Chapter Eleven

Scientists at Harvard University today confirmed the first known development of telepathy in human beings, producing no less than seven people with mind-reading powers of varying strengths. Professor Zeller, the developer of the research programs that produced the telepaths, stated that it was the dawn of a new era for the human race. The federal government refused to comment, both on the development of the telepaths and the suggestion that telepaths were used to catch the New York Dirty Bombers...

-AP News Report, 2015

“So,” Art said, as the government car pulled into Harvard, “who is Professor Zeller anyway?”

They had been caught completely by surprise. Despite the NSA’s hugely expensive system for intercepting and monitoring phone calls and the internet, Professor Zeller’s bombshell was already hitting the news by the time Looking Glass was alerted. It had been sheer luck that Art had been even remotely close to Harvard and by the time they could reach the building, the news was spreading all over the United States. The coverage had a detectable tone of ‘have they gone mad’ but it was spreading. The testimonials from both staff and students were helping to push it along.

Art rubbed the back of his head as the car parked next to cars belonging to a dozen media outlets and other interested parties. If Professor Zeller had been CIA at one point, he should have known better than to trigger off a media feeding frenzy. The CIA had recruited several think-tanks to attempt to puzzle out what would happen if an awareness of telepaths entered the general public mentality and few of the results had been good. The worst case had suggested that telepaths would be rounded up and sterilised by the government, if not shoved into gas chambers and left to die. It hadn’t made pleasant reading.

It was easy to see the writer’s point. In the six months between discovering other telepaths and Professor Zeller’s brainstorm, Art and his comrades had been used in a role that made him uneasy. The CIA routinely did security tests on its staff, including lie detector tests and drug interrogations, but this time things had been different. Art had been concealed behind a one-way mirror, watching and reading minds as questions had been thrown at the test subjects. They’d uncovered four Russian moles, six Chinese spies and several officers who had been slipping information to the media from time to time. The CIA had a nasty reputation for leaking like a sieve, yet Art had never realised the scale of the problem. Lie detectors and security vetting were far from completely reliable. Even so, it was setting a worrying precedent.

The CIA’s recruits had known that they would be expected to undergo various security checks, but none of them had signed up to have their minds read by telepaths. They didn’t know that their minds had been violated and when they found out ... Art wouldn’t be too surprised if they were angry. Even with light peeks – the term had entered general use – he’d picked up too many secrets. Quite a few officers were homosexual, or cheating on their partners, or worried about their expenses and paperwork. He’d said nothing about that to his supervisors. They didn’t need to know.

Alice frowned. “Why don’t you read my mind?”

“I’m lazy,” Art said. Pulling individual facts out of a person’s mind was possible; it was a great deal harder to obtain a complete story, particularly when it wasn’t of great significance to the source. “Why don’t you tell me everything and I’ll tell you if you’re telling the truth?”

“I thought Marines weren’t allowed to be lazy,” Alice countered, although her words carried a worried emotional state. She, too, was concerned about the effects of the leak. “Let’s see ... he actually left the Company before I joined, so I never met him in person ...”

She ticked off points on her fingers as she spoke. “Professor Zeller was the youngest son of very old money, one of the richest people ever to join the CIA,” she said, thoughtfully. “He could have wasted his life without ever touching the seed money, but instead he developed an interest in the paranormal from a very young age. The CIA was throwing money at ESP in those days and they decided that a scientist who was obsessed with proving the existence of telepathy would make a suitable recruit. The Russians were supposed to be making advances in turning ESP into a weapon and the CIA thought it needed a counter.”

Art smiled, although in truth he felt no humour. It had crossed his mind that he might not be the first telepath after all. It was possible that the Russians had developed telepaths of their own and that they continued to operate in secret, without alerting the Americans or anyone else to their existence. So far, most of the reports he’d read that had come out of the Russian ESP program had been vague in the extreme – or written to be sensational – but it was possible that there was a hard core of truth somewhere within the reports. But it was equally possible, as Alice had reminded him, that they were all nonsense. The CIA had been desperate for funding in those days.

“Professor Zeller developed the Zeller Test and many of the other tools we use to measure psychic potential,” Alice continued. “He pioneered some of the research into remote viewing – Project Star Gate – and made several strides forward. Unluckily for him, most of the research wasn’t particularly impressive and some of his enemies claimed that he was faking the results, despite the most secure tests we could conduct. Remote viewing simply doesn’t seem to work according to the laws of science as we understand them. Unlike ... say, a gun, it doesn’t always seem to work. Zeller eventually quit in disgust and went private, writing several articles on his life with the CIA. We didn’t even consider calling him back to see you.”

“Oh,” Art said. “And since then he’s been carrying out his own research?”

