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For the last few days, my thoughts had been haunted by images of two telepaths locked in a mental battle to the death. That night, those images invaded my dreams, turning them into a vivid nightmare where I was standing at one side of a vast, featureless room, while Keith was at the other.
Keith and I were locked in mental combat. Between us, our two Strike teams were locked in matching physical combat, each trying to kill the other telepath and save their own.
In my dream, I defeated Keith, but it wasn’t a victory. The result matched the actual events from long ago. I lay broken and mindless, surrounded by the dead bodies of most of my Strike team, while a few hideously wounded survivors still clung to life.
I woke from that horror, hearing the sound of my own screams, and found Lucas holding me close against him. “Were you dreaming about being attacked by Tobias’s echo?” he asked anxiously.
“Yes,” I lied, because lying was far simpler than telling the truth.
Eventually, I fell asleep again, but I woke the next morning to find a message on my dataview from Gregas. I’d realized that the limited amount I’d told him didn’t explain everything, and he’d soon be asking a host of questions about the insights he’d had after the emergency run, the details of my ability, and precisely what my unit did.
I’d chosen to admit there were more things that I hadn’t told Gregas, but warn him that the full truth would be deeply disturbing. I’d hoped that would make him decide to wait until Lottery before learning any more. I should have known that tactic would never work. Gregas had never had any sense. He wanted to know the full truth, and he wanted to know it today.
I spent a while consulting with Lucas and Buzz about the best way for me to break the news to Gregas, then Lucas and I went to meet him in the park. As we left our apartment, I felt exactly the same emotions as when I went into Lottery, wanting to turn around, run away, and find somewhere to hide.
“Why couldn’t my brother wait until Lottery to learn the full truth?” I asked in despair.
Lucas made a sympathetic noise. “Gregas has a strong sense of curiosity. He was bound to be especially curious about something so important to him. You should understand that, because you’ve got a strong sense of curiosity too. If you were in Gregas’s position, I think you’d be making the same decision.”
I groaned. Lucas was right. When I’d come out of Lottery as a telepath, I’d been curious about a host of things, particularly why I couldn’t meet other telepaths. When Morton told me the answer to that question, I’d regretted learning it, but now ...
I remembered Morton saying that curiosity was a dangerous trait in a telepath, and it was true that some knowledge gave me nightmares, but ignorance could have fatal consequences. If I hadn’t known the reason telepaths mustn’t meet, I might have tried to arrange a face-to-face confrontation with Keith that ended in utter disaster for the two of us, our Strike teams, and our Hive.
It was safer for me to know the truth about my situation. Perhaps it was safer for Gregas to know the truth about his situation too. Not just for him, but for me as well.
“This is like when you told me about duty children,” I said aloud.
Lucas gave me a puzzled look. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“You said it was better for someone to explain duty children to me properly before I stumbled across the information by accident. You wanted to tell Gregas the full truth about telepaths as soon as we found out he was a borderline telepath. You were right. It’s better for us to explain it properly to him. If we don’t, then he’ll either work it out for himself or stumble across the information in a far worse way.”
I paused. “I just hope Buzz’s plan works. I can’t let either my parents or Gregas go home while Keith is attacking us. My parents are already unhappy here. If Gregas starts hating himself and me, then ...”
“I have faith in Buzz,” said Lucas. “She’s inventive, determined, and completely unscrupulous.”
We carried on to the park doors in silence. Once we were inside, and walking towards the picnic tables, I saw Gregas was already standing there waiting for us. Of course he was already there waiting for us. If Gregas found an unguarded lift shaft, he’d be eagerly queueing up to jump down it.
When we reached Gregas, I had a last moment of cowardice. “Are you absolutely sure you want to know the full truth?” I asked.
Gregas nodded. “What you told me yesterday did help, but I’ve still got a lot of questions. I need to make sense of things that have happened in the past, and work out what this means for my future. I can’t do that unless I know everything.”
“All right,” I said wearily.
“So, what are we waiting for?” he looked expectantly at me.
I turned to point across the park. “We’re waiting for that.”
Gregas looked where I was pointing and gasped. “What’s a nosy doing in your unit?”
