Duty intervened as the living room clock began to chime ten o’clock. She would have to cheat time to make it to the morning meeting. She teleported herself into the shower and let the automatic spray try to wash away her intruding thoughts. All it really did was moisten them, they would eventually germinate within her mind into issues she could no longer pretend to ignore. The Chief teleported from the shower to the kitchen of the apartment, sans water plus clothes. She greeted her husband stiffly and he returned it absently, restoring the daily routine. Just what she needed mental Novocain, to numb her mind to . . . It was time for work.
From the food processor she ordered a compact breakfast, a nutritionally complete compressed bar of emergency rations. Her briaunti taste buds, genetically endowed with a sensitivity allowing some of her race to detect the chemical composition of a single molecule out of a billion, no longer even objected to the pseudo-cardboard taste. In truth, the sheer dull repetition was bringing her very near liking them. At least she would notice an absence if she missed her daily dose. Briefly her mind squirmed against the idea of another day of the same, she promised herself a doughnut, if she behaved herself during the meeting.
The meeting began an hour ago. Many attendees, like Niri Everett for example, were forced to cheat time a little to make it to meetings. They had to use the time displacement feature of the transport pods to get to them because the schedule of their duties often overlapped. Angela didn’t make a habit of doing it. She had enough trouble keeping track of her age without stealing or adding a few minutes to each day. Despite that, somehow her age had snuck up on her this morning. She shoved the thought aside and stepped into the pod beside her front door. Technically she had the skill and experience to do the time shuffle herself, but the effort just wasn’t worth the effort. She quickly tapped instructions into the control panel and activated it.
The conference room was empty when she arrived. She’d taken herself a little further back than was strictly necessary, and the extra time of quiet contemplation was probably a bad thing given the directions contemplation had already taken her this morning. So she stepped into her office, with the full intention of beginning to go over reports and paperwork on her pop-pad, but her eyes fell immediately on the tin star sitting on the corner of her desk. She picked it up and stuffed it into her pocket, fingering the rounded points of the star. Then on a whim she pulled it back out and pinned it to the breast of her jumpsuit.
Angela looked down at her chest and read the upside-down engraving, “Sheriff.” It was not helping. Thinking of Ben, she removed the star and twirled it on point between her thumb and forefinger. Daniel wasn’t the only one she had infected with duty. She was the “typhoid Mary” of duty. Not enough of her friends had Daniel’s defense. How many of them were gone now? How many dead? How many captured? She tossed the star back to the corner of her desk.
Not even in her state of melancholic musing could she deny her strength of purpose. Knowing what she knew, if she didn’t stand against the dark, she may as well be helping them. No one ever said, “Poor Nazi Germans, of course they didn’t stand up to Hitler.” It was always, “What kind of monsters were they? How could they help him commit genocide?” No, question, she had to stand against the dark. The question was if she would ever be allowed to sit again. How many years was she supposed to hold up the world?
She was tired. She was old. Briaunti don’t get old. Either that wasn’t true or the mirror had lied. A heavy sigh pushed itself up from the depths of her diaphragm and out of her mouth. Her soul couldn’t lie. Briaunti do get old.
Another long sigh threatened to draw tears. She didn’t want to go to the meeting. She didn’t have it in her. She needed to feel young, or at least to connect with the memory of what it felt like to be young. Before her chronic case of duty pains could flare up and change her mind, Angela snatched up her pop-pad. She keyed it on and set it to tape a message to send to the usual morning crowd. All she needed was a message to send. It had to be carefully worded. She didn’t want to concern anyone, or start a panic. Angela put on a fake look of relaxed concentration and began speaking into the pad.
“Folks, I’m busy working on something that needs my time. I won’t be at the meeting this morning. If you have something important, message my pad, and I’ll get back to you ASAP.” No, That wouldn’t do, she deleted the message and began again, “Folks, I’m playing hooky. Message my pad with anything important and I’ll get back to you ASAP.” That would work. She tapped the pad and sent the message out.
