Chapter 23: Monday, August 9, 2010

Monday, August 9, 2010

Annabelle, we need you out here in the entryway.

Yes, Jake.

She appeared a moment later.

“Annabelle, you need to pretend that you were escorting Mr. Hamilton out the door when he fainted. If he presses you for information, say only that. If he demands that you say more, tell him you have other duties, excuse yourself, and leave.”

“Okay, Jake.”

“Everyone else, go back to where you were when Jan put Hamilton out. Leanne, will you stay here, please? We’ll pretend I called you for help when he fainted.”

“Of course. Don’t forget about the rings on his auditory nerves.”

Jake cringed. He had forgotten. That would have given Hamilton another reason to be suspicious, one that Jake wouldn’t have been able to explain away. He tore the rings open. Everyone but Annabelle and Leanne filed out.

I think we’re ready, Jake sent when everyone was in place. Jan, please release his sleep nerves.

Done, she sent.

Jake took a deep breath, and then he jostled Hamilton’s arm.

“Mr. Hamilton, wake up.”

Hamilton roused quickly and tried to get to his feet. “What happened?” he asked thickly.

“No, you just lie there,” Leanne said officiously, pressing down on his chest with her hand. “Annabelle, go fetch a glass of water.”

Hamilton looked around and got his bearings. Then he glared at Jake.

“What did you do to me?”

“Look, I’m sorry if I scared you,” Jake said. “I didn’t realize you were so frail.”

“I’m not frail. What did you do to me?”

“Nothing. You fainted.”

“I don’t just faint.”

“Well, you did. You took a real header. You’re not hurt, are you?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Drink,” Leanne said, taking a water glass from Annabelle, lifting his head up, and putting the glass to his lips. “Let’s get you to a chair,” she said after he had sipped a small amount of water.

Jake helped him up and directed him to the living room where the nearest chair was located.

“I’m sorry I lost my temper,” Jake said. “I didn’t think it would have this kind of effect on you. Maybe we should call 911 and get you an ambulance.”

“An ambulance wouldn’t be a bad idea,” Leanne said. “How do you feel?”

“I feel fine,” Hamilton said. He looked at Jake suspiciously. “In fact, I think that if I had fainted, I wouldn’t feel as good as I do.”

“Things were pretty intense there for a couple of minutes,” Jake said. “I’m sorry if you felt threatened.”

“You didn’t do anything to me?”

“Me? No.”

Hamilton stood and walked into the entryway where he picked up his briefcase.

“Let’s hope that’s the truth,” he said. “I shouldn’t need to tell you that the Council would take any assault against me very seriously.”

Jake read him quickly. Hamilton didn’t seem to remember Brenda or passing out. Only waking up. He was, however, quite suspicious and knew that he would be scanned thoroughly when he returned to Philadelphia. He opened the door and left with no further word.

“Any reason to think we messed up?” Jake asked.

He received no reply.

“It seemed okay to me, too. I was really scared there for a second.”

“When he wanted to know what you had done to him?” Julie asked.

“No, before. When I was destroying the memory engram.”

“Why?” Jan asked.

“My father told me that it took him five minutes of energy at full power for him to destroy a nerve. When I focused full power on the engram, I obliterated it and some nearby tissue almost instantaneously.”

Kara and Leanne glanced at each other. Jake noticed.

“What?” he asked.

“Ellen, Mom, and I have been conditioning your transmission nerve while you were sleeping,” Kara said. “Ever since you came back from South Carolina and told us about it.”

Jake laughed. “I’m glad my phaser is at full power.” Then he became more serious. “The War Council will meet tonight after dinner. Meanwhile, it looks like the training of the second and third waves has just taken on new importance. Let’s go back and finish today’s lesson.”

Brian came home from his first day of football practice, looking exhausted. He barely managed to remain sitting upright through dinner. He went straight to his room afterward.

“What did you say to Brian about last night?” Jake asked Leanne.

“Nothing. It was too late when we wrapped up, and now he’s only interested in lying down.”

