My father finally found his voice. “What sort of research will you be doing?”
“I’m afraid I’m not allowed to tell you any details. It’s classified.”
“If you’re Level 1, you must have an important post at this Research Unit,” he said.
“It’s my Research Unit,” I said. “It’s being specially set up to help me with my work. That means …”
“Your own Research Unit!” My mother turned to look to her left. “Gregas!” she yelled. “Your sister’s got her own Research Unit!”
There was a grunt from somewhere off image. I could tell that Gregas was much less thrilled than my mother. I could see his point. He had a Level 1 older sister with her own Research Unit. Anything he did now, short of inventing the elixir of life, was going to be an anti-climax.
“I’ll be wildly busy for the next few weeks,” I said, “but once my Research Unit is ready you can come and visit me. I won’t be able to show you the unit work areas for security reasons, but you can see my apartment.”
“We understand,” said my father.
“You’ll be tired after the imprinting, so we’d better let you go.” My mother’s expression suddenly changed to something vulnerable and anxious. “You’ll keep in touch?”
“I’ll keep in touch.” I knew my parents really needed the reassurance of me visiting them in person, but I wouldn’t be able to do that for weeks. I thought of something that would please my mother. “I’ll need you to advise me about clothes. I’ve no idea what to wear now I’m Level 1.”
“That’s a good point,” said my mother. “You can’t keep wearing your old teen clothes in your new position.”
“I’ve no time for shopping right now,” I said. “Could you find some clothes you think would look good on me and mail me the details? I can order some of those to start with, and later we can go shopping together.”
“I’d love that,” said my mother. “We can go to the 500/5000 shopping area on Level 1. The finest shops in the Hive!”
I laughed at the delight in her face, said goodbye, watched my parents’ holo images vanish, and gave a sigh of relief. I’d told them a host of lies, but at least the lies had made them happy.
I went back into the bedroom, and picked up the cube that held all the holos of my time on Teen Level. I hadn’t played them since the last day of Carnival. I wanted to play them now, but almost every image of my friends would include Forge. If I watched them again, I’d be taking my teen fixation with him into my new life.
There was only one way to stop myself doing that, so I did it. It was surprisingly hard to smash the small cube. Not just mentally hard but physically as well, because it was a tough little thing, and stubbornly dented rather than breaking in pieces. I had to pound it with a chair for several minutes before it shattered into sad little fragments. I collected them up, cutting my right forefinger on a sharp edge, and dumped the lot down the waste chute.
It was done. I’d made a clean break with the past, and could focus on the future. I’d hoped that Lottery would make me high level, and it had made me Level 1 but a telepath. I wasn’t sure if that was a dream come true or a nightmare.
Chapter Five
“You need to go deeper into my mind,” said Megan.
“I can’t.” I snapped the words at her. We’d been sitting at a table in my apartment all morning. We’d spent most of the previous two days sitting here as well. We didn’t seem to be making any progress at all, and I was getting increasingly tired and frustrated.
“You’re still just picking up pre-vocalization,” she said. Her lips weren’t moving, I was taking the words straight from her mind, but effectively she was saying them. “When you pick up …”
“I know,” I interrupted. “You keep repeating this over and over. It’s not enough to read the words someone is preparing to say aloud. I need to go deeper, and read the level beneath with their private thoughts and plans. You keep telling me what I need to do, but you aren’t telling me how to do it.”
“I can’t tell you how to do it, because I’m not a true telepath,” she said, or thought.
“Then why don’t you get one of the other true telepaths to teach me? Why haven’t you told me anything about them? I don’t even know their names.”
Megan’s thoughts seem to freeze for a moment before starting up again. “The other telepaths are Morton, Sapphire, Mira, and Keith. I worked for Keith as a Deputy Administrator before accepting the position as your Senior Administrator.”
“What is Keith like?”
“Giving you more information about the other true telepaths would merely distract you at this stage in your learning process,” said Megan. “They can’t teach you because they’re far too busy to come here, and you can’t return to the Hive until you’ve learnt to control your ability.”
“Get a borderline telepath to help me then.”
“Borderline telepaths can’t help you achieve a telepathic depth and control that they don’t have themselves,” said Megan. “You can do this, Amber. Try to go deeper into my mind.”
“You could at least explain to me why I need to learn these things. I keep asking you questions, and you keep avoiding answering them. What are you hiding from me? What does a Telepath Unit do?”
“I’m not hiding anything from you, Amber,” said Megan. “I’m only a Senior Administrator. I could tell you all about the day to day running of a Telepath Unit, all the trivial details of general maintenance and ordering supplies, but you don’t want to know about those things. You want to learn about the operational side of a Telepath Unit. Your Tactical Commander will be in charge of that, and it’s his decision how best to explain your role to you.”
I groaned. “Let me talk to my Tactical Commander then.”
“Your Tactical Commander can’t give you instructional guidance yet because he hasn’t been confirmed in his post. All your team leaders need to come here and be approved by you before their appointments are finalized.”
“Then get my Tactical Commander here so I can approve him!”
