The Ability (Ability, The) (20 page)

The group of clowns looked down with curious expressions as Baxter finally turned silent, and then his eyes rolled to the back of his head and he fainted.

•  •  •

Ernest giggled.

“See, that wasn’t so hard,” said Mortimer, watching as Richard Baxter was strapped onto a stretcher and wheeled toward the waiting ambulance. Sheila and her colleagues gathered around the vehicle, dressed exactly as they had been on Baxter’s arrival. They watched in shock as the doors closed and the ambulance sped off in the distance.

“I can’t believe he was scared of clowns,” said Ernest, amazed, jumping down from the cabin of the bulldozer they had been hiding in. They walked behind Baxter’s car and turned out into the street.

“It’s easy if you know how. You just have to find exactly what they’re most frightened of and replace everything in their mind with that one thought so they think that it’s real.”

Ernest nodded, deeply impressed, although a part of him felt a bit sorry for the man, even though he would never have admitted it.

“Quick, let’s get back to Mother,” said Mortimer, breaking into a run.

“She’s going to be so happy,” said Ernest, following behind.

That evening, while Ernest and Mortimer were treated to a sumptuous banquet by their mother, and the pupils of Myers Holt were relaxing in the Map Room, an unmarked car pulled up outside 10 Downing Street. A waiting police officer with an umbrella opened the car door and escorted Sir Bentley in through the front door.

“The prime minister’s expecting you,” said the butler. Sir Bentley followed him down the hallway and into a dark study, where he found the prime minister standing by an open fire.

“Prime Minister,” said Sir Bentley, shaking the prime minister’s hand.

“Please, Bentley, call me Edward; we’ve known each other for more than thirty years now. I got your message—what’s the urgent news?”

Sir Bentley looked at the prime minister. “Richard Baxter has been the victim of Inferno.”

“What?” exclaimed the prime minister, louder than intended. He coughed. “When?”

“Today, this afternoon. He’s in the hospital now, but it looks irreversible—the doctors say that there’s not much they can do for him.”

“Poor man,” said the prime minister sadly, looking down at the roaring fire. After a few moments, he looked up. “What is going on?”

“I don’t know,” said Sir Bentley, “but we’re going to find out. You obviously remember Richard Baxter; he was a pupil at Myers Holt when you were there.”

“My roommate,” said the prime minister, walking over to the bar in the corner of the room and pouring them each a drink. He walked back over and handed one of the crystal glasses to Sir Bentley.

Sir Bentley took a sip and continued. “As you also know, Cecil Humphries was a teacher at the same time. The coincidence is just too great. The only pupils not to have their knowledge of the Ability wiped at the end of their time at Myers Holt were the last set of pupils we trained—we just closed down after . . . that night . . . and as far as I knew, nobody ever spoke of the Ability again . . . until now. I have spent the last few hours trying to work out what this could all be leading to and I’m afraid that I can only come to one conclusion: Your life is in danger.”

The prime minister considered this carefully. “I understand. But not my life only, is that right? You were also there.”

“Yes, I imagine that I’m a target too, if the pattern continues. The only other people who are still alive and were there that year are Lady Magenta and Clarissa Teller. Everybody else is either dead or locked up in a hospital room.”

“Do you think one of them could be responsible for this?”

“I really can’t, but I keep asking myself who could have knowledge of Inferno and be able to train children to use it. Danny Lyons and Anna Willows both died that night. Jenkins and Basil both died of old age some years ago. We know where Cecil and Richard are, so that leaves you, me, Clarissa, and Arabella Magenta. If you were training up twelve-year-old children to use the Ability, we would know about it.”

The prime minister smiled at the thought.

“And if I were responsible, then I wouldn’t be bringing it to anybody’s attention. That leaves only the two of them.”

“And where are they now?”

“As you know, Clarissa only leaves her home in the Outer Hebrides once a year, for the Antarctic Ball. She spends the rest of her time writing her books. Lady Magenta is still in London, hosting dinner parties every night. I’ve had my men watching them both, and they’ve seen nothing suspicious at all.”

“So what now?”

“It’s still early in their training, but I have some very talented pupils. I’ll take them tomorrow to meet Lady Magenta and Clarissa and see if they can find out anything.”

“Very well,” said the prime minister, nodding. “You know that you have my full support and any resources that you need.”

“Edward, you must take care. I’m afraid this makes the situation far more serious than we had even imagined. Perhaps you could consider canceling any public appointments until we’ve worked out what’s going on.”

“I appreciate your concern, Bentley, but I simply can’t do that. I’m the prime minister; I have responsibilities. I’ll increase security for us both and trust that you will resolve this situation as soon as possible.”

“I understand,” said Sir Bentley, shaking the prime minister’s hand. “Thank you.”

Chris sat down at his desk in the classroom and waited nervously for Ms. Lamb to arrive. Rex had been winding him up all morning, and the other children hadn’t argued in his defense, suggesting they might not think Rex’s ideas for his punishment so far-fetched. He looked down sheepishly as the door opened and Ms. Lamb stormed in, her heels making loud clacking sounds on the hard floor.

“Today,” she began, looking at everybody except Chris, “we will continue our lesson on telepathy. We will be learning to extract memories and then writing them up as reports. When you begin working for us, you will need to pass the information you find to the authorities, so it’s essential that you are able to communicate exactly what you have seen with as much detail as possible. You,” she
said, pointing to Sebastian, “hand out these forms.”