“When he’s back to normal, he’ll be curious,” Ellen said, sitting rigidly erect in her chair. “I’m not sure what I should say to him.”

“He’ll want to know what got into Jake,” Kara said. “You acted normally.”

“Or at least as a typical submissive woman would be expected to act,” Leanne said. “I’m going to tell Brian that disciplinary issues arose, but since I’m neither dominant nor submissive, I can’t really speak to it. I will also say that the circumstances seemed to be unusual and we weren’t likely to see that kind of thing repeated.” She fixed Jake in her gaze. “We’re not going to see that again, are we?”

“I don’t think so, although I have to say that as I think back on what Dom Jake set up in a single day, I’m actually rather impressed. I wish I could have done it so well.”

“Why can’t you?” Donna asked. “I mean, he’s you.”

“Even with yesterday’s changes, I’m not willing to use as much force as he did. I don’t mind Ellen being sore at the end of a session, but I won’t take it that far. I don’t think that I’ll let my temper get involved either. That said, Brian will still think that I am being pretty extreme if he sees me disciplining one of my subs. The rest of you would, too, except for Shannon and maybe Jan.”

“How do you feel after your session, Shannon?” Kara asked.

She smiled. “It was rousing, though I wouldn’t have minded a session like Ellen got yesterday. That sounds delicious.”

“I just don’t get it,” Boris said, shaking his head.

“But you will,” Jake said. “There’s no hurry.”

“The one good thing about that so-called bondage room,” Leanne said, “is that what happens in there will be decently hidden behind a locked door. Tell me that will be the case.”

“Yes,” Shannon said. “My dad will ensure that it has a lock and very good soundproofing.”

Everyone else remained at the table after the dishes were cleared away. Jan arrived just after six p.m., took a cup of coffee from Annabelle, and joined them.

“So, the War Council has grown,” Jake said to all the assembly.

“It’s probably for the best,” Boris said. “It’s not like we’ll be keeping any secrets from one another.”

“Agreed,” Jake said. “Why don’t you lead the discussion?”

Boris nodded. “Everybody except Ellen witnessed the Council messenger’s visit,” he said, turning to Ellen. “Did you get someone to explain what happened?”

“Yes. Leanne told me.”

“The first item of business is to assess the threat,” Boris said. “It seems to me that the best case is for the Council to ignore us. The worst case is for them to mobilize all 92 telepaths and maybe an army of slaves to crush Jake. I suspect that their actual response will be between those extremes.”

“We can’t count on the best case,” Kara said. “If they’ve gone as far as they have, they won’t let Jake go his own way.”

“I think you’re right,” Leanne said. “They’ve issued an order. Their authority is on the line. They have to enforce it.”

“But Jake hasn’t defied their order yet,” Julie said. “He told them that he would think about it and contact them with his decision.”

“They don’t seem to be the kind of people willing to talk things out in a civilized way,” Alice said. “It’s more likely that they will see anything but instant compliance as disobedience.”

“I agree with Alice,” Boris said. “We have to consider the possibility that Jake has already provoked a reprisal that could fall anytime. Of course, there is also an opportunity here if we use it.”

“What are you thinking?” Jake asked.

“You have a reason to call them now. Maybe you can use it to sound them out. Anything you learn might help us to get a better sense of the threat.”

“Then I’ll call. It’s probably too soon to do it tonight. I’ll let Hamilton get back to Philadelphia. I’ll call tomorrow afternoon.”

“Good,” Boris said. “We’ll prep you for the call tomorrow.”

“Whatever they do, it won’t involve more than one telepath,” Ellen said.

“Why do you say that?” Nina asked.

“Because no telepath will let another come within range,” Carol said. “There is no trust between them.”

“If they refuse to act together as a unit that is a great advantage for us,” Boris said. “In fact, it sounds too good to be true. Can we take that as gospel?”

“I think so,” Jake said. “When I read my father, he doesn’t even register the possibility that another telepath would come here to his territory. In fact, I think it’s much more likely that any attack will be launched by servants.”

