‘Really?’
‘It happens.’ Max smiled his award-winning smile at her. ‘Charlotte, you have to relax now. Don’t react, stay calm. And remember what Amy said: no matter what happens in there, more people will be replaying your words than his. Understand?’
‘Okay. Give me the goggles.’
‘I’ll be right beside you the whole time.’
~ * ~
The Anti Psi League held their meetings in avatar spaces. The rooms replicated real-life public spaces, and the speakers appeared on a raised platform at one end and viewers in the larger open area before it. When there were more avatars attending than visual space allowed, a count was registered of how many people were watching and a generic amalgam of crowd demographics was shown. This meeting had close to ten thousand and their overall mood was interpreted through an algorithm that combined their reactive expressions, so the speakers could gauge how they were faring.
The rules of the meeting were clear, and more easily enforced in avatar spaces than in the real world where anyone could shout out at any time. The panel of speakers would speak; in this case it was the leader of the mob, Nigel Westgate, and Charlotte. If someone in the audience had a question, they could post it at any time, or wait for the opening address to be completed and the floor opened. Once the floor was opened the questioning proceeded in the order of who put their hand up first and also a little by who had the greater influence. The APL had a strict policy of no moderation, which meant it could not be held accountable for any views expressed by the crowd, no matter how rude or ignorant. Charlotte did not expect a warm welcome. In the last twenty-four hours she had watched selected highlights from its previous meetings and if this meeting was being held in the physical world she would have felt afraid for her life. Here, on the Weave, it was only her civic life under threat.
But it was a chance she had to take. She had to come out strong and show she could stand up to the opposition view. At least that was how Max had convinced her. It was time to show some backbone after a life of slinging her opinions from a safe distance.
Amy, the assistant, or consultant or whatever she was meant to be, had made alterations to Charlotte’s regular avatar. ‘I don’t care where they are or what they’re angry about, a good bosom can remind men what is most important to them.’ Max had shrugged and left the room to avoid laughing and Charlotte had given in. If only it was so easy.
The other person on the podium was the self-appointed president of the Anti Psi League. Nigel Westgate was young and abrupt, short with hair cropped to the scalp. He dressed in a fashion that seemed referential to Services’ dress uniform, but in browns rather than blues. The tactic did give him the look of authority he hoped it would.
‘Miz Charlotte Betts. I was surprised you accepted our invitation. You are the de facto voice for psi tolerance, but as yet have no official position. How should I refer to you?’
Charlotte was ready for this one. Max had suggested she may as well not hold her tongue with this demographic. ‘As I understand it, in your meetings I am most commonly referred to as “that woman”. Perhaps to avoid confusing yourself you should stick with that.’
‘Miz Betts would be more appropriate, I think. Thank you for taking time out from your busy schedule of spreading psionic propaganda.’
‘I appreciate you asking me here to help cure your ignorance.’
‘Are you a telepath, Miz Betts?’
‘I am not.’
‘Then are you under the influence of a telepath?’
‘No.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘My cat would have told me.’
‘Miz Betts, are you not taking this seriously? Our way of life is under threat.’
‘Is it? I think your phobias are causing more harm to our way of life. We have lived with psis amongst us for a very long time ... in peace.’
‘Until last week. Can you deny that a psionic entity took thousands of innocent lives?’
‘Do you pretend that if you were attacked you would not protect yourself? Besides which, not even the Primacy can confirm what caused the incident under the Dome.’
‘How can you be so foolish? We all know what it was.’
‘No. You don’t. You have a fear of what it could be and without adequate proof you have decided that your superstition is fact.’
‘I am reassured that you speak only for a small minority, Miz Betts.’
‘Large enough that you felt the need to invite me here.’
‘The APL welcomes all honest opinions and points of view.’
‘Then may I speak?’ Nigel indicated that she could. ‘Thank you all for attending this gathering and listening to a voice you know already that you disagree with. I think it is extremely important for our society to have groups like yours who can come together to discuss common fears that affect our lives. It is the very foundation of our civic structure.
‘I knew, coming here, that my standpoint would not be commonly shared, but there is a growing portion of the World Union who are questioning whether psionics are a threat to our society. We have known of the existence of psionic powers in humans for ninety years, and we can safely assume that the potential has always been there.
‘Humans always have fear. There has never been a time when we have not found something to be afraid of. But why do we always let fear guide us? Are our imaginations so limited that we cannot be guided by hope?
‘I believe that, in the absence of any other major threat, we have found something that we don’t fully understand and we are working hard to make it our enemy. And by making it our enemy, by persecuting these people, they will make us their enemy. They are human too. They love just like the rest of us. They hurt just like we do. Why do you feel they should be punished for their gifts? Why do we let fear haunt us?
