Telepath (Hive Mind Book 1) (7 page)

“I’m perfectly fine.
Different people are … different,” I said lamely. “I needed a moment to absorb what
I’d learned from reading Adika’s mind, but I’m ready to see Lucas now.”

Megan hesitated.

“I’ll see Lucas now,” I
repeated.

She sighed and gave in. “Lucas
is only twenty-one, but he’s by far the best qualified choice for your Tactical
Commander. He was deputy leader of Keith’s Tactical team.”

“You worked for Keith too,
so you must know Lucas well.”

“Yes. I came out of Lottery
with Keith thirteen years ago. Lucas joined us three years ago as a Tactical
team member. A person has to be exceptionally gifted to be imprinted for a
Telepath Unit position in a year when no true telepath is discovered, but
Lucas’s Lottery assessment scores were incredible. A year later, the deputy
leader of Keith’s Tactical team transferred to another post, and Lucas was
given the position.”

“I seem to be stealing
everyone’s deputies,” I said.

Megan smiled. “You’re our
big chance for promotion, Amber. Openings as team leader in a Telepath Unit are
incredibly rare. Moving from being deputy in a Telepath Unit to being a team
leader in another area would be a downwards career move. Telepath Units are the
highest prestige assignments in Law Enforcement. Even the team member positions
on Strike, Tactical and Liaison teams are rated Level 1.”

Megan left, and Lucas
walked into the room. He had unruly, light-brown hair, surprisingly dark eyes,
and an intense expression that abruptly changed into a grin as he looked at me.

“Are you reading me yet?”

I had to laugh. “Of course
not. You’ve only just walked through the door. You haven’t even sat down yet.”

He sat down opposite me,
and leaned forward eagerly. “I’m sitting down. Please read me now. My chance of
becoming your Tactical Commander depends on whether you like what’s in my head
or not, so I’m desperate for your answer.”

“Naturally, anything I see
is confidential.”

He shrugged, seemingly
uncaring about his privacy. “I’ve no secrets.”

I entered his mind, and it
was like being in the centre of a whirling Carnival crowd. The thoughts glittered
and shone, level upon level of them, racing past at incredible speed.

… is confidential! So
different from Keith. The way he teases people …

… still no pattern
at all. If there was only …

… of the occipital
alpha waves or even the cortical theta rhythm …

… reaction to first
reading of Megan was …

… and the parental relationship
differs totally from the previous …

… body language looks
favourable. Her first impression of me is …

… want this so much!
What will her approach be to …

… love her legs, but
her physical preference results from Lottery show I haven’t a hope of getting
into her …

When I first read Megan, I
was sucked down against my will into a morass of dark, churning emotions. With
Lucas, I was willingly plunging down through the levels of his mind, chasing
one shimmering image after another. I finally hit some that were completely
indecent, and surfaced, gurgling with laughter. I couldn’t be offended when the
images were down at the level that was more unconscious emotion than thought.
After years of Forge ignoring me, I found it rather flattering that Lucas lusted
after my legs and …

I sternly reminded myself
that I was supposed to be deciding whether I was happy with Lucas as my
Tactical Commander, not nosing round his unconscious fantasies. He was obviously
brilliant. His thoughts ran like multi-layered express belts, leaving me
sprinting madly in pursuit. Better yet, he was young, friendly, and delightfully
unconventional. For the first time, I realized how lonely I’d been since
Lottery started.

“You’re back out of my
mind,” Lucas said. “Well? Yes or no?”

I smiled at him. “Yes.”

“High up!” He jumped out
of his chair, punching the air with one hand, just like an over-excited kid on Teen
Level.

I laughed. “Now, if you
don’t mind, Megan said you were the best person to answer my questions.”

Lucas instantly sat down,
leaning forward in his chair again, his eyes fixed on me. “Go!”

“What does a Telepath Unit
do? What am I supposed to do?”

“Good question. Needs a history
lesson. Let’s go back in time. People used to live, dotted all over the world,
in communities of various sizes. Bigger communities grew into pre-Hive cities.
Homes close together, mostly two or three levels. You’re following me?”

