Perilous_Hive Mind

by Janet Edwards

  I collected six bottles from the shelf. The labels said that they were specially enhanced water for professional athletes. “What’s so special about this water?”

  “Absolutely nothing. I bought a few bottles to impress the other teams in the swimming competitions, but the truth is that I keep refilling them with ordinary water.”

  I laughed and handed him the bottles. “Anything else?”

  “The snack bars and the packet of crunch cakes from the same shelf. Oh, and the small backpack that’s next to my swimming bag.”

  I had to squash the backpack flat to get it through the hole. There were loud rustling noises from the other side of the air vent. I guessed that Forge was loading everything into the backpack. I heard the dataview give the self-satisfied bleep that meant it had completed charging, and handed that through to Forge as well.

  “I still think this is a bad idea,” I said. “You have to be careful you don’t get lost or have an accident.”

  “I’ve got a marker pen with me to number junctions. You’d better get me the other two marker pens from the drawer as well.”

  I fetched the marker pens. “If you haven’t found your way out by ten o’clock this evening, I’m going to call Emergency Services.”

  “We can’t give in that quickly.” Forge gave me a pleading look through the air vent hole. “At least give me until tomorrow evening to find a way out.”

  I sighed. “All right, but then I’m definitely calling for help. Shall I put the vent cover back on now?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Forge. “I’ll fix it myself when I get out of here.”

  There was a scraping noise, a view of Forge’s hair followed by a glimpse of backpack, and then he was gone.

  I went over to the door, and looked out furtively. The corridor looked empty, so I hurried outside, but Shanna came out of her room at precisely the wrong moment. She gave me a confused look.

  “Amber, I was looking for Forge. What were you doing in his room?”

  I thought rapidly. “Forge had to go off somewhere unexpectedly. He asked me to take his swimming things back to his room.”

  “Oh.” Shanna looked disappointed. “Where has he gone?”

  “He didn’t say.” I tried to distract Shanna. “I was talking to Atticus a few minutes ago. He’s asked me to be his partner for the Carnival parties.”

  “That’s wonderful. Have you got your dress yet?”

  “I was thinking of wearing the dress I wore last Carnival.”

  Shanna shook her head. “Even if that one still fits, you need something better to go to the couples’ parties. I’ve made myself a new Carnival dress, so you can have my old one from last year.”

  “That would be wonderful.”

  “It will need a slight adjustment to the bodice, and the length shortening since I’m taller than you. Come along and I can alter it now.”

  “Just wait for one minute,” I said. “I need to change my door code before I do anything else.”

  She frowned. “What? Why?”

  “Because Reece worked it out and has been nosing in my room.”

  “Reece should be pelted with slime balls,” said Shanna.

  “Reece should be dropped head first into a slime vat.” I hurried back to my room, started changing my door code, and hesitated. The new code had to be something that Reece wouldn’t guess and Forge wouldn’t find amusing. I punched in 77186.

  Chapter Ten

  “The idea is that you choose a door code you can remember,” said the depressed man in an Accommodation Services uniform.

  My morning wasn’t going well. I’d stayed up late, waiting for Forge to call me to go and let him out of an inspection hatch, but heard nothing. I’d finally fallen asleep, fully dressed and sitting in a chair, and was woken by my dataview’s alarm to find there was still no news from Forge.

  I’d instantly pictured him falling down a lift shaft, and sent him a panicky message asking if he was all right. Forge had replied saying he was fine, it was just a bit more difficult than he’d expected to find a suitable inspection hatch, and could I refill the water bottles he’d left by the air vent in his room?

  I’d cursed, but gone down the corridor to fill Forge’s water bottles for him, which was how I’d got locked out of my room, and why I was being scolded by an irritated man from Accommodation Services.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I changed my door code yesterday evening. I could remember it last night, but I couldn’t remember it this morning, so I had to call you for help.”

  He tapped at his dataview. “Name and identity code?”

