The Hunt for Pierre Jnr

by David M Henley

  ‘We shall reconvene tomorrow. Until then, watch the feeds and the Will.’

  ~ * ~

  Takashi tapped Ryu on the shoulder as he demersed.

  ‘Takashi, what are you doing in my rooms?’ Ryu asked. No one was supposed to enter. No one was allowed to enter — though clearly his brother had found a way around that edict.

  ‘Mother has sent me to force-feed you. She has alerts that tell her when you aren’t eating enough.’

  ‘I eat every meal.’

  ‘Yes, but you aren’t used to the permanent connection like I am. Please, Ryu. This is one area I know better than you.’

  Ryu stared at him, his eyes dry and red-rimmed. ‘Were you watching that last session?’ he asked.

  ‘Only out of the corner of my eye. It seemed the same as the others. The Will versus the kinder heart of Charlotte Betts.’

  Ryu scoffed. ‘I should have you disconnected for crossing the line.’

  Takashi shrugged at that. ‘Just because you are my brother, doesn’t mean I have to heed level restrictions. What kind of weaver would I be if I only went where I was allowed?’

  ~ * ~

  When the second Dark Age came, after the collapse, wealth shifted with every global mood swing. After the weather went neurotic, it was a lottery of sentiment and rainfall that determined which cities floundered or flourished.

  War, following the dirt winds, made the entire American continent split east and west: populations driven to the coasts, where the cities were battling the aggravated oceans, but managing to feed themselves.

  When the desert bowl stirred, and the midland towns evacuated, it was only a matter of chance that the survivors congregated on the eastern seaboard, creating an unintended and fragmented megapolis between Washington DC and New York.

  Atlantic, as it became known — or the Cape — like many of the coastal mega-cities, hid behind gigantic seawalls and dykes that held back the sea swell and drew a lot of their energy from the ocean’s fury with near-shore turbines and wave harnesses that, from above, looked like a dock line being gnawed by a school of eels.

  It was one of the first cities to establish a raised floor in response to the rising seas — a layer of hard composite that became the new street level while the ground beneath was either drowned or drowning. This gave the city the capacity to establish reasonable sewerage, electricity and connectivity grids, and made a muddy basement for the subterraneans, who had their own reasons to stay underground.

  Most of the Cape was stuck in the mode of the twenty-first century, pre-Dark Age and pre-World Union. The city was a subdivided chaos with each population striving for survival and dreaming of flourishing. Only the top five per cent were even classed as Citizens, most choosing, or ignoring, the civil games of the WU.

  Here, Services was limited to two embassy compounds. The last of the megapolises to resist global governance, Atlantic was a plutocracy, which is to say: those who had power wielded it, primarily for their own interests.

  Tamsin was not as polite as other telepaths when it came to gathering information. When she met someone, she pushed them to think what she wanted them to. People would stop what they were doing and suddenly be thinking of something else: a painful memory, their first love, kiss, or taste of cruelty. Seemingly unconnected to what they were doing, their memories would replay, jump about and abruptly change.

  At first she was directionless, but after encouraging a few passers-by to think about the recent manifestation they inevitably connected their thoughts to the people they suspected of being psis, or having psi sympathies. Then she would move along, following the hint or suspicion she had picked up. The passers-by were left in momentary confusion until they managed to remember what they were meant to be doing.

  Since waking up — her reawakening — Tamsin had a new understanding of her powers. She had always been strong, but never particularly deft. She could use her kinetics for everything now: dressing, undressing, washing, eating, pushing the curtains of her room aside to look out.

  Her telepathy too was more refined. It was like someone had replaced her hammer with a suite of lock picks. With enough time alone there wasn’t anything that could be kept hidden from her.

  She stood to one side of the footpath, the people of the Cape passing in front of her like streams on the Weave. A man stopped to stand before her, face beaming with lecherous thoughts and hungry eyes. Tamsin-Maria smiled at him.

  ‘Well, hello there, would you like to take me somewhere more interesting?’ she asked him.

  ‘How much for?’

  Whatever you can afford, big boy.

  He led her off the main street toward a motel, but as soon as they were out of sight of the thoroughfare she pulled him into a shaded alley. He leant in to lick at her lips and she broke his nose with the butt of her hand.

  Grabbing his ears, she held down his head so he was forced to meet her eyes. ‘Tell me everything you know about psionics in this town.’ Everything.

  Fortunately for him, he didn’t know much. There were rumours of psis in the gaming parlours, rigging everything for the house, and that the basement was full of dennies who were telepathic and rode around on giant rats. She knocked him out, took his cash and moved on.

  Tamsin had never lived amongst the public before. Not since she was very young, when life was a dash between classes and play and home. Services took away all that before she knew what was happening. She couldn’t remember much.

