Cindy Psi: Spy In Training
Chapter 17: Dinnertime Chat

“That was – mmph – cool,” Milton said with a mouthful of food. The five of them were sat around a table in the common room having their dinner after a day spent practicing mindspeaking, blocking, and intercepting. All of them were in good spirits with the exception of George, who was being a bit quiet and reserved. “How about when I broke in on the chat you and Jane were having Nat?!? Couldn’t block me could you!”

“Natalie.” Natalie corrected, then continued, “No, I sure couldn’t. You’re really good with that Milton. Better than Cindy in my view.”

Milton beamed, but Jane piped up with “Are you kidding? He’s good,” turning to Milton, “You’re good, very good, I grant you,” back to Natalie, “But better than Cindy? No chance. She could just cut through any block. Remember when all three of us tried to block her and she just smashed through?”

“Yes,” said Natalie a bit huffily, “I do remember. But it’s just brute force. Milton has some finesse at least.”

“Don’t be mean!” Jane began, ready to leap to Cindy’s defence, when Cindy cut in.

“That’s OK Jane, I don’t think it’s mean,” And then turning to Natalie, “I agree. Milton has a really classy way of doing it; really subtle and spylike. I could learn a lot from you on that Milt.” Natalie looked annoyed rather than placated by Cindy’s words, but she ignored that. Milton, on the other hand, looked like if he smiled any wider his face would split in half.

“Thanks, Cind, you’re really kind. But Jane has a point – your strength is just awesome.”

And I don’t think Natalie likes that very much, Jane added privately to Cindy, using her newly learnt shielding.

“Oh come on, don’t go on about it, please,” Cindy replied to Milton. She was replaceing this whole power thing was getting a bit awkward and embarrassing.

George spoke up. “Why shouldn’t we talk about it, powergirl? Even Dave was saying how strong you are.”

“‘Powergirl’! Lol!” Natalie clearly thought this was hilarious.

George continued. “It’s true though, right? The rest of us wouldn’t have a chance against Cindy.”

“What does that matter George? We’re all on the same side,” Milton said as he loaded another forkful of food and waved it in the air discursively.

“Hmm.” George seemed unsure.

“What?” Asked Jane.

“Did you notice that all day we were with Selma we didn’t see any of the other agents or whatever they are? Where do you think Dave, Louise and Christof were?”

The others looked thoughtful. Natalie seemed to reach the same conclusion as George first, and before the others had the chance to catch up the thought came to all of them from George: That’s right, they’re busy wiping the twins’ minds.

Jane looked shocked. Cindy had worked out what he was driving at just before he said it. Milton was quiet, but then George said out loud, “Only I got that sping Milton,” so Milton said aloud to the group “I had thought of that earlier this afternoon, but I kind of put it to the back of my mind because I was getting so caught up in the stuff we were doing. He’s probably right though.”

“You know I am,” replied George, “and I don’t know, I just don’t think the sides are that clear cut.”

Cindy spoke up. “But you saw that hideous … thing … and you felt that horrible woman. They’re the enemy for sure. And have you seen anything like that coming from any of the agents?”

“No, no I haven’t. But then it’s not exactly being Father Christmas wiping peoples’ minds to keep your operation secret, is it?” Natalie was nodding slowly as George spoke.

“No it’s not,” Cindy agreed, “But then what choice do they have? I don’t know, it all kind of adds up for me. There’s a threat to the whole galaxy, if everyone found out about it it’s not just that you’d have a massive panic, you’d also make it impossible to defend against because all the bad people with talent would be contacting the Turgs once they knew they were there. How could you stop that? At least keeping it secret means only the people the Turgs approach become a problem. And the Turgs have no way of knowing if the person they approach is someone who’s likely to be influenced or not. They’d probably just freak out or tell them to get lost. I mean, I did.”

“You already said you didn’t have a choice with that though – you had to do something, you said,” said Natalie.

“No, not then, the first time.”

“What first time?”

“The Turgs approached me before I came here,” Cindy admitted after a brief pause. “They tried to get me to help them. I said no.”

There was a stunned silence around the table. Jane mindspoke first, with are you sure you should be telling us this Cind? Followed shortly by Milton, out loud, with “You spoke to a Turg? What happened?”

“And why didn’t you tell us?” added Natalie pointedly.

I don’t know, but I’ve said it now. Cindy sent back to Jane, then “I did, Milt, and I don’t know why I didn’t mention it Natalie, it just didn’t feel like I should. I guess the times I did think of it I didn’t want to freak you guys out, and the times we were, well, being freaked out anyway, I wasn’t thinking about it.”

“So what happened, then?” Insisted Milton.

“Well, not long after Dave first contacted me …”

“Oh, was it Dave who contacted you first? It was Louise for me,” interrupted Jane.

“Was it?” Said Milton, “I was Dave. You two?”

“Dave,” Said George.

“Same here,” added Natalie.

“Just me with Louise then,” Jane concluded, “fair enough. Anyway, you were saying Cind?”

“There’s not much to tell, really. The Turg approached me – it seemed to have difficulty with the language at first, but then it started offering me like my own planet and everything. I knew what it was because I’d already had the long chat with Dave – did you guys get that? Where he told you about everything? Louise in your case I guess Jane.”

A chorus of nods.

