They filtered into Lyceum slowly, inconspicuously, beginning Sunday afternoon and evening, continuing all through the wee hours of Monday morning, the last rolling in minutes before the opening ceremonies.
They came in unmarked cars and vans from every direction, some through Portland International Airport, some via the small airport at Eugene, many through Seattle-Tacoma International, and even a few through Vancouver, British Columbia or Boise, Idaho. No airport in the region noticed any significant increase in its usual volume of passengers for that time of year.
State Department agents were at all of the effected airports and along all the approaches to Lyceum, but they were in plain clothes and unmarked cars, and neither the regular airport security people nor the local residents noticed anything unusual. Low profile was the name of the game, and so Lyceum’s helicopters were not used.
They came from twenty-seven different countries around the world, including all of the nations who had even partial nuclear weapons capabilities, several countries where, on land leased to other nations, such weapons were stationed, a few who manufactured missile delivery systems that were used for nuclear weapons, and even two who had been invited because they faced traditional enemies who possessed The Bomb.
They were cabinet-level ministers and other high ranking officials who were empowered to make many minor decisions themselves, and who could slip away from their respective capital cities without public attention. And they all brought with them the means to use Lyceum’s SatLink channels to send scrambled messages and receive coded instructions from their kings,
presidents, or central committees.
From the moment they stepped out of their vehicles at Lyceum, they all wore photo I.D. badges, as did all of the federal agents on the scene, all of the United Nations diplomats in attendance, every Lyceum member who ventured out of the residence halls, and the few others who were allowed on campus during the four-day conference. The two teachers from Montana had smiled when informed of the requirement. Their young students were exempted, but were not allowed to enter the conference centers.
Those badges allowed the security teams to trace the movements of every person at the conference, and to know immediately if anyone was wandering around without a badge. Jason and Claire were asked to make extra sure that none of the large animals got out of their pens and pastures, as they would be quickly spotted by the campus-wide infra-red scanners and descended upon by federal agents and Lyceum security people. They had checked and double checked all of the animal fences and gates during the preceding weekend.
Senator Buchanan arrived early Monday morning and had breakfast with his daughter. He insisted on being issued a badge that would not allow him to enter the conference center. He was willing to talk to anyone, quietly, unofficially, but did not want anyone to think he was present in order to influence the outcome of the conference.
Even though the event was being sponsored by the United States, there was a considerable United Nations presence. One of the purposes of the conference was to air any concerns that had not been resolved during the years of diplomatic work that had preceded. Those concerns would be carefully listened to by the U.N. diplomats. They knew that last minute concessions would have to be made on a host of secondary issues, such as timetables and inspection protocols. They also knew that the core provision of the Nuclear Disarmament Treaty, by its very nature, was not subject to compromise.
The opening ceremonies took place in the Ecumenical Temple at ten o’clock. Liberty was checking badges as people entered, while hidden sensors looked for weapons and an armed federal agent stood nearby. She greeted
Ashley with a smile when she came through, but the thirteen-year-old was unable to stop and talk as the minister from New Zealand was still exchanging words with the statesman from Zaire, and neither spoke the other’s language.
The opening speeches were limited to five minutes each, and many noble things were said about the major step the human race was about to take along the road from a world riddled with the fear of nuclear war to a world free of nuclear weapons. Even though everyone had been asked to keep their initial remarks completely positive, few nations avoided the temptation to at least hint at their remaining concerns. Only one very young island nation, which was attending the conference because of the Chinese submarine base it hosted, began to clumsily enumerate its grievances. The guilty minister soon realized that everyone was clearing their throats and no one was listening. He got the message.
Lyceum served up a lavish buffet for the first lunch of the conference, with foods from around the world. Liberty found herself on a team charged with making sure that no one tampered with any of the food. Each serving pan was lidded and sealed in the kitchen, watched at all times on its way to the conference center, and finally unsealed by Liberty only when the member who would be serving was in position with spoon or spatula in hand. She noticed Ashley eating with two handsome U.N. diplomats, and felt a moment of envy, but reminded herself that her Russian was getting stronger all the time, and she too would someday be in the interpreting pool during conferences such as this.
It was while she was imagining herself as a Russian interpreter for important diplomats that she saw the first potential security breach. No sealed pans of food were arriving and she had been just gazing across the room, not looking at anything in particular. The Lyceum member who was attending the hot beverage cart had her head in a drawer looking for something. A man was taking the top off the hot water urn. A red flag went up in Liberty’s mind.
