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 "No, stay in bed, Debbie." Peter got up and walked back over to his
computer, determined this time to complete the task he had set himself and
check his email. "Of course, master," Debbie said.  She tried to lift
herself from the bed, out of interest,and found as expected that she
couldn't.  "You know," she continued, "this is interesting, kind of."
"Hmmm?" Peter was non-committal; others might simply have ignored her.
"This whole mind control thing.  Only it isn't mind control...  well,
actually I guess it is, but..." "What do you mean?" Peter asked, a note of
impatience in his voice for which he immediately chided himself.  A Whyte,
indeed, any member of the breed, should never display impatience for
anything but battle. "Well, it's more like some kind of override.  I mean,
you look at people who've been mind controlled in the movies, and they
don't think for themselves, nothing like that.  But I am.  I just have
trouble disobeying, I guess." "And that's not mind control?" Peter said,
now slightly preoccupied.  He started up the computer. "Well...  it isn't
what I expected." "No," Peter said.  "If it had been, Cambridge females
would have a consistent record of failed degrees." He was operating on two
levels, only paying the minimum of attention to Debbie - something else he
chided himself for, but he was a student.  He couldn't be expected to
conform to the breed's rules entirely, not yet. "What do you mean?" "I told
you this was hereditary," Peter said.  "Most of us have it." "Us?" "The
children of the nobility - well, the long-ennobled, anyway.  These
nouveau-riche of the last century or so aren't precisely of the same
mettle, not cut from the same cloth...  well, they lack our breeding."
"Which gives you what, exactly?" "This ability," he said.  He fired up the
connection program - custom-designed by Richard De Lorne, one of his
Etonian classmates and circulated among most of the younger breed - and
swivelled in his chair to look at her as she lay unmoving on the bed. 
"You're fairly widely read, I'd assume," he said.  "Ever hear of Bulldog
Drummond?  Ever read any of John Buchan's books?  Ever read Stalky & Co, by
Kipling?" "I...  yeah, some of that's familiar." "Those are tales told
about the breed in it's heyday, told generally by outsiders or written from
an outsider's viewpoint.  They don't mention this, but they paint a pretty
fair picture of what to expect us to act like; stubborn, resourceful, some
degree of intelligence, emotions generally kept under a tight rein, and
patient.  Not necessarily good-looking, but possessed of a charisma that
led armies, that carved an empire that spanned the world, that could hold
one hundred men together to defend against four thousand.  Think of that as
a kind of area-effect dilute version of this." The computer beeped, and he
turned back to read his messages.  Debbie was still trying to piece
together what she'd been told. *** "Well, the good news is that the
reverse-engineered snake is ready for action, thanks to young Eric Sorren's
love life," Alex announced.  "I'll bring Jonathan in on Thursday for his
treatment.  That should provide adequate time to prepare." "Easily so,"
Sorren said.  "I've arranged the deployment device in his chair.  The
snake'll pop out in answer to the keypad on the chairman's armrest, code
1543.  It'll target on the nearest person, correct?" "Indeed.  But we need
a quorum.  And we need to drop the mechanical mental access barriers on the
day.  If we do not do both of these, we will not be capable of ensuring
that he is in the right chair, and later that he is put under.  So
everyone, be here before eleven, if you please?" *** "OK," Carver's
supervisor said, "what's the score now?" "The control method isn't even
comparable to anything in our files, Mr Kirk," Ethel said.  Ethel was still
young but already exhibiting the characteristics that would eventually
fully manifest as she retired by making her dress in tweeds, organise the
local WI, and terrify all males below the age of forty who inhabited
whatever village she decided to retire into.  Currently, however, the item
you couldn't imagine her without was her clipboard.  Which was odd, as no
matter how long you watched her for she'd never look at it's contents. "Oh,
come on.  We've eliminated subliminal messages, electronic repackaging,
sequestration nanonic implants, and pretty much everything else mechanical,
right?" "Yeah," Carver said.  "It's got to me something mystical or magical
in the common sense." "Which makes it our jurisdiction." "Right." "And we
can't find anything similar?" Ethel shook her head.  "If this has been
employed in the past - and I think it must have been - it's never been
brought to our notice." "Oh, bloody hell.  So we're dealing with an ancient
mystical method of manipulating people's minds without leaving any evidence
behind and we have no records of this ancient method ever having been used
before?" Carver shrugged.  "So up to now they've been careful.  Nothing to
worry about, guv." "It is," Kirk corrected him.  "We don't know what it is,
so we can't fight it yet." "So we wait.  He's made this slip, whoever he
is; he'll make another." "Unless it wasn't a slip," Ethel replied.  "Maybe
he wants a confrontation." "In which case we have to assume he - or she -
expects to win it." "So they must realise that we exist.  Maybe they know
more, know the extent of the Bureau, our capabilities." "And if that's
true, if they expect to win they've actually got a damn good chance of
doing so." "OK," Kirk said.  "So, a consensus opinion, please?" "Pray it
was a slip," Carver said.  Ethel nodded. *** His duty done until Thursday,
Alex turned to pleasure.  He summoned Michelle and Lisa to him in his
study. He never took more than one woman to the four-poster in the bedroom;
his concession to the memory of his wife. She would understand, in any
case. They had loved, but both had been of the breed.  Both had thus kept
their feelings securely in check. Both were also products of the 1960s; sex
an important part of life once more, just as their great-grandparents had
been in the final years before Victorian self-denial set in.  And Alex
didn't intend to grieve in celibacy from there on in, as his grandfather
had done.  At that time - the best of times for the breed as a group, if
not for the sex lives of individual members - the public schools had more
or less successfully created total apathy toward emotion of any kind.  All
that was gone now. He kissed Lisa and felt her kiss back with abandon. 
