The Mind's Eye, page 14
“I am not responsible for their stupidity,” Leo said. His thoughts were coldly superior, but Art could sense an underlying layer of fear. Leo didn’t dare back down. “They tried to kill us and I will not submit to mistreatment because of their stupid fear ...”
“Perhaps I could propose a compromise,” Professor Zeller said. “My family owns a sizeable mansion some distance from local population centres. I intend to transfer the telepaths who have agreed to work with me there, where they will be away from the people who fear and hate them ...”
“They’ll be calling him Professor Z soon,” Leo said.
“... And they won’t be picking up stray thoughts from the general population,” Professor Zeller added, ignoring Leo’s snide remark. “They will be able to learn how to shield their minds and avoid reading other people’s thoughts, at which point they will be able to re-enter the world as responsible telepaths.”
Alice frowned. “Telepaths who have agreed to work with you?”
Professor Zeller beamed. “We have inaugurated the world’s first institute of telepathic research,” he said. “We will be working both to teach telepaths how to master their powers and to study telepathy in the hopes of learning how to control, develop and perhaps even create the powers within mundane human minds. I intended to make the formal announcement in a week’s time, but we already have hundreds of scientists signed up to join the research into telepathy and other mental powers.”
He beamed in delight. “We should make a whole series of wonderful breakthroughs into the innermost workings of the mind,” he added, seriously. “How can anyone stop such a project?”
Art scowled. If Professor Zeller had so many people already signed up to work with his institute, it would be difficult – politically speaking – to shut it down. Furthermore, the idea did have a certain inherent logic – and it would keep telepaths from non-telepaths and minimise the dangers of additional riots. It would even provide an alternative to drafting telepaths into Looking Glass, as some political figures were already suggesting.
“You know,” Alice said, flatly. “The reason the Company chose to fire you was because you never thought about the consequences of your actions.”
Professor Zeller glared at her. “I was making breakthroughs that scared the Company,” he hissed, angrily. “They refused me additional funding because they feared that I would change their tiny minds and deny them their chance to win vast amounts of funding for spy satellites and ...”
“No,” Alice said. Art sensed the anger she was fighting to keep under control. “You wanted to make breakthroughs without ever asking what might happen if you succeeded, or what it might do to the world. You wanted to push ahead and didn’t understand why everyone else wanted to advance slowly. You were so obsessed with your project that you never thought about how it would affect the outside world.”
She met his eyes, refusing to budge. “There are all kinds of ... things concealed within the vaults at Langley that have been deliberately concealed from Joe Public,” she said. “There are advances that would change the world for the worse if they got out and truths that would merely give new life to old causes. There are secrets about attempts to smuggle backpack nukes into the United States and biological weapons that were – barely – captured before they could be destroyed. Releasing any of those little details – how close we came to collapse – would shock and terrify the nation. And telepaths are just another little detail, one more powerful and dangerous than most.”
Alice stepped back and waved a hand towards the chaos outside. “The world just changed,” she said. “People believe, now, that telepaths exist and can do things to them ... and that there is no defence. The world is going to change again and again and it’s going to become much darker. Did it not occur to you that we might have good reasons to cover everything up as long as possible? Instead ... it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better, Professor. Think about that when the State Prosecutor starts trying to assign blame for the riot.”
“The riot,” Leo said, “was caused by a group of stupid idiots who believe that we would spend our entire day reading their minds.”
“You are applying logic and reason,” Art said sharply, “to something that is not governed by logic and reason. People are scared. How long do you think it will be before political leaders start demanding that telepaths be rounded up, tattooed and sent to Alaska where they will be away from the mundane population? I’m telling you, right now, that your actions today have brought that day closer.”
“We didn’t mean to hurt anyone,” Elizabeth said, from where she was seated. She hadn’t spoken a word since they’d entered the room. “We didn’t know ...”
“I know,” Art said, more gently. “I know you didn’t know. Do you think that that will make any difference to the public reaction?”
Alice looked at him, and then nodded. “We will provide transport and escort to your mansion,” she said, to Professor Zeller. “These two telepaths, at least, are to remain within the mansion until the whole ungodly mess is sorted out.”
Leo looked up, sharply. “But ...”
“The other choice is going into protective custody until the lawyers manage to reach a consensus on who is responsible for what,” Alice snapped. “I suggest, very strongly, that you accept being under house arrest for the moment and don’t push your luck any further. If you go on live TV and start calling people stupid idiots – just because they’re afraid of you – you’ll just provoke additional riots. The choice is yours.”
They locked eyes for a long moment.
“We’re going to the mansion,” Elizabeth said, flatly. Leo looked surprised, but nodded. Art could sense his relief and frustration, relieved because he knew he should back down and didn’t quite dare, frustrated because he wanted to push back against the world. “We didn’t mean to do any of this ...”
“I know,” Art said. “But I’m afraid that you will have to deal with the consequences. We all will.”
