Telepath (Hive Mind Book 1) (8 page)

He broke off, and turned
his head to look towards the door. I realized that Megan had come back in and
was watching us. She had an odd expression on her face.

“Is there a problem?” I
asked.

“No,” she said. “It’s just
that this has been taking a very long time. I came to see if you were all
right.”

“I’m fine,” I said. “Lucas
has been explaining how Telepath Units work.”

Megan gave me a bewildered
look. “But he was just gabbling a list of random words. Divide. Target. Trouble.
Irreplaceable.”

Lucas laughed. “Megan, you
know that I sometimes miss out the obvious, trivial words in sentences to save
time.”

“Yes,” she said bitterly,
“but what’s an obvious word to you isn’t necessarily obvious to other people. As
I keep telling you, it doesn’t save time if the rest of us don’t understand
what you’re saying.”

“But Amber
does
understand,” said Lucas. “I tried abbreviating sentences further, and she still
understood. I found I could go right down to using the occasional key word to
anchor my mental logic train.”

He turned to give me a
joyous grin. “I’ve never been able to talk to someone this way before. It’s incredible.”

I couldn’t help grinning
back at him. “Surely you could talk to Keith in the same way?”

Lucas and Megan exchanged
glances. “The situation with Keith was different,” said Lucas.

“So you’re happy with
Lucas as your Tactical Commander, Amber?” asked Megan.

“Definitely,” I said.

“That’s good.” She gave
Lucas an oddly doubtful look, and went back out of the room.

Lucas turned back to me.
“You understand what a true telepath does now?”

“Yes, but there are a
hundred million people in our Hive, and only five true telepaths. That’s twenty
million people each.”

He nodded.

“What if we miss finding
one of the wild bees?”

He looked down at the
floor. “If the list of areas that need checking is too long, then we may not
get to one before the wild bee injures or kills someone. That means an emergency
response, to locate and apprehend the target before more people get hurt.”

I shook my head in
disbelief. “I’ve never heard of a criminal hurting or killing anyone. The
nosies don’t let …”

I broke off. The nosies
were fake. There were only five true telepaths. One of those five was me.

Lucas lifted his head
again. “Liaison invents unfortunate accidents to cover up such incidents. That’s
better than having others tempted to copy the actions of a wild bee. Better
than having a hundred million people living in fear.”

He paused for a moment.
“The faster any suspect areas are checked, the fewer emergency runs happen. Once
our unit is operational, we’ll be able to help ease the strain on the other
Telepath Units.”

I glimpsed Morton’s name
flashing by on level three of Lucas’s express thoughts. He was thinking about
the other telepaths. Eager for more information about them, I chased after that
thought train.

… hope I’m not imagining
seeing Morton and Sapphire’s strength in her. We mustn’t lose Amber. Olivia
collapsing under pressure was bad enough, but York …

There was more information
in other linked thought levels, as well as emotional pain and far too much graphic
imagery. I hastily pulled out of Lucas’s mind, but I couldn’t unsee the things
I’d seen.

“Megan’s right though,” I
said, trying to keep my voice under control. “This has taken a long time and
I’m getting tired.”

Lucas stood up. “We’ll
continue this conversation another time then. You mustn’t overstrain yourself
reading new minds at this stage.”

I didn’t trust myself to
answer that, so I kept silent as he walked out of the room, and then buried my
face in my hands. I’d thought the Hive had four other true telepaths, but the
truth was that there were five and should have been six.

Olivia had come out of
Lottery eight years ago, collapsed under the strain of the work, and could barely
use her telepathy at all now. York had come out of Lottery thirty years ago, and
killed himself a few months later.

This was what Megan had
been hiding from me. This was why I was smothered in luxuries, and why my every
whim would be granted without argument. True telepaths had to be kept as happy
as possible, because they could break under the strain of their work.

I handed a glass of deep red juice
to Lucas. He accepted it without taking his eyes from his dataview display. I picked
up my own glass of melon juice, went to lounge on Lucas’s couch, and watched
the cascading thoughts in his head.

I’d spent a lot of time in
Lucas’s apartment over the last week. I preferred it to my own for two reasons.
One was that it wasn’t so intimidatingly large and luxurious. The other was
that it had Lucas in it. I’d solemnly explained to Megan that studying Lucas’s
mind was excellent training for me as a telepath, far better than the exercises
I was doing with her. She’d politely accepted that verbally, while her mind was
filled with protective concern and lurid speculation about what else was going
on while the two of us were locked away together.

I frowned as the colour, nature,
taste of Lucas’s mind abruptly darkened. Baffled, I tried to make sense of the words
gabbling away in his mind as he read the rapidly scrolling information, but they
were too technical for me.

“What are you reading,
Lucas?” I asked.

