For two days the tension had been building; two days – since the formless wave of fear had jolted them all from their sleep, leaving them wide-awake and shaking. Every member of the tank had felt it. Katie had woken up screaming. Then … nothing.
After the weeks of learning, of eagerly devouring the new communication, the mind-silence was a terrifying emptiness. Not just for the feeling of withdrawal which it produced in all of them, but for fear of what it meant.
Susan stood and walked towards the old eucalypt which stood in the centre of the lawn. The ground was bare beneath its spreading branches, where it had starved the grass of sunlight and drained the goodness from the soil. She picked absent-mindedly at a piece of bark as she spoke.
“If I could just persuade him to let me inside.”
“Forget it.” Erik walked up behind her and placed a hand softly on her shoulder. “No one goes in except the terrible twosome. How are the other researchers taking it?”
“That lot? Larsen has them just where he wants them. He says ‘Jump’, and they say ‘How high?’ Besides, he’s organised it pretty carefully. Those he couldn’t send on wild-goose-chase assignments have been given a week’s paid leave. They must’ve thought it was Christmas.”
“What did he tell them?”
Susan picked a dry leaf from one of the lower branches, and crushed it between her fingers, letting the pieces drop. “Just that they were reorganising and didn’t need anyone around.”
“Except you?”
“Except me. I guess they think they might need me later on … in case something goes wrong.” He could taste the fear in her voice.
“Come on. Let’s get back. Maybe the kids can think of something …”
“Why don’t you use your card to get inside? I bet we could keep them occupied for the best part of an hour, if we put our minds to it.” Greg sat on the rocker in Mikki’s room. The others sprawled around the room, on the beds or on the floor. Susan stood with Erik beside the door.
“He’s changed the access code,” she replied. “Without it, the card’s useless.”
Chris untangled his legs, stood up and left the room without a word.
Lesley, standing beside the window, gave voice to everyone’s unspoken thought. “What could that jerk be doing to them? It’s been two days already … and nothing.”
Gordon placed a soothing hand on her shoulder. Gretel shifted uncomfortably on Katie’s bed, dislodging one of the pillows, which slid in slow motion to the ground.
“Look.” Greg’s voice was even. He held Lesley’s gaze before continuing. “He’s not going to harm them. Not yet. Not if he even suspects their potential. My guess is that he does suspect something and that he has them sedated. He’s probably working out ways to test his theories. But it worries me that the bastard had to send everyone away.”
“Why?” Sometimes, it was easy to forget that Katie was only ten years old; still the baby of the group.
Susan almost smiled at the naivety of her question. Instead, she crouched down beside the girl and spoke quietly. “Because, Katie, it means that he probably intends doing things that he wants no one else to know about.”
A long silence settled on the room.
Then the door opened and Chris returned. On his open palm, he held a thin black disc – about the size of a ten-cent piece.
“Here it is.”
“Here what is?” Erik leaned forward, looking over Chris’s shoulder.
“Your key to the inside.” He had everyone’s attention, and allowed himself a small smile of satisfaction. “I kept a few of these – for old times’ sake. This is the best model.”
“A bug?” Greg spoke up from the depths of the rocker. “What use is that? We don’t want to listen to them, we want to get inside.”
“Exactly.” Chris’s smile expanded to a grin. “The access code is computer-controlled – it’s just like a bank PIN number. And the key-pad you punch the numbers on works on electronic tones, the same as a push-button phone. All we need to do is stick this little baby onto the underside of the key-pad, then record the tones when Larsen lets himself in, and bingo – we know the code.”
Susan smiled. “Remind me not to use the autobank when you’re around. Did you ever consider a career in white-collar crime?”
“I did.” Chris beamed. “But there’s no challenge in it. I’d much rather play point-guard for the Chicago Bulls.”
“So when do we begin?” Greg struggled to his feet, easing his weight onto his crutches.
“How about right now? It only takes five seconds to attach it.”
“Well, what are we waiting for, Christmas?”
