Stealing Phoenix (6 page)

‘Last night. But it’s OK, Jo—fortunately, it was a freebie. I’d been given it by Apple to test—the next generation.’ He had a great voice, what I thought of as a hot-chocolate tone. I could listen to him for hours, even if he were just reciting the phone book.

‘Wow.’ She gazed adoringly up at him. I had a bizarre urge to slap her out of her worshipful daze.

‘Yeah, it was supposed to be a secret.’ He shifted a step away, a little embarrassed by her full attention being on him. ‘As it got destroyed rather than stolen, that won’t bother the company so much as if the thief had gotten away with it. They might be annoyed, but not at me.’

At least that explained why the Seer might be so insistent on getting his hands on this guy’s stuff: a new model of anything by Apple would be worth a fortune.

The Scandinavian girl stopped in front of a photo of melting icebergs. ‘It was so mean of that thief—why run off with your bag and then burn it—that’s just spiteful.’

He shrugged. ‘No telling what makes someone do that. Probably on drugs, high as a kite.’

Never. I had enough problems without adding a habit to the heap.

Jo scowled. ‘But she was good at it—I didn’t even see her make the snatch. Did you, Ingrid?’

‘No. It was all very strange. Hey, look at this.’ She tugged them away to the display board at the far end. With their backs to me, I took advantage of their distraction and got up to leave, hoping I could get at his bag while he was inside.

I wandered out into the sunshine, assessing the café to see if it was suitable for one of my strikes. It didn’t take me long to decide that there were too many people and the place was overlooked by hundreds of offices. Would the old-fashioned thief method of walk-up-and-grab work? Headphones in ears, head back to enjoy the sunlight, the Asian boy was sitting over the bag like a hen on an egg. I could just imagine the hue and cry that would hound me and I was too far from the exit to be sure of making it out of the campus. I’d have to wait until they got into a more confined space. Flipping through the timetable, I spotted that they had seminars at eleven in something called ‘break-out’ rooms. I hadn’t ever had the chance to go to college but I guessed from watching TV and films that seminars were smaller than lectures. My power worked on a maximum of thirty at any one time, so that sounded my best chance.

Confident that my disguise had no one connecting me with the thief of the day before, I trailed after the conference students and sat through their introductory lecture. Sitting in the back row was a bit like being on the top deck of a bus gazing down on the people below, not really hearing what was said but enjoying the experience of nosing into other lives. The two teachers down the front spoke enthusiastically, clicking their way through a slide presentation like confidence tricksters drawing a crowd in by their spiel. I wouldn’t have been surprised if they had concluded by inviting us all to shell out to buy a bit of a timeshare in Tenerife but they finished without selling us anything. A wasted opportunity in my view; any member of the Community would have had the students digging deep in their wallets by now.

The audience filed out of the room discussing which groups they were going to go to next.

‘I’m going to “Scientific Evidence”,’ declared Gazelle Jo pertly. ‘How about you guys? Ingrid?’

‘I’m thinking of “Human Impacts”.’ Ingrid turned hopeful eyes on Yves who had replaced his shades with a cute pair of rimless glasses.

Cute?
Get a grip, Phee!

‘I’m down for “Ecosystem Impact” so see you both later, OK?’ He turned left at the corridor junction. Both girls looked upset by their wrong guesses. I nearly laughed; they were so transparent in their desire to shadow the fittest boy at the conference. Yves, for his part, didn’t seem sorry to be free for a time of their rather obvious attempts to snag him as their conference romance; I concluded that he wasn’t sure how to handle such blatant signals of female interest. Poor big good-looking guy, I smirked, as I set off on his trail.

Us Ecosystem Impacters (I had just elected myself to the group) took our places in a small room in one of the older buildings of the campus. I sat behind my target near the window. We were on the first floor with a balcony overlooking a lawn and white clock tower—a bit of nineteenth century posh on the Mile End Road. I had the reassuring glimpse of my world—that of the cars, taxis, and pedestrians—just the other side of a low white wall. I couldn’t make my move until everyone was gathered in case I was interrupted, so I slowly counted the numbers coming through the door, getting worried when we reached twenty-five. Sweat began to trickle down my spine. I had to allow for a speaker yet and we were almost at my maximum.

