CHAPTER 12

At the bottom of the stairwell I ran into someone—literally.

I corrected, and apologized. It was Green, the guy who’d accused me of violating his privacy and gotten me thrown in the cell.

“You have got to be kidding me,” I said.

He pulled back. “You! Why is a criminal still walking around like free people? You should be in a cell.”

“And the case was dismissed,” I said rudely, which might be true. Maybe.

Green looked at Stone. “You’re coming with me while I file a protest. You can explain to Diaz why you’re letting a criminal free in the building.”

“Your boss hired me,” I said, petty anger floating to the surface. “Check with Rex. It’s already done.” I had no idea who Diaz was, but Rex seemed like the kind of guy who was senior to everyone else.

Green stood there while his shields leaked disapproval and contempt. “Be sure I’ll check that.”

“Go on, Adam, I’ll handle this,” Stone said.

“Fine.” I added silently, Weren’t you going to follow up with Kara, or Hawk?

I’ll do that after I take Green to Nelson. It’s his department and he’s signed off on it. He can deal with the fallout.

I didn’t envy Nelson all of a sudden.

“Are you coming with me or should I go to your boss?” Green said. “I can pull your voting privileges if you irritate me, you know.”

I wasn’t sure if that was a real threat or not. When I was here last, voting wasn’t something you lost once you’d gained it. Guild membership might have been compulsory, but voting privileges for Council positions and the occasional policy legislation were not. You got them if you were both born with Guild parents and had a certain Ability rating, or if you hit certain high-level marks in your career. Practically no one still in school—even advanced schooling—would be able to hit those marks if they didn’t have a vote by inheritance. In practice, only about forty percent of the Guild had the right to vote, and only a third of those hadn’t been born into the privilege. Once you’d gotten votes, you had them forever.

“Can he really do that?” I asked.

“Let’s ask Nelson,” Stone said. Then, to Green: “After you?”

Green turned on his heel and walked out through the stairwell door. His mind muttered behind him about political power and biased charges.

You know your way? Stone asked as he hustled to catch up.

Yes, I said, but he was already gone.

•   •   •

The rest of the Guild felt deserted, hollow, with Mindspace and reality curiously empty of minds. The main atrium, which was nearly always full of people, had one student on an errand and a guard. That was it. It was eerie.

I wondered how Cherabino was doing right now. I worried at the thought, trying to figure out if I would really ask her out as Swartz said. It would change everything, but maybe for the better. Or maybe he’d been right the first time.

Now I walked along the skybridge between the living quarters building (luxury apartments at the top, of course) and the “work” building, which housed pretty much any work the Guild did on-site with the exception of the school and research. I’d worked in the school, so while I’d seen the admin building through Kara’s eyes—in the smallest, least important areas—I hadn’t had much cause to go into the high-security bigwigs area.

Fortunately I had just the excuse to do that today.

The skybridge was beautiful and warm, light and airy with frost-tinged glass on every side, a pleasant cross breeze of plant-scented air, while below the small formal winter garden beckoned. All pollution-resistant plants, and most taller and more deeply colored as a result. Insect-eating flowers shared space with more normal bushes and trees. It was an oasis even in November.

A student sat in the middle of the bridge, on one of the low seats on the side built for that purpose. He was fourteen, maybe, and awkward, tall and thin with zits all over his face and misery written on his mind. A Seven, maybe, in telepathy, by the feel of his mind, though it could be another similar Ability. He was upset, and afraid of something, hiding out from the rest of the Guild in this relatively isolated spot.

I thought of stopping; I’d been a professor once, and this kind of thing happened more often than you’d expect. You took kids out of their family homes and lumped them in together with little training, and hurts happened. Hurts happened a lot; I’d found out the last year I was here that some of those hurts were encouraged, so as better to toughen people up.

“You lost, mister?” the kid asked me. I’d hesitated too long.

“I used to work here,” I said, to cover whatever I might have projected into Mindspace. “It’s hard to know sometimes what to do when you come back after a long time away. Are you okay?”

