Part 27 (2/2)
”Good.” He forced his attention outward, onto the dark motorway, for the sake of Suzanne's safety as he drove. ”You calmed them down.”
”Actually, I got one of them sputtering with confusion as I tied them up in verbal knots, showing the contradictions in their behaviour. Sometimes you need to be outrageous and almost aggressive.” She smiled. ”Rapport can be overrated.”
”So no hypnosis.”
”Well, maybe a little.”
”But you can't hypnotise someone against their will.””Uh-uh. Look, pay attention to the road right now, but in the past, have you ever drifted off while driving... then come to your senses, and wondered who the h.e.l.l was in charge for the past fifty miles?”
”Oh. So it's not just me.”
”Everyone who's been lost in a good movie was in a trance, because that's all it is, an altered state. We drift through dozens of different mental states every day.”
”Mind control,” he said. ”Tell me about the mind control.”
”Bad metaphor. People want to learn how to hypnotise others but not go into trance themselves. Wrong, wrong, wrong. It's more like a dance, leading someone into a state where they're more resourceful than usual. The fastest way to induce a trance is to go there first.”
”You're joking.”
”I go into a different state from theirs, because my eyes are open, my attention on the client while they go inside themselves. But I'm still in a kind of trance. The fMRI proves it.”
Josh was not sure whether he was impressed or disappointed.
”You say it's like a dance. There are links between martial arts and dance, you know.”
”What I use is not a weapon.”
”Oh.”
Clearly she could read his mind.
Later, still driving, he tapped the phone, then told it the URI to connect to. Ghostly outlines in blue, red, and green popped up on the windscreen: a translucent heads-up display. Via proxies, he had the postings list from his querybot, with two hits registered, both recent.
”What's that?” asked Suzanne.
”High-probability sightings of Richard Broomhall.” He tapped for a map-pane, which he dimmed. ”London, south of the river. We can check the video footage when we stop.”
”How far to the services?”
”Ten minutes. Perhaps we should go on. I've had to control my bladder before.”
”Do you like watching waterfalls? All the water splas.h.i.+ng down, splish-splash.”
”Jesus, you are are a witch.” a witch.”
”No, I'm not telling you to think about a flowing tap, the ripples of running water down a channel that”
”All right, I'll stop.”
”I promise to use my powers only for evil,” said Suzanne. ”Er, I mean good.”
”Witch, witch, witch.”
At the service area they pulled in, plugged the car in to recharge, used the facilities then carried cappuccinos back to the vehicle. Inside, he put music on. After ten seconds, it was replaced with a shus.h.i.+ng sound.
”That's odd,” said Suzanne. ”Has the channel gone offline?”
”No, it's anti-sound in the cha.s.sis and windows. There's one-way silvering on the gla.s.s as well, now that I've changed the polarisation.”
”Er... Are there onboard missiles? Machine guns?”
”I think that's next year's model. And your phone's blocked, by the way.”
”Oh.” Suzanne had velcroed her phone around her wrist. ”Right, it's dead.”
”Standard anti-surveillance. I don't want you flagged as of interest, or no more than you already are, by a.s.sociating with Broomhall.”
”a.s.sociating?”
”Or whatever. Anyway, let's see the footage.”
Both segments were short, and he set them up to loop simultaneously in two panes. In one, the pinpointed youth walked along a street past piled-up bin bags a moving shadow might have been a rat while in the other segment, a youth in a green sweats.h.i.+rt maybe the same person crossed a road to avoid a group of larger teenagers.
”That's him.” Suzanne kept watching. ”In both loops, that's Richard.”
”Right.” Josh blanked the display, then called up the map. ”Depending on how far he tends to move at night... if he's settled in somewhere, he's in Wandsworth, maybe Brixton.”
”Settled in. Asleep in a doorway. Poor Richard.”
”Maybe not asleep.” Josh did not want to mention nocturnal predators. ”But trying to keep out of sight and warm.”
”So you're not likely to find him if you start looking now.”
”But if we”
”We both need sleep.”
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