“I don’t know if you have been in a dark forest at night, Admiral. The fact is the smallest light is visible at considerable distances. To a blind person, the brightest light is invisible. Telepaths can ‘see’ even dim lights. There are a lot of those, and I personally was surprised that there were so few of any kind with Colonel Grimes.
“Lieutenant Yardley is a shining beacon in the night. Dr. Kemp is a warm glow. Cozy, cuddly, no matter how she fights it. She reminds me of my mother. She reminds me of my mother a lot.”
Admiral Merriweather drew herself up. “Prepare those injections.”
The silence in the compartment for the next few minutes was profound. Steve presented his arm to Dr. Kemp without hesitation.
After the injection, Dr. Kemp said, “Work your arm. Is there any joint pain?”
“No, doctor.” He started to say something and then stopped.
After a minute, Admiral Merriweather said, “Your turn, Dr. Kemp.”
Dr. Miller did the necessary without words. After two minutes, Admiral Merriweather said, “Well?”
“Steve is more sensitive than any other telepath I’ve met,” Makaa said. “Yolanda Ruiz is aboard.”
“Yes.”
“And she hijacked a cruiser to get here?” Makaa pressed.
“Indeed.”
“You will learn that telepaths are unique individuals -- each can hear other telepaths, other people, at a different distances. Dr. Kemp is like me, about twenty feet. Steve Yardley -- about a kilometer.”
“That’s interesting, I’m sure,” Admiral Merriweather said.
“This is a fundamental test of the Federation’s promises to us,” Makaa told the admiral.
“Yolanda’s mother is my sister. It is certainly possible she was murdered by coincidence, but I think not, Admiral. Bring her murderers to justice.”
Admiral Merriweather waved at where Steve Yardley sat, cords visible on his neck. “Is Yardley okay?”
“Admiral, telepaths are a breed apart. No telepath has ever considered divorce. A telepath can look at someone’s mind and knows what sort of person they are see. He knows if a person is lying or telling the truth. More, they see deeper. Telepaths know whether or not they can trust someone. They know if the person is particularly well suited to them.
“I have never met anyone like that, but other telepaths have. We are, in a way, jealous of that -- we wish we could meet our soul mate.
“Yardley and Miss Ruiz are two such. You will kill them if you separate them. I mean that literally.”
“A lot to think about, Senior Pilot Officer Makaa,” Admiral Merriweather said.
“At some point, you will think ‘Hey! Telepaths would make dandy lie detectors!
“Telepaths can lie; ask Captain Moore. She’s not the first person telepaths have lied to. However the reason has to be very important. The Union courts treat telepathically derived evidence as hearsay. Yes, telepathic police are highly efficient at solving crimes -- but they still are required to find physical evidence linking a person with a crime.” The fighter pilot grinned wolfishly. “Union courts do accept a telepath’s statement as grounds for a search warrant.”
Admiral Merriweather sighed. “Obviously we have a lot of work ahead of us.
“Lieutenant Yardley, can you read my mind?” she said aloud.
The young man looked at the admiral. “No sir, both the bracelets and the ship-wide scrambler work just fine.”
“Yardley, a second ago, Senior Pilot Officer Makaa was describing you reading Miss Ruiz’s mind.”
“The lieutenant is at a loss for words, Admiral,” Makaa said. “Your screens adequately shield your thoughts. They do nothing to shield your soul. Union scientists have been focusing on the soul for nearly as long as your scientists have focused on Benko-Chang.
“There are no words for what we see in a soul. It is like trying to describe ‘blue’ to a person who has never had sight. Your thoughts are secure, Admiral. It’s your soul that is naked. Dr. Kemp needs help.”
“Dr. Kemp?” Donna Merriweather asked.
“I’ll probably be all right in the end. Makaa didn’t mention that you can see your own soul. A tiny shriveled husk of a soul,” the professor said bitterly.
“Probably doesn’t cut it, Doctor. Any help we can offer is yours.”
