The Hunt for Pierre Jnr (34 page)

Hearing of the Prime’s discomfort pleased Pete slightly. He hooked into the room surveillance watching St Clare.

Pete: Here we are again. Different room, different prisoner. Same sacrificial lamb.

Geof: That’s enough complaining. You could also be flattered that you are considered the best man for the job.

Pete: I can’t stand not knowing whether you say that with humour or not.

Geof: Copy.

Pete: What have you got him on?

Geof: Suppressants. If you’re not getting any sense out of him, we can try a transfusion. At the moment his toxicity is still very high, which might make for interesting answers.

Pete: Okay. For the record, I’m starting to hate interviewing. When was the last time I got to speak to someone who hasn’t been touched by Pierre?

Geof: Copy.

Pete: Where is he? I can’t sense him.

Geof: Underground. Deep. We are controlling all contact with St Clare for now. You will question him through a simulator room.

Pete: Don’t I lose my advantage if I can’t tap him?

Geof: Let’s see how it goes first before putting you near him again.

The doors opened automatically. The simulator was a capsule with a cube in the centre which represented the black box Sullivan was sitting in that was buried five hundred metres away. The box was wrapped with wall screens and Pete could circle the interview room and talk to Sullivan from all sides. He could choose to let the interviewee see him or not.

Sullivan sat patiently on a red-backed chair. From his perspective he saw only mirrors looking back in on him, and he heard a voice, encoded and mechanised to obscure the original. Pete stood before him and allowed St Clare to see him.

‘Mister St Clare, do you know where you are?’

‘Who is that?’

‘You can call me Peter.’

‘Oh. Hello, Peter. I have heard a lot about you.’

Pete: Geof? How could he have?

Geof: Ask him where he heard about you.

‘I don’t think we have met before. Can you tell me where you have heard of me?’

Sullivan cocked his head to one side, like a curious raven. ‘From Pierre, of course.’

‘You’ve seen Pierre Jnr? When was the last time you saw him?’

‘Is this a test? This room reminds me of the testing rooms.’

‘Do you mean from the psionic development facility? When you worked with Doctor Rhee?’ Pete asked.

‘Yes. Is this a test?’

‘No, Sullivan. I’m just asking you some questions.’

‘Okay. Who are you? I can’t see you.’

‘My name is Peter. I’m far away from you.’

‘Peter Lazarus. I remember.’

‘How do you know my name?’

‘Pierre told me.’

Geof: He could have got it before you masked him, or from one of your ten. Don’t overthink, Pete.

‘Do you know how long you have been gone from the institute?’

‘Eight years, one month and five days.’

‘You have been keeping track?’

‘We remember things like that.’

‘Did you enjoy your time at the institute?’

‘Yes.’

‘You were close to Mary Kastonovich, weren’t you?’

‘Mary. Nobody could help loving Mary.’ Sullivan drifted off. He muttered under his breath.

‘Mister St Clare, I can’t hear what you are saying. Was that about Mary?’

‘No. I’m just — just — I haven’t gone this long without a chew for a while.’

‘Can you explain?’

‘A chew? A fix? Man, the fungi in my home. You know?’

‘Yes, tell me about that. We found that most of your garden was hallucinatory. Your notes seem to indicate you were studying the effects.’

‘Yeah. Yeah.’ He began holding himself. ‘If I go ecky on you, just give me one of those pills you confiscated in my clothing. It’s just withdrawal.’

‘I’ll look into returning them to you.’

‘Oh, don’t pretend, Lazarus.’ His speech suddenly hardened. ‘You’ve got no power. You’re just a puppet.’

‘Tell me more about your studies. What effects did you find?’

‘Is that why you’re here? It doesn’t work, okay.’

‘Then why do you still grow them?’

‘I’m addicted. Is that so hard for you to get? I knew that years ago. But even once I knew they were doing nothing, I had no reason to stop. I’ve been high for seven years, man.’

‘How did you know they weren’t working? What were you expecting them to do?’

‘Make me stronger, of course. It wasn’t hard to see when it didn’t work.’

‘Why do you think it didn’t work?’

‘Because psionics isn’t like that. Lazarus, you should know this. Every psi should know this. Strength ain’t strength. It’s the wrong word for what we do.’

Geof: Steer it back to Pierre. Find out what he knows.

Pete: One second.

‘So what is the right word?’

‘Fluency.’

‘Like language?’

‘Yeah, man. It’s like a frequency, a wavelength, a vocabulary. It’s all these things, and to get stronger you just have to get better.’

Geof: Pete. First and only warning.

Pete: Understood.

‘May I call you by your first name?’

‘I don’t care. Call me Sully if you want.’

‘Okay, Sully. We were talking about Pierre Jnr a moment ago. You said you had spoken with him.’

‘I am talking with him all the time, Peter. We have a permanent connection.’

‘Are you talking to him now?’

‘I said always, didn’t I?’

‘What does Pierre say?’ Pete asked.

‘He doesn’t speak directly. It’s not like that. Are you sure you’re a mindee? You are as ignorant as a norm.’

‘Is he out to harm us?’

Geof: Pete, don’t get caught up in his madness. The toxins are talking.

Sullivan paused for a moment. ‘How could he harm us? We are him and he is us.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘He says you will.’ Sullivan was so calm.

Geof: Pete. He is not sane. Nobody is in the room with him and there is no way he is communicating from underground. Look at the tox report. You’ll see that anything he says is not coming from a place of sanity.

But it does come from somewhere,
 Pete thought to himself. He drew the medical information from his symb and saw a bunch of data of which he had no comprehension. The summary was clear though: Sullivan St Clare was not functioning on a normal chemical balance.

