Chapter 11: Assessment

“Um, thanks,” Cindy managed to stammer in reply as she gathered her wits after the transport. As she gathered them, she used her mind-clearing trick … and thought of something: Should I be trying to talk to you like this? she asked, silently.

Dave raised an eyebrow. “Impressive. But no, there will be plenty of time for that later, and there’s things you need to know about mindspeak, as we discussed in your classroom.”

“Oh. Yes. That’s right. Sorry.”

“That’s fine. Come along with me – you can ask questions as I show you around the facility.”

The transport portal room exited into a long corridor. As they walked down this and turned into what looked like a common room of some sort – trestle tables, featureless walls, a bench at one end – Cindy noted how, well, drab everything was. Maybe Dave’s skills in interior design matched his skills in graphics. “Everything is grey,” she commented.

“Yes. We have found that keeping things as minimalist as we can when it comes to the surroundings increases the speed in which people can be trained. Limiting the mental clutter if you like.”

“Oh.” All of a sudden she remembered she’d seen the common room before, when she was deciding whether or not to sign up for this training. “Dave …” she began.

“Yes?”

“I’ve seen that room before.”

“What do you mean?”

“That room – the one with the tables we just went through. I’ve seen it. Or I’ve – ” she broke off, cleared her mind …

seen

… “– it, if you know what I mean.”

“You’ve remote viewed it?”

“I don’t know. You’ve mentioned that before – what does it mean again?”

“Oh yes, sorry, using jargon when you’ve only just got here. Remote viewing is seeing things taking place elsewhere psychically, like when you came here during the test and later that day.” Dave looked at her intently. “Is that what happened do you think?”

Cindy thought. It didn’t seem right. “No,” she said, “It wasn’t that. It felt more like I was seeing it because I was there. Like it was sometime in the future.” She still held back about the other visions of an older her.

“Precog!” Dave exclaimed. He looked genuinely stunned for a moment, then visibly steadied himself and took a breath.

“Look,” he said, “we need to do things in the right order. I’m going to show you to your quarters. You’ll have an hour or so to yourself to gather your wits, and then we put you into an assessment. And maybe after that you’ll stop catching me off guard by being able to do things that, frankly, you shouldn’t be able to do. Certainly not at your age, and certainly not untrained.”

“Ok. Is the assessment with you? Where are all the other people?”

“No, there’s a team who do it, but I’m not one of them this time, I have other things to do. There are a few of us here, but pre assessment we prevent a new recruit from seeing anyone – it muddies things. After you’ve been assessed you’ll meet some of the trainers and other agents, and some of your fellow new recruits. Then we’ll have an orientation.”

Cindy had been wondering about that. “So there are others. How many of us are there?”

“It’s a reasonable class this semester. Seven.”

“Only seven?!?”

“Sometimes there have only been two. We’ve never had more than nine. The talent is pretty rare at the level we need it.” And rarer still at the level you seem to have it he added silently.

Cindy wasn’t sure whether she was supposed to pick up Dave’s thought or not, so she let it pass – she didn’t want to seem rude. There was a whole lot of etiquette involved in this psychic thing that she was going to have to learn.

As they’d been speaking Dave had led her through the compound, out of the front gate and down the road. Cindy had been getting a strange sense of déjà vu, having been here before in her visions. Dave stopped at one of the featureless buildings in the ‘town’.

“Here you go. This is your quarters for the next six months,” he said, and opened the door to let her in. Cindy was unsurprised to find it was a featureless grey room identical to the one in which she’d found the monitor. There was a simple armchair against one wall, and she could see a chemi-dispensary unit in a small side room. Dave stood silently as she had a quick look about – it didn’t take long. The main room with the adjoining food nook – it seemed too grand a word to call it a kitchen – and then a medium sized bedroom with a large single bed and an en suite shower room.

“So I’m living here by myself?”

“Yes. There’s no risk – there’s nothing to harm you on this whole planet, everything is monitored, and as your mindspeak develops you can always be in contact with others when you want – or need – to be.”

“Can I use my PCD?”

“As you see fit – but although you can get streams and books all comms are blocked except on specified times. We need to monitor any comms with family and so forth to maintain the PEEP cover.”

Yes, of course, thought Cindy. And protect the secrecy of this place.

“Yes, that’s right.” Dave said aloud, startling Cindy. “I’ll be back to escort you to your assessment shortly – but just remember where you are and what the people around you may be capable of, you’re not the only one who can sometimes read thoughts that haven’t been deliberately sent.” He gave her a pointed look. “The sooner we start teaching you some control, the better.” And with that, Dave left her alone in her room and headed back up the road toward the facility.

Cindy sat in the armchair in the room, took out her PCD, then put it down again in her lap. She spent the next half hour sitting quietly, thinking about where she was and what she was about to embark on, and even though she missed her dad already terribly, the excitement was growing sharply about events to come. What would she learn? Where would she end up? She was lost in this reverie imagining distant worlds and nameless wonders when there was a knock on the door; it was Dave, ready to escort her back for her assessment.

---

Cindy was sat behind a glass screen with a table in front of her. There was a sliding trapdoor on its top covering an alcove the size of a small but deep drawer. She was feeling a bit self-conscious as she knew she was being observed by the three trainers she had been introduced to from behind the glass screen. They had seemed nice enough – two women, one older and one younger, and one man, the three all in white coats. They had smiled and been pleasant, but they were also very business-like in their manner and Cindy was struck with how serious the whole affair seemed. Also, when she was introduced, Dave told them her name, but he didn’t tell her theirs, and they didn’t volunteer them.

A voice came over the loudspeaker in the room, clearly from one of the nameless assessors: “Your assessment will now commence. In a moment the table trapdoor will close, and an object will be moved into the table compartment. You will not be able to see it, but you will have up to a minute to identify what it is. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Then we shall begin.”

The door slid shut, then a small red light appeared to one side of it. Within a couple of seconds this light turned green, and Cindy knew something was in the table. She tried to envisage what it could be.

Nothing.

Ah – wait, she realised what she had forgotten. She cleared her mind, and let her thoughts surround the space in the table. As she focussed, it took on the sharpened quality she’d seen in the classroom. And something else. Realisation struck as the shape suddenly became clear.

“It’s an apple.”

“Next.”

Red light … green light … and this time it was much quicker.

“Top hat.”

“Next.”

“Book.”

“Next.”

“Ball”

“What kind?”

Cindy focussed harder. Wait, it’s not a ball, it’s a …

“It’s a small globe.”

“Of where?”

Cindy didn’t know. It seemed like it should be Adriá, but she wanted to be sure. What was the trick?

Cindy let her thoughts stream through the globe; it almost felt like she was consuming it with her mind. As she did so, she detected something in its middle – glowing, was it words?

Yes. A word. A label. Clever.

“It’s Torrode.”

“Yes. We will move on to the next test,” came the tannoy voice. “One of us has left the room. Which one is it?”

Cindy – still in what she was now thinking of as her psychic mindspace – cast her thoughts behind the glass screen. This seemed almost too easy. “The lady with the dark hair.”

“And what is her name?”

Ah, so that’s why they didn’t tell me. Cindy focussed on the remaining woman. She tried to see if she could get an image of the younger woman with a name attached to it. Nothing – and she felt pushed back, much like when she had tried to read Ms Primp’s thoughts. She looked at the man instead. Ah, this was more like it. Receptive and open, Cindy found he was thinking about the missing assessor – and there it was.

“Rebecca”

“That’s correct. Where is Rebecca now?”

This was tricky. Cindy knew that she could pinpoint her father easily when she was on her home planet, but this was someone she’d only just met on a planet she’d only just arrived on (in person, at least). She tried to cast her mind out to find this Rebecca, with no success.

Ok, so … clear … spread … search …

Nothing.

Cover … encompass … FIND …

Still nothing.

Cindy paused. Wait, she thought, this was an assessment of her ability for the Spy Corp, right? So it wasn’t going to just be about psychic power. Her ability to think on her feet was being tested as well. Cindy considered for a moment.

Ah ha! She knew what to do. She let her thoughts focus back on the male assessor, and she could see that he was still thinking about Rebecca. Piggy-backing on his thoughts of her, she pushed her focus in and, sure enough, a trail of that glowing silver light formed stretching from his mind. She followed it out of the observation room, through a series of corridors, down a flight of stairs, and to a heavy steel door. Cindy could see the sign on the door said ‘Dry Store’. She let her mind drift through the door and there, at the end of the trail of light, was Rebecca. She was standing amongst various tins, boxes and pots. She had it.

Just as she started to surface from her mindspace Cindy noticed a brief smile flicker across Rebecca’s face. That was interesting.

“Rebecca is in the dry storeroom, down a flight of stairs and about 200 meters away. She knows I’ve found her so she’s about to come back.”

Cindy sensed rather than heard or saw the hubbub her words caused in the observation room.

“Excellent, excellent,” came the loudspeaker voice, “just a couple more tests. You will note in the desk cavity that the apple is back and the trapdoor is open.”

Cindy duly noted.

“We’d like you to lift the apple. Without touching it.”

Cindy was briefly surprised at the request but then this was quickly squashed by the sheer volume of extraordinary events that had been occurring for the last week or so. Well, why shouldn’t she be able to move things with her mind? She thought. That just sounded perfectly reasonable.

Still, there was nothing for it but to try.

Cindy took a deep breath, and cleared her mind once more. She focussed on the apple, and, as the veil of her mindspace descended, it came in to sharp, vivid focus. It felt like she could see the skin, the yellowy flesh, the pips, and the darker flesh around the core all at the same time, like she was somehow seeing through it. She tried to lift it. It remained resolutely immobile.

Ok, first let’s try this: focus … surround … lift …

Just like when she tried to locate Rebecca, this achieved absolutely nothing. So again, Cindy pondered over the problem. She kept her focus on the apple, assessed it from all sides, both inside and out. She felt the texture of the stem, zoomed in on it and saw the rough surface, it was as if she was looking through a microscope but even clearer. She could almost smell the sweet flesh of the fruit, felt cooled by the glossy skin. And yet, despite feeling she now knew this apple better than anyone had any right to know any piece of fruit, any effort she made to move it had no effect whatsoever.

Then she had an idea. She considered where she wanted the apple to go – let’s say about 30cm above where it was now. That seemed a reasonable target. So, keeping the apple in her focus, Cindy started also drawing in the air space above it and the place where she wanted it to be. She created an oval ring in her mind with the apple at the bottom and where she wanted it to be at the top. Now, that silver light thing. Was it just a matter of thinking about that? She remembered back to the monitor in the room from ages ago, the trail that the Turg had linked to her that she’d traced back on, the trail that led to Rebecca. She imagined a ring of that silver light around the oval she was picturing. Then, slowly, carefully, she mentally pinched the oval in from the bottom.

And slowly, carefully, the apple began to rise.

Too focused to be shocked Cindy kept squeezing in the oval of light from the bottom. Slightly faster now. The apple kept rising until it was nearly at the top of the silver oval; at some level the part of Cindy outside the mindspace knew that this was just an apple, floating in mid-air. She kept squeezing the space. And now the apple was at the top, where she wanted it, surrounded by a glowing silver ring.

What would happen if I keep squeezing? She thought. She applied more pressure to the silver ring.

The apple seemed to distort, like a slowly boiling pan of thick soup, lumping out in different places as the pressure of the mental force fought with its own internal consistency. Something had to give.

The apple exploded.

Cindy gave a shout, and flinched as chunks of pulped apple hit her face and body, the table, the walls of the room. The door opened, and Dave strode in.

“Are you ok?” he asked, concern in his voice.

Cindy did a quick self-check. “Yes,” she said, “just shocked. Did I really do that?”

“Yes. Yes, you really did.” Dave turned to the observation window. “I think you’ve got enough for your assessment, yes?”

“Yes, that will be fine,” came the tannoy voice. “Dave, if we could see you after you escort Cindy back to her quarters?”

“Of course. Come on, Cindy, the assessment is over. Let’s take you back.”

Chapter 12: Orientation

“I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Dave was in the observation room with the three assessors. It was the older woman who was talking to him. “I know,” he said.

“I mean, not even close. Kinesis on a first assessment. Never mind that she didn’t just pass the lateral psi-location, she came back knowing the subject had observed her. And what was that thing with the exploding apple? I don’t even know if we’re equipped to deal with that kind of raw power.”

“I know, Louise, I know. I’m as shocked as you. Well, maybe a little less shocked as I’ve been doing her recruit and I’ve had a sense of it, but seeing it in full flow is mind-blowing.”

“We’re going to have to be careful with her.”

“Well there I can reassure you. She’s a very sensible, honourable girl. I’ve had enough dealings with her already to know that. And of course, she comes well referred.”

“Yes, yes, I know. But I still think caution is advisable. So what now?”

“Well, now we take her to orientation. We train her. And, just putting it out there, it might be a very fortuitous coincidence that we get a recruit like her now just as we find out about this new threat.”

Louise and the other assessors looked shocked. “You can’t mean to put her on the Theta Sector case. Raw power or not, she’s a novice! It’s too big a risk,” said Louise.

