by Jane Killick
“I thought you might want to know about Kev. He’s got two broken ribs and a fractured leg. A tibia or fibula, I can’t remember which.”
“They broke his leg? But I saw him running.”
“It’s possible to run on a broken leg,” said Cooper. “My brother broke his leg halfway through playing a game of football when he was fourteen and kept playing until the end. They only found out after the final whistle.”
Michael smiled at the concept.
“What’s so funny?” said Cooper.
“I don’t think of you as having a brother.”
“I have a mother and a father too. Contrary to rumour, I didn’t appear on this earth as a fully formed adult.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” said Michael. He looked out onto the pleasant green of the grass, which was about the only vegetation which hadn’t turned brown with the cold weather. He wished he could be left to sit and stare out at it alone.
“Sergeant Macaulay’s ringing round, securing accommodation for the others,” said Cooper. “He thinks it best, and I agree, that they’re housed in small groups in several places until this whole thing blows over. So the Perceiver Corps isn’t concentrated in one place.”
“You think this is going to blow over?” said Michael. “Have you seen what’s left of Galen House?” He yanked his phone from his pocket and pulled up the news report he’d been watching earlier. The one that had made him feel too angry to be around other people.
He passed it to Cooper, knowing that it showed the blackened empty shell of what had once been his home. The television news crews still had no clear view of it from outside of the base and so had sent their helicopter up to film from above where they could see right into the charred remains. Michael had little sentimentality left for the place, but he had perceived the horror of the others as they had looked at the footage. Not only had they lost their home, they had lost all of their possessions too.
The voice of Sian Jones spoke with that irritating hint of a Welsh accent out of the phone’s speaker. She talked about a woman who was in hospital with second degree burns after “perceivers and protestors clashed”. She didn’t mention anything about the woman accidentally setting herself on fire while she was trying to firebomb a bunch of people.
Cooper handed back Michael’s phone and he shut down the news report before he had to listen to any more.
“I’m still trying to find out exactly what happened,” said Cooper.
“People are frightened of perceivers,” said Michael. “I don’t expect that’s ever going to change.”
Cooper paused. Perhaps he was thinking about what Michael said, perhaps he wasn’t. Michael couldn’t be bothered to perceive him to find out.
“I actually came out here to ask you if you need a lift back to London,” said Cooper. “I presume the Prime Minister still wants you to work for him and I presume he’s still going to go bananas if I don’t get you back.”
“I presume so.”
“I’ve managed to secure an army driver to take me back to the base where I left my car. I can drive myself to London from there. I can give you a lift if you want.”
Michael thought about it for a second. He really had no other way of getting back. “Yeah, that would be helpful. Thanks.”
The road back to Galen House looked less sinister in the day. The bare branches of the trees were majestic against the white winter clouds, as opposed to the skeletal outlines of the night before. The rolling hills of the English countryside stretched out to the horizon in different shades of green, some of them with the white blobs of sheep moving on them.
But, as they got closer, Michael got an uncomfortable feeling about going back in the base and asked the driver to pull over.
“Don’t be silly,” said Cooper. “It’s safe.”
“For you, maybe,” said Michael. “But the soldiers inside might recognise me as a perceiver. I’d rather stay out here. You can pick me up on the way out.”
Cooper reluctantly agreed and Michael got out into the cold. The sun that had pleasantly warmed his face earlier in the day was sinking below the tree line and the chill was returning to the air. He buttoned up the military coat that he still wore and stood back from the road.
Michael pulled out his phone and texted Pauline: ‘How are you doing?’
She texted back almost immediately: ‘Took Katya for check-up. Army doc says all fine. She thinks baby is a boy!’
‘How are *you* doing?’
‘Stuck here for another night, but ok. Phone needs charging. Gotta go.’
Michael sent another message asking her to let him know when Norm had found her somewhere else to stay, but he didn’t get an immediate reply. Either she was busy or her phone had run out of power.
Michael looked up the road towards the army base that had once been his home. From where he was standing, he should have a view of the guarded gate at the entrance with the buildings behind. But what he could actually see was a group of civilians and three vans with news logos on the side and satellite dishes on top. They were probably all journalists. The fire had put Galen House firmly back in the news.
With the dimming of the light, the news crews had started to turn on their own light sources and areas of bright white beamed out from where they gathered. Michael, curious and cold from standing still, decided to walk up to investigate. As he got closer, he heard the irritating voice of Sian Jones carried on the wind.
She stood between one of the news vans and the fence, and was looking into a camera mounted on a tripod and pointing in the direction of the entrance. One of the bright lights Michael had seen from further down the road shone down on her from the top of a pole, giving her blonde hair an almost saintly halo.
Behind the camera stood a giant of a man, well over six feet tall, who had to bend forward to look into the viewfinder.