And the crisis-meeting broke up.
XVII
SUSAN’S STORY
Erik and I slipped inside as soon as the kids started the diversion. It was only a small fire, but the smoke was surprisingly thick and black. And seven kids can certainly make a commotion when they want to.
Well, actually it was six kids. Chris was stationed in one of the small rooms above the rec area. It gave him an unobstructed view of the lawn and the Babies’ complex. He was the “cockatoo”; he kept in touch through a tiny two-way similar to the one Erik was carrying in his top pocket. It was his job to warn us if they decided to come back. To give us a chance to escape. Or hide.
The whole place was too quiet. Not that it had ever been Grand Central; but you could usually count on running into someone. I’m sure that a large part of the gut-sick feeling I had when we entered was a combination of sneaking around like a cat-burglar – something we were both getting quite used to – and a formless fear of what we might find.
But it was also the absence.
For weeks, most of my time inside the complex had taken the form of a silent dialogue. I learned, they learned. And we shared so much more than the sterile walls, the meaningless experiments. All that was gone. Somehow, the mind-silence seemed so much more complete there in the empty corridor. So much more frightening.
Erik was checking the doors. An analysis lab. A seminar room. The empty observation room. All deserted. We moved on down the passage.
And we found them.
Four of them.
Larsen had moved extra beds into the twins’ room and they were lying there, obviously sedated: Pep, Myriam and the twins. Ricardo was missing.
Erik started checking them out. Whatever Larsen had administered, it was a strong dose. He couldn’t wake them.
“Where’s Ricky?” He sounded worried. “You stay here, I’ll go and look.” He left the room.
I walked over and looked down at Myriam. Her dark hair had fallen across her face. I brushed it aside and watched her sleeping. There was no peace in that face; it was as if she had fallen asleep fighting and the pain of that effort was frozen in her expression. I touched her cheek. It was cold. She stirred slightly, then rolled over onto her side and lay still. I wanted to lift her up, to hold her against me and warm the life back into her. To feel her presence again inside my mind.
Was she my favourite? I loved them all, but there was something about Myriam. An unquenchable spirit. I felt like a mother to them all, but there was a special … link with Myriam.
“Come on, Myriam. Talk to me.” I thought I sensed a movement. And again. Slight, but definitely there. The door was ajar. I looked towards it, listening for Erik. Nothing.
And when I looked back, her eyes were open.
“Myri?”
She stared at me, eyes wide, struggling to focus. Then, suddenly, she screamed. The first sound I had ever heard her make. It filled my ears; I felt it crash across my mind in a wave of pure pain. And the terror in that cry was like a dagger turning slowly in my heart.
Then I realised that the others were stirring. Pep sat up groggily, fighting the sedative; Rachael rolled over onto her side, her eyes wide, her mouth locked open in a yawn; Ian grasped the rails of the bedhead with his left hand and pulled himself up against it, struggling to unglue his eyelids. And I knew. Myria
m was waking them. She had stopped screaming, but the terror was etched into her face.
“Myri? What is it? What’s wrong?”
ricardo. The mind-speech filtered through, weakly. ricardois … gone.
“Gone? What do you mean?”
iwecannotfeel … himheisgone.
XVIII
Ricky
September 22, 1990. 2.30 am
The scream echoed down the corridor and Erik froze with his fingers on the handle of the door. He turned, ready to move back towards the source of the sound, but stopped. Through the thin crack beneath the door, he caught the faint yellow glow of a light.
He listened for a moment. The echo of the scream died away inside his mind and the complex was silent again. He looked at that telltale glow.
Susan had not called him, and he knew instinctively that if anything serious was wrong she would. Carefully, he pushed open the door and moved inside.
The light came from a small examination lamp. It was mounted on an articulated arm protruding from the wall above the room’s only bed. Someone had turned it towards the wall, so that there was no direct glare, only a weaker reflected illumination, which borrowed its colour from the creamy yellow of the walls.
