I recalled Mary’s face as I had seen it in the photographs. I had two of them with me. She had distinctive features—small nose, black eyes framed by chestnut red hair, which she kept almost to her shoulders. She had milky-white skin, and a nice, slim figure with slightly oversize boobs. She was thirtyish and not at all unattractive, although from her pictures she came across as a bit cold. I would have kicked myself for not asking more questions about her, but I had enough to create a contact with her and, anyways, I would learn more about her when I was in her head. I took a couple of deep breaths and brought her image to life before my closed eyes. Then, I opened my head to the world and searched for her. Searching turned out to be more challenging than in the past, as my vision jumped from one mind to another. It only took me a second to realize when I was not in the right person’s head and to keep searching, but after a while I felt a bit dizzy. Luckily, the fourth attempt was successful.
“Good evening, Miss Payne,” a Swiss receptionist was saying to her. “Your room is ready. I’ll escort you to it.”
I—in Mary’s head—followed the receptionist to a small wood-paneled elevator and along a luxurious corridor, where he stopped before room 403, opened the door, and let Mary in. The room was spacious and smelled of pine wood. For a moment, the smell surprised me, because so far my targets had always been either in the same room with me or somewhere neutral like a bare hilltop, and I hadn’t fully realized that I would be able to smell what my target smelled. But being able to do it stood to reason, since every sense somehow gets analyzed by the brain, and my brain was hooked into hers.
“Your secretary’s room is on the first floor, room one-one-seven,” said the receptionist. “To call another room you dial nine and then the room number. The air conditioning can be switched on here, and the minibar is there, under the TV set. If you need anything, just dial zero.”
“Thank you very much, I will,” said Mary, but she was thinking, go away already!
Mary dropped her handbag on the bed, sat sinking in the soft mattress, and picked up the phone. She dialed 9117, and a man’s voice answered her.
“Yes?”
“Jason, I’ve arrived. I’m in four-oh-three. I’m exhausted, and I’m going to take a nap. When do I have to be ready?”
“Oh, first of all, welcome. The delegations will hold a cocktail at eight, followed by dinner. You need to be there.”
“All right. Check with me at seven thirty,” she said, and hung up.
I disconnected from Mary and pushed the walkie-talkie button. When I heard steps outside I turned the pisspot on and as soon as Doctor Alexander stood beside my bed, I ostentatiously turned it off and took it off my head.
“What’s happening? Did you make contact?” he asked.
“Nothing much. She has arrived and is taking a nap, which I also plan on doing. Please send some food to my room. I need the rest, and I have to keep my strength. They have a cocktail at eight, followed by dinner. I don’t think that much is going to happen then, but I will tune in for orientation. Do you agree?”
“Yes, yes. That sounds reasonable. I’ll go to report to the director and will have food sent up to your room.”
“Send the food first, please? I’m starving, and I need my rest.”
After eating everything that was brought to me on a tray, I closed my eyes and went to sleep. That is one of my best skills—I can sleep on demand anywhere, any time, and I am asleep in a matter of seconds. You can’t imagine how helpful that is to keep me fresh and alert, and more importantly, to keep me from getting bored if I’m left to wait for a long time, as regularly happened at the base between viewing sessions. Those long, boring sessions took place in empty, whitewashed rooms, with only a chair, a table, drawing pad and pencil, and nothing to entertain me beside myself, and believe me, I can be pretty boring without any outside stimuli.
I had had to surrender my cellphone on arrival at the base and was issued a small alarm clock to help me keep time. I woke up when it buzzed, and for a moment I felt an irrational sense of loss, remembering the soft chime that was my phone’s wake-up tune. The hour was seven thirty and time for me to get to work. I pushed the walkie-talkie button and said “Coffee!” into the mike. I didn’t feel like being polite. Five minutes later, Tom knocked on my door and brought in a tray with a small coffee pot and a croissant. “To keep your strength up,” he said, smiling hopefully, and was rewarded with a warm smile from me. I like croissants. I think he blushed as he left.
I placed the pisspot on my head, propped against a pillow so the on-off switch would be hidden by it if anybody walked in on me unexpectedly. The inner straps that kept it positioned on my head, like a helmet, had begun to irritate my scalp. Those straps had a number of electrodes in them, which had to be in contact with my head for the amplification to take place, or so it had been explained to me. I used the pillow to lift the pisspot a little higher, to avoid direct contact with them. It was a tricky setup, but it would deceive anybody who didn’t suspect that I had no need for amplification. I closed my eyes and searched for Mary. Loud voices reached me immediately, and I found myself in a splendidly ornate grand room, with a taste of champagne in my mouth that made my tongue tingle with surprised pleasure. Mary was talking to a tall, thin man in his fifties with butterscotch hair and the whitest complexion I have ever seen.