***
Roger showed his press pass to one of the National Guardsmen and was surprised when the guardsman waved him through, after warning him to stay out of the way of the emergency services. The scene was a nightmare and it seemed impossible to believe that everything could have gone so bad so quickly. His head still ached from where the telepathic command had slammed into his skull, forcing him to run ... dear God, if they could do that, what else could they make people do?
I did this, he thought, and shivered. He’d been pushed into visiting Professor Zeller, convinced that he was wasting his time, when instead he had stumbled over the scoop of the century. He’d gleefully shouted the news to the world, convinced that he would win the Pulitzer for his efforts and instead ... he’d helped provoke a riot. Perhaps several riots; there were reports of unrest down south and several more suspected telepaths being lynched across the United States.
He’d always approached his profession with a cynical air. The modern-day reporting environment was based around speed, not accuracy. A half-correct report that beat a correct report to air was a victory ... and, with the speed of the news cycle, an inaccurate report could be swept away and forgotten, not retracted. Reporters had become careless with the facts over the years, allowing half-truths and even outright lies – and enemy propaganda – to enter the news sphere. How many other riots had been triggered by reporters, he wondered; how many lives had been lost, or ruined, because a reporter had no time to do his homework?
And how much of the riot that had destroyed the campus was his fault?
Roger looked into his soul and wondered, for the first time, if he had done the right thing.
Chapter Fifteen
Las Vegas became the first city to unilaterally ban telepaths from entering for any reason, particularly gambling, after intensive lobbying by casino owners in the city. The measure was challenged by a number of civil liberties organisations, but after the events at Harvard it is expected to stand. The news came too late to prevent a telepath – who went under the name of Henry Sugar – from breaking the bank at two different casinos within the city. A second telepath was apparently caught in the act and arrested by security guards ...
-AP News Report, 2015
Joe Robertson had learned to listen, from a very early age, to the voices in his head. They told him, sometimes, what people were thinking and what they intended to do in the near future. It had honestly never occurred to him that there was anything unusual in having voices in his head. As a child, it had been a defence mechanism against a drunken and abusive father and uncaring mother; as an adult, it was his gift for survival. And gambling; if Joe hadn’t had a drug and drink habit that far surpassed his father’s addictions, he would have become one of the richest men in Atlantic City. As it was, he earned money at the tables and then lost it to the pushers and bars in the city.
He looked down at his cards while listening to the voices in his head. There were five players at the table, all – technically – playing illegally. Atlantic City was second only to Las Vegas when it came to gambling, with dozens of official casinos, but the men and women who played at private games disliked having to give anything to the casino authorities. Joe had his own reasons for avoiding playing in the official casinos; a player who was too lucky, or too good, might find himself suspected of cheating, or quietly barred from the casinos. That, too, was technically illegal, but who gave a damn? Money talked in Atlantic City and the casino owners preferred to rake in the dough, rather than hand it out to lucky little players. Joe had never given a sucker an even break, if only because no one had ever given him a break.
The voices whispered their words into his mental ears. Two of the players – both women attractive enough to make him wish that they were playing strip poker – had good hands, although nothing spectacular. The other two had poor hands and would probably fold rather than raising the stakes, although one of them – a gambling addict rather like Joe himself – was thinking about bluffing and raising the stakes. Joe knew – thanks to the voices in his head – that the man’s wife was bedridden with cancer and that he had chosen to gamble in order to raise the money for her care, but the addiction had long since overwhelmed him. If he had managed to break the bank, he would have lost it all within hours at the tables.
Joe sat back and studied his companions. One of the women was determined to keep raising the ante and see what happened, confident in her hand and playing skills. Her face was impressively controlled, but she couldn’t hide anything from the voices in his head. They told her that she regarded him with disgust and he felt a wave of anger, anger that he knew would never be allowed physical expression. The other woman was nervous, unsure of what to do or how to act. Joe wasn’t sure what she was even doing at the private game; she acted more like an innocent young debutante who had been tossed into a pool full of sharks. The chances were good, he decided, that that was exactly what she was. Atlantic City drew losers like her like flies to honey, hundreds of thousands of young hopefuls called by the siren song of easy money. In the end, they either broke the addiction or found themselves trapped for the rest of their lives.
The game went on for two rounds before the confident woman scooped up the pot. Joe shrugged, accepted his own losses, and joined the second game. This time, his cards were better and he knew that his opponent was bluffing. The pot fell into his lap and he pocketed the cash – there was no need for gambling chips at private games – before joining the third game. It wasn’t going to be a lucrative night, he realised, as the third and fourth games were both busts, but at least it was interesting. He leered at the confident woman and smiled inwardly at the disgust she refused to show on her face.
Pulling himself to his feet – several thousand dollars richer – Joe waved goodbye to his playmates and headed out of the small apartment block. The grimy surroundings of the poorer regions of Atlantic City were home to him and the thousands of others like him, although none of them possessed the voices in their minds. Shaking his head, he walked into the nearest bar and ordered a beer for himself, settling back in a dark corner to drink it and enjoy the show. If he had enough to drink himself into a stupor ... he didn’t care. Only then, when he was swimming in enough alcohol to pickle a hog, could he get some peace from the voices.
