Mindbenders (31 page)

Max sighed. “Let’s try these things once or twice— just get the feel of them—then sleep if you need to.”

Kate constructed an energy shield. Max tested it with his hands—it gave and pushed back. Then he held up his fingers, sitzing and sparking. He tried to throw a lightning bolt but the spark only went a couple inches before fading out. He zapped the shield and Kate flinched.

“Once you’ve made it, let it go,” he instructed. “It grows from energy but then it has it’s own life. If you try to retain control, you only make it weaker.”

“So Tauber was right—it’s alive?” she asked.

“The Universe is alive. Children, birds, mosquitoes, those are reactive forms of matter; rocks, not so much.” Renn’s voice was firm. “I’m only comfortable with a philosophy that develops out of what I know—which is not necessarily what I can prove. What I know is,  the same little things make all the big things. Electrons are electrons—everything is one thing.”

“You’re working on lightning bolts,” Kate murmured—it was a reproach, though a polite one.

Max shrugged. “I don’t have a plan, so I have to prepare for
everything
. Mark is right—at the moment,
they’re
running the table.”

~~~~

When I woke, Kate’s face was inches from me. Which would have made me very happy, except for the look on her face, which was alarming.

“You were crying out in your sleep.”

Her hand was on my chest. When she took it away, I could feel the absence like a memory. The sky was still black outside the window—the clock on the night table read 4 in the morning. And then Max was in the doorway behind her and the way he looked at us on the bed together cut my heart out. Jealousy didn’t become him but I knew the feeling myself.

“Do you remember anything?” Kate asked. She’d glanced over at Max and had to have seen what I did, but she didn’t budge. “Do you remember the dream?”

“Touch me again,” I said. That took her by surprise so I added, “It’s how I felt when I woke up. Maybe I can use it to get back there.” She laid her hand down—it fit right where it had been.  I closed my eyes and, in two seconds, I was in a room, a tiny room. In the toilet. Literally. I had locked myself in the toilet, avoiding the knock at the door and the voice calling, “Are you alright?” My mother. My mother? It was supposed to be my mother but I couldn’t see her face or pinpoint her voice. I knew what she was saying and how I was expected to answer but I was overcome by her memory being so close and the fact that I still couldn’t see her face. And then I was in the living room in uniform, ready to ship out, and here was an older face straining to be younger—but this mother’s face didn’t go with the voice in the bathroom. This face came accompanied by another voice, more musical and familiar. And then I was back in a living room decked with party hats, a huge cake and kids waiting for a party—waiting for me. Waiting while I hid in the bathroom, refusing to come out. Not wanting them or the party.

I opened my eyes and blushed because I could see, looking at Kate, that she’d seen everything I had. And Max as well. But what did it mean? I’d been in combat—I’d killed men and seen my friends killed. What was the trauma about a birthday party?

“How did you feel?” Kate asked.

“Confused.”

“That’s it? You were panicked when I woke you.”

“Maybe the problem is, it’s not his memory,” Max said. “It’s mine.”

Kate swiveled on the bed like someone had kicked her.

“You’re a receptor,” Max told me quietly. “You’re picking up bits and pieces of memories and thoughts around you.”

“I didn’t at Dave’s,” I protested. I wasn’t sure why I was against this idea; it seemed obvious as soon as he said it.

“Dave was against all this,” Max said. “He stopped emanating a long time ago. If he’d kept it up, maybe he’d still be alive. Since Florida, everyone around you’s been getting into your head, making connections. You’re responding. Just not always as expected.”

“So it was
your
birthday party?”

He nodded. “Remember, my parents were never together—nor my grandparents, for that matter. They mated for the state and disappeared, expunged so I shouldn’t go looking for them. I grew up in a collective of teachers and parents. When I got to be 3 or 4, the program became concerned I should have American memories of childhood. So I suddenly acquired a split-level house and a room with a television and a father and mother from the film academy in Moscow. I’m not sure they loved performing for an audience of one in Novosibirsk but they were patriots and did their duty. To no good end. I saw through them in days—it was my first out-of-laboratory invasion of someone else’s mind. Not that mindreading was really called for in this case. I longed for family enough to know this wasn’t it. I could sense what was missing even though I’d never had it.”

He stared at the floor now, embarrassed. I’d seen Max do things that would embarrass most people but I’d never seen him embarrassed before.

“Russians don’t have cake, pizza and ice cream at birthdays. In the Soviet, you had a sit-down dinner, very formal. After the meal, the adults started drinking and the kids lay waste. That morning, the dining room—which was odd to me anyway, since we’d just moved in—was surreal, paper party hats, balloons, banners and cupcakes. I was a Taliban prisoner hauled into Disneyland. It was the moment of separation—the moment when, even that young, I understood my life wasn’t real, that I was a fiction.”

“So you locked yourself in the bathroom?”