“My government truly appreciates your government’s help in setting up this important meeting,” she said, from which I inferred that the man was a Swiss, and therefore nobody I should waste any time on.
The man nodded with a smug smile and murmured, “Our pleasure. Of course, our pleasure,” and with a little bow, he left. What a stiff! Mary thought. I started to read her thoughts more attentively, trying to dig deeper and to see if there was any interesting information to be gathered from them, but she merely explored the room and concentrated on naming to herself the people she saw, which was great orientation for me. There were about fifty people in the room, most of them aides, and I didn’t make an effort to remember all their names, limiting myself to labeling them by job title. I was busy following her inventory, when I felt a touch on Mary’s arm. That was something else that I still needed to get used to, I mean, feeling everything just like Mary was feeling, including being touched, as well as tasting. In my earliest training at the base I had already felt some of the sensations that Liv had felt, but those were either very strong events, like hurting her knee, or otherwise the sensations she conveyed were discernible, but somewhat fuzzy, like they didn’t belong to me. But now, I felt everything that Mary felt as if it was happening to my body. My ability was obviously growing, and feeling the other person’s sensations as if they were my own, was simultaneously upsetting and exciting.
Mary turned at the touch and faced one of the sexiest men I had ever seen. He was sinewy and tanned, with piercing gray-brown eyes that seemed to magnetize you. He smelled good, with an after-shave lotion that I couldn’t place, and his smile revealed perfect, white teeth. He looked like a regular movie star.
“Shall we go in?” he asked, speaking with a strong Russian accent. “They have seated us together at the main table.”
“Yes, Vlad,” she said, and I could feel a shiver of pleasure running down her spine. Or was it my spine?
So this was the famous Vladimir Vilikov that I had to keep an eye on. Well, that would entail no hardship, for sure.
You are so damn good looking! Mary thought, and then she turned her thoughts to the mechanics of cutting through the crowd toward the dinner table without bumping into anybody.
That seemed like a good moment for a report, so I broke my connection with Mary, removed the pisspot from my head and pushed the walkie-talkie button. “Report!” I said into it, and two minutes later Doctor Alexander was standing beside my bed, his face showing eager expectation, which reminded me a little of a dog waiting for a nugget. I sat up and gazed at him, taking my time just to annoy him.
“They have gone in to dinner,” I said at last, pausing as if I was about to say something of momentous importance, which of course I wasn’t. “I have seen Vladimir Vilikov and identified a few others. So far I have nothing important to report. I’ll rest for a few minutes and will go back.”
“Okay. You need to keep an eye on Mary and try to learn what she is planning to do.”
“Yes, thank you very much, Doctor. I wouldn’t have known what to do without your help,” I said.
I was being openly sarcastic, but sarcasm was always lost on him, so he merely nodded and said, “I’ll wait for your next report,” and left.
I got back to Mary and found her sitting beside Vladimir. Someone at another table was standing and giving a speech. It was so boring that I couldn’t bring myself to listen, so instead I dug into Mary’s mind, but she was following the speech so closely that I didn’t manage to dig up anything else.
The evening went on forever, pretty much along the same lines, boring me stiff. The food was good, though, and I enjoyed it almost as if I was there. It’s funny, though: they say that hunger is in your mind, not in your stomach, and I think they’re right, because after that dinner, I felt completely full.
After dessert and coffee, the meeting ended and Mary spoke briefly with her assistant, Jason—a burly man of about forty who looked completely out of character at a diplomatic event—and then went up to her room. I broke contact again and pushed the walkie-talkie button. Doctor Alexander silently strode into my room in his black suit. With the night light and the way he walked, shuffling his feet on the floor, he reminded me of a vampire I had seen in a movie.
“She’s gone to sleep, and I need to do the same,” I announced. “I’m wasted. They will start meetings tomorrow at nine, and I need to be fresh for that.”
“I agree. I also need to take the equipment for recharging.”
I handed the pisspot to him, hoping that he wouldn’t notice that it didn’t need any recharging since I hadn’t used it. I hadn’t thought of that. I would have to find a way to discharge it a bit, next time. As he left, I got up and locked my door, set the alarm for eight a.m., and went back to my bed. I wanted a little more time with Mary, to get to know her when she was alone with her thoughts. I lay on my bed and pictured her face again.