“It’s come here to talk to you,” I said. “Weren’t you listening when I said this explanation would be deeply disturbing?”
Gregas was looking uncertain as he watched the ominous grey-robed figure walking towards us. “You didn’t mention anything about nosies. Why do we need to drag a nosy into this?”
“When you know the truth you’ll understand,” I said. “If you don’t want to meet the nosy, then I can send it away, and we’ll forget the whole thing until you go through Lottery.”
“No.” Gregas straightened up defiantly. “I can do this.”
He stood, hands clenched into fists at his side, as the nosy walked up to him. It stood silently looking at him for nearly thirty seconds, with its purple eyes glinting from behind the inhumanly shaped whole-head mask. Finally, it spoke in an unnervingly distorted voice.
“You have asked for knowledge, Gregas. Do you understand that if you learn this knowledge it can never be unlearned?”
Gregas moistened his lips before speaking. “Yes.”
The nosy stood in silence for ten seconds. “Do you understand that the Hive would normally give you this knowledge after Lottery?”
“Yes.”
There was another pause of ten seconds. “Do you understand that the Hive knows best in this matter?”
“Yes. No.” Gregas made a whimpering sound. “I suppose the Hive knows best, but I want to know the truth anyway.”
Yet another long pause. “Those who wish to know the truth must see the face behind the mask I wear. Are you ready for that, Gregas?”
“No!” yelped Gregas. “I mean ... Why do I have to see your face?”
“Because the truth is in my eyes, and I must unmask for you to see them properly,” said the nosy. “Do you wish me to unmask, Gregas?”
“Yes,” said Gregas, with the impatient tone that came from utter desperation. “Stop being so creepy and get on with it!”
The nosy lifted its hands and slowly unsealed the back of its mask. There was a last dramatic delay before it yanked off the mask, tossing it aside in one swift gesture. Buzz’s dark face was revealed, and she gave Gregas one of her generously wide smiles, before shaking her head to send her flattened black hair into a glorious mass of wild curls. As a final touch, she shrugged off the grey robes to show the minimal, figure-hugging black dress that she’d worn at the Halloween party.
“Do you still think I’m creepy?” she asked.
Gregas stared at her, his mouth drooping open, then gulped and managed to speak. “Buzz? Is that really you?”
She peered down at herself before laughing at him. “This is really me.”
Gregas turned to look at the discarded mask lying on the grass. “So ... What does this mean?”
“What it means is that nosies aren’t telepaths,” I said. “They’re just ordinary hasties, taking turns to dress up, look frightening, and deter potential criminals from even thinking of committing crimes. It’s all a gigantic bluff, but it works. It stops virtually everyone from stealing, damaging things, and most importantly from hurting others. It keeps the Hive a safe place where people can live without fear.”
“But ...” Gregas moved to sit on one of the benches by the picnic tables, and let his head fall into his hands before speaking in a muffled voice. “You mean that I’ve spent my whole life terrified of nosies rummaging through my thoughts, but there aren’t actually any telepaths at all?”
“Lottery finds almost a thousand people a year with a small level of telepathic ability,” said Buzz. “People like you and me. We have occasional random glimpses into the core driving motivation of someone nearby. When you met that man in the air vents, you had an insight that he wanted to kill you. That insight quite probably saved your life.”
Gregas lifted his head. “That was telepathy?” he asked sharply. “You’re saying that we’re both telepaths?”
Buzz went to sit down opposite him. “We’re both borderline telepaths,” she said. “Our insights happen at random, only work at close quarters, and only last for a split second. You’ve seen that’s still enough to be incredibly useful. A malevolent person may be clever, charismatic, and fool even skilled experts with their brilliant lies, but our borderline telepathic insights show us their true nature. The Hive rates us Level 1 and values us highly.”
Gregas looked at me. “Is this really true, Amber? Am I a borderline telepath?”
“Yes.”
“And Buzz is a borderline telepath too?” he asked.
“Yes,” I repeated. “That’s why I asked her to come here. She can tell you everything you need to know about yourself.”