And then he decided to be nice.

Yves turned round and smiled. He had probably decided I was a safe female as I’d not yet asked him for his telephone number like every other girl he met.

‘Hi, um … ’ he peered at my label,‘Wendy. You just arrived today, am I right?’ A gentle, humour-filled sound that made something inside me want to purr like a contented cat.

‘Yes.’ My voice was a whisper—not my fault as I hadn’t had anything to drink for ages.

‘Any relation?’

‘Sorry?’

He flicked a pencil at my name. ‘To J. M. Barrie. You know,
Peter Pan and Wendy
?’

He knew that? This science genius knew that the book had first been published with both names in the title? I thought only rejects like me who haunted the obscurer corners of public libraries took an interest such arcane stuff. But he needed an answer. I couldn’t keep on gaping at him like a stranded fish.

‘Er … no. I wish.’

‘What school are you from?’ He was looking at me now as if he thought we’d met but he couldn’t quite place me.

I grabbed at the first place that came to mind. ‘Newcastle … um … School for Girls.’

‘Newcastle. That’s in northern England, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah.’ Wendy wouldn’t say ‘yeah’. ‘Yes, not far from the border with Scotland.’

‘Never been there.’ That was a relief. The way my luck was going he would have had close family in my birthplace. ‘Going to college up there too?’

‘Um … yes.’ I grappled to think of a place he wouldn’t know. ‘Aberdeen.’

‘Oh, cool. They’ve a great Geoscience department which is doing really cutting edge stuff on petroleum extraction. Have you read their recent paper on CO
₂
storage?’

No. ‘Well of course. That’s why I applied. Me, Miss Geoscience. Petroleum … um … attraction is so fascinating.’ Shut up, Phee.

Yves gave me a sceptical look. ‘
Extraction,
you mean.’

‘Sorry, slip of the tongue. Extraction.’

He still looked dubious. ‘So what’s your course?’

‘Geoscience.’ Duh, he couldn’t catch me out that way.

‘Yeah, but within that you have to specialize, don’t you?’

I did? ‘Well, I thought I’d concentrate on the Geo bit to start with.’ That sounded dumb. ‘I mean, Geography.’ Was that a geoscience? I didn’t know.

My answer seemed to satisfy him. I felt like someone who just avoided a car crash by a last-minute braking, tyres still screeching in my head.

‘I’m taking Environmental Sciences at Berkeley in the fall, but I’ll be dipping into the Geography programme too. So we have lots in common, then.’ He turned back to face front as the teacher came in.

We did? ‘Er … yes, that’s really interesting. Berkeley.’

He glanced over his shoulder. ‘California.’

From his expectant expression I guessed I was meant to know that. ‘Absolutely. I’ve heard of it. Of course I have.’

There: I’d confirmed him in the impression that Wendy was an idiot who really shouldn’t be taking Geography as she didn’t know where to find Berkeley.

The lecturer, a young Indian woman, came to the front of the room and held up her hand, mesmerizing me with her clinking rows of bracelets. I never wore things like that because they got in the way of stealing.

‘Hello, everyone. My name is Dr Sharma. I cannot tell you how delighted I am to see so many of you have chosen this option.’

Not me: by my count, we were on thirty-two in the room. I’d never tried to hold so many at once.

‘You’ve all been chosen as you are the top science students from your colleges and schools—our brightest stars who we hope will shine for the next few decades at least. And, as you all know, Ecosystem Impacts is where the action is really going to be for any innovative scientists. Let’s start by doing a table round and finding out a little about each other.’

Let’s not. I had to stop this before she asked me. Closing my eyes, I reached out for their mental patterns. Most whirred away in cool blues and greens, images of mountains and rivers flicking through; a couple of girls had Yves’s face dreamily floating in their meadows; my target was stuck in a black and white zone, my appearance yesterday crossing with how I looked today.