“Admiral, the Union has no experience with someone of Dr. Kemp’s age developing telepathy. She is wrong about her soul, she’s just looking at it without perspective.”
“What perspective is that? I’ve wasted most of my life. You can’t say I haven’t!”
“The measure of a person, the measure of a soul, isn’t that you fail -- it’s what you do afterward, Dr. Kemp,” Makaa retorted.
“I’ve made a cock-up of my life.”
“You have an idea about mistakes you made; pick yourself up, Dr. Kemp!” Makaa said roughly.
Makaa turned to the admiral. “You wonder what to do with Lieutenant Yardley and Dr. Kemp. It will do Dr. Kemp a service to treat her as a guinea pig without options. She will resent it from the first, and come to an understanding of herself.
“You should give Yardley and my niece to the tender mercies of Commander Booth, explaining Yardley to her. She will leap at the opportunity.”
“And you can’t read my mind?”
“Admiral, your soul screams about the injustice to you. It is a primal scream.”
“The Fleet certainly has done me no injustice!” Admiral Merriweather exclaimed.
Makaa stared at her steadily. “My father,” the admiral whispered.
“I swear, Admiral, I can’t read your thoughts. What is in your soul is black hatred.”
“That isn’t actually what I feel about him.”
“Admiral, as I said -- there are no words for what a telepath sees in a soul.
“Why do you think we agreed to allow Colonel Grimes to command a Union warship?”
“We had no idea,” the admiral admitted.
“He will never stop. It isn’t in him. Every Union telepath will follow him to the ends of the universe.”
“Evidently the Federation will have to play a lot of catch-up when it comes to the Union.”
“Not as much as you might think, if you listen to what Lieutenant Yardley and Dr. Kemp have to say.”
*** ** ***
Steve Yardley looked at Yolanda and grinned. “They are not going to arrest you, Yolie. We are here to hear about how the investigation into your mother’s murder is coming along.”
“Don’t let them get me alone, Steve.”
“I won’t leave your side, I swear.”
The two of them entered the building of the Federation Investigation Service, and Steve told one of the information assistants their names. They were told to wait a few minutes, and an older woman appeared very quickly. She handed them ID badges. The woman laughed as they clipped the badges to their clothes. “Yes, badges are so retro! You have to know that this building houses some the oldest dinosaurs in the Federation!”
Yolanda gripped Steve’s hand tightly as they were escorted to an elevator. To Steve’s surprise they went down, not up. The woman saw his expression and correctly translated it. “Dinosaurs, Lieutenant, really like their caves!”
They went down another corridor and entered another elevator, where this time their escort swiped her hand over a sensor. They went down again, to find themselves in a small anteroom. The woman walked to the door and gestured, “Open, says me!”
The door promptly slid open, and they were ushered down yet another corridor, this one with several doors off it. Doors that were closed, and if Steve was any judge, locked with some serious locks. There were no numbers or any other identification of what was behind any of the doors.
There was nothing that distinguished the door that they finally went through. There were a half dozen people in an outer office, all working on computers. The woman ushered them through another door and into an office with a desk and just a few chairs.
&
nbsp; “Take a seat,” she told them. Then she went behind the desk. “My name is Deidre Cloud, a Fleet vice admiral. My grandfather was Duncan Cloud. Does that tell you anything?”
The two young people shook their heads.
“Lieutenant Yardley, I see surprise in your expression.”
“I’ve never heard of Duncan Cloud or you, Admiral.”
“Either you are a consummate actor, Lieutenant, or you are deficient in your duty.”
Steve looked at the woman and shook his head. She smiled. “There is one rear admiral in the Fleet who knows about you, two vice admirals, all three admirals of the Fleet, and two politicians who know about you, Lieutenant.”
“I was told not to talk about it.”
“And you, Miss Ruiz -- you were told not to talk about your claims to fame as well.”
“I thought I was to hear about the progress of the investigation into my mother’s murder.”
“Just be sure you remember what you aren’t to talk about. Unless, of course, you have permission,” Admiral Cloud told them.