“You told me that we had different abilities,” said Gregas. “You said that yours was similar but more intense and far longer-lasting.”
I saw his eyes widen. “If I am a borderline telepath, then what are you, Amber?”
I couldn’t make myself say the words. I gave Buzz a despairing look, and she spoke for me.
“There are true telepaths in this Hive, Gregas. People who can genuinely read minds and have full control of their abilities. They are vanishingly rare and indescribably precious though. Our Hive currently only has five true telepaths. We depend on them to deal with all the greatest threats to our citizens, and to protect the vital life support systems that keep us all alive.”
She paused. “Your sister is one of these five true telepaths. She was only discovered in the last Lottery, but has already saved a massive number of lives.”
Gregas stared wordlessly at me before suddenly frowning.
“Don’t think it,” said Buzz sternly. “Don’t do it. Don’t envy Amber for even a single second. Remember how you heard her screaming when she returned from her last emergency run, and thank the Hive that you have been spared seeing the things she sees and feeling the things she feels.”
Gregas gave Buzz an appalled look. “You got an insight into my mind!”
“Yes. You’ll discover it’s rare to get an insight into the mind of another borderline telepath, but it sometimes happens, while you’ll never get an insight into Amber’s mind at all.”
I saw Gregas’s face change as he thought of the obvious. “But Amber can read my mind whenever she wants, can’t she?” He gave me a hurt look. “Have you been reading my mind all the time since Lottery? Have you been reading our parents’ minds too?”
“I’ve never read our parents’ minds at all,” I said. “I’ve only read your mind once, and that was because I was forced into doing it.”
He glared at me. “How were you forced into reading my mind, and what did you see nosing around in there?”
I groaned. “You were arrested by another telepath’s Strike team, Gregas. You’d had an encounter with someone dangerous and wouldn’t tell anyone what had happened to you. A telepath had to read your mind, and I thought it was better if I did it than one of the other four. That way, I could do everything possible to help and protect you.”
Lucas had been sitting on a bench watching us, and now finally joined the conversation. “We arranged for you and Wesley to be brought to our unit. Amber hoped that she’d see all she needed in Wesley’s mind, but the two of you had split up when the man in the air vents was chasing you. Amber had to read your mind, but we went to great lengths to make sure that you were only thinking about those few moments in the air vents when she did it. Amber didn’t see anything else at all. Nothing personal. Nothing embarrassing.”
“Oh. Right.” Gregas hesitated. “What about you, Lucas? Has Amber ever read your mind?”
“It’s Amber’s job to hunt people who pose a lethal threat to our Hive,” said Lucas. “She does that by reading their minds and guiding her Strike team to chase them down. In the final moments of the chase, she will change from reading her target’s mind to reading the minds of her Strike team members. That’s a protective measure that means she can get them immediate help when they’re injured or in other trouble.”
He smiled. “Amber doesn’t have to read the mind of her Tactical Commander as part of her work, but I’ve encouraged her to read my thoughts from the very first moment we met. It saves a vast amount of time explaining things.”
“You’ve been asking a telepath to read your mind to save time?” said Gregas incredulously.
“Originally, yes,” said Lucas. “Now that Amber and I are partners, I’ve got far more important reasons to want her reading my mind though. As a Tactical Commander, I’m imprinted with extensive knowledge of societal dynamics, but that doesn’t stop me being a social disaster myself sometimes.”
He paused. “When I’m crippled by personal anxiety, Amber can look past the words I’m saying and see what I really mean. She’s the only person I’ve ever met who could fully interact with me on a social level. Her telepathy is the reason our relationship works.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” said Gregas.
“Nothing about Lucas makes sense to me,” said Buzz, in a heartfelt voice. “As a borderline telepath psychologist, I’ve worked with a huge variety of people, and he’s the most confusing person I’ve ever met.”
She sighed. “It’s not just that Lucas is insufferably bright, startlingly perceptive, and unnervingly uncaring of his dignity or privacy. He can deal unflinchingly with terrifying threats to the Hive, but falls apart over simple things like complimenting Amber when she’s wearing a new dress. To make matters even worse, he either speaks in sentences crammed with far too many complex words or misses half the words out entirely. Lucas’s Tactical team spend a lot of time complaining about it behind his back.”
