by Alex Hughes
I looked ahead, a strange, almost double vision in front of me as the back of my head dealt with the physicality of Mindspace laid upon the real world. The left side of the back wall was a vertical window cracked open, blood spatter coating the pieces left in the frame, sunlight seeping through from the door above. The inside of the cab I could see was also covered in spurts of blood, now drying, and a forgotten jacket, well worn, hung on the passenger-side seat. Death was hole in the room, a deep black hole centered on the driver’s side.
And directly in front of me, a pile of broken boards, left over from a large crate maybe, and what looked like another broken crate, hip-high. I looked back, slowly; a truck this size had to have had dozens of the crates in it, from the pattern on the right wall for tie-downs, some pieces bigger than these, most a lot smaller. How in the world had they managed to transport so much in a single white van?
“Hurry up,” Morris yelled at me. “I’m getting cold in this wind.”
“Do my best.”
Something odd then—from the boards behind me. Like a blip, almost. There and gone.
I turned. Nothing. If it had been anything but first thing in the morning, when I was sure my telepathy was stable, I would have doubted myself. But here, now—there was something going on.
“Yell at me again!”
“Stupid damn consultant wants me to yell at him,” I barely heard. Then, much louder, “How’s this?”
The blip again, harder, this time—
My own frustration, in a rainbow-pressed kaleidoscope burn through Mindspace, like a pulse from a quasar, like the signal light on a hill, on and then off again. A pulse of energy, twisted, sudden, then gone.
What the hell?
This time I projected on purpose—curiosity. Strong picture of where I was.
A pulse again, the same twisted kaleidoscope pulse. A reflection, a ping back.
I was moving the boards like a madman, uncovering the box underneath. It was small, half the size of the crate. My fingernails broke on the hard wood of the lid, but I kept going, heedless of the pain. Finally I forced it open.
“What the hell?” came from behind me, then fast footsteps.
Didn’t matter. I sent a picture again—and there it was, like a shining pulse of light, there, then gone. The light all in Mindspace. It was pretty, but it was pretty like the skin of a cobra; you stared at it too long and you died.
As the lid came off, warm steam lifted into the cold truck. I tore off three layers of air-filled protective packaging in a rush. Picked up the contents, at least the top package, a hard board covered in softer wrapping, and unpeeled.
I had to take it into the light to understand what I was seeing. There, in the sunbeam from the cab, was a network of leads, small flexible medical-type tubes in a nest, and in the center, connected to all the leads, a thin round piece the size of my hand, thin blue veins covering its surface, deeper splotches of green within, sickly green like bile or infant feces. The things looked like one of the neuron cells you saw under a microscope, the main body fat and translucent, the long tube connections like dendrites coming out on all ends. It reacted to the air by pulling in, its tubular extensions shrinking quickly away from the leads and starting to shake. The hard board I was holding had been my body temperature but was now cooling quickly.
“What the hell is that?” Morris’s voice came from behind me; I’d felt her approach and shielded partially already. She was quiet, curious now.
“I’m not an expert. Hell, I’m not supposed to get within a hundred feet of these, but I think it’s a biological.”
Behind me, she opened her mouth to ask—
But I’d already read the question. “It’s Tech. Real Tech. The stuff no one’s had the guts to make since the wars. The stuff that, networked together with synthetics and other biologicals, used to run the world. The stuff that made the computer viruses go blood-borne.”
I wrapped up the thing hurriedly and put it back in the box, the lid back on top of it all. Part of me wanted to get out a blowtorch and burn the whole thing, burn it with fire so hot the residue would steam an hour later.
Part of me was suddenly very afraid.
But Morris took the lid back off, pulled stuff away. Opened the next. And the next. Like a fool, pulled apart the broken crate, pulled until every piece was flat on the wall of the trailer.
“A heater,” she said. “A heater and two more. High-end electronic components. Glucose and minerals and a hell of a lot of stuff I have no idea what it is, labeled in packages I’ll bet anything are for keeping these damn things alive.”
She looked up at me. “How do you know what this is?”
I took a step back. “It fluoresces. It pinged back in Mindspace. Like two things do in the whole world. Two. They teach us what to look for, to know what you’re looking at—to know when to run.”
Morris shook her head, hair shifting. “They teach you how to recognize biological illegal Tech. Why would the Guild teach you to recognize illegal biological Tech?”
I swallowed, took another step back. “For the same reason they taught us to avoid sharks, snipers, and a hell of a lot of other dangers. There are stories . . .”
“Stories of what?” She stood up. “Of the Guild doing bad, bad things? Of the normals coming after you with pitchforks?”
“No. Stories of men going into a data center, good telepaths, and leaving in body bags. Screaming. These little babies will shred a telepath’s mind like a forest of razor blades. The fields don’t play well with mental fields, not in aggregate, but worse . . . Worse, they do exactly what this one does, echoing back strong thoughts, twisting them—twisting them and echoing them and amplifying them until your own thoughts pull your mind apart.”
I swallowed. “Would you mind very much if I killed them?”