Now what? Angela looked at the star. What did she used to do when she was young? She scratched around in her head shoving aside cubic miles of statistics and requisitions. She had gone to school, studied, practiced gymnastics, and did chores. Then she became briaunti, and her telepathy, telekinesis and other new abilities happened. Training herself to use them and control them had taken years of disciplined study. Then she became chief. Didn’t children play? Hers had. When had she been young? How couldn’t she remember? She shoved aside memorized tables of factor placement and rank. She didn’t find her childhood. She found piles of reports. Even her inner reflection showed her only The Chief.
Fingers searched out and found the tin star on her desk. With it came a dim memory. Once upon a time she had wanted to grow up to be a cop. Long ago she had childhood dreams. Her thoughts turned to Niri, and more towards the girl Niri was representing. That girl dreamed too. Her name was Annette. Maybe, Annette could help refresh Angela’s memory of her lost youth. Her fingers slipped the star into her pocket and then tapped her pad finding the girl. Annette was in the main training cavern.
The pop-pad began to vibrate violently in her hands. What? Already with the urgent? Angela decided to ignore the message, leave the pad on her desk and go see what the girl was doing. Her hand tapped the respond icon instead. The screen flickered to show Daniel’s worried face. He was bleary eyed, and she could see herself asleep on the bed behind him. He spoke softly so as not to wake her, but his voice revealed his probing concern, “What’s wrong? How were you hurt? Why are department heads messaging me trying to find out how you were injured?” Suddenly she understood why he woke before her, the room must have woken him carefully to receive the calls.
“Nothing’s wrong. I’m not injured. I’m taking the day off,” Angela answered. Perhaps she should have gone with the first message.
“You cheated time to play hooky? Who are you really? What have you done with my wife?” Daniel whispered, only half kidding. Her reassurance had only worried him more.
“Love, I’m fine. I just need to take some time to recharge my batteries. I don’t just feel old. I am old.”
Daniel’s eyes softened, and his concern drained from his face. He understood what she was saying without telepathy. After fifty years of marriage he didn’t need to read her mind to know what she was thinking. “Okay, but I’m telling the department heads you sprained something. There’s no need to worry them like that. Next time warn me dear. There is nothing more frightening than waking up to Sinclair Chavez’s sour pus.” She watched as his hand filled the screen and his image winked out.
Playing hooky, that sounded like a game. Yes, she was playing. Angela felt younger already. She started towards her personal transport pod, and changed her mind. Her abilities needed some exercise. Play was exercise, wasn’t it? Angela thought of the practice cavern, then released her thought into action and was there.
She appeared in the only quiet corner of the huge irregular space. Around her at least eight different groups filled every zone of the room, from the mini obstacle course to the track to the bleachers, and every person was in motion. Even the teenagers sitting in the bleachers, though they limited their motion to the energetic gesticulation of sports enthusiasts. Most of them appeared to be cheering for one or the other of a pair of wrestlers on the mat below. The room was full of people, full of youth, but where was the girl she was looking for? Angela’s eyes searched through each group from her quiet c
orner. She didn’t find the girl. She checked her pad, it still showed the girl’s location as the practice cavern.
Angela’s eyes scanned the huge room again, questioning if she remembered what the girl looked like. Finally Angela found Annette at the far end, in close discussion with Niri. The girl was small, with nondescript, almost forgettable features. All in all, Annette almost seemed hard to notice. At the sight of the girl, Angela could almost understand why Sinclair had been so adamantly opposed to her application. Just the thought of agreeing with the pompous blowhard set Angela’s teeth on edge. Even if she hadn’t been here to see Annette for her own illogical reasons, Angela knew she had to talk to the girl just to remind herself of the potential she had seen.