“I locked myself in the bathroom. And listened to the kids pretend to be American in the next room. Not my most effective rebellion—but my first, and the first anything is always memorable.”

“It still bothers you?” Kate asked.

“It comes back to me in times of stress. I have no anchor. I resent it. Greg is the lucky one.”

“Me?”

“Of all of us, you’re the most concentrated self. You’ve lost your memory, your habits, your training. You’ve forgotten all the messy entanglements. What’s left is the essence of your self. You’re getting the chance to rebuild from scratch. I envy you that.”

“I don’t know what you’re envying.”

Kate stared at Max like she’d never seen him before. “You listen to people your whole life without knowing a thing about them,” she said. “We find ourselves in others, in those messy entanglements. Our family, our lovers, they force the doors open. That’s what you need, maybe-somebody who can read you like you read everyone else. Someone you don’t have to fear you’re controlling.”

“That’s…a good answer,” Max smiled, and this was a different smile, a smile of admiration for such a thought. He smiled at the floor for a moment and then raised his head to look her straight in the eye. Kate flushed red. I felt embarrassed watching, like I was intruding.
You’re the entanglement I need
, is what the look on his face said. Kate was as strong in her way as he was. He wouldn’t have to worry about forcing her. Whatever she felt for him, it would be for real. She might be his only chance at real, ever.

I realized now why he’d looked so torn up, seeing the two of us on the bed together.

And I realized, in that same rush, that I hadn’t just divined this information out of thin air. I hadn’t miraculously gained the ability to crack the mindbender of mindbenders, the man who could block the universe. If I’d received this message, it was because Max had sent it. He’d made himself vulnerable, but, as always, with a purpose, an end in mind. Maybe his tragedy was that he didn’t know any other way to be with people.

I understood. I even felt a little sorry for him. But, looking at Kate, whose hand was still on my chest, I knew there were limits to my loyalty. I had hopes of my own.

That was the moment I consciously began to block the two of them.

And then the phone rang and we all flinched—who was calling at 4 in the morning? The answer was obvious by the time I picked up the phone.

“I should be pissed ye’re not all running around searchin’ for me already,” Tauber said. “Meet me at the Stefano Rotunda.”

“What’ve you got?”

“Nuthin’ much. Just a guy who knows what they’re plannin’.”

The Rotunda sat on one of the Roman hills. Round and squat, with columns arrayed in overlapping arcs, the Rotunda would have been a showstopper anywhere else; in Rome, it was just another church. But it made the Top Ten spy-friendly locations list; Tauber stepped out from behind a pillar, taking us all by surprise, when we were already right on top of him.

He led us to the far side of the building, which looked down on a complex of low office buildings, six narrow rows running off a central courtyard but only two of them lit at 4:30 in the morning.

“Once I knocked the vinegar out of myself,” Tauber said, grinning, “I realized
this
was prime time. If ye’re gonna send a message—and they didn’t bring the drones for nothin’—yer best worktime—”

“—is when your subject is asleep,” Max completed the thought.

“So I went over to the Island and waited for the eager salarymen with the lapel pins. I followed a group of ‘em back here. They’ve been hummin’ away all night.” He was really pleased by his own accomplishment.  “I figgered I was better off up here, seein’ as how I’m not as dead as I’m s’posed to be.”

“Good thinking,” Max muttered and they both smiled. This was their common ground—any tension between them dissolved as soon as there was
action
.

“There’s two offices down there with twenty drones apiece; they took a break three hours ago so they should be close to the end of the shift. I can’t read the stream but I can feel it. Things are coming back to me. They’re working ‘Emerald’—and I found another stream too, a different head, like a 10 Hz vibration. You feel it?”

Max listened for a few seconds. “Yeah,” he said. “Is that your man?”

“He’s got to be the leader. The others are locked in, focused on the message—”

“—and he’s focused on them, making sure they’re sending together, no disruptions, beaming to the right location. Supervising.”

“He puts ‘em under suggestion so he
has
to know the message.” Since we’d first met him, he’d been a cranky, nasty old guy, someone who always found the mold in the yogurt. Now he was twinkling like a three-year-old boy bouncing on his parent’s bed.

Max nodded. “You’re right. That’s got to be right.” He clapped Tauber on the shoulder and almost knocked him over. “That’s good shit, Mark.”

“I’ll be useful to ya yet,” Tauber murmured  to no one in particular.

“Does that mean they’re attacking her now?” Kate asked.

“They’re not trying to
assassinate
her now. But feel the stream coming out of there! They’re working
somebody
pretty hard.”

“Can you read it?”

“I guarantee that’d raise the roof. But Mark’s plan is, we wait till they shut down and then pull it out of the supervisor. Am I right?”

Tauber nodded, grinning wide.

“
Pull
it out?” Kate said. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

“You’ll have a chance to test your scruples,” Max told her. “I want
you
to do the pulling.”

