“Spike, enter the apartment,” said Eli.
Adika took out his dataview, and tapped the green flashing dot labelled “robot”. Amusement flashed in his mind.
It won’t be long before Eli talks the Liaison team into changing that label to say Spike.
Then Adika was concentrating on the image from Spike’s camera as the robot’s legs rippled forward, nudged the apartment door open, and it went inside. “What the waste are we looking at?” asked Adika.
“I’m not sure,” said Lucas. “Everything in the apartment seems to be black. Walls. Floor. Furniture.”
“Has there been a fire in there?” I asked.
“Nothing looks damaged, just black,” said Lucas. “It would help to have more light.”
“Spike, engage maximum lights,” said Eli.
The image got rather brighter, but I still couldn’t make sense of it.
“I think those are plates and cups on the table,” said Lucas. “It looks like Martin got some black liquid he works with, and sprayed it all over this apartment to destroy any evidence. We’ve definitely found the right firebug.”
He paused. “Eli, can Spike give us any information on the black stuff?”
“Spike,” said Eli, “describe the black layer on the floor.”
“Eli, the layer on the floor is black,” said Spike.
I felt Adika’s hand go across his mouth as he heroically tried not to laugh.
“Eli, the layer on the floor is wet,” said Spike. “Eli, no further details are available.”
“I’m afraid that’s all that Spike can tell us,” said Eli.
“The substance could be hazardous,” said Lucas. “We’ll have to send a sample for expert analysis before anyone goes in that apartment. Bring Spike out of there now, Eli.”
“Spike, return to me,” said Eli.
“Do we go back to the unit now, Lucas?” asked Adika.
“Yes. It looks like Martin has abandoned his apartment and gone into hiding. He plans meticulously, so I doubt he’s left anything behind that will help us find him. We’re finally making progress though. My Tactical team are already collecting more information on Martin, and looking for clues to his hiding place and the identity of the other targets.”
Our trip back to the unit was enlivened by people making jokes about Eli and Spike. When we arrived back, Lucas was waiting outside the lift to welcome me home, but Megan only allowed us two minutes together before sternly ordering her patient back to the medical area.
“I’m perfectly recovered,” said Lucas. “You can discharge me now.”
“You aren’t perfectly recovered,” said Megan. “You aren’t even moderately recovered. If you go back to the medical area now, rest quietly, and sleep well tonight, then it’s possible that you’ll be recovered enough for me to discharge you tomorrow morning. I’ll still want to run checks on you twice daily for the next week though.”
Lucas turned to me. “Amber, tell Megan that I’m perfectly recovered.”
I laughed and shook my head. “I agree with Megan.”
Lucas groaned. I watched him walk off as Megan’s prisoner, and then headed back to our apartment to have something to eat. I’d just finished my meal when there was a chime from my dataview.
I pulled it from my pocket, tapped it to make it unfurl, and frowned. The screen was totally black except for a one-word question. “Alone?”
I hesitated, worried by the oddity of this, but any calls or messages from outside my unit would have been checked by Adika. I sent a reply. “Yes.”
The screen of my dataview lit up, showing a stunningly beautiful, blonde woman of about forty. I stared at her in bewilderment. I was sure I’d never met her, but her face seemed familiar, as if I’d seen her image in someone’s mind.
“Hello, Amber,” she said. “My name is Sapphire.”
Chapter Twenty-one
I gaped at Sapphire. “What? How? Is it safe for telepaths to talk like this?”
“It’s totally safe for us to call each other. You must have realized by now that the Hive carefully restricts access to knowledge. Telepaths inevitably stumble across minds that hold especially secret details, learning things the Hive would rather we didn’t know, so there are attempts to stop us from sharing that information with each other.”
“Does that mean it’s safe for us to meet in person as well?” I asked eagerly.
She gave a slow shake of her elegant head. “No. We must never meet in person.”
“Why? What’s wrong with two telepaths meeting?”
“It’s undesirable for you to be burdened with that knowledge at this point. In normal circumstances, I wouldn’t even call you until you’d completed your telepathic development.”
“But …”
Sapphire’s cold voice interrupted me. “Becoming a telepath is hard, Amber. You will learn that being a telepath is even harder. For now, you should just accept that catastrophically bad things can happen if telepaths meet in person.”
Ever since I’d been told I was a telepath, I’d been wondering why I couldn’t meet the handful of others in the Hive who were like me, but Sapphire clearly wasn’t going to tell me. If I kept arguing with her, she might end this call and never make another. Besides, something about her words had unnerved me.
Sapphire waved a dismissive hand. “Let’s move on to the purpose of my call. According to the continuous data exchange between the Telepath Unit Tactical teams, your Tactical Commander lover is recovering from the injuries he sustained in the Security Unit fire.”
“Yes. Lucas is …”
She kept talking over the top of me. “However, one of your Strike team, your Alpha deputy, is among the patients still in a critical condition at the Navy Zone Fire Casualty Centre.”
I settled for the single word answer this time. “Yes.”
