “I used my most casual voice and disinterested body language when I asked if Forge had a partner. Silly of me to waste effort on that when you’re a true telepath.”

  I put the lid back on the seed box and sighed. “I should talk to you about Fran.”

  “Lucas mentioned Fran. I stopped him talking about whoever she is, because I don’t want him pressuring you into telling me anything.”

  “I read minds, but Lucas reads faces. He knows I want to talk to someone about Fran. I haven’t been able to do that because everyone in our unit, especially Lucas, has such strong feelings about her. You’ve never met Fran though, so you won’t suffer from anger or guilt at the mention of her name.”

  Buzz gave a nod of acceptance. “It sounds as if something very serious has happened.”

  “It couldn’t be more serious. Fran used to be my Liaison team leader. I fired her months ago, just before our unit went to operational status. A few days ago, we went on an emergency run and found Fran’s dead body. She’d been murdered.”

  Buzz gave me a blank, appalled look. “Murdered? Did you catch the person who killed her?”

  “No. We’re still hunting that target.”

  “Finding Fran’s body must have been a huge shock for you.”

  I pulled a face. “Yes. It churned up a lot of old emotions. Hiring Fran as the unit Liaison team leader was a total disaster.”

  I stared down at the table for a moment before speaking again. “That disaster was entirely my fault. Most of my staff came out of Lottery with me, but some key roles required existing experienced staff. Megan, my Senior Administrator, was in charge of my training, so hers was the first mind I ever read. Fran was the second. She’d come out of Lottery twenty-five years ago, been considered for a Liaison team post in Sapphire’s Telepath Unit, but been rejected by Sapphire. That had given Fran a hatred of Sapphire and telepaths in general.”

  Buzz frowned. “If Fran had learned to hate telepaths, why would she want to be your Liaison team leader?”

  “Fran was very ambitious, and Telepath Unit positions are the most prestigious in Law Enforcement.”

  “But why did you accept her?”

  “Because I was a well-intentioned, naive fool,” I said bitterly. “I was stunned when I was hit by all the anger and resentment in Fran’s head. I knew I should reject her, but I’d always loathed nosies myself. Every time I saw one of the nosy patrols roaming the Hive, I’d hated the idea of them rummaging round in my thoughts. It seemed incredibly hypocritical to reject Fran for feeling exactly the same way about me.”

  “I see,” murmured Buzz.

  “I had this ridiculous idea that there wouldn’t be a problem if I avoided reading Fran’s mind, so I accepted her as my Liaison team leader. She kept her feelings in check until it became clear to everyone that Lucas was interested in me as a potential partner. Fran couldn’t control her revulsion after that. She couldn’t bear the thought that he’d want to kiss, to hug, to love something like me. The cracks began to show, and …”

  I winced. “We were here in the park, having a team leader meeting, when Fran started arguing with Lucas. Adika joined in on Lucas’s side, and then the whole situation exploded.”

  I remembered the way Fran had looked at me in open disgust, her normally professional voice changing into something viciously discordant, as she spat hatred at Lucas and me. “Fran said that she didn’t know how Lucas could bear to touch me, I told her she was fired, and she started screaming about me being an ugly, mutant freak.”

  I shook my head, trying to banish that memory, and fought to keep my voice steady as I finished the story. “Adika grabbed Fran, dragged her away, and I never saw her again. Nicole took over as Liaison team leader the next day, and everyone carried on as if Fran had never existed.”

  I sighed. “That must sound really peculiar to you, but the staff of Telepath Units will go to tremendous lengths to avoid distressing their precious telepaths. Nobody mentioned Fran’s name. They barely even thought about her once our unit was at operational status, because they were so busy with other things.”

  “But you couldn’t forget what Fran had said?”

  “No. All through my childhood, I thought of the nosies as unnatural, frightening, mutant freaks. My parents and brother hated them too. In fact, they still hate them, so they must never find out I’m a telepath.”

  “They still think that you’re a Level 1 Researcher?” asked Buzz.