  “Amber 2514-0172-912.” I recited wearily.

  An image of me appeared on the dataview. The man stared at it, stared at me, and stared at the image again. “Yes, I think that’s you.”

  “Of course that’s me. Why would I lie about it?”

  “Teens have been known to lie to try to get access to someone’s room,” he said gloomily. “I had one only yesterday. He claimed that …”

  He broke off and stared at his dataview. “There’s a behaviour monitoring alert on you.”

  “On me?” I squeaked. “Why?”

  “Because you had a head injury two days ago.” He frowned at me. “If you display signs of unusually severe headaches, confusion, abnormal behaviour, memory loss, or dizziness, you should be referred back to the medical facility that treated you.”

  “Oh, no, no, no. You can’t send me back to Level 93 just because I forgot my door code. Teens must forget their door codes all the time.”

  The man tapped at his dataview. “You’ve never forgotten your door code before. Forgetting it now is an unusual memory loss.”

  “I’ve never forgotten my door code before because I’ve never changed my door code before. It’s always been 54321, but a friend said that I should change it to something less obvious.”

  The man sighed. “I’ll call the number on your medical discharge report and see what they say about it.”

  We’d already had an audience of Margot, Linnette and Preeja. Now Shanna arrived to join them, carrying a glittering silver dress over her arm.

  “I’ve made the last alterations to your dress, Amber.” She handed it to me. “What’s going on here?”

  “Amber forgot her door code,” said Linnette, “and apparently she’s supposed to go back to Level 93 for more treatment if she shows signs of memory loss.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” said Shanna.

  “It’s a sensible precaution,” said Margot. “Amber’s got a big bump on her head.

  “I think that bump is mostly glue,” said Preeja.

  The man held his dataview to his ear. “Can the rest of you either leave or keep quiet? I don’t need … Oh.” His voice changed from impatient to official. “I’ve got a patient of yours here. Amber 2514-0172-912. She’s forgotten her door code, and she’s never done that before.”

  The man listened in silence for a moment, and then held out his dataview towards me. “Someone called Buzz wants to talk to you.”

  I took the dataview. “Hello, Buzz.”

  “Hello, Amber. How are you? Any symptoms other than forgetting your door code?”

  “No, and I only forgot my door code because I’d changed it to something less easy to remember, so there’s no need for me to go back to Level 93 to bother you again.”

  She laughed. “If you do need to see me again, then it wouldn’t be at that Level 93 medical facility, Amber. I was just working there for the one day because their regular therapist was ill.”

  “Oh. Should I be talking to their regular therapist then?”

  “No. I kept your case myself, since it just involved covering a few days of aftercare.”

  “I took your advice by the way.”

  “The bit about dating a boy? You’ve got a partner for Carnival?” Buzz sounded just as thrilled as Shanna by this news. “What’s his name? Is he nice?”

  I gave an embarrassed glance at my audience, retrea
ted down the corridor, and whispered into the dataview. “The boy’s name is Atticus, and I think he’s nice. Shanna has given me a dress to wear.”

  “Is the dress like the one I told you I was going to wear for my deliciously handsome new neighbour?”

  “The dress that was frighteningly respectable while dreadfully suggestive? No, this one is the dress Shanna wore for Carnival last year. It’s spectacularly gorgeous. Much too spectacular for me really. Look!”

  I held up the dress with one hand, and held the dataview away from me with the other, so I could send Buzz an image of the dress. When I held the dataview back to my ear, I heard her chatting away enthusiastically.

  “It’s definitely spectacular, but you’ll look good in it. I adore the pink and silver sash trailing round the bodice.” She paused for breath. “Do you remember me telling you about the boy I wanted to kiss on Teen Level?”

  “The stunningly good looking boy?”

  “That’s the one.”

  I heard a pointed cough from next to me, and realized that the owner of the dataview had followed me down the corridor.

  “I think we’d better stop chatting now,” I said into the dataview. “The man from Accommodation Services is getting impatient.”