“My sympathies and understanding.” Sapphire’s expression had been remote and disinterested, but now there was a brief flicker of pain before her face returned to being a rigidly controlled blank. “I’m calling you because the daughter of one of my Beta Strike team members is also among those critically ill patients. Are you aware that my Beta team was caught in a major fire last year in Burgundy Zone?”
“Yes, I was told you lost two of them.” I automatically repeated the same words that Sapphire had used. “My sympathies and understanding.”
“My whole Beta team were deeply affected by the news that Soren’s daughter had been injured in a fire. They are concerned for the daughter of their brother in arms, while also struggling with their own old traumas being reawakened. We’ve received information on the continuous data exchange warning that the Security Unit fire survivors may be targeted by further attacks. Soren has asked permission to go to the Fire Casualty Centre and help guard his daughter, and the rest of my Beta team wish to accompany him.”
“The rest of your Beta team? Can you spare them all?”
“My Tactical Commander, Penelope, feels my Beta team’s level of distress is currently too high to risk using them in even the simplest check run. Besides, their absence should only be of a limited duration. I’ve been advised that Kirsten will be given her genetically tailored treatment tomorrow afternoon, and she should hopefully be well enough to be transferred to the safety of my Telepath Unit medical area within the following few days.”
Sapphire paused. “I therefore wish to grant my Beta team’s request. However, basic good manners mean that I need your consent before allowing my people to encroach on your case.”
There was something oddly pointed about the way she said that. “Basic good manners are a set of rules for telepaths?” I asked.
“You can think of them as a set of rules if you like. We refer to them as basic good manners, because that’s what they really are. It is good manners for me to ask your consent before involving my people in your case. It is bad manners for another telepath to nose around inside my people’s minds. It is extremely bad manners for that telepath to call me and
gloat about discovering my personal information.”
It was clear that she was speaking about an actual incident, and I could guess which telepath had been guilty of extremely bad manners. Keith enjoyed teasing people about their secrets.
“Keith,” I said.
“Yes. Bad manners have consequences. I no longer communicate directly with Keith.”
I was getting a strong message here. Whether you referred to them as manners or rules, breaking the telepath code of behaviour would make you unpopular, and serious offences would mean other telepaths wouldn’t communicate with you again. I definitely didn’t want that to happen. There were so many things that I could learn from other telepaths.
Logically, displaying good manners would count in your favour, and agreeing to Soren and his friends helping guard his daughter was probably good manners. I wanted to agree to the poor man’s request anyway.
“I can imagine how Soren must be feeling right now, and give my consent for your Beta Strike team to help guard the Fire Casualty Centre.” I hesitated. “I assume it would be bad manners for me to tell anyone else about our conversation, so it’s best if you inform my Tactical Commander of your Beta Strike team’s involvement yourself.”
Sapphire nodded. “It would be extremely bad manners to tell outsiders that telepaths have conversations with each other, because that would inevitably lead to attempts to break our channels of communication. Even Keith and Olivia accept that would be undesirable.”
I blinked. “You’re in contact with Olivia?”
“Yes. Olivia is a telepath. She may be difficult at times, but in her case bad manners must be excused as being due to reasons beyond her control.” Sapphire had the unmistakable air of someone about to end a conversation. “Thank you for giving your consent. It is appreciated.”
“Please wait,” I said. “I need to know how to contact you.”
“At this point, it is good manners for you to wait for contacts to be initiated by the rest of us.”
Sapphire obviously felt that she was the experienced telepath, while I was the mere novice who should accept her authority. This seemed like a time where diplomacy would achieve more than arguments, so I phrased my reply carefully.
“I’m worried that I might need to ask the consent of another telepath for something, and not know how to do it. I wouldn’t wish to be guilty of bad manners.”
“I concede I’ve created problems by contacting you prematurely,” said Sapphire. “I should not engage with you further at this stage, but it would be unreasonable to expect you to forget this conversation happened.”
She was silent for a couple of seconds. “Very well, I will explain how you can contact us, but you must not do that for trivial or inappropriate reasons. You know the continuous data exchange between the Tactical teams uses a dedicated secure connection between the Telepath Units?”
“Yes.”
“That also allows the staff of the different units to be linked together in conference calls for events such as the Joint Tactical Meetings. If you start a new conference call, then you can invite a person from any Telepath Unit to join it. That call is then treated as internal, so it bypasses all the security checks.”
“Oh. That’s really …”
I let my sentence trail off because my dataview screen had gone blank. I looked at it in frustration. Sapphire had ended the call, and there were dozens more questions that I wanted to ask. I was tempted to call her back, but I was sure that would be classed as extremely bad manners.
Ever since I came out of Lottery, I’d been burning with curiosity about the other telepaths. I’d collected snippets of information about them, built up mental pictures of their personalities, and imagined the conversations I could have with them.
Now I’d finally spoken to Sapphire, and the conversation had been nothing like I’d imagined. Sapphire had been nothing like the person I’d imagined either. In fact, she’d appeared more like an automaton than a real human being. Her voice had been coldly neutral. Her words had been unnaturally formal. Her face had been a blankly beautiful mask.
