Edge. Part 3

"Flying green, and I knew you'd be awake. Everything still on for next week?"

"Uh-huh. Hang on." The phone showed Tony turning away. "Hey, Am? You hear the kids screaming?" A distant answer sounded, then he turned face-on again. "Sorry, yeah, the course is on plan. You sure you're OK to teach?"

"Definitely. So is the basha free tonight, by any chance?"

"I didn't expect anyone before tomorrow, but yeah, it's booked since the beginning of the month, because of the programme."

It was an eight-week training programme for Quantal Bank, and Tony had booked a Docklands apartment, cheaper and more homely than a hotel. Most of the trainers called it a basha, because Tony hired only exmilitary.

"Thought I'd settle in, get my bearings. Same entrance code?"

"Sure. You're OK with the mentoring aspect? You're not primary teach until week three. Next week, the big thing will be getting them fired up for the old board breaking."

Bankers wanting SpecOps mystique to give them confidence, deal with the deadly stress of meetings, bureaucracy, and back-stabbing. It was the security-and-crypto modules for the IT guys that Josh was looking forward to.

"No change with Sophie?" added Tony.

"No miracles, no."

Giggles sounded in the background."Listen, Am could look after the kids, and I'll meet you in the basha tonight."

"No, enjoy your weekend," he looked up as the waitress appeared, beans on toast in hand "and give Amber my love. Hi to the kids. Cheers."

"Cheers, mate. Take it easy."

He flicked the phone to GPS, ready to slot into the car's dash, and placed it face up on the table as the waitress put down his food.

"Enjoy, love."

"I will, thanks."

The map displayed his long and lat, his position a glowing yellow dot, while in subterranean data centres beneath the Cotswolds, ma.s.sively parallel networked cl.u.s.ters tracked the movements of every phone and car in Britain, DNA-tagged and ID-registered, everyone known to the system, even as the most important parts of their lives, the millions of thoughts and feelings, everyday and profound, remained unknowable, untrackable, beyond governance.

Josh could drop off the grid if he had to. If only he could pull his daughter into health and freedom with the same kind of ease.

He stared at his food, feeling dreadful.

[ FIVE ].

Nine minutes before the Broomhall boy's appointment, Suzanne's phone beeped. She turned her chair away from the window, and picked the phone up from her desktop, checking the caller's picture. It was a client, Rosa, so she pressed the Accept symbol, pointing the phone at the wallscreen, transferring the image.

Rosa's face sharpened, larger than life-sized.

"Hey. Just wanted to call and say thank you."

"Rosa, does that mean you've good news?"

"The hospital confirms what you thought. The consultant's nice."

"And there's a treatment?"

"Uh-huh. They can't believe I'm breathing so easily, what with the micro-scarring they found. Both lungs. I told them you work miracles."

"A very scientific kind of miracle, and I'm glad you're so much better."

"The medium that I go to see, she's impressed with all I've told her about you. She'd love to meet you sometime."

"Uh-huh. Well, right now, I've someone to see. You go well, Rosa."

"And you. See ya!"

The wallscreen blanked out.

Miracles. Right.When Rosa had seen her own brain activity pulsing in sheets of colour on that same screen, she had been in awe, sitting beneath the silver tree that was Suzanne's fMRI scanner, set on castors so you could roll it across the floor, like a hairdryer from a salon. "It's kind of a sacred moment, Doc," she had said, for to her science was magic.

Therapists focusing on the mind too often treated every illness as psychosomatic Rosa had seen hypnotherapists before but in her case Suzanne had been right to suggest another medical opinion, despite the two medics who had given the all-clear, suggesting that the tightness in Rosa's breathing was her own fault, caused by stress.

If only it were ethical for Suzanne to change New Age irrationality as easily as she removed the other limiting beliefs of Rosa's mental world.

"Dr d.u.c.h.esne?" The image went straight up on the wallscreen. "Your appointment is here. With his, um, driver."

"Thanks, Colin. Send them up, would you?"

She disengaged her phone from the wallscreen, muted it and blocked incoming calls, then walked out into the lobby and waited in front of the lift. Soft sounds carried from the other firms on this floor freight consultants and a marketing agency deadened by soft carpeting and fibre-covered walls. The lift door dinged open.

Richard Broomhall was fourteen, looked a year or two younger, and did not move until a big woman she stood behind him touched his shoulder. Then he stepped out, followed by the woman.

"I'm Richard's driver," she said. "You won't want me inside, I a.s.sume?"

"There's a coffee machine round there."

"I'm good, thanks. Right here is fine."

Suzanne nodded, then focused every sense on the boy, excluding the world. His eyes widened.

"Come inside, Richard." Direct commands are unambiguous. "And sit down."