The door behind them opened and Steve was a little slow out of the chair, coming to attention.
“Do you recognize me and my voice, Miss Ruiz?”
“You are Admiral Ernest Fletcher, commanding the Fleet.”
“And you, Lieutenant Yardley, do you recognize me?”
“Yes, sir!”
“You authorized to discuss your personal histories with Admiral Cloud. No one else in her shop. You are assigned to her until further notice, Lieutenant. You too, Miss Ruiz.” He nodded to the two, turned and left.
“Sit,” Admiral Cloud pointed to Steve’s chair.
“I will digress for a bit. The Federation has long had clandestine intelligence assets. Currently we are listed as the ‘Fleet Management Analysis Branch.’ Our title changes periodically; our duties do not. Currently we are located in the FIS building; that will change within the year.
“Intelligence agents have two broad categories of tasks -- these are colloquially known as ‘spooks’ and ‘hoods.’ Generally, spooks collect intelligence from their armchairs and hoods get their hands dirty. Spooks are kept apart from violence; hoods revel in it.
“This is in the nature of a recruitment pitch, Lieutenant. You would seem to have a particular talent for it.”
“I’m not like that, Admiral. I don’t go prying into someone’s personal -- affairs.”
“Please listen, Lieutenant. It may be as you say. Tell me, Lieutenant. Miss Ruiz had graduated from secondary school and was attending college. You were offered a commission and promoted without the proper certificate.”
Steve sat up straight. “Admiral, in my mind, dirty-foot certificates don’t count. I was pleased at an opportunity to train as an officer in the Fleet, and if I passed, I was determined to be the best pilot I could be. I was content, sir, with the possibility of an opportunity to acquire Fleet certificates.”
“Be that as it may be, Lieutenant, Miss Ruiz is ostensibly at least as qualified as you are to become a Fleet officer. Why has no commission been offered to her?”
“I have no idea. If you read the reports of my debriefing, you would know what I looked at wasn’t what you think.”
“Evidently not. Perhaps you should take a look.”
“And I would never look at someone close to me.”
“Miss Ruiz presented a simple problem; we identified her in seconds. One of my people noted an anomaly in the data; she is an historian, specializing in Stephanie Kinsella.
“There were some features in Miss Ruiz’s history that reminded my person of Kinsella’s daughter. Miss Ruiz has died twice, Lieutenant.”
“People die all the time sir, then the medics revive them.”
“In Miss Ruiz’s case, she was, reportedly, interred twice. She died at six months of age in Australia, at two years of age in San Francisco.”
“Yolie?” Steve asked.
“I’m a bing, Steve. A human being with something missing,” Yolanda said bitterly.
Steve corrected her, “You are like me, Yolie. We have something added, not subtracted.”
“Miss Ruiz,” Admiral Cloud said, “tell your friend how old you really are.”
“Fifteen, just a few days past fifteen. I’m sorry, Steve, I thought you knew.”
Steve shook his head. “I’ve seen your soul, Yolie. There is nothing more I will ever need to know about you.”
“One of my tasks is not to affect Federation records of achievements. Cindy Rhodes was younger than you, Miss Ruiz, when she was forcibly enlisted as an ensign.
“As I said, I’m here to make a recruitment pitch. If you agree, you’ll be an ensign. You should know, Miss Ruiz, that a Fleet officer is considered to have reached her majority -- the same thing as a civilian court emancipation.”
“And what would we be doing for you?” Steve asked.
“I won’t pretend that your assignments would be safe. Your first assignment is to investigate Miss Ruiz’s mother’s death. It is my thought, Lieutenant, that you could see who was responsible, without alerting those responsible that anyone was even looking.”
“And Yolie? What would she be doing?”
“The Fleet occasionally has a prep class for officer candidate school. You, Lieutenant, have had the benefit of the short class.”
“If a purple rocket from Admiral Merriweather is a benefit.”