“Vaguely.”

“Imagine the transport
issues. Problems providing things like rapid specialist medical care are
obvious. People gravitated into larger cities where these things were available.
Cities got bigger, buildings taller, closer together. Natural progression into
first proto Hives.”

He was speaking in partial
sentences, as if speech couldn’t match the speed of his thoughts. I dipped into
his mind to help me keep up, and suddenly what he was saying really was
obvious. I could actually watch the process in his head, as humanity clustered
together into cities.

“Old lifestyle heavily
affected by threat of crime and risk to personal safety. Children watched every
second due to perceived threat of abduction and injury.”

“What?” I was shocked by a
brief, graphic picture in his mind.

“Also major pollution-related
health issues and danger from high speed transport vehicles. Anti-crime surveillance
measures everywhere. Cameras, facial recognition devices, tracking devices,
even automated drones and orbital satellite thermal imaging.”

I shook my head in
disbelief. Children under ten wore tracking bracelets as a safety precaution,
but the thought of adults having their every move tracked and recorded was unbelievable.
“People really accepted living like that?”

Lucas shrugged. “People traded
privacy for increased safety. Their acceptance of camera surveillance seems
strange to us. Current public acceptance of nosy patrols might seem as strange
to them.”

For eighteen years, I’d
believed the nosies were genuine telepaths. I’d hated the idea of them reading
my mind, but accepted that nosy patrols were necessary to keep the Hive a safe
place. “You’re probably right.”

“Now!” Lucas startled me
by shouting the single word, before babbling on in speed speech again. “First true
Hives relatively small, but major impact on society. New enclosed habitat available.
All amenities immediately accessible. No pollution. No danger from vehicles. No
criminals allowed entry. Hives perceived as superior, safer environment, huge demand
to become residents.”

I was checking his pre-vocalized
thought level now, patching in the missing words that he wasn’t saying aloud,
to help me make sense of his shortened sentences. “Yes, but …”

Lucas kept relentlessly jabbering
on. “Phase of extending prototype Hives to become mega Hives. Design variations.
All in geologically stable areas, mainly underground, 70 to 210 levels. Other communities
gradually abandoned.”

I had another try at interrupting
him. “Yes, but I still don’t see where I …?”

Lucas raised a hand to
stop me. “Approaching that. Hives now sole major environment. Existing undesirable
elements not allowed entry, but new ones appear within Hives. Vast numbers of
people packed close together, hugely vulnerable to predatory natures. Crime and
murder rate soared. Society panic defence response.”

I didn’t understand the
last sentence at all, because he was talking too fast and leaving out too many
words. Then something happened. Lucas’s pre-vocalized thought level seemed to
blur, merge with the images in the level below, and come abruptly back into
focus again. Had my mind made an adjustment to read both levels at once, or was
it his that had changed? I didn’t know, but I could understand what he was
saying now without consciously filling in the missing words.

“Hive society responded in
panic, instituting oppressive defence measures. Trivial breaches of rules
resulted in the offender being classed as a criminal. Children were screened
for factors considered a potential danger to society. Undesirable elements were
controlled, medicated, even genetically restricted.”

Lucas’s speed speech
wasn’t an issue any longer, but there was still a problem if I didn’t
understand the words in his mind. “What does genetically restricted mean?”

He rephrased it at my intellectual
level. “People classed as criminals or socially undesirable were not allowed to
have children.”

I missed the next couple
of sentences while I absorbed that. The implications of it were huge. “Hold on.
Go back to the not allowed to have children bit. I’ve never heard of anything
like that happening.”

“The policy of genetic
restriction proved to have immensely damaging consequences.” Lucas pulled a
pained face of disapproval. “It resulted in large population drops that seriously
weakened Hives. Many valuable qualities were mistakenly labelled as negative. The
elimination of diverse characteristics harmed the gene pool. Some Hives
suffered horrific epidemics due to their populations having reduced disease
resistance. Hives became isolationist, banning all casual travel between Hives
as a disease containment measure. Changing Hive, either by individual choice or
as part of a Hive personnel trade agreement, became an irrevocable lifetime
commitment.”