“The data feed from yesterday’s
Joint Tactical Meeting. That’s when the Tactical teams from all the Telepath
Units link up in a conference call to exchange ideas and data on problem areas.
My ex boss, Keith’s Tactical Commander, wants my opinion on the latest events
in Orange Zone.”

“Around 600/2600 again?” I
knew Lucas was deeply worried about that area of the Hive. He spent a lot of
time thinking about it, desperately trying to find a pattern to the oddities
there.

“Yes.” The data feed ended.
Lucas tapped his dataview to turn off the display, and slammed back into his chair.
I didn’t need telepathy to sense his mood. I could almost physically feel his
frustration.

“Gaius is right,” he said.
“There’s still something wrong about that area. No big trouble in the last two
weeks, but far too many minor things, and they’re spread virtually evenly across
the levels which is highly unusual.”

“What’s Keith planning to
do about it?”

“Nothing!” Lucas said
savagely. “Keith says he’s checked there twice already. He’s found nothing because
there’s nothing to find. We should quit bothering him with a statistical anomaly.”

Lucas thought there was a
wild bee in 600/2600. Keith had tried to find him or her, failed, and given up.
I believed in Lucas. “When we get back to our Hive, do you want me to go over
there and take a look?”

“No, Amber!” Lucas swung his
chair round to face me. “We’re not staffed yet. You must never go near any
suspect area without a full Strike team guarding you, and especially not near this
one. The pattern is entirely wrong. There’s no obvious motivation factor. It doesn’t
match a single target or two targets working together. It doesn’t distribute
like two independent targets. It doesn’t make any sense at all, which is why
I’m so worried about it.”

I sipped from my glass,
and put it down on the small table next to me. “When our unit’s operational
then.”

Lucas considered that. “Yes,
once we’re operational, it would be helpful if our unit takes over responsibility
for area 600/2600. Now Keith’s decided there’s no problem there, it’s impossible
for Gaius to make any progress with it.”

I let the issue of area
600/2600 drop, and asked the question that had been bothering me for days. “Why
can’t I meet the other true telepaths?”

“Inadvisable,” said Lucas.

“Why? Surely they’re the
best people to teach me how to do my job.”

Both Megan and Adika had reacted
in confusion to this question. I was curious to see how Lucas would respond. He
didn’t disappoint me.

“I don’t know,” he said.
“I’m imprinted with the fact, but not the reason. Very strange.”

“I can tell it’s an
imprinted fact, because it has no memories or emotions attached to it.
Imprinted facts usually seem to be very impersonal.”

“Imprinted facts should
always
be totally impersonal,” said Lucas. “The data can include objective reasons and
ancillary data, but any private memories and feelings should be strictly
excluded. It’s horribly easy to cause unwanted emotional side-effects when you
use either imprinting techniques or hypnotics. That’s why the teens in Lottery
are encouraged to avoid contact with each other.”

I was startled by this revelation
of the reason behind the Lottery custom of silence. “It is? You mean some of
the tests use hypnotics.”

He nodded. “Those interact
with the subconscious, and could escalate a casual flirtation between two of
the subjects into something they’d regret after the hypnotics wore off.”

That was interesting, but I
didn’t want to be distracted from my original question. “Megan and Adika don’t
know the reason why I shouldn’t meet other telepaths either. Why would all your
imprints exclude it?”

I watched Lucas’s mind
tackle the issue on multiple levels, the thoughts accelerating to a speed I
couldn’t follow, before reaching a conclusion.

“To keep the information
from telepaths. You can’t directly read the imprinted data in our minds, but
you can see it in our heads when we think about it. You should try to forget
about this issue, Amber.”

“You aren’t curious about
what’s being kept secret from us? You aren’t going to try to find out what it
is?”

“Yes, I’m curious,” said
Lucas, “but my imprint includes some very nasty facts. Things that are kept
secret from the general population of the Hive to avoid terrifying people. I
recommend that you pull out of my mind if you see me thinking about them,
because the details are horrific and you don’t need to know them. I often wish
I didn’t know them myself, but I have to be informed about these things to do
my job.”

He paused. “My point is
that the reason you shouldn’t meet other telepaths could turn out to be
something even worse. Something that both of us would regret learning. Something
that could leave either or both of us traumatized. You’re a newly emergent
telepath, Amber. The next few months will be hard for you. I’m not going to try
to learn information that could make your life even more difficult.”

I deliberately pulled out
of Lucas’s mind before I said the next sentence. “You’re worried it could
increase the risk of me ending up like Olivia or York.”

There was a short silence
before Lucas spoke. “I thought you must know about them by now. Your staff have
to be fully informed about what happened to Olivia, York, and other telepaths
in prior centuries, so we can help guard against you suffering similar
problems. We can’t stop ourselves thinking about them, and you’re too good a
telepath to miss seeing those thoughts in our minds. You weren’t saying
anything about it though, and Megan agreed with me that it was best to let you
raise the subject in your own time.”