“If it were me, I wouldn’t bother with a telepath,” Boris said. “Cox had the right idea. The right weapon is a sniper.”

“It’ll be a telepath,” Shannon said. “And it will be a serious attack.”

“Why do you say that?” Boris asked.

“It’s something I got from that Mr. Hamilton. They’ve had to deal with rogues before. Hamilton doesn’t know exactly what the Council does to them, but whatever it is, it’s effective. Hamilton has never heard anything more from a rogue once the Council has acted.”

“What do they do?”

“Hamilton didn’t know, but Greenlee would call the mind reader from Miami and that would be the end of it.”

“Miami? That’s one of the mind readers I wrote down,” Leanne said. She hurried out of the room and returned a minute later with several sheets of paper. She scanned through them quickly. “Yes, I’ve got it here. Someone named Oliver Wise.”

Carol rubbed her chin. “But that doesn’t tell you if Oliver Wise deals with the rogues himself or if he makes the arrangements with whoever actually does.”

“But it gives us someplace to look for more information,” Jake said. “And it tells us what direction an attack would come from.”

“The Council may have given you another source of information,” Carol said.

“What’s that?” Boris asked.

“That disk. Hamilton said its communications software for talking to the Council and other mind readers. I wouldn’t be surprised to discover a directory of mind readers on it.”

“Give me the disk,” Leanne said. “I’ll stick it in my computer and look it over.”

“No!” Carol and Boris yelled simultaneously.

“What’s wrong?” Leanne asked, drawing back in alarm.

“There’s no telling whether that disk has more on it than what Jake’s been told,” Carol said. “If the Council developed the communications software, they could have put backdoors in it that would allow them to access your computer.”

“Computer security is something we deal with at work,” Boris said. “We have a forensic computer specialist on retainer who can examine the disk and tell us all the things the software does.”

“That’s taking a big chance,” Nina said. “What if your specialist learns that the software is meant for mind readers?”

“And what if the Council learns that someone other than Jake is messing with it?” Carol said.

“Right,” Shannon said. “We’ll have to investigate the disk ourselves.”

“Except that none of us has that kind of expertise,” Jake said. “But Boris’s idea is still good. We just have to take precautions. Boris, would you get in contact with your specialist and arrange for him and I to examine the disk together? I’ll install controls so that he won’t freak out if he sees anything alarming.”

“Okay, boss,” Boris said. “I’ll expedite it. We should be able to do this tomorrow.” He took a breath. “Okay, so far we’ve decided to expect some kind of reprisal from the Council, probably a serious one, although we don’t know just how serious. It will probably involve a single mind reader or maybe one or more of their servants. We’ll try to get more intelligence from them tomorrow when Jake calls Philadelphia and when we look at the communications disk. Now we need to set up defenses.”

“Already?” Nina asked.

“For all we know,” Boris said, “Hamilton called Philadelphia when he left here and Greenlee called Miami two minutes later. There might be a sniper in the trees across the street right now waiting for Jake to walk out the front door.”

“The good news is that we only have to protect Jake,” Ellen said. “The Council has no reason to feel threatened by any of the rest of us.”

“Good point,” Boris said. “That makes security issues much more manageable. It also allows all of us to assist in protecting him. The first precaution we take is that Jake goes nowhere alone. Several of us will go with him everywhere.”

“And at least one of his protectors needs to be a mind reader with the full suite of skills,” Ellen said.

“Right,” Kara said. “Two mind readers against one gives Jake a lot better chance.”

“And one of the protectors has to be armed against a conventional threat,” Boris said. “That means me, Ellen, or Shannon.”

“Me, too,” Kara said.

“Not until you are old enough to get a concealed weapon permit,” Boris said.

“Stupid laws,” Kara muttered.

“In your case, I agree,” Boris said, “but it’s not worth getting you in trouble if we have others who can cover Jake.” Boris rubbed his hands over his face. “I’m very worried about the sniper threat even though there is no evidence that it’s a tactic the Council uses. I won’t risk them suddenly getting smart. I’ll bring you a body armor vest tomorrow, Jake.

