Transitional arrangement.., p.23
Transitional Arrangements, page 23
“Okay. Urei?”
“Not now. Tell Pel to pack a couple of days’ worth of clothes for himself and his brother. He can’t stay in that apartment. I'm sending a driver and a guard over. The driver will bring you to our place, and the guard will keep an eye on their building. Don’t call anyone, don’t tell anyone where you’re going. Oh, and tell him to bring Urei’s medication.”
“Matsin? He knows about all this.”
“I’ll call him. Hurry, hon.”
“Something bad’s happened?”
She glanced to the side and then nodded. “Can’t talk now. If you have to knock Pel out to make him come, do it. It’s important.”
“All right. See you.”
I closed the call and told Pel exactly what she’d said. “But, this is ridiculous. Urei could—”
“Pel, if my mum says to do something because it’s important, you can believe it. She doesn’t screw around. Whatever this is, it’s not a joke. Go pack, will you?”
To tell the truth, I thought it sounded pretty wacky as well, but Mum didn’t play jokes and I’d never heard her sound so worried or serious in my life. There had been a sharp edge to her voice like the sound of fear, and Mum didn’t do fear.
Pel had only just changed his clothes and put his little suitcase together when my communicator went. “It’s Mum’s driver,” I told him. “He’ll be here in a minute.”
“Fine.”
Pel went to the door and picked up his walking cane. He stood waiting behind the door and when the knock came, I opened it while Pel held the cane ready to bash the poor guy’s brains in.
“You guys ready?” Mum’s driver, a guy called Huon, didn’t even blink at Pel’s stance. “Let’s go.”
“What about the guard?” Pel demanded.
“Downstairs. Miss Fresiz said to keep it low key.”
Huon whisked us through the city streets in one of Mum’s anonymous company luxars. Pel clutched his cane and case to him, and I could guess how far all this ratcheted up his worry. I wished there was something I could do to ease his fear, but I was nearly as worried as he had to be.
I called Mum as we rode up the elevator. Something told me that it wouldn’t be a good idea to surprise her by walking through the door unannounced. But even with that, I still had a hell of a shock to see her holding a gun, though not at me, as I came in with Pel behind me.
“Jesevo, am I glad to see you both,” she said, coming over to kiss my cheek. Then she holstered her gun and wrapped Pel in a hug. “So sorry about this, dear.”
“Thank you. Luiz, what’s going on?”
A man cleared his throat. I realised with shock there was someone else in our apartment.
“Mum?” I asked, staring at the stocky, sandy-haired stranger. Behind him stood Matsin, staring levelly at me but not indicating one way or the other what he was thinking.
She came up beside me. “Jesevo, I can’t introduce you to this man, you’ve never seen him, and he was never here. But he might be Pel’s only hope of finding his brother.”
From the look on his face and the tense way he held himself, Pel had just about reached his limit. Time for some pre-emptive control. I took him by the arm and guided him over to the sofa. The others joined us in the living room. Matsin chose to remain standing. Pel ignored him, but the hostility was thick in the occasional glances between them.
The man turned to Pel. “Mister Kani, did you bring your brother’s medication?”
“Yes, but why—”
Mum put her hand up. “Pel, dear, right now, we need to ask the questions.”
Pel opened his mouth, closed it again, then nodded. He pulled the pill bottles out of his pocket and handed them over. Mum and the guy looked at the labels which seemed to confirm something to them.
“When did your brother start showing symptoms of schizophrenia?” the guy asked.
“Uh...at the age of twelve. There were other problems that masked it, the doctors said. Or so my mother told me. He had a very abusive childhood. What’s this got—”
Mum put her hand up again. I squeezed Pel’s forearm to offer him a little support, but I don’t think he noticed. She had a whispered conference with her friend and then turned to us.
“Okay. What I'm about to tell you can’t leave this room and is going to sound completely crazy. Jesevo, you know I'm not, though, right?”
“Of course you’re not crazy, Mum.”
“Thank you, hon. Let me start by telling you about the two men who owned this apartment.”