If it hadn’t been for the one moment when that mask slipped, and I saw her fleeting expression of pain, I might have accepted that Sapphire was an emotionless vacuum obsessed with rules of behaviour, but that instant had been enough to show that she was hiding her true self.
Sapphire had come out of Lottery twenty-five years ago. She’d be familiar with the minds of everyone in her unit, including the behavioural analysis experts on her Tactical team. She’d have learnt how to prevent her body language and voice from betraying her emotions. She’d used that knowledge against me, to hide her own personality behind an impenetrable shield.
Why had she done that? Why did she want to avoid more contact with me? Why did telepaths have their strange rules of good manners?
I’d always wanted to talk to another true telepath. I’d expected it to give me answers, but talking to Sapphire had just added more questions.
Chapter Twenty-two
The next day, I had lunch with Buzz in the park. We sat at a picnic table, eating hunks of bread and cheese, and sharing crumbs with the birds. It was oddly relaxing, reminding me of my days on Teen Level, when I’d often buy food at a sandwich bar and take it to the local park to eat.
I found myself talking about the first time I met Lucas. “I’d been taken to Hive Futura, our abandoned seed Hive, for my initial telepathic training. Only Megan and I were there, and I was feeling dreadfully lonely, but then Lucas arrived. His thoughts were like a host of racing express belts, filled with people in shining Carnival costumes, and I was swept away in wonder.”
There was more to it than that, of course. I wasn’t just drawn to Lucas because his mind was stunning, but because of his vulnerability. Lucas was both incredibly gifted and deeply human.
“You must be thinking how different I am from Lucas,” I said. “He’s utterly brilliant, and I’m a very ordinary girl. He’s very open, while I’m private and defensive. The fact I’m a telepath bridges the gap though.”
I paused. “I suppose I should be talking about the fire, but I can’t. Not yet. Not when Rothan is still …” My voice shook too much to finish the sentence.
Buzz grimaced. “I appreciate how horrific the fire was for everyone involved. I was just sitting in Liaison’s operations room during the run, looking at the images from your cameras and listening to your voices, but that was enough to terrify me. I’d known that Telepath Units dealt with the most dangerous incidents in the Hive, but didn’t realize how bad those incidents could be.”
“That was an exceptionally bad run,” I said. “Especially for a check run rather than an emergency. Check runs are usually perfectly simple.”
I was hit by a memory of my first check run. Lucas had gone along with me and the Strike team, and we’d ended up eating in a restaurant and then buying him some socks.
“Borderline telepaths often discuss a hypothetical question,” said Buzz. “If someone offered us the chance to be true telepaths instead of nearly telepaths, to join the select group of you, Sapphire, and the others, would we accept it or not? Most of us say they’d accept. I’ve never been sure what I’d do, but now I know I’d refuse.”
She sighed. “To be honest, I’m still processing my own feelings about the fire. I’d understand you not being ready to discuss it yet. However, I think you’ve already been talking to me about it.”
I didn’t know what she meant, automatically reached out to find an explanation in her thoughts, but stopped myself just in time. The relationship I had with Buzz was working, and I didn’t want to risk spoiling it by reading her mind.
“Your greatest fear during the fire was that you’d lose Lucas,” said Buzz. “That’s why you’ve been talking about how important he is to you.”
I frowned. “That does make sense.”
“Some things appear unrelated at first, but then you find they’re really closely connected,” said Buzz. “I’ve been thinking ab
out the problems you have going near nosy patrols. People react to nosies with powerful emotions, and you get hit by that horror and disgust.”
“Yes.”
“I was wondering if that was why you developed such an aversion to nosies as a child. You weren’t just picking up your parents’ attitudes, but sensing the massed emotions of hostile crowds.”
I shook my head. “That can’t be right. My telepathic abilities were blocked until I went through Lottery.”
“Were your abilities totally blocked, or were you actually sensing emotions on a subconscious level even then? You read deeper levels of the mind than other telepaths. That could make a crucial difference.”
I thought that through for a moment.
“I could be wrong about that,” added Buzz. “I’m used to having the advantage of my insights when I’m counselling people, but they don’t work on you.”
“You could be wrong,” I said, “but it’s possible that you’re right.”
“If I am right, then it would also explain why you’re defensive about your privacy. You’ve been fighting all your life to defend your mind from the thoughts and emotions of others.”
“That’s certainly a better explanation than Megan trying to blame it on my parents. My mother kept nagging me about tidying my room, but she never …”
I was interrupted by a chime from my dataview. I hastily stood up. “I’m sorry, but I have to go now. We’re visiting Rothan at the Navy Zone Fire Casualty Centre this afternoon. I know I won’t be able to talk to Rothan, I probably won’t even be able to see him, but I want to be somewhere nearby when the genetically tailored treatment finally arrives.”
I couldn’t make myself say the rest of it aloud. Buzz would work it out for herself anyway. Rothan’s fate would be decided this afternoon. If he was among the lucky nine in ten that responded to the treatment, then he’d show signs of improving within two hours. If he didn’t, then he would die within the next few days.