The Elders (Mind Dimensions #4)(29)

I look over every Elder. Their faces reveal nothing. Whoever did it is very good at controlling his or her expression. Then again, given how experienced these people are, I’m not surprised.

I assumed that the Super Pusher knew about, or suspected, my Level 2 capabilities. Otherwise, why bother using my friends to try to kill me at Kyle’s funeral? She could’ve leveraged Level 2 against me and had me kill myself—a much cleaner solution. So this implies that whoever just pulled me into Level 2 is not the Super Pusher.

It would be great to talk to this person, if only I knew who it was.

Now the part that I don’t get—that voice in my head. It was Mimir; I’m pretty sure of that. He was warning me, again—that part is obvious. But whom was he warning me against? Why? Dread spreads through my body as I recall what almost happened the last time Mimir warned me about something. Did he want to say, “Don’t trust the Elders,” or “Gustav,” or “anybody?”

“Are you all right, lad?” Gustav asks. “You look distraught.”

“I’m overwhelmed,” I say, happy he gave me an out. “You kind of ganged up on me with all this.”

“Say no more,” Gustav says. “I hope I speak for everyone when I say that this conversation can continue at another time.”

“I agree. It would be very helpful for Darren to see the Celebration before we continue,” Frederick says.

“Indeed,” Gustav says. “Surely he will be more amicable once he sees our way of life.”

“Just please promise to think on it,” Alfred says. “Think about becoming a special Ambassador—our liaison with the Readers.”

I nod and try to look more out of it so they’ll leave me alone. Under the circumstances, looking confused comes easily.

“If we want to impress the young gentleman, why don’t I show him around?” Victoria offers. “I know all the good spots.”

“Remember, we have the Celebration preparations to attend to,” one of the older Elders says with slight disapproval.

“Of course,” she says. “Please, follow me, Darren.”

“Nice meeting you all,” I say and follow Victoria as she leads me away from the fountain.

I feel slightly relieved. If I assume that Mimir was telling me not to trust a specific person, rather than, say, raw fish, then statistically speaking, the person he wanted to warn me against is one of the Elders. Leaving them puts me in relative safety, assuming Victoria is not the Super Pusher. But she, of course, could be. I did randomly decide to call the Super Pusher a she, and Victoria does embody femininity.

People claim that some women can walk seductively. I always thought that was just a figure of speech. I mean it’s true some girls’ butts look good in certain clothes, and when they walk, it looks hot. Some women sway their hips as they strut, which also looks appealing. But ‘seductive’ implies a certain premeditation, as though a girl is moving in a specific manner to provoke a specific reaction. I never noticed that before, but I think this is exactly what Victoria is doing. And I must say, the effect her walk is having on me is very similar to when I watch Mira undress, especially when Victoria leads me up a wide staircase.

Thinking of Mira forces me to do the right thing. I unglue my eyes from Victoria’s legs and focus on the other wonders of the Castle.

“What are your interests?” she asks over her shoulder.

“What do you mean?” I force my eyes to stay above her neckline.

“We have a great library I can show you if you like to read. We have a glass-blowing studio, a couple of rooms with different sculptures and gardens, rooms full of portraits in different styles, mechanical inventions—”

“This place sounds like the Metropolitan Museum of Art.” My concerns momentarily give way to wonder.

“The good people at the Met would sell their souls to have even a fraction of our masterpieces, as would any science museum. Aside from things done outside the Island, we have our own achievements on display, creations that chronicle the span of—”

“Some of the works of art you’re offering to show me were done by the Elders?” I look at a gorgeous suit of armor standing in a corner by a majestic floor-to-ceiling window.

“Yes, most, in fact. Also books, music, and—”

“How can you bring a book you wrote inside the Mind Dimension into the real world?” I fleetingly wonder if this is her strategy, to distract me from being wary. If so, it’s kind of working.

“We don’t always,” she says. “Sometimes the books just exist so that we can read them once. Come, let me show you how it works.”

She leads me down a corridor and into a huge room filled with manual typewriters.

“This is one of the rooms where I like to write sometimes.” She takes me into an adjacent room, which appears to be a humongous computer room with around two hundred frozen people sitting at their workstations.

“You Guide them to type out your books?” I guess. “And you use the manual typewriters for yourselves since you can’t use computers?”

“Indeed. We find it easier to Guide a single person to write a single page from the manuscript. Once all the pages are typed out, a special computer program combines the pages into one book. This way we can have a book ready and in the library by the next day’s Session.” As she talks, she walks through the rows of workstations, topping her earlier sexy walk with a worse, or better, one, depending on how you look at it.