Michael stopped when he got close enough to hear what Sian Jones was saying:
“…has confirmed that the army base behind me was the home of an elite unit of perceivers being trained for unspecified missions. In the statement, the government condemns the attack on the building in which they say many of the perceivers were sleeping and which could have resulted in loss of life. What the statement fails to address is who carried out the attack. It was assumed earlier in the day that it was the anti-perceiver protestors who we spoke to yesterday outside of the army base, but some people I’ve been speaking to here have told me that it was some of the soldiers stationed on the base who staged the midnight attack. Official sources won’t comment on that suggestion, but it would answer the question being asked by many: how did protestors armed with petrol bombs get into a secure and guarded military installation? And if perceivers are no threat, then why did the very soldiers who work alongside them turn against them?”
Her diatribe stopped and she kept staring into the camera for a moment. Then she relaxed and turned away as she apparently came off the air. The cameraman stood up from his stooped position, put his hands in the small of his back and leant back against them. After stretching out, he reached across to a cord dangling from the light on the pole and turned it off. The halo around Sian Jones gave way to the grey of the day’s fading light. She pressed her finger to her earpiece and lowered her mouth towards the microphone on her lapel. “Yeah, that’s fine,” she said to whoever was listening on the other end. “Ask them how long they want, will you?”
The cameraman approached her with a large puffer jacket which she took, gratefully. Putting her arms into the sleeves and doing the zip up over her thin body made her look like she was a puffer jacket with a head sticking out of the top.
“Cheers, Andy,” she said. “They need us to stay to do a piece for the six o’clock.”
“It’s all overtime to me,” said the cameraman, who was evidently called Andy.
“Have you got any more tea in that flask?” she said.
“You drank the last,” he said. “I’ll see if I can score some more. ITN have
some work experience kid hanging around, I’ll see if they’ll let me borrow him.”
The tall cameraman, who seemed oblivious to the cold in his big jumper and jeans, walked off towards one of the other news crews.
Sian Jones plunged her hands into the pockets of her puffer jacket and walked away from the van. She was ambling, more than heading anywhere in particular, but still her path generally headed in Michael’s direction. She didn’t see him at first, as her eyes were pointed towards the ground as she assessed the best place to plant her feet on the uneven grass. When she looked up again, she gave him a cursory smile. “Afternoon,” she said.
“Afternoon,” Michael replied.
As she passed, he perceived her. She was thinking about what she was going to say in her six o’clock news report. It was not much different to what he had already overheard. But, as he lingered in her head, he noticed something else emerging in her thoughts: a growing sense of recognition.
Sian turned back round. “Do I know you?” she asked.
Michael faced her. “We met once,” he said. “About five years ago.”
“Was it on a story?”
“Sort of,” said Michael.
He didn’t know what he should do with himself. Make his excuses and run back down to where Cooper was expecting to pick him up, probably. But he was interested in what Sian Jones knew, and worried about what else she might reveal about perceivers.
He perceived her as her mind ran through snatches of half-remembered stories she had worked on. It was like watching a slide show of photographs on fast forward: a cute dog, a crying widow, an injured man, an embarrassed politician. Then Michael saw an image of himself as a boy reflected back at him. That was back before he became a perceiver for a second time, when he thought he was a norm.
She clicked her fingers. “You were with that girl who was asking about Brian Ransom, the perceiver guy.”
It was Michael who now remembered a face from his past: Jennifer. She was the perceiver who had taken him in when he had nowhere else to turn and helped him to discover who his father was. “Yes,” he said.
She was excited now, as her brain rushed to reconstruct little bits and pieces of memory from five years ago. “She was the one who led the march on Parliament that sparked off the riots. Whatever happened to her?”
“She couldn’t take it anymore,” said Michael. “She opted for the cure.”
“That’s right.” Sian nodded. “I’d almost forgotten. That was back when I worked at the paper. I loved working for the paper, you didn’t have to stand out in the cold for hours talking to a camera. But they had to cut the investigative reporter budget in the end, so I figured I could reach more people on the TV.”
“Why are you doing it?” said Michael.
“It pays the bills,” said Sian.
“No, I mean, why are you digging up all the secrets about perceivers?”
“People have the right to know.”
“Do they have the right to attack perceivers in the middle of the night with tear gas and petrol bombs?”
She was getting angry now. He could perceive it. “I didn’t tell people to do that, they did it on their own.”
“But you told everyone where the perceivers were!” said Michael. He was aware his voice was raised, he saw a couple of people from the other news teams turn to look. But he didn’t care.
“I didn’t know it was going to turn violent, how could I?” said Sian.
“Because you were the one stirring up anger,” said Michael. “Perceivers were fine living their own lives not bothering anyone, then you go ahead and broadcast information about them with no thought for the consequences. You need to stop before someone gets killed.”
“All I’m doing is putting the truth out there,” Sian insisted. “People on trial and arrested police suspects were having their minds read without their knowledge. Who knows what they were doing with that information? And who’s to say that the perceivers could be trusted? They could perceive the mind of an innocent man and say he’s guilty and no one would know.”