Fleetingly he wondered why Jonathan was so interested in mindless
automatons in the first place.  People were so much more responsive.  It
might only be flattering his ego, but when they genuinely enjoyed the
sex... *** Trinity Hall abuts the river Cam, and opens onto a bridge that
spans it.  Beside the bridge you can hire punts to float about the river
yourself, or pay to be punted about by skilled hands - usually students who
want a little extra money. Over the bridge, on the other side of the Cam,
Trinity Hall looks out onto the Backs - a vast expanse of flat grassland
owned by the colleges that make up Cambridge University.  They're much used
by frisbee players, people trying to get together an impromptu kickabout,
groups of friends with a few 2-litre bottles of whatever beer's cheapest
and loud stereos, and courting couples. Debbie and Peter were lying in each
other's arms on a blanket, with a picnic spread out on what space remained,
concealed in the dappled shade of a weeping willow.  Unlike most students,
the picnic had been supplied by Fortnum & Mason's.  Peter hadn't yet got
the hang of keeping a rein on his spending.  A shame, because learning this
was part of what people generally became students for. "You know, romance
by mind control was not something I'd expected from Cambridge." "No?" Peter
sounded almost surprised, but she knew it was acting.  "Well, Cambridge and
Oxford are the most likely places.  Dad says there's a guy running around
who made some kind of full brainwash device at UMIST, but I think he's an
exceptional case.  Even pretty intelligent; you expect people with the
power who don't have our hereditary caution in it's use to show up like
crazy.  They leave tell-tale paperwork everywhere they go.  Instead, he
creates a touring Adult Circus and goes around picking women out of the
audience and turning them into exhibitionist slaves for the night, dumping
them in a ditch when he's finished.  Only he's kept a policewoman he got on
the books, apparently." "In case he gets into trouble." "Yeah." "Smart
guy." "Smart, but not our sort of person.  Dad's club is working on it." It
took her a moment to work out exactly what he meant.  "There're more people
like this?  There are a club of you?" "Yup.  An old-style gentleman's club.
Two of them, actually; you don't enter your father's club unless you're
both over forty.  Grandad retired after they made some changes in the
sixties, though." "Changes?" "To female servants instead of male
employees." "You don't mean servant the way the rest of us do, do you?"
"Nope." "That's disgusting," she said.  A pause.  "You didn't say no." "No,
I didn't.  I guess I can see your point.  Theoretically, they're - you're,
for now - no better than the slaves of antiquity.  Worse, in some of the
more enlightened Greek or Roman households...  But it's people like this
ringmaster whose controlees deserve the word 'slave'.  Robbed of all
emotion, all feeling, all thought.  You've still got that.  Granted, I've
coloured it, tilted it in my balance, but you're still basically you.  Even
Adrienne's still Adrienne..." "Adrienne?" "Dad's club gets all the exciting
stuff to do." His voice held just the right pitch of jealousy, feigned once
more.  He was so good at that, so good at acting his part.  He had to be;
it was in his blood.  The breed had always been able to manipulate people
just by the way they acted.  "As well as converting this guy over to the
side of reason, the side of fairness, they're dealing with some
long-running governmental setup.  Some bureau whose job is to root out the
mystical and the magical in our lives and destroy it for the good of
society at large." He paused.  "Established 1704, so there may even be a
transatlantic copy.  There's certainly one in Australia; Dad's been busy
e-mailing Ralph Sideney over there about it since the start of term. 
Anyway, they're luring this bureau into a confrontation.  Dad's club are
going to rip it apart.  To do that,he had Adrienne kill someone and get
caught.  Then he did a couple of other things to make sure they take the
mind control aspect seriously.  There'll be a showdown soon.  Don't worry,
the dead person was already dead; Dad had a brief talk with the local
psychologist a few months ago.  Potential suicide cases in the area have
been watched for months.  As soon as one of them just slit their wrists,
Adrienne was sent in to hack her body apart and confess.  She knows she
didn't do it and we didn't alter her personality in any way; she knows
she's just helping us out, which she likes to do after Dad's first meeting
with her, and that we'll bail her out of a prison sentence if it goes that
far.  It already hasn't." "What do you mean?" "We already know the CPS
won't touch the case." Debbie was about to continue the questioning, but
Peter just said, "I feel like absolute silence right now." Her mouth still
open and ready to question, her voicebox failed her.  No sound emerged. 