Her eyes flashed. “It’s evidence. You don’t destroy evidence, no matter what it is. Not until the trial is over. And especially not if some of this will finally get the Guild to answer to the law.”
So she was one of those, was she? The anti-Guild radicals, who thought the Guild should answer to the normals. As scary as the Guild could be, as much as Enforcement scared me like the monster under the bed, all of that existed because of people like her. The people who hated and feared telepaths, who wanted to control and mitigate them. I hadn’t realized Morris was one of them.
She dusted off her hands. “Now get out of the crime scene before you ruin whatever evidence we might actually have left.”
I opened my mouth to protest that she’d done worse than me—then closed it at the anger still in her mind.
“We need to call the feds,” I said. “The Tech Control Organization.”
* * *
As we waited for the local TCO officer to show, I watched the Sigmacrete heal itself. The nanoid cells moved too slowly for the eye to pick up, but you looked away for a moment and came back, and a piece of the interstate’s long skid damage had filled in. A tiny piece, sure, less than the width of a thumbnail, but over time, the deep grooves were getting narrower and narrower, less and less deep. It was fun to watch, or try to.
Occasionally, transportation officials came on the news and told us the nanoids’ cells had reached their projected life span, and nobody could make more without forbidden Tech and a great deal of micromanufacturing power besides. They kept warning that the interstates would dry up one day soon, and start blowing away like sand on the wind. But thus far the nanoids seemed as stable as they’d been for more than a century.
Besides, worse come to worst, we’d repave the interstate with concrete or asphalt like a normal road and go back to regular maintenance. The Transportation guys were making too much out of nothing, or so Swartz said. I was inclined to agree, but the newspeople had to fill airtime, I supposed.
Finally a nondescript black aircar settled down on the Sigmacrete on th
e other side of where the ambulance had been, before they’d pulled away, and a guy in a black conservative suit came out. I stood up from my perch leaning against the car and walked over to stand next to Morris.
As the TCO officer got close, he put his hand over the back of his left wrist and frowned.
“You’re not wearing a patch,” he told me, frowning at me hard like I’d broken some sacred rule.
How in the heck did he know I was a telepath to begin with? “I’m not Guild. They don’t have a police telepath patch.” Probably for the simple reason that I was the only one.
“Well, I’d suggest you make one,” the guy told me. Then he stuck out a hand to Morris, who shook it.
“Detective Morris,” she introduced herself. “And you are?”
“Agent Ruffins. The rest of my guys will be here in a moment.” He turned back to me, his hand returning to his left wrist, scratching. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave the scene. You’re too strong—even the lower-level guys might pick up the electromagnetic bleed-over, and we need our senses sharp.”
“I’m sorry, what?” I moved a little closer.
“Stay there.” He pulled his left sleeve up. “You’re setting off my tattoo.” Under red scratch marks, there was a long tattoo, like the top half of a bracelet with multicolored stripes. “It vibrates when it’s around EM frequencies higher than the standard background level. And you’re setting it off. I’m going to have to ask you to leave.” He scratched it again, harder, and pulled his sleeve back down.
I got a funny feeling from him, but his mind seemed normal; maybe it was the tattoo, somehow. He was thinking the vibration was too strong. He’d just gotten the telepath stripe on the tattoo when he’d gotten promoted two months ago, and it was going off like crazy. It had never done this before; either I was crazy strong, far stronger than you’d expect, or the material they’d implanted in his skin was doing something weird, reacting far too strongly to the stimulus. Either way, he didn’t care.
“I’m not kidding. I have the full power of the US government behind me and I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” he said. Then he relented and pulled out a card. “Call me so I can get a statement.”
The feds had a telepathy tattoo now? I mean, I’d known about the Tech one in theory for a while, and had always been a little creeped out. But telepathy? Why in hell would they need to know who had telepathy and who didn’t? If the government was starting to side with the radical anti-Guild faction, that was not good for me. In fact, it was downright disturbing.
So, because it bothered him, I dragged my feet and offered useless advice, even pulling Bellury into it to make the moment go as slowly as possible.
In the end, when Ruffins was seriously thinking about bodily carrying me out of the scene—with protective gloves on—I left. Morris would probably help him, and if I got Bellury bruised, his wife would yell at me.
There was something wrong with the world where, in a scene full of Tech that could endanger the world, instead they spent time harassing me.
I took the card with me; I’d give a statement. I already had the damn FBI on my back; for all Ruffins was a boorish idiot, I didn’t need the TCO causing me trouble too. Especially if they had those new disturbing tattoos.
* * *
Hours later, I was back at the station and preparing for the next round of interviews at the borrowed desk downstairs. The phone on my little desk rang with an ear-shattering, vibrating off-kilter literal ring. I nearly jumped out of my skin. Then I picked it up and answered with my name.
Bellury’s voice grumbled. “Your girlfriend’s calling you from the Guild. Want me to patch her through?”
“You talking about Kara?”
“That would be the one.”
“She’s not my girlfriend. We used to be engaged, like ten years ago. She’s married and everything.”
A pause from Bellury. “My mistake. You realize I’m going to listen to this, right? Paulsen’s watching you, you know.”
