Defender

  Lucas laughed. “Respectfully point out that you’re one of only five true telepaths in our Hive, Amber. That makes you far from ordinary.”

  I gave a reluctant laugh myself. “Sometimes I can accept that, but most of the time I still feel very ordinary.”

  Lucas waited expectantly for a moment before speaking again. “I notice you aren’t commenting on the possibility of Buzz getting glimpses into your mind.”

  “I honestly don’t know what to say about that. I admit I’m defensive of my privacy. I’ve reacted badly to people gossiping about me in the past. I completely lost my temper with Adika once when he was being nosy about my relationship with you. Most of my problems with Megan were because she kept pushing me to tell her personal things.”

  I sighed. “If I find I’m uncomfortable with Buzz now that I know she’s a borderline telepath, then I promise I’ll say so immediately.”

  Lucas nodded. “I’ve tracked down Buzz’s identity, and asked for her to be put on standby to visit our unit today.”

  “Today?” I was startled. “Won’t we be busy with Fran’s case today? The mandatory twenty-four hour shutdown is almost over, so we can start doing check runs.”

  “My Tactical team are still analyzing the situation. Besides, your problems during the last run were sufficiently worrying that finding you adequate psychological support has to be our unit’s highest priority.”

  I didn’t like Lucas’s grim tone of voice when he said that. I considered checking his mind to see what he was thinking, but decided I didn’t want to know. “I agree that I should see Buzz today then.”

  “I suggest you limit the meeting to doing the standard initial check of Buzz’s mind that you do on all new unit members. If you’re still feeling positive about her after that, we’ll arrange for you to have a proper counselling session with her.”

  He paused. “You wanted me to talk to Megan for you, so I called in at her apartment yesterday evening. I’m afraid the conversation didn’t go according to plan.”

  “What happened?” I asked anxiously.

  “I told her you wanted her to stay, but she was in the same noble, self-sacrificing mood as when she left Keith’s unit after her husband’s death. Whatever I said, she kept insisting that her leaving would be in the best interests of both you and the unit.”

  “Oh.” I frowned.

  “In the end, I had to change from arguing against her leaving to delaying her departure. I asked Megan to put the good of the Hive above her own feelings, keep her resignation secret, and continue working while we recruited suitable replacement personnel.”

  Lucas shrugged. “That worked. Megan agreed to stay on as long as necessary for the transition process.”

  “I thought you’d stand a better chance of persuading Megan to stay than I would, but I think I’ll have to talk to her myself after all.”

  “I agree, but I suggest you allow her a few days to calm down first.”

  “I suppose that’s best.”

  “There are actually some advantages in leaving Megan’s status in doubt for a little longer,” said Lucas. “Technically, the Senior Administrator is responsible for recruiting new unit members. Imagine the potential complications of Megan recruiting a new counsellor for you.”

  I imagined them and winced.

  “We currently have the opportunity to recruit your new counsellor without involving Megan, and also to establish that counsellor’s position in our unit organizational structure.”

  “Is that important?”

  “It’s very important. If we persuade Megan to stay on as Senior Administrator, she’ll expect your new counsellor to report to her.”

  I shuddered. “We can’t allow that. We’d end up with Megan telling my counsellor what to discuss with me, and there’d be precisely the same problems as before. My counsellor will have to report to you instead.”

  “Megan shouldn’t be giving orders to your counsellor, but neither should I. Your counsellor has to have the status of an independent specialist, with the sole responsibility of ensuring your mental wellbeing. It would avoid arguments if we establish that before confirming Megan in her new role.”

  “You’re right. I’d better see Buzz this morning then.”

  Lucas nodded, picked up his dataview from a side table, and headed off into the shower room. I went across to the bedroom storage wall, opened it, and studied my clothes. On the left, was an array of untouched, prestigious clothes that my mother had suggested I should wear now I was Level 1 and head of my own unit. On the right, were my battered and faded clothes from Teen Level, which I no longer wore these days but somehow didn’t want to throw away. In the middle, were the clothes I really did wear, which were a more respectable, higher level version of my old ones from Teen Level.

