Mind Power Page 6
The officer opened it to reveal a flustered man in a grey suit whose wispy hair had been blown by the wind outside and uncovered his bald patch. He carried a cardboard file stuffed with papers. “Have they started yet?” he asked.
The officer said that he thought they had, but the man probably didn’t hear him. His attention was stolen by something that had touched his mind and he turned his head to look up the stairs.
Michael felt it too. The man was a perceiver.
Their gaze locked. Michael perceived the man raise barriers around his mind. Weak barriers belonging to a natural born who must have met very few other perceivers in his life and had little occasion to use them.
The door was still open and the draught from outside was blowing in. The flustered man turned away from Michael and looked around the entranceway like someone who had just realised they’d got out at the wrong train station.
“If it’s urgent,” said the police officer, “I’m sure they can be interrupted, they’ve only just sat down.”
“What?” said the flustered man. He turned to the officer like he had only just remembered he was there. “No, it’s fine. Not urgent. I can leave this with you, can’t I?” He held out the report.
“Not really, sir.”
“When there’s a break, just see that Anne Wintershall gets it.”
Barrington jogged down the last remaining steps to rescue the police officer from the report being thrust in his face. “I’ll do that for you,” he said.
Michael perceived the man’s relief as he finally managed to offload the file and head for the door.
Before he turned to go, the man glanced up the stairs to where Michael stood. Don’t say anything, his thoughts begged, knowing that Michael could hear him. If you keep quiet, I promise not to say anything about you.
Pankhurst sat on the same brown leather sofa where he had briefed Michael on his new job barely a week before. On a china plate in front of him were two halves of an anaemic white bread sandwich with a bite taken out of one of them. The discarded packet on the table revealed that it contained ham and mayonnaise.
Michael sat opposite while Barrington took up his customary stance by the door with his hands clasped behind his back.
“Are you sure?” said Pankhurst.
“I’m sure,” said Michael.
“Peter Wauluds is one of my most capable ministers,” Pankhurst went on. “I was going to promote him next reshuffle.”
Wauluds was a latecomer to the political arena, according to his Wikipedia page. Michael had looked him up after their encounter in Downing Street. He had risen through the party with the shrewdness of a capable political operator. He was soon selected to stand as an MP in a safe seat and given a junior ministerial role in the Ministry of Justice. The smart money was on him becoming party leader sooner rather than later. They put his skill down to a background in business, where he had been successful in pharmaceutical research. Michael put it down to his ability to perceive the people around him so he knew how to ingratiate himself with the right people and manipulate them to his own ends.
Pankhurst took another bite out of his sandwich. Mayonnaise oozed out between the two slices of bread and dropped in a creamy-white blob, like bird poo, on his tie.
“Could my day get any worse?” With the sandwich in one hand, he used the other to fish in his trouser pocket.
Barrington came to the rescue with a pristine folded handkerchief. Pankhurst took it and brushed at his tie so the blob of mayonnaise turned into a greasy mark.
There was a knock on the door.
Pankhurst looked across the table to Michael. “Make yourself scarce. But not too scarce. I need to know for sure before I sack the bastard.”
Michael removed himself from the sofa and went to stand at the back of the room where it was darker.
Pankhurst nodded to Barrington.
Barrington opened the door. Wauluds walked in. He was no longer flustered, Michael perceived, but angry and confused. He also realised that Michael was in the room. The darkness in which he stood was no protection from a perceiver’s senses. Wauluds didn’t even have to turn around to look.
“Take a seat, Pete,” said Pankhurst.
Wauluds did as he was asked. Michael kept perceiving him.
“How are you doing, Pete?”
“Fine. Busy.”
“And your wife?”
“She’s fine too.” He paused. “What’s this about?”
Pankhurst looked up and beyond his shoulder to where Michael was standing. There was one question in his mind.
Michael stepped forward into the light. He nodded to indicate that, yes, Wauluds was a perceiver.
Barrington was the only person in the room who was not able to feel the Prime Minister’s disappointment.
“I’ll be honest with you, Pete,” said Pankhurst. “I’ve had some news about you which has made me unhappy. Very unhappy indeed.”
“I’ve always been loyal to the party,” said Wauluds. “And to you, John, you know that.”
“I thought it until I found out you were hiding something from me. Until I found out that you have probably been spying on me and other Members of Parliament ever since you were elected.”
“No!” protested Wauluds. “That’s not true.”
Michael perceived he was being honest. More or less. Honest in the sense that any information he had gleaned from his colleagues had remained private. He hadn’t read their minds and passed that knowledge on to any third party. At least, not very often.
“You’re a perceiver, aren’t you?” said Pankhurst.
“Perceivers are teenagers,” said Wauluds. “I know I look young, Prime Minister, but I’m actually fifty-five.”
His little attempt at a joke fell flat and did nothing to lighten the mood.