I saw a series of lies flit across his brain, then a decision. “No,” he said, “but I don’t want to talk about it.” His mind leaked a roommate who was yelling about Guild First, a girlfriend who wouldn’t stop talking about everyone going mad, and a teacher who did nothing to stop the chatter. And his classmates, his hallmates, who were convinced he was a carrier of the madness even though he’d passed the screening. They wouldn’t talk to him anymore. They ran when they saw him coming. And now his girlfriend was starting to believe them. He wanted time to sit, and be, and pretend things were normal again, pretend the shame of it didn’t matter. He hadn’t done anything. But the shame still burned.

“Fair enough,” I said, keeping my mind calm, responding only to the verbal thoughts. I didn’t think he realized he’d spilled, and I wasn’t the person to offer comfort, not now. Helpless, I asked, “Can you tell me how to get to the employment administrative offices?”

He straightened. “Yeah. Sure.” He told me detailed directions twice and then forced a smile. “Hope you find your way.”

“Me too,” I said, and left. The memory of my own hurts from my school days echoed too, made that much worse by this idea of contagion. His fellows might never let him back. Never. Over some imagined idea that spread like wildfire. There were downsides to a life among telepaths. There were downsides to a life among humans.

•   •   •

As I entered the cafeteria, I felt a familiar mind emerge close by. I followed the mental sense around the corner and all the way across the room, to the section where you emptied your trays.

“Jamie!” I called, genuinely pleased. One of the strongest minds at the Guild and impossible to miss, but I was glad to see her. Her presence made all the madness seem far away. If anyone in the building was least likely to get infected, it was her. She had the willpower—and the numbers—to disbelieve anyone around her, to be the influencer and not the influenced.

She looked around, confused, before spotting me. Jamie was one of a handful of Level Ten telepaths in the world, her mind impacting Mindspace like a stone dropped in a pond even when she was controlling it. She was a sixty-something woman now, with graying hair pulled into a chignon (she insisted on the term) and a silk skirt suit at the moment. She had two older-teenager students behind her, a Latina with very long hair and a dress at maybe sixteen years old, and a short Indian-looking male student in slacks and a button-up shirt at maybe seventeen.

Why are you guys out despite the lockdown? I asked, still ten feet away.

Adam, her thought hit me in return. Meet Marta and Rohan. She pulled my mind into an open rapport with their minds, easily and smoothly. There were reasons why Jamie was one of the best mentors in the Guild.

I stopped about three feet from them, a comfortable distance. Hello, Marta. Hello, Rohan. I sent a small packet of the me-sense to both, a greeting among close friends or colleagues. I received their return greetings and mental signatures with formality. They both seemed nervous in body language and mental signature. I sent a quiet calm in return.

They’re about to take their Eleventh Hour testing, Jamie explained.

“Ah,” I said out loud. “Good luck. I know you’ll do very well. Jamie’s one of the best telepathy mentors in the Guild. She mentored me back in the day, you know.”

“Did you pass the first time?” Marta asked in a high, hesitant voice.

“Top marks in every category but one,” I said.

“You always did struggle with distraction.” Jamie smiled. Is there a reason you pulled back from the connection? She sent on a private channel to me.

I blinked. I hadn’t realized I’d done that. Around normals too long, I said. And then added subtext that I was worried about something.

You work with normals? Rohan’s mental voice put in. You don’t seem like a Minder.

I blinked at him, shocked. That had been a private sending, laser-targeted to Jamie’s mind and hers alone.

Oh. Forgot to warn you, Jamie said, a trace of amusement in her voice. Rohan is . . . well, we call it ‘seeing around corners.’ There’s not much he can’t interpret in Mindspace. My hope is that we’ll get him involved in some heavy-monitoring situations.

Military? I asked. Then, to Rohan: Sorry I startled. No, I’m not a Minder. Once upon a time, I worked Structure. I leaked in all the layers of what I was: professor, etc. I’ve been . . . away from the Guild for a while and work for the police now. How do you ‘see around corners’?