He looked up as the music changed and the dancers came out on stage. They were all young and attractive – and two of them, he suspected, were below legal age – but they all shared the same trait: desperation. They were the dispossessed; the young women who had found themselves on the streets, helpless and alone. They had been easy meat for the pimps and suchlike who watched for such women, worked them into an early grave and then moved on to the next one. There were hundreds of thousands of such women in Atlantic City, their flesh and blood used until there was nothing left, their bodies eventually dumped and left to rot. The dark underside of the city rarely gave up its victims.
The voices in his head hissed as he looked at a young blonde girl, her naked body showing the tell-tale signs of cocaine addiction. He could have had her, he knew, simply by offering her some of the dollar notes in his pocket. In her situation, she couldn’t afford to be picky – or pricey. He could meet her outside, give her a few dollars, and then make her suck him off in a side street, or take her back to his apartment for the night. And then he might find that she had taken revenge. The chances were good that she, like many street whores, carried a sexual disease that would cause him some pain and hardship, at the very least. Or she might carry AIDS and infect him … he shook his head. If he wanted pussy, he would go to one of the high-class joints in the more upmarket areas of the city.
Staggering to his feet, he left a small handful of dollar bills on the table and headed out, walking back to his flat. Darkness had fallen over the city while he’d been playing and drinking, but the party never stopped in Atlantic City. He heard the sounds of police cars driving to the scene of one crime or another and shook his head in disgust. Atlantic City didn’t want to admit it, even to itself, but it had a real problem with corrupt police. Joe had been in a dozen private games that had been raided, a problem that had been solved by handing the cops a few thousand dollars apiece.
He shook his head as a street whore stumbled out of the shadows and offered him whatever he wanted, in exchange for a few dollars. The whore, at the end of her lifespan, shrugged. Her emaciated body suggested that she would die soon and she knew it. Her pimp had long since abandoned her for someone younger and prettier. She wouldn’t see another summer. Joe had no time for sympathy. Instead, he walked into his flat and turned on the light.
“Just in time,” a voice said. The voices in his head screamed a warning, too late. He wasn’t alone. “Just think – we were starting to wonder if you had been waylaid by a pretty face with a handful of gold.”
Joe recoiled. The man facing him, sitting on his chair, was a very familiar face, even if they had never spoken before. He was completely bald – rumour had it that one of his enemies had shaved him and then done something to prevent his hair from growing back – and covered in silver rings that had been inserted into his skin. When he opened his mouth to speak, Joe could see the glint of implanted golden rings in his tongue. He presented a chilling appearance, but then it was hardly needed. Everyone knew that the Capper – he’d picked up that name after he’d kneecapped four of his rivals in a single night – owned a third of Atlantic City’s criminal activities and that he wanted the other two-thirds. Joe had hoped never to come to his attention.
“I’ll get right to the point,” the Capper said. He had an accent that suggested New England, although the truth was that no one knew where he had come from, or even if he had family elsewhere. It gave him a certain strength that many of the other gangsters lacked. “I wished to talk to you in private.”
Joe shivered. The last person who had talked to the Capper in private had been skinned alive. And they weren’t truly alone either; the voices in his head were warning him that there were two men behind him, their stares boring into the back of his skull. If he dared to raise a hand to the Capper – fear kept him from moving in any direction – they would be on him before he could land a blow.
“I’ve been watching you for some time,” the Capper continued. The voices in his head were unusually silent. Joe found himself floundering without his secret advantage and knew that he was completely at the Capper’s mercy. “I always look for people who seem to … shall we say be bucking the odds? I run the games that you and your fellow vermin play and I don’t like cheaters. The pattern surrounding you is odd.”
The Capper smiled. It was the most fearsome expression Joe had ever seen. “You don’t always win and you don’t always have good hands,” the Capper said. “You certainly aren’t dealing from the bottom of the pack … on the other hand, you don’t ever lose very much and at times you seem to lose nothing more than the first stake. I think that you somehow know what cards your opponents are holding.”
His gaze sharpened. “I think you’re one of those telepaths.”
Joe couldn’t move. He’d heard the voice in his head screaming GO AWAY, but he’d assumed that it was just another voice, another helpful whisper within his mind. He hadn’t paid much attention to the news, but the voices in his head, suddenly focusing on the guards behind him, whispered that telepaths – perhaps other telepaths – had been discovered. And he, a man who had always been on the verge of madness, might be one too.
“Ah,” the Capper said. “We do understand one another, don’t we?”
Joe couldn’t move as the Capper stood up and advanced towards him. All the stories about how he treated his enemies – the things he did for his own sadistic amusement, the fate of the trusted lieutenant who had tried to betray him and set up his own criminal ring – raced through his head. What would happen to him? Joe knew, without the voices in his head, that the Capper was angry. He could do anything, to Joe or to his friends and family, and no one would dare try to stop him.
