“Members of Sea Farm Security use a variety of methods, including widespread use of surveillance cameras and drones, to keep order,” said Lucas. “A certain level of minor crime, such as theft of fruit or tampering with surveillance cameras, appears to be accepted by them as inevitable. If a more serious crime occurs, they arrest all the most likely suspects, and fly them to the Hive in the expectation that a nosy will read their minds.”
Lucas grimaced. “The reality is, of course, that Morton has been reading their minds. The innocent suspects are sent back to the sea farm, while the guilty party remains at the Hive for appropriate treatment. Normally, there’s only a very low level of serious crime at the sea farm. The prospect of having their mind read by a nosy, and then spending an extended period at the Hive undergoing therapy, seems to deter most people from causing trouble.”
Lucas looked expectantly at Adika. “Morton’s unit has been responsible for the sea farm for the last four decades. Adika spent seven years working for Morton, so I expect he’ll be able to give us far more detailed information about the sea farm, and advise us whether or not to accept responsibility for it.”
Adika seemed disconcerted. “You’ve just told us far more about the sea farm than I ever knew, Lucas. The only people in Morton’s unit who knew any details about it were Saanvi’s Tactical team and Morton himself. The Strike team had strict instructions to avoid learning anything about the sea farm, never to discuss it, and preferably not to think about it either.”
I gave him a bewildered look. “What? Why?”
“Because Morton hated reading the minds of suspects from the sea farm. Dealing with a group of them left him in a foul mood for days, and any reminder of the place upset him.”
Lucas frowned. “What was Morton’s problem with reading sea farm minds?”
“I had the impression it was a combination of things,” said Adika. “The sea farm people were all terrified at the idea of a nosy reading their mind, a lot of their thoughts were incomprehensible, and they were all guilty of something that would be considered a crime here in the Hive.”
“Did the insights of borderline telepaths help at all?” asked Lucas.
“The insights of borderline telepaths seemed useless where these people were concerned,” said Adika. “Even Morton had to spend a long time studying each person’s mind, trying to work out if they’d committed a trivial offence – the equivalent of one of our teens trespassing on another level of the Hive – or done something serious.”
“That must have been extremely difficult for Morton,” said Lucas.
“It was appallingly difficult for Morton,” said Adika. “He has a horror of anything to do with Outside, and found the sea farm minds were full of disturbing images. It was fortunate that we usually only had to deal with a sea farm incident once or twice a year. Occasionally, the first group of suspects all proved to be innocent, or at least only guilty of other trivial offences, so Sea Farm Security had to collect up a second group to find the guilty person.”
Adika shuddered. “Morton reacted especially badly when he had to read a second group of minds.”
Lucas ran his fingers through his hair. “That explains why Saanvi is so eager to pass responsibility for the sea farm to us. Over the last few months, the sea farm has suffered from a series of nasty incidents, resulting in a number of injuries as well as one death. Sea Farm Security has sent four groups of suspects to the Hive without including the genuine culprit. Now a fifth group of suspects has arrived, and Morton has refused to read their minds.”
“A fifth group!” Adika winced. “I can understand that pushing Morton beyond his limits.”
I wondered exactly when Morton had refused to read those minds, and guessed it was directly after his conversation with me. Morton had no mercy on himself. He hated reading the minds of people from the sea farm, but he’d kept doing his duty for four decades. He was only allowing himself to try to escape it now because he’d found another telepath who he believed was more suited to the task.
“How many people were in the first four groups?” I asked.
Lucas checked his dataview. “A total of thirty-three people.”
I pictured how I’d have felt as a teen if I’d been arrested and dragged off to have my mind read by a nosy. It would have been a terrifying experience for me. From what Lucas had said, it would have been even more frightening for people from the sea farm.
“Thirty-three innocent people,” I said. “All labelled as suspects and put through what they’d have found a traumatic ordeal.”
“Yes,” said Lucas, “and now another seven are here at the Hive, waiting to have their minds read. Since Morton has refused to do that, Saanvi wants another unit to take over full responsibility for the sea farm. She suggests we’re the obvious choice, making the point that Amber shouldn’t find the images in sea farm minds unsettling because she’s been Outside herself.”
I nodded. “Saanvi is right. Morton has been bearing the burden of the sea farm alone for four decades. It’s time another telepath took over responsibility for it, and that will be far easier for me than any of the others.”
“I don’t think we should rush into agreeing to this,” said Lucas. “Saanvi is desperate to get us to take over responsibility for the sea farm. She’s focusing her argument on the images of Outside because that’s something you should be able to handle better than Morton, but there are clearly wider problems for telepaths reading these minds.”
He paused. “Adika mentioned a lot of sea farm thoughts were incomprehensible, so Morton had to spend a long time studying each person before he could establish their innocence or guilt. What’s worrying me is that sea farm minds may not just contain incomprehensible thoughts, but have particularly confusing or distressing emotions as well.”
“Amber’s sensitivity to target emotions would make that a major issue for her,” said Megan anxiously. “We should refuse to have any dealings with the sea farm.”