‘When I first heard of telepaths, when I was a girl, I thought to myself, “How wonderful that someone might now understand me.” When I first heard about telekinesis, I thought of the amazing things one could do with that ability. I choose to meet this unknown with wonder. I have been greatly saddened to discover that others meet this concept with fear. Can you not imagine the great things that could be done in teaching, in therapeutic medicine, in entertainment, in simply understanding each other better? Could we not, for once, try a different approach than aggression and domination?’
‘Miz Betts, you are either hopelessly naive or you are working for the psis,’ Westgate’s avatar sneered, one of two expressions it seemed to be programmed with.
‘Did you hear nothing I said?’
‘Oh, I heard. I heard your fear. Your fear is so great that you think we should simply roll over and let them do what they want to us.’
‘Why is it, Mister Westgate, that you feel more afraid of a psionic than you do of a person with a gun? Both can cause harm. Both can force you to do what you don’t want to do.’
‘Because I can get a gun of my own and level the playing field.’
‘And once again, violence is met with violence. How many times must humanity follow the same path to destruction? Are you too young to understand what was lost in the collapse? Have you not viewed the horrors of that time? Would you really want us to go through a war like that again?’
‘And your answer is to submit?’
‘To understand.’
‘I think we do understand. I think you are a puppet of Pierre Jnr and I can no longer tolerate you spreading your lies.’
~ * ~
In a blink, Charlotte was staring at the inside of her goggles. The little bastard had ejected her. Before question time.
She sighed and pulled the helmet off. Max was sitting nearby grinning and Amy was bringing a fresh pot of tea to her side table, with a biscuit.
‘That didn’t end well.’
‘Quite the contrary, Charlie. Your performance and his reaction at the end have put us over. You’re being quoted all over the Weave. You�
�ve done it.’
~ * ~
The incubator room was tranquil. The babies were too young to roll. They could only move their arms and legs and peer about at the fuzziness of their surroundings.
A boy of eight years stood amongst them. He kept them calm and made them coo with happiness.
He leant over the plastic cot of the latest newborn. It was only an hour old, still red from its exciting entry to the world. It stared at him with big fresh eyes. It was too young to see anything but the blur of the older boy looking down on him, but it could hear him.
Hello.
Of course it was too small to understand even the concept of hello. Pierre watched its immature brain rabidly networking, making sense and constructing patterns as quickly as it could.
Pierre put his finger in its hand and it clamped down automatically. Learn, little one.
A nurse came in through the sliding doors. He didn’t seem to see Pierre amongst the cots; he just walked to the side and lay down upon the floor.
You see, little one? It is that easy.
~ * ~
After Tamsin’s disappearance, the team originally assigned to the capture of Pierre Jnr was removed to a semi-permanent compound for isolation. Peter Lazarus was kept under guard in a hospital tent, while Geof Ozenbach and Colonel Pinter found themselves roomed in the officers’ barracks. It was normal procedure to put a hold on operations while a change of command was underway and the team and mission under review, so their segregation was reinforced by a complete disconnect from the world’s data channels.
For two days they sat together, confined in a stark barracks room with a dozen generic publications and a trio of viewers, their information filtered to grunt level. They were shown again and again the footage — and testimony from every possible source — of the events that were reshaping their world.
It had been a long while since Geof had had so little knowledge at his fingertips. A lifetime, in fact. He had no more contact with the outside world than the Colonel did with his Services-issued plastics spread before him on the table. Geof felt twitchy at not being able to dive into the raw data and see what was really happening.
His symbiot had never felt so heavy.
The Colonel slid one of the sheets from his pile and nudged it toward him. It was quite a nostalgic feeling for him to lift it closer and watch the animated lines and text, remembering his days in preparatory before he was botted for the first time. Geof had to remind himself that the information it presented was current rather than historical.
The article the Colonel thought would be of interest to him was tracking the influence of the Primacy, the group of people who held most sway in the world and were the top of the civics hierarchy. Since the manifestation, and disclosure of the damage, an unprecedented swell of opinion was sweeping the population.
The balance of authority and power was sliding into oblivion. People had to decide what to believe, which meant taking sides if they hadn’t before and changing sides given the new circumstances. Only about one per cent would have the level of access to know what had really happened, and what led up to it. Within twenty-four hours the entire Primacy would change and those who had reigned would now become subjects.
The Colonel removed the thread from his ear that fed him communications from his Services superiors and sat back in his chair.
