~ * ~
The Hunt for Pierre Jnr
[Pierre Jnr 01]
David M. Henley
No copyright 2014 by MadMaxAU eBooks
~ * ~
Pierre Jnr is
eight years old
~ * ~
Newton Pembroke was happy to be home. He’d flown back from his prospecting in the midlands with a buoyant heart and an appreciation for everything that met his eye. He landed his squib outside his house and, grabbing his aluminium attaché, sauntered inside.
‘Darlin’?’ he called.
A woman with overlapping curls of short blonde hair came out from the kitchen. There was flour on her hands, forearms and the navy dress she was wearing. Gail was obviously experimenting with manual cooking again. Normally when Newton saw the ridiculous occupations his wife employed to pass the time he would sigh; today, he smiled.
‘What is it, Newton? I’m in the middle of some scones.’
‘So it would appear.’ He grinned, and came close enough to give her a small kiss on the cheek.
‘Despite appearances, I did not mean that literally.’ She liked it when he was nice to her. Not that he was ever mean to her; it was just that life hadn’t turned out for him as he had planned and he was sometimes a bit dour. She turned back to the kitchen and spoke over her shoulder, ‘How was your day then? Something has put you in a good mood.’
‘Yes. I do seem to be in a good mood, don’t I?’ Newton’s search for reasons was short and ended with a shrug. ‘Nothing in particular, except I did come across this remarkable family today.’
‘Remarkable how?’ Gail was bent over a bowl of wet off-white mixture, brow furrowed and not really listening.
‘Well, it’s hard to explain really. I was out in the midlands looking for acquisitions and I stopped at this farmhouse where a family was outside, playing.’
‘Uh huh ...’ Gail nudged the story along while trying to understand the instructions in the recipe book beside her. She couldn’t tell if the mixture before her matched the description of what it was supposed to look like. Were her circles ‘short’?
‘Anyway, the thing is, the entire family was focused on the little boy. I can’t quite explain it, as it took me a moment to realise what was happening, but they orbited him like planets, bringing him food, water, or wiping his chin. He just sat on the grass as the others moved around him and he didn’t say a word the whole time I was there.’
‘Maybe he was shy.’
‘Maybe, but it was almost unnerving the way he watched me. He seemed a very strange little boy — intense, murky — but he left me with a good feeling about him. You should meet him.’
‘Me?’ Gail squawked. Newt sometimes had odd ideas. Why in the world would I want to go to the midlands to meet some creepy child?
‘He wants to learn to read. Didn’t you say you wanted to help people? Now’s your chance.’
‘I never said I wanted to teach midland lumps.’
‘They’re not lumps. Their farm is functional, and their house is quaint and clean. You’d love it.’
‘I would?’ Gail was beginning to wonder what had got into her husband. Did he really expect her to squib out to the midlands to teach a lump the alphabet? ‘Really, dear, I’m not sure.’
‘Trust me. Tell me you’ll go. What if I went with you?’
‘Well, maybe.’
He nodded with pleasure, so glad that he had made her agree. Gail looked down at her hands and began scraping the mixture off her fingers. She had lost the impetus to cook.
~ * ~
It was, as they say, only ‘a hop and a squib’ to get to the midlands. The Pembrokes lived in old Tennessee, just on the edge of the metropolitan area, and the squib needed a quick recharging to make the distance. The midlands were the unprotected zones between the two weather-controlled areas of the east and west coasts, where the big farms used to be. Now, any farms that still existed struggled with temperamental grazing lands and scattered herds. Making a living out here was a risky — some might say unnecessary — pursuit for throwbacks and reclusives.
Husband and wife spoke very little during the journey; she had become used to him having notions and found that the best way to deal with them was simply to let him tire himself out. Why it had to involve her, she had no idea, but she was happy when they began descending toward a double-storey whiteboard house. At least now her husband’s fascination might be explained.
They landed on a patch of previously flattened dry grass. The squib doors opened and Gail stepped outside. It’s often hot in the midlands, she thought, and she raised her hand to protect her eyes. When it wasn’t hot, it was typically raining and being decimated by twisters. The midlands took the brunt of the weather’s extremes.
‘Come on, Newt, let’s get this over with. Newt?’ She turned around to find him slumped over the dashboard. ‘What are you doing?’ She leant in and shook his shoulder. ‘Newt?’ In alarm she clambered back inside and felt for his pulse. He was alive, but unwakeable. She pushed him back into his seat and ordered, ‘Computer, patch me into Services, quickly.’
There was no response. All the power seemed to have drained from the vehicle. Gail screamed in frustration and panic. After a final ineffective shake of her husband, she rushed into the house, calling for help, but received no answer.