  I was still staring at the clothes when Lucas returned to the bedroom, his wet hair dripping water onto the equally wet dataview he was holding. I’d spent my years on Teen Level taking paranoid care of a basic model dataview that could suffer terminal damage from water. Intellectually, I knew Lucas and I had the same models of dataview that the Strike team used, designed to survive their owner crawling through the revolting liquids of the waste system, falling off ladders, or being thrown around in combat. On some deeper level of my mind, I still found it disconcerting that Lucas would casually work on his dataview in the shower or even when swimming.

  Lucas gave a last tap at his dataview, tossed it on a side table, and started getting dressed. “Why are you staring at your clothes as if you’re afraid that they’ll bite you?”

  “I’m not sure what to wear to meet Buzz,” I said. “Whether to dress formally or not.”

  Lucas shook his head, sending water droplets flying in all directions. “You’re a telepath. You’ve no need to use clothes to proclaim your status, especially not to your own counsellor.”

  “The clothes issue isn’t about status. It’s … It’s a game.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Lucas.

  “Buzz has a system of dressing appropriately for the people she’s treating. When I was a teen, she wore cheap, colourful, basic clothes. I’m trying to work out what she’ll wear to meet a true telepath, so I can dress to match it.”

  “You mean this is a psychological game like playing rock, paper, scissors?”

  I’d no idea what Lucas was talking about, cheated by checking his mind, and discovered him thinking about an archaic game where two people made hand gestures to indicate one of three choices, each of which would defeat one of the others.

  “It’s a bit like that,” I said.

  “What do you want for breakfast?”

  After my restless night, my stomach was desperate for food. “Everything.”

  Lucas laughed and wandered off. I went to have a shower myself, and then stared at my clothes again. How would Buzz think of true telepaths? Would she see them as rare, valuable or useful? Would she wear an outfit that was ornate or just formal?

  I heard a distant bing that meant the kitchen unit had finished preparing breakfast. I groaned, grabbed an official-looking onesuit, and rapidly dressed.

  I found Lucas sitting at the table, eating his breakfast, and inevitably staring at his dataview. I picked up my own heavily laden plate from the kitchen unit dispensing tray, and sat next to him.

  He put his dataview aside and smiled at me. “I see you decided to dress formally.”

  I didn’t reply. I’d just taken a bite of over-hot potato slices, and was urgently gulping down a glass of melon juice.

  Lucas’s dataview made a chiming noise. He glanced at the screen. “Buzz is on her way to the unit.”

  I instinctively tensed. Yesterday, my Strike team had gone into full flight mode to avoid me meeting another true telepath. This morning, I was going to meet a borderline telepath. I reminded myself that not only was everyone sure this was safe for me, but I’d actually met Buzz before without having any problems.

  “I’ve asked Adika to meet Buzz and take her t
o one of the community rooms,” continued Lucas.

  I was confused. “Why a community room? I usually do initial telepathic checks in a meeting room.”

  “The community rooms we use for social events are a more relaxed setting than a formal meeting room. They’re also closer to the lifts if we want Buzz to leave quickly.”

  I frowned. “You seem to expect Buzz’s visit to be a disaster.”

  “I’m not expecting it to be a disaster, but any attempt to bring in a new counsellor at this stage has a high failure risk. The fact you already know Buzz increases the chance this will work, but I have to be prepared for all eventualities.”

  We’d nearly finished eating breakfast, and I was wondering what Adika would think of Buzz, when I caught his annoyed thoughts nearby. For security reasons, Adika’s apartment was directly opposite mine, and he’d just come out of his front door.

  … unnecessary for Lucas to bring a stranger into our unit. If he needs to consult with someone, he could …

  … not even answering my messages now. If Megan doesn’t feel I’m worth five minutes of her time, then there’s absolutely no reason for me to …

  Adika strode down the corridor to the row of lifts. As he reached them, his dataview chimed with a message saying the visitor had been scanned to check her identity and ensure she was clean of weapons. She was now heading up in lift 3.