Angela kept her eyes on the girl as she crossed the room, searching for the hidden spark. Annette seemed oblivious to everything but Niri’s instruction, and Angela was oblivious to everything but the girl. The rest of the room on the other hand, was full of scattered clusters of intense interest in Angela’s presence. Most people in the room were so focused on their tasks a herd of pink elephants could have raided the room demanding salt water taffy, but not all was lost, each group contained several quick minds capable of seeing both the forest and the trees. These observant few noticed Angela’s arrival and turned their focus on her. Slowly and quietly their attention drew the attention of most of the rest, soon almost every eye in the room was focused on the chief as she walked to speak with the least among them. Many questioned why Angela was there, though some gauged her direction and assumed she wanted to speak with Niri. Before any of their curiosity could be satisfied, the group leaders or instructors in charge began calling their attention back to their tasks.
While the rest of the room watched Angela, Niri and Annette moved from instruction to action, engaging in a slow motion sparing match. Clearly Niri was working with Annette on some kind of martial arts, self defense lesson. Angela was familiar with many styles of combat, and fought not to identify the one Niri was teaching. The compulsion to classify the moves and bring forth their names was strong, Angela had to spar with herself to drive it back. By the time she reached Niri and Annette, Angela had managed to forge an uneasy truce with the compulsion, aided by the sudden cessation of motion her arrival caused.
“Angela,” Niri immediately snapped to attention, “What can I do for you? Oh my! I hope you’re not here because I’m not at the meeting. I didn’t think you’d come after me for missing the meeting. I hadn’t even decided not to attend yet! I just wanted to get started early today. “
Angela held up her hand and stopped the word flood. She had forgotten how Niri could be. Though she was usually quiet during meetings, she could be very vocal in one on one conversation. Even worse, Niri became a compulsive talker when she got nervous, and unfortunately she was usually nervous around Angela. Some of Niri’s talkative nature had rubbed off on Angela’s cousin Tina during Tina’s years of aborted factor training. At least Tina seemed to have nearly cured the condition in herself. “Relax, Niri, I’m just here to watch Annette for a while. I couldn’t care less about the meeting, I’m not going. You’d know that if you checked your messages occasionally.”
Angela’s words, weren’t the least bit comforting to the woman, as evidenced by the sudden appearance of Niri’s pop-pad and her almost frantic scanning of her messages. Niri’s reaction bothered Angela, she hadn’t meant to disturb the woman. Angela suddenly worried that she’d become too tightly bound to being the chief to ever be anything else in anyone’s eyes. Forcibly Angela turned her attention to Annette who, in the lull had seated herself cross-legged on the mat.
Annette sat staring at her own lap, breathing deeply. Angela wondered what the girl was thinking, and then wondered at the idea of not already knowing. Few telepaths in Sanctuary could match Angela’s abilities, which were sensitive enough to pick up the thoughts and feelings of almost every mind within Sanctuary, at one level or another. At that moment, Angela could sense nothing from the girl, not surprise, not fear, not the jittery puppy dog excitement of a child facing her hero, nothing. That blankness focused Angela’s curiosity and abilities even more sharply on the girl. Finally dimly she felt the intensity of the girls focus. Annette’s thoughts anxiously focused on Angela. Dimly Angela could sense the many direction the girl’s suppositions explored.
“So, Annette, how are things going?” Angela asked lowering herself to the mat beside the girl.
“They are moving quickly,” Annette answered.
Angela looked the girl over, still having trouble seeing the concealed potential within. “Not too quickly, I hope,” Angela felt a flare of panic on the heels of her words. Angela wondered whether the panic was over speed of things, or if it was something else, the girl was just so amazingly difficult to read.
“No, I’ll be fine,” Annette glanced up from her lap briefly making eye contact with Angela before letting her eyes fall back towards her lap.
“Would she be fine? Or would she crack under the pressure?” Angela asked herself in thought. Annette’s panic flared again. Hesitantly Angela’s gut wanted to associate the girl’s panic with her own thoughts. If the girl was a strong enough telepath to read Angela’s mind, she was galaxies away from being the telepathetic weakling Sinclair had described. Angela pulled out her pop-pad and brought up all the information she had on the girl.
