“Fun? You called that fun, Peter?” Rhyssa exclaimed almost angrily, realizing that she had been under a tremendous strain of worry even if Peter had not.
“With power like this, I could loft the shuttle much easier than the pilot could,” Peter said in a voice that was suddenly hoarse with fatigue.
Dorotea, very privately to Rhyssa: ‘How’re you goin’ keep ’em down on the farm, after they’ve seen Paree?’ She rolled her eyes expressively.
“Marked fatigue, low energy level, but even that’s within what I’d call the normal range for a Talent,” Don announced in a baffled tone. “You did great, Peter,” he added proudly.
Clearing her throat, Rhyssa said wearily, “I don’t think Ludmilla’s going to believe that onboard Talents also ‘ported the shuttle out again.”
“Well, I couldn’t leave it on the runway, Rhyssa, now could I?” Peter asked with weary irritation. “Those shuttles cost billions.”
Suddenly all the telepaths were aware of other touches, vying to reach their minds.
Kayankira: Oh, thank you, thank you. How did you manage?
Rhyssa, Dorotea, and Don exchanged glances.
No, Rhyssa, Dorotea said on a very thin thread to the other two, we didn’t think this whole thing through very carefully.
Rhyssa gulped and replied with an evenness in her mental tone that Dorotea applauded, Lance is right there. It was all his idea. A real G and H. Wasn’t it, Lance?
Lance: I’ll tell her. I’d rather shout “Eureka” but accept the caveat. He sent an image of a large crocodile, jaws wide in amazement, followed by a kangaroo bouncing from a pictorial map of Australia to the moon. You never know till you try, do you, cobber?
“Enough!” Dorotea said suddenly. “Let’s get Peter home to bed. Don’t you try to move a muscle, young man.”
For one brief moment, Peter looked as if he was going to disobey. Then his expression turned woeful. “I don’t think I could right now.”
“Nothing a good night’s sleep and a hearty breakfast won’t put right in next to no time,” Dorotea said briskly, but the fierce glance she gave Rhyssa suggested that a lot more recuperation time might be required in spite of Don’s optimistic interpretation of the monitors. “Now, how do we get him back to the Center? Boris and Sascha are apparently up to their eyeballs in their riot control.”
The Center vehicle’s coming, Sirikit said, a ripple of amusement in her voice. Just stay put!
Even through the heavy roof sheeting of the power station, they could hear the vibrations of the approaching heli. Then the roof door opened and a figure charged through.
“You all right down there? I was told to come pick up pieces!” Dave Lehardt cried, descending three steps at a time.
Rhyssa nearly wept with relief. What had Boris, the sly mutt, said? “Someone you could trust!”
“Hi, Peter,” Dave said. “What have you all been up to that your PR man gets called out of his bed in the wee small hours of the morning?” Then he knelt down by the boy, his expression very gentle. “You look done in. Tell me later, huh?” With tender solicitude, he gathered up the exhausted boy and, moving with exquisite care, started up the stairs with him. Rhyssa followed, immensely grateful for his unexpected presence.
CHAPTER 9
Within minutes of the Event, an Incident Room was in place on the wide mall in front of the Assembly atrium. Crowd-control Talents and LEO specialists had quickly defused the volatile temper of the incipient mob. Although a number of attendees had managed to evade the LEO backup, the rest were being systematically ID’d.
The focus of the Incident, some twenty women of various ethnic groups, had been immediately sequestered in one of the rehearsal rooms behind the atrium and, despite their loud lamentations and protestations of innocence, were being adroitly questioned by a special Talent team.
By then Boris and Sascha had arrived in the big heli. Already the tapes from the hi-eyes, discreetly set in the high ceiling of the hall by two industrious electricians who had come with the RIG setup team, were being viewed in the Incident Room by the original precogs, Auer and Bertha Zoccola. Boris and Sascha took up observation positions. The portable’s walls were packed with analyzers keyed in to the LEO mainframe. Debriefing reports by crowd-control Talents were being made at the various stations, while LEO personnel avidly read rap sheets spewed out by churning printers as the wrist-ID scans were processed. Frequently the LEO commissioner was interrupted in his viewing to initial warrants, but the main meat of the Incident eluded all. Reverend Venerable Ponsit Prosit had once again flitted off in time.