“Yeah, well,” She continued, “So I guessed what was going on, and the Turg knew I knew and seemed to get annoyed. And the point is I could tell that it was an evil thing. Not like psycho killer evil, but just, I don’t know, cold. Unfeeling. Nasty. And since then I’ve been pretty clear who the enemy is.”

“So what did you do about it?” Asked Milton.

“Well, I got rid of it. I guess I pushed it away,” admitted Cindy, almost guiltily.

“Oh, so that wasn’t the first time you saw off a Turg,” commented Natalie, “No wonder you seemed to know what you were doing when Dave and Louise needed help.”

I didn’t, you know, Cindy sent to Jane conspiratorially, whilst saying out loud “I guess. But it was very different. Well, actually, I guess both times were stupidly scary. But in different ways. Sort of. I don’t know,” she finished lamely.

Jane was as instantly supportive and helpful as ever: “Well that must have been horrendous. Alone, and knowing less about the whole thing than we did in the room, and no Dave or Louise to step in. I don’t blame you for not mentioning it Cind, I think I’d want to forget it just as soon as I could.”

“I don’t know, it’s kind of relevant. It might have been worth knowing that one of us had experience with this ‘enemy’” George said, “I guess you didn’t think it was important enough to tell us. Or that we were important enough to tell.”

Cindy became aware of Milton spinging George but in an unguarded way with a nudge to each of them to tune in.

Look, I don’t know what your problem is George, and why you keep trying to stir up trouble, but we’re all in this together, and whatever you say, we’re all on the same side. If you don’t think you are then we better tell Dave and the others and you can work it out with them. But if you are with us then start acting like it and stop having a go at Cindy. I’m sick of it.

I agree, chimed in Jane, leave her alone. She hasn’t done anything to you and she can’t help being what she is. Get over it.

George looked chastened. Natalie said nothing, but her normally haughty expression got even haughtier with the arching of an eyebrow and a narrowing of the eyes.

For what it’s worth, George, I haven’t got any problem with you. I think this is hard for all of us, and we’re all going to deal with it differently, Cindy sent privately to George.

George was thoughtful. You’re kind, Cindy. Probably kinder than I deserve, he sent, and left it at that despite Cindy asking what he meant.

Conversation turned to lighter topics after that while the children finished their meal. It was only at the end that Milton said “One thing though, well, two really …”

“What’s that?” asked Jane.

“I’m going to ask Dave when I next see him what happened with the twins. And Rebecca.”

They all nodded, and with perfect timing, in walked Dave.

“Well?” said Milton.

“Well what?” Dave replied, clearly puzzled.

“Oh, sorry, I thought maybe you were, you know, listening.”

Dave sighed, suddenly looking a little older. Cindy noticed how tired he seemed. “No,” he said, “But I understand the suspicion. We don’t monitor every conversation or anything, just what we need to for security reasons. Most of the monitoring we do is just for any kind of loud psychic noises if you like. If you guys are having a chat amongst yourselves, either out loud or in mindspeak, and we’re not there listening, then it’s amongst yourselves, I promise you.”

“We were talking about what happened to the twins,” George said, “And Milton mentioned Rebecca as well.”

“Oh,” Dave sighed, still more deflated. “Well, I’ll start with Rebecca. There’s no change. We can’t seem to reach her – it’s like someone’s put a kind of block around her mind that we can’t break through and she can’t get out of. She’s physically stable, and we can keep her fed and alive, but that’s small comfort if we can’t figure out how to release her.”

There was a moment while the children digested this. Jane visibly shuddered at the thought of it.

“And the twins?” Natalie asked. “Have you wiped their minds?”

“No. No, we haven’t,” said Dave with heavy resignation, “But we may have to.”

“So where are they then?” asked George a bit accusingly.

“They’re in a special section of the compound undergoing counselling. We run tests to see if we can let them go home without doing a … a wipe … but under close monitoring instead. It takes a while. And another problem we have is we’re down one in the number of people who can do the monitoring because of Rebecca’s … situation …”

Dave was clearly struggling, and Cindy felt sorry for him.

“It’s ok Dave, we understand the burden on you,” she said, and some of us more than others she added privately.

Dave looked gratefully at her. “Thanks, Cindy, these are tough times. But look, let’s focus on positive things when we can. How was your first proper training day?”

Milton changed his demeanour immediately. Brilliant! He sent to Dave, with a nudge to each of the others. I mean, I started slow but we learnt loads!

Evidently so, Dave sent back to them all with a smile in his mental tone. Well done.

Yes, we played a lot of fun games and all became jolly good psychic spies, George sent, heavy with sarcasm.

“Well,” said Dave out loud, ignoring the sarcastic element of George’s message and adopting his more usual authoritative tone, “That’s great. That’s what we’re trying to achieve after all. Ok, your PCDs are locked down but there’s a library of streams for you to choose from on the Adriá intranet, so help yourselves if you want after tea; you can watch something on the training room wall together or head back to your respective quarters for some private time if you prefer. Be back here at the common room for breakfast tomorrow at 0800 ready to fuel up for another big day’s training.” And with that, he strode out, regaining his composed air although not without effort it seemed to Cindy. She shot a thought off to George.

Why do you have to keep pushing? What is it with you, George?

George seemed thoughtful again, and then Cindy sensed him reaching a conclusion.

Sping me when we get back to our rooms and I’ll tell you.

Shortly after, the children left the common room table. Jane and Milton decided to go watch a stream in the training room, while Natalie, George and Cindy all made their excuses and went back to their respective quarters.