“They call people like you ‘natural borns’,” Pankhurst continued. “Your mother didn’t take a pill like the mothers of the teenagers. You were born with the perceiver mutation which would have lain dormant until your teenage years. Back when you were a teenager, no one knew about perceivers, which is why you were able to keep it a secret. Or so I’ve been told.”
“Who told you? Him?” Wauluds turned and pointed an accusing finger at Michael. He was so angry that his arm was shaking.
“Forget him,” said Pankhurst.
“What’s he even doing here? If you’re going to sack me, at least have the decency to do it without an audience.”
“So you are able to perceive that my intention is to sack you?”
“What? No! I … Jesus!” He brushed back the wisps of his hair with his fingers. “How long have you known?”
“About you?” said Pankhurst. “Just today. About the possibility that perceivers could have infiltrated my inner circle? I’ve suspected for a while.”
“So you’re going to get rid of me and keep him?” Wauluds didn’t even turn to look at Michael this time, he just gestured behind him. “You’re swapping a perceiver you already know and trust with a perceiver you don’t.”
“If that were true, you would have told me, long ago, what you are. But you’ve hidden it from me all these years. How can I trust you?”
Wauluds sat back against the sofa with the slump of a defeated man. “Will I have to stand down as an MP?”
“No, that would cause too much fuss. With our ratings in the polls, we could do without a by-election. Just give me your resignation as a minister and issue something bland to the press. You need to spend more time with your family, that sort of thing.”
Wauluds stood up. “I think you’re making a mistake.”
Barrington opened the door and allowed Wauluds to walk through it.
“I hope not,” said the Prime Minister, as the door closed behind him.
He picked up his sandwich and bit into it like it was the sandwich’s fault. With his other hand, he pulled out his phone and checked his schedule. Talking with his mouth full, he asked Barrington to get in touch with his PA to bring
him a clean tie.
Michael waited long enough for Wauluds to have walked far enough away and he made his excuses to leave.
As he left the Disraeli Lounge, he sensed another perceiver waiting for him. In the tiniest of moments, he thought it might be Wauluds wanting to ambush him. But that brief thought was extinguished when he recognised the signature of Pauline’s mind. Her thoughts were full of anxiety and she wasn’t making any attempt to hide it.
She stood, tucked into the edge of the corridor, like a timid mouse.
Michael walked up to her. “What’s happened?”
“Galen House,” she said. “They’ve found out about us.”
Nine
Sian Jones stood on a stretch of grass with the wire perimeter fence of a military base behind her. Visible behind her left shoulder was the entrance. Two armed soldiers in camouflage paced backwards and forwards in front of the barrier as if they didn’t know a camera crew was filming them.
Jones, with her black lapel microphone obvious against her blue coat, tucked a few strands of hair back behind her ear to stop them being blown about by the wind. “This is where some of the strongest perceivers in Britain have been living for the past five years as part of a secret government project to develop young people into spies for the country,” she told the camera. “Known as the Perceiver Corps, they have been training with the army as an elite squad able to use their mind-reading powers in any situation.”
The shot cut back to a comfortable breeze-less studio where the news presenter with a perfectly shaped bobbed hairstyle was watching Sian Jones on a television screen. “Is this where the perceivers you’ve been telling us about have come from? The ones which have been placed inside police forces and courtrooms across the country?”
Sian was full screen again. A few spots of light rain fell onto the camera lens and created little blurry specks on the picture. “That’s my understanding,” she said. “Officially, according to the Ministry of Defence, this army base trains soldiers to serve in the infantry divisions of the army. Unofficially, according to some of the local people I’ve been speaking to, a significant number of young people have been seen coming and going from this base in recent years. It only serves to confirm my information that this is a secret base for perceivers.”
Pauline’s mind filled with anger as she watched the news report on Michael’s television. Michael wanted to put a comforting arm around her as she sat next to him on his sofa, but he knew their relationship hadn’t been that intimate for some time and kept his hands tucked between his knees.
His flat was small, being just a tube ride from Westminster and, therefore in an extremely expensive part of London. It was about half the size of his flat in Nottingham and quadruple the price. He was lucky the Prime Minister’s office was paying for it, otherwise he would have had to live far out of town.
The landlord who had furnished the place obviously had a thing about red. Up one end, the cupboards of the kitchenette gleamed with bright, shiny red doors; while the only sofa up the other end was covered in a red fabric. It was one of those sofas with a small back rest and a wide seat which meant leaning back was difficult. So they sat on the edge as they watched the news report. Which they probably would have done regardless of the design of the sofa: it wasn’t the sort of news that perceivers could relax to.
“I should go back,” said Pauline.
“You can’t,” said Michael. “There’s a camera crew watching the front gate.”
“They will have gone by the time I get there. It’s not right for me to be here while all the other perceivers are dealing with this.” She stood up.
“You’re not leaving now? I thought we agreed, you’re safer here.”
“I’m just going to make a phone call,” she said. She reached for her handbag which she left on the floor and pulled out her phone. “Is there somewhere that’s a bit quieter?”