  “Tell him he should keep quiet when I’m evaluating my patient’s condition,” said Buzz.

  I gulped. “I’d rather not tell him that.”

  “Then I’ll tell him myself in a minute. Are you planning to copy my tactics to get Atticus to kiss you?”

  I laughed. “You mean trap him in a lift? No, I don’t think so.”

  Buzz’s tone of voice abruptly changed from chatty to professional. “Your memory seems to be functioning perfectly, Amber. You don’t just remember facts from two days ago, but you can repeat the exact phrases I used back then, and echo the tone of my voice when I said them. I hope you enjoy yourself at the Carnival parties. I’d like to talk to the man from Accommodation Services now.”

  I gave the man his dataview back. “Buzz wants to talk to you.”

  The man held the dataview to his ear. “Yes?” There was a long pause. “Well, it didn’t sound like a memory test to me.” There was another, much shorter pause, and he tapped the dataview to end the call.

  “The medical staff are satisfied that you don’t have any problems, Amber,” he snapped at me. “I’ve reset your door code to the standard default code 11111. You should immediately change it to a new code. Please don’t forget it again.”

  I didn’t have time to reply before he stalked off down the corridor. I went back to join the others, and found them staring after the man.

  “I think Buzz said something that annoyed him,” said Preeja. “Who is Buzz anyway? A doctor?”

  “Buzz is a Level 1 Psychological Therapist,” I said. “She talks like an excited, chattering teen, but that may just be an act to make me relax and talk to her. I have a theory that she uses different acts for different patients.”

  Margot shrugged. “I expect a Level 1 Psychological Therapist is imprinted with lots of techniques for dealing with patients. Hurry up and change your door code now. We want to be at the community centre in time to eat breakfast before the morning activity session.”

  I groaned at the mention of the activity session, went into my room, hung the Carnival dress on a hook on the wall, and started changing my door code again. I daren’t choose anything too clever this time. Forge’s door code was 12121, so I punched in 23232.

  Margot’s voice shouted from outside my door. “Time to go, everyone!”

  I went out into the corridor, and was greeted by a massed chorus of voices saying “Go away!” I recoiled in bewilderment, and then realized the order wasn’t aimed at me but at Reece.

  “I’ve as much right to go to the community centre and take part in activity sessions as the rest of you,” said Reece.

  “You’ve a right to go to the community centre,” said Margot, “but you aren’t walking there with us, and you aren’t sitting at our table for breakfast either. If you try it, then Forge will …” She broke off and looked round. “Where is Forge? Is he skipping this activity session because he doesn’t want to do embroidery?”

  “I’ve just looked in his room, and he’s not there,” said Shanna. “Wherever he went yesterday, he’s not back yet.”

  Of course Shanna would know Forge’s room code and be bound to look in his room. I wondered if she’d noticed the air vent cover was missing. Probably not. She’d been looking for Forge, not inspecting the state of his room.

  “Maybe Forge has moved to a room in a different corridor,” said Reece maliciously. “I don’t blame him if he has. I’d like to move myself. I’ve requested a room change three times, explaining how horrible you all are, but Accommodation Services keeps turning me down.”

  “Accommodation Services must have worked out that it’s you that’s horrible, not us,” said Linnette.

  “Forge would never ask to move room away from me,” said Shanna. “He’d never leave his surfboards behind either. I’ll call him.”

  She tapped at her dataview, and held it to her ear. “Forge, where the waste are you?”

  I heard the faint murmur of Forge’s voice answering her.

  “So what level are you on,” asked Shanna, “and when can I visit you?”

  There was another murmur from Forge.

  “And when will you be back? Please don’t tell me that they’re keeping you in for Carnival.”

  A final, very short, muttered comment from Forge.

  Shanna sighed and put her dataview away. “Forge had an accident yesterday, and he’s being treated in a medical facility.”

  “Not another one of us getting hurt,” complained Preeja. “What’s Forge done to himself, and why didn’t he call us yesterday?”