Megan gave me her maddeningly calm smile. “Contact with too many minds can be dangerous for a newly emergent telepath. Your team leaders can’t come here until you’ve learned to control your ability.”
I thumped the palms of my hands on the table. I was tempted to bang my head on it too. Better yet, I should bang Megan’s head on the table. Every time I tried to get her to answer questions, I got stuck in one of these circular arguments.
Megan looked down at my hands, and her smile changed to an anxious frown. “Your finger is bleeding, Amber. I should put a protective dressing on it.”
I glanced down and saw I’d knocked the scab off the cut on my right forefinger. Given Megan’s expression of doom, anyone would have thought it was spurting torrents of blood instead of oozing a single tiny drop.
“I don’t need a dressing on a microscopic cut.”
“It may be a very small cut,” said Megan, “but it’s still an open wound that could become infected.”
I thrust my hands out of sight under the table. “I’ve survived eighteen years of cuts and bruises without anyone covering them in protective dressings.”
Megan sighed. “Let’s get back to work then. Try going deeper into my mind. Look for what’s beneath the pre-vocalized thought level. Focus on …”
“It’s no use!” I stood up and screamed the words at her. “I’ve tried a thousand times already.”
… need patience to achieve the breakthrough that …
… still can’t believe my good luck being offered this. A Senior Administrator position at last, and the fresh start I desperately needed after …
… had to resign. It wasn’t just my feelings when I looked at Keith, but his feelings when he looked at me. Constantly reminding him of Dean’s death. Constantly reminding him of his failure and …
… his fault, his stupid, arrogant, lazy fault. If Keith had done his job, the Strike team would have known Dean was w
ounded. They’d have been able to reach him before he bled to death, and …
Dean! He’s dead and everything’s gone with him. All our plans. The children we’ll never have now.
Ashes blowing in the artificial wind of the park.
I’d broken through to Megan’s deeper thoughts, but there wasn’t just one set of them. I was sucked down into her mind, through layer after layer of thoughts and emotions, feeling her grief and her pain, becoming her instead of Amber.
I don’t know how long I was caught there, being Megan, lost in her emotional turmoil, before my survival instincts kicked in. I fought my way back to the surface of her mind, like a drowning swimmer desperate for air. I stared at my face – no, that was Megan’s face, not mine – still dazed with shock.
“Judging from your face, you managed it that time,” said Megan.
“You didn’t feel me in your mind?”
She shook her head. “Not a thing. People can’t.”
She hadn’t felt anything, but I’d felt all her emotions as if they were my own. Megan hadn’t warned me that reading deeper thought levels would be like this.
“I’d like to be alone for a while.”
She nodded, stood up, and left the room. I waited until the door was safely closed before I allowed myself to start crying. Mourning for my husband, Dean. Grieving for the stupid, senseless loss of his precious life, and the children we’d never have.
I’d thought I needed to be imprinted to grow up. I’d been wrong. I felt a hundred years old.
Chapter Six
After a week of only Megan’s mind amid total silence, there were three new people in Hive Futura. I’d been practising controlling my telepathic abilities with Megan over the last few days. Now I could open up my telepathic view of the world to see the shapes of three unfamiliar minds nearby, or pull down a mental curtain to protect myself from them.
In theory, that meant I should be in total control of this situation, but the experience of being hit by Megan’s grief had taught me the difference between theory and reality. I’d learnt to avoid the dangerous depths inside Megan’s head, and keep in the safety of the shallows just below pre-vocalization, but I’d no idea what new emotional whirlpools might lurk inside these strangers.
“We need you to approve or reject your three operational team leader candidates at this point,” said Megan. “They can’t start selecting their team members until their own appointments are confirmed.”
We were sitting in a room in my apartment, lounging in two of several comfortable chairs. Megan showed me the holos of three people. I studied them anxiously.
“Their names are Lucas, Adika, and Fran,” Megan continued.
“Do I really have to read their minds?”
“You must read the minds of everyone in your unit before their appointment is confirmed, Amber. If there’s anything in their heads that makes you feel uncomfortable, then it’s much better to find out at the start and reject them than have it cause problems later.”
I was feeling nervous. My team candidates were probably feeling even more nervous. Their future careers depended totally on my personal whim. I could see that in Megan’s thoughts right now. She’d chosen the best qualified team leaders she could, but they were replaceable and I wasn’t. I had to be begged, bribed, cosseted, whatever it took to keep me happy and doing what the Hive needed. I could demand anyone should be fired, and they would have to go.
That was what Megan had meant when she told me I was in charge. I would be the notional head of my Telepath Unit, not because I was capable of making any useful decisions, but because true telepaths had to be kept happy. I could throw a childish tantrum, whine, scream, and demand anything I wanted, and people would have to obey.
True telepaths had to be kept happy. I kept hitting that over and over again in Megan’s thoughts. The fact was connected to something deeper down in her mind, something she didn’t want to tell me. I’d tried investigating it, but whatever Megan was hiding was surrounded by a wall of powerful emotions. There was a lot of fear in there, and grief that somehow merged into her grief for her dead husband. The combined effect of those emotions overwhelmed me whenever I tried to get past them.
