by Jane Killick
It had been more than half an hour since Barrington had left Michael sitting on his bijou two-seater sofa, and he had virtually memorised all the titles written down the spines of the Indian cookbooks on the opposite wall.
The front door opened.
Michael widened his perception and sensed that it was Barrington. The mind that he had brought with him was instantly recognisable as Pankhurst.
The door banged shut again and Michael felt the tremor through the house. Indecipherable male voices talked in the hallway on the other side of the wall. Then the final barrier between them, the living room door, was opened and Barrington led Pankhurst into the heart of his home.
The Prime Minister looked somehow less prime ministerial as he had taken off whatever brightly patterned tie he had been wearing that day and was just in a suit with open-necked shirt. However, it was what was in his mind that Michael was more interested in.
Michael had promised weeks ago when Pankhurst offered him a job that he would not perceive him. But sacking him, ordering that he be cured and sending his friend the policeman to lock him in a cell violated that agreement as far as Michael was concerned. He ignored Pankhurst’s tired and slightly nervous emotions and looked deeper into his mind.
Michael perceived no remorse at what he had done. Pankhurst was riding high at what his announcement over perceivers had done for his public approval and he was full of confidence following a meeting with senior members of his party who had agreed to back his continued leadership into the next election.
Other questions remained unanswered. Michael wanted to ask Pankhurst outright, but he had promised Barrington that he wouldn’t. So he thought them instead:
Why did you turn on perceivers when we had done nothing to you? Do you know how much pain you will cause when you force people to be cured? Do you realise you’ve criminalised an entire generation who has done nothing wrong? How can you live with yourself?
But Pankhurst couldn’t hear Michael’s questions. He was just a norm.
Barrington joined them. “Remember,” he said. “No politics in my flat. I know the two of you are on opposite sides of a certain debate, but you left that debate when you left Westminster. This meeting is about Wauluds and Wauluds only.”
“I heard you in the car, Barrington, there’s no need to repeat yourself,” said Pankhurst. He came further into the room and sat on the armchair. As soon as his bottom hit the cushion, he shifted himself to the side and reached underneath himself to pull out the PlayStation control he had just sat on. He dropped it on the floor next to the First World War book.
“As long as we’re clear,” said Barrington. “Did you speak to Wauluds?”
Pankhurst nodded. “I called him on his mobile. I told him I had been rash asking him to resign like that, when he could so clearly be an asset to the party. I told him I understood he’d been working on something that would be a game changer when it comes to the issue of perceivers and I would like to hear more about it.”
“He bought that?” said Barrington.
“Of course he bought it,” said Pankhurst. “He’s a politician with ambition and his party leader has offered him the possibility of redemption. He’ll be here.”
Pankhurst’s gaze drifted across the room and fell on Michael for the first time. He maintained his stare as if to show he was not afraid, but he couldn’t shield his mind from the discomfort at being in the same room as a perceiver.
“I still don’t understand why he has to be here,” said Pankhurst.
“Because we need a perceiver to make sure Wauluds is telling you the truth and find out anything that he’s not telling you,” said Barrington. “Wauluds is a perceiver too, remember, and we need Michael to stop him getting into your mind and discovering the real reason you asked him here.”
“Yes, well.” Pankhurst averted his eyes. “I find it very unfortunate that it’s necessary.”
Barrington’s doorbell put an end to the discussion and the security chief went to answer it.
He returned moments later with an intrigued, excited and somewhat wary Peter Wauluds. Michael threw a perception block around both Pankhurst and Barrington. It would be a strain to keep it up through the course of the meeting, but a necessary measure.
As Wauluds brushed his wispy hair over his bald patch, he saw Michael sitting there and suspicion filled his mind. Wauluds erected his own barrier around his thoughts, but it was weak and Michael could easily break through if he tried.
“I thought you were going to cure him,” said Wauluds, turning to Pankhurst.
“After this meeting, I’m sure I will,” said Pankhurst.
Michael shuddered as he perceived that it was no lie.
“I’m happy to talk to you, John,” said Wauluds. “But I’m not happy to be spied upon by a perceiver.”
“He’s here because I need an expert in perceivers to evaluate what you’re telling me. Why, Peter? Is there something you want to hide?”
“No, Prime Minister.”
Michael focussed his perception and tore a hole in Wauluds’s barrier. If there was something he was concealing, then asking him about it was the very moment that he would reveal himself.
Wauluds glared at Michael, flapping away the intrusion like a person flaps away a fly during a picnic. But the more Wauluds tried to push him out, the more Michael pushed in. And he was stronger than Wauluds.
Wauluds looked away again and dropped his barriers in surrender. Look into my mind, Michael, if you must, but you won’t find anything, he thought.
“Okay,” said Wauluds out loud to Pankhurst. “But I want my objection to him being here on record.”
“Noted,” said Pankhurst. “Although you do realise this is an off-the-record conversation?”
“Fine,” said Wauluds. He walked over to the only remaining seat left in the room – the one on the sofa next to Michael – and sat on it at such an angle that he purposely turned his back on him.
Barrington leant against the closed living room door behind him and folded his arms.