“Well, I’m just sowing the seed. Let’s get her trained up and then we can make a call when the time comes. I just think it’s a bit of a strong coincidence that we know we have this threat rising, it’s near Cindy’s own planet, and we expect it to be coming to a head around about the same time our most powerful recruit ever is due to complete her training. It just all fits together a bit too well.”

Louise looked dubious. “So you’re saying it’s ‘meant to be’ or something? Let’s not get superstitious David. As you say, we’ll get her trained and then make the call. But I want it noted that I’m wary of the idea of a raw recruit on such a vital mission. A more established agent like Justin would be a better choice I think.”

“Fair enough. Let’s be honest, the final call will sit with the Controller. For obvious reasons.” Dave stood as the others were nodding agreement, and clapped his hands. “Right! Let’s go get these recruits together in the common room for an orientation.”

---

Cindy looked around the room at the other six children. There were four other girls and two boys. Two of the girls were clearly identical twins and sat next to each other. Cindy didn’t check, but she felt sure they were engaged in a silent discussion with each other about where they were and the other candidates. The others kept quiet, and most of them were looking around the room and stealing glances at each other, apart from the shorter of the two boys who was mainly looking at his shoes. Both boys had dark hair and were both taller than Cindy, although the shoe boy not by much. The taller boy had darker skin and short-cropped, curly hair. The other boy had slightly tousled, slightly longer dark hair and deep set eyes (as much as Cindy could tell). The twins were very pretty and both had long, blond hair and bright, blue eyes. One had a very slight dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose – Cindy filed this for later so she had a method of telling them apart, they were that similar. Of the other two girls, one was quite tall and skinny with short-cropped slightly reddish brown hair. She had an air of quiet confidence about her that for some reason made Cindy think of Ms Primp.

The final girl was about an inch shorter than Cindy, with a round face, pale brown hair and striking green eyes. She had a natural, happy glow about her and this was offset by a kind of childish, gleeful smile. She was kicking her legs and being a lot less guarded in her assessment of the others – openly staring and assessing each in turn.

Hi. I’m Jane, came a voice in Cindy’s head.

Hi Jane, I’m Cindy, she replied.

So you can mindspeak too! That’s brilliant! I don’t think the other girls can but I haven’t tried to talk to the boys. Have you tried?

Um, no, I’m not sure whether I should or whether it’s rude or what.

Oh, I think it’s fine. If you can, why not? I tried to speak to the twins. Aren’t they pretty by the way? But I couldn’t – they seem to be locked up in a private conversation with each other. It’s really weird. Jane motioned her head towards them as she mindspoke and one of the girls glanced across briefly, then resumed her private chat with her twin.

Maybe they can talk to each other but not other people yet? Cindy ventured.

Yes, I bet that’s it. You hear of twins being able to do that, don’t you? Where are you from? I’m from Earth.

Earth! Wow! That must be pretty cool, having a home planet with all that history and stuff.

Nah, it’s not so great. Overcrowded, and mainly full of people who can’t afford to go elsewhere, so you don’t get the best neighbours if you know what I mean. Where are you from then?

Oliver County.

Don’t know it. Can you think about it for a sec?

Cindy obliged, wondering what Jane was going to do. Then she felt a slight tickle in her mind as she thought about home. It wasn’t invasive like when the Turg contacted her, it was more like being lightly dusted with a silk cloth.

Oh it looks LOVELY! Jane silently exclaimed. All green fields and picket fences. Was that your house you thought about last?

Cindy thought back. Um, yes, it was. That’s very clever what you did there.

Oh pshaw, I bet we can all do a lot more than that once we’ve done this training. How long have you known what you can do?

Only a week.

Ah, so when they contacted you then? That must have come as a shock. I’d kind of worked out I was different and could do some weird things by the time I was about eight. Since then it’s come in handy!

I daresay, Cindy said. She decided she already liked this very open and seemingly very happy and contented girl. So what sort of things have you … she began, and was then interrupted by a lady coming into the room. It was Rebecca. Cindy had a chance to take her in a bit better now she was out of her lab coat (and in front of her in person more to the point). She was beautiful in a business-like way, with tied-back, long brown hair, big brown eyes and a lovely figure. Cindy wondered if perhaps it was no coincidence that the male assessor had been thinking about her earlier.

“Good afternoon children, welcome to Adriá. For those who don’t already know” – the slightest glance at Cindy – “my name is Rebecca. As well as being one of your trainers I’m the student liaison for GCCSC, which means I get to help you guys all settle in, feel comfortable, and relax so you can concentrate on your training. And given we’re not allowed to put any decorations up, and Dave’s very – um – straight-laced approach to things, this is no easy task I can tell you!”

There was a bit of a nervous half-laugh around the circle.

“Right,” Rebecca continued, “I’m going to start by answering a few of the questions you’re all thinking.” She paused and looked pointedly around the room a moment. Then, with a laugh, “but not like that. We’ve been doing this a while, so we know what you’re probably wondering about, and also people in our line of work get pretty good with empathy as I’m sure you can imagine. So, first off, you’ve all been here roughly the same length of time, although we only have two primary assessors, so you’ve been cycled through the assessment in turn. You all have different skills, and there’s no point worrying about whether you can do more or less than each other – it’s a lot like the A&P exam; different strokes for different folks. Some of you have known you have special skills for a while,” – she glanced at Jane and the shorter boy at this point – “and some of you have only just found out,” – this time a quick glance at Cindy and the taller girl. “We have found,” Rebecca continued, “That this doesn’t have a lot of bearing on where you end up after training. We encourage those who’ve been using their talents already to share knowledge with their fellow students and speak openly about them – it’s a great way to learn and to optimise what you can do. However …”

And now Rebecca looked a lot more serious and a lot more intent. Cindy felt a kind of weight pressing down, radiating from her. Her face took on a sharpness and her voice an echoey quality as she barked: “Attend!” The weight grew very heavy – Cindy felt it pressing at the base of her neck. She was vaguely aware the other students felt something too by the general consternation in the room.

And then the weight lifted, and Rebecca continued: “This raises the most important thing. Speak freely here, and use your talents freely within reason, but always remember – what we do is a secret, and it must stay a secret. We’re training you to be spies. You have already been vetted in ways you can’t imagine, and although we know you’re very young, you are all very capable, and you have to learn fast just how serious this business is. The very fate of the galaxy sits upon each and every one of you. Let me give you an example. When I said the word ‘attend’ a moment ago, who felt something odd – show of hands! Quickly!”

Every hand shot up.

“Milton – what did you feel?”

“It was a kind of heavy feeling. Kind of in the back of my head,” the taller boy replied.

“Yes. Now here’s the thing – you could feel that, all of you felt that, because I wanted you to. But when you don’t have control, you don’t know who can sense what. The talent can be a bit like a PCD message – it gives off a signal. The more you are using, the stronger that signal is. And the Turgs are trying to see us – all the time. Be wary. The first lessons you all have will be about control, but until then, no showing off, no acting out – use the talent gently, speak to each other, learn from each other, but don’t do anything where you need to push. Do I make myself clear?”

A series of silent nods around the room.

“Good,” said Rebecca, cheery once more, “Right, well, let’s have some questions then. Who’s going to be first?”

Chapter 13: Unexpected Visitors

Cindy wasn’t surprised that Jane put her hand up pretty much straight away. “Have you ever seen a Turg?” She asked.

“No,” Rebecca replied, “Not in the flesh. Of all of us here only Dave has done any recon missions to their galaxy – it’s a hugely risky thing to do, and it takes a long time to get there. Dave had to do a five year recon mission just to get the intel we currently have. I’ve seen them through his eyes though.”

“Oh, wow,” said Jane, “What were they like?”

“I can show you if you like?” replied Rebecca with a slightly pointed look at Jane.

“Yes please!”

“Go on then – anyone else who is able to is free to have a look as well.”

Cindy understood what was going on – Rebecca was going to ‘show’ Jane the image of the Turg like when she had inadvertently ‘shown’ her her homeworld. She decided she would try to see it as well.

Clearing her mind, Cindy focussed on Rebecca’s thoughts. She was startled to find that she immediately got a view of what Rebecca was thinking about. The Turg was almost identical to the ones Cindy had seen in her visions previously, but this time instead of a fleeting glimpse she could take a good look. It was about two metres tall and roughly conical in shape, tapering upward from a base about one metre across to the top of its head which, although thinner than the base, was still fatter than a human’s. It had kind of crevices in its brownish-green skin that looked a bit like knots in old tree trunks, and as Cindy observed a tentacle emerged from one of these crevices and extended outward as if reaching for something. The tentacle holes were asymmetrical on the creature’s body but Cindy could tell there were sufficient that it had a 360º reach if required. There was nothing obviously discernible as a face. Just as Cindy was wondering how it moved, the answer came as the image of the creature began to slide across the ground like a slug. Cindy was relieved to note it didn’t appear to leave a trail. However, it did give her with a sense of unease just viewing it, no matter how far away or long ago she knew the image to be; something about it set her teeth on edge.

Filing the Turg’s image in her mind, Cindy broadened her view. She found that she could see a silver aura around the image that she realised was Rebecca projecting it. She then noticed lines plugging into this aura as the other students observed as well – not all of them, Cindy noticed – the twins remained resolutely isolated. However the tall girl, Jane, and both boys seemed to be looking, although the shorter boy seemed to be having trouble. Jane, Milton and the taller girl were ‘watching’ avidly.

Just as Cindy was about to return her focus to the image itself she noticed another, very faint line connecting in. It seemed to be a very slightly different colour from the others as well – not quite as silvery. That was odd. Cindy homed in on it and tried to see where it was coming from.

The line was trailing out of the room. Dave? Cindy wondered, and continued to follow it.

No, this wasn’t Dave. It wasn’t anyone on this planet. The line trailed off into space. Cindy remembered her experience connected to the Turg and let herself drift along it, intrigued. Somewhat foolishly, she didn’t stop to wonder who it might be and, more importantly, what their intentions were.

Before Cindy could get to a destination planet, she became aware of a consciousness coming back towards her along the line.

So we have a little spy it seems. Came a cold, steely thought. We can’t be having that.

And with that, everything seemed to happen at once. A force came back along the line very much like the force Cindy had sent at the Turg when it made contact, but this was somehow harder; sharper. Cindy felt like her head was splitting as it sliced through her probing thought and sent what felt like a blinding flash of force back along the line, into the room and into Rebecca’s projection.

Rebecca seemed to freeze on the spot and the other children, locked in, tried to cry out but couldn’t. The thought came through and Cindy knew all the others were receiving it as well.

Yes, look well children. Look well, Rebecca. Look at your new masters. Because I can tell you, masters they will be, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. And as you are ruled by them, so they will be ruled by me. Look well … a pause … and now we will let C’Thaarg look well back at you.

Cindy felt a shimmer in the image that caused a shudder of revulsion in everyone in the room, and it seemed to fold and invert in on itself for the tiniest fraction of a second, and then, suddenly, impossibly, the Turg stopped being a vision from the past and became a present view instead. Cindy knew, and could tell that the others also knew, that they were seeing the Turg in real time!

It slowly turned to the assembled watchers, facing them although it had no face, and its voice came into their minds.

Have fear, tiny humans. We grow strong, and we have new allies. Forsake your goals, for they are doomed. We will conquer, and you will fall.

Cindy felt a force gathering – the Turg seemed to be adding strength to the human presence that had them trapped (for human it was, Cindy knew that; and female, somehow she also knew that,) and Cindy felt with dread a surge was forming.

You will feel our combined might.

The force from the evil alien/human alliance at the other end of the mindline was gathering into an incandescent mass, malevolence at its core. It was disorienting, and painful. Within the confusion, Cindy was dimly aware of a door bursting open, of Dave and Louise running into the room, and forcing their way into the circle both physically and mentally. She sensed the gathering of force between them.

Stand down, children – shield yourselves. She heard from Dave.

The pain of the mental pressure was getting intense. Cindy had to do something. She drew into herself, keeping her mindspace open and connected to the shimmering silver ring that Dave and Louise were building around the alien (she wasn’t even sure she had a choice). She pulled back to her core … dig … gather … wait … wait …

She was aware of a brief moment of surprise in the adults as she joined forces with them. Stand down Cindy! Louise sent, but Dave followed this with No, wait – she can help. Cindy – do exactly as I say.

Cindy nodded, awaiting instructions. The pressure was almost unbearable.

Wait … not yet … wait …

Wait … gather … Cindy felt her power bolstering Dave and Louise’s as she drew it all. And another power joined them as well, at once familiar and unknown. And a fifth power chimed in, somehow even more familiar, and somehow even less known. Cindy didn’t, couldn’t stop to think about who these new allies were – they needed all the help they could get.

The pool of force grew. Wait … wait … gather …WAIT … Sent Dave.

Time stood still …

Then, suddenly, the intruder force exploded outward from the unknown aggressor and the Turg, and the mindline exploded with it as it raced towards them.

… ready … aim …

And Cindy pushed the force she’d been harnessing with all her might, feeling as she did the other minds also pushing in harmony with her. It felt like opening a faucet to unleash a waterfall.

… FIRE!!