“I’m also going to bring some infrared cameras to keep an eye on the approaches to the house. I don’t think we need to monitor them all the time, but we can capture the images on video and have someone scan through it before we let Jake leave.”

“That sounds like a lot of trouble,” Jake said. “Not least of all for me.”

“It will mean you can’t have any spur of the moment trips,” Boris said. “It may involve some inconvenience, but it’s got to be done. You’ll just have to deal, boss. Make sure that someone looks through the recorded images before you need to leave here every day. We’ll capture it digitally on a hard drive. With the proper software, someone can go through it much faster than real-time. People are easy to see on infrared.”

“Let’s assign Randy and Andy,” Jake said.

“Jake, you’ll need to keep me informed about your schedule. I’ll have to clear any trips. If you propose anything too risky, I’ll veto it. For the ones I do allow, I’ll decide on the level of protection you require.”

“Boris—” Jake began, exasperation showing in his voice.

“Boss, don’t go there. If you don’t like my plan then fire me and get someone else you can work with. I won’t let myself be bullied into half-assed security arrangements that get you killed.”

“I, for one, think Boris has proven his good judgment on these matters,” Leanne said. “I support him one-hundred percent. Jake, I expect you to give him your full cooperation.”

“Hear, hear,” Jan said.

“Right,” Julie said. “Don’t be a fool, Jake.”

“Fine,” Jake said, seeing that the tide was squarely against him. “You take your precautions, Boris. But I won’t accept any restriction that goes overboard.”

“If I insist on a security measure it will be justified,” Boris said. He looked around the table. “Does anyone have anything else?”

“I’ve got a suggestion,” Kara said. “We are under-utilizing five very valuable resources. I think we should give the servants treatments and let them help us scan the vicinity telepathically.”

Boris nodded. “Andy and Randy could patrol the area. That would expand our perimeter by hundreds of yards.”

“That’s fine,” Jake said. “In fact, it’s smart thinking, but I’m going to ring them so that they cannot control anyone.”

“You don’t trust them?” Julie asked.

“I just know their history,” he said. “My father put a lot of effort into forming their minds to suit his purposes. Until I’m sure that I know everything he did to them, I’m not willing to give them that kind of power.” Jake looked over at Kara. “Would you take charge of conditioning them?”

“Sure, Jake.”

“And let me say right from the outset that I’ll do my part to treat Andy and Randy’s nerves, but I’m not going to supercharge them.”

“On a more serious note,” Boris said, “It’s time to buy the neighboring parcels of land. Jake and I have already talked about this, and he asked me to bring it up before the Family Council.”

Boris explained his proposal and why he wanted to do it.

“Off the top of my head,” he said, “based on initial inquiries, I think the cost will be about three-quarters of a million dollars to acquire the property. Fencing and other security improvements will probably cost another one-hundred grand.”

“Can you afford it, Jake?” Kara asked.

Jake nodded. “The money is there.”

“Jake, does this mean that you’ve decided to defy them on the move to Oklahoma?” Alice asked.

“Actually, I haven’t made a final decision on that, and I wouldn’t do that just on my own anyway. But if we decide to stay, this will improve our defenses.”

“Do you want to wait until that decision has been made before we buy the adjacent tracts?” Boris asked.

“No,” Jake said. “We move forward on that. Knowing that we can secure the house is an important part of deciding whether to leave or stay.” He turned to Jan. “I know that you’re not a regular member of the family, but can I ask you to head the effort to buy the land? I think Steven Cockrell owns the other plots, and you’ve given me excellent advice on how to deal with him in the past.”

“I can verify if Cockrell is willing to sell and negotiate the price,” she said. “What do you want to do if he won’t sell?”

“Let’s find out if that’s going to be a problem before we worry about it.”

“We make him sell if necessary,” Leanne said. “Where family safety is concerned, we will do things that Jake might not be willing to do otherwise.”

Jake thought about that. Perhaps Leanne was right. It would be better to be safe than sorry.

“Find out if we can do this without compulsion, Jan. If not, then we’ll talk about the next step.”