He waved his hands in
despair. “Genetic restriction was abandoned two centuries ago. Hives reabsorbed
their seed Hives, or merged with neighbouring Hives to restore their populations.
New approaches were developed to keep Hives safe. Eighteen-year-olds were
tested to assess their abilities, and allocated to professions that were personally
rewarding and useful to the Hive.”

He smiled. “Qualities previously
seen as negative were proven to be highly productive when correctly channelled.
The nosy system was instituted to deter criminal activities. Social changes were
made to limit conflict with authority arising during the peak danger years of adolescence.”

“Social changes,” I
repeated. “That’s why teens all live on Level 50?”

“Yes.”

I had a sudden new insight.
“We really are bees. Tame bees.”

Lucas tipped his head on
one side. “We live in Hives, but …?”

“My parents work in
genetics. They told me all about bees. Wild bees have stings. The ones in the
parks and hydroponics don’t. They were specially bred from the wild bees, to be
friendly and hardworking.”

Lucas’s face lit up, and
he clapped his hands. “Yes! Our Hive is full of tame bees. Well fed, comfortably
housed, with different types of workers all happily making their contribution.
Luxury differentials between levels are carefully limited to avoid fuelling
discontent. People are deterred from committing crimes by the nosy patrols, but
…”

He grimaced. “Various factors
can result in a wild bee appearing. An individual with a potential for harming
others. Most get spotted in annual development checks or in Lottery screening, treated
where necessary, and channelled by Lottery into being productive members of the
Hive. In rare, extreme cases kept securely confined.”

“Most get spotted,” I
muttered, ahead of him for once.

“Some are very intelligent
and fake their way through screening. In other cases, behaviour gradually
escalates. They’re surrounded by potential prey. Imagine, for example, if one
of them is a danger to children. In this Hive, children roam freely to the
park, to the nursery, wherever they want to play. Hasties keep them safe from
accidents, but think of the tempting opportunities for a wild bee. Hence.” Lucas
pointed his finger at me. “You!”

“I catch the wild bees?”

“Yes. Old style
surveillance could only catch a wild bee after they’ve committed a crime, but a
true telepath can catch them before anyone gets hurt. You have a whole unit to
help you. Tactical, Liaison, and Strike are the operational teams.”

“What do they … I … do?”

Complex sentences
involving incomprehensible words flashed through Lucas’s mind, but I didn’t
need to ask him to explain what they meant. He knew I wouldn’t understand psychological
definitions, and was trying to rephrase them in simple terms.

“The biggest problems come
from those who have no concern for the wellbeing of other people. They feel that
indulging their own wishes is far more important than the rights, safety, even
the lives of everyone else. The only thing limiting their behaviour is their fear
of harmful consequences to themselves. They cautiously push the limits, testing
how much trouble they can cause without their behaviour being challenged by a
nosy patrol. The Liaison team monitors the Hive, feeding information to the
Tactical team who analyze it for a whole range of early warning signs. Things
like complaints about unsociable behaviour or harassment, patterns of suspicious
accidents, or outbreaks of vandalism.”

I thought of Reece’s behaviour
on Teen Level. “Or bullying?”

Lucas nodded. “There’s often
an obvious guilty party. If they’re identified before the behaviour pattern
becomes too established, then the Tactical team can simply arrange for a nosy
patrol to intercept the culprit and frighten them into better behaviour. More
entrenched cases have to be referred to specialist units for treatment.”

He paused. “Where there’s
no clue to the identity of the wild bee, a true telepath is needed. As your Tactical
Commander, I’ll decide an area needs checking. You’ll go out with the Strike team,
and identify the target wild bee among all the tame ones. Liaison get data on
the area, evacuate bystanders if appropriate, and tell creative lies to cover
up what’s happening. The muscle-bound heroes of the Strike team go in to
collect the target.”

He paused again. “The Strike
team will divide into two at that point. Chase team will go after the target.
Bodyguard team will keep you safe from trouble. Wild bees may fight when
cornered. You’re irreplaceable, and mustn’t be stung. When …”