“Knock yourself out.” I swallowed, and tried to figure out what Kara could possibly be calling me about. With any luck, it was good news on the certification. I could use some good news right now. Or an apology. She owed me that, and more, for not telling me.
“Did you know about Stone?” I asked when the phone went silent.
“Hi to you too. Don’t you have a direct number? I just got yelled at by three different people. You’re lucky I didn’t just hang up.”
“I asked you a question, Kara.”
She blew out a long line of air.
“I couldn’t tell you. I’m sorry, Adam. They made me promise. And I only found out that morning.” Which would explain why she had been so odd over breakfast. But still.
“Tell me at least I’m going to get my certification.”
“I’ll keep pushing, Adam, but right now it doesn’t look good. And me asking has set off a whole bunch of—”
I interrupted her. “Why are they doing this, Kara? Why send Enforcement on me? I haven’t done anything.”
“I swear I don’t know. I walked in on a meeting halfway through—and I hadn’t even been invited. There’s crap going on in the Guild right now, a lot of crap. The higher-ups want to cover their asses. They’re worried you’re a threat. Thus Stone, and the trouble with the certification. They want reassurance.”
“I just want to do my damn job here and have people leave me alone. I called you on the Bradley thing,” I grumbled, frustrated beyond words. “Really, Kara, I can’t believe you’d do this to me. Or maybe I can.” It wasn’t the first time she’d betrayed me for the Guild. “I saved lives, damn it. I took out a bad apple. This is beyond the pale. At least tell me they’re done now. A little posturing and a little pressure and this is it. I’m surrounded by cops. How much trouble can I really get into?”
“You know they could have done this at any time,” Kara said quietly. “There aren’t many free agents out in the world, and you attracted a lot of attention. You did the right thing, and you’ve made something of yourself. But they can’t make an example out of you anymore, and they’re not listening to me. I’ve done everything I can for you. I swear, Adam.”
They’d all thought I’d die in the gutter when I left. When they threw me out. Well, screw the Guild, I wasn’t going to roll over for them or anyone else.
But Kara kept talking. “I’ve begged, borrowed, and strong-armed. At least I can tell you they’ve assigned somebody honest. Stone came and talked to me today, after he got confirmed as watcher and—”
“Wait, he got a watcher assignment? For me?” I swallowed. Crap. This wasn’t going to end. This wasn’t going to end until they got their way. “Why in hell didn’t you call me? What did you tell him?”
“I told him the truth. You kept your head and helped us handle an explosive situation with minimal fuss. I told him if it was up to me I’d reinstate your numbers and leave you alone. I promise you, I fought. It’s an investigation. No force justified. I fought like hell to get that put in place. But you’re a Level Eight, Adam. They’re not comfortable with that kind of strength suddenly showing up and challenging their interests.”
“Challenging their interests? I caught a fucking serial killer without making the Guild look bad! How is this a problem, Kara? How?”
“I can’t stop this, Adam. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, me too.” And then I hung up on her.
* * *
I waited patiently for Bellury to show up at the desk, and when he did, I stood.
“Let’s go talk to Paulsen,” I preempted him.
“Why don’t we,” he said, a statement. From the feel of his mind, that was happening today with or without me anyway. He hadn’t understood everything he’d heard—but he was damn suspicious.
We waited, uncomfortably, outside Paulsen’s office while she finished up a
phone call with the county’s budgetary committee. My hearing was working overtime today, so I got snips and portions of what she was saying even through the closed door. Paulsen was arguing for more money for the department, with a list of reasons and statistics that impressed me even in pieces.
Several cops walked by, getting hostile as they saw me. I got flashes of officers getting termination papers and their general anger that I was still here, still getting attention from Paulsen, while they took pay cuts and watched their friends leave. I didn’t hunch over, and I didn’t look away. I needed this job, damn it. I needed it worse than they did.
At least my brain was cooperating enough to pick up the anger, if that’s indeed what I was picking up, and not a reflection of my own crappy mood.
No; it was the telepathy. Bellury began to think about his conversation with the FBI guy who’d called him yesterday, and my heart sank. Bellury was too honest not to give both the good and the bad, and he’d seen enough to at least suspect I was having trouble with the telepathy—and worse, suspect I was doing something with the Guild. However this worked out with the watcher—assuming he didn’t convict and kill me—I had the FBI on my tail right after.
It was almost a relief when Paulsen hung up the phone, took a deep breath, and then gestured for us to open the door and come in.
She had only the one chair today, so I stayed standing, next to Bellury, right in front of the large battered desk dominating most of the room. Paulsen’s wrinkles seemed deeper and she seemed more tired than ever. Her new cactus was sitting on the edge of the desk, looking a little battered. My slight headache did ease up when I got close enough to smell it.
“What’s going on?” she said in a clipped tone. “I have a full day today and I don’t have time for nonsense.”
“Kara just called me. The Guild contact we worked with on the Bradley case—you met her, I believe. She teleported me out to save Cherabino’s life, and she did it without charging the department and without complaining. She’s a good guy, for all she works for the Guild, and she’s demonstrated that to you personally.”