‘Sullivan? What about the people in the Dome who were killed?’ Pete asked.

‘He didn’t kill anyone.’

‘Are you saying Pierre wasn’t responsible?’

‘He says no one was harmed.’

‘Sullivan, I was there. Many people died.’

‘He says he made sure they were not. Nobody was harmed.’ 

Pete: Geof, can you think of a question we can ask to test out if he is in contact?

Geof: No. We can’t be sure of what he already knows.

Pete: And what if Pierre is transmitting to him?

Geof: Impossible.

Pete: Kinetically destroying a city block was also thought impossible a month ago. What if telepathy is just a language, like he says — brain code — that some can use and others can’t?

Geof: It’s a possibility, and we’ll look into it. Nobody expects us to come up with all the answers today.

Pete: I want to know my mind is free. Isn’t that what we are fighting for? We need to be able to test if psionic influence is limited to contact.

Geof: Then we must draw a line. If we keep him isolated, then we can test in a week to see if he has acquired new knowledge. Break off the interview.

~ * ~

Every day the Primacy council opened a chat circuit to report on recent developments and discuss future actions. It was a non-public discussion, though participation was notable.

Every day the weighting of the players shifted, though there had been no change in the Primacy since Ryu had risen. To his chagrin, Charlotte Betts had gained credibility. As the world was swept for psis, the imposition of security was pushing more people toward her way of thinking. Something would have to be done.

Charlotte Betts spoke more often now. ‘If Sullivan is right and psionic ability is more like a language skill, perhaps Pierre Jnr can’t hear us.’

‘Are you defending him again? Why are you so intent on him being innocent?’ Admiral Zim accused and the assembly rumbled in tones of agreement.

Demos’s avatar leant conspiratorially toward hers. ‘The Admiral has a point, Charlotte. The evidence points toward a certain malice.’

At least Demos had become more compliant. It had only taken a little attention to have his dominions fall in line with the security measures.

‘But what if Pierre doesn’t recognise non-telepaths as people? What if he doesn’t see them? We could just be like ants to him and he doesn’t know he is hurting anybody.’

‘Is this idea supposed to reassure us?’ asked Shreet.

‘And even if that was true, he can still read minds and therefore he is fully aware of his actions. You must begin to accept this, Representative Betts,’ Ryu said.

‘It is for that reason I find it hard to imagine that he acts with cruelty. Surely he suffers the pain of those he hurts?’

‘Are you out of your mind, woman?’ Admiral Zim shouted.

‘Admiral, I must rebuke you there,’ Ryu responded. ‘These sessions are for discussing developments. There is no value in them if we degenerate to insult. Let us end for today. Representative Betts, while your opinions are not in line with the rest of the group, I think we should recognise what you have suggested: that the nature of the threat may not be as we assume.

‘We shall reconvene tomorrow. Until then, watch the feeds and the Will.’

~ * ~

Takashi tapped Ryu on the shoulder as he demersed.

‘Takashi, what are you doing in my rooms?’ Ryu asked. No one was supposed to enter. No one was 
allowed
 to enter — though clearly his brother had found a way around that edict.

‘Mother has sent me to force-feed you. She has alerts that tell her when you aren’t eating enough.’

‘I eat every meal.’

‘Yes, but you aren’t used to the permanent connection like I am. Please, Ryu. This is one area I know better than you.’

Ryu stared at him, his eyes dry and red-rimmed. ‘Were you watching that last session?’ he asked.

‘Only out of the corner of my eye. It seemed the same as the others. The Will versus the kinder heart of Charlotte Betts.’

Ryu scoffed. ‘I should have you disconnected for crossing the line.’

Takashi shrugged at that. ‘Just because you are my brother, doesn’t mean I have to heed level restrictions. What kind of weaver would I be if I only went where I was allowed?’

~ * ~

When the second Dark Age came, after the collapse, wealth shifted with every global mood swing. After the weather went neurotic, it was a lottery of sentiment and rainfall that determined which cities floundered or flourished.

War, following the dirt winds, made the entire American continent split east and west: populations driven to the coasts, where the cities were battling the aggravated oceans, but managing to feed themselves.

When the desert bowl stirred, and the midland towns evacuated, it was only a matter of chance that the survivors congregated on the eastern seaboard, creating an unintended and fragmented megapolis between Washington DC and New York.

Atlantic, as it became known — or the Cape — like many of the coastal mega-cities, hid behind gigantic seawalls and dykes that held back the sea swell and drew a lot of their energy from the ocean’s fury with near-shore turbines and wave harnesses that, from above, looked like a dock line being gnawed by a school of eels.

It was one of the first cities to establish a raised floor in response to the rising seas — a layer of hard composite that became the new street level while the ground beneath was either drowned or drowning. This gave the city the capacity to establish reasonable sewerage, electricity and connectivity grids, and made a muddy basement for the subterraneans, who had their own reasons to stay underground.

Most of the Cape was stuck in the mode of the twenty-first century, pre-Dark Age and pre-World Union. The city was a subdivided chaos with each population striving for survival and dreaming of flourishing. Only the top five per cent were even classed as Citizens, most choosing, or ignoring, the civil games of the WU.

Here, Services was limited to two embassy compounds. The last of the megapolises to resist global governance, Atlantic was a plutocracy, which is to say: those who had power wielded it, primarily for their own interests.

Tamsin was not as polite as other telepaths when it came to gathering information. When she met someone, she pushed them to think what she wanted them to. People would stop what they were doing and suddenly be thinking of something else: a painful memory, their first love, kiss, or taste of cruelty. Seemingly unconnected to what they were doing, their memories would replay, jump about and abruptly change.