Lucas laughed. “They spend a lot of time complaining about it in front of me too.”
Buzz gave Gregas an especially devastating grin. “Learning the truth about yourself and your sister has been a great shock for you. I’m afraid there are some more things that I’ll need to explain today as well. You’ll have to make two decisions before you return to Teen Level, and you may want to think about them for a while.”
“What decisions?” Gregas asked, in a bewildered voice.
“The first decision is about your counselling,” said Buzz. “You’ll need a weekly session with a borderline telepath psychologist to help you adjust to your abilities. You can either travel here once a week to have your counselling with me, or I can arrange for you to have counselling from someone in Blue Zone.”
I wasn’t surprised when Gregas instantly replied to that. “I’d rather keep having counselling from you.”
“The second decision is whether you wish to move room to a different area or not,” said Buzz. “If you stay in your current room, then you’ll have to be extremely careful to keep your ability and your new knowledge secret from the other teens.”
“I don’t see how moving to a different area would make that easier,” said Gregas.
“Children who grow up on Law Enforcement’s private Level 20 know the truth about telepaths,” said Buzz. “When they’re thirteen, they go to live on Teen Level like other teens, but they have their own areas to make it easier for them to keep the Hive’s secrets, and when they go through Lottery they’re likely to be assigned to work in Law Enforcement themselves.”
She smiled. “If you choose to move to a part of Teen Level where teens from Law Enforcement live, you’ll find everything virtually identical to where you are now, but there’d be the crucial advantage that you could speak freely to the teens and activity leaders about your ability.”
“How far would I have to move?” asked Gregas warily. “What zone would I have to live in?”
“There are areas in each zone,” said Buzz. “You’d naturally want to move to one in Blue Zone.”
Gregas pulled a dubious face. “Even if I was still in Blue Zone, I’d be moving into a corridor of total strangers who all have friends already. They probably wouldn’t be very welcoming, and telling them I’m a borderline telepath would make things even worse.”
Buzz laughed. “People in Law Enforcement are used to interacting with borderline telepaths, Gregas, and admire our abilities. They’re intrigued by our insights, and the vagueness of what they reveal means only problematic individuals react to them as an invasion of privacy.”
She paused. “Being a teen borderline telepath with full insights is unusual, because most of us don’t get full insights until after we’ve been through the triggering processes in Lottery. If you moved to live among Law Enforcement teens, then you’d find you were the centre of attention.”
“Oh.” Gregas seemed to be thinking that through.
“You’d be surrounded by admiring teens eager to be your friends,” said Buzz, “and your insights would allow you to avoid those mostly attracted by the fact they know you’ll be rated Level 1 in Lottery. You’d be wise to keep your relationship to Amber a secret though. If the other teens discovered you weren’t just a teen borderline telepath with full insights, but the brother of a true telepath as well, then you’d get completely mobbed.”
The expression on Gregas’s face hovered somewhere between being apprehensive and smug. I guessed he was picturing himself being the centre of attention for an admiring crowd of teens.
Buzz stood up. “I suggest we go and sit by the lake for a while now, Gregas. You can take your time absorbing everything you’ve learned, and you’ll probably have some questions that you prefer to ask in private. I should explain that my primary role here is to be your sister’s counsellor, but I counsel other people in this unit as well, and never share their confidential information with her.”
Gregas stood up as well but turned to give me a suspicious look. “Do you read Buzz’s mind, Amber?”
I shook my head. “No. Megan gave me my original telepathic training, and also acted as my counsellor for a while. Seeing her professional thoughts about me was one of the reasons those counselling sessions were a disaster. I don’t want to risk messing up my counselling relationship with Buzz in the same way, so I never read her mind. Your secrets will be perfectly safe with her.”
Gregas nodded, and followed Buzz off down the path towards the lake. I watched them go, then looked reproachfully at the nearby bushes.
“Come out of there at once!” I ordered.
Rothan and Forge crawled out of the bushes and got to their feet.