Pel exploded. “Look, how is this helping me find my brother? Where’s his communicator?”
The sandy-haired man took something from his pocket. “We found this up on a roof in the city. Is it his?”
Pel checked the communicator, which looked pretty battered. “Yes. It’s got paint on it like his does. Where is he?”
“We don’t know. But this was flung with some force away from whoever held it. My assessment is that someone didn’t want anyone using it to find your brother, and disposed of it. Wherever Mister Ges is, he’s nowhere near where this was found.”
“He’s been kidnapped? We need to call the police!”
I stopped him running out of the apartment. “No, Pel.” Mum held up her hand. “ We can’t call the police. The police are the last people you want around your brother right now.”
“If someone doesn’t explain what the fuck is going—”
“Kani, shut up,” Matsin snapped.
“Ro, who the hell—”
“Okay, both of you shut the fuck up!” I yelled. “Let my mother talk.”
“Thank you, hon,” Mum said, giving Matsin the evil eye. “It’s a long story, but I promise it’s relevant. Matsin, sit down, be quiet and leave Pel alone.”
Matsin raised, an eyebrow but stalked over to the empty armchair and sat down stiffly in it. “Continue.”
“Thank you. Right. The two guys who owned this apartment.”
She told us a story that would have been too nutty to make a film out of. About seeing dead people, and other guys who could read minds, see ghosts. Losing a second friend on a mission to save the world, and seeing her newly deceased friend with his dead lover, saying goodbye. It was still a painful memory, because she choked up several times as she told it.
“I guess you want to know why I’ve told you all this, Pel. This is where it gets tough, so don’t get angry. Urei’s not schizophrenic. He’s a telepath.”
“What? Don’t be ridiculous! Paranormals are a myth.”
“Pel, calm down,” I said, keeping a grip on his arm. “Mum?”
It was the stranger who spoke. “Mister Kani, I work for the Elite Security Force. I used to work with Luiz. I knew the people she told you about. Paranormals aren’t a myth, and your brother’s in our records as a late-manifesting telepath. He was marked as too unstable to recruit, and it looks like a decision was made to control him medically. Those drugs you showed me aren’t standard treatments for schizophrenia.”
“No, I know,” Pel said, glancing at me for support. “They tried to find a balance which allowed him to work.”
The guy shook his head. “That was the least of their concerns. What these drugs do is mess up his telepathy. He probably still hears voices but they won’t feel real.”
“You mean...Urei’s not sick?” Matsin jerked at Pel’s words. “He can read minds?”
“Wow, does that explain a lot.” I remembered the things Urei had said about his voices, the things I’d seen him do and say. Telepathy, not insanity. It all fit. “Mum...what’s the connection between Urei and the guys who left you the apartment?”
She smiled, and clasped her shaking hands together, her eyes filled with tears. “There were four people I lost contact with the day Jesi died—him, Nevo, Tinun Ajui and Keril Parido. Keril had died a little while before but thanks to Nev, he hung around until Jesi’s death. Tinun died—killed himself that day. Tinun was the telepath. Nev was a Bridge, a connection between the physical world and the spiritual one. He could see the spirits of dead people. Like you can, Jesevo.”
I choked. “I can’t—”
“Yes, you can. I’ve known that since you first told me about your visions. Nev used to tell me the same kinds of things. He never understood it either, until Keril Parido explained it to him. I knew what you were, but I didn’t want ESF to have you on their system.” She turned to Matsin. “What’s the precise probability I'm telling the truth?”
“Ninety nine point three. Uh....” He covered his mouth with his hands, as if horrified by what had come out of it.
I stared in astonishment. “Matsin?”
“You’ve been able to do that all your life, haven’t you?” Mum said. He nodded, his hand still over his mouth. “So could Keril Parido. He said he was an Extrapolator. He could see in his mind the exact probability of any event coming to pass.”
“I thought I was nuts,” Matsin whispered. “No one sees numbers in their mind like that.”
“Not nuts. Paranormal,” the sandy-haired guy said.
“Mum?”