She suppressed the nasty name that popped into her consciousness, a name better suited for use on the back streets of Philadelphia, and breathed once before deciding what to do. “Sister Lynette, how is your hot water supply?” she called across to the other.
The member looked up and assertively, but politely, determined for herself that she was indeed out of hot water, and that the man had been attempting to confirm the fact. Liberty watched his responses carefully even as she listened to his and Sister Lynette’s words. A few moments later she was convinced that he was genuinely only seeking something in which to steep his tea bag.
But when he turned around, she noticed that he was one of the agents from the Department of State. He should have known better.
During the afternoon, the statesmen and their aides got down to business.
Conference Center Two had been divided into as many small rooms as possible, each of which hosted one of the attendant nations, a United Nations diplomat, and a Lyceum moderator. The current text of the Treaty was displayed on view screens in the lobby, with different words and phrases in different colors, depending on the number and severity of the concerns relating to those sections.
For part of the afternoon, Liberty was on security duty in the lobby of the conference center. She sat in a chair where she could see most of the lobby and tried to relax. She had been feeling, ever since Sister Nancy’s death, as if her life was rushing along much too quickly. She craved the ability to slow down, savor the good times, hold onto the special moments and not let them go.
Sometimes, in recent weeks, she had succeeded in making precious experiences last longer. She was discovering ways to prolong her love making with Jason. She had found that she liked to set her alarm clock for half an hour or more before she had to get up, making time to lay in bed and ponder her dreams, remember the previous day, and wonder what lay in store for that new day. And she was beginning to enjoy using part of her flight simulator time to go back to an earlier lesson and see how effortlessly she could complete it.
As she sat in that comfortable lounge seat gazing at the conference center lobby, she willed her mind and body to slow down, relax, take life easy, a moment at a time, slower and slower. Her breath slowed, and she coaxed it even slower by breathing deeper. Then, muscle by muscle, she let every part of her body relax and melt into the chair. After she had done this for a few minutes, she realized her heartbeat was slowing also. Thump.. thump..
thump... thump... thump.... thump.... thump.... She could feel it slowing, even though she knew she had no direct control over it.
Liberty had kept her eyes open, knowing that she still had an important job to do, but she hadn’t been paying much attention to the lobby for the last several minutes as it had been completely empty. Suddenly diplomats and aides started bursting out of doors and scurrying around like busy ants, looking at the view screens, picking up printed materials, using the restrooms, going in and out of the telecommunications booths. For a moment she was confused, and reached for her pager, as everyone seemed to be running, like an old movie being replayed too fast. But she stopped herself, just before pressing the emergency call key, realizing that she must have relaxed herself too well, and everyone else appeared to be running in comparison to her languid state.
She concentrated on the scene before her, and felt better when she saw that everyone in the lobby was wearing their badges and was doing only appropriate things, even though they still appeared to be running, scurrying.
Then something hit her, a feeling so startling it was almost like a physical attack. That contact made her bristle, and every muscle in her body immediately tensed itself, and her heart and breath instantly began to race.
Her perception of the people in the lobby snapped back to normal, and they no longer seemed to be running, but just walking as she knew they must have been doing all along. None of them were doing anything threatening.
Liberty felt confused, and could feel herself shaking. Then she realized that she couldn’t see the entire lobby. She carefully, fearfully, turned her head to the left to see what could have possibly caused the mental assault she had experienced. Her mind was racing, and she fully expected to turn and find a gun pointed at her, a finger on its trigger, a bullet ending her life, all before she could even begin to get a hand to her pager.
Instead she saw one of the European foreign ministers looking at some papers, an aide gazing into an aquarium, and a federal agent nonchalantly leaning against a wall, none of them even looking at her, and no gun or other weapon in sight. She stared at them for a moment, and then turned her head back to the lobby, not wanting to arouse anyone’s suspicions.
The thought of leaving, running and hiding, sprang into her mind, but she
remembered that she was on duty. So for the next twenty minutes she stayed in her seat and forced herself to breathe, slowly and deeply, and she pondered the experience she had just lived through, and her fear slowly subsided.
Another member of her security team arrived to take her place, and she almost ran to the Healing Arts Clinic to get some help understanding what had happened.
Sister Karola, the late middle-aged doctor whom Liberty liked the most, listened to her entire story and took some vital signs.