“I never thought to do a telepathic check of the park for people spying on my private conversation with my brother,” I said bitterly. “I’d no idea you were there until I noticed the light of the suns glinting on your guns. Were you really planning to shoot Gregas?”
“Only if absolutely necessary, and only on stun,” said Rothan hastily. “The news was bound to be a shock to him.”
“Adika said we had to take the danger of a personal attack seriously after the way Gregas dealt with the man on the ladder,” said Forge.
“We were only obeying orders and protecting your safety,” added Rothan.
I made shooing gestures with my hands. “I realize that. Now go away.”
They hurried off, and I did a brief scan of the nearby area. “There isn’t anyone else around. Adika took the cowardly option of sending Rothan and Forge rather than coming to spy on me himself.”
Lucas looked amused. “I think that was good tactics rather than cowardice. You’ve yelled at Adika in the past for asking questions about your personal life. He knew you’d be annoyed about him listening to a private conversation with your brother, but wouldn’t blame Rothan and Forge for following orders.”
I went to sit down next to Lucas. “As far as I could tell, Gregas coped with the revelations reasonably well. I’m obviously not going to read his mind to check.”
“This would be an exceptionally bad time to read Gregas’s mind,” said Lucas. “He’s bound to have a few resentful thoughts about you at this point. The important thing is that he isn’t having an extreme reaction of loathing against either you or himself.”
“Yes,” I said. “Buzz felt the key point was to undermine Gregas’s fear of nosies with a dramatic unmasking, replacing his image of nosies as being loathsome with an image of them as being ordinary people. That does seem to have worked.”
I hesitated. “I wasn’t expecting Buzz to wear that particular dress. I suppose she chose it because it’s a Teen Level one. She’s got a tactic of wearing clothes of someone’s level to help them relax and talk to her more easily.”
“That was probably one reason she chose the dress,” said Lucas drily. “I think the other was that she wanted to make sure Gregas’s new image of nosies was as attractive as possible.”
He paused. “Query. Can we discuss an oddity that’s been puzzling me ever since we discovered Gregas was a borderline telepath?”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“There’s a strong genetic factor involved in someone becoming a borderline telepath,” said Lucas. “We’ve no idea what makes someone move beyond that and develop into a true telepath, but we do know that when two or more siblings are borderline telepaths, they virtually always have a borderline telepath parent or grandparent. That rule must surely hold true when a borderline telepath and a full telepath are siblings.”
I rubbed my forehead. “You’re saying that Gregas turning out to be a borderline telepath means that we have a borderline telepath parent or grandparent as well?”
“Yes.”
“You must be wrong about that,” I said. “If one of my parents or grandparents were a borderline telepath, they’d be Level 1. My parents are Level 27. My mother’s parents are Level 31 and work at manufacturing dataviews. I’ve never met my other grandparents, but they’re Level 14, and they dumped my father for coming out of Lottery a disappointing Level 27.”
“Yes, I remember your mother mentioning that,” said Lucas. “Would you mind me checking the records to make sure there hasn’t been a mistake?”
“I don’t see how a mistake could be possible, unless ...” I was hit by an unnerving suspicion. My father’s parents had been Level 14!
“You clearly aren’t comfortable with me investigating this,” said Lucas. “I’ll forget about the whole thing.”
“No,” I said. “Check the records. I’m almost sure that you won’t find anything, but ... Well, you’d better do it anyway.”
“Are you sure that’s what you want?” asked Lucas. “You could think about it for a day or two.”
“I’m sure. Now you’ve raised this issue, I need to know the full truth.” I frowned at Lucas. “Why are you pulling that face? What did I say that was funny?”
“I just remembered what I said earlier about curiosity, and how you’d feel in Gregas’s position.”
I groaned. “Yes. Gregas wanted to know the full truth immediately. So do I. Check the records.”
Lucas tapped at his dataview. “Your father’s record says that his parents are Level 14 medical staff.”
I relaxed. “There you are. No borderline telepaths in my ancestry.”
“That’s on your father’s standard open record,” added Lucas. “He also has a secure record.”