“So it would seem,” Alice admitted. “The Company didn’t bother to keep a close eye on him afterwards. Far too much of the details surrounding Project Star Gate had already leaked out into the public and generally been dismissed. Zeller was allowed to continue his research in private and ... well, we may have misjudged him. He’s produced civilian telepaths.”

“Yes,” Art agreed. Ahead of them, the background noise was sparking with shock and fear. More and more people, he realised, were becoming convinced of the truth. They had come to Harvard intending to prove that there was no such thing as telepathy, but instead they were realising that telepaths were real. The thought made him wince. There was no way to shut down the media circus now. “What on Earth was he thinking?”

A thought occurred to him and he frowned. He’d developed his telepathy through stress while on a combat mission and the other telepaths had been developed through being forced to feel stress and fear. How had Zeller developed his telepaths? Somehow, Art doubted that any student would stand for allowing a professor to conduct pain experiments on their bodies. Or, as one of the researchers back at Looking Glass had speculated, had the presence of a handful of telepaths started to speed up the development of additional telepaths, without the need for induced stress? There was no way to know.

“I called ahead,” Alice said, as she opened the door and stepped out onto the streets. The noise of people milling about ahead of them grew louder. “The Professor has agreed to meet us in private, rather than subjecting us to a press conference.”

“Right,” Art said. “And what exactly are we supposed to do?”

“Find out just what the real situation is,” Alice said, briskly. “And then report back to Looking Glass. I heard that the President himself is being briefed now.”

Her voice was normal, but her mental tone was worried. If there were other telepaths up ahead – and Art was sure that he could sense at least one telepath in the general area, although his mind could just be playing tricks on him – all of her CIA secrets would be exposed. Her superiors had sent her to Art because she knew relatively little, but that was no longer true...and none of the non-telepaths had succeeded in producing a mental shield to protect their thoughts.

Art had to smile. It hadn’t occurred to him – until it had been pointed out by one of his briefers – that the President himself hadn’t been told the details of Project Looking Glass. It didn’t sit well with him; he might have had some problems with some of the people who had sat in the Oval Office while he was alive, yet the President was still the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Military and therefore Art’s ultimate superior. He suspected that the President, no matter how relieved he was because of the success in New York, would be unhappy about not having been told in advance. As it was, Professor Zeller’s success would fall upon a President who was mentally unprepared for the shock.

Alice seemed to know her way around Harvard and led them away from the crowds, towards a rear entrance that was guarded by a pair of campus policemen. Art checked them out as they approached and smiled at their reactions to the card Alice held up for them to see. Harvard University had provided more than a few recruits for the CIA and the rest of the federal government over the years, yet they were still a resolutely liberal college. They would not be comfortable with intelligence agents prowling around on campus. Art shrugged, dismissing their concern. It hadn’t been that long ago that several terrorist recruiters had been arrested at various campuses across the United States, an operation made harder by the reluctance of the college authorities to allow the FBI to operate on their territory.

“Professor Zeller will be with you shortly,” a harassed-looking secretary said. Her mind was a maelstrom of shock and disbelief, shading rapidly towards horror. Art guessed that she hadn’t believed in telepaths until she had found herself confronted by several, all college students. He hated to think what they would do with telepathy, particularly if they hadn’t been identified as telepaths. The opportunities for blackmail were staggering.

A moment later, a door at the far end of the room burst open and Professor Zeller swaggered through, followed by a mousey-looking brown-haired girl and a green-haired boy. Art kept his face blank with an effort. He had never considered dying his hair and couldn’t understand why anyone would choose to do so while they were studying. Of course, while the staff might think that the students were there to study, the students might have different ideas.

“I’m sorry about the delay, my dear,” Professor Zeller said to Alice. His voice was larger-than-life, a booming sound that made Art detest him instantly. “I had to check up on Charlie. I’m afraid we had to sedate him and transport him to an isolated medical centre owned by my family. His telepathy was torn wide open and he was unable to maintain mental blocks for long.”

Art frowned and reached out mentally towards Professor Zeller ... and recoiled. The Professor seemed to be a complete blank. Even another telepath, one who was capable of shielding himself, could still be detected, even if it was impossible to pull information out of his mind. The Professor ... didn’t seem to be there at all. Art felt a shiver running down the back of his neck. Not for the first time, he had been confronted by the inexplicable. Had Zeller been experimenting on himself as well?

“Thank you for seeing us,” Alice said, formally. “You know who we represent.”

“The Company can go piss up a rope,” Zeller boomed. Art had to smile, even though he was still unable to probe Zeller’s thoughts. “I could have developed telepaths for them, but no – they insisted on developing cell phone intercepts and satellite observation ... BAH! What use is it if the Company knows what someone is doing when they do not know what they are thinking? I told those half-witted morons years ago that they could develop telepaths and they rejected me ...”