And it WAS fire – mind fire, pouring out of them – an awesome, staggering, barely contained force surging back along the line from where they were connected to it. Just outside Rebecca’s circle the forces met, and exploded in a cataclysm of light, thought and power. Streams of pure, white hot light shot out along all the connecting lines like solar flares.

The Turg screamed first; an alien scream of pain. Then Rebecca screamed – an all-too-human scream – and dropped to the ground. The other children flew backwards from the ring and crashed into chairs and walls as the twins looked on, aghast and confused. The noise was cacophonous, the room a riot of chaos. Cindy just managed to stand her ground as Dave and Louise held her steady. For a moment the throbbing force felt like it was going to squash her brain into nothing, she could hardly contain it.

Then, far too slowly, it began to subside as she pushed back, leaving a painful ache but no damage as far as Cindy could tell.

As the contact dissolved and the light dimmed Cindy sensed the two unknown helpers in the melee breaking contact and disappearing.

She also sensed the human aggressor, the enemy, and the enemy sensed her. Two minds regarded each other briefly. Cindy felt cold ambition, hideous power, and, worst of all, the tiniest hint of familiarity.

I see, came the thought.

And then it was gone, leaving just the clatter of a spinning plate that must have fallen in the chaos.

And then silence.

---

Slowly, with help from Dave and Louise, the children picked themselves up and tried to compose themselves. Oddly, given they hadn’t been directly involved, it was the twins who looked the most shaken. The two taller children both looked confused and a bit scared, although Milton was putting on a degree of bravado it seemed. The shorter boy was sitting in the chair he was in originally, having presumably picked it up and replaced it where it was, and was again staring at his shoes. Jane was the first to start asking questions – “What was that?!? What happened?” – but Dave and Louise were ignoring her for the moment as they focused on Rebecca.

Rebecca hadn’t moved.

Dave turned to the children and spoke. His voice was firm and steady, but Cindy could tell he was trying very hard to maintain composure.

“I need you children to all stay here and wait for a moment. Do not use your powers. I’ve called for someone to come and watch over you while we take Rebecca to the infirmary …”

“Is she alive?” Jane interrupted, fear in her voice.

“Yes, she is,” Dave replied, “But we will need to do a full assessment to find out the extent of the damage. I will be back to debrief you all as soon as I can. Louise, can you get her feet?”

As the two of them picked up the still motionless Rebecca the door opened and the third assessor came in.

“Oh my God,” he cried as he ran across the room, “Dave, what’s happened?”

Cindy was aware of something passing between them very quickly. She was also aware of the massive effort it took the other man to hold himself together, but hold himself together he did. He turned to the children.

“Right, kids, I’m Christof. You’re safe. Let’s make some tea and see if we can figure out what just happened, and as Dave said, he will be back shortly.” As he spoke, Dave and Louise carried the still worryingly motionless Rebecca out the door Christof had just come in and it slammed closed behind them. The slamming of the door seemed to be the straw that broke the camel’s back for the twins and the two of them simultaneously broke down into loud, racking sobs.

As Cindy moved to console them alongside Christof, Milton and Jane, she noticed the taller girl looking pointedly at her.

Shoe boy just kept looking at his shoes.

This was not the start to her training adventure that Cindy had been expecting.

Chapter 14: Aftermath

“Rebecca is stable, but still not talking. She doesn’t seem to be in any physical danger but we haven’t worked out what’s going on in her mind. We’re sure we will.”

Dave was sat with all of the children except the twins; they had been impossible to console and Louise had taken them away somewhere to try to comfort them. Christof was still there, looking serious but positive as he nodded in agreement with Dave’s words.

“I’m sure you’re all feeling worried, probably even scared, and you have every right to be. The main thing I can say to reassure you is that what Rebecca was doing to show you the image you saw is called a mindshare. We know that this activity can expose you to attack, but the odds of it happening are very slight. In this circumstance it happened because Rebecca was already being spied on by somebody – somebody who knew her name. Cindy discovered the mindline that was being used to spy – otherwise we wouldn’t have known that person was there. We are now aware of the threat and will take precautions; mindshares can be secured and until you’ve all been trained in their use we won’t use them with you. They are not the same as one on one mindspeak – think of it as the difference between seeing a stream on your PCD or having a call with someone. Mindspeak, as far as we know, is still safe.

“I’m going to talk to you all separately very soon, but first I need to make something clear. When we recruited each of you we explained what the dangers are. We know this is a risky thing we do, and although we take great pains to keep you safe we can’t do everything. It is a huge burden for all of us here, but the galaxy has no choice. But, this recent … event … has made clear that we are now facing a danger beyond that which we’ve faced to date. In light of this we will be offering each of you the option of opting out and returning to your previous lives. I want you all to think about that before we speak.

“Next, I want your questions, and I want us to talk freely – out loud – about what just happened.”

Jane was the first to speak again: “What would happen if we went home?”

“You would be returned to your regular lives. A cover story for why the PEEP didn’t work out would be created for you, and if you had a different outcome in your A&P exam than the one published, as some of you did, you would be returned to your original vocational path.”

“But what about the fact that we now know about the GCCSC? And this place?” It was the taller girl speaking.

Dave and Christof exchanged a look. Dave spoke, “It’s a good question Natalie; it would be dealt with. We’ve had people not complete training in the past – it’s rare but it happens – and more commonly we’ve had people who get through the initial covert screening that we approach but who turn us down and opt for their original path. We’ve not been exposed yet.”

Shoe boy surprised Cindy by speaking up at this point. “Because you wipe their minds. They can’t expose you because they don’t remember you exist.”

There was a hubbub among the children as Dave and Christof looked at each other again. This time it was Christof who spoke, addressing them all:

“George is right, children. I know it sounds horrible, but that is what we are forced to do. We can’t risk being exposed – for the sake of the galaxy.”

“So you can just muck about in peoples head and control what they remember?” Milton asked incredulously.

“We can, within a set of very tight constraints.”

“So why do you do all the cloak and dagger stuff?” Cindy asked. “Why don’t you just get people in and make other people around them forget they were ever there? Or better yet, just not remember they were away for the time they were away?”

“Because it’s not as easy as you think,” Dave answered. “I understand the conclusion you’ve all leapt to – we just dip our mental hands into peoples’ brains and fiddle them around a bit to contain what we want. It’s not like that. Doing a mindwipe takes both a massive amount of power and a huge amount of precision. It takes many of us working together for several hours to psychically debrief someone in this way.”

“Is it risky?” Asked Natalie.

“Yes.” Replied Dave.

“Have you ever got it wrong?”

Another glance between Dave and Christof.

“Once, yes. We can’t give you details – the person was ok, but their life was not the same. But that only ever happened once.”

“Great, so if we want to leave we can, but you’ll mess around with our brains and there’s a chance you’ll turn us into fruitcakes when you do it? Is that it?” Milton sounded extremely angry.

“No, no it’s not,” Said Christof hurriedly, “We’re just trying to be completely honest with you. The person who responded badly to the wipe was only the third person who ever had it done – there have been no incidents since. It’s safe.”

It was George who spoke next. “They don’t mess it up anymore because there’s more of them to do it – more power. It takes a lot of power and in the early days there were fewer of them.”

Dave looked intently at the boy Cindy had been thinking of as shoe boy with a measure of respect in his eyes. “That’s exactly right.”

“Of course, you probably wouldn’t need more than one person if it was her,” George continued, motioning to Cindy with a nod of his head.

Cindy gave a start at that, and the others spoke up – “What, Cindy? What do you mean?” Said Jane. “Why her?” asked Natalie. Milton just looked quizzically at him.

“That force? The power that surged through the circle and pushed the alien and his friend away? Did you guys feel that?” George asked. There were nods and murmurs of assent. “Well that was her … Cindy. Dave and Louise started it, sure, but most of it came from Cindy joining in.”

Cindy looked confused and embarrassed as the other children all turned to her. Jane spoke first:

“Was it? Was that you Cindy?”

“I … I don’t know! I don’t know how much came from me …”

“’How much’?!?” interrupted Milton, “So some did then?”

“Yes, well, I did push out. I had to do something. We were all in danger! I don’t think it was all me though, or even mostly me.”

Dave cut in. “A lot of it was you Cindy. You have an immense natural power. This is why we need to get you trained – to control it.”

“So you hurt Rebecca,” Natalie accused. Cindy felt like she’d been slapped.

“No, Natalie,” Dave was quick to reply, “That’s completely unfair. The enemies were launching an attack – that’s what alerted us and brought us running to you. Cindy was helping to defend you. If it wasn’t for her it’s entirely likely you would have all been hurt.”

“Or killed,” Interjected George, staring at his shoes once more.

“That’s not helpful George.” Said Christof.

“But it’s true,” insisted George.

“We have no way of knowing.” Said Dave with a tone of finality, “So conjecture is pointless. Suffice to say that but for Cindy’s quick response, willingness to help, and – let’s face it – raw power we would all be a lot worse off. We should be thanking her, not pointing fingers at her,” This last was said with a sharp look at Natalie.

There was a pause as the children considered, and then Jane jumped up and gave Cindy a hug. “Thanks, Cind. You’re awesome. You’ve got to show me what else you can do someday! Wow, sending off an alien, not to mention some kind of horrible human. You’re like a superhero or something!”

“No I’m not,” protested Cindy, “I didn’t ask for any of this, I just tried to do what seemed right.”

“Nevertheless, it sounds like you saved us Cindy,” said Milton, “So thanks. Honestly, thanks. And like Jane says, I want to see what else you can do!”

Natalie also offered her thanks, although Cindy thought it seemed a little grudging and that she remained a little guarded. George said nothing; he just kept looking down.

“Well, it’s not just what Cindy can do,” said Christof in a pretty transparent attempt to lighten the mood. “I think you’ll all be surprised what you’re capable of. Cindy has a lot of raw power, it’s true, but with training you’ll all be able to be kind of superheroes in your own right. If you decide to stay that is.”

---

There followed a bit more in depth chat about who they thought their attacker was, and more generally about the powers they’d seen displayed and what they thought they might develop. After a while everyone was feeling a lot better. Dave finally stood up and said “Right, well it’s time to have a one on one chat with each of you. I won’t ask you to return to your quarters, but have a little think to yourselves and I’ll call for each of you in turn. If you decide to stay then in a day or two we’ll arrange a comm. for you back home. A bit earlier than scheduled but I think you’ll find it comforting. Also it doesn’t hurt to remind you who we’re trying to protect here at GCCSC. Finally, if you do stay, I appreciate it seems a little trite given the circumstances, but you might find this useful.”

With that Dave tapped a button on his PCD and left the room. Each of the children felt a buzz as their devices received a file from him. Cindy tapped her screen and saw this:

*

GCCSC Training Corp

Common Terms Crib Sheet

So you’ve got psychic powers and you’re going to be a spy? Good for you! You may find some of the following words and phrases useful.

Psionics: General term for all psychic activity

Mindspace: The mental zone you go into when performing any psychic activity

Mindspeak: Telepathic chat one on one

Mindline: A psychic link used to connect to people, places or events remotely

Mindshare: A way of sharing thoughts with a group of people like a broadcast

Psi-location: Locating people telepathically

Precog: Psychic knowledge of future events (unproven)

Mindblast: Sending a psychic force (either standalone or down a mindline) as a form of attack

Spyline: A covert mindline

Shielding: Blocking psionic intervention

Telekinesis: Moving objects with your mind

Chapter 15: Galaxy First

“Who was that?” Cindy was in a predictably featureless office with Dave. She was the third to be spoken to after Natalie and Milton. Presumably George and Jane would be following. Dave was seated behind a large black desk with a single 3D projection screen built into it and nothing else on top apart from what looked like a small trophy of some sort with a plaque on it. It faced Dave, and Cindy was sitting opposite so she couldn’t see what it said. There was a single window in the wall behind Dave above his right shoulder that looked out over the training facility grounds and nothing else to notice in the room at all.

“We don’t know.”

“But you know more than we do, right?”

“Yes,” Dave sighed, “For about six weeks we’ve been aware of a new threat emerging that we will have to address. We don’t know who she is, but we know she’s very powerful, and as of today we have an even better understanding of that. We’ve not encountered this kind of strength before. Not just hers – on either side.” He finished pointedly.

“On either … you mean me?!? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes. Sorry Cindy, I know it’s a lot to lay on you, but you have significant power, that’s very clear.”

“Am I stronger than her, whoever she is?”

“We don’t know. We bested her then thanks to your help, but there were three of us in the melee, and even then it was a near thing. But on the other hand, you’re completely untrained, and didn’t even know you had power a fortnight ago, so it’s impossible to tell.”

“Do you know where she is?”

“We have suspicions.”

“Where?”

“Our best psi-locaters have been working on it, but she shields incredibly well. We do think she’s in your home Sector. Possibly your home planet.”

“That makes sense. She felt familiar in a weird sort of way. And at the end just before she broke contact it felt like she kind of recognised me.”

“Yes, I thought I sensed something like that. How do you feel about it?”