The kid looked at me. How do you see in Mindspace?

Um . . . I thought about it. Good point. You just do. That was the one thing you couldn’t quite teach somebody; I’d tried. Either you could “see” the space between the minds, like me, or you couldn’t, like Stone. You could be a good telepath either way, but the difference could not be taught.

Yeah. I just kinda do. Jamie saw me doing it and pulled me out of the regular class. I was getting into trouble anyways.

I could imagine people would be very bent out of shape to have their private conversations public. Maybe sometime you’ll let me ‘piggyback’ and see what you do, I offered. Sometimes I can learn techniques that way so we could teach others. It startled me that I’d used the “we,” but it felt natural here.

Maybe, he said, but I felt a reluctance, partly because he liked being unique, and partly because I was betting he didn’t feel quite comfortable around me. Good call, kid, I thought quietly behind a shield. Stranger danger and all that.

We need to go, Jamie said on a wide band. Even controlled, she was loud enough in Mindspace that people sitting at tables ten feet away looked up. Or, well, about sixty-five percent of them, the usual percentage of listening-telepaths in the crowd.

Good luck, I told them both. Don’t let the proctors intimidate you.

They took their leave then and headed off. I wondered if I should have kept my distance.

Jamie sent a small, quiet laser-tight sending to me after they’d already turned away: Let me drop off the kids. Then I’ll meet you back here? She sent a quiet welcome and a request to catch up.

Sure, I said, but I’d had to put way too much power behind the sending, enough power to make my head hurt. They were only a hundred feet away down the hall now. I’ll be here.

Seeing her brought it all back, those days when I was on top of the world, a part of something greater than myself. When I was happy with Kara, and happy teaching, and happy following in Jamie’s footsteps. The world seemed so clear then. The memory cut me now, like a blade.

I would never be what I was, never again. And now, I had to work all too hard to send a decent distance-message. It was afternoon, when my brain was tired, and I was still recovering from a mind injury. I’d probably overstrained finding my way back from Mindspace in Meyers’s apartment. That’s all it was, just a little overstrain. But deep inside, I doubted. It was just one more thing that made me different, made me less, than what I had been.

•   •   •

At nearly four o’clock on a Saturday, you took what you could get from the Guild cafeteria. In this case, it was a three-bean chili they’d set out with corn bread and some greens in the entryway; the main food line was, of course, closed at this hour. I was hungry enough not to care about content, and ladled plenty of everything.

When Jamie showed up, I was in the long, brightly lit seating area, in a booth toward the back under a picture of Gabriela Gee, the original firestarter back at the founding of the Guild. I’d always mistrusted something about her eyes in pictures, but the booth was clean and quiet, with privacy awnings set up with enough low-level electrical fields to prevent accidental thought spillage into other booths. Now that I’d had some time to think about it, I regretted talking to the kids mind-to-mind; I felt fine, but if I’d been exposed to madness, I had no business spreading it. I was out of my league here, and unsure. What risk was there, if any?

I’d warn Jamie to look out for signs, I decided.

I’d finished about half the bowl of chili, enjoying the spice, and most of the greens and corn bread, when I saw her.

Jamie smiled and slid into the booth, a sense of tiredness and apprehension for the students coming through. She had a cup of tea in her hands, the strong smell of chamomile flavoring the air. The feel of her mind, like sunshine and ozone over baked grass on a summer’s day, complemented the smell of the tea and reminded me of days long past. Even the ebb and flow of Mindspace around her impossibly strong mind felt comforting, familiar.

Every time I looked at her these days, I blinked. It was like she’d aged ten years in a day. She hadn’t, of course; I’d aged the ten years too. But I’d been there for that part. For her—well, it was new.

I swallowed the food. “Yes?”

She held the mug with both hands on the table. “You work with Justin, right? How is he these days?”