Ricardo lay on the bed. And his eyes were open.
“Ricky. Am I glad to see you …” The words trailed off as the realisation struck. The child could not see him. For a moment Erik felt his heart lurch and an electric fear run through him. Then he caught the rise and fall of Ricardo’s tiny chest and released the breath which he suddenly realised he had been holding.
Always the smallest of the Babies, it seemed that he had shrunk. And there was an … emptiness, an absence of life behind that gaze. He lay unmoving in the centre of the barely disturbed bed, in the middle of the sparsely furnished room and stared at nothing.
No. Much worse.
He didn’t stare. For the emptiness behind those eyes went far beyond the Babies’ normal peculiar detachment. Ricardo’s body lay on the bed; it breathed, its heart pumped blood. Perhaps it might even react.
But Ricky wasn’t there.
… youcannotit … isnottherighttime.
“What do you mean, ‘not the right time’? You can see what the bastard’s done to Ricky …” Erik was looking straight at Myriam, who turned and placed a hand on Ricardo’s unmoving shoulder. The others had now joined Erik in the room where Ricardo lay.
iwecansee … iwecanfeelbut … itiswrongtoactfrom … emotion … wemustconsider …
“Consider! I’m considering. I’m considering ripping his bloody throat out.”
ifitwouldserve … someusefulpurposeiwe … woulddoit foryou … iwe . . .
“Erik, I think I know what she’s getting at.” Susan cut in, moving between him and the bed and taking his hand gently. He looked into her eyes as she continued. “Sure, you could give him what he deserves, and MacIntyre too. But what does it achieve? Does it help Ricky?”
“I guess …”
“Of course it doesn’t. All you’ll succeed in doing is getting yourself canned, and once they get rid of you, it won’t take them long to figure out my connection. We aren’t exactly a state secret, you know. So I get fired too. Who’s going to help the kids then? Who’s going to protect the Babies?”
“Yeah, sure.” There was a bitter edge to Erik’s voice. “We did a great job of protecting them, didn’t we!”
“They caught us by surprise. We can make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
“Right, and I know how. We blow the whistle on the whole damned project. We stop him once and for —”
noyoucannot …
The force of Myriam’s projection drove the words from his mind.
youmustnot.
pleasenoyoudonot … understand.
Pep and Rachael lent the power of their sudden fear to Myriam’s warning and his mind was reeling.
“But he’s killing you. He’s …”
wewouldratherbe … dead … susanpleaseyou … understand …
“I think I do. Erik, we have to work from the inside. It’s their only chance. You can’t reveal what’s going on here, even to save their lives.”
“Are you crazy? I won’t let them —”
“No, I’m not crazy.” She looked towards the Babies who now stood in a group at the foot of Ricky’s bed. “And they’re not crazy either. But the damned world is.
“Think about it. What if you do get the project scrapped. What happens to the Babies? I’ll tell you. Either they ship them back home or someone else takes them over. Someone who knows their secret. Someone who might be worse than Larsen.”
“We could make sure they got home. They —”
“But they don’t want to go home. Don’t you understand? For all that time, they put up with the loneliness, with being cut off from the whole damned world because they didn’t know any better. Apart from the twins, until the Babies came here they had never known anything but the solitary existence of the Shield. But now they’ve experienced the Sharing. They can’t go back. For them it would be worse than death. Much worse. You can’t condemn them to a world of mind-silence again.
“And anyway, what makes you think they’d be left alone? Larsen would publish. He’s hungry for the glory. And once their secret was out there’d never be any peace. The scientists would probe them in ways Larsen never even dreamed of. They’re not just kids any more, they’re an enigma. A question to be solved. You don’t think they’re going to let them be if we just ask nicely? They’re scientists; it’s their job to destroy people’s peace and quiet, if that’s what it takes to find the answers.”
“That’s a pretty cynical view of your colleagues.”
