I’d never been to Europe before and didn’t know what to expect, but as it turns out, Switzerland is a pretty decent place. After we landed in Zurich, a nice limo drove us to a cottage near a place called Flims. The scenery there is pretty, and the air is good for your health, or so they say, but it’s the closest thing to a mortuary that I’ve ever seen. Except for a couple of cows grazing about, it’s difficult to see a soul outside. On the other hand, it’s no more than 30 miles from Flims to Davos as the crow flies, which is where my target was supposed to be, and so the place had been selected to ensure good proximity to her, as well as privacy for us. Given that the pisspot had been tested to work well at a distance of at least 300 miles from the target, they could’ve picked a livelier place for our base, but of course I hadn’t been consulted.
Saying goodbye to Liv had turned out to be emotional—much more so than I had expected. For one thing, I couldn’t tell her what I had learned. Telling her might put her in danger and then, although even thinking of it made me sick, if I told her she might betray me if she had a misplaced sense of duty, and then I would be done for. No, I decided to say nothing to her, although I ached to share what I was going through, and the danger that I faced, with someone. Like most seventeen year old girls, I was bursting with the need to share my intimate thoughts with someone, but I had nobody to talk to, except Liv, and in this case perhaps even not her. I had no close friends or family with whom to share the burden, and that really bummed me out. I think that my face showed it.
“So you’re leaving,” she had said, without looking me in the eyes.
I guess that she wanted me to say something tastefully tender, but I am no good at goodbyes, so all I managed to say was “Yes.”
“Will you be coming back?”
“I’ve no idea. You know they never tell me anything.”
“And … If you don’t get back here?”
“We’ll be in touch.”
“Meaning that you will miss me? I’ll miss you.”
“Dammit! You have to make me say that, don’t you? I’ll miss you like hell, okay? I’ll think of you all the time.”
I gazed at the floor as I said that. Why am I so bad at expressing feelings?
She came closer and hugged me, then she kissed me softly on the lips, and while she did that I had no choice but to look straight into her blue eyes.
“Stop talking now, okay?” she said. “Just let me hold you and feel you for a while.”
I kept silent for long enough to feel my old self again, and then an idea came to me.
“You know what? We can still be close while I am away. Let’s agree on an hour when you can sit down and think of me, and I will make contact and read you then. You can tell me what’s going on with you, how your day was, and anything else in that way. The time difference must be nine hours, so if your lunch break is at noon I can read you at 9 PM—if I’m not working then, that is.”
“I’m afraid that it won’t work. You will be more than 5,000 miles away from me, and we know that distance is a problem.”
“No, it’s a problem if I don’t know my target, but even the doctor agreed that it shouldn’t be a problem with someone I know well. Anyway, no harm in trying.”
“No, no harm. I like the idea, but how will I know that you’re actually listening to me, and I am not just gazing at the wall for nothing?”
“I could speak to you through your own lips … but no, that’s not a good idea.”
“Why?”
“Because you don’t know if somebody is eavesdropping on you. When I was in basic training, ESA15 had microphones hidden all over the place.”
“So?”
“I know! I’ll give you a sign. Keep a legal pad near you and I’ll use your hand to tell you. I’ll make you draw a check mark, if I can read you. How does that sound?”
“It sounds great. How smart you are!”
“Oh, it’s nothing. Don’t make me blush.”
“Blush away! You’re more beautiful when you’re flushed.”
“Shut up and turn the damn light off,” I ordered. My breathing had quickened, and I realized that I was actually blushing. Luckily, she turned off the lights without more backchat.
So, the first thing I wanted to do, as soon we settled in our Swiss cottage, was to test my ability to get in touch with Liv. Of course, the doctor had to schedule a briefing right at 9 PM, immediately after dinner. Our little delegation consisted of myself, the doctor, assorted security agents, and a housekeeper who had been lent to us by our local operation. I can’t say I was happy to know that I would be spending time with the doctor, but I understood that he had to be nearby to take care of the equipment, and besides, he was part of the machination against me. I didn’t think that he would be able to pull the trigger himself, the dork, but he would certainly play along with whoever was charged with doing it.