  Adika tapped his foot impatiently as he waited outside lift 3. The lift doors finally opened, and I felt his startled reaction to the sight of the visitor. Adika had checked her identity record earlier, and had an image in his mind of an elegantly dressed young woman, with a professional expression on the face that was nearly as dark as her neatly ordered black hair. The girl facing him now was obviously the same person, but her hair was curling in wild disorder, and she was wearing a red top and skirt in one of the basic styles worn by girls on Teen Level.

  Ungroomed and unprofessional to the point of being deliberately insulting. Lucas is really scraping the bottom of a slime vat consulting someone so …

  … contrast with Megan’s immaculate clothes and …

  I burst out laughing.

  “What is the joke?” asked Lucas’s voice.

  “My idea was totally wrong. Buzz isn’t dressed to meet a telepath. She’s dressed to meet me. She’s wearing the same outfit as when I first met her.”

  I closed my eyes to concentrate on Adika’s thoughts. He took a scanner from his pocket, waved it at Buzz, and spoke in tones of rigid disapproval. “Identity confirmed as Simone 2512-1004-106.”

  “That’s right, but everyone calls me Buzz.”

  As Buzz spoke, I left the familiar territory of Adika’s mind and reached out towards her instead. Her thoughts had a strange colour, taste, texture to them and were hard to read at first, but then they abruptly came into focus.

  … has to be Amber’s Strike team leader with that dominant stance and …

  … man has the muscles of a structural pillar …

  … body language screaming anger. What’s been happening in this unit to …?

  “Your official identity is Simone 2512-1004-106.” Adika’s voice was even harsher now. “Should you be required to visit here again, I suggest you wear more formal clothes.”

  The part of me that was Amber was worried by his rudeness, but Buzz’s thought levels were rippling with amusement. “How would you react if I advised you on what weapons you should carry?”

  … while he’s working out what to say to that, and deciding it’s safest to say nothing at all, I should drive home the attack. Best bewitching smile and hold out my right hand, pressuring him to shake it.

  He’s trying to ignore it, but getting uncomfortable. One second, two seconds, three seconds, and the man of granite is starting to feel foolish. I keep pushing him, and … Yes, I’ve got him! He reaches out to shake my hand and … I don’t get an insight from him. Well, it was worth a try. Physical contact sometimes helps, but in this case …

  “This way please.” Adika turned to lead the way down a corridor, and …

  ** Insight**

  Ah, the human structural pillar is suffering from sexual frustration not anger. If the man was just a little younger, I’d be tempted to help him with that problem. Imagine what it would be like to …

  Buzz’s thoughts blurred into graphic images that would have shocked me before I went through Lottery. Now my Alpha and Beta Strike teams were both composed of eighteen-year-old young men, so I’d seen stray fantasies covering most things that were physically possible, as well as several that weren’t.

  I wasn’t bothered by the images in Buzz’s mind, but I’d learnt what I needed to know, so I pulled out of her thoughts. When I opened my eyes, I was startled to find Lucas had moved his chair closer to me, and was staring intently at my face.

  “You were reading Buzz then?” he asked.

  “Yes. I don’t think her borderline telepathy will worry me. I saw the moment when she had what she calls an insight. It wasn’t really like reading thoughts. More like seeing a flicker of light in the corner of your eye, hearing a few bars of music, or …”

  I stood up. “I have to change out of this hideously uncomfortable onesuit and go and see Buzz.”

  I dashed into the bedroom, yanked off the onesuit, dressed in a random set of my ordinary clothes, and sprinted for the apartment door. As I went out into the corridor, I heard the sound of Lucas’s laughter from behind me.

  Chapter Eight

  When I entered the community room, I found Buzz sitting in one of several comfortable chairs, while Adika glowered at her from another. Adika stood up, and gave me a puzzled look.

  “I thought our visitor was here to talk to Lucas.”

  “Slight change of plan,” I said happily. “She’s talking to me instead.”