“They’re scientists. I’m a psychologist. I just supply them with data …” She stole a glance at the child on the bed. “And try to pick up the pieces when they screw up. Anyway, forget them. How do you think Mr John T. Average-Citizen is going to react, knowing the Babies exist? Hell, some of our fellow Australians get paranoid enough about ‘boat people’ – or the new neighbours with the name that ends in a vowel.” She held his hand tightly, then raised it to her lips and kissed it. “You know I’m right.” He nodded. “Whatever we do has to be done without alerting them.”
“But what about Ricky?”
They both moved towards the bed, but the little boy remained motionless …
… Inside was darkness. No sight, no sound. No sensation. Only mind.
Behind the barrier, he cowered; cringing from the memory of the Noise – which had swept its pain across his unprotected thoughts, tearing at his soul as he stood alone, lost on an endless plain, a featureless expanse with nowhere to hide. No shelter. No escape. Exposed, with no direction to run.
And so, he had turned inside himself. Deeper and deeper. No longer able to hold back the force of the Noise, he had re-treated from it, burrowing desperately down through the layers of his mind; of knowing, of remembering, of feeling. Of wanting. Down to a place beyond thought. A primitive cell of self. The seat of survival. The one place, deep inside, where the Noise could not penetrate.
And there he remained.
The shell of his body continued to function. Vaguely, he sensed its pulse, the rise and fall of its breathing, the movement of its blood. Vaguely. But it was no longer a part of him. Nor he of it.
Here he was safe. Here the pain could not follow. Here he could think and be. And remember.
And he remembered.
The wave of terror which exploded through the Sharing, when Larsen entered with the needles and they read the pattern of his intentions. Pep was first, then the twins, and finally Myriam, who offered a futile resistance, before the needle entered and the cold stream of sleep spread slowly through her.
One by one Ricardo had felt them leave him; drifting away from him, their Presence fading, until the Sharing disintegrated. The Shield of the Sharing dispersed and he was alone. Truly alone.
The Noise was as strong as he always remembered it, but his own
Shield held it back.
Larsen had led him from the room, and he had followed.
And lying on the bed, he had felt the needle enter; slide coldly into the vein, eject its stream. He had waited for sleep to overtake him too. But no sleep came. Drowsiness, but no sleep.
Instead, he felt his willpower start to crumble; his capacity to resist. A tiny, blinding light shone in his eyes. First one, then the other. And the Shield began to waver as random waves of Noise crashed through it. He fought, but the needle had done its work: stripped him of his will, left him vulnerable and naked to the raging storm of thoughts.
Just moments before the Shield disintegrated, before he began that desperate retreat inside, he remembered the voice. Larsen’s voice, whispering close to his ear.
“And now, Ricardo Munoz, you’re going to tell us exactly what makes you tick …”
“Sodium bloody Pentothal! What the hell did he think he was doing?” Ricky’s file was open on the desk before her, and Susan pored over it, shaking her head in disbelief. She whispered to herself: “Oh, Ricky. What’s he done to you?”
“What is it?” Erik returned from the photocopier with the file-sheets he had just copied. “You find something?”
“Something I wish I hadn’t.” She massaged both her temples with the tips of her fingers, trying to ease some of the tension which she felt rising. “The damned fool. He just doesn’t understand …”
“And neither do I. What the hell has he done?”
“He’s dosed Ricky up with Sodium Pentothal.”
“And?”
“And. Do you know what Sodium Pentothal is? Do you know how it works?”
“Would it surprise you if I said no?” Erik attempted a weak smile, and even through her anger and worry, she had to smile back.
“You know, you’re good for me.” He touched her hair gently by way of acknowledgment and she continued: “It’s what they used to call a ‘truth serum’, though no one much uses it any more. Too unreliable. If you use a large enough dose, it sends the subject to sleep, but in small doses it removes the conscious inhibitions. Makes it harder to hide your thoughts. The idea is that you can’t keep secrets. That’s why they used to use it to try to extract confessions from suspects. Larsen obviously figured he could get information out of Ricky …”
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