‘That goes without saying, I suppose...’
‘Like here?’
Leslie Carter had become a glittering mist which filled her whole room. She could not regain corporeality, and did not even want to. Her joy dictated she must expand to her limits. Flesh would only make her ache. She had kissed Kid Spectrum. He had held her in his arms, and it had transcended all her desperate imaginings. Oh, she knew it had really been Steven, but for a few moments, she had lived her dream. And he had given her such strength, such strength.
Coalescing into a kind of solidity she regarded herself in the mirror for a few moments. Now, even in flesh, she appeared transparent. Her eyes were virgin’s eyes, but the containment had become power. She had become prophet, angel, saint, all from a short embrace. She had come alive. Steven, Steven, you waited at the end of my difficult path. You were there with open arms. Oh, yes, and she had taken the out-stretched hand willingly. Soon, everything would be different.
‘Your lessons are really quite instructive, Mr Valiant,’ Steven said.
‘I don’t remember you having an appointment.’ Derek Valiant was perturbed to find this nuisance in his office at such an early hour. After the previous interview with Steven Rider, he had immediately contacted the DPR and repeated his misgivings about having such a potentially destructive presence under his roof. His complaints were being sent to committee. As if that did any good! The whole place could be in chaos before anything was done, and Derek Valiant was quite sure that something would have to be done. Weevil, he thought, looking at the smug smile opposite.
‘Actually, I don’t have an appointment,’ Steven said, affably. ‘I assumed yours was an open door.’
‘What do you want? Please be brief. I’m very busy today.’
‘Well, I have a small problem.’
Valiant grunted. ‘You should go to Emily Band with problems. That’s what she’s here for. I’m very busy.
‘Well, I would have, but as the problem I have is you, I thought I’d better be more discreet.’
‘What?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t want to embarrass you.’
‘I think you’d better explain, Mr Rider.’
Steven leaned back in his chair. ‘My Talent is more... interesting than I thought. But then, I suppose, given that you know everything, you’re already aware of that.’
‘Don’t try to play with me. Say what you have to say.’
Steven stood up and sauntered, hands in pockets, round the desk. He relished the moment as Derek Valiant flinched. ‘Well, your Talent enables you to run this establishment without mishap, without fear of deceit or cunning. Am I right? Now, tell me, if you discovered a paranorm who could somehow, through manipulating your mind, emphasize that Talent, what would happen?’
Valiant laughed, scudding backwards a few inches on his wheeled executive chair. ‘You tell me.’
‘Well, to be honest, I’m not quite sure. I do know that for a person who can turn themselves into a phantom, it means they magically find the confidence to extend that ability, to be able to turn other people into phantoms too, or at least draw the essence out of their bodies. How it would affect a person with an already impressive Talent for telekinesis I’ve yet to find out, but ... well, it’s just a hunch, but surely for a person whose Talent is the ability to be unaffected by other people’s Talents, expanding that ability would mean they’d also be unaffected by their own Talent, too, wouldn’t it?’
Derek’ Valiant made one or two flustered noises. ‘Your idea is preposterous!’
‘It sounds so, I agree, but it is possible. Be so kind as to activate the monitoring device you have in Leslie Carter’s room.’
‘We don’t monitor the trainees in their rooms!’ Valiant said.
Steven shook his head. ‘Please, it will save us having to walk up there.’
Valiant activated the screen. Leslie’s room had been transformed into a whirling maelstrom of coruscating light. ‘She is happy,’ Steven said, ‘very happy, but I must point out that, until last night, her Talent was nowhere near as powerful as that.’
‘This is one of your illusions, then.’
‘No, all I did was give her a belief in herself. That is the beauty of my Talent, Mr Valiant. I can change reality for people, and thus give them the confidence to reach out further than they ever have before. It is all a question of belief.’
Derek Valiant tapped his lips with his fingers. He looked thoughtful. ‘I have to admit I’m impressed – if what you say is true.’
‘It is. But this raises another issue. Your methods of training paranormals involve imposing disciplines, definitions – boundaries. I envisage a new training programme, where trainees are encouraged to strive beyond the limits they have imposed on themselves.’