  “No. My parents and brother have found out that I run some sort of Hive Security Unit, but they don’t know that telepathy is involved. I work hard to avoid reading their minds, but I’m scared I’ll do it by accident one day.”

  I dismissed that issue with an angry wave of my hand. “When I came out of Lottery, and Megan told me I was a telepath, I realized the real truth. The nosies are just ordinary people, and I’m the mutant freak.”

  “So Fran’s words hurt you deeply because they echoed something in your own mind? Do they still hurt you now?”

  I’d tried to forget Fran’s words, but they were carved, like never-healing scars, on my brain. I couldn’t say that aloud, even to Buzz, so I settled for a single word answer. “Yes.”

  “Most people have five senses,” said Buzz. “Does losing one of those senses make them more or less human?”

  “No.”

  “I sometimes have an instant of telepathic insight into the minds of others. Does that make me a mutant freak? Do you look at me and see a thing out of nightmare to be regarded with horror and revulsion?”

  “No.”

  “You have a fully controlled telepathic sixth sense, Amber,” said Buzz. “It makes you stronger in some ways, and far more vulnerable in others. It does not make you more or less human.”

  I blinked away the moisture from my eyes, and we sat there in silence. I didn’t know why I’d told Buzz the stuff about me thinking of myself as a mutant freak. Now I felt strangely empty.

  It must have been at least five minutes before Buzz spoke again. “Will you continue dealing with Fran’s case yourself, or will you hand it to another Telepath Unit?”

  “Fran hated me, and I didn’t like her much either, but she was one of my unit, one of my people. I feel I should deal with her case myself. If I catch her killer, then it will mean I’m free to move on without looking back. Does that make any sense?”

  “It makes sense to me. This is about getting closure.” Buzz paused. “I don’t want to read the records of your past cases, but I would like your permission to monitor the comms during your future emergency and check runs. Do you have any problem with that?”

  “No. There’s nothing private about what happens during a run. Half my unit will either be actively
involved or monitoring the comms in case they’re needed to help.”

  “Good.” Buzz groaned. “Now I must go and apologize to Lucas. In general, I don’t want him forcing information on me or dictating what we talk about, but he was correct to try to warn me about something as extreme as you finding the body of someone you knew.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The next morning, Adika, the Alpha Strike team, and I set off on the check run to Fran’s Security Unit. We had an unexpected addition to our party, because Lucas had decided to come with us.

  Occasionally one of the Tactical team, usually Lucas, came with us on routine check runs to talk us through the situation. I was nervous about it this time though. We weren’t going out to hunt down a budding vandal, or someone behind a series of threats that could soon turn to violence, but an established killer.

  “Tactical ready.” Emili’s voice spoke from the crystal unit in my ear.

  She was using the same calm, relaxed tones that Lucas used during emergency runs, but it wasn’t quite as reassuring coming from her. Lucas was a brilliant Tactical Commander and had successfully guided us through some horrific runs. I knew that Emili and the rest of the Tactical team would have been sitting with Lucas during those runs, feeding ideas and suggestions to him, but he was the one who’d filtered through those ideas and chosen which orders to give us.

  “Liaison ready. Tracking status green,” said Nicole’s voice.

  It felt wrong to be going through the ritual checklist with Lucas standing beside me. I wanted Lucas safe in my unit rather than in the middle of whatever unknown dangers lay ahead.

  I checked my dataview. “Status green here too.”

  Lucas started briefing us on what lay ahead. “This is a virtually unique situation. We’re going out to check a suspect area that’s a Hive Security Unit located on Level 20. There’s an instinctive reaction that this will be a safe place. Level 20 is the home territory of Law Enforcement. Security Units are full of dedicated people working to protect the Hive.”

  He shook his head. “That instinctive reaction is entirely wrong. If we’re right, and Fran’s killer is working at that Security Unit, it makes them doubly dangerous. Our target knows the nosy squads are fakes, there are over one hundred million people in the Hive, and just five genuine telepaths to check minds for guilt. We must assume our target knows what those five telepaths look like. Amber must not go near that unit.”