Bloody hell, he was working it out, suspicion fracturing the black and white with orange flames.

‘Girl at the back—sorry, I don’t know your name—are you all right?’

I opened my eyes to find Dr Sharma was addressing me. The carefully gathered patterns scattered like sheep escaping from a fold. I nodded.

‘Good, because I usually expect to send my students to sleep after I’ve spoken for a bit, not before I even get started.’

Her audience laughed politely.

‘Yes … er … sorry,’ I said hesitantly.

‘Shall we begin then? Perhaps the student in the seat in front of you would like to introduce himself?’

Yves jolted out of his own thoughts. ‘Yes, Dr Sharma, I’d be happy to.’

I would’ve liked to listen to him but I had to do this. Stretch my mind out to gather in the threads of their thoughts, reel them in, and then …

Stop.

It worked—for a second. Someone was pushing back hard, trying to untangle himself from my trap and I didn’t have to look to find out who that was. There was no time to search his stuff; I just grabbed his bag and ran, stumbling over the legs of the boy opposite stretched out in the aisle.

How can you?
The protest sliced into my mind like an ice pick. I crashed into the door, holding my head in my hands. My whole body was ringing with the telepathic message, unlike anything I’d experienced before. It was as though he had found my private wavelength and was playing at full bone-tingling volume a song specially written for me, so enticing and haunting that I couldn’t shut it out. I wanted to answer, felt myself yearning to respond but how could I? I was stealing from him, wasn’t I?

My connection to the mental patterns in the room fractured and everyone snapped into awareness and saw me crouched at the exit.

‘How did … ?’ Dr Sharma swung her head between my chair and the door in confusion. To her senses it would have appeared that I leapt the gap like some superhero.

Yves did not bother to gape like the rest. He vaulted over his desk in pursuit. Shocked back into motion, I slammed out of the room and sprinted down the corridor. What had just happened? I couldn’t outrun him so I would have to do something he wouldn’t. Darting into the next empty class, I made for the window. Only first floor. My world just a fifty metre dash away if I could get down without breaking an ankle. I ripped the window open and climbed on to the balcony, his bag slung over my shoulder. Not quick enough. A hand grabbed my calf.

Who are you? What do you want with me?

His thought-speech shivered through me. I couldn’t get my brain in gear.
Go away. Just go away!

He went still, then his grip tightened on my leg as he tried to haul me back into the room.
How do you do that? You … you’re different. Speak to me again.

Bugger off.

He had the gall to laugh, his whole demeanour changing from fury to a weird exhilaration.
It’s you—I know it’s you!

I didn’t know who he thought I was but I wasn’t planning on staying to find out. This strange intimacy of our thought-speech was freaking me out. I kicked hard, thanking Wendy and her thick soles when I managed to get a connection with his stomach, but the bloody Yank wouldn’t let go.

Uh-uh, none of that, Wendy.
He tumbled me to the floor by the window and solved the problem of me struggling by sitting on my back. ‘I’ll take that, thanks.’

He removed his bag from my shoulder and chucked it out of my reach. This wasn’t good. This smacked of police and prison. I lay still, defeated for the moment. Grimly, I realized that as I’d not done what I’d been told, I wouldn’t last long in a cell in any case. Probably be dead by the end of tomorrow if I couldn’t drink.

‘Please let me steal something from you.’ That sounded pathetic, but I was reduced to begging.

‘We’ll get to that later.’ Yves placed a hand on my head, cupping it gently. He was showing far more presence of mind than I was at this moment. ‘Who would think my soulfinder would turn out to be a thief?’

I went very still.
Soulfinder?
He had to be joking. That was a fairytale.

‘You know what that means, then?’ He brushed my neck, sending shivers down my spine. My body recognized him though my mind was still shrieking that I had to get the hell out of here. ‘I thought, maybe, you didn’t. My brother’s soulfinder didn’t know. You’re a Savant?’