  As she walked around, she learnt a lot about where she was. Atlantic had two extremes and every step in between. At the city’s best, the causeways were tessellated poly-paving, beautified with elm trees and street chandeliers, plant walls and fountains. The people walked tall and dressed proud in well-cut clothing of natural fibre. All their mess was dispensed with by the miniature army of robo sweepers.

  At its worst, the streets had built up a carpet of dirt and pressed litter and, in places, holes broke through to the level below. The walls were piled with garbage slopes, broken only by the homes people had made within them and dogs on chains to protect them while they slept. As she walked through these unlit alleys, she regularly saw robberies and molestations and lifelong drunks cackling away at nothing in particular. She didn’t get involved; she just tried to watch where she stepped.

  After dropping her customer, folded neatly into a corner, Tamsin once again planted the suggestion into the minds of the passers-by that they should go immediately toward anyone they suspected of being a psi, or someone they thought might know that kind of person. Then she would follow.

  She went in circles chasing groundless suspicions until eventually the stories of the strangers coalesced and she found herself walking behind a short woman who had once been helped by a most miraculous surgeon.

  The woman caught a rail car north, changing to a coach that stopped at old town, where she had to walk the rest of the way. This Doctor Alexi Salvator, in the woman’s head, was either a psionic scalpel or worked closely with one. A kinetic surgeon, Tamsin thought. How excruciating.

  The woman palmed the office door for her and said she needed to see the doctor right away. A middle-aged string of a man with silvering hair hurried into the waiting room.

  ‘Stacy, is there something wrong?’

  Tamsin dropped Stacy to the ground with a pulse of awe and exhaustion.

  ‘Sorry to barge in like this, doctor, but I need to know something.’

  ~ * ~

  Piri’s mother watched with amusement as her daughter, all of six years old, stomped back and forth across the room, collecting all the things she would need on her adventure.

  It was a one-room home, with a small en suite bathroom behind a plastic curtain. The pair of them slept in the same room, cots along the wall and a common table for the preparing and eating of meals. They had one door, and a small window that Piri wouldn’t be able to look out of until she was fully grown.

  ‘What about a blanket?
You’ll need to stay warm,’ she suggested and Piri went to her bed and folded up her blanket.

  ‘You should take some food too, Piri. It could be a long journey.’

  ‘Won’t you get hungry, Momi?’

  ‘Not as much as you, dear. You should take it.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll take some. But I’ll leave some for you.’

  ‘And when will you come back to your loving mother?’

  ‘I don’t know, Momi. First I must find him, and I don’t know how long it will take.’

  ‘Who are you finding? Prince Charming?’ she laughed.

  ‘No, Momi. Pierre Jnr.’

  ‘The boy in the news? Darling, he is make-believe.’

  ‘No, he isn’t. He’s been seen.’

  ‘No, my darling, that is just people talking. He’s pretend, I promise you.’

  ‘I know better, Momi. He has given us a sign and is calling us to him. I have to go. I just have to.’

  ‘Piri, sweetie, who has been filling your head with this nonsense?’ Piri did not answer. ‘Who have you been talking to?’ Her mother was worried. She had to spend a lot of time out of the unit to earn money and often had to leave Piri alone. Her daughter still didn’t answer. ‘If he was calling to us, why did I not hear about it? Hmm? It is just in your head, darling.’

  Piri mumbled something, which her mother asked her to repeat. ‘You are not one of us.’

  ‘What? What are you saying?’

  ‘Momi, please. Just let me go.’

  ‘I’m not letting you out that door.’

  ‘You can’t keep me in here forever.’

  ‘Piri, I have had enough. Put down that bag, wash your hands and go to sleep. Perhaps by morning this ridiculous notion will have disappeared.’ Her mother pointed sharply at the foldout that was her bed. Piri didn’t move. ‘Put the bag down, now.’

  ‘No. I have to go.’

  She reached for the bag and tore it from her daughter’s shoulders and began pushing her to the bed. ‘Bedtime. To bed with you. Now.’

  ‘No, Momi, please. Please! I have to go!’ Piri screamed and screamed. Her mother had never seen her in such a state. She began flailing her arms about, not even watching where she was hitting. Her mother bent down and trapped her in a hug.

  ‘Piri, please, calm down.’ She felt her daughter’s panting body shuddering, the tight arms ready to hit. She stroked her hair and found it sweaty and hot. ‘Oh, darling, you have a fever. Let me get you a medicine.’

  She pulled away and went to the bathroom, looking for something that would lower a fever. Oh no, she thought. It could be anything. She’s burning up.

  A drop of blood fell on the wet white of the porcelain. It spread through the sprinkle of leftover water. Another drop hit the white. Her nose was warm and, reaching up, her hand came away filmed in red. Her head wobbled with dizziness.

