Doctor Who_ Sleepy - Kate Orman [21]
Molokomme licked his lips. ‘I don’t think it’s up to the Captain to decide what we’re going to do about people with the bug. I think we should take a vote on it.’
‘Damn,’ muttered Byerley. ‘I wish I’d gotten up there first.’
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ said Molokomme, and laughed awkwardly at the unintentional joke. ‘We can’t run the colony with nine-tenths of the people. But we can’t run it with people with powers out of control, either. One of the reasons we’re behind schedule is equipment damage caused by psychokinesis. And then there are the telepaths...’
Now a murmur did run through the crowd. There were around four hundred of them, mostly adults, filling the field beside the habitat dome and spilling over onto the edges of the ploughed land. Almost the entire population of Yemaya 4.
‘You know what I mean,’ said Molokomme. ‘I...’ and he banged his chest with his fist. ‘I want my thoughts to be private.’
Byerley was heading for the podium almost before the Doctor and Roz knew it. Molokomme moved aside uneasily, obviously still full of unsaid words. Byerley bent the microphone down and said, ‘More than a dozen people have quietly asked me the same thing. Dimitri is the first person to make that request public.’
He shut his eyes, visibly bringing himself back under control. ‘”Whatever I see or hear when treating someone I will keep to myself — believing it shameful to talk about that sort of thing.” That’s the oath I swore when they made me a doctor. Do you understand? I am not going to start outing people.’
Molokomme said something. Byerley leaned on the podium, head in hand, while the taller man took the microphone back. ‘Some people here don’t need to ask you for that kind of information,’ he said. ‘They only need to look into your head.’
‘Listen,’ said Byerley. The microphone squealed with feedback, and he thumped it on the podium. ‘What’s going to happen if we start dividing up into little groups? The whole development plan depends on our working together.’ He looked up into the audience. ‘Athaliah,’ he said, ‘come up here.’
Roz craned her neck to follow the audience’s suddenly redirected gaze. It was a slender teenage girl, her hand politely raised. She got up and wended her way down to the podium. They had to bend the microphone all the way down for her.
‘I just want to say,’ she began calmly, ‘that I have telepathy now. That means I know how scared everybody is.
I don’t have to look inside your heads to know that. You sort of — broadcast. Anyway,’ she hurried, ‘I just want to say that I wouldn’t ever try to read someone’s mind if they didn’t want me to. And that’s all I want to say.’
She went back to where she was sitting, looking down at the grass, as though feeling the pressure of all those eyes trained on her. All those minds.
The Doctor touched Roz on the shoulder as someone else shuffled up to the podium. ‘Let’s go for a walk,’ he said.
Roz waited until they were in the forest, the amplified voice of whoever was speaking echoing indistinctly behind them. ‘It’s an iceberg, isn’t it?’
He looked at her quizzically.
‘The virus is an iceberg. All those extra genes, waiting below the surface for... something.’ She picked up a stick, prodded the ground with it as she walked. ‘The whole situation is like an iceberg. There’s stuff going on under the surface that we haven’t even noticed yet.’
‘I knew that as soon as I read about it next century,’ said the Doctor. ‘An outbreak of psychic powers, in a small, isolated group with known genetics... It’s extremely difficult to trigger latent human psi. And besides, we know Benny has some latent ability, so why hasn’t it been brought out? This had to be an experiment.’
‘So do you know who’s behind it?’
‘I have a pretty good idea.’ He shook his head. ‘The time isn’t right to confront them yet. To tell you the truth, right now I’m much more worried about the Trojan Horse memories than the powers themselves. Anyone can rig up a bug that turns on latent genes. But one that infects people with someone’s recollections?’
‘And