“...none of them were even looking at me, but I know I felt something very threatening, something very dangerous.”
“It sounds like you placed yourself in a sort of hypnotic trance,” the doctor said, “and that trance may have caused you to remember something dangerous from the past... or it may have made you hypersensitive to something in the present. Perhaps it is time we got some help from someone who knows more about this sort of thing...” She pressed some keys on the small computer on her desk.
“This is Rachael,” a voice said.
“This is Sister Karola. Are you busy, Sister Rachael?”
“Just
painting.”
“Could you come down to the Clinic for a moment? I need an opinion on something. And bring Sister Sarah with you if she is available.”
Liberty snickered to herself, remembering the ups and downs of her relationship with Sarah.
“She’s helping with the school children, but I think I can pry her away for a few minutes.”
“Thanks so much, Sister Rachael.”
For the next ten minutes, Sister Karola examined Liberty more thoroughly, and massaged some tight muscles she found in her patient’s neck, muscles, she explained, that were still reacting to the fear of the earlier situation. Just as Liberty was really starting to relax, Rachael and Sarah entered.
Liberty told her entire story again, and the doctor added her assessment of Liberty’s physical and emotional condition.
“Interesting!” Rachael said. “When you felt the contact, were you in the
process of remembering anything from the past?”
“No. I was just watching the people in the lobby.”
“Well, if it isn’t an organic problem, and it didn’t come from your own memory, and I have a strong hunch it didn’t, than either someone out there is being very telepathically pushy, or you’re telepathically sensitive. Maybe both.”
“Me?”
“She’s sensitive,” Sarah said. “I’ve known it for a long time.”
“Have you?” Rachael said with raised eyebrows.
“I didn’t want to say anything until she discovered it for herself,” Sarah said in her own defense. “And I didn’t want to do anything to ruin our friendship.”
“You mean... I’m sort of like you guys?” Liberty said with a mixture of pride and confusion.
“You might be only sensitive... only able to receive,” Rachael said. “Or you may be fully telepathic, but the ability just didn’t manifest until this point in your life.”
Liberty looked at Sarah, and suddenly felt a bond with that powerful nine-year-old mind that she had at first detested, and more recently, with encouragement from her friends, only mistrusted. Now all of those negative, suspicious feelings fell away, and she felt a sisterhood with Sarah, and Rachael as well, that even transcended their shared Lyceum membership.
“I
have been going through lots of emotional changes recently,” Liberty said in response to Rachael’s statement.
With a wave of her hand, Rachael changed the course of the conversation.
“We can explore this possibility at our leisure once the disarmament conference is over. In the meantime, Sarah and I have some work to do. Do you need anyone to cover what you were doing, Sarah?”
“No. I was just tagging along, holding up charts or pictures sometimes.”
“Liberty, you should stick to whatever you had scheduled. Sarah and I are going over to the conference center to see if we can pick up anything.”
“I’m on the poison control team again at dinner. It’s a banquet this time.”
“Call if you have that experience again, or anything similar.”
“You can count on it!” Liberty said with a smile.
As Rachael and Sarah left, Sarah glanced back and caught Liberty’s eye, and they both flashed each other grins. Then Liberty relaxed into the comfortable chair as she felt Sister Karola’s strong fingers begin to knead her neck muscles again.
By noon on the second day of the conference, Rachael and Sarah had been mingling with the conference attendees for many hours, both during structured conference sessions and during meals and evening recreational activities. They were both convinced there was something telepathic going on that they didn’t like, but were unable to pin down its exact nature or location.
It seemed to come and go, and change position mysteriously.
It was Shawn who was finally able to shed some light on the problem. He and Sarah were eating lunch together, and he was listening to her describe her feelings and impressions, as he often did when she was upset about something. He began to ask questions.
“Is there anyone who’s been around every time you’ve felt something?”
“I don’t know! There are always lots of people around.”
“Okay, close your eyes again and picture conference room two twelve, the one with the clipper ship painting on the wall.”
Sarah closed her eyes and remembered. “Okay.”
“Who is there that was also in the lobby a half hour before?”
Sarah concentrated. “That short little aide from the Chinese delegation...
the plump U.N. diplomat with the double chin... and Liberty. She was on security in the lobby, and then helping with a projector in two twelve.”
“Okay, now go back to the corner of the Main Lobby where you felt something last night. Can you picture it?”
“Yeah.”