She turned to me. “Do you realise, Jesevo, that Pel, Matsin and Urei were all born within a month of each other? And within a month of my first son’s birth?”
“No, but—”
“I was on contraception when I fell pregnant. Both times. I shouldn’t have got pregnant at all. I conceived you on my first cycle after Zan died. The first time I thought was a kind of sad coincidence—getting pregnant just after losing my two closest friends. The second time...I knew it wasn’t a coincidence. That’s why I named you after them, Jesevo. I knew they were trying to come back to me. I just didn’t know which one you’d turn out to be. Looks like Nev won the race.”
This was too much to take in. It was like watching a bad film while on good drugs. “Wait....”
“Reincarnation?” Pel snapped, his voice high with stress. “Are you serious?”
She nodded. “Completely. Matsin is Keril Parido, and Urei is Tinun. I think that explains the instant attraction. They were lovers in my time. Just like Nev and Jesi.”
“Mum, you said Pel—”
“Yes. The fourth missing soul. Jesi Gonlimi. My darling Jes.”
She looked at him with red-rimmed eyes, smiling through her tears. From the way the muscles in his arm bunched and twitched under my hand, Pel was about a second from bolting.
Matsin cleared his throat. “Uh, Luiz, this is fascinating but how does it help us find Urei?”
“It doesn’t, but I just realised what was happening.” She shook herself. “The important point is that Urei’s talent is of interest to more people than the ESF. The same organisation that Keril Parido and Tinun Ajui were part of, still exists, as do rival groups. A lot of people want to recruit paranormals. Matsin, you’re at risk, and so is Jesevo. Pel, you too, if you have natural shields as I suspect you do. We’d need Urei to test that though.”
“He’s been kidnapped by criminals who think he can read minds,” Pel said flatly.
“It seems likely,” the sandy-haired man said. “Your brother’s not wealthy, not connected to drugs or criminals, has no obvious associates, and is not connected to anyone with influence. We did find, however, that someone’s been illegally tracking him for a number of days using his communicator.”
“Who?”
“We don’t know. But we have some ideas and I'm running those leads down discreetly too. Luiz is going to check a list of known paranormal criminals or those who run with them against people who might have only recently encountered your brother, most likely on one of the film sets.”
Pel turned to me. “So this is your fault!”
“Hey! Can we wait until we know for sure what happened to the little weirdo before you start throwing the blame around?”
“Don’t refer to Urei in that manner,” Matsin snapped. “Luiz, can I help?”
“I'm hoping so. In the meantime, all three of you need to lay low. Matsin, cancel all your appointments. Pel, you can’t go into work. Not only are your possible talents attractive, the people who have Urei may decide to take someone important to him to put pressure on him to cooperate.”
“We have to find him now,” Pel barked. “Who knows what they’ll do to him?”
“For now, not much,” the sandy-haired man said. “The drugs will be in his system for a day, and then they’ll try to persuade him to work with them. They may keep him drugged in fact, if they plan to sell him off.” Pel opened his mouth to yell. “We’re moving as fast as we can. I can’t obtain the list of criminals openly so I’ve had to rely on more indirect routes. As soon as we have the data, we can run through the list.”
“And then? You’ll have names, but how do you find him?”
“Use Matsin.” Everyone looked at me. “Run the names past him, see what this trick he can do, says.”
“I can’t trust Urei’s life on a trick.”
“There was a seventy-six percent chance you were going to say that, Kani,” Matsin said. “And a twenty-two percent chance of me agreeing with you.” Pel sniffed in disgust.
“Worth a try,” I said to Mum’s colleague.
“Yes, I agree. Okay, guys—it’s going to be a couple of hours. I suggest everyone rest, calm down, don’t waste time fighting.”
“If you’re right, he’ll have been with them all day.” Pel turned to Mum and pleaded. “I can’t leave him with them all night. The nights are bad for him.”
“Mister Kani,” Mum’s friend said, “we don’t have any choice. Your brother’s valuable. They won’t harm him, at least not at first. Unless he pisses them off.”
I groaned. “Lord, we’re in trouble.”
“They’ll still want him to be physically sound,” the guy said.