“Which of your team leader candidates would you like to read first?” asked Megan.
There were two men and one woman, and I felt another woman’s mind would be easier. “I think I’ll start with Fran.”
“Fran is your candidate for the Liaison team leader position,” said Megan. “You may find some initial tension when you enter her mind. She’s been highly successful in several similar team leader positions, but she hasn’t worked in a Telepath Unit before.”
“What does the Liaison team do?” I asked.
“They collect data and co-ordinate unit operations with the rest of the Hive.”
That meant nothing to me. The woman in the holo looked as if she was somewhere between forty and fifty years old. She had an emotionless, professional smile that hardly changed during the short, repeating holo sequence, but Megan had managed to hide all surface signs of her grief behind a similar smile. If I was hit with something equally drastic, and embarrassed myself by crying again, then I didn’t want an audience watching it.
“I’d rather see Fran alone,” I said.
Megan sighed, but turned off the holo images and left the room.
A minute later, Fran entered. I gestured at a chair opposite me, she sat down, and there was an awkward silence. I forced myself to speak.
“Megan said you hadn’t worked in a Telepath Unit before. You understand that I have to …?”
Fran nodded. “I understand there is an initial check.”
I reached out to her thoughts. I’d read Megan so often during our training sessions, that her mind had become familiar territory. Fran’s mind had a different … sound, taste, texture to it. I hesitated at the surface, adjusting, reading the pre-vocalized words.
I am calm and helpful and have no problem with this. I am calm and helpful and have no problem with this. I am calm and helpful and have no problem with this.
I was startled. Fran was repeating the words, over and over, inside her own head. I wasn’t sure if she was trying to convince herself or me, but either way it was obvious they weren’t true. It prepared me for the tension I saw on the next level down.
… have to do this or I lose the promotion of a lifetime. Everyone would think …
I moved on to the level below that, and was hit by bitter resentment.
Sneaking, prying nosy!
I recoiled out of her mind. Fran loathed the idea of me reading her thoughts. I didn’t know how to react to that. I had to get her out of this room so I could think.
I forced a smile. “Thank you, Fran. You’ve been very helpful. Please ask Megan to come back.”
Fran’s face lit up with relief. She believed her ridiculous chant had hidden her resentment, and she’d got the post as my Liaison team leader. I watched her eagerly leave the room, and wondered what I should do now.
The easy way out would be to reject Fran, but I remembered all the times I’d been part of hostile crowds, chanting tables as a grey-masked nosy went by. How could I blame Fran, reject Fran, for feeling exactly the same way that I’d felt myself?
Megan came back into the room. “What did you think about Fran? Was she tense?”
I tried to keep my voice calm as I answered her. “Yes. I suppose that’s natural. I won’t have to read her again?”
“The only people in your unit that you must read on a regular basis are the members of your Strike team, but the telepath has the right to read anyone’s mind at any time. All candidates for Telepath Unit positions understand that and are happy about it.”
I didn’t believe Fran was happy about it, but if reading her mind wasn’t necessary for my work then I wouldn’t be doing it. My mood abruptly changed from uncertainty to grim determination. I was going to prove to Fran that I was totally different from the hated, prying nosies that had frig
htened me as a child. I’d show her that I’d only read minds when necessary for the good of my Hive, and then she’d accept me.
I needed Fran to accept me. My hatred of nosies hadn’t vanished when I learned I was a telepath myself. It lingered on as a nagging voice in the corner of my mind, telling me that I was a vile and disgusting thing. If Fran accepted me, then perhaps I could accept myself, and that nagging voice would leave me in peace. I could be happy then, remember all the Hive Obligations and Duty songs we’d learned in school, and celebrate the fact I was Level 1 and valuable to my Hive.
I glanced at the images on the wall. “Adika next.”
“Adika is your candidate for the Strike team leader position,” said Megan. “When Mira was discovered during Lottery seventeen years ago, Adika came out of Lottery as one of her Strike team members. Ten years later, he moved to become a deputy Strike team leader for Morton.”
I didn’t ask what the Strike team did. I already knew their work was dangerous, because I’d been seeing that fact every day in Megan’s mind. Her husband, Dean, had been a Strike team member in Keith’s Telepath Unit. It was barely a month since Dean had been wounded on a mission and bled to death. However much Megan concentrated on training me, there was always a deep part of her mind brooding on her loss.
On a conscious level, Megan believed that true telepaths were incredibly valuable to the Hive and must not be criticized or rebuked. On a subconscious level, she believed that Dean would be alive today if Keith hadn’t been so selfishly lazy and arrogant. The two parts of her mind were fighting a constant war.
Megan went out of the room, and a minute later Adika came in. The holo sequence of his dark face hadn’t prepared me for just how powerfully built the man was, and the way his presence dominated the room. I couldn’t guess his age by looking at him. If he’d been through Lottery seventeen years ago, then he must be thirty-five now, a few years older than Megan.
He sat down, and gave a relaxed nod that seemed to be an invitation to go ahead. I braced myself, reached out to a mind with such sharply defined edges that it could have been carved with a chisel, and tapped warily into his surface thoughts.