“So my precog centered on the women,” Bertha was saying, studiously avoiding eye contact with Auer. The dour man was pulling at his lower lip, oblivious to her as the replay continued. “While his was for Flimflam. When are you going to bust that guy? He’s obscene, a miserable maggot of a man, leeching off emotions—you know that’s all he is! An emotion leech, growing fat whenever he has a mob to suck! The bigger the bunch he manipulates, the bigger his hit.” She waved her arms in exaggerated circles.
“As I’ve explained before, Bertha, he inadvertently serves a purpose,” Boris explained patiently. “He works them up, yes. He may get a vicarious pleasure holding a crowd in the palm of his hand, but his histrionics defuse a lot of pent-up garbage in a catharsis not generated by passive watching of the tri-d fare. Occasionally he runs pretty close to dogmatic insult, but usually he’s innocuous and says nothing.”
“ ‘Says nothing’ is right!” Bertha muttered indignantly.
Boris went on. “He had registered sponsors for tonight, some East Indian Mystical Concept Group which is properly registered and screens as legit. We had no grounds to deny them, or him, the right of religious assembly.”
“Religious assembly!” Bertha was outraged. “Religion he ain’t got. And religious assemblies are supposed to be uplifting, not downtrodding. He’s a rouser, a leech, a spewer of blasphemy. He’s dangerous.” She waggled a finger violently under Boris’s nose. “There’re laws against inciting to riot, and he caused one tonight.”
“Unfortunately, Bertha, your precog absolves him of primary blame.” Boris tried to exude pacification. Her voice was getting louder with each denunciatory remark, and she had never been noted for tact.
“Who gave him strands, Commish?” she demanded. “You can’t tell me he didn’t use ’em with criminal intent!”
Boris’s patience snapped, and he sent a crisp summons to Sascha, who was outside helping the telempaths keep control. “On that count, we’ve a search-and-find warrant out for him right now.”
“It was me twigged Flimflam, Bertha Zoccola,” Auer said, glaring furiously at the little woman. “He’s none of your business.”
Sascha arrived and deftly rendered her helpless with a heavy lean on her speech centers just long enough to escort her to a debriefing position at the opposite end of the room.
“We got another wild one manufacturing that strand stuff for Flimflam?” Auer asked Boris in a low voice.
“Could be, Auer,” Boris replied unhappily. “That’s the only way fringe fanatics like Ponsit Prosit could obtain strands.” The tangling substance was a recent LEO invention, produced from an aberrant chemical compound to provide a fast-drying midrange restraint. Top secret, its formula and processing were of a complexity that ought not to be easily duplicatable. “There’s a real smart head out there somewhere. Forensic says the stuff is pretty damned close to our formula. More toxic, which is bad, and less durable, which is fortunate. You’ve a good feel for technical matters, Auer. Keep your mind open for us, will you? Report even the slightest twinge. We’ve got to find this bozo as soon as possible. I don’t care what sort of Talent emerges from Residential genes but, whatever it is, it should be registered with us.”
“I can’t imagine Flimflam having enough credit to hire that sort of smarts. Ah, and I see Yassim’s got himself a new ladrone?” Auer asked cynically, pointing at the replay.
Boris re
garded him with approval. “You caught that one frame of Yassim?”
Auer shook his head but pointed to the tape being played over and over on the screen. “I keep up-to-date on the LEO visitors’ list. Every ladrone, hitter, and sassin known to be connected with Yassim was here tonight. He had to be, too. Didja get many?”
“A good crop but no one of particular importance,” Boris said, and then grimaced. “You know those new indestructible door-eyes we’ve been installing? It could have been Yassim’s people, or maybe the new Talent who supplied Flimflam with strands, but every one of them was disabled. Very cleverly, with a bit of wire, a hairpin, even a twisted length of foil—nothing irreparable but enough to cloud the count. We’re ID’ing everyone who didn’t have a chance to leave after the Incident, but we’re shy counts on exactly who, and how many, came to the party.”