“Any other business for the War Council?” Boris asked.

When there was none he adjourned the meeting. Alice grabbed him before he could leave and dragged him over to Boris.

“Hey, big guy, Jake and I have a date with our friend Mona tonight.”

Boris looked hard at Jake. “And when were you going to tell me that you had an engagement tonight?”

“Easy now, Boris,” Jake said. “I didn’t have a requirement to disclose my schedule until five minutes ago.”

“Where are you going?”

“We’re going to pick up Mona at her house and then go over to Diana’s,” Alice said.

“We are?” Jake said.

“Yes.” She turned to Boris. “Do you have a problem with that?”

“I don’t like it. I better come along. Jake’s been known to go there. It’s a place that might be under surveillance.”

“Not known by the Council,” Jake said. “There’s no reason to think that Cox’s goons have talked to them.”

“No, I suppose not,” Boris said. “But that only works once. If they’re watching you now, that will tell them that Diana’s is a place they could stake out to find you. After this time, you will have to have an armed escort.”

“I’ll have Alice.”

“Take your handgun. Leave it in the glove box. Don’t let the police search there if you’re stopped. Plus there is one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“You teach Alice how to distract, disable, or kill an attacker while you’re on your way into the city.”

“Cool,” Alice said.

“That’s not very practical,” Jake said. “She won’t have anyone to practice on except me and I’ll be driving.”

“Then wait until you are stopped at a stoplight before she does anything that will interfere with your driving. Or let me come with you.”

“Fine. I’ll show her something on the way in.”

As soon as Jake had the car in motion, Alice turned to him.

“Okay. I’m ready. How do I kill somebody.”

Jake glanced over at her.

“It’s easier than you might think, but all the killing techniques require the use of the neurological level. I wasn’t going to teach that for a couple of days yet.”

“Crap!”

“There is something that I can teach you. It builds on today’s lesson of projecting emotion.”

“Okay, I guess that will have to do.”

“All you have to do is project an extremely negative emotion such as fear, shame or despair. Just avoid something like anger that might provoke a physical reaction.”

“Is that it?”

“It’s worked for me.”

“How do I make the emotion strong?”

“A couple of things. The easiest way is to push the more extreme version of the emotion. There’s a big difference between projecting concern and terror. Also, you can intensify the emotion as you send it. You might start with garden-variety fear. Then you push harder. It won’t be long until the subject is feeling very strong fear.”

“I think I can do that.”

“Then prepare yourself. I’ll bring the car to a stop when you’re ready.”

Alice was quiet for a minute.

“Okay. I’m ready,” she said.

Jake pulled into a parking lot and parked away from the other cars.

“Now these things are hard on people, so please, don’t hold it long. Once you have produced the effect you want, make it go away. For instance, if you’re going to make me afraid then make me calm once you see that you’ve been successful.”

“Right.”

“Proceed.”

Suddenly Jake felt like he had been caught raping a six-year-old girl by Ellen, Gramma, and Leanne. He hunched over to make himself small and started to whimper. He was worse than scum. And everybody knew it. Then the emotion got even worse. He heard a screaming sound start and was dimly aware that it was from him. Then it went away.

Jake gasped and huddle in on himself, breathing hard. The agony was gone but the memory remained and the self-condemnation was slow to dissipate. He couldn’t help himself. He started to sob. He leaned into the door and buried his face in his hands. Alice must think that he was unspeakably contemptible.

Then he was better. He raised his head. His face was wet with tears and his nose was stuffy, but he felt fine. He looked over at Alice who was staring at him, anguish written on her face.

“Thanks,” he said.

“Why the bloody hell did you have me do that to you?”

“It was harder than I thought it would be. I think it’s safe to say that you’ll be able to distract someone if it’s needed.”

He reached for a tissue and blew his nose. Then he took a deep breath, put the car in gear, and started driving again.

“I don’t think I’ll do that again unnecessarily,” he said. “Although maybe it was a good lesson for me. I’ve made other people feel bad before without fully realizing how much suffering I was causing.”