“So,” said Pankhurst. “Tell me your solution to the perceiver issue.”
Michael could not see Wauluds’s smile with his back to him, but he perceived his sense of superiority as he prepared to relay the information that he thought only he knew. “A serum,” he said.
“Like the one that caused the Russian soldier to shoot himself in front of the most powerful people in the world?”
“Not like that,” said Wauluds. “This is different. It’s been refined so it doesn’t have any of those unpleasant side effects. This is a serum that we can inject into any British agent anywhere in the world and they will be able to read the minds of whoever they encounter. If you want to use it domestically, then no problem. Inject it into the bloodstream of a police officer and he will be able to read the minds of all his suspects and know instantly who are the murderers, who are the rapists and who are the terrorists.”
“This is a technology to make Britain ‘great’ again, is it?”
“Exactly,” said Wauluds, his mind full of excitement.
“You wouldn’t be planning to sell this technology to foreign nations and pocket the profits through the defence companies you have links to?” said Pankhurst.
“No!” said Wauluds.
The lie was so easy to detect that Michael didn’t have to try. “He’s lying,” he said.
“What I meant was,” said Wauluds, scrambling to regain his credibility. “Not right away. But you’ve got to understand that something this powerful cannot be kept secret indefinitely. The Americans ended the Second World War by inventing the atomic bomb, but it wasn’t long before the Russians had one. The Americans, back then, lost their exclusive rights to the technology because it was stolen from them. Britain shouldn’t be allowed to make the same mistake with the perceiver serum. If we keep the development and manufacture in this country, we can sell it to the rest of the world. Then we will control the supply and we can collect the profits.”<
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“By ‘we’, you mean the country and yourself?”
“An entrepreneur should be rewarded for his hard work.”
Barrington unfolded his arms and pushed himself away from the door so that he seemed to physically enter the space of the conversation. “Sounds very calculating,” he said. “That sort of calculating, money-grabbing approach wouldn’t make you look very good if it were made public, would it?”
Wauluds looked up at him and a strand of wispy grey hair fell across his eye. He pushed it back again as he returned his attention to the Prime Minister. “Are you going to let your security chief talk to me like that?”
“I don’t see why not,” said Pankhurst. “It seems to me he has a very good point.”
“In fact,” continued Barrington, “it would look even worse if someone found out that you were planning to push through such a plan by using your influence in Parliament.”
“You have no proof of that,” said Wauluds.
“Neither did Sian Jones,” said Barrington, “but she was close to getting it, wasn’t she? Is that why you had her killed?”
A wave of guilt washed over the MP and dampened his thoughts with shame. “I’m not a murderer,” he said.
Michael perceived that he may not have pulled the trigger, but the blood was on his hands. “Don’t try to lie in front of a perceiver as strong as me,” said Michael. “The law still says you’re a murderer even if you paid someone else to do it.”
Wauluds got up off the sofa and backed away from Michael as panicked thoughts rushed into his head in an attempt to find a way out of the hole he had dug himself into. “You can’t use anything he says in a court of law.” He pointed an accusing finger at Michael. “Perceiver evidence isn’t admissible.”
Pankhurst stood up slowly. Calmly. Methodically. “I’m not concerned about the journalist,” he said.
Michael perceived he was telling the truth. He really didn’t care that an innocent woman had died.
“But I am interested in your serum,” said Pankhurst. “I mean, it’s perfect, isn’t it? I can continue to cure every perceiver in the country, satisfy the public desire to keep their private thoughts private, and still keep the perceiver card up my sleeve. Assuming this serum stuff does what you say it does.”
“Which is why I brought it to show you.”
Wauluds reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a syringe. One that was full of a clear liquid and had a plastic cap to protect the needle.
Michael hadn’t seen that coming. With all his perception powers, he had missed it. He had been concerned with the knowledge Wauluds had about the serum and Sian Jones, while keeping his protective barrier around Pankhurst’s and Barrington’s minds.
Pankhurst backed up: only half a step in the small living room before the back of his legs touched the chair he had been sitting in. “What are you planning to do with that?” he said, staring at the syringe.
“Show you,” said Wauluds. “I would inject it into myself, but I’m already a perceiver – not a strong one, maybe, but I read minds good enough when I need to – so I was thinking I would find a norm and inject them. That will show you how effective and safe it is.”
He turned to Barrington.
Barrington’s passive enjoyment at the unravelling of Wauluds’s deception suddenly turned into a trepidation that bled all over Michael’s perception. “No, wait …”
“Now, Peter …” said Pankhurst. Even his emotions revealed he was unsure.
“It’s only temporary,” said Wauluds. “Its effects should wear off after a few days.”
He pulled the plastic cap from the needle and dropped it to the floor.
“No, absolutely not,” said Barrington. “I refuse. I resign. I won’t be anyone’s guinea pig.”
Michael leapt from his seat as he perceived Wauluds wasn’t going to take no for an answer. But the MP had stepped over to Barrington before Michael could get to him.
Barrington dodged the hypodermic needle as if it were a knife and followed up with a sharp punch in Wauluds’s face.
