The Elders (Mind Dimensions #4)(28)

A few more faces warm up, but Alfred doesn’t look amused.

“We don’t all share Alfred’s paranoia,” Louis says. “If we all thought you were working for the Leachers, you wouldn’t have gotten off that plane.”

“My brother is right,” Frederick says. “As I mentioned before, we know of your mixed bloodline. We also know that your aunt, Hillary Taylor, trusts you.”

“I didn’t come here wishing you any harm,” I say. “And that’s the truth.”

“I concede that your heritage mitigates the risk,” Alfred says, “but it’s still too great.”

“Allow me to play devil’s advocate, dear Alfred,” Louis says. “Let’s say he is a Leacher agent.”

“Which I’m not,” I interject.

“But assuming you are,” Louis says calmly, “our overall objectives when it comes to Leachers can still be served.”

“And those objectives are?” I ask, trying to hide my excitement. If they ask me to turn on the Readers, it could be a great segue into asking for help against the Enlightened.

“We want to make peace with them, of course,” Frederick says. “So, even if you are working for them, you can still be persuaded to bring them our offer of goodwill.”

I blink. “You want to be friends with them?” I hope I don’t sound as disappointed as I feel.

“Maybe being friends is too much to hope for, but we need to establish an amicable relationship with them. We don’t want to repeat any of our not-so-ancient history that so worries Alfred,” says another older-looking Elder.

“We want to coexist,” says yet another man. “We want them to know that our groups existing is not a zero-sum game.”

“It sounds like a pretty old problem,” I say, frowning. “What makes you think I can help solve it?”

“Ah, but don’t you see that in a very real way, you were born for such an endeavor?” Gustav asks.

“Indeed, no one is better suited to bridge this unfortunate divide,” says Frederick.

I consider this. It’s great that they think I could be helpful—it means they’re unlikely to actually shoot me—but this peace with Readers isn’t compatible with what I wanted to ask them.

“You know, if you want to be friends with them, you might consider calling them Readers rather than Leachers,” I say. “It’s a lot less insulting.”

“That’s it,” Frederick says. “You’re getting in the spirit of it already. I shall call them Readers from now on and encourage the others to do so as well.”

“I concur,” Alfred says. “Though I must ask, if you are not here on the behest of the Readers, then why did you come?”

“Umm,” I mumble, trying to figure out how much I can share with them.

How would they react to me blurting out all the business with the Super Pusher? If the Super Pusher is in this crowd, how would she respond? I also don’t know how to best introduce the whole ‘the Enlightened kidnapped my peeps’ situation. I get a sneaking feeling they might not want to help me if I broach the subject, since they want peace with the Readers and helping me storm the inner sanctum of the most powerful of Readers isn’t exactly friendly. But what pretext should I give them for being here?

I decide to try a basic approach and say, “I want to learn from you.”

Some of the warmth disappears from most of their faces.

“Darren, Darren,” says Gustav, shaking his head. “You must know we’ve had millennia to get very good at reading people’s expressions, so I am sure it is as obvious to the others as it is to me that you are hiding something.”

“I—”

Before I can finish my sentence, the world goes away.





*





The bright colors are gone. Everything is gone. I feel as though I’m falling into an abyss. Actually, that’s not correct. I feel as though I’ve ceased to exist.

I recognize this lack of feeling.

This is Level 2.

But how did I just reach it after so many failed attempts?

Struggling to not freak out about not feeling my body, not even something as little as my left earlobe, I concentrate on the neural network patterns I was able to perceive the last time I was here—the patterns that make up other minds.

There is one quite ‘close’ to me, though distance is a misnomer here. A dozen patterns are also slightly ‘farther away.’ I have to assume those are the Elders. The nearest pattern is alive, with its synapses, for lack of a better term, firing, while the farther ones are static.

Suddenly, the active pattern appears nearer to the frozen ones.

The dynamic pattern begins enveloping one of the frozen ones.

A familiar voice in my head states, “Darren, don’t trust—”

Before I can receive the rest of that sentence, the enveloping is complete, and my senses return.





*





“You what?” asks Gustav.

“Nothing,” I say, my head spinning.

I think I understand part of what just happened. I showed up in Level 2 because one of the Elders accidentally pulled me in. Perhaps he or she wanted to Guide me to make me do their bidding but ended up pulling me in instead. I figured that would happen when one Level-2-capable person tried to Guide another Level-2 initiate. If I’m right, then who just tried Guiding me? And what did they want to make me do?