“And have you got the slightest idea how we retrieve him without help of the police or the ESF?”
“Some ideas, yes. Until we know ‘where’ and ‘who’, ‘how’ is up in the air. Do like Luiz says. Get some rest.”
“We might have one advantage,” Matsin said slowly. “If Urei’s off his medication, then his talent will be unfettered. Kani might be able to use that to our advantage. Call to him, I mean.”
I blinked. “That’s brilliant, Matsin.” He made a little bow. “Chances of that working?”
“Uh...nothing’s coming up for me. I don’t have enough information. I don’t actually know how this works,” he added rather defensively as Pel’s shoulders bunched up either in denial or anger.
“Still, it’s a good idea,” Mum soothed. “Pel, you have Jesevo’s room. Jesevo, you and Matsin can share the sofa or the air bed.”
“I don’t need his room.” Now Pel was all stiff and affronted again.
“Yes, you do, dear. This is hardest on you of all of us. You need the most rest and TLC.”
“Not from me,” I muttered. Matsin smirked and I briefly showed him a finger.
“Fine.” Pel turned to Matsin. “Tell me—what are the chances this is all a crock of shit?”
“Exactly zero,” Matsin said, his eyes cold. “Your brother’s in danger, and I intend to be part of bringing him home. Like it or not, Kani.”
I grabbed Pel’s arm and hauled him up before he and Matsin could get into it. “Come on, I’ll show you around.”
Pel seemed rather distracted as I gave him the tour of the kitchen, the fridge and the bathroom. He waited politely while I quickly changed the sheets on my bed, and then he sat on it, a distant expression on his face as he looked around. “If your mother’s crazy theory is right, this used to be my home.”
“Our home.” He winced. “Freaks you out, doesn’t it. That we were lovers.”
“I don’t believe in reincarnation. Or predestination.” I shrugged. Me neither but it was still freaky. “But if it were true, it means that Urei and I were once bitter enemies.”
“Matsin and me too. But you know what they say—there aren’t enemies, just friends you haven’t got to know.”
He frowned. “Who says that?”
“Um...people?” I wiggled my finger in my ear. It was almost like there was another voice in the room.
“I’ve never heard that before. It makes little sense. Plenty of people are enemies for good reason. I could never see Urei as my enemy. I love him. He’s my brother, my family. All I have left. What if we can’t find him, Jay?”
I sat next to him and put my arm around his shoulder. “We will. Mum’s the best. Matsin’s super bright even without this thing he’s supposed to do. We haven’t even started. You can’t give up now.”
“I promised Mum....”
He rubbed hard at his eyes, and I squeezed him tighter. “Did you get much sleep last night?” I asked quietly.
“Not a wink. I won’t tonight, either.”
“You should. He’s going to need you, Pel. I, uh...have some sleeping pills you could—”
He held his hand up as if to ward off my nasty temptations. “No thanks. Your drug habit is why we’re in this mess.”
I moved away from him. “My drug habit is for the same reason as Urei’s drug habit. We hear voices in our heads and it drives us crazy. So lay off with the superiority. You try living with seeing people pop in and out of your sight, walking through you, turning up in the middle of a scene you’re filming, and see if you wouldn't be popping Moxi like candy.”
“Does it work? Stop it?”
“Yeah. Haven’t taken any in weeks, so it’s been a bit weird on and off. Dead people, Mum says.”
“It makes no sense.”
“Welcome to my life, Pel.” I stood. I’d had enough of pandering to his prejudices. “Look, get some rest. You should try a pill, seriously. I'm going to take one and I don’t want to hear any fucking lectures. Mum knows about them—they’re prescribed completely legally. You try night filming without them,” I added at his sceptical expression. “Oh...do what you like. I'm going to talk to Mum.”
As I got to the door, I heard him mutter, “Still your fault.”
I turned. “Maybe. But it was lucky it was because of me, because if Urei had been gabbling away about his voices and been picked up for some other reason, you wouldn’t have my Mum and her friend to help you out, would you? Just sleep and leave me alone.”