“Scared! How do you think I’m going to feel?!? I’m terrified! But … but I’m also stuck. I can’t leave. If everything you say is true – which I know it is – I have to do the training, and I have to confront this horrible, powerful woman. Am I right?”

“Not necessarily. Louise and the other senior agents don’t think you should. They think it would be too big a risk, regardless of the need.”

“And you?”

Dave was silent. He seemed to be deliberating something – Cindy wasn’t sure if he was mindspeaking with someone else or not, but she didn’t think so. Eventually he stood up from behind the desk and walked over to the window. As he gazed out of it he began to speak.

---

“I joined the Spy Corp when it was first formed about thirty years ago. There were four of us at the beginning. Louise, me, a man we call The Controller, and another woman who I can’t tell you the name of. It was The Controller who first detected the Turgs and took news of them to the GCC. It was him who proposed the Spy Corp, and him who convinced the council to lock down the FTL technology. He was only about twenty years old at the time, but he was an incredible talent, and so clever. We were a good little team, the four of us. For the first ten years at least we had it completely under control.

“As time went on though, it got tougher. More people seemed to be showing signs of infiltration, and they were spread increasingly further apart. That’s when the woman whose name I won’t tell you came up with the idea of the A&P exam. We thought it was pure genius – as indeed it was. She devised the first exam, and worked with the GCC to get it implemented. At that time it was targeted at 17 year olds, but over time it has got younger and younger to where it is today.

“We don’t know how it happened, but something about studying how to detect the talent brought a dark tendency to the front in … the other woman … look, let’s call her Nancy for the purpose of this explanation. Something dark came out in Nancy. Louise spotted it first – Nancy had approached her with an apparently harmless suggestion that maybe they didn’t have to register all the recruits with the GCC. Maybe they could keep some secret. Some of the stronger candidates. That way, they could work on developing stronger psionic abilities that the GCC would never sanction. Louise laughed it off, but when she mentioned it in passing to me it made me a bit wary of Nancy and I decided to keep an eye on her.

“Over time, very gradually, Nancy got more and more anti-GCC and more and more subversive in her approach and suggestions. She argued with The Controller constantly. It made life very tough for all of us. We would complain to The Controller about it but he wouldn’t accept it was a problem, always downplaying it and finding excuses.

“It came to a head one day when I detected Nancy in her room mindspeaking with a lady who we had recently discovered that had a high potential talent. Something was a bit odd about the contact, so I alerted The Controller and managed to convince him that I sensed something was wrong. After much cajoling, he put a Spyline in. With his raw psionic strength only he had the power to spy on a private Mindspeak.

“He listened for a while silently. At one point he pinged me a thought saying she wasn’t following procedure, but nothing seemed too wrong, she was just sounding the woman out. She hadn’t revealed anything. He was going to break contact, but I convinced him to stay on the line for a few more minutes.

“Then his face fell. I’ll always remember it – he looked as though he’d just heard his best friend had died. I discovered shortly afterwards that to his great dismay and astonishment he’d overhead Nancy trying to convince this woman to join her … on the side of the Turgs.

“He called an emergency Mindshare with Louise and me to decide what to do. We conferred with the GCC liaison team and they told us she would have to be court-martialled, and silenced. Imprisoned. Forever.

“That was when he came up with the idea of a Mindwipe.”

“This was the one that went wrong, wasn’t it?” Cindy cut in.

“Yes. He’d done a couple before apparently, successfully, and by himself, but he knew he didn’t have the power to do Nancy alone given her own exceptional power. So he called us in. I don’t know if it was because we’d never attempted a power union like this before, or if there was something else that caused The Controller to pull back at precisely the wrong time, but it went wrong. Nancy was changed. Permanently. And so was The Controller – most of his power was lost when the ’wipe blew out. And as for Nancy … well, it was horrible.” Dave shuddered involuntarily at the memory.

“What happened to her?”

“We had to banish her. She was relocated to a world on the other side of the galaxy and tagged so she couldn’t use FTL. She’s there still, under care. She can’t speak anymore, but it’s a danger for anyone to make eye contact with her – the power has turned into a single force that burns out of her when she looks at you. None but the strongest can even survive it. Her carers have to wear special helmets even to look after her.”

“That sounds horrible!”

“Yes, it is. Horrible for her. You have to understand, we were friends, this was new, and you can’t blame her for being misled – we didn’t know anything of the dangers, and much of what we’ve learned about the evil nature of the Turgs, and all we’ve learned about recruiting, and safeguards, and reconnaissance, all of this has come since this happened. Most of it as a result of it happening. But that first decision to do the mindwipe, to take this risk, was The Controller’s decision to make, and he made it for the good of the galaxy. Nancy could have been imprisoned, but he knew this would never be safe enough and that it carried the risk of her going public with her knowledge of the Turgs. Or worse. He knew that the only safe option was to attempt what we attempted. For the sake of the galaxy … all those countless billions who would never know who he was. And it was the hardest decision he ever made, because there’s one thing you don’t yet know.

“Nancy was his wife.”

Cindy sat in stunned silence for a moment, contemplating this. How did a man decide to meddle in the mind of his own wife? She couldn’t help thinking this ‘Controller’ must be a horrible person.

“No,” said Dave, interrupting her thoughts, “he isn’t. He’s a noble, selfless man. A good man. That’s the point I’m trying to make. He listened to his head instead of his heart, for the good of the galaxy. He didn’t want to do it, he did it because he thought he had to. And he did have to – she was too much of a threat. But he really, really didn’t want to.” Dave turned to stare Cindy straight in the eye.

“Believe me, he didn’t.”

After locking eyes for a moment Dave broke away and continued, “And that’s why, when you ask me if I think it should be you that confronts this new enemy, my instinct is to say yes. From what I’ve seen, you are our best chance. And also from what I’ve seen, this threat is very real, and very big. The biggest we’ve seen in a long time. And so we need to use whatever resource we can to stop it.”

“For the good of the galaxy,” said Cindy.

“Yes, for the good of the galaxy.”

“The galaxy first.”

“Yes, the galaxy first.”

Cindy thought hard on that.

“I think I understand,” she said. “I don’t know if I could make the same choice as your Controller did, but I think I understand where you’re coming from.

“By the way,” she continued, “What happened to the other woman?”

“The other woman?” Dave sounded puzzled.

“The lady that ‘Nancy’ was talking to in her room when she was found out.”

“Oh, she never made training. She also didn’t get turned by Nancy. We kept her under surveillance as we do all the talented who don’t make training. I think she’s a teacher or something.”

Cindy sat bolt upright in her chair. “A teacher?!?”

“I think so. Why?” Dave looked curious.

Cindy thought quickly. A suspicion was dawning, but she didn’t want to reveal it yet. “Nothing, nothing. Never mind.” She said.

“Ok,” replied Dave, clearly still a bit too distracted by his reverie to pursue it. “Well,” he went on, gathering his wits, “I know I’ve asked you this before, but I’m asking it again. What’s it going to be? Will you stay?”

This time Cindy didn’t need to think about it. “Yes, I’ll stay. I need the training. And we need to deal with this woman, whoever she is. For the galaxy,” She added with a wry smile.

Dave smiled back at her with genuine warmth. “I knew I could count on you Cindy. Ok, I need to see the other two. Tonight you’ll have a supervised comm. with your Father to touch base and tell him how well your PEEP is going. It won’t be fun living the lie, but I think you’ll be happy just to see him and chat to him, right?”

“Absolutely.”

“Great. You can head back to your quarters now. And Cindy?”

“Yes?”

“Thanks again.”

*

“They’re so nice Daddy, they really are.” Cindy was sat in a comms room in the main compound, talking to her Father on her PCD. The wall behind her was unique in this place, in that it had some colour to it. It had been set up like a twelve year old girl’s bedroom. There was a bunk bed with dishevelled covers hanging off the top bunk, a poster on the wall of some singer or other that Cindy was vaguely aware of (a former runner up from The Galaxy’s Got Talent she seemed to recall, but not from Oliver County’s one), and a couple of stuffed toys marking the space between the bed and a small white desk in the corner.

“Well, they seemed very struck with you when I just spoke to them,” Mr Parker replied. Dave had explained that the actors playing her host family would be patched in from where they were located before cutting across to Cindy. It was all very spy-ey, and although Cindy hated the deception element, she got a tiny little thrill from that.

“They’re sooooo nice. And Khoo is beautiful. I’m looking forward to seeing what the school’s like. But I miss you Daddy.”

“I miss you too, monkey, more than I can tell you. I was so pleased when the PEEP agency arranged this early comm. I guess they realise how hard it is in the first few days when you’re away.”

“I guess so. Have you been looking after yourself?”

“What, in the many, many hours since Sunday? Nope. There’s empty whisky bottles and pizza boxes all over the living room and every wall in the house is blaring out a different sport. Including fishing.”

“We’ve spoken about this before Daddy – fishing is not a sport. Standing on the banks of an artificial lake holding a stick while you wait for a randomly moving robot fish to engage a magnet on the end of a line is not a sport no matter how many of you sad Dads watch it!”

“Harsh! But fair. Hey, Tess knocked on the door on the way home from school today. She wanted me to say hello to you. She also wants to come on the next comm. Is that ok?”

“Of course it is! Oh that’d be great Daddy.” Cindy caught herself and flicked a thought off to Dave, who was standing out of sight behind her PCD.

Dave?

Fine.

“Bring her along!” she continued, “I miss her almost as much as you!”

“But not quite as much, right?”

“Of course not.”

“Ok, well, our time’s nearly up but you keep being good and monkey …”

“Yes Daddy?”

Mr Parker looked seriously at her for a moment. “You look after yourself now, ok?”

“I will Daddy. I will. Love you.”

“Love you beautiful. And where are you most beautiful?”

Cindy grinned, and, weirdly, almost felt a little like crying. “On the inside.”

“That’s right. Bye bye.”

“Bye.”

And the connection closed.

Chapter 16: Training

“Right, who’s familiar with the game called Telephone? Or I think some planets call it Whispers.”

Every hand went up – which meant five of them. The children were sitting in the same room from the events of the previous day. Dave had spoken to them first, and explained that the twins, when given the choice, had decided to opt out and go home. Cindy had not been overly surprised. So that left her, George, Milton, Jane, and … what was the tall girl’s name again? Oh yes, Natalie. Cindy was a little surprised that she had opted to stay as well – she had seemed a little cool generally after the attack. But there she was, as neatly turned out as yesterday, sitting with that same straight-backed, almost hoity posture and that detached, almost cold look in her eyes.

The lady talking to them now had introduced herself as Selma. There had been no mention of Rebecca, so Cindy assumed there was no change. Selma looked younger than any of the other adults they’d met so far – late teens, perhaps 20 at the most. She was quite short – not much taller than Natalie – and a little bit plump. She had begun the session introducing herself as one of the junior instructors who was going to tell them about the basics of shielding. She continued.

“Ok, so what we’re going to do now is a version of that, but using mindspeak. I’ll sping a message to one of you and an image of who to send it to next. When you get it, you sping it to that person with an image of the next and so on. At some point I’ll call stop and whoever was last with the message says it out loud to me.

“Sorry, miss,” said Milton, “What do you mean by ‘sping’?”

“It’s just shorthand for sending a mindspeak message to someone. It comes from ‘psychic ping’ I think. I guess it’s kind of a slang word so you won’t find it on your crib sheets but you’ll be using it plenty before long! So, are we ready?”

A series of nods.

For a few moments Cindy just sat there – it was a bit odd, because she could see the others shift in their seat or otherwise react while they were being contacted. As far as she could work out, Selma sent the message to Natalie first, who only showed any sign of it when she turned her head slightly to send the message to Jane. Jane immediately grinned as she got the message and kicked her legs under her chair. She sent it on to Milton. Cindy then became aware that he was trying to send it on to her. She cleared her mind to receive it.

Selma says she likes … but … came the message in fragments, along with a vague image that could have been any of them.

I’m sorry, Milton, Cindy sent back, I couldn’t make that out. What does Selma like?

Selma says she likes … … but it doesn’t like her came the thought, clearer this time but still not quite clear enough. The image remained unchanged.

That was better, Cindy sent, trying to be encouraging, but I still didn’t quite get it.

“You’re not listening!” Milton exclaimed out loud, clearly frustrated. He was looking directly at Cindy so it was clear who he was sending to.

“I’m sorry Milton, I’m trying,” she said, also out loud.

Selma intervened, saying “Don’t get frustrated Milton, it takes a little practice. You’ll be spinging like mad before the day’s out, I promise you. Try again, and this time you need to think about the connection between you and Cindy – you may see it as a kind of silvery line joining the two of you when you speak. Think about that, and imagine it’s a wire and you’re sending thoughts along it like a current. Off you go.”

Cindy waited expectantly as Milton thought about what Selma had said and tried to put it into practice.

Selma says … came the thought, clearer this time.

That’s better! Cindy sent, nodding appreciatively. Keep it up!

Milton was clearly concentrating very hard. Selma says she likes chocolate cake but it doesn’t like her! By the end of the sentence it was as clear as a bell and Milton was looking very pleased with himself.

That’s great! Well done, sent Cindy, and who shall I send it to next?