“My grandfather told me about meeting Commander Booth for the first time. It isn’t easy to impress him; he was quite taken with her. Commander Booth tells people that she always asks herself ‘What would Admiral Merriweather do?”
“I have looked at her. She actually asks herself, ‘What would David Zinder do?’”
“Knowing Commander Booth, I have an advantage. It’s why she is still a commander.”
“Then you are making a mistake, because after she asks herself that, a very fine mind applies herself to finding something better. She doesn’t fail as often as she succeeds.”
The admiral grinned and nodded. “Number two always tries harder.”
“That’s as poor of a motivation as there is,” Steve told the admiral.
“You’re young and don’t understand things,” the admiral said primly.
“Souls, Admiral. Souls. Steve understands them like you and I never will,” Yolanda offered.
“Will you accept a commission in the Fleet, Miss Ruiz? Will you help bring your mother’s killers to justice?”
“Steve promised to tell me who killed her. I intend to kill those responsible milliseconds later.”
“Were you to do that, we’d arrest you, too.”
Yolanda grinned then.
“Maybe.”
“Let me be clear about what’s on offer here. Enlist, and you both will receive the long course at the Fleet Academy in Maunalua. That’s two years of instruction, twelve hours a day, six days a week. It would be individualized courses of instruction; you would have no classmates as such, not even each other.
“This starts after you find who killed Miss Ruiz’s mother and bring those individuals who participated in any meaningful way to justice -- alive, not dead.
“After you graduate from the Academy you would be assigned to various intelligence duties of the ‘spook’ variety,” Admiral Cloud told them.
“And what about ‘splat,’ Admiral?” Yolanda asked.
Steve looked at her with a raised eyebrow, and mouthed the word “splat?”
“You would be called on, as needed, for analysis on that project, in addition to your other duties. For the time being, you would keep your activities in that regard, secret except from those already authorized. “
“Admiral, all of this is wonderful, I mean it. But how goes the investigation into my mother’s murder? Even you acknowledge it as my first priority.”
“I’ve told you nothing because there is nothing to tell. She called you from a location in central London. As soon as the call ended, the GPS on her phone was switched o
ff, a felony if it was intentional.
“Twenty-five minutes later someone saw her body in the Thames. The city of London has more cameras than any other, but in spite of that, your mother appeared only in cameras before she called you and after she was dead in the water. From after that call and until after her death, she might as well have been invisible. We are not even sure how she got into the river, because we thought coverage of the river was total. Obviously, it’s not. We have had agents walking along the river, and we could follow their progress every centimeter.
“I’m sorry, Miss Ruiz. Your mother was abducted and murdered in the bright light of day in a city whose police swear it isn’t possible.”
“Steve has told me he will help.”
Admiral Cloud nodded. “He may help; Lord knows we’ve run out of other ideas. Except he is to be constrained, even so. You would be charged with any crimes that you commit, and the usual rules of evidence will also apply. I understand just fine what Senior Pilot Officer Makaa said about hearsay. It will probably be the same in Federation courts.
“You won’t be authorized to carry a weapon, either of you. Great Britain is a sovereign member of the Federation; they have always been a bit dotty about the use of weapons, even for the police. You will be given a name of someone you can contact at Scotland Yard, and that person will brief you completely on the case as it stands now.
“Miss Ruiz, you are listed as missing in an explosion at your former residence. Somehow you went up without anyone seeing your ship. How people could miss a ship that was thirty meters in diameter and three hundred meters long is a much as mystery as any of the rest.”
“When I lifted, it was dark. Mad Hatter’s turbines were specially made, and are very quiet. I had a clearance from traffic control. I only deviated from it in the last two minutes of my flight.”
“And Admiral Merriweather was just a bit upset at the fact that no one had seen fit to look at your two ships with the old, Mark I eyeball. The admiral has a spectacular temper and a great many purple rockets were fired.
“All of this digresses. Do either of you wish to agree to the enlistment terms on offer?”
“I get to stay with Steve?” Yolanda asked.
The Odyssey and the Iliad (Kinsella Universe Book 7) Page 22