I requested context silently. “Oh, Captain Harris. He’s fine, as far as I can tell. Doing a lot more arbitration work with the recent budget cuts. The chief of police is thrilled with him if you believe the rumors.”

She looked down at the mug, and a tinge of wistful might-have-beens and complex mixed emotions leaked out. “Good to hear,” she said quietly. She and Captain Harris were married once upon a time, well before I’d known either, and apparently the parting hadn’t been all that straightforward. As usual, though, she brought her emotions under painful control after only a few seconds.

After an appropriate pause, I said, “It’s good to see you again.”

Now she looked back up. “It’s good to see you too. I’ve heard you’re looking into the death of Del Meyers.”

“That’s right,” I said.

She sighed. “Del was a good man. He wouldn’t want his death to start this powder keg.”

I leaned forward. “What do you mean?”

“Health is screaming about quarantine, Guild First is taking the excuse to reach for more power and more votes, and the Cooperist clans are screaming for blood and truth and a lot of things nobody thinks they’re going to get. And the more they posture, the more concerned I get. It’s the ordinary people who are going to get the short end of the stick, I fear.”

I smiled. “You including yourself in the ‘ordinary people’ category?”

She laughed. “In this case, perhaps so. What a change.”

“Listen, can Council members really take away voting privileges?” I asked, and explained the context. Without meaning to, I let my concern about the madness spill out as well.

Sorry, I added, and pulled back in.

Jamie blinked. You’ve got a lot on your mind right now, don’t you?

I nodded and took a bite of the now-cold chili.

She leaned forward a bit, her hands cradling the mug a little closer. “I won’t clutter you up with a lot of telepathy, then. Green is a lot of bluff—he’s very concerned with his personal power and the position of the Guild for his faction—but he has, actually, taken away voting privileges from four people. It took the assent of the entire Council, but he did it.”

“That’s . . . disturbing,” I said.

“It’s a new world,” she replied. Then: “If you’re worried about madness contagion, I’d go by the screening machine before you leave. You don’t have to, but it’s there as much for your peace of mind as it is for the health of the Guild as a whole.” Her idea, she put in mentally. A real answer did a lot to address the panic and prevent the more susceptible minds from “catching” the illness. She’d have the students do it too, when they got out of testing.

I didn’t know how I felt about that. But it would probably work, at least for me. “Thanks. I’ll go by there,” I said. “If it stops me worrying, a little pain is worth it.”

Changing the subject, I asked her some more questions about the politics going on with the upcoming election, and she answered at length.

Finally she said, “It’s a blessing that so much of the senior staff and Council is away at the health care conference. At least for now the politicizing has died down. You can’t walk down the hall anymore without getting a student projecting some party line.”

“Didn’t they rule mind-to-mind advertisement disallowed?” I asked.

“Not in the last five years, and they’ve got students earning money that way. I feel for the students, but I’d like a little peace and quiet. At least, what little they’ll give me.” She sighed. “Like I said, the Guild isn’t what it was.”

“Change happens,” I said, one of her sayings.

She laughed. “I suppose it does. It sure isn’t like it was back in your day!”

From there the conversation turned to the old days, to when I’d first been one of her students, and then a professor. We talked for maybe an hour, and for that hour, I forgot I was in the middle of strangers with agendas. I forgot I was years away, and worlds apart. I forgot I didn’t belong, not anymore.

And I remembered, finally, what Jamie had been saying for so many years about living by example, about doing the right thing because it was the right thing.

As I walked out, I realized I hadn’t told Paulsen or Cherabino about the Guild. I’d been avoiding it, for no other reason than that I didn’t want to tell them. The old me wouldn’t have liked that. The old me would be in her office, trying to live by example.

So I decided to take the bus to the department and hope Paulsen was still working overtime. I needed to tell her, and I needed to tell her before I chickened out.

So I left, dropping by the scanning machine at the door as Jamie had suggested. I passed the test, and even the pain of it didn’t detract from the knowledge that I wasn’t mad. Maybe there was something to that after all.