Oh yeah, he sent back, and turned to look at George making it pretty obvious (although George was the only one left to be fair, so it was kind of obvious already.) Milton turned back to Cindy and visibly strained. Cindy was a little unclear on whether the image was coming from Milton or if she was just imagining George’s face herself because she knew it was going to be him, but she decided to just go with it.

Brilliant, well done Milton. She broke contact with him and turned to George.

Selma says she likes chocolate cake … she began

But it doesn’t like her. Yes, I got it. Came the message back from George, clear as a bell.

It was only much later that Cindy thought to wonder how he had known that – as far as she knew no-one had communicated the message out loud or sent it to him at this point.

And who shall I send it to? He continued.

Oh, right, sorry, sent Cindy, and sent through an image of Jane.

Of course, he sent, somehow managing to sound sarcastic in his tone of … well, thought, she figured.

Selma interrupted a moment later. “Who has the thought, what was it, and where is it due to go next?” She said.

Jane jumped up. “It’s me! I was last. It was that you like chocolate cake but it doesn’t like you, and I was meant to send it on to Milton.”

“Well done,” said Selma. “Right, now we’re going to introduce another dimension to the game. What I want you to do this time is the same as before, but as we sping around the circle I want anyone who doesn’t have the thought to be trying to find it out from whoever has it, or if you don’t get the thought but you get the image instead I want you to sping the person who’s meant to be getting it next and tell them you’ve intercepted. We’ll do a couple of rounds of this and then I’ll tell you how to make it harder for people to do the intercepting. Let’s go.”

This time Cindy watched the people in the circle for reactions to see if she could anticipate where the message was. She thought she got the sense it was with Natalie, so she quickly slipped into mindspace and tried to intercept. At first she saw nothing, but, drawing her focus in, she thought she could see a line running from Natalie to George. George was looking at this shoes, giving nothing away, and Natalie was equally cautious, but Cindy was sure she identified the contact. So, how to intercept it? She imagined sending her own line out to connect to the one she could now see clearly between Natalie and George.

Sure enough, she found she could plug in to the line. … could even be one of you … she heard, and with it clearly saw an image of Jane. Oddly, Cindy found she could also detect from the image some of what Natalie seemed to think about Jane – she was plumper in Natalie’s image than in real life, Cindy thought, and somehow looked a little daft. Cindy wasn’t too keen on this, but decided to keep it to herself. She kept her focus on George now, and waited for him to send the message to Jane. Being in mindspace and focused already, she saw the line stretch out to connect to her and Jane, bless her, couldn’t help but react with a little gasp and a big smile. This time Cindy listened from the start.

Remember, children, guard your thoughts, as you don’t know who might be listening in. It could even be Cindy, George sent to Jane, sending an image of Cindy towards her, and this time it was clearly shaped by George to be a caricature – Cindy’s nose wasn’t that big, for a start, and she only had a few freckles – not that thick band of big blotches from one cheek to another. And she certainly wasn’t cross-eyed!

“Selma?” she said aloud.

“Yes, Cindy?”

“I think I’ve intercepted the message.”

“Go on then,” Selma said expectantly.

I think you said “Remember, children, guard your thoughts, as you don’t know who might be listening in. It could even be one of you” she finished pointedly, with a look across to George, who looked back at her with a smart alec expression. “Natalie sent it to George, and then George was sending it to Jane with an image of me.”

“Yes, well done. I had noticed that as well,” said Selma, “It wasn’t a very good image, was it George?” She looked accusingly at him.

George had the courtesy to look embarrassed at least.

“Ok, let’s keep it friendly. Well done Cindy by the way – do you want to tell the others how you intercepted?”

“I think I know,” Milton cut in, “I nearly had it myself. She saw the line between Natalie and George and plugged her own line into it. When she saw who was going to get it next she was ready.”

The others looked impressed. “Well done Milton!” exclaimed Selma. “Now you see, children, this is a good example of how different people have different strengths. Although you struggled with spinging at first Milton you seem to be a natural with the more receptive skills.”

“Yes, that makes sense,” said Milton, obviously very pleased, “I didn’t have any trouble plugging in to Rebecca when she showed us …” his voice trailed off as it all came back. The other children started looking perturbed as well. Selma intervened quickly.

“Yes, that’s right,” She said. “Listening to a mindshare and plugging into mindspeak are much the same, although the latter is harder, so well done you.” Milton looked pleased again, albeit still a bit shaken by the memory. “And well done Cindy,” she continued, “Did anyone else get it?”

“I haven’t really had a chance because you sent to me first.” Said Natalie. Selma nodded.

“I didn’t. But I know what to do now, can we try it again?” Asked Jane.

“Yes, we’ll do a couple more and then I’ll teach you how to guard.

They did three more cycles. Cindy picked up the thread each time but let the others have a go. Milton got the first one (it was Jane sending to George). Natalie got the second, and George got the third (although Cindy could tell Milton had picked it up as well and, like her, was giving the others a chance. Jane was yet to get one, and was starting to look a bit fed up. On the fourth try, Selma sent to Cindy first.

She had an idea. She sent the message (it was “all horses have four legs, but not all things with four legs are horses”) to Natalie with an image of Milton, but as she was sending it, she tried to send a little side nudge to Jane, by imagining a tiny splinter line coming off the connection between her and Natalie.

It seemed to work. Jane’s eyes popped wide like saucers and she jumped up excitedly.

“Ooo, miss, miss, Selma!” she exclaimed, waving her arm frantically in the air, “I got it! It’s Cindy sending to Natalie. Something about horses!”

Selma couldn’t suppress a small chuckle at Jane’s blatant excitement. “Yes,” she said, smiling at her, “Well done. That was very good. And very impressive, all of you,” she said to the group, adding particularly using a covert nudge there, Cindy to Cindy alone. Cindy blushed at being found out, but said nothing.

“Right,” she said, “Blocking. Now, who can describe what happens when you sping someone?”

Milton answered first. “It’s like you connect with a mental pipe … or wire. Kind of like a glowing silver one.”

“That’s right, and you intercept by …?”

Jane cut in. “You connect your own wire to their wire!”

“Yes. So, who wants to have a guess how you defend against it?”

There was silence for a moment.

“There’s two things you can do, if that helps,” Selma coaxed.

George broke the silence. “I guess,” he hazarded, “Logically, if there’s two things, one is to make it hard to intercept when you’re discovered, and the other would be to not get discovered in the first place.”

“That’s right,” said Selma, encouragingly, “Go on.”

“Well,” George continued, “I guess for the first one you need to somehow make your mindline hard to plug into. Put a shell around it or something. And for the second, um, I don’t know. Somehow you need to do the mental equivalent of whispering I suppose?”

“That’s exactly right!” Said Selma, clapping her hands together once. “That’s exactly what you do. The way I think about it is that mindspace is a very visual kind of place. You imagine things as pictures, and you can use this to shape the way it works. So, for example, to make your mindline hard to break, what do you think you’d do?”

“I know! I know!” Jane, of course, “You imagine like a hard shell on it!”

“Brilliant!” Exclaimed Selma. “Well done, Jane! And to make it hard to find?”

There was silence around the circle again. It was Natalie who broke it this time. “You’d have to … hide it somehow. If it’s visual, I guess, you could imagine covering it over with something?”

Selma nodded, impressed. “Yes. That will work, and it’s one of the best ways. There are others, and you’ll no doubt work out your own best technique, but, armed with those two suggestions, shall we have another round?”

There was a chorus of assent, and the children got to work.

Chapter 17: Dinnertime Chat

“That was – mmph – cool,” Milton said with a mouthful of food. The five of them were sat around a table in the common room having their dinner after a day spent practicing mindspeaking, blocking, and intercepting. All of them were in good spirits with the exception of George, who was being a bit quiet and reserved. “How about when I broke in on the chat you and Jane were having Nat?!? Couldn’t block me could you!”

“Natalie.” Natalie corrected, then continued, “No, I sure couldn’t. You’re really good with that Milton. Better than Cindy in my view.”

Milton beamed, but Jane piped up with “Are you kidding? He’s good,” turning to Milton, “You’re good, very good, I grant you,” back to Natalie, “But better than Cindy? No chance. She could just cut through any block. Remember when all three of us tried to block her and she just smashed through?”

“Yes,” said Natalie a bit huffily, “I do remember. But it’s just brute force. Milton has some finesse at least.”

“Don’t be mean!” Jane began, ready to leap to Cindy’s defence, when Cindy cut in.

“That’s OK Jane, I don’t think it’s mean,” And then turning to Natalie, “I agree. Milton has a really classy way of doing it; really subtle and spylike. I could learn a lot from you on that Milt.” Natalie looked annoyed rather than placated by Cindy’s words, but she ignored that. Milton, on the other hand, looked like if he smiled any wider his face would split in half.

“Thanks, Cind, you’re really kind. But Jane has a point – your strength is just awesome.”

And I don’t think Natalie likes that very much, Jane added privately to Cindy, using her newly learnt shielding.

“Oh come on, don’t go on about it, please,” Cindy replied to Milton. She was finding this whole power thing was getting a bit awkward and embarrassing.

George spoke up. “Why shouldn’t we talk about it, powergirl? Even Dave was saying how strong you are.”

“‘Powergirl’! Lol!” Natalie clearly thought this was hilarious.

George continued. “It’s true though, right? The rest of us wouldn’t have a chance against Cindy.”

“What does that matter George? We’re all on the same side,” Milton said as he loaded another forkful of food and waved it in the air discursively.

“Hmm.” George seemed unsure.

“What?” Asked Jane.

“Did you notice that all day we were with Selma we didn’t see any of the other agents or whatever they are? Where do you think Dave, Louise and Christof were?”

The others looked thoughtful. Natalie seemed to reach the same conclusion as George first, and before the others had the chance to catch up the thought came to all of them from George: That’s right, they’re busy wiping the twins’ minds.

Jane looked shocked. Cindy had worked out what he was driving at just before he said it. Milton was quiet, but then George said out loud, “Only I got that sping Milton,” so Milton said aloud to the group “I had thought of that earlier this afternoon, but I kind of put it to the back of my mind because I was getting so caught up in the stuff we were doing. He’s probably right though.”

“You know I am,” replied George, “and I don’t know, I just don’t think the sides are that clear cut.”

Cindy spoke up. “But you saw that hideous … thing … and you felt that horrible woman. They’re the enemy for sure. And have you seen anything like that coming from any of the agents?”

“No, no I haven’t. But then it’s not exactly being Father Christmas wiping peoples’ minds to keep your operation secret, is it?” Natalie was nodding slowly as George spoke.

“No it’s not,” Cindy agreed, “But then what choice do they have? I don’t know, it all kind of adds up for me. There’s a threat to the whole galaxy, if everyone found out about it it’s not just that you’d have a massive panic, you’d also make it impossible to defend against because all the bad people with talent would be contacting the Turgs once they knew they were there. How could you stop that? At least keeping it secret means only the people the Turgs approach become a problem. And the Turgs have no way of knowing if the person they approach is someone who’s likely to be influenced or not. They’d probably just freak out or tell them to get lost. I mean, I did.”

“You already said you didn’t have a choice with that though – you had to do something, you said,” said Natalie.

“No, not then, the first time.”

“What first time?”

“The Turgs approached me before I came here,” Cindy admitted after a brief pause. “They tried to get me to help them. I said no.”

There was a stunned silence around the table. Jane mindspoke first, with are you sure you should be telling us this Cind? Followed shortly by Milton, out loud, with “You spoke to a Turg? What happened?”

“And why didn’t you tell us?” added Natalie pointedly.

I don’t know, but I’ve said it now. Cindy sent back to Jane, then “I did, Milt, and I don’t know why I didn’t mention it Natalie, it just didn’t feel like I should. I guess the times I did think of it I didn’t want to freak you guys out, and the times we were, well, being freaked out anyway, I wasn’t thinking about it.”

“So what happened, then?” Insisted Milton.

“Well, not long after Dave first contacted me …”

“Oh, was it Dave who contacted you first? It was Louise for me,” interrupted Jane.

“Was it?” Said Milton, “I was Dave. You two?”

“Dave,” Said George.

“Same here,” added Natalie.

“Just me with Louise then,” Jane concluded, “fair enough. Anyway, you were saying Cind?”

“There’s not much to tell, really. The Turg approached me – it seemed to have difficulty with the language at first, but then it started offering me like my own planet and everything. I knew what it was because I’d already had the long chat with Dave – did you guys get that? Where he told you about everything? Louise in your case I guess Jane.”

A chorus of nods.

“Yeah, well,” She continued, “So I guessed what was going on, and the Turg knew I knew and seemed to get annoyed. And the point is I could tell that it was an evil thing. Not like psycho killer evil, but just, I don’t know, cold. Unfeeling. Nasty. And since then I’ve been pretty clear who the enemy is.”

“So what did you do about it?” Asked Milton.

“Well, I got rid of it. I guess I pushed it away,” admitted Cindy, almost guiltily.

“Oh, so that wasn’t the first time you saw off a Turg,” commented Natalie, “No wonder you seemed to know what you were doing when Dave and Louise needed help.”