‘Tell me, Geof, have you ever played Criticality?’
‘The card game?’ he asked. ‘Only in the mandatory classes.’
‘It’s a trench game. When I was active, in my early days, we played it all the time. It’s a good way to pass the hours when you’re waiting for something to happen.’
They ordered food, Serviceman meals only, and Pinter took a box of palm-sized cards from his kit and brought them to the table.
Geof laughed. ‘We’re not using those, are we?’
‘Of course we are. Don’t mock. We’re not all wired to the cerebrum, are we?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Now, do you remember the basic rules of the game? You can pick up as many cards from the draw deck as are already in your hand and you can lay out as many as you choose. Stacks can only go as high as there are piles and when a stack peaks it falls down and goes into your prize pile. If that has a knock-on effect and more stacks are toppled, they also become yours. To go out, you must trigger a collapse and empty your hand. Clear?’ He began dealing the cards, ten to each of them. ‘Remember, the point of any game is to play. It’s not life or death.’
‘I find it a bit abstract, to be honest.’
‘It is intended to be analogous.’
‘Of civics.’
‘That is one example. Should I go first?’ They began playing slowly, while Geof found his feet in the game. ‘It struck me, Ozenbach, that we don’t exactly know each other that well. Do we?’
‘I guess that’s true.’
‘We met Pete before we met each other.’
‘Yes. Is that important?’
‘I don’t know. Is it?’ The Colonel only briefly flashed his eyes from the game to look at Geof. ‘You’re an incubator baby, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And what’s that like?’
‘It’s all I know, sir.’
‘Well, that’s a dull answer. I was hoping for more.’
Geof sat back, not sure how to respond. There wasn’t much more to tell. He was born (which he couldn’t remember), he’d gone to a weaver ranch for his training and since he was fifteen he’d been running assignments for Services. All of which the Colonel knew already.
‘You can’t read minds, can you, Ozenbach?’
‘No, sir. I cannot.’
‘Pity. It would make things an awful lot easier, wouldn’t you think?’
‘I can see how it might be useful sometimes.’
‘You found Peter Lazarus pretty easy to talk to, didn’t you?’
‘What is with all these questions, Colonel? Am I on trial?’
Pinter stopped in the middle of laying down his cards. ‘Of course you are. We all are. That’s why we’re in the middle of the desert. You understand that, don’t you?’
‘You’re right. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me. I’ve never been on trial.’
‘Nor would you ever expect to be.’
Was the Colonel back to this again? Why were norms so fascinated by the bred? Geof knew the mantra, because it had been drilled into him since birth: born to be better, born to do good. It was written on the wall of every nursery and every ranch, always reminding them that they were genetically compelled to do what they were meant to do and be what they were meant to be. It wasn’t something they had to accept as it was impossible for them to challenge.
‘Does my asking make you uncomfortable?’ the Colonel asked.
‘I simply don’t know what answer will satisfy you.’
‘I ask because you have more experience in being controlled than I do. I wondered what it felt like. If there was a way to recognise it.’
‘You’re suspicious of Peter? You may as well be suspicious of all of us.’
‘Oh, I agree. One can’t doubt everything. That way leads to madness. And yet ...’ The Colonel let the ‘yet’ hang in the air. ‘Geof, a little bird has whispered in my ear.’
Geof’s gaze stopped straying and focused on the faint blue irises of the older man.
‘I too found him very good to talk to,’ the Colonel said. ‘And now I ask myself if I would normally have been as open as I was with a non-telepathic stranger.’
‘Are you suggesting Pete was manipulating us the whole time?’
‘Somebody has suggested it to me. I am now asking if you think the idea has merit.’
Geof clenched his teeth, dimpling the skin under his lip. ‘It would be denial to say that it wasn’t possible.’
‘Did you ever dig out how he escaped the camp he was taken to? When he was fourteen?’
�
�No, the records are restricted.’
‘Oh, come on, Geof. I know how weavers work. It’s only restricted if you can’t get to it. Why didn’t you look it up?’
‘I assumed others would have already.’
‘That’s not like you, is it?’ Pinter turned back to the game and laid down three cards on separate piles. ‘It’s not a remarkable story. He just walked out. And nobody tried to stop him.’
‘Why would they let him do that? Did he supposedly control them to let him go? He’s not strong enough for that.’
‘You’d have to ask him. The hypothesis is that continued exposure to a telepath increases their understanding of you and their ability to control you, to a certain extent. Inserting thoughts, triggering emotions. Who knows where that sort of thing would end?’
The Hunt for Pierre Jnr Page 13