Valiant laughed. ‘Far too dangerous. Ambitious, yes, but...’
‘No, not dangerous at all. It depends on how you define danger, of course. Anyway, I intend to implement this myself.’
‘Out of the question.’
Steven sighed. ‘May I remind you of how my Talent could affect you, Mr Valiant?’ He laughed. ‘Your way is history, I assure you. The DPR are going to be very interested in my ideas. Now, would you be so kind as to make a telephone call for me?’
‘We are living in strange and wonderful times,’ said Mr Sharpe, snapping his briefcase shut. ‘As yet, it is a time of discovery, one of daring and gambling, too.’
‘The sky’s the limit, then,’ Steven said, putting his feet up on the desk that used to carry the nameplate of Derek Valiant.
‘Oh, far beyond that, Mr Rider. Far beyond that.’
‘You are greedy people,’ Julianne Farr said. She sat on the window-sill, composed in killer business suit, each nail perfectly filed to a point. ‘You are sucking from us, aren’t you?’
Mr Sharpe directed a hurt glance at her, faultlessly performed. ‘We need the best,’ he said. ‘That’s all. As I said, we are constantly learning.’ He smiled at Steven. ‘You have been given a chance, Mr Rider, don’t abuse it. We want the best from the Talented, the utmost, and you can help us achieve that. Don’t let us down.’ He stood up. ‘Well, that’s all for now. I’ll leave you to it. The administration of Tintern House has been officially passed to you and Ms Farr.’ He smiled benignly at Julianne. ‘Your responsibility, I feel, is to keep this young man’s enthusiasm under control, and to groom his ideas into workable programmes. I also leave the staffing of this establishment in your hands, Ms Farr.’
As Julianne escorted him to the door, they passed a pretty waif of a girl who nodded to them as she drifted into Steven’s office. For a moment or two, her identity quite escaped Mr Sharpe, despite having recently been shown a video of her Talent by Steven and Julianne. Then he realized: the prototype. Steven had also described how he intended to implement her Talent into his training courses; out-of-body-experience classes would be fitted into the curriculum alongside fitness training.
Leslie closed the door behind her. Her heart was aflutter with the enormity of her decision. ‘Kid Spectrum,’ she said. ‘Show me your most serious colours. Show me.’
Somewhere outside, a phone began to ring.
Last Come Assimilation
‘Ola, can you never wait for anything?’ Con Redley punched flamboyantly his terminal exit pads and swung around in his body-cupping seat.
Ola was impatiently drumming her fingers against the wall, wearing an exaggerated expression of irritation.
‘It will be your downfall, Ola!’
‘Some of us have work to do tonight, Redley. If you’d spent less time wagging your jaw today, you might be ready to leave on time.’
‘Ah, my little Ola,’ he said, jumping up and brushing her swiftly retreating cheek with casual fingers. ‘Don’t complain. I left the seat warm for you.’
Ola grimaced and slid fussily into the formacurl chair, her fingers reaching greedily for the micro-pad as if she’d been away from it too long. She knew Con Redley was aware she didn’t enjo
y having to share her ‘place’ with anyone. Ola’s brusque impatience was one of the many standing jokes around the Centre and had given rise to the expression ‘Uh oh, I can feel an Ola Embeleny coming on!’ to signify irritation at some system hold-up or another. Ola was mildly amused by this; she was conscientious but far from easily offended.
The daytime shift gradually left the building, chatting together in groups, shrugging themselves into fleecy jackets, speaking of rendezvous in local bars. Ola listened with satisfaction to their fading voices before settling comfortably into her chair and leaning back for a moment’s relaxation. She breathed in deeply, taking in the smoky sweetness of Incoce’s vaporous exhalations far above her head. Recess 920, a vast chamber other than its name implied, seemed to breathe a sigh of relief also, as if welcoming the quiet and solitude of night. One by one, the overhead lights dimmed to blackness, allowing the more pellucid gleam of low-glow nightlights to bloom around Ola’s terminal; the only one still on-line at this hour.