My unnerving suspicion wasn’t just back again, but turning into virtual certainty. “My father is Level 27,” I said grimly. “That’s far too low for him to be involved in any Hive secrets. That secure record must be adoption details.”
“It’s probably adoption details,” said Lucas warily.
I ran my fingers through my hair. “It has to be adoption details. My father must have been the duty child of a borderline telepath. You said that the duty child programme selects suitable couples between Level 11 and Level 19 to adopt children. My father’s parents were Level 14 medical staff. If they’d adopted a duty child expecting him to come out of Lottery as Level 1, then it would explain why they were so disappointed by my father’s Level 27 result.”
“That theory does fit all the facts,” said Lucas.
I stared down at my hands. “Do you think my father knows the truth?”
“I doubt it.”
I lifted my head again. “Can you check the secure record and find out who my father’s genetic parents were?”
“Are you sure you want to know?”
“Yes. I’ve always felt this sense of bewilderment that I was a telepath. It seemed as if my ability had been thrown at me from nowhere. If I have a borderline telepath grandparent, then it would all make far more sense. It’s not as if I have any attachment to the people I thought were my father’s parents. I’ve never even met them.”
“All right,” said Lucas. “I’ll check the secure record.”
I watched tensely as he tapped at his dataview, and was startled by a staccato bleeping noise.
“This is Information Archive,” said a female voice. “You have requested access to a secure record containing restricted information. Please state your identity and the reason for your request.”
“I’m Tactical Commander Lucas 2511-3022-498,” said Lucas. “I’m requesting this information on behalf of Amber 2514-0172-912.”
“I cannot release the secure ancestry information of a telepath without that telepath’s personal consent,” said the voice.
Lucas handed me his dataview, and I saw a woman with an oppressively perfect hairstyle that reminded me of Megan.
“I’m Amber 2514-0172-912,” I said, “and I’m requesting this information.”
“Do you only require details of your father’s parents, or are you requesting your complete extended paternal ancestry record?” she asked.
I shrugged. “I might as well have my complete paternal ancestry.”
“Please wait while I get my supervisor to witness the request and verify your identity,” said the woman.
Her face froze for a moment, then the image divided to show both her and a man.
“Please repeat your request for the witness,” said the woman.
“I’m Amber 2514-0172-912,” I said wearily, “and I’m requesting my complete paternal ancestry record.”
“Now please look directly at your dataview screen and repeat the following words of a Hive duty song for me,” said the man. “Burgundy, Red, Orange Zones. We are united.”
I pulled a confused face but repeated the words. “Burgundy, Red, Orange Zones. We are united.”
“Request witnessed and identity verified,” said the man briskly.
“I’m sending your complete extended paternal ancestry record to your personal dataview now,” said the woman.
There was a chime from my own dataview that meant it had received a message.
“Do you require any further information at this time?” asked the woman.
“No, thank you.” I ended the call, handed Lucas’s dataview back to him, and took my own from my pocket.
Lucas stood up. “I think I’d better leave you to look at your ancestry information alone.”
“Why? We already know what I’m going to see. One of my paternal grandparents was a borderline telepath.”
“I think you’re going to see more than that,” said Lucas. “The Information Archivist wouldn’t have had to get her supervisor to witness the request and do face and voice identity verification if it just involved a borderline telepath.”
I blinked. “You mean there’s a true telepath in my ancestry?”
Lucas nodded. “I’ll go and sit by the stream for a while.”
He walked away, and I stared at my blank dataview screen. Lucas had to be right. There was a true telepath in my ancestry, and it was obvious who that true telepath would be.
After Claire’s death, her unit had been closed down for three years, before becoming my unit. Her apartment became mine. I was sitting in the park where her ashes had been scattered. Four of her old Strike team members were now my bodyguards.
I’d always felt something of Claire was still present in this unit, and now I knew what it was. Claire had had twenty-five duty children. I knew none of those children had been adopted, but some of them would have had duty children too, and ...
Something of Claire was still present in this unit. Her great-granddaughter was here. Her great-granddaughter was me.
I tapped at my dataview and displayed the ancestry information in mid air in front of me.
I’d been right.
I’d been wrong.
I knew what I needed to do.