Her eyes adjusted slowly to the darkness inside, diminished only by the dry light pushing through the brown curtains into the haze. The place was like a museum, one dedicated to the poverty of a previous century, and she sniffed at the baked air and the smell of degrading synthetics.
Her next call for help caught in her throat as she recognised shapes in the room: a man lying on the floor, a pair of children folded over the arms of a giant settee, a woman slumped in the doorway to the dining room as if she’d become exhausted trying to push the doors closed. They were alive, breathing dully, like Newton, but flopped carelessly about like dirty laundry.
‘I am glad you came.’
A voice from behind made Gail jump. It was a boy about eight years old, obviously the one her husband had spoken of. ‘What’s wrong with everyone?’ she asked.
‘Nothing is wrong. Do not be afraid.’
Newton never mentioned the size of the boy’s head. She was surprised he could stand up straight. ‘My husband has collapsed. I need help.’
‘It is okay. I understand.’ He didn’t speak like a little boy. His diction was immaculate with a confidence bordering on arrogance. ‘They are just asleep. It is good to let them sleep when you are not using them.’
Though she looked at him from above, it seemed that he was beginning to tower over her. She was in his shadow and he tilted his eyes down upon her. His lips pulled back as if smiling. She was terrified and then her fear was slipping from her as though a drug was calming her, stripping her emotions while keeping her conscious, and she knew that it was because of him, and it was good that it was him. He was inside her head, where she wanted her darling little boy to be.
She reached down and he reached up, their hands meeting with a friendly squeeze. ‘Am I your mother now?’ Gail asked.
‘Yes. You shall take care of me and show me the world.’
‘I love you, Pierre.’
‘I love you too, Mother.’
His whereabouts are unknown
~ * ~
His whereabouts
are unknown
~ * ~
Peter Lazarus checked into a sweetheart motel with a minimum stay of fifteen minutes. The room was a polyplastic reformable, a self-contained unit of pull-out benches, bed and bathroom, washed down and sterilised after every visit.
He folded hi
s legs beneath him on the bed and calmed his thoughts. He was used to such places and, as voyeuristic as they may have seemed to other telepaths, the good thing about sweetheart motels was that people kept to themselves and didn’t ask questions. It was one of the only places a man like him could hide.
The walls might block out the sounds in the other rooms, but nothing could protect him from the mental gyrations in the sex lives of others. In the cube of his room he couldn’t help but read the thoughts of the people around him.
On the floor above there were three couples within his range, plus another man who was sitting alone. On either side of him was a ménage à trois and a room being cleaned. Below, a woman slept while her lover spoke with his wife. The trysts of the masses were enacted time and again in these boxes, the saga of the ages, the ebb and flow of lust. Pete sighed and thought how nice it would be to sit in this room without picking up the thoughts around him. It was built for silence, but not the silence he needed.
Pete had grown up in this area until he was thirteen; a bay in the west coast megapolis. He’d taken the north-south tracks to get here, wanting his last day of freedom to be by the seaside. The tracks were the former Serviceman route that was opened to the public when the weather went haywire a century ago, an underground series of moving walkways that could take you across the city in as much, or as little, time as you wanted it to take.
Pete liked the tracks. They were dimly lit, surrounded by subterranean piping and pulsing with a steady stream of bouncing walkers. The articulated path clicked regularly over certain joins ... thck thck thck thck. Fading closer, then diminishing as he overtook them and moved on. The passing murmur of thoughts lapped over him, too quickly for him to discern clearly. Pete was happy.
On his way out from the motel, Pete swiped his carte through the auto-clerk, paying forward for the whole night. He was spending big and had chosen this particular sweetheart motel for being across the road from the beach and just a short walk from the expensive French restaurant that had become his traditional place for last meals.
This was his third visit to La Nouvelle Maison. From the outside it was a small peach-walled block in the shadow of the window-dotted towers that built up like a mountain range behind. The owners had furnished the inside with any wooden furniture they could get their hands on. The slab walls were covered in flocked wallpaper, divided with heavy curtains that implied there were windows behind them. The hum and slur of the city were successfully blocked and replaced with the tinker of plates and cutlery and wisps of discreet conversation. Pete chose the duck and a carménère vintage that was distinctly outside his normal budget.
His first visit had been when he was thirteen, before they took him to the psi-camps. His father wasn’t a bad man, he continued to remind himself; they had both known Pete would be taken the next day. His father because he had arranged it and Pete because ... well, because of what he was. It was an odd repetition of events for him, actively leading himself through the same steps that would result in his renewed incarceration.