I didn’t, you know, Cindy sent to Jane conspiratorially, whilst saying out loud “I guess. But it was very different. Well, actually, I guess both times were stupidly scary. But in different ways. Sort of. I don’t know,” she finished lamely.

Jane was as instantly supportive and helpful as ever: “Well that must have been horrendous. Alone, and knowing less about the whole thing than we did in the room, and no Dave or Louise to step in. I don’t blame you for not mentioning it Cind, I think I’d want to forget it just as soon as I could.”

“I don’t know, it’s kind of relevant. It might have been worth knowing that one of us had experience with this ‘enemy’” George said, “I guess you didn’t think it was important enough to tell us. Or that we were important enough to tell.”

Cindy became aware of Milton spinging George but in an unguarded way with a nudge to each of them to tune in.

Look, I don’t know what your problem is George, and why you keep trying to stir up trouble, but we’re all in this together, and whatever you say, we’re all on the same side. If you don’t think you are then we better tell Dave and the others and you can work it out with them. But if you are with us then start acting like it and stop having a go at Cindy. I’m sick of it.

I agree, chimed in Jane, leave her alone. She hasn’t done anything to you and she can’t help being what she is. Get over it.

George looked chastened. Natalie said nothing, but her normally haughty expression got even haughtier with the arching of an eyebrow and a narrowing of the eyes.

For what it’s worth, George, I haven’t got any problem with you. I think this is hard for all of us, and we’re all going to deal with it differently, Cindy sent privately to George.

George was thoughtful. You’re kind, Cindy. Probably kinder than I deserve, he sent, and left it at that despite Cindy asking what he meant.

Conversation turned to lighter topics after that while the children finished their meal. It was only at the end that Milton said “One thing though, well, two really …”

“What’s that?” asked Jane.

“I’m going to ask Dave when I next see him what happened with the twins. And Rebecca.”

They all nodded, and with perfect timing, in walked Dave.

---

“Well?” said Milton.

“Well what?” Dave replied, clearly puzzled.

“Oh, sorry, I thought maybe you were, you know, listening.”

Dave sighed, suddenly looking a little older. Cindy noticed how tired he seemed. “No,” he said, “But I understand the suspicion. We don’t monitor every conversation or anything, just what we need to for security reasons. Most of the monitoring we do is just for any kind of loud psychic noises if you like. If you guys are having a chat amongst yourselves, either out loud or in mindspeak, and we’re not there listening, then it’s amongst yourselves, I promise you.”

“We were talking about what happened to the twins,” George said, “And Milton mentioned Rebecca as well.”

“Oh,” Dave sighed, still more deflated. “Well, I’ll start with Rebecca. There’s no change. We can’t seem to reach her – it’s like someone’s put a kind of block around her mind that we can’t break through and she can’t get out of. She’s physically stable, and we can keep her fed and alive, but that’s small comfort if we can’t figure out how to release her.”

There was a moment while the children digested this. Jane visibly shuddered at the thought of it.

“And the twins?” Natalie asked. “Have you wiped their minds?”

“No. No, we haven’t,” said Dave with heavy resignation, “But we may have to.”

“So where are they then?” asked George a bit accusingly.

“They’re in a special section of the compound undergoing counselling. We run tests to see if we can let them go home without doing a … a wipe … but under close monitoring instead. It takes a while. And another problem we have is we’re down one in the number of people who can do the monitoring because of Rebecca’s … situation …”

Dave was clearly struggling, and Cindy felt sorry for him.

“It’s ok Dave, we understand the burden on you,” she said, and some of us more than others she added privately.

Dave looked gratefully at her. “Thanks, Cindy, these are tough times. But look, let’s focus on positive things when we can. How was your first proper training day?”

Milton changed his demeanour immediately. Brilliant! He sent to Dave, with a nudge to each of the others. I mean, I started slow but we learnt loads!

Evidently so, Dave sent back to them all with a smile in his mental tone. Well done.

Yes, we played a lot of fun games and all became jolly good psychic spies, George sent, heavy with sarcasm.

“Well,” said Dave out loud, ignoring the sarcastic element of George’s message and adopting his more usual authoritative tone, “That’s great. That’s what we’re trying to achieve after all. Ok, your PCDs are locked down but there’s a library of streams for you to choose from on the Adriá intranet, so help yourselves if you want after tea; you can watch something on the training room wall together or head back to your respective quarters for some private time if you prefer. Be back here at the common room for breakfast tomorrow at 0800 ready to fuel up for another big day’s training.” And with that, he strode out, regaining his composed air although not without effort it seemed to Cindy. She shot a thought off to George.

Why do you have to keep pushing? What is it with you, George?

George seemed thoughtful again, and then Cindy sensed him reaching a conclusion.

Sping me when we get back to our rooms and I’ll tell you.

Shortly after, the children left the common room table. Jane and Milton decided to go watch a stream in the training room, while Natalie, George and Cindy all made their excuses and went back to their respective quarters.

Chapter 18: All About George

George?

Hi Cindy.

You said to contact you, so here I am.

Well, you wanted an explanation why I’ve been so, you know, awkward.

Only because you don’t seem very happy.

I’m not. Tell me Cindy, how’s it been like growing up for you? Do you have a lot a friends, a nice family, things like that?

Cindy wondered where this was going. Well, not a lot of friends as such. I get along fine with most people I guess – she thought about Jacinta for a moment then quickly put it out of her mind – but I only really have one really good friend. And as for family, there’s just me and my Dad but we get along really well. Why?

I guessed as much. Not exactly the widest social circle, is it? Did you ever wonder why? No, don’t answer, let me have a guess – you never had a lot of friends because you always felt different from everyone else, am I right?

Yes, I guess so.

And now you know why.

Cindy thought for a moment. It hadn’t really occurred to her in that way. What, because I’m, you know …

Psychic. It’s ok to say it you know.

Yes, ok, is that what you mean then?

Well, what do you think?

Cindy thought about it. It did make a certain kind of sense, and the more she looked back on things the more she made connection between the fact that she felt different and the fact that, as it turned out, she actually was different. Yes, you could be right. But what of it?

And your Dad, always there to support you, right? Good relationship?

Yes, he’s brilliant. Cindy felt a momentary pang at that, thinking about how much she missed her Father.

Well, things were a little different for me. I figured out early on that I was different, and then I figured out why. I spoke to my parents about it when I was just eight years old.

Cindy felt the pain and resentment coming down the mindline. What did they say?

Well, unlike you, my relationship with my parents wasn’t brilliant. They thought I was making it up. Called me a liar.

But couldn’t you, you know, prove it somehow?

Yes. That’s what I did.

So they knew you weren’t lying then!

Yes. Instead, that’s when they became scared of me. That’s when they started treating me like a freak.

Cindy was taken aback. She had tried to work out previously why she hadn’t opened up to her father about her newfound talents, but she hadn’t, and that was that. Partly, she hadn’t really had time to think about it before she found herself heading off for this training. But she did know that if she had spoken to him, he would have been confused and unsure, but he would have believed her, and been on her side with it.

Oh, she sent, that must have hurt.

Oh it did, but it gets worse. They were afraid, and it made them nasty. They wouldn’t let me out, kept calling me a liar, told the school I was making trouble at home and making things up all the time. It wasn’t fun. And so then it started carrying on into school, the other kids all bullying me, picking on me, calling me Curious George and worse, and meanwhile I could see what was going on in their minds – I mean, they really hated me. All of them. Can you imagine what that’s like?

Cindy thought back to the time when she saw into Jacinta’s mind and was surprised by the venom there. Yes, I think I can a bit. It must have been awful.

It went on for years. And it was worse than awful. It was … hold on …

The connection broke off for a moment, but just as it did Cindy became aware that George was sobbing. Tears started to form in her own eyes in sympathy. What a rotten ride he’d had!

Cindy?

I’m here George.

Sorry. The thing is, I haven’t been able to talk to anyone about this. Ever. By the time they recruited me I was pretty down on the whole world, you know? All I wanted to do was hide away.

I don’t blame you. I’d probably feel the same. So what made you agree to come?

I guess … I guess hope is the last thing you lose.

There was a pause, and then he continued, sounding slightly more resolute.

Dave gave me hope that there were other people like me, people who might understand, you know?

Yes, yes, I do! Cindy sent back, throwing in a bit of sympathy and encouragement in the thought. I think that’s right. You can fit in here. But you have to stop, I don’t know, challenging all the time.

I know. That’s kind of why I’m talking to you now. I want to, but it’s not easy. You see, after years of being picked on, bullied, having no safe place even when I went home I’ve come to kind of, I don’t know, hate the talent. All it’s ever done for me is hurt me. Do you see? It’s the enemy at some fundamental level and now I’m here being trained to use the very thing I’ve grown to hate. And the people training me have that same ‘talent’! So it’s hard for me to trust them. It’s hard for me to trust anyone.

But you are talking to me now …

Yes, I am. The thing is, I can see into you – you have a good heart, Cindy. There’s something kind of … shining … inside you. It makes me think I can trust you, and I think I need a friend.

Oh George, you can trust me, I promise. And I am your friend. I’ll help you however I can.

Thanks Cind. Another pause down the line. Th-thanks.

It’s ok, George; everything is going to be ok.

---

The rest of that week they did more work on honing their mindspeaking and shielding skills. As Natalie had observed, Milton was a natural at it after a slow start, showing great skill at the finer subtleties of shielding, nudging and intercepting. Natalie and Jane were both competent, although lacked Milton’s finesse. Cindy thought Natalie’s assessment of her was pretty fair – brute force she could manage, but she had a lot to learn when it came to the gentler, more covert use of the talent.

George was the big surprise. After their conversation Cindy saw that he was really trying to be more positive. He was also quite remarkably talented. Where everyone had been making a big deal about Cindy’s very obvious psionic power, she was coming to realise that behind his defensiveness George possessed an awful lot of strength as well. In some ways, it was comforting for her to realise that there were varying degrees of the skill – it wasn’t like you had it at a certain level and then there was Cindy, the freak, way out beyond that; no, as Rebecca had said on the first session, there were different levels, and Cindy was sure she’d see strengths in the others as they began to work on different skills.

By the end of the week they were all competent at sending, receiving, shielding and, to an extent, intercepting thoughts. They were also all getting along quite well. It was like they all found a comfort in being with other people who were in some way the same as themselves, much as George had said. George, too, was getting along with the others better – even smiling from time to time no less, and he spent less time looking at his shoes. He regularly communicated to Cindy on sidelines, and they quickly got into the habit that if she thought he was sounding a bit sarcastic or just generally a bit negative, she gave him a nudge, and, to his credit, he’d stop, think, and rephrase himself.

On the Thursday Dave came into one of the classes to tell them that the twins had been sent home under observation. As a result, he had said, they wouldn’t be seeing a lot of Christof for a little while. It felt like a positive thing that no mindwiping had taken place, although it did give Cindy pause, reminding her that the experience with Rebecca, the woman and the Turg had been a pretty big deal. She felt it was important not to lose sight of that.

Friday night was call home night. Cindy was taken to her pretend room again and her Dad came up on the screen.

“Hi Daddy!”

“Hi monkey, how’s it going?”

“Yeah, really good. The school’s really nice, and the kids are really nice. I’m fitting in really well – you’d be proud of me.” Most of that was true, she thought. And, at another level, she thought it was a bit strange to be have this, well, vocal conversation over the PCD. It felt a bit, kind of, retro.

“So no Jacintas yet then?” Mr Parker asked with a raised eyebrow.

Cindy laughed. “No, not even close. Well, there’s one girl who’s maybe a bit offish, but not mean or anything.”

“That’s good. Hey, I’ve got someone here who wants to talk to you.”

Tess! Awesome. “Put her on!”

“Okay, okay, hold your horses. Geez, no time for your poor, old Dad, just swanning off chatting to your friends, I don’t know”

“Yep, that’s right, now less you, more her – come on Daddy, move aside!”

Mr Parker laughed as he stepped aside and straight afterwards Tess appeared on the screen.

“Hey you,” she said, “how’s it … Jason Radler? Really?!?”

Cindy was confused for a moment then remembered the picture on the wall behind her. “Oh, yeah, I know. I guess that’s what my exchange counterpart is into. Lame, huh?”

“Tragically lame. So how are you?” Tess asked with a very slight pointedness – so Cindy would know what she meant but her Father wouldn’t pick anything up in the background.

“Fine, fine. It’s all going well.”

“Ok. What’s the school like?”

“Well, not like ours. It’s a lot more modern for a start – it’s not trying to be like something out of colonial America. Kind of drab though. But the other kids are nice.”

“That’s good. Are you fitting in, or have they already figured out what a space cadet you are and given you a wide berth?”

“Fitting in fine, thanks very much, I have fifteen new best friends. You’ve dropped out of the top ten. Soz.”

“Fine by me. I’ve been mainly hanging out with Jacinta this week anyways.”

This was too much, and they both laughed. Tess continued, “Speaking of witch girl, she’s been trying to stir things up since you’ve been gone.”

“Let me guess,” Cindy replied, “telling everyone how lame I am, how I’m running away from my problems, how I’ll still be an outcast wherever I go, right?”