The briefing mostly was about telling me what I was allowed to do, which was pretty much limited to sitting on the porch when not working. I was not allowed to leave the cottage, and if I needed anything, our security agents would get it for me. The one exception was if I wanted to take a short walk along the path from the back of our cottage that went up the hill. I would be able to do that if accompanied by one of our security details. The doctor made it quite clear that those were imperative orders of the director and that I was not there to have fun but to bring a critical mission to completion. There was no sense in arguing, so I limited myself to grimacing.
But there was an obstacle that I hadn’t thought of: to try to talk to Liv, I had to use the pisspot, which I had no good reason for putting on at that time. Our mission only started in two days, when Mary and Vladimir were scheduled to arrive at Davos. But I never let small difficulties get in my way.
“Oh, Doctor,” I said, “I want to be ready and at my best for the operation, so please give me the pisspot. I want to start to train myself.”
“We need to follow protocol,” said the doctor, who looked a bit surprised at my sudden eagerness to do things. “According to the program that we developed, we have to start testing tomorrow. One of our security detail also volunteered to help us tune the system.”
“I understand, but being here feels different than at the base, and I want to try and see what kind of background noise I receive from the surroundings, and to familiarize with it. I don’t know, maybe the cows have thoughts? There were no cows back at the base …”
“I doubt it very much that the cows have thoughts, but I concede that the rats showed some activity … sorry, I know we agreed not to talk about rats. Anyway, I see no harm in testing the equipment. I have two identical devices with me, so we have backup if anything goes wrong with the one you are using. Wait here and I’ll bring it to you. When you’re done testing, bring it back to me so I can recharge it.”
So easy—the more they think they are smart, the easier it is to play them.
So I got my pisspot and sat on the porch with it and a pint of beer, only fifteen minutes later than planned. Swiss beer is great, by the way. The deck chair that I picked was comfortable, and I closed my eyes, switched on the thing, and opened my mind. The background noise was minimal, but I still had to concentrate to make it vanish. I pictured Liv’s face before my eyes and, as if by magic, in a moment I was in her head.
She isn’t making contact. I told her it was too far away, came her thought, loud and clear. Liv was in her room, for some reason gazing at the door. When she turned her head toward her desk, I saw that she had placed a yellow legal pad and a pen on it, as I had asked her to. I concentrated and, as I had learned to do easily, I took control of her movements. I lifted the pen with her right hand and traced a check mark on the page, and then I let go of her.
You’re here! I don’t believe it. I’m missing you already.
I took control of her hand again and drew a sad emoji on the pad.
Great news! Today the director asked me to volunteer again to train with you when you return. You see what this means? It means that you’re coming back here. He also wants me to join a group of volunteers who are going to be tested in the slipper, to see if they can develop some telepathic power. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I could? Then we would be able to connect all the time. I immediately agreed and he couldn’t give me the paper to sign quickly enough.
This time I drew a smiley on the page, although I knew that the director was only misleading us and that there would be no new training. Not with me dead, anyway. Did that mean that he knew or suspected that I would be talking to Liv and wanted to make me feel safe? The director was devious enough and thorough enough to think about that. There were a million things that I wanted to know and I prepared to dig deeper into Liv’s mind, to look for her memories of the meeting with the director, but right then the doctor stepped onto the porch.
“Turn it off,” he ordered. “You shouldn’t overdo it. It’s not good for you or for the equipment.”
It felt like someone had yanked me back physically from Liv’s room. I turned the pisspot off and sat straight up. I gazed at him with my most dangerous expression, and I can look nasty when I want to.
“Don’t you ever again interrupt my work in this way, do you understand? And speak softly, don’t yell! What were you thinking?”
The doctor was visibly taken aback for a moment, but only for a moment.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have,” he said, not sounding sorry at all. “It won’t happen again, but you mustn’t overdo it. From now on, I will limit off-mission usage. Now hand it to me.”
I gave the thing back without looking at him, and he turned away without further comments. I remained in that seat on the porch until I started to feel the cold, and then I went to my room and climbed into bed without undressing. Perhaps it was the separation from Liv, or the impending mission (or the fact that powerful people were plotting to get me killed, which I found hard to keep off my mind), or the atmosphere of the cottage, but for the first time in a long time, I felt miserable.