  I was keeping quiet to avoid lying to my friends. Forge had obviously based his story on my own accident. I hoped he hadn’t claimed to have bumped his head, because that would be too much of a coincidence.

  “He didn’t call yesterday because he didn’t want to worry me,” said Shanna. “He says he’s cut his leg, but it isn’t serious. He thought they’d let him out this morning, but they’ve decided to keep him in a bit longer, and they’re only allowing family to visit him. At least he’s being treated on Level 16 instead of Level 93.”

  “If Forge is being treated in a Level 16 medical facility, then I can understand them not allowing visitors from Teen Level,” said Atticus.

  “We really need to go now if we want to have time for breakfast,” said Margot pointedly. “You may be willing to eat one of those dreadful meals from your kitchen unit, but I’m not.”

  We moved off down the corridor. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Reece was watching us go with a sulky expression on his face. I wanted to yell at him for sneaking into my room, but I mustn’t publicize the fact Forge was stuck inside the vent system. Dealing with Reece would have to wait until either Forge had found his own way out or Emergency Services had rescued him.

  When we reached the community centre, we found the usual range of breakfast food was on sale in one of the side rooms. We queued up to buy our meals and then gathered round one of the long tables at the back of the room. Atticus grabbed the chair next to me, while Shanna, Linnette and Preeja sat opposite us, grinning and exchanging whispers.

  Atticus looked as if he wanted to talk to me but the audience was intimidating him. Margot was sitting on the other side of me, but she was fully occupied with her usual ritual of arranging everything on her plate into separate neat piles. I started eating myself, stabbing an egg viciously with my fork.

  “What did that egg do to offend you, Amber?” asked Atticus.

  “I’m picturing the egg being Reece.”

  Atticus laughed.

  “It’s not funny. If a telepath comes in here right now, and sees what I’m thinking about Reece, I’ll get arrested.”

  “They’d have to arrest me as well,” said Margot. “For that matter, why di
dn’t a telepath arrest Reece years ago?”

  “Telepaths can’t possibly arrest everyone who has momentary angry thoughts, tells trivial lies, or commits acts of petty bullying.” said Atticus. “If they did, they’d end up arresting half the people in the Hive. They have to focus their attention on people who are planning criminal acts that could harm others or damage the Hive.”

  I thought that over as I continued eating. Reece had trapped Forge in the vent system, and that had to qualify as an action that could harm him. Reece hadn’t planned it in advance though. He’d discovered Forge was in there, and glued the inspection hatch cover in place on impulse. That meant there’d been no chance for a telepath to see the plan in Reece’s mind and stop him, but a telepath could well read Reece’s mind now and see what he’d done. If that happened, Reece would definitely get into trouble, but what about Forge and me?

  “Time for the activity session.” Linnette’s voice interrupted my thoughts.

  “Oh joy, oh rapture, oh unalloyed transports of delight,” said Preeja glumly. “I don’t know why I bothered coming. I already know that I’m dreadful at sewing.”

  Margot studied what was left on her plate, picked up a final salad leaf and ate it with a faint air of disgust, and then we all stood up and trooped through to room 8. I blinked in surprise, because the tables had been taken over by strange machines.

  “I thought we were having another embroidery session,” I said.

  Our activity leader entered the room just in time to hear me. “This is another embroidery session, Amber. Last week, we did hand embroidery. This week, we’re trying machine embroidery.”

  I decided that was good news. I’d found the slowness of hand embroidery stitching deeply frustrating. Machine embroidery wouldn’t stop me making mistakes, but it would mean that I made the mistakes a lot faster.

  Reece was already sitting at the back of the room, so I chose to sit at the front. Shanna sat at the table on my right, and Atticus on my left. The activity leader gave a brief demonstration of how to use one of the machines. I grimaced as I discovered this activity wasn’t just about using a machine to embroider cloth, but also about creating the design in the first place. I was hopeless at anything creative.