“... Mocked you, cast you out,” Art said, dryly. Zeller glared at him. “Professor ...”

He stopped as he felt the intrusive tickle of a person trying to worm their way into his mind. He turned to look at the girl and blinked; she was one of Zeller’s telepaths. Art frowned, tightened his own shields and looked back. Her mental blocks were impressive for one who had only developed telepathy two days ago – they had to be, or she would have gone insane from being so close to so many people – but Art had drilled with other telepaths and knew how to break down blocks.

“You’re telepathic,” the girl said, in shock. “I thought I was the first.”

“That would be him,” Alice said, dryly. Professor Zeller, for the first time, had been struck speechless. “Professor, we need to talk about the future.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Professor Zeller said. Art had no difficulty in realising that the Professor’s obsession was blinding his mind to reality. “The entire world will know about my success and you can’t cover it up.”

“Yes,” Alice sighed. “Congratulations. You’ve single-handedly changed the world. Well done.”

Her voice hardened. “Every single person you tested – if they’re telepathic or not – will have been marked down by now,” she said. “The human animal is a suspicious beast. How long is it going to be before mobs arrive at Harvard to storm the gates and burn your telepaths for poking into their minds? How long will it be before people who have nothing to do with you get accused of being telepaths and attacked? You should have brought this to us!”

“So you could cover it up for the next thousand years, like all of the research you laughed at?” Zeller demanded. “It was my success and ...”

“No one is disputing that you made a remarkable breakthrough,” Alice said, patiently. “You have to understand that ...”

“No,” Zeller said, flatly. “I will not cooperate with the Company. They had their chance and now the world will see what I can do.”

Art smiled. “You can’t do anything,” he said. At the back of his mind, he wondered if that was actually true. Why was Professor Zeller a mental blank? “You’re not a telepath yourself.”

He looked over at the two telepaths, the scared girl and the green-haired boy. Somehow, Art had no difficulty in believing that the lad would enjoy using his telepathy to peek into other minds, without regard for any ethical qualms. When he’d been a young man, it would have probably seemed a cool idea to him too. He could have answered the age-old question of what women actually wanted, picked up girls who were interested in him ... the possibilities were endless.

“Tell me,” he said. “What do you want to do?”

***

Elizabeth didn’t know what to think. Professor Zeller had explained that the two people they were going to be meeting were from the CIA, but she hadn’t expected a rugged-looking man and a pretty girl only a few years older than Elizabeth herself. On the other hand, the man was a telepath and the woman had calm and disciplined thoughts, although she also had the underlying edge of fear that was becoming alarmingly common. Elizabeth didn’t probe too closely. She didn’t want to alert the CIA telepath.

“I don’t know what I want to do,” she admitted. It had been cool proving that telepaths existed, but after that ... the growing air of fear and worry was wearing away at her. Worse, Charlie’s mental blocks hadn’t held at all, despite her support. She hoped that being sedated would make life easier for him, even though there was no way to know for sure. She had taken a brief nap herself and discovered that the thoughts and feelings of everyone around her seemed to bleed into her sleep. “I used to think that I was going to become a lawyer.”

The CIA girl – Alice – smiled. “You may well be in danger here,” she said. “You and your fellow telepaths may find yourself targeted by all kinds of people. We can take you and the rest of you into protective custody where you will be able to sleep safely.”

“And then they won’t be able to leave,” Professor Zeller said, sharply. “You’ll just cover them all up and ...”

The CIA telepath smiled. “Do you think that they will be able to resume a normal life?”

Elizabeth placed both hands on her ears, as if by doing so she could blot out their words. She didn’t even want to think about it, yet there was no choice. If she went with the CIA, they might be able to help her, but it would mean letting Professor Zeller down badly. He needed her to prove that telepaths existed and ...

“You need to see this,” the secretary said, bursting in. She tapped the television at the end of the room and switched to Fox News. “I just got an update from a mailing list ...”

The television showed the face of a well-known presenter. “... have just come in,” the presenter said. “A man has been arrested in Kansas after shooting his neighbour, who he accused of being a telepath and reading his mind at their poker games. The claim is a reference to the announcement made a day ago that actual human telepaths had been discovered and are capable of reading minds ...”

“Well,” Alice said, as Professor Zeller turned off the television. “I don’t know if that man was a telepath or not, but I do know that you are likely to be in danger. Please ...”

“No,” Elizabeth said, flatly. She couldn’t let Professor Zeller down, not now. And besides, if the CIA had telepaths, who knew what they could do – had been doing - with them? “Thank you for the offer, but no.”