“I think this is the
time,” I said.

“What happened to Olivia
and York won’t happen to you, Amber.”

“You think the Hive can
stop me from breaking under the strain by giving me a luxurious apartment to
live in and my favourite foods to eat?”

“Of course not. We’ll do
everything we can to help you be happy and relaxed when you aren’t working, but
that can only help a little. What will make the real difference is that you
have deep reserves of inner strength.”

Lucas sounded as if he
believed what he was saying. I didn’t dare to check his mind to see if that was
really true. If Lucas had doubts about my ability to cope, then I didn’t want
to see them. I had too many doubts of my own.

My dataview chimed with an
incoming call. I pulled it from my pocket, tapped it to make it unfurl, and saw
who was calling. I pulled a graphic face of despair at Lucas before hitting the
accept call button.

“Yes, Megan, what is it?”

“It’s nearly time for your
next training exercise.”

I forced a smile. “We’re
not due to start the next training exercise for another twenty minutes. Lucas
and I have been discussing the latest developments in 600/2600, and whether our
unit should take over responsibility for that area once we’re operational. I’ll
join you as soon as we’ve finished the conversation.”

I held the smile while I
ended the call, then indulged myself with a faint scream.

Lucas laughed.

“It’s not funny,” I said. “I
understand that Megan’s primary role is protecting my physical and mental wellbeing,
in the same way that Adika’s primary role is protecting me from attack, but she
takes it much too far. If I bump my elbow, or cut a finger, Megan acts as if
I’m terminally wounded, and just look at the way she’s making excuses to get me
out of your apartment. Anyone would think she wasn’t my Senior Administrator
but my mother!”

I was drifting among the
top levels of Lucas’s mind again now, and caught his amused reaction to my
words. “What? Lottery selected Megan to act as her telepath’s mother? You may
think that’s funny, Lucas, but I don’t. I’m not letting Megan replace my own
mother!”

He cowered at the anger in
my voice. “Respectfully point out that you have a strong relationship with both
your parents. Many people aren’t that fortunate. I’ve no contact at all with either
of my parents.”

“Oh.” My anger instantly
faded, and I pulled out of his mind again while I thought for a moment. “I
didn’t know that. I’m sorry.”

I wondered what had gone
wrong between Lucas and his parents. The obvious answer was that Lottery had
made Lucas Level 1, and he’d cold-bloodedly dumped his low-level parents. That
idea worried me.

“Can I ask why you’ve no
contact with them?”

He groaned. “It’s all in
my head, Amber. You can just read it.”

“It’s my job to read
minds, so I can’t help stumbling across information by accident sometimes, but
I shouldn’t cold-bloodedly invade your privacy and nose through your secrets.”

“I’ve told you before that
I don’t have any secrets,” said Lucas. “Not from anyone, but especially not
from you. My parents felt I was an incomprehensible, emotional mess, and dumped
me. Perfectly understandable action.”

I wanted to strangle
Lucas’s parents. “You aren’t incomprehensible or an emotional mess.”

“Possibly less incomprehensible
to a telepath. Getting back to Megan. Lottery selects Senior Administrators to
have the ability to act as a substitute parent if needed.”

“I’m eighteen years old,
Lucas. I’m supposed to be taking on an adult role and responsibilities. I don’t
need or want someone mothering me in front of everyone in my Telepath Unit.”

“Remember that you’ll be
able to discuss things with Megan that you can’t discuss with your own mother.”

“Because I have to keep
lying to my parents.” I sighed.

“Amber, you told Megan
that your parents have a strong dislike of nosies. You mustn’t risk telling
them you’re a telepath, or try reading their minds. Doing either of those
things could irretrievably damage your relationship with them.”

I was silent for a moment.
I’d already thought through the fact my parents loathed nosies, and pictured
the nightmare consequences of them discovering I was a telepath. Now I imagined
reading their thoughts, and being hit by the same disgust of nosies that I’d
seen in Fran’s mind.

Lucas was anxiously
watching my face. “I’d always had a difficult relationship with my parents, but
it was still painful to be cut off from them. You’d find the situation even
more agonizing. You’ve huge amounts to lose and little to gain by telling your
parents that you’re a telepath. Even if your relationship with them miraculously
survived the revelation, you’d still end up lying to them about your work to
avoid frightening them.”

“You’ve made your point,
Lucas. There’s no need to distress yourself by talking about this any longer. I
admit that I could, in theory, discuss things with Megan that I can’t discuss
with my own mother, but I can’t imagine me wanting to do that in reality.”

Lucas nodded. “Think of Megan
as your safety net. You may never need her, but she’s there in an emergency.”

I knew we were on the
brink of discussing Olivia and York again. I didn’t want to find out the
details of exactly what had broken them and might break me, so I hastily stood up.
“I’d better go or my substitute mother will come in here after me.”