The Hunt for Pierre Jnr (38 page)

‘I guess I should thank you for your honesty,’ Tamsin replied.

‘Have you known many telepaths in your time?’

‘I’ve met hundreds.’

‘Do you mean collected?’

‘Look, can’t we just lower our blocks and have a real conversation?’

‘Not yet,’ La Grêle replied. ‘And this is real conversation. The items you prefer not to discuss, the topics you skip across, it all communicates.’

‘Well, you’re not communicating very much. So that makes this a one-way conversation,’ Tamsin objected and stood up.

La Grêle looked at her with pale eyes. ‘I am communicating in questions, Tamsin. I am asking you about your past, your experience. Obviously I ask to test your level of exposure, your knowledge. I have learnt much about you already.’

‘If you’re so against me, why are we bothering with this charade?’

‘I shall forgive you, for I know you have lived a sheltered life. It is often hard for people who have never had friendships to know how to begin them.’ She sighed and straightened her back. ‘Please, sit back down. Just a few more questions before we open ourselves up.’

Tamsin relented and sat, folding her legs beneath her.

‘What has Salvator told you about me?’ La Grêle asked.

‘Nothing at all. Only that he would take your opinion over his own.’

‘That is a very high compliment. What have you deduced so far?’

‘You are obviously a very competent telepath with a lot of influence in the psi underground.’

‘Obviously. The reason I asked about your past, Grey, is that I wanted to know if you had had much exposure to telepaths. If you had any teachers.’

‘None.’

‘My mother and father were telepaths. They taught me everything they knew.’ La Grêle closed her eyes and pushed herself out, washing Tamsin with the experience she had of her parents.

Tamsin had no response to that. The possibility had never occurred to her. A lump rose in her throat and her chest felt like it couldn’t move to breathe. All her memories swirled into one single word.

‘Saudade,’ she whispered.

‘I don’t know what that means,’ La Grêle said.

She repeated it, not knowing herself. ‘I just remember this,’ she said, touching her hand to the empty place she felt on her chest where her heartbeat was strongest. ‘Saudade.’

‘Take my hands,’ La Grêle said. ‘This is a good place to start.’

Tamsin put out shaky hands and let the older woman take them.

‘Now lower your block.’

‘What have you done to me? I’m not like this.’ This was similar to what Arthur had done to her. She began to raise her block.

‘Please, Tamsin. Just this one time, trust a stranger. Let your mind flow to me.’

She did as she was asked.

I talk. You listen,
 La Grêle explained firmly. 
One of the saddest things about the oppression of our kind, Tamsin, is that we are born with these abilities and have to discover how to use them without any help. What could we do if we had a teacher to show us the way? I am one of the lucky ones. My parents had the ability and they taught me what they could. Together we discovered even more.

La Grêle kept her thoughts calm. She dropped Tamsin’s hands, stood and began walking in a circle around Tamsin as she communicated. 
Let my mind swim around yours.
 Tamsin saw La Grêle’s parents, the long afternoons spent together. Traversing the southern continent, hiding, but always in contact with each other.

You might have to do this someday, so be aware. It can be very dangerous if we both slip away and neither of us can manage to detach. While we are connected this way, we will be like two drops of ink in water. At first we have different colours, but the longer we swim together, the more time passes, the more mixed we will become.

Together they slipped into a shallow coma, their bodies stilling. Their minds, however, became one pool. They knew everything there was to know about the other. Everything that had ever happened to one, had happened to the other.

I try to pass on as much as I can so it is not lost should anything happen to me.

How selfless of you.

You are strong. I can sense that. You have proven that. You do not need to keep proving it. Not tonight.

What are you doing?
 Tamsin demanded.

Shhh. You will have to trust me, Tamsin Grey. Or you will get no help from me.

But what are you doing?

I’m showing you what you should be fighting for.

Tamsin didn’t remember being so young, or so short. She had no control of what her body was doing. She just stood there, twisting back and forth restlessly.

‘Saudade,’ a man’s voice said to her. She couldn’t repeat the word. She was only small.

The man was now before her. He had one big hand on her shoulder and the other touching the place where his heart beat. She had learnt that. The heart beats in the chest, not in the centre, a little to the left.

‘Saudade,’ he said again.

That is a Portuguese word,
 La Grêle explained.

How do you know?

Because you knew. This man is your father.

Why can’t I see him properly?

Because you were young. A lot has happened to you since then.

What is he saying to me? Why is he saying nothing but that one word?

I think he was upset. This is the day they came for you.

I don’t remember that. Did they hurt him?

I don’t know. I only know what you know.

What does it mean?

I can’t be sure. Memory is not perfect. Your father is trying to project an emotion upon you, but you are just getting sadder and sadder.

It sounds like ‘sad’.

No, it is more complicated than that. It is like a sadness over something that can never be, or never was. It is the feeling of loss when nothing has been lost.

And my mother? Where is she? Can I see her?

You don’t have any memories of her. I’m sorry.

It’s okay. Just take me away. I can’t bear it.

‘Saudade,’ her father said, tapping at his chest.

The memory faded away to be replaced by another.

They stood at a window in a stone wall. They were one body with two minds peeking out.

It’s about to happen.

Tamsin watched as the nose of a black limousine floated into her line of sight. She regulated her breath. Slowly the limo came forward, a languorous pace. It seemed to linger more than it progressed. The wait was unbearable.