All of the test results and records she had, not to mention the girls own self introduction described her as a non-telepathic hominid of mostly human extraction. At the bottom of the file was a small tag that indicated Tina had performed a molecular cytoplasmic scan yesterday and that the results were pending. Angela didn’t know details, but she did know that a molecular cytoplasmic scan was so complicated and took so long for the technicians and computers to process that Tina wouldn’t have done one lightly. That meant something about Annette had drawn Tina’s curiosity. Angela had learned to trust her cousin’s medical instincts, as had nearly everyone else in Sanctuary. Another thing Angela had learned, the hard way from her cousin, was that it was possible for the potential of an incredibly powerful telepath to be hidden within a child with no apparent abilities. She made mental note to have Tina begin running regular Everett scans to follow the girl’s telepathic potential.
Angela marveled. Annette looked so small and weak, and was so nearly forgettable. Could there really be someone strong, self assured and intelligent hiding in that plain wrapper? She was so young! Then again, her youth was what had drawn Angela to visit Annette this morning. Angela thought about their first meeting. The girl had wanted to be a factor so much that, as Niri had once put it, Angela could taste it. Now Angela saw the possibility of untold hidden potential. If Angela hadn’t had the strange urge to look at herself in the mirror, she might not have come to understand so much about Annette. Not for the first time Angela contemplated the idea that her life wasn’t guided by fortuitous coincidence but by some sort of benevolent consciousness.
Angela looked at the girl again, and noticed clear agitation. The girl knew Angela held her dreams in her hands, and Angela’s too intense interest was leaving the girl thinking the worst. Beside them Niri was coming to the end of her messages and slowly pulling herself together to address Angela again, to Angela’s dread. Suddenly possessed of the idea that she’d seen what she’d come to see, Angela decided it was time to go, “Niri, thanks for your time, I think I’ve seen what I needed to.” Angela offered a hand and Niri shook it. Before Niri could attempt to resuscitate the conversation, Angela fled.
- - - - - - - - - -
Max slammed his locker and sat on the bench running down the center of the room. He looked at the paperwork on his next assignment and sighed heavily. He was supposed to act as a bodyguard and galactic liaison for an heir to the Tanerian throne while she took a pilgrimage to earth. It was simple babysitting duty, and from what the paperwork implied, it was likely to be uneventful. Forty-three other women had to die before this girl would even get half a chance o
f inheriting the throne from her mother, and even then the chances were slim. She would have to be the luckiest of her five litter sisters, all of which had at least twice the potential. Max had to wonder why the council would even assign a catalyst. The worst that might happen would be a serious breach of moral etiquette, like the girl getting arrested for indecent exposure or propositioning the wrong person. That was probably it. Several factions were lobbying the council on the issue of revealing galactic society to humans, and the kind of uproar the girl’s behavior might cause would reduce the likelihood of a successful council initiative.
Max the babysitter to the rescue. He sighed again and dug through the envelope pulling out the pay statement. That made him want to cry. Even with the overtime he would draw looking after the girl, he still probably could not afford a premature buyout of his contract. All he could do was pay his bills and expenses. Max had spent five years in training, to become a certified, card-carrying catalyst. His family wasn’t rich. They weren’t even able to help pay for the training. So now here he was halfway through the time he had contracted to the council in exchange for that training. Five more years of minimal pay and lousy hours before he could even seriously consider going freelance, with the increased freedom that would imply. Then he could pick and choose his assignments. He could even choose not to work.
Max sighed again; he could quit. All he had to do was walk into the office and hand the boss back the orders.
He could get by on what little he had saved, until he could find other work. It wouldn’t pay as well, but at least he wouldn’t have to deal with a sex-crazed dilettante who’s only real goal is probably to flash her boobs at Mickey Mouse. Max felt a tension headache building at the thought. He could quit and find another line of work, but he loved being a catalyst. It had been his dream since he was a child. All he ever wanted was to make other people safe.
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