The wine had depth and the duck was luscious with flavour. The gratin potatoes were made with convincing butter.
All his life he’d shunned the thoughts of others, overwhelmed by the range and breadth of what was truly on people’s minds. The alcohol played its part, but he was unusually tranquil and let the pandemonium walk and dance around him, seeing but not looking, hearing but not listening. He knew it was unfair, the way things were for psis, but, on the other hand, being a telepath made it easy for him to understand what Services had to worry about; if he was more malicious than he was, they would be right to impose their strictures.
There was an estimated population of ten thousand psis worldwide, although it was unclear to him what data this was based on. Of these, some were cured and the others were sent to the islands. A very few found the cracks and escaped the prescribed fates.
For dessert he had a selection of cheeses. It was all rather delicious, which was as it should be for a last meal.
Pete stared at the empty chair across from him. It seemed as though a barrier was coming down in his mind. Now that he had decided to turn himself in, the closer the moment came the more it seemed his life of hiding was someone else’s life, and another him was now returning ... the world he knew as a boy, before it changed so suddenly.
Then he thought of his sister. He had seen her born. Had held her that very first night and they’d known each other. Instantly.
He had only seen her two times after that. Once when she needed him and once when he found her too late. The memory made him angry. The first time he knew her. The second time he knew it wasn’t her. The last morsels of his meal lost their flavour.
He thought momentarily about finding a partner for the night, but he wasn’t very good at ignoring another’s thoughts mid-coitus and it was all rather unappealing. Instead he returned to his room, took a double dose of dreamers and lay back. Thoughts, emotions and dilemmas swallowed him whole and he fell asleep.
~ * ~
The next morning Pete Lazarus woke and walked to the beach for one last swim before turning himself in.
The water was too cold for most swimmers, and only a few women dotted the beach to catch the early sun. They were sleepy under the warmth so their thoughts were peaceful to him, except for one lady with overlarge sunglasses who watched him approach the waves, her thoughts too tawdry for his liking.
The day was bright, the million reflections brighter. In the shallows small waves wet and re-wet the sand, sucking the ground from under his feet and sinking him centimetre by centimetre into the beach. It had been a while since he had last swum, and the sight of a pontoon in the middle of the bay called to him. It wasn’t too far.
The waves pushed back at him. Crisp coolness and the potent sunlight energised his muscles. He clambered onto the old planks and air-dried while watching the horizon move up and down with the swell.
The ocean glittered. The sun and wind were hitting the waves, creating a shimmer that blinded if stared at for too long. Pete closed his eyes and lay back, letting the waves roll him up and down and the light imprint striking red patterns through his eyelids.
He could hardly hear the people on the beach now, nor their thoughts, for which he was grateful. This could well be the last moment of peace he would ever know.
~ * ~
The first problem was proving his Citizenship, which Pete refused to do. That would trigger a lockdown before he could get out the words he needed them to hear.
‘I would like to see Lieutenant Baumer, at his convenience,’ was all he would say.
‘On what business?’
‘For now I will keep that private.’
‘As you wish,’ the ugly man sneered.
Pete was more familiar with small minds than most, and this man was a typical example. Typical to Services and typical to humanity at large.
It was his right as a Citizen to request an audience with the commanding officer, in this case Senior Lieutenant Baumer. The choice of offices for his surrender was not an arbitrary affair and he’d settled on this particular bureau after probing half the Servicemen of the city. The last thing he wanted was a hothead; what he wanted was a man like the Lieutenant.
Nobody but a telepath could know that Baumer had unspoken sympathies for psis — his mother had been persecuted for some minor talent — but he was also a rigid officer who followed regulations and that was precisely what Pete was counting on.
There was, of course, no privacy possible in this building. Services offices were permanently under surveillance, as were all public areas, and refusing to reveal his business as he had done was one sure way of flagging himself for closer attention, thus the officer’s sneer.
Behind him a younger man, straight of back, uniform buttoned and wired to regulation, opened a door and invited Pete through to a closed room. Baumer had a casual and confident manner, despite beginning an interview that had instant complicat
ions. They sat across an empty table, wondering about the other.
People like Baumer were essential to Services. Without men and women who could relate to the public, resentment would quickly build against the institution. Pete suspected the Lieutenant had some of his mother’s empathy and might be able to sense that he had come in peace. Or so he hoped.
‘I am obliged to tell you this interview is being actively monitored.’
‘I understand. Thank you, Lieutenant Baumer.’
The young man raised an eyebrow at the use of his name without any formal introduction. ‘We are having some trouble with your records, sir. Can you explain why this might be, and please begin by stating your name for the record.’
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