Some teenagers respond to Would you like to sit down? as if it might be a question, not an instruction, so she needed to set the tone. But there was no surliness in Richard's manner as he took the client seat, glancing at the fMRI in the corner. as if it might be a question, not an instruction, so she needed to set the tone. But there was no surliness in Richard's manner as he took the client seat, glancing at the fMRI in the corner.

"You know what that is?"

"Atomic magnetometer," he said. "You're going to look inside my brain?"

"I'm surprised you know that, so well done. But no scanning today. So do you like science?"

"Uh, sure." His tone said: Doesn't everyone? Doesn't everyone?

"Any field in particular?"

"Astrophysics. Galaxy formation. Dark matter strut formation. And I'm an atheist."

From dark matter to religion was a leap, therefore interesting.

"I'm curious. Tell me more about that."

"You can't see dark matter but you can see its effects. And it doesn't matter where you were brought up, physics is the same, and anyone can do experiments to false, um, falsify theories, right? But you're supposed to believe in the same G.o.d as your father wherever you are, even though every country has different religions, because well ... they just do."

He blinked as if surprised at the way his words had spilled out.

"And your father?"

"He knows... He's so, er, certain."

"What kind of thing is he certain about?"

"Everything."She could challenge that for exceptions, because there must be times when Broomhall senior looked or acted uncertain, but she chose a different route. "Is there any specific belief of his that bothers you?"

"I... don't know."

The hesitation told her everything.

"If you did know, what would the answer be? And if you still don't know, just guess."

"Knives." The word popped out. Richard blinked again, then stared at her. "He thinks it's good to carry knives."

"Do all adults carry them?"

"Yes." A pause, then: "Um, no. But lots do."

"Is there anyone you know who doesn't?"

"Mr Dutton, at school. He's brilliant and he doesn't carry."

Good for Mr Dutton.

"Imagine someone with a knife were about to walk in now."

Richard's gaze flicked down and right, his face whitening.

"Tell me," she continued, "how you would feel."

"Sick. Like... like throwing up."

"How would you like to feel around knives?"

"I..." His left hand made an unconscious gesture over his stomach. "I dunno."

Knives brought on a roiling sensation, and he would rather feel settled. That much he had told her without words.

"If you felt calm inside yourself, what would that do for you?"

"I... I'd be safer? Able to work at school without worrying about... things."

There was something there, something to uncover that was school-related, but going for it now would be confrontational. For the moment, she needed rapport; and with four sessions already booked, she could afford to postpone this line of questioning.

And she wanted to know about his father.

For a while she continued with gentle questions, learning about the death of Richard's mother three years ago, the loneliness of a Surrey mansion, and the way his father smelled of whisky at the breakfast table, far too often. And then there were exams, the pressure to do well, and Richard's increasing difficulty in revision. The reason for revision is that revisiting a memory strengthens it, and the principle applies universally. She wondered what bad memories Broomhall senior kept replaying and so strengthening inside his head, what pictures, sounds, and feelings needed the deadening effect of booze to let him sleep.

But there were practical things she could do for Richard now, beginning by instructing him in the fourteen-minutes-study, five-minutes-rest cycle for optimum revising. Then she raised his hand and dropped him into trance.

Limb catalepsy is unknown in the conscious state, an extra convincer to Richard that something new was going on: his hand would feel suspended by wires, held in place by invisible force. While the hand remained poised level with his head, Suzanne talked him down into deep relaxation. "Think back to a time when everything was all right, all was well..."

She showed him how to bring feelings of confidence back into play when needed, and finally instructed his hand to lower "with honest unconscious movement only as fast as your unconscious agrees to integrate these understandings" and told a metaphorical tale, as the hand inched downward, of a novice monk graduating via the dark, fear-filled, final chamber to reach the light, only to look back and see flimsy paper dragons hanging from the ceiling: a metaphor which, in Richard's current neurophysiological state, might have profound effects. Beneath his eyelids, tears welled.

"And you can awaken now..."

He rubbed his eyes and smiled.

The next client was a ten year-old bedwetter, accompanied by her mother. Here Suzanne's work was subtle, directed more toward mother than daughter, changing the source of the behaviour. Next up was a webmovie scriptwriter, blocked for months because of a single cutting remark at a vulnerable time. That was straightforward, and by the session's end he was almost dancing as he stood with ideas, he said, bursting inside his head, desperate to pour out.

Freud said that words were once magic, while Dawkins called even birdsong "barcodes on the air", causing the state of listeners' brains to change. Suzanne wondered, as her writer client left, if he had any clue how her use of language patterns had changed the way he "Dr d.u.c.h.esne." This was a security override, popping up on her wallscreen. "Richard Broomhall's driver is on her way up. I couldn't stop her."

Suzanne blinked, then exhaled, centring herself like a dancer.

"I'll deal with her. That's fine."

Clearly there was a problem. Forestalling the woman's actions, Suzanne pulled her office door open. The big woman from earlier was storming out of the lift.

"Something's wrong," said Suzanne. "Tell me what it is."