“Spot on. Predictable, isn’t she?”

“Yeah. Well, and she said the same things to me before I left, remember.”

“Oh yeah, so she did. Don’t worry about it though. No one listens.”

Cindy knew this for the half-truth it was, well aware that some people did, but she was grateful to Tess for the effort. “It’s ok, I’ve dealt with her for long enough now. It doesn’t bother me that much. I just don’t get why she hates me so. But let’s not talk about her, how’s things with you? How’s the new workstream?”

Conversation continued for a while with Tess raving about how great everything Sports Science focussed was already. She was clearly excited by it, being uncharacteristically chatty, and Cindy was happy about that as it meant she didn’t have to dip into her pretend PEEP story too much. She still had a hard time with the deception element of that. Too soon it was time to end the comm.

“Well, I’ll let you say goodbye to your Dad now. Look after yourself, alright? Stay focussed.”

“I will. Great to talk to you Tess. Come back on another comm. soon.”

“I will. I miss you over here you know.”

Cindy was slightly shocked – that was not something Tess would normally say. “I miss you too. Well, one week down, 23 to go. Not long now,” she said with a smile.

Tess smiled back. “Catch you later.”

“Bye.”

Mr Parker came back on the screen. “Well, I think our time is up monkey – I better let you go.”

“Sorry we didn’t get to talk much Daddy”

“No no, that’s ok, I’m glad you got to have a chat with Tess, I really am, and we’ll catch up more next time.”

“Ok. Love you Daddy.”

“Love you too, beautiful. And where are you most beautiful?”

Cindy smiled. “On the inside.”

“That’s right. And never forget it. Cindy?”

“Daddy?”

“Never forget it,” he said, and with that they said their goodbyes and the comm ended.

Chapter 19: Fruit Salad

“So how many people lift the apple?”

It was Monday morning, and Cindy was sitting with Dave back in the assessment room with the table from when she first arrived. The children had been told they would be taken for some individual skills-based training today, and Cindy had gone with Dave to work on telekinesis apparently. Dave was looking a bit better than when she’d seen him on Thursday, although he still had big bags under his eyes. He was clearly still very busy working on various things – Rebecca, aiding with the defences against the Turgs and their human ally, maybe monitoring the twins, to name just the few Cindy knew about. She assumed the shadowy ‘Controller’, whoever he was, must be helping with these things as well, but Cindy didn’t know if she thought very much of him. She understood the story Dave told her but still had issues with what he had done. She’d had time to think about things over the weekend but still had a lot of questions in her mind.

The weekend had been a surprise – given the limited time, Cindy had assumed they would just be working constantly throughout the six months, but no, they were given free time on the weekends. Selma had explained that they believed a balance of work and rest was the best way to learn effectively, and they went with the traditional five days on, two off approach of old earth and the majority of planets in the galaxy. The children had spent their time watching streams on their PCDs and in the common room, exploring the facility, and getting to know each other better. George continued to come out of his shell and Cindy was delighted to see the others were responding to him better as well. She couldn’t believe how quickly things seemed to be turning around for him, and was hugely happy about it.

Natalie remained a bit aloof and remote from the others, although Cindy noted that Milton was very keen to talk with her at any opportunity it seemed. She suspected there may be a bit more to that than just wanting to be friendly; after all, Natalie was extremely pretty: tall, slim, that lovely auburn hair. It was also clearly the latest style (although Cindy didn’t pay too much attention to that stuff herself), and she was obviously up to date with galactic trends in other areas as well. She wouldn’t have to do a double-take to know who Jason Radler was, that was for sure. Yes, Cindy thought it was pretty clear that Milton had taken a bit of a shine to Natalie. She thought that was funny … she would soon find out that it wasn’t that funny at all.

“On the first try?” Dave interrupted her thoughts to answer her question with a question, which he then answered himself. “Fewer than half, although it’s not uncommon. But, as I think you may have guessed, we’ve never had someone blow it up before.”

“Sorry about that.” Cindy was genuinely embarrassed.

“Don’t be silly. If anything it was a good thing – it gave us a clearer indication of the level of power we’re dealing with with you. So, on that note, why don’t we see what else you can do?”

Cindy felt a thrill of excitement. “Ok then, what do you want me to do?”

“Let’s start with another apple. This time I’ll keep it in the desk with the trapdoor closed to contain the mess!”

What do you want me to do with it? Blow it up again? Cindy surprised herself by switching to mindspeak almost accidentally.

Yes. Do you remember what you did?

Sure. Let me have a try.

Cindy flipped into mindspace. She focussed on the desk drawer, and sure enough there was the apple. Rather than try and lift it this time she surrounded it with the silver glow and imagined it tightening around the apple like a shoelace being pulled very taut. Just like last time, the skin of the apple seemed to buckle and boil as if it had no place to go, and, more quickly this time, the point came where it almost felt like the apple kind of gave up and surrendered to the force acting upon it. With a wet splat it exploded into pulp, coating the inside of the desk cabinet. As Cindy surfaced she became aware that Dave had been watching what she was doing as she did it.

Impressive, he spinged to her. Ready for something bigger?

Cindy was getting kind of excited by this. Sure! What have you got in mind?

This, sent Dave, walking over to the door and retrieving the biggest watermelon Cindy had ever seen in her life. He set it on the table and then fetched a free standing, transparent plastic screen from behind the door as well. “It could get messy!” he said aloud with a smile. Cindy realised that although Dave was maintaining his authoritative detachment, she wasn’t the only one getting a thrill from this line of experimenting.

Let’s try lifting it first, he suggested, placing the melon on the floor behind the screen.

Cindy waited until Dave returned and then dropped herself into mindspace once more. Everything around her came into vivid, sharp colour as she focussed on it, and she locked on the watermelon. At first, just to see, she tried just surrounding it with a ring of silver and willing it upwards. Nothing happened. Oh well, she thought to herself, worth a try, and instead started doing what she had done with the apple the first time to move it. She envisaged where she wanted the melon to be, then drew a mental ring around where it was and there, and started to pinch.

It was harder this time. Evidently the weight of the object being moved was relevant – that made sense. Cindy fined her focus in and concentrated on squeezing the ring at the base.

The melon started to rock, and then, slowly at first, it started to rise off the ground. Dave looked on with a gleam in his eyes. Cindy kept squeezing, and the melon kept rising.

Can you turn it?

I think so.

Cindy now had the melon where she wanted it, surrounded by a glowing silver ring about four feet off the ground. She mused on how to turn it. Was it just a matter of …

She willed the ring to start turning around. That was easy – it started to spin freely. Annoyingly though, the watermelon sat within the spinning ring, hanging in mid-air, motionless.

Hmm.

Okay, so the ring surrounds it, holds it, squeezes it, but doesn’t, sort of touch it. Cindy puzzled this one for a moment.

I know! She thought, and imagined the spinning ring contracting slightly at opposite sides as it span, almost sending out a little spike or spur.

Sure enough, the silver spikes started to nudge the reluctant (albeit floating) melon into motion. And sure enough, within a few moments, it was slowly turning on its axis. It gradually picked up speed.

Before too long it was turning quickly. A massive watermelon, spinning in mid-air. Cindy almost laughed aloud, and she saw Dave was smiling as well. Go on then, how fast can you get it? He sent.

Cindy, enthused, leapt to the challenge. Alright then, Mr Melon, let’s see how fast you can go, she thought, and started whizzing the spinning ring around as fast as her mind could produce. She increased the spurring as well, creating an almost serrated effect in the ring, gripping ever tighter on the melon so before too long it was spinning as fast as the ring.

“Faster!” Dave said out loud. Cindy got the ring whirring even more.

And more …

And more. It started to make a noise as it span, a kind of bass, thrumming noise. Cindy didn’t notice it was also rising near the top of the plastic screen. Faster! She thought, Faster, faster!

The melon span faster than the eye could follow now. The thrumming noise grew louder and louder. Dave looked on amazed, whereas Cindy was kind of oblivious – just focussed on getting the melon to spin as fast as it possibly could. The noise was getting uncomfortably loud.

The melon explosion was different to the apple one. Where the apple was a reaction to forces pushing in on it, the melon just reached its physical breaking point and started to tear itself apart. Instead of doing it all at once, pieces started peeling off it in quick succession. Great hunks of watermelon rind and flesh splattered themselves all over the room. They were quite fearsome projectiles moving as fast as they were, but fortunately Dave and Cindy were saved from direct hits by the plastic screen. Cindy was laughing too now, as the wildly spinning melon grew smaller and smaller, throwing pieces of itself off as it surrendered to the forces cast upon it by her mind. She kept the silver circle contracting so it remained tight around what was left of the melon until it was all gone but one, last, rapidly spinning seed. Cindy sent a final, power-filled surge at this seed and it shot off like a bullet, and the melon was gone. She let the last point of silver light spin into nothingness.

Cindy and Dave both looked at the results with a kind of dazed expression. The room they stood in was coated with watermelon pulp. Shards of green and splats of pink dripped from every surface. They were covered in it as well where, unnoticed by them in the heat of the moment, watermelon had dropped off the ceiling, or rebounded off walls, or ricocheted over the top of the screen, and hit them. As they became aware of their new, somewhat fruity outfits they looked at each other and laughed.

“Cindy, Cindy, Cindy,” Dave said with mock-exasperation, “What are we going to do with you?”

“Well I guess I could help make fruit salads,” she replied, laughing still.

Dave laughed anew, then after a minute said “Ok, we need to get cleaned up. Nip back to your unit and I’ll meet you back here in, let’s say half an hour, for some more … wait on …” he trailed off as something caught his eye on the far wall. Cindy followed his gaze and saw where he was looking. There was a black mark of some sort where he was looking. No, not a mark, she thought …

A hole. Dave finished. They both walked up to it slowly. It was a small hole in the wall about 2cm across. It hadn’t been there before. Dave reached into a pocket and pulled out a slender PCD stylus. He poked it into the hole and started scratching around inside it. It seemed to go into the concrete about 3cm before he came across something. He wiggled the stylus around until it dislodged something inside the hole.

The last watermelon seed dropped onto the floor.

Dave and Cindy looked at each other. Neither spoke. Finally Dave broke the silence:

“Right. Well. I think we best be careful when we undertake any further tests.”

Sorry, sent Cindy.

You know, you’re going to have to stop saying that. If anyone should be staying sorry it’s me – I have to stop underestimating you. Anyway, as I say, we’ll go get cleaned up and come back here for some more tests. “Some careful ones!” He finished out loud, his smile returning. Cindy felt reassured, and headed off to wash and change.

---

The rest of that day Cindy spent with Dave doing a series of more controlled tests. She lifted a series of differently weighted objects – square blocks made of some kind of metal. Dave didn’t ask her to try and destroy anything further, although they did do a set of what he called ‘projectile tests’, where she had to mentally flick objects at a set of targets around the room. She was interested to note that without the building excitement she had been experiencing when she spun the melon there were no further wall-piercing incidents. That was worth remembering – there was a link between the power and her emotional state. Perhaps it was an adrenalin thing. She asked Dave.

It could be, he replied, quite frankly we don’t know. Knowledge of the talent is in its infancy, really, and of necessity we’ve had to be pretty focussed on developing a clear set of defensive skills without having much time or resource to research the nature of it. Christof has done some work, but The Controller has done the most research on that side of things – because he has a strong interest in learning how it can impact someone, for reasons you know about.

Yes, she did. That was interesting. Will I ever meet him? She sent.

There was a pause before Dave answered. A loaded pause. I’m not sure, was all he finally managed. Cindy decided not to push it, so she changed the subject:

I was thinking, Dave …

Yes?

This work we’re doing, it feels like it takes quite a lot of power …

Yes, it does.

And I have quite a lot to use you keep telling me …

Yes, you sure do. You buried a watermelon seed knuckle deep in a wall for pete’s sake!

“So how come I’m not shining out like a beacon to every Turg between here and Andromeda?” She finished aloud.

“Ah,” Dave responded in kind, “I wondered where this line of questioning was going. Well, along with a couple of other rooms in this compound – not including the common rooms as you can probably guess – this training room is surrounded by a fiendishly complicated defence shield mechanism. We have one operative always directing power into a central … kind of like an electricity substation thing. Do you know what I mean by that?”

Cindy thought she kind of did, largely from talking to her Father about his work. She nodded.

“Well, there’s a way that the defensive mindshield gets amplified and spread out across the three rooms to form a very strong, very effective block. Scrying into these rooms is pretty much impossible.”

“So why not have that across the whole facility?”

“Simply because we don’t know how to do it,” Dave admitted. “The person who built it is no longer available to explain their construct or build us any more.”

“It was Nancy, right?” She asked.

“Yes, it was Nancy.”

There you go, she thought, I bet that’s why he wants to work out how to fix her. So he can use her. For the galaxy. She gave a mental snort. She wasn’t spinging anything, but Dave gave her a sidelong look anyway, although evidently decided not to say anything, other than:

“Well, that’s enough training for today. You’re off for the evening – back to the common room tomorrow at 0800 for some group work.” And he strode off out of the room.