Auer nodded again, sympathetic in his own sour way to the commissioner’s frustration. “I’ll keep it all in mind, Commissioner. Leave you to it.”
Boris turned his attention to the head of the team questioning the focus group. Norma, any luck?
No, sir, they’re still on the boil. We’re getting anger, frustration, envy, some anxiety and worry over being detained, mainly maternal, but really, sir, we can only get the dominant emotions. They’re angry at being ‘done.’ And not by old Ponsit Prosit Flimflam. Trouble is, none of ’em speak much Basic. Could we have a linguist down here? Someone who’s got Neerest, Paki, and Asian languages? Ranjit, maybe?
I’ll send him along presently. Anything else?
Yes, sir. Nine of them are involved in some kind of feud. We’ve had to separate them twice already to keep them from scratching each other or pulling hair. Something about being chosen and it wasn’t right to intervene. Doesn’t make any sense.
“Being chosen?” Boris spoke aloud as well as mentally.
Sir?
Thank you, Sergeant, you’ve just triggered a thought! Boris turned to the screen as yet another replay of the Incident began. He forwarded it quickly and then reduced the speed, his eyes on the screen.
You’ve got something? Sascha was at his shoulder.
If my theory is correct that Flimflam was fingering people for someone—Yassim probably, since his men were there in force—I want to know what the common denominator of choice was, Boris told his twin. Most of them were males except our focus group, which were—ah, here we are!
The two brothers watched as the reduced speed clearly showed the strand falling in the center of the focus group.
It didn’t hit a woman! Unless she was a midget, Sascha said, pointing to the thin hands clawing up out of the mass. Boris tapped out an enlarge, sharpening the definition in the center of activity. A child?
No child in the group being held. Twenty women. I can count that many heads.
Sascha: Are some tugging?
Yes, and some resisting. Norma said the women are contentious. In an overlay of thought, Boris repeated Norma’s exact words.
Sascha: And feeling cheated. Look! Knife severing the strand. Now all hell breaks loose.
“Okay, who were the nearest crowd controllers?” Boris asked.
Cass Cutler and Suzanne Nbembi were summoned, still wearing their undercover gear, although Cass had wiped off the heavy makeup and discarded the tangle of cheap jewelry. Boris spun the tape back to the relevant scene.
“Cass, Suzanne, good strong damper work today.”
“It was very close, Commissioner,” Cass said, rolling her eyes. “Could have been a bad one without that precog.”
“Either of you two see a child with our focus group?”
“No,” Cass replied quickly, and then frowned. “At least, I don’t think she was with them. We first noticed her trying to get away from Bulbar.”
“We would have intervened—no girl child should be caught by that scuz—but she freed herself,” Suz added. “Knew well enough how.”
“She dodged behind us for a moment, on her way to an exit. Just then the Incident erupted. Funny about that . . .” Cass faltered, frowning. “I felt something, Commissioner, when I touched her. A shield solid as a wall, and that’s odd enough for a Linear kid. She might even have some latent Talent.”
“We still haven’t found the reason for the riot. Could she have something to do with it if she’s a possible latent Talent?” Boris mused, tapping the monitor.
Cass gave a diffident shrug, but both she and Suz watched the replay closely. Boris speeded it up, stopping at the moment when the hands appeared, looking more balletic in slow motion than frantic as the slender fingers splayed in panic; then the sequence went on, showing fingers clutching at the strand, the flash of the knife, and the scrimmage of the women.
“Can you get the perimeter of the scene just before they started to boil?” Cass asked.
Boris tried every combination of review, but the hi-eye had been fixed on the precogged site of the Incident, and although the definition was sharp, the angle obscured what Cass wanted to see.
“Ranjit Youssef reporting as requested, sir.” The young LEO officer presented himself a respectful distance from the absorbed cluster around the screen.
“And what did the search of the assigned quarters reveal, Lieutenant?” Boris asked formally.