Sebastian stood up and walked over to Ms. Lamb, who handed him the papers and some pens. He handed one of each to all of them.

Chris looked down at the printed sheet.

“On here, you must fill out the relevant information. Name, date, time,” said Ms. Lamb, running her finger across the top of the sheet. “In which street and building you found the information, and in the large box below, a detailed description of exactly what you saw. Understood?”

The children nodded.

“Now all we need is somebody’s mind to access. Let’s have . . . you,” she said. Chris looked up and saw that Ms. Lamb was pointing at him.

“Come now, don’t be shy. You certainly weren’t yesterday. As you clearly have no need for any training, the others can test their Ability on you.”

“I . . . um . . . would prefer not to.”

“Unfortunately for you, it’s not an option. Get up here . . .
now
.”

Chris stood up slowly and walked over to the front of the class. The rest of the pupils looked at him with a mixture of sympathy and relief that it wasn’t them.

“Your task today is to find out what this boy’s most embarrassing memory is.”

Chris looked over at Ms. Lamb, horrified.

“But—I—”

“Stop talking, boy. Now, to access that memory you must walk up Emotions Street which is . . . here,” she said, pointing to a long road on the left-hand side of the diagram on
the wall. “Find the building marked ‘Embarrassment’—a red building, of course—and look on the ground floor for the largest and most prominent filing cabinet. Open that up, remove the largest folder, and make a mental note of everything you see. When you have finished, withdraw back to Reception and out; then write a detailed description of the memory. And if any of you decide not to do this, I will choose one of you to take this boy’s place instead. Begin.”

Chris looked over at Philip, who gave an apologetic shrug. He looked at the door and considered making a run for it before suddenly coming up with a better plan.

Chris closed his eyes and started singing to himself, louder and louder.

Ring a ring of roses, a pocket full of posies, a-tishoo, a-tishoo, we all fall down. Ring a ring of roses, a pocket full of posies, a-tishoo, a-tishoo, we all fall down. Ring a ring—”

All of a sudden, a loud knock to his left disturbed him from his thoughts. He opened his eyes and saw the door open and Sir Bentley walk in.

“Pardon the interruption, Ms. Lamb.”

Ms. Lamb looked annoyed but said nothing.

“I have a rather urgent matter to discuss with the children. Do you mind?”

“Of course not,” said Ms. Lamb. “Sit down, boy; we’ll continue this later,” she whispered to Chris, who rushed back to his seat in relief.

“There has been a rather significant turn of events in the last twenty-four hours. Although we wouldn’t normally ask pupils to begin work before the New Year, I’m afraid we are going to have to speed things up. Ms. Lamb,
I will need to take two pupils with me now. Perhaps you could tell me who would be most able to take on a Mind Access job so early in training.”

Ms. Lamb thought for a moment, her lips pursed.

“I recommend you take that boy,” she said finally, looking over at Rex.

“Yes, ha!” said Rex, standing up.

“I need two, Ms. Lamb. Is there anybody else who is particularly strong in this area?”

Ms. Lamb shifted uncomfortably and grimaced.

“I suppose you’d better take that one,” she said at last, pointing at Chris.

Chris stood up and smiled at Rex, who gave him a thumbs-up.

“Excellent, thank you, Ms. Lamb. Christopher, Rex, follow me. The rest of you, enjoy your lesson. I’ll see you all later.”

Chris practically skipped down the hall behind Sir Bentley, who led them out past the Dome and into his office in the staff quarters.

“Take a seat, both of you,” said Sir Bentley, sitting down slowly in the leather chair behind his desk.

Chris and Rex sat down and listened carefully as Sir Bentley explained the situation as simply as he could, beginning with Cecil Humphries and Richard Baxter and finally leading to the conclusion that the person responsible had to have something to do with Myers Holt.

“And so,” he continued, “I need you both to interview two people, Lady Magenta and Clarissa Teller, today and find out if they know anything.” Sir Bentley slid two photographs across the table.

Chris looked surprised. “Clarissa Teller, the writer?”

“Yes, do you know her books?”

“Of course, everybody knows them! You know her, Rex, right?”

Rex nodded. “Yeah, and I hate to read. They’re the only books without pictures that I’ve actually finished.”

“Wonderful, I’m sure she’ll appreciate meeting some fans of hers. Now, back to business. You’ll be using your Ability to access their minds. Listen carefully. I want you to go to Calendar Street, go into the first building on the street, which houses all memories for this year, and find the filing cabinet for yesterday. Check it to see what they were doing at midday exactly—that’s the time that the Ability was being used on Richard Baxter. Then I want you to go down People Street and find the building marked ‘Old Acquaintances.’ There you should find a drawer for Richard Baxter. The drawers are labeled alphabetically, so it shouldn’t be too difficult. The folder at the front will contain the most recent encounter that Clarissa and Lady Magenta have had with Baxter. If they aren’t involved with what happened yesterday, you should find that their last memories of Baxter are from some time ago. As far as we know, neither Clarissa nor Lady Magenta stayed in contact with him since leaving Myers Holt. Any questions?”

“So,” said Rex, leaning forward, “we are basically working for the prime minister.”

Sir Bentley nodded.

“The prime minster needs me, Rex King, to help him?” asked Rex, checking.

“Yes, Rex, that is correct.”