Telepath (Hive Mind Book 1) by Janet Edwards Page A

about that area of the Hive. He spent a lot of
time thinking about it, desperately trying to find a pattern to the oddities
there.
    “Yes.” The data feed ended.
Lucas tapped his dataview to turn off the display, and slammed back into his chair.
I didn’t need telepathy to sense his mood. I could almost physically feel his
frustration.
    “Gaius is right,” he said.
“There’s still something wrong about that area. No big trouble in the last two
weeks, but far too many minor things, and they’re spread virtually evenly across
the levels which is highly unusual.”
    “What’s Keith planning to
do about it?”
    “Nothing!” Lucas said
savagely. “Keith says he’s checked there twice already. He’s found nothing because
there’s nothing to find. We should quit bothering him with a statistical anomaly.”
    Lucas thought there was a
wild bee in 600/2600. Keith had tried to find him or her, failed, and given up.
I believed in Lucas. “When we get back to our Hive, do you want me to go over
there and take a look?”
    “No, Amber!” Lucas swung his
chair round to face me. “We’re not staffed yet. You must never go near any
suspect area without a full Strike team guarding you, and especially not near this
one. The pattern is entirely wrong. There’s no obvious motivation factor. It doesn’t
match a single target or two targets working together. It doesn’t distribute
like two independent targets. It doesn’t make any sense at all, which is why
I’m so worried about it.”
    I sipped from my glass,
and put it down on the small table next to me. “When our unit’s operational
then.”
    Lucas considered that. “Yes,
once we’re operational, it would be helpful if our unit takes over responsibility
for area 600/2600. Now Keith’s decided there’s no problem there, it’s impossible
for Gaius to make any progress with it.”
    I let the issue of area
600/2600 drop, and asked the question that had been bothering me for days. “Why
can’t I meet the other true telepaths?”
    “Inadvisable,” said Lucas.
    “Why? Surely they’re the
best people to teach me how to do my job.”
    Both Megan and Adika had reacted
in confusion to this question. I was curious to see how Lucas would respond. He
didn’t disappoint me.
    “I don’t know,” he said.
“I’m imprinted with the fact, but not the reason. Very strange.”
    “I can tell it’s an
imprinted fact, because it has no memories or emotions attached to it.
Imprinted facts usually seem to be very impersonal.”
    “Imprinted facts should always be totally impersonal,” said Lucas. “The data can include objective reasons and
ancillary data, but any private memories and feelings should be strictly
excluded. It’s horribly easy to cause unwanted emotional side-effects when you
use either imprinting techniques or hypnotics. That’s why the teens in Lottery
are encouraged to avoid contact with each other.”
    I was startled by this revelation
of the reason behind the Lottery custom of silence. “It is? You mean some of
the tests use hypnotics.”
    He nodded. “Those interact
with the subconscious, and could escalate a casual flirtation between two of
the subjects into something they’d regret after the hypnotics wore off.”
    That was interesting, but I
didn’t want to be distracted from my original question. “Megan and Adika don’t
know the reason why I shouldn’t meet other telepaths either. Why would all your
imprints exclude it?”
    I watched Lucas’s mind
tackle the issue on multiple levels, the thoughts accelerating to a speed I
couldn’t follow, before reaching a conclusion.
    “To keep the information
from telepaths. You can’t directly read the imprinted data in our minds, but
you can see it in our heads when we think about it. You should try to forget
about this issue, Amber.”
    “You aren’t curious about
what’s being kept secret from us? You aren’t going to try to find out what it
is?”
    “Yes, I’m curious,” said
Lucas,