  “I’d better stay until you’ve checked …”

  “No, I’ve already done that. Everything is fine.”

  Adika seemed even more puzzled now, but he went out of the door and closed it behind him.

  Buzz gave me one of the infectious grins I remembered from when I’d known her on Teen Level. “I’m afraid I’ve been teasing your Strike team leader, but I’ve a suspicion you were … watching that.”

  “Yes.” I sat down in Adika’s chair. “You look exactly the same as when I first met you.”

  “I did my best to look the same.” Buzz studied me for a moment. “You look different. Not just a year or so older but more experienced. Of course you’ve been through a lot recently.”

  “Yes, I have.” I rushed into asking the question that had been nagging at me. “When we first met at that medical facility, did you notice anything … unusual … about me? Did your insights tell you that I was a true telepath?”

  “I noticed something when we first met,” said Buzz, “but that first meeting wasn’t in the medical facility. It was in a lift.”

  “What? When did we meet in a lift?”

  Buzz gave me a wary look. “It was when you were on a wheeled stretcher being taken down in a lift to the medical facility. Do you remember a telepath squad came into the lift with you?”

  “I could never forget that. The nosy arrested the paramedic who was …” I let the words trail off. “Are you saying that …?”

  She nodded guiltily. “I was the nosy. When telepath squads are doing standard patrols of the Hive, an ordinary hasty with a talent for acting will dress up to play the part of the nosy, but on special occasions a borderline telepath does it. This was one of those special occasions. Sapphire’s Tactical team had been investigating a case of a girl being harassed. Anonymous threatening calls. Notes being pushed under her apartment door.”

  Buzz shrugged. “Tracking the calls proved the girl’s ex-boyfriend was behind it, so the Tactical team didn’t bother Sapphire with the case, just referred it to me to be dealt with as a nosy publicity exercise. That’s when a borderline telepath goes out dressed as a nosy, intercepts the suspect person, and pretends they were walk
ing past by chance and saw something incriminating in their thoughts. Once the borderline telepath has used their insights to confirm the person’s guilt, they get their hasty squad to arrest them.”

  With only five true telepaths in the Hive, there was always a huge queue of areas with warning signs that were waiting for a check run. I’d known that Tactical teams reduced the burden by referring straightforward cases to be dealt with by hasties or borderline telepaths, but not what happened after that. I muttered a single, stunned syllable. “Oh.”

  “Anyone could dress up as a nosy, and go through the pretence,” continued Buzz, “but it’s done by a borderline telepath as a safeguard that no mistake has been made. The idea is to help build up the myth that the nosies are telepaths, not destroy it by arresting the wrong person.”

  “I see.”

  “What happened back then was that I went into the lift with my hasty squad and went through the standard, scary routine with your paramedic. Heightened emotions in a subject probably make no difference to a true telepath, but they help a borderline telepath like me get a clear insight.”

  Buzz paused. “You aren’t saying very much. I felt I should explain the truth about how we met right away. If it’s going to be a problem, then we’d better discover that now rather than later.”

  “Before I went through Lottery, I believed the nosies were real,” I said, speaking slowly because I was still working out my own feelings. “I was terrified of them. I hated the idea of them reading my mind. Being stuck in that lift with a nosy squad was traumatic. I was strapped to a stretcher, with an inhuman nosy looking down at me, snooping through my thoughts. Discovering that nosy was you … Well, it’s a shock.”

  “When I was a child, I believed the nosies were real too,” said Buzz. “For me, they were just creepy creatures that made me feel uncomfortable, but some of my friends had a deep-seated revulsion of them. If you think this is a terminal issue for you, then just say so.”

  “I don’t know if it’s a terminal issue or not. I’ve got two separate reactions going on in my head. Part of me is reliving the terror I felt back then. Another part of me is looking at it with the knowledge I have now. The truth is that you were only doing your job, arresting someone who was likely to be a danger to his ex-girlfriend, while promoting the myths that deter criminals and keep the Hive a safe place.”