“Who’s
there?”
“The whole delegation from Israel... the Russian defense minister, Yuri... I forget his other name. And Liberty, helping one of the Israel people change the battery in his decoder.”
“Liberty
again?”
“Well,
she
has been very busy,” Sarah said in Liberty’s defense.
“Have there been any times you felt something telepathic going on when
Liberty wasn’t around?”
Sarah thought. For a long time. Then she spoke, slowly and reluctantly.
“Um... no.”
Shawn put his arm around Sarah and gave her a reassuring squeeze. He could tell she was upset by what she had just said. She looked at him with a half-smile.
“Let’s see what Rachael thinks,” he said, pulling his pager off his belt and pressing its tiny keys.
“This is Rachael.”
“Are you busy?” Shawn asked.
“Just staring at a plan of the campus, trying to make some sense out of our ghost.”
“May I ask you a question?”
“Shoot,” the voice said through his pager.
“Was Liberty nearby every time you sensed something unusual?”
There was a long silence. Shawn and Sarah both waited, almost holding their breaths.
“Yes.”
“Sarah says the same thing.”
“Meet me in the Main Lobby in one minute,” Rachael said.
The two young people took ten seconds to clean their plates, another ten to put their dishes in a bus tub, and thirty seconds to dash to the Main Lobby.
They arrived ten seconds early.
After the three of them passed through the security log-in station at the beginning of the corridor to Conference Center One, Rachael described what they needed to do.
“Sarah, you and I need to get near Liberty for awhile. There are some historical cases of telepaths who have been completely overwhelmed by their abilities, and have totally lost control. It always seems to happen when they discover their talents later in life, as Liberty has, instead of in childhood.
Shawn, I want you nearby but out of sight. This could get ugly, and Sarah and I could have our hands full keeping her under control. If that happens, you’ll need to coordinate the non-mental aspects of the situation.”
Shawn swallowed. They were approaching the conference center. He had once had strong feelings for Liberty, and on some level he always would. And even though he had been hurt when she chose a different lover, their bond of friendship was strong.
They entered the conference center lobby and greeted Brother Fred.
“Shawn, please wait here and brief Fred. Liberty is in the banquet room.
We’re going in.”
Shawn stepped with Brother Fred into the little conference center office so they couldn’t be overheard by the diplomats and aides who were milling about. Rachael and Sarah took deep breaths, placed nonchalant smiles on their faces, and entered the banquet room.
Liberty was there, checking the food pans that arrived for the proper seals and watching for other security breaches. They greeted her and inquired about unusual events, and in guarded terms she indicated that she had felt something about an hour before in the corridor between the two conference centers.
That matches my last feeling, Sarah silently shared with Rachael.
Rachael thanked Liberty, and even though they both had eaten, Rachael and Sarah pretended they hadn’t, and forced themselves to slowly consume another meal, talking all the while about funny little things that had occurred at Lyceum during the last year or two.
The two telepaths eventually were able to finish their second lunch. They had sensed nothing. They spoke about their most recent art finds for a few minutes, and then wandered over to the dessert table. Sarah felt like she was waddling, and hoped it didn’t show. They selected the least-filling desserts they could find and went back to their table, which was not far from the place where Liberty checked the incoming pans of food.
Another ten minutes passed, everyone had been served, and the room was already thinning out. Suddenly, at a moment when they were least expecting it, the telepaths both felt a mental push so strong that it made them jerk their heads in the direction from which it had come. Rachael could tell it had come from near the entrance door, and had not been aimed directly at them, but off to the side of the room where the serving tables were... and where Liberty was.
What they saw was a group of five people entering the room together: a
cabinet member of a European state, two aides, a U.N. diplomat, and a State Department agent. Rachael concentrated on the group, but could not determine from which person the push had originated. As much as she wanted to solve the mystery, she turned her head toward Liberty.
The fifteen-year-old had just been the target, again, of a strong and nasty telepathic push. She too was looking at the five people who had just entered the room, but on her face was written anguish and fear.
Rachael realized her mistake. She had been thinking that the pushes were coming from Liberty, that her talent was emerging so fast that she was losing control of it. Now she realized that Liberty had all along been the target. One of the five people who just entered the room had been methodically attacking Liberty telepathically. And then it occurred to her that Liberty was the daughter of a U.S. senator, one who had been very vocal in his support of the Nuclear Disarmament Treaty.