“And that gives you the right to victimise them, does it?”
Andy the cameraman must have heard them arguing because, in a few strides, he came over carrying a mug of tea in each hand. “What’s going on?” he asked, looking at Michael, then at Sian.
She held up her palm towards him like a traffic warden holding up the traffic. “It’s fine, Andy, thanks.”
Michael took a breath and tried to subdue his own anger. It was stopping him thinking clearly and getting in the way of perceiving other people’s thoughts. “Everyone knows the truth now, so you need to stop saying it on the news.”
“If I stop, then other journalists will take over.” She threw out her arm to indicate the other news crews hanging around the base and narrowly missed whacking her cameraman in the face. He took a step back and tried not to spill the tea.
Michael looked back towards the entrance. There were more white lights shining out now, and each one probably represented a different organisation all doing a different report using the same facts and putting their own spin on it. It was the proverbial genie let out of the bottle.
“And if you think this is all there is to the story, then you’re so sorely mistaken,” said Sian, her pride now taking over. “There’s so much more that they’re hiding. A few young people shut away behind a military fence is nothing to what’s coming.”
“More?” said Michael. He concentrated his perception on her. He pushed away her pride and anger to look into the thoughts beneath. She was thinking about politicians. He saw images in her mind of men in suits and the tower of Big Ben rising above the Houses of Parliament.
A sudden fear blanketed her thoughts. “Are you a perceiver?” she said. “Is that why you are hanging around here?”
“You say it like being a perceiver is a bad thing,” said Michael.
But what he perceived from her was not a hatred of people like him, but a fear that he would see her secrets. Not an unfounded one, either, as Michael probed further to find out what she knew.
Sian suddenly broke into song: “Land of hope and glory! Mother of the free!”
Her mind was full of song lyrics and images of crowds singing at the tops of their voices while waving Union Jacks at the Last Night of the Proms. “How shall we extol thee, who are born of thee?!”
Andy the cameraman put the cups of tea down on a patch of uneven ground so they tipped and some liquid spilled over the top. But he was more concerned with Sian. “Come on, let’s go back to the van.” He took her arm.
On the road nearby, a car stopped and there was the sound of a door opening and closing. Michael perceived it was Cooper, while his perceptions of Sian were coming up against only patriotic singing.
Some of the people from the other news crews had split off from the rest and were coming over to see what the fuss was about.
The cameraman pulled Sian back the other way. “God, who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet!” she kept singing.
Michael shuddered as he felt Cooper touch the sleeve of his coat. “What’s going on?”
“She’s trying to stop me perceiving her.”
“I thought the technique was to sing songs in your head.”
“She’s gone one step further,” said Michael.
Somehow the whisper went around the approaching journalists that Michael was a perceiver and they quickened their pace towards him.
“We need to go,” said Cooper.
“Yeah,” said Michael.
He jogged down to Cooper’s car and got in the back.
As Cooper drove away, Michael stared out of the rear window at the journalists as, for a moment, he perceived their disappointment that they had missed their chance to interview a perceiver. But it wasn’t them he was worried about, he was thinking about the real story that Sian Jones claimed the politicians were hiding.
Sixteen
Michael got back to the flat to find the sheets that P
auline had been sleeping on, folded up on the arm of the sofa. As he wandered through to the bathroom to do the necessary after his long journey in the car, he looked through to his bedroom to see the unmade bed where Katya had slept.
After he washed his hands, Michael stripped the bed and put the sheets in the washing machine. He was overtired from getting virtually no sleep the previous night and he wanted to look forward to getting into his own bed with his own clean sheets and not ones that someone else had used.
He collected the folded up sheets from the sofa and was about to put them in the machine as well when the smell of Pauline stopped him. It was wrapped up with the residue of fragrance from the washing powder, but there was enough of it to make him think of her. The sheets were soft in his hands and he held them like he was holding her.
Shaking the silliness from his head, he bent forward to put the washing in with the rest and stopped. The machine was quite full already with sheet, two pillowcases and a duvet cover. There was also the issue of getting everything dry before he could put it back on the bed again. It didn’t make sense to wash both sets of bedding and leave him with nothing. So he shut the door of the machine, added the powder and set it off on its washing cycle.
Michael took the other set of sheets back to the sofa, put them back where he had found them and sat down. The cushions hugged his body with a comfort of home which was more relaxing than any other. He retrieved his phone from his pocket and read the warning message to say it was low on power. Reluctantly, he left the sofa, scrabbled around for the charger, then sat back down again and dialled Pauline’s number.
The wire attached to the phone was too short for him to sit back so he leant forward with the phone at his ear. It rang for a long time and he thought it was going to go to voicemail. But, at the last moment, Pauline answered.
“Hello?”
She sounded a little out of breath, but it was good to hear her voice. “Hi, it’s Michael.”
“Yeah, I know. The display tells me who’s ringing. Where are you?”
“Home.”