Pierre ...?

She didn’t mean to. She wished she could take it back, but she needed to know what was inside.

In shock, she punched at the car, knocking it in from both sides, but it was already too late. A ravine opened between her and the target, fountains of dust shooting in every direction. The cloud came straight at her, tore the window in two and darkness took over ...

You warned him?

I didn’t know if it was him or not. I wasn’t even sure he existed.

But now you put your faith in him?

Yes.

And what does he intend?

I don’t know ... Can you help me remember my time with him?

No. There seem to be no memories of your days together. Only this moment...

Tamsin was walking down a linoleum corridor, black and white tiles, black white, black white. She had just left Peter Lazarus, telling him that she was going to escape. She felt annoyed and upset and then there was a small hand holding hers.

That is where it ends.

Pierre ...

He is real.

You weren’t sure?

How can one be sure of that? My network has reported nothing.

Their thoughts seemed more distinguishable now.

You can feel us separating?

Yes.

Good. We’ll go slow. I want you to know how to end a commune. It’s important. Imagine a rope’s threads, bound and entwined. The threads unfurling, spreading apart.

I can’t believe you have been able to hide from Services for so long.

Right under their noses.

Will you help me?

I won’t risk everything, but I will help.

Thank you
 ... 
Thank you for showing me my father.

~ * ~

Tamsin woke calm.

La Grêle was standing beside her, adjusting her drapery back into position. ‘Now you and I are not so different.’

Yes. Tamsin had absorbed some of her colour. She knew La Grêle’s past, but it wasn’t just a sharing of knowledge; she had felt her emotions and experienced how she thought. She was changed. ‘I never knew about that.’

‘We have never had the chance to grow our own culture. It makes me very angry,’ La Grêle said.

‘Angry enough?’

‘I took some of yours.’ La Grêle smiled and stroked Tamsin’s cheek gently. ‘It’s good to know you are human.’

‘Don’t feel sorry for me. You haven’t had it so easy yourself.’

‘But at least I was able to be myself. Now you must do that. Your life cannot just be about the fight.’

‘It will have to be for now.’

Tamsin reached up to let her finger touch the soft and downy skin of the older woman. They had been one.

We know what we must do.

We know what we must do.

~ * ~

That night Tamsin couldn’t sleep. She was excited. The adrenalin of the day hadn’t worn off and her visions of what was to come filled her with trepidation and bliss. A place for psis to exist and learn. It hadn’t occurred to her until it had been said.

In the dark she held her hand out. 
Are you there, Pierre? 
She could picture him. She could. But then she couldn’t. Was he there and hiding from her? Or had he left her? 
Why are you doing this? Why are you silent? Am I doing what you want?

Then she thought of Pete. Why was she thinking of a man she’d only known for a few days ... she really didn’t want to know. She had enjoyed taunting him, that much she could admit.

What is he thinking of me now?
 she wondered. Probably trying to decide if she was a traitor or a puppet. She didn’t feel like a puppet. And how could she be betraying something she hated? Or was he right about Pierre?

Please, Pierre. Just let me know.

~ * ~

The Sullivan expedition and the interviews left Pete exhausted and disturbed.

He rewound the conversations in his head. Everything Sullivan had said was touched with unreality, probably from long-term drug use, but his insights into how psionics worked presented Pete with a new framework. He’d never previously questioned how his abilities worked; he had them, he used them. He understood now why Tamsin’s trick was so hard to comprehend at first and then so easy after.

‘Just a puppet.’ Sullivan didn’t even know him and he’d managed to pinpoint Pete’s worry. Tamsin had warned him of the same thing. ‘Don’t be a puppet, Pete.’ He had been so determined not to come under Pierre’s control that he had put himself in the hands of others. 
I walked right in off the street. Services just used me as a decoy and I let myself be used.

He remembered his last day. A motel room. A restaurant and an empty chair. The sand of the beach under his toes. A last swim. Nothing before that.

Peter Lazarus, the puppet.
 Next to him in the squib was Gock. The proxy and the puppet. Not so different after all.

There was no exit from his thought spiral. Everything twisted back in on itself. Was he a real person or not? Had Pierre reprogrammed him? How could a man go through thirty-five years and not develop any relationships? He closed his eyes and saw those staring eyes. Tranquillity in the midst of a huge scarred head. 
What have you done to me?

Pete felt every metre of the tower as they ascended rapidly in the elevator, his stomach dropping further into his feet and the pain of his weary muscles pulsing.

He knew someone was in the needle before the doors opened, and then he found her standing at the window in the crescent lounge. She was besotted with the view and he had a moment to admire her before she noticed him. He had never seen her with her hair loose. It ended in the small of her back, tips curling in.

Anchali?

Peter?

‘Nurse Anchali, what are you doing here?’ he asked out loud.

‘I’ve come to —’ She collapsed into his arms and started shaking.

‘What’s wrong? It’s okay.’ He held her close. He sent soothing messages to her through the bond.

It came out in drips how she was removed from the outpost when he’d left. After he and the others were gone, they put the compound back into storage. Anchali thought she was being transported to her next assignment but found herself in a black box and the next thing she knew there was a voice offering her a choice between going to the islands or doing what they wanted.