~~~~

Jerry Lowery was mulling the velocity of boredom. From his table at the front of the classroom, he had a good view up the skirt of the brunette in the front row and apparently she didn’t mind. She kept crossing and uncrossing her legs and squirming in her seat, offering a varied but ever-more-enticing view of the pumpkin orange thong underneath. After a year at L Corp, Lowery had developed his skills to the point that he was certain the brunette knew exactly what she was showing at each moment, even under suggestion. Which only made his boredom in the face of this display more infuriating.

When he’d signed up, three weeks before graduation, choosing L Corp over the CIA, DIA and Livermore Labs, he’d told himself he was making the brash move, taking the unconventional, daring route. L Corp might not be as recognizable on his resume but surely he wouldn’t be bored.

Wrong. Sitting in Rome in the middle of the night, keeping watch on the girl with the pumpkin thong and a room full of less-gaudy colleagues, he was bored to the teeth. Bored bored bored bored bored. The rumors said this was the big one, the operation that would put the company over, make their stock options gold. Of course, if they told you how, they’d have to kill you, haha. He’d told himself the job was undercover work, duties he’d never be able to confide, changing history (in a small way, of course—Lowery was not a boastful man), betrayal and intrigue. Just like Wall Street but legit. And now here he was, making sure the vectoring was right, checking it against the instrument readings every five minutes (or so—Jerry wasn’t the most exacting of souls), making sure the stream of suggestion maintained its consistency, that the message was reaching the target coordinates at full strength. The truth is, a teenager could learn to implant a suggestion and, after that, you might as well be giving an algebra quiz. The brunette kept moving her leg in and out now, popping the skirt up and down as though waving it at him. Ho Hum. In the end, she wouldn’t take him home; she probably wouldn’t even remember the tease.

Life was a tease. Hang in there, Jerry, it’s not challenging work but, if you do your bit, if this is the Big Hit, there’ll be promotions and raises and bonuses. That was the tease. In the end, he’d still be at a desk in front of a group of post-grads doing invisible work with invisible consequences. He’d get more out of tasking the brunette with a few suggestions of his own. Even if they caught you, the first time was just two weeks lecturing from HR.

The watch he’d laid across the desk in front of him began to beep. “Alright, that’s it for tonight,” he announced and the group began to sit up straight, rub their eyes, filter back in stages to the real world. “Straight to your apartments and to sleep.
Sleep
. We need you back here,
rested
, 7pm sharp. No wandering around , no parties—we’ll be monitoring everyone, so don’t get cute.” He threw a sad-eyed glance at the brunette, mourning the loss of possibility. The girl didn’t seem to notice the gesture.