I felt my usual irritation with Megan. When she was my counsellor, she’d kept talking as if she knew more about my telepathy than I did, trying to lay down rules about what I should or shouldn’t do, know, or discuss. She wasn’t my counsellor any longer, but she still kept trying to interfere.
“I don’t see why the emotions of people from the sea farm would be different from the emotions of people here at the Hive,” I said. “Even if they lead very different lives, they’ll still have moments when they’re happy, sad, feeling loved, or lonely.”
“That’s true, Amber, but I’m still worried about this,” said Lucas. “You’re used to skimming across hundreds or even thousands of dutiful, contented minds in our Hive to find the conspicuous thoughts of a dangerous target. Most minds in the Hive are dutiful because of a combination of factors. The Hive Obligations and Duty songs taught in schools, the socially conditioned fear of Outside, and the nosy patrols discouraging people from even thinking of committing crimes. Those factors aren’t present at the sea farm.”
Megan looked shocked. “Children at the sea farm must surely still be taught the Hive Obligations and Duty songs.”
“They may be taught some modified version of them,” said Lucas, “but that can only have a limited impact. It’s impossible to make people think of the Hive as their whole world when they live somewhere else. It would be foolish to teach people to fear the Outside when you need them to work there. The nosy myth will still have a slight impact on people, because they know they could be sent to the Hive to have their minds read, but it won’t make the same impression as seeing nosy patrols on a daily basis.”
Lucas sighed. “I expect sea farm minds will be far less dutiful than the minds of people here in the Hive. I’m certain they’ll be less contented. The optimization stage of Lottery ensures that people at the Hive are assigned to work they love. The much smaller number of professions available at the sea farm means that many people will be assigned work they generally like but won’t necessarily love.”
I fr
owned. “Are you suggesting that sea farm minds will be more like the targets I chase than the people I’m protecting? More like wild bees than tame ones?”
“I’m not saying they’ll have the minds of wild bees,” said Lucas hastily. “I’m saying that the Hive’s most experienced telepath finds sea farm minds hard to read because of their incomprehensible thoughts, and you would have the extra problem of having to cope with their potentially turbulent emotions as well.”
A few months ago, I might not have taken this concern seriously. Now I knew more about the risks involved in using telepathy to share the thoughts of strong-willed people. I reluctantly accepted Lucas was right to be worried about me reading sea farm minds. In fact, I’d known he was right all along. I’d only argued because I couldn’t resist taking the opposite side to Megan.
I had to overcome my old irritation with Megan. I knew she was only motivated by concern for me, but I was still finding fault with every word she said, and every thought I read in her mind. That was both unfair and unreasonable of me.
I made a mental resolve not to criticize anything Megan said in future, but look for opportunities to praise her.
“We can’t decide whether to accept responsibility for the sea farm until we know how I react to the thoughts of its people,” I said. “I have to try reading the mind of one of the fifth group of suspects. If I find it as hard as Morton does, or even harder, then you can explain that to Saanvi.”
“I agree we need information on how you react to sea farm minds,” said Lucas, “but I’m reluctant to let you try reading the mind of one of the fifth group of suspects. Sea Farm Security has sent four previous groups of suspects to the Hive that didn’t include the guilty party we’re looking for, but they may have been luckier with their choice for the fifth group.”
He pulled a face. “Amber, I don’t want the first sea farm mind you read to be that of the person behind this series of attacks. You wouldn’t just be hit by the difficulties of reading the thoughts of someone from the sea farm, but the mind of a deeply disturbing wild bee as well, and that could be a dangerous combination.”
I waved my hands. “What do we do then?”
“We let you begin by reading the mind of a person we know isn’t the wild bee. A seventeen-year-old girl was injured in one of the sea farm incidents. A flying hospital was sent to the sea farm to stabilize her condition, and then fly her to the Hive for specialist treatment.”
“What’s a flying hospital?” I asked.
“It’s an aircraft equipped with advanced medical facilities and an operating room,” said Megan. “They’re used in cases when someone is critically injured at one of the Hive’s supply stations or Hive Defence bases.”
I grimaced. “The girl was very badly hurt then.”
“Yes,” said Lucas, “but fortunately Juniper survived and is now ready to be discharged from the Purple Zone Trauma Casualty Centre.”
“Juniper is an unusual name,” commented Megan.
“Judging from the records we’ve been sent, most people at the sea farm have unusual names,” said Lucas.
I had a sudden moment of realization, where several oddities came together to make perfect sense. Morton had said his wife was called Celandine, and I’d been struck by it being an unusual name. Once I’d found out Adika didn’t know anything about her, I’d wondered if the unusual name was evidence that Morton had made up the whole story to frighten me, but it wasn’t. Morton’s wife had an unusual name because she came from the sea farm!
That explained why Morton got so upset if he found his Strike team members talking or thinking about the sea farm. It didn’t just remind him of reading suspect sea farm minds. It reminded him of his wife and his guilt over her death.
Lucas was looking expectantly at me. “Do you think that’s a good idea?”
“Sorry,” I said. “I was distracted and missed the last bit of the conversation.”
“I said that Juniper is supposed to be returning to the sea farm on today’s scheduled flight, but we could ask for her return to be delayed until tomorrow. There’s no reason to believe she’s a wild bee, so you could safely read her mind this evening to establish how you react to the thoughts of an ordinary member of the sea farm.”