Ola stretched and hopped up to fetch herself a coffee from the dispenser by the door. Sipping, she leaned over her chair and stroked her Initiate pad.
How can I help you? Incoce asked; its usual polite greeting. Beneath this, it shyly offered the options of ‘Interrogate’, ‘Check’ or ‘Fill.’
‘Hi there, Inc. What kind of a day have you had, eh?’
The computer terminal blinked its soft blue lights as if in perplexity.
Ola slid back into her seat and tapped in her response. ‘Check, please, Inc. Let’s see what the data-shovels have fed you today, huh?’
Swiftly, as if greeting an old friend, Incoce asked for her authorisation code, which she supplied with one hand, still sipping the hot, sweet, vaguely synthetic tasting liquid from her cup. As Overnight Shift Recess Supervisor, Ola had to check the day’s input for obvious errors before beginning her own work each night. It wasn’t much of a chore; Incoce knew enough by now to recognise most mistakes itself. In fact, Ola was sure it seemed to take a certain pleasure in displaying them to her: Look what I’ve found. Aren’t I good?
Wriggling blue lines played across her face as Incoce skipped through the day’s text. Ola twisted a few strands of hair between her fingers, not really looking that hard. A niggling anxiety had slipped back into her mind, which she’d been trying to dismiss since waking up that afternoon. She sighed through her teeth and murmured, ‘Lancy, Lancy,’ before abruptly leaning forward, stroking a pause pad and switching to vocal command. Often she forgot to do that, taking it for granted the machine heard and understood her anyway. If it did, it was cunning enough not to let on – ever. ‘What was that, Incoce, back a bit.’ The wriggling lines wriggled backwards. ‘Asshole!’ The screen flared brighter for a moment at her outburst. She had found an error. Timely. It conveniently pushed from her attention the problem of Lancy Lefarr, and it would be at least another day before Ola found time to think about it again.
Incoce – an abbreviation of Information Collection Centre – was an impressive sleek bulk possessed of massive memory banks. The machine had been diverted far from its original purpose, and expanded and improved because of that, even if a lot of people thought it a rather gross and outmoded model. Its home was the small, congenial world of Brickman, named for the Senior Administrator, Osmund Brickman, who’d headed the team first arriving on the planet. Now centuries dead, Brickman’s name and his machine lived on, if not the scheme towards which he had dedicated himself and whose collapse had been partially, if not wholly, responsible for his own.
Incoce had originally been designed as the thinking mind, administration centre and personnel department behind OFEX Project, a grand plan to mine fliridium from the dozen or so worlds circulating Rover’s Star. Back then, the mineral had been newly discovered and had engendered enormous excitement owing to the fact that it appeared to be a powerful energy source of limitless life and without any radioactive strings attached. Initial excitement, glee and vast financial outlay had withered to craven embarrassment when other, unexpected side products of fliridium had emerged. It wasn’t radioactivity exactly, but it still rendered all living creatures sterile, plants included, before inflicting a particularly horrid death that few journals kept a record of nowadays.
The money and the mega-corporations flitted off to the further reaches of the galaxy in search of more verdant mineral pastures, leaving a rather shame-faced, if not redundant, settlement of colonists on Brickman. The Governmental Station two stars away had declined Osmund Brickman’s request for the transferral of his people. The Administrators there were reluctant to decolonise a world so supremely amenable to human habitation as Brickman’s was. It would surely come in handy one day, when perhaps other purposes could be thought of for its dozen sister worlds and yes, they surely did have a use for the great mind of Incoce.
These days, Brickman existed as a vast information collection agency, documenting the history and human achievement of the galaxy. Its huge, inimitable source of knowledge was used by academics, sales companies and students from as far away as could be imagined. Incoce, in fact, was an encyclopaedia, directory and dictionary to end them all. And the machine seemed very happy about that, too. Of course, it cost people to use the facility and this kept the population of Brickman, most of whom worked with Incoce, comfortably, if not well, endowed with financial incentive.