Rachael knew that Liberty would need comforting very soon, and had to be removed from security duty at the conference. But they needed to know which one of the five had initiated the push. She turned back to look at the group again, only to discover that three of them had slipped back into the lobby and were nowhere in sight. The cabinet member and the U.N. diplomat were still present, but the telepathic attack was definitely past. She had no way to determine if it had been one of them, or one of the three who had left.
Damn! Rachael exclaimed so that only Sarah could hear her.
Liberty was trying to compose herself, but moisture was in her eyes.
Have Fred replace Liberty, and get Shawn and meet us in the conference center office.
Sarah nodded and headed for the door.
Rachael went to Liberty, took her hand and said, “Come on. This place is not safe for you.”
Liberty came completely willingly, and she managed to hold herself together until they were in the office and Shawn had his arms around her.
Then she shook and talked rapidly for the next half hour, feeling very glad she had friends who were able to figure out what was happening and who were willing to protect her.
For the remainder of the conference, Liberty kept to the residence halls, in Jason’s arms, or talking with her father, or doing quiet but fun things with Shawn and Ashley. Rachael and Sarah mingled with the conference guests to try to gather any clue they could about the identity of the attacker. But with the preferred bait removed, no other telepathic attacks were made, and Lyceum was not willing to use the bait again.
That situation, however, did give them confirmation of one suspected fact: Liberty, and only Liberty, had been the target.
On Thursday afternoon the conference concluded with short speeches by each of the statesmen. None of them had gotten everything they wanted in the negotiation process, and they had realized, with Lyceum’s help, that every special consideration they demanded caused at least two other countries some kind of worry, and those worries would in turn lead to more demands for special considerations.
At that point in time, the text of the treaty, which had received one hundred and forty-one wording changes during the conference, was in a shape that was very close to acceptable to the cabinet ministers of all twenty-seven nations in attendance. Now the document would go back to the United Nations where it would be checked for consistency with existing international law, and then to the governments of all the nations of the world for consideration.
It was a step in a very long process, and Lyceum was happy to have been able to help. The President of the United States announced that evening that a high-level conference at a secret location had succeeded in hammering out a document of great promise. By then the delegations had already begun filtering away from Lyceum, through a half dozen regional airports, to the international transportation hubs of Los Angeles, Seattle, and New York, and eventually back to their homes.
The newly refined text of the Nuclear Disarmament Treaty was transmitted back to United Nations headquarters that same day, where analysts and lawyers began to scrutinize it in preparation for presentation to the General Assembly and to the world.
Senator Buchanan decided to take a well deserved vacation. He knew his
main task was still ahead of him. He knew the Nuclear Disarmament Treaty still had to be ratified by Congress, and that powerful segments of the American political system would be throwing all their weight into an effort to defeat it. But for a couple of weeks, there was little he could do, and Congress was not in session.
He and Liberty conferred, and as she had accumulated more than two weeks of vacation credit in her seven months at Lyceum, they decided it was a very good time to get to know each other better. This time, for the first time, it would be as father and daughter who both had their own successful lives, their own challenging work, their own important tasks to perform.
With the help of Lyceum, they were soon driving along the Oregon coast in a car that could not be traced to either the name Buchanan or to Lyceum.
They were seen at restaurants, museums, aquariums, cheese factories, and often just walking along the beach, but they dressed casually and were not recognized.
On the day they crossed into Washington state, Liberty decided she wanted to tell her father about her newly discovered telepathic abilities, but she didn’t work up the courage until they were on the ferry watching the glaciated inlets of southwestern British Columbia pass slowly by. She spoke about it softly, not wanting anyone to overhear, as they both leaned on the ship’s rail and gazed at the dark green fir trees that cloaked the mountains.
“I always knew you would be coming up with things to surprise me for the rest of my life,” he said with a smile. “We’d have more time to talk about it if we went all the way to Alaska...”
“I’d love to, but Shawn’s going on an important mission soon and I promised to help with it, and my sixteenth birthday is coming up.”
“Oh, yes! Sweet sixteen! You know, I have trouble sometimes remembering just how young you are.”
“I guess I’ve been through a lot, haven’t I, Dad?”
“You... could say that. And I don’t suppose your life is going to get dull any time soon with a pilot’s license coming up, fluency in Russian not far off, all that computer work of yours, and now this telepathy stuff.”
Liberty chuckled. “And don’t forget, Dad, I can even ride horses now!”