“Yes, that’s a good idea,” I said.
“Given the potential complications of reading Juniper’s mind, I insist on allowing you the same twenty-four hour recovery time as after an emergency run. If you don’t suffer any serious aftereffects from reading her mind, then you can try reading the fifth group of suspects tomorrow evening. Whether you find the guilty party is amongst that group or not, we should then be in a position to make a decision about taking over responsibility for the sea farm.”
I was still distracted by thoughts of Celandine. It was obvious how Morton had met her. She must have been among a group of suspects sent to the Hive, and Morton had read her mind along with the others. I didn’t understand what had happened after that though. Given Morton’s extreme aversion to Outside, how could he have got involved with a girl from the sea farm?
Whatever had happened back then, Morton hadn’t told me about Celandine just to frighten me into following his strict moral rules, but because he was planning to hand over the problems of the sea farm to my unit. If I accidentally discovered anything about Celandine when I was reading sea farm minds, I would be bound by the telepaths’ rules of good manners, and have to protect Morton’s privacy by not sharing the information with anyone else.
Lucas tapped at his dataview again. “I’ve asked Morton’s unit to arrange for Juniper to be brought to our unit’s holding cells this evening.”
His use of the term “holding cells” finally got my full attention. “What are holding cells?”
“They’re rooms designed to hold prisoners securely,” said Adika.
“Holding cells are normally used for release cases.” Lucas put down his dataview and continued the explanation. “When offenders have completed appropriate treatment, they’re usually checked by a borderline telepath before being re-established as productive members of the Hive community. In the case of offences involving actual violence though, the check has to be performed by an experienced true telepath to avoid any risk of the individual harming others again in future. Such cases are kept in holding cells at a Telepath Unit until the telepath has time to read their minds.”
I was still confused. “I didn’t know we had holding cells in our unit.”
“There’s no need to bring potentially dangerous people inside a Telepath Unit,” said Adika. “They just need to be close enough for the telepath to read their minds. Our holding cells are two levels down from us, and a couple of corridor lengths away to the west.”
I nodded. Telepath units were deliberately located in isolated areas, surrounded by equipment that required minimum staffing or maintenance, to allow the telepath some peace. With so few minds around, it would be easy for me to reach out and read the thoughts of someone in our holding cells.
“I think we can end this meeting now,” said Lucas. “I’d like us to regroup here this evening while Amber reads Juniper’s mind. I’ll ask Buzz to join us as well.”
I frowned. “I don’t see why it’s necessary to involve my counsellor in this.”
“We’re venturing into the unknown here, Amber. Frankly, I’m tempted to treat this like an emergency run, and have the whole unit on standby, but that seems excessive for reading the mind of one innocent girl. I’m settling for having your team leaders and your counsellor ready to provide any support necessary.”
I sighed. “All right.”
Everyone stood up except me. Adika, Megan, and Nicole went out of the room, but Lucas paused to give me an enquiring look.
“Would you like us to go back to our apartment now, Amber?”
“Yes, but I want to check something first.” I took out my dataview. “I’ll catch you up in a minute.”
Lucas left the room, and I used my dataview to access the records M
orton’s unit had sent us. There was a startling volume of them, not just including details of all the suspects the sea farm had sent to Morton’s unit in the last four decades, but archive records for the century before that as well.
At another time, I’d have been curious about records that mentioned the unfamiliar names of telepaths from long ago, but my priority now was finding information about Celandine. Morton had told me she’d died nearly four decades ago, so I focused on the earliest records from his unit, searching through lists of suspects until I saw her name.
Celandine had been among a group of suspects sent to the Hive only a year after Morton’s unit took over responsibility for the sea farm. The records stated she’d been twenty years old at the time, and a rapid mental calculation told me that Morton couldn’t have been more than twenty-one himself.
The guilty party in that group had been sent for treatment, and most of the other suspects had been sent back to the sea farm a few days later, but Celandine had never returned. A note against her name recorded her date of death as precisely one year after she’d arrived at the Hive.
Chapter Eleven
That evening, Lucas, Megan, Nicole, Buzz, and I gathered around the table in meeting room 4. I was having a last-minute panic about reading Juniper’s mind, and trying to convince myself that the fact I didn’t share Morton’s paranoia about Outside should make this relatively easy.
“Adika, Rothan, and Eli are on guard duty down at the holding cells,” said Lucas. “Can you please turn on your ear crystal now, Amber?”
I realized that my crystal unit was still in my pocket, and hastily put it in my ear.
“Adika, is everything ready down there?” asked Lucas.
“Yes, a medical aide has just brought the girl to her holding cell,” said Adika.
Lucas nodded to me. “You can go ahead and read Juniper’s mind, Amber.”
I closed my eyes and reached out with my telepathic sense. It was acting like sight, so people’s minds were shining lights in the surrounding darkness. I couldn’t resist dipping into Lucas’s head, and found his glittering thoughts focused on studying my face, watching for my reaction when I first touched Juniper’s mind.
Hurricane (Hive Mind Book 3) Page 10