Somewhere private, she meant. But other than the room they were in, the flat only had a bathroom and a bedroom.
“You stay here,” said Michael. As he got up, he turned off the TV – the news had moved on to something else anyway – and chucked the remote control back on the sofa. “I’ll go sort out a bed for you.”
Michael left Pauline alone and went to the bedroom where he stripped the bed of its week-old bedclothes and replaced them with fresh. He returned to the living room carrying the bundle of used sheets clasped to his chest.
He heard Pauline say goodbye to whoever she was talking to and hang up the call. Both her face and her emotions revealed she wasn’t happy.
“Norm the Norm wants me to stay here,” she said. “Apparently more journalists have been arriving to chase the story and the whole base is on lockdown. The norm soldiers, not to mention the army brass outside of the Perceiver Corps, are livid.”
“That’s settled, then,” said Michael. “You stay here tonight. I’ve put clean sheets on the bed for you.”
“I’m fine with the sofa.”
“Even so, you’re my guest and I insist.”
She must have perceived there was no changing his mind and so she shrugged off the argument. “Okay.”
Michael was going to put the used sheets on the sofa for him to sleep on, but now they were all bundled up in a ball in his arms, he could smell how stale they were. So he took them into the kitchenette instead and stuffed them in the washing machine.
Pauline followed him in. “What do we do now?”
“I was thinking we could order in pizza,” said Michael. “Or Indian. There’s a great place I found round the corner that does deliveries. It tends to stink out the flat, though.”
Even as he was speaking, he perceived that wasn’t what she meant. “What are we going to do about the journalist, Sian Jones, putting all our secrets out there out in public?”
“I have the first meeting of that working group on perceivers tomorrow,” said Michael. “Maybe something will come out of that.”
“Maybe,” said Pauline.
“So,” said Michael. “Pizza or Indian? Or anything you like, this is central London, after all.”
Pauline turned her nose up. “I’m not that hungry.”
“Or I can cook something. Well, I say ‘cook’, I can put something in a pan and give it a stir.”
“What have you got?”
“Hmm.” He opened the shiny red door of the cupboard next to him. Inside was a packet of dried pasta and two tins of soup: one chicken and mushroom, the other cream of tomato. He tried the fridge next, even though he knew there was only a carton of milk, a two-litre bottle of fizzy water and a jar of pesto in it. “I got pretty good at pasta and pesto when I was a student.”
“That sounds nice.”
He perceived that she was only saying that to be polite. But that was okay. Cooking gave him something to do and if she enjoyed it, it would be a bonus.
Michael made far too much pasta and pesto for the both of them and brought two steaming bowls over to the sofa with an apology. “You don’t have to eat it all.”
“Smells lovely,” she said. This time, she meant it.
They ate without saying much. As Michael got to about halfway through his mound of food, he realised that Pauline had closed her mind off to him. Not that he was looking, he just sensed that whatever thoughts she was having, she wanted to keep them to herself.
“Thanks for letting me stay,” she said eventually.
“You couldn’t have gone back to Galen House, not tonight.”
“I could have got a hotel room.”
“On the salary you get from the Perceiver Corps?”
“Or I think the woman in my office has a spare room. She keeps talking about her son having just gone to university.”
“It’s nice to have you here,” he said.
He got the sense that it wasn’t the thing she had been thinking about behind her blocks. She put her fork down and placed the bowl of pasta on the floor. “I’m sorry I didn’t speak to you after Alex died.”
“It was a shock,” said Michael.
“You did it to rescue me and I never acknowledged that. Not even to myself. So, I wanted to say thank you.”
Michael picked up the glass of water that he had brought over to have with his meal. He lifted it towards Pauline. “To Alex,” he said.
Pauline retrieved her glass of water, too, and chinked it against his.
They drank to the memory of their friend.
Over the couple of hours that followed, they talked more and the friendship that they had once forgotten became real once again.
Ten
Michael’s optimism lifted out of his body and drifted out of the window which had been opened a crack to allow in some fresh air. It left the House of Commons and floated over the London skyline until it was lost among the noise and pollution of Britain’s capital city.
He had thought the working group on the perceiver crisis would bring some solutions to what was happening out in the world, but all it brought was empty talk. After a while, Michael stopped listening to the words the people around the table were saying and took a look into their thoughts. He found no inspiration there. No great idea that was going to solve the problem facing perceivers and the people close to them.
Around the table, squeezed into the small room next to the debating chamber of the House, were four backbench MPs of various parties and a representative from the cure programme who Michael had never seen before. They had given their names at the beginning of the meeting and he had already forgotten what they were. They were suits to him. They wore the uniform of the establishment with either shirt and tie or jacket and blouse and their minds were entrenched in establishment thought. But then he looked down at himself and the uniform of suit and tie that he had put on that morning and he wondered if he was any better.
When he had introduced himself, he had told the other people in the group that he brought an insight to their meeting because he worked closely with the perceiver community. At the request of the Prime Minister, he didn’t tell them he was a perceiver.