“Commissioner, the count of illegal children under the age of ten is eight hundred and three, including five newborns. In fact, all the children apprehended are under ten.”
Although the LEO commissioner was not actually surprised, the total was considerably higher than estimated. He propped himself against the desk edge and folded his hands over his chest, rubbing his jaw pensively. Eight hundred? he repeated.
And three, Sascha added, his mental tone equally grim.
Boris: And all to be sacrificed to produce more underfed disposable kids to be abused one way or another. How can the traffic be stopped when people blindly follow an archaic ethnic imperative?
“Any with legal wrist IDs?” Boris asked Ranjit aloud.
“The nine-year-olds, sir, but so far no IDs match the genetic print registered for the number. There are also far fewer preteens and teens than a Residential population should generate.”
“As usual. How many of the illegals under ten were found in the quarters of the focus women?”
“Thirty-two, some too young to run for it. The older ones had some warning—they always do. But a clamp is already initiated. No one without a wristband will move out of this Linear,” Ranjit said, “even through disposal chutes.”
“Ah, yes, disposal chutes,” Boris added with a further sigh of resignation. “And, I trust, the cargo lines? Good.” He tapped a sequence and the screen showed the architectural schematic of Linear G, slowly rotating to display every angle of the immense ziggurat. “Norma Banfield needs your linguistic abilities, Lieutenant. She’s in the rehearsal hall to the left of the stage. She’s got a mess of ethnics with little Basic, and there are two factions at least willing to pull hair.”
“Pull hair?” Cass sat upright, a wisp of a memory surfacing from the recent explosion.
“Got something, Cass?” Boris asked.
“I’ll work on it.” She sagged into as much of a relaxed state as the activity in the room permitted. Suz began a soothing massage of her neck muscles to encourage recall.
“I’ll do what I can to help Lieutenant Banfield.” Ranjit saluted and left.
Cass stood. “I wanna check something in the hall, sir, unless some officious moron has sent the cleaners in already.”
“Go to it.” Boris gestured broadly and turned back to the schematic to try and figure out where refugees might hide in the maze of corridors, closets, and conduits. Sascha, get your teams to start searching ducts. Scared kids can squeeze into the damnedest places. I don’t want a single illegal to get caught by Yassim’s slimy hooks.
Done. Sascha’s eyes blanked briefly as he gave the orders.
“I got it,” Cass cried, reentering the room. She gave an eerie yodel and held the trophy u
p. “Her scalp, by all that’s holy!”
With two fastidious fingers, Boris took the hank of hair, the dull severed strand tangled right to the bloody patch of skull skin. Loufan! Find out all you can about the person who grew this!
The technician hurried to the commissioner’s side, received the tress without expression, and went back to his cubicle.
Commissioner, Ranjit said. After a polite pause to be sure he was not interrupting, he went on. They’re hiding something.
Norma: Someone. I concur. Someone important to them.
Ranjit: I think that’s the reason for the dissension, sir.
Norma: I would go along with that. May I nudge them, sir?
Boris: By any fair means, Lieutenant. Boris told them. He grinned to himself, knowing Ranjit’s scrupulous sense of honor, and then felt the mental touch that meant Sascha had overheard the exchange.
Dealing with the unTalented took heroic efforts, Boris thought. On the other hand, did he really want everyone to have paranormal abilities? Or at least some minor paranormal quirk, so that there would be less hassle? But that gave rise to envy—envy of someone more Talented than oneself, which only increased dissension and prejudice. No, far better to have a small minority, dedicated—and disciplined—to perform functions that the mind-numb could not. And all of the peculiar and unusual quirks registered!
Sir? Loufan paused. I removed the strand from the scalp, as it interfered with the reading and is certainly irrelevant. The subject is a Eurasian ethnic mix, preadolescent female. Good strong genoprint, good immune factors, healthy, unusually so. The technician sounded surprised. Linear G subsistence fare was nutritionally adequate, of course, but if the child was illegal, as Boris suspected, how had she managed to be healthy? And there’s no match of birth ID.
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