Chapter 20: Fun and Games – Not.

The next couple of weeks went along relatively uneventfully. There was a mix of group and individual training, and the children began to form bonds with each other. As George came more and more out of his shell it became more and more evident that he was a force to be reckoned with in terms of the scale of his power. Only Cindy had more raw strength, and George countered that with a natural flair for subtlety and cunning that he had developed through his years of trying not to let his power make him stand out. Whenever there was group training that took the form of a game it would normally come down to a showdown between Cindy and George. It was all good natured now since the night they had their chat, and although Cindy usually won, there were no hard feelings.

Well, no hard feelings from George anyway. And none from Jane either. Natalie, however, was a different story. Cindy sensed pretty clearly how envious she was growing of the greater skills of her and George, and it was a sign of Natalie’s character that she made no effort to hide her displeasure. Annoyingly, Milton started sharing this view; fuelled largely, as far as Cindy was concerned, by his interest in the older girl.

Things got a bit heated one Thursday afternoon when the children were doing group work with Selma. They were in one of the two training rooms at the facility – not the one with the table where Cindy had been doing her fruit tricks, rather it was a bigger room above where Cindy thought the store cupboard that Rebecca hid in during her assessment was. It was set up a bit like a school gymnasium at one end, with ladders on the walls, a basketball hoop, a wooden floor area with a net that could be used for various ball sports, and an area beyond that that had a padded floor that they were told was the combat training area. The other end had various tables and chairs and was strewn with boxes of what looked mainly like innocuous board games and puzzles.

The game they were playing on this day was a version of tiddlywinks where the mind was used to bounce the counters into a cup, rather than flicking with another counter. Natalie, Milton and Jane all still struggled to lift the counter, with Milton only able to make it inch along the table towards the cup without lifting up at all. Jane could get it to stand on its edge and do little hops. Natalie could get it to hover, but steering it towards the cup while in the air was just at the limit of her power.

George and Cindy, on the other hand, had no trouble with it at all. So Selma moved them onto larger and larger items, and before too long the pair of them had moved onto the court area and were playing a type of mental volleyball. Jane broke off from the tiddlywinks exercise to go and watch, and soon she was cheering them on. Cindy noticed from the corner of her eye the disdainful glare Natalie gave the three of them, and then, very slightly, she got the sense that Natalie was spinging Milton about something. She brushed it off and returned her focus to the game.

George had just sent the ball towards her side of the court with a sharp mental blow, and it bounced quickly about three metres to Cindy’s right. She quickly spun a silver mindline lasso around it and flicked it back towards his side of the court. Then, just as it was about to sail past him half a meter to his left, Cindy became aware of a very subtle, combined nudge coming from Milton and Natalie, and the ball changed its course suddenly and smacked square onto the side of George’s head. Instinctively, George responded by firing it straight at Milton like a bullet. It was only an instant away from hitting him in the shoulder and no doubt knocking him for six with the speed it was going by the time Cindy had gathered her wits enough to nudge it off course, where it then went on to smash into the tiddlywinks table and send counters, board and indeed table flying everywhere.

“Children! Children! Time out!” Called Selma. “What’s going on here?”

“He was trying to kill me!” Exclaimed Milton. “He deliberately flung the ball at me!”

“That’s because you smacked me in the head with it!” George shouted in self-defence.

“No I didn’t!”

“Actually,” said Cindy, “I think you did. You and Natalie. I felt the nudge.”

“Did you nudge the ball Milton?” Asked Selma.

“Yes, we did,” interjected Natalie defiantly, “It was just a bit of fun – there was no need to respond like that.”

“Well I didn’t think it was fun,” George replied, “You hit me in the head, and it hurt. I responded instinctively. And I don’t think you meant it as fun either – I think you did it because you’re jealous that Cindy and me can do this stuff better than you.”

“Jealous! Of you two?!?” Natalie scoffed derisively, “Why on earth would I be jealous of a pair of freaks like you two? Am I supposed to be jealous of Cindy’s nothing hairstyle or clothes that fashion forgot? Or of your hang-ups and height? Yeah right.”

Before George could reply, Selma stepped in, “Now cut that out Natalie. That’s uncalled for. Apologise.”

“No. I won’t, I … OUCH!! STOP IT!”

“What is it? What’s happening?”

“He’s pinching me! The little swine is pinching me! Inside my head! OWWW!!”

George! Stop it! Cindy sent urgently.

Why should I? Rotten cow.

This won’t help anything! Come on George, this is the old you not the new you. Stop it, you’ll only make her worse!

Cindy breathed a sigh of relief as she sensed George grudgingly relax. But before she could relax too much, and before she could do anything about it, Natalie strode over to where George stood and slapped him. Hard. Right across the face.

“Don’t you ever do something like that to me again you little rodent. You might be stronger with all this mental stuff but I can still take you apart if I have to.”

Before George could do anything he’d regret Selma stepped between them. Back off Natalie, she sent, cold steel in her sping. And George, don’t do it, she sent as Cindy became aware of him gathering force. There was a moment while Selma mentally faced off with the two of them where Cindy could tell just what a pool of power George also had access to. It made her shudder involuntarily without fully understanding why.

After a moment, slowly, considered, and in control once more, George let the tension ease and the power settle back down.

Let’s talk later, Cindy sent to George, as Selma turned to address all of them.

“Right. All of you. Chairs. Now.”

The five children assembled themselves on the training room chairs, Milton and Natalie returning to the tiddlywinks table they had been at and the other three taking position around various other game tables. The tension in the room was palpable, heightened by the fact that everyone there was capable of sensing the emotional state of everyone else. Natalie was glaring at George and Cindy in turn. Jane was glaring at Natalie. Milton was looking embarrassed. George, worryingly, was looking at his shoes. He had a red mark on his right cheek where Natalie has slapped him. Selma looked more annoyed than Cindy had ever seen her as she started to speak.

“Right. I’m not going to get into who started this or what the underlying reasons are because there’s a much more important issue here. I know it’s hard when you’re your age, you’ve been put together with people you might not have chosen to hang out with at school, you’re coming to grips with a talent that frankly is pretty weird and you may not have even known you had, and you’ve only just found out that the whole galaxy is under threat from a race of evil aliens and it’s up to you guys to defend it. Yes. It’s hard. Well, this is what I have to say to you about that.

“Suck it up.

“It’s hard for you, it was hard for the class before you, it’ll be hard for the class after you, and it was hard for me. But you know what? You have to deal with that because, while you’re here, you don’t have any choice. And what that means, more than anything else, is that you have to get along together.”

Here she turned to face Natalie and Milton.

“You two – bullying is something for the other kids to worry about. I know it happens in the playground – leave it in the playground. Fair or not, our expectations of you are a lot higher here than you would have had at school – or at home for that matter. We expect that someone who has lived 11 or 12 years with your talents is more mature than other kids their age because of the insight they’ve had into how the people around them think and feel. Live up to that.” She turned to George.

“And you! You do not do that! Ever! It’s not the first time we’ve had a trainee lash out at another trainee the way you did but it’s sure as heck going to be the last time for this group – do I make myself clear?!?”

George said nothing.

“I’m expecting an answer.” Selma was more forceful than Cindy had thought she was capable of.

“Yes,” George mumbled, his tone subdued and flat.

“Good.”

Are you ok? Cindy sent privately to George but with no reply.

“Ok,” Selma continued, “We don’t expect you to be best friends, but remember that after this you will all be working for the same organisation and sometimes on the same cases, so I suggest you learn to get along. Now let’s get back to work.

George? Cindy tried again.

Leave me alone Cindy, George sent, then, more resigned, I’ll be ok, ok? I just need some time.

Ok then. Basketball?

No. Thanks. Why not play something with Jane?

If you’re sure you’re ok.

Yes, I’m sure. Go on, she’ll love it.

Cindy turned to Jane and within a few moments they were playing a game of checkers with Jane’s counters bouncing a little erratically across the board, but she was clearly enjoying it immensely nonetheless.

After tea that day Jane talked Cindy into watching a stream starring Jason Radler. Apparently he was very much on Jane’s radar and Cindy found her little-girlish enthusiasm both distracting and infectious. The film itself was a piece of brainless drivel as far as Cindy was concerned, an overdone tale of a famous pop star swapping places with an ordinary boy so he could experience a more ‘normal’ life, with Radler taking both roles. By the time it was finished Cindy had already largely forgotten it, but it seemed to tick all the right boxes for Jane.

Oh isn’t he gooooooooorgeous!!! She sent at least ten times while it was on and again when it finished.

Um, yeah, he’s ok I guess, Cindy sent back somewhat disingenuously. Jane gave her a shrewd smile.

Doesn’t float your boat then? Well, thanks for watching it with me anyway.

My pleasure. Well, the company was anyway! And Cindy tried something new – she imagined a big yellow smiley face and sent it along the mindline as she spinged. .

“Sping smiley! I love it!” Jane exclaimed. I mean, I love it …!

Nice one. So what’s your back story then Jane? Can I have a look at your place back on earth like you looked at mine?

For one of the first times Cindy could remember Jane lost her cheery smile and looked miserable and more than a little guarded. No, she sent, I’d rather not if you don’t mind. It’s not a nice place like yours.

That’s ok, I won’t pry. But you know, I wouldn’t judge.

Of course you wouldn’t. I know that, Cind. Then, after a pause, alright, here, take a look … And Cindy felt Jane dropping into mindspace and opening up.

If you’re sure … Cindy sent, and, receiving a mental nod in return, Cindy had a look at the images Jane was sending.

It started with an old building in a dirty street. Concrete stairs led to a split wooden doorway. As they went in, Cindy became aware this was an apartment block. One of the doors they passed as they went up a flight of stairs was open, and Cindy glimpsed a squalid room with trash lying about. When they reached the third floor, the image stopped moving.

This is it, Jane sent, the palace! Cindy could tell she was hiding something behind the humour.

The door opened and the image panned in to a very small, inner city apartment. It was clean and tidy, but the furnishings were clearly very old, some of them patched, others torn and frayed. Next to the food dispensary was something Cindy only recognised from history streams at school. Is that an oven? She sent.

Yes. My Mum insists. She thinks the old ways are best with a lot of things.

Oh, ok. What does she do?

What, for work? Nothing.

Oh, is she ok? Cindy had never heard of an adult not working before. Again, she knew from history that there used to be a thing called welfare for people who were ill or couldn’t find work, but since mankind conquered illness and the stars there were no further instances of these that she knew about.

Jane’s tone was uncharacteristically indignant. She’s fine, ok? She just chooses not to. Lots of people do that on earth. Some people think it’s a bit weird, but it’s just not, ok? Cindy got a sense of internal conflict in Jane’s words.

Of course, of course. It must be great having your Mum around the whole time! What does your Dad do?

I don’t know. We don’t see him.

Oh.

Whatever. Jane’s tone was now terse. So this is the flat. Small, isn’t it.

Well, it’s home, right? Cindy was trying to sound upbeat.

Yes it is. So now you’ve seen it. And with that the mental stream stopped abruptly and the two of them were back in the rec room. Jane was silent, and clearly in a brittle frame of mind.

“Hey,” Cindy said, “I told you I wouldn’t judge and I won’t. I’ve only got one parent as well you know.”

“Really?” Jane’s tone was brighter, as if finding an ally. “Where’s your Dad?”

“At home. It’s my Mum I don’t see,” Cindy replied, adding, silently: and like you, I don’t really want to talk about it. Then she added a smiley to take any sting out of her words.

The wave of relief from Jane was palpable. Thanks Cind, she sent, you do understand. You’re such a nice person.

So are you! I’m glad we ended up here together. I think things will be easier having someone to go through it with.

Me too! Jane sent.

They chatted some more, and then started heading back to their rooms. Along the way they bumped into Natalie and Milton who were heading out of the kitchen block. “Night guys,” Cindy said.

“Night.” Said Milton.

“Yep.” Said Natalie tersely. Cindy let it lie and they continued walking.

I think we need to keep an eye on those two, Jane sent privately.

Agreed.

I’m not sure how much Selma’s talk sunk in – with Natalie in any case. Hey where’s George?

He went back to his quarters straight after tea. He’s ok.

He’s ok with your help I think. He trusts you Cind. Look after him.

I know. Well, I feel for him.

Oh yes? Well I can see why Jason Radler isn’t your type then

Not like that you dufus. No, he … Cindy paused a moment, being careful not to betray any trusts. He’s not had an easy ride.

Well he’s got a good friend in you – I can see why he trusts you. There’s something good about you Cindy. Something inside you.

That’s weird. George said almost exactly the same thing.

Well it’s true, sent Jane with conviction. And we should know. We’re psychic, you know!

Cindy laughed. They’d reached the quarters, so they said their goodnights and retired to their respective huts.

---

George?

Hi Cindy.

Just making sure you’re ok.

I’m fine. I’m not going to let those idiots get to me. And I’ve thought about it and you’re right. I overreacted. That was the old me, and it won’t happen again.

That’s great George. I’m glad to hear it.

Thanks for having my back Cind.

Don’t worry about it. Night George. Thrash you at basketball tomorrow

Lol. Night Cind