Ola called up on screen from the comms store the material it was her task to sift through before directing it to the relevant files of Incoce’s memory. Throughout the vast complex centre, hundreds of other Recess supervisors would be embarking upon the same employment, but to Ola, it felt as if she was the only person awake in the whole complex every night. Occasionally, one or two of the nightshift data clerks – there was a skeleton crew of those – would pop in to ask her advice or simply to pass a few congenial words, but on the whole Ola was left alone.
This suited her fine. The only time she felt she could truly relax was at work. She also had a great affinity for the machine itself, conscious of a quirky if evanescent personality coming through her screen now and again. Less imaginative operatives would scoff benignly at such fancies; to them Incoce was a yawning mouth, ever hungry for the food of knowledge, never satisfied, whose supplies never ran dry. Data sorting was not the most stretching of jobs if one did not have an interest in the data itself. Ola considered herself lucky. She at least worked in a Recess that dealt solely with planetary flora and fauna, to her an absorbing and fascinating subject. She reflected that she could have been allocated a statistics or governmental procedures terminal; life might not have been so enjoyable then.
All Incoce employees spent nine hours a day at work during days that lasted only twenty hours. Admittedly, three out of every seven days were free, but often Ola would work overtime then. Learning about the exotic and far-flung worlds newly discovered by intrepid exploratory teams was of far more interest to her than passing on the latest of trivial gossip in one of the local bars. Not even the holovids on show at the Movie Palace were as intriguing as the real fantasticals with which she communed every day. ‘Oh,’ Ola would sigh, ‘if only I’d been born in a place where I could be on one of the teams sending the information back instead of stuck behind a bloody terminal! Sorry, Inc, I know, at least I have mobility, not like you, stuck here forever, even if I don’t have the funds to make more use of it!’
Lancy didn’t show up for dinner on Ola’s next day off. This annoyed Ola intensely. She had spent three hours preparing a relatively sumptuous repast and was also unaccustomed to her best friend standing her up. Uncharitably thinking that some new man must have glided over the horizon and into Lancy’s range, Ola sat regarding the congealing sum of her efforts for nearly an hour before she called up Anton Givesey, one of her more senior colleagues but a long-standing friend, to come and help her eat it.
Anton didn’t seem to mind the food being a little cooler, its texture a little more unsupple, than it should have been. Like Ola he lived alone, but unlike O
la he didn’t have the particular knack for culinary arts. He thoughtfully brought along a carton of wine, which lubricated the food nicely and broke the ice of Ola’s frosty temper. ‘I don’t know what’s up with Lancy these days,’ Ola said, after her third helping of wine. She generally refrained from discussing other people on principle, which often made it difficult for anyone to hold a conversation with her.
Anton shrugged. He’d never cared for Lancy Lefarr anyway, thinking her a shallow person and rather an unlikely comrade for the astute and industrious Ola. Perhaps it was true that opposites attracted, although what the two talked about when they were together he could not imagine.
‘I mean she’s just started not being where she should be, or arriving when she shouldn’t or...’ Ola shook her head. ‘I know she can be a flittery creature, Anton, but I’ve known her since we were kids and she’s never been like this before.’
‘Perhaps it’s love or something like that,’ Anton offered.
Ola pulled a face. ‘I’d thought of that, yes, but I’ve heard nothing and you know how everybody hears everything around here. Anyway, Lancy would tell me. We’ve never kept secrets like that from each other.’ Ola thought briefly of all the affairs in her life that had ever fallen apart and how Lancy had been there, a far from fragile support, to see her through all of them. Could Lancy be going through something now that she could not share with her friend? Surely not. It hurt Ola to think Lancy would keep her distance if she was in trouble or in love.
As soon as she reported for her next duty, Ola made a point of calling Lancy’s personal mail-file. It had until recently been the custom most days for she and Lancy to leave little messages for each other, but Lancy had been unusually silent for over a week now. She had not materialised at all during Ola’s rest period and attempts to call her apartment had been met only with an answering machine. Ola had even gone round there in person on one occasion, but no one had come to the door. Barely giving Incoce time for its usual greeting, Ola punched in Lancy’s mail code, squinting at the screen.
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