Wauluds spun with the force from Barrington’s fist; sending a spray of blood from his nose across the far wall as he collapsed onto Pankhurst.
The two men fell backwards. Pankhurst’s head struck the collection of hand weights in the corner with an ugly thump that was barely softened by the folded gym clothes on top of them.
Pankhurst groaned. He was dazed, but not unconscious.
Wauluds raised the syringe in his hand and plunged the needle straight into Pankhurst’s arm.
Everyone in the room saw what was happening, but was powerless to stop it. No sooner had the idea entered Wauluds’s thoughts than he had injected the Prime Minister.
Pankhurst cried out. But the serum was already in his bloodstream and his heart was pumping it into his brain.
Barrington pulled Wauluds off Pankhurst’s sprawled body.
Michael stood and watched the horror play out in front of him.
He could perceive Pankhurst’s mind changing. The mind that had belonged, so clearly, to a norm, was turning into a perceiver. Like light turns to shade when a cloud moves between the sun and the earth.
Barrington pushed Wauluds away from him and the MP crashed against the shelf of books. “What have you done?” cried Barrington.
“Shown him how powerful a norm can be when they’re given perception,” said Wauluds.
“Oh my God,” said Pankhurst, trying to sit up from where he had crash landed. Barrington came to his aid and lifted him onto the sofa.
Pankhurst stared at his security chief with wide, manic eyes. “Christ, Barrington, you really don’t like me, do you?”
“Sir, you’ve had a shock. Why don’t you sit there? I’ll get you a glass of water.”
Barrington turned from him, but Pankhurst grabbed hold of his sleeve. “Did you vote for the other lot in the last election?” He concentrated; perceiving him. “You did, didn’t you?”
Barrington picked Pankhurst’s fingers off his sleeve and stepped back. He pulled his mobile phone from his pocket and started to dial.
“Excellent, Barrington. Call my driver.”
“I’m calling an ambulance.”
Wauluds composed himself, tugging down his rumpled shirt and pushing back his wayward strand of hair. “I’ll call your driver,” he said and got out his own mobile phone.
“Speaking as your head of security, sir, I really wouldn’t advise it.”
“I thought you just resigned,” said Wauluds.
Pankhurst got to his feet. He wobbled a little, but Michael could perceive his head was clearing as it rushed to process all the perceptions that were being thrown at him. “You’re right, Peter, this stuff is amazing!” he said. “I always wondered what it was like. If I go back to the Houses of Parliament now, will I be able to see into all the minds of the other MPs?”
“Of course,” said Wauluds. “Your driver should be here any minute.”
Thirty
Michael turned his back against the wind to protect Katya’s baby’s body from the cold. The little boy looked so fragile sleeping wrapped up the blanket that Pauline had bought for him, that Michael couldn’t help but cuddle him close. Especially now that the DNA had proved he was the boy’s father. Biologically speaking, at least.
Pauline and Katya emerged from the visitors’ centre and the wind caught their hair, sending it flapping around their faces in little strands. Pauline waved as she stomped over the rough, grassy ground that surrounded Beacon Hill, the natural monument that rose ahead of them into the grey and white clouds. Michael didn’t wave back for fear of dropping his sleeping son. Rather, he stood patiently waiting for the two women to catch him up.
“All set?” he said.
Pauline opened the carrier bag in her hand and revealed three bottles of water and a collection of chocolate bars in the bottom. “All set,” she said.
Katya reached over for her baby and Michael carefully relinquished the bundle.
The little boy stirred awake at the movement and Michael perceived his tiny little mind as it reached consciousness and smelled the chilly air around him. It was so strange to perceive a baby. It had no thoughts at all, not like an adult, just the feelings of its own body and basic emotions that told him he was safe or hungry or tired. His ability to perceive, which he seemed to have temporarily transferred to Katya in the womb, was gone. He probably wouldn’t develop it properly until he became a teenager.
“Come on, Oliver,” said Katya, as she wrapped her arms around him and the child snuggled back to sleep.
“Don’t let Otis know you called your baby after him,” said Michael.
“It is not after him,” said Katya. “I called him Oliver because it is a nice name. An English name. Would you prefer I call him something Russian, like Mikhail?”
“Heavens, no!” said Pauline. “One Michael is enough, thank you!”
They looked up to the top of the hill. It was going to be a long climb, but others had already started the ascent. By the look of their silhouettes against the sky, they were teenagers and young adults, most of whom would have been born to mothers who had unwittingly taken one of Ransom’s perceiver vitamin pills.
Michael, Pauline and Katya began the walk to join them. The air was fresh, but it was dry. The weather, Michael could tell, was going to be kind to them.
“I used to run up hills when I was in the university running club,” said Michael. “It’s good for building strength and stamina.”
“I bet you couldn’t do it now,” said Pauline.
“I’m not so out of condition,” he said.
“Race you?”
“You’re on.”
Pauline broke into a run and was one stride ahead of Michael before they’d even started. He chased after her.
Within minutes, the exhilaration he used to feel when he was training on the streets of Nottingham was back in his blood. Despite everything, he found himself laughing as he caught up with Pauline and overtook her.