  ‘Piri, darling. Go get a doctor. There’s something wrong with us.’ She tried to keep the panic from her voice as she lowered herself gently to the floor. Piri was standing in the doorway to the bathroom, bag on her back. ‘Quickly, honey, go find Doctor Salvator. Tell him we’re both sick.’

  Piri shook her head. Her face was both red from perspiration and washed with tears now. ‘I’m sorry, Momi. Not us. Only you. I’m okay.’

  ‘Hurry, Piri, please. I need a doctor.’

  Piri turned and ran from the room.

  She ran all the way to Doctor Salvator’s offices and didn’t stop to knock. Inside she saw a blonde woman leaning over the prostrate form of the doctor, and another woman collapsed by the doorway.

  ‘Hey, you get off of him!’ Piri shouted and rammed the woman with her shoulder. She blasted the stranger with all the emotions she was currently feeling and then knelt by Salvator.

  ‘Doctor, wake up. Wake up. Wake up. My mother has been hurt.’

  ‘Piri?’ He blinked. ‘What happened?’

  ‘No time, Doctor Sal. My mother.’

  ‘Okay, I’m coming. Just let me grab my —’ He saw the woman who had attacked him. ‘Who are you?’

  She stood up and stared both of them down.

  ‘You had no right to do that.’

  ‘I did what I needed to.’

  ‘Doctor Sal! Momi!’ Piri pulled at his arm.

  ‘Okay, Piri. Let’s go. I’ll deal with you later,’ he said to Tamsin.

  Tamsin followed the doctor and the child as they hurried through the streets. This old town area was filled with blind turns and streets that had been cut off for living spaces.

  Piri led them to what looked like a kennel, but ducking inside and seeing the small frames that were their beds, Tamsin understood that this was her home. A woman was on the floor in the bathroom, a twitching foot scraping the floor.

  Salvator went to her side and pulled equipment from his bags. ‘What happened here, Piri? How long has she been like this?’

  ‘I came as soon as it happened.’

  ‘As soon as what happened?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Doctor Sal. I didn’t mean it.’ The child was sniffling back tears. She tried peering around the doctor to see how her mother was. ‘I just wanted her to let me go.’

  He tried everything, checked her heart, pulse, temperature, pupils. He put a sylus on her to check for tox, but he knew there would be no explanation. Her body was functionally normal, but her brain showed no activity. Piri’s mother had become a drool, another mind-mushed denny; they were common in Atlantic.

  He turned to look at Tamsin gravely. ‘What about you? Is there anything you can do?’

  Tamsin approached the body on the floor. She looked downward, looking inward. After a moment, she bent down and placed her fingers around the mother’s face. Tamsin shook her head.

  ‘Piri, what did you do?’ she asked.

  ‘She was going to stop me.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault, child,’ the doctor insisted.

  ‘Doctor,’ Tamsin whispered to him, ‘do you realise this child is psionic?’

  ‘Oh, child ... no.’ Salvator’s heart was breaking. ‘You didn’t ... You can’t ... just ...’

  Piri backed away from him toward Tamsin. You’re like me.

  ‘She’s just a child, doctor. She’ll only understand later.’

  You think I will be sad, Piri thought to Tamsin.

  Yes. One day you will realise what you have done.

  But she was going to stop me.

  She was still your mother.

  ~ * ~

  The three of them returned to the doctor’s offices, waiting as the sanctuary that the doctor had contacted came to collect Piri’s mother. They stood without talking, Tamsin watching the doctor and his thoughts while Sal watched her and tried not to think too much. Piri was quiet, on the outside. Underneath she was bubbling with questions for Tamsin. She ignored them.

  ‘How are you feeling, Piri?’ Salvator asked her gently. Tamsin sat on a stool in the corner.

  ‘Okay, I guess.’

  ‘I didn’t realise you were gifted, Piri. I try to watch out for the signs in all my patients.’

  ‘I know. I didn’t want to have them take me.’

  ‘Who? Services?’ Tamsin asked.

  ‘La Grêle.’

  ‘You know of La Grêle?’ he asked Piri.

  ‘No, but you do. That’s who you tell when you find ones like me. Isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. But she is nothing to fear. She helps children like you.’ Piri shook her head. ‘Where were you trying to go?’

  ‘I was going to look for Pierre Jnr. He has called for us to join him. Can you take me to him?’ Her eyes were full of hope.

  ‘No, Piri. I don’t know where Pierre Jnr is.’

  Piri looked over at Tamsin. You know, don’t you?

  You and I can talk about that later, kid. Just talk to the doctor for now.

  Okay.

  ‘Tell me, Piri. What can you do? Can you hear what I am thinking?’


  ‘Sometimes. But you think things I don’t understand. Who is La Grêle?’

  ‘Never mind that for now. What else can you do? Can you move things without touching them?’