Seeing her open mouth, Peter looked around.  Seeing no one looking their
way, he unzipped his jeans and smiled as his cock folded out, already
erect. He shifted position and slid it into her mouth.  She closed her lips
around it and greedily began to suck, tongue, lips and even teeth to some
degree working in a dance choreographed to bring applause spilling forth.
*** Jonathan walked into the club's boardroom; a long rectangular table
with two seats to spare.  Alex quickly took one of them and gestured to
Jonathan to take the other. Jonathan shrugged and did so. "You know," Alex
said, "you look quite naked without Jane by your side.  I've grown used to
seeing her with you." Jonathan smiled.  A waitress wearing a French maid
outfit that was probably pretty stylish in the sixties appeared at his
side. "A drink, sir?" He turned with a start.  "Uh, yes.  What's good here,
someone?" "Scotch," Alex said.  "If it's not polluted with water or ice or
anything else a good Scotch doesn't deserve to have done to it." "Then I'll
have a Scotch," Jonathan said dismissively to the waitress.  The breed
seated around him carefully concealed their disgust for such plebeian
behaviour. The waitress, indifferent, bobbed a curtsey, said "At once,
sir," turned, and left. A moment later she was back, with the drink.  As
soon as her back was turned once more, the chairman tripped the switch on
his armrest. The top of the broad, high back of Jonathan's chair sprang
open.  The robotic snake catapulted itself out and coiled itself loosely
around his neck, it's own head rising up free to his eyeline, bobbing from
side to side as if following a snake charmer. Jonathan had just enough time
for a moment of frozen realisation before the beams triggered; Sorren's
son's girlfriend hadn't been quite been able to sustain the snake's
rapidity of reaction time in overriding it's safeguards. Mouth open in the
shape of a scream, Jonathan froze as the programming beams began to score
across his mindscape, burning, his mind's eye flickering and dying as it's
retina crumbled against the laserlike intensity of the light. "This is just
a behaviour change, of course?" Alex asked.  Sorren nodded. "I'm damned if
I'll sink to his level." Alex smiled.  He took a hip flask from his pocket
and swigged.  The warm liquid ran down his throat and he closed his eyes
briefly, smiling with his whole body.  Like liquid sex, as always. Jonathan
continued to stare.  The breed seated around him observed with polite
interest. It was curious, in it's way, how much light spilled from what was
supposed to be a coherent beam.  They could see the virulent green as thick
bands themselves.  However, that shouldn't affect them as they weren't
seeing the full didactic imprint pattern, as Jonathan was. And in any case,
all it could do was attempt to program into them the moral code they
already shared. A Whyte did not indulge in slavery.  No member of the breed
indulged in slavery.  None had for many years.  It was not proscribed; it
was forbidden in a far stronger way than that.  It simply wasn't done. 
Those who had had been driven overseas to America; probably not the best
available solution, with hindsight.  Still, it had taught them to take more
assertive, if also more brutal, steps from then on, so chalk it up to
experience. The glow continued to burn it's patterns into Jonathan's
wide-open brain.  Unlike the original, where the purpose of the ray was
simply to lay the brain open to suggestion, this one was intended to
imprint new behavioural patterns and overwrite the others.  So Alex had
been told, anyway; he wasn't as good with the technical bits of computers
as he might have been.  As long as they did what they were supposed to, he
wasn't worried about it. Taking that analogy was, he felt, a little
overconfident; but he had to admit that if the worst came to the worst the
original snake could be used and the new behaviour could probably be
programmed in with dilligent work. After what seemed an eternity, but was
in fact only a few more seconds, the light cut out from the snake's eyes.
It slithered back into the chair and sank below. "Ah, Rhiannon," the
chairman said, "Take the snake away and destroy it, would you?" "Of course,
sir," the waitress replied.  She approached the chair, levered the lid up,
extracted the now comatose snake and bore it away. "Thank you," the
chairman said, making a point to Jonathan who was now regaining his
consciousness.  "Ah...  Jonathan.  How do you feel?" "Guilty." "We can't
have that.  No member of this club should feel guilt for their actions. 
Simply remedy them now." "I'm not sure that's possible." "We will supply
you with blueprints for the redesigned snake.  Converting your slaves to a
simple state of servitude should be simple with some further reverse
engineering." "Thank you." There was real warmth in his voice, though not
the charisma of the breed.  Alex smiled, and beside him, Sorren smiled. 
Light glittered off their unusually long canines; teeth long enough to
stand out but not to be puzzling.  Unless you saw more than one of the
breed together. Jonathan looked at the spectacle, and wondered what was
coming. MORE TO COME...