Mindbenders by Ted Krever Read Free Book Online

triggered the reality by thinking the word. Raindrops appeared on the windshield. A few moments later, the downpour was pounding the roof, slithering in the slipstream across the windows, a mad river curdling the pebbly ground along the road, a full-fledged sky-dump. Words have power —who said that?
    It quickly got too much for driving.  “We have to stop,” Max said and pulled off at the next exit. It was a strip mall of motels—you could see the chain signs buzzing over the treetops miles away. Five sprawling motels in an overlit shiny row, room rates a dollar apart, separated by gas stations with prices varying by three cents a gallon. We pulled into the furthest parking lot, the one with deep woods behind it and took a double room with a cot for the third man. As soon as we’d dropped our stuff inside, Tauber told Max, “Lend me ten bucks out of the stash—I’ve got some personal maintenance issues.”
    “Lend?” Max asked.
    “Tomorrow, you set me loose with a shopping cart and other people’s garbage; you’ll see how much money I can make. At the moment, I’m without the tools of the trade.” Max gave him some money and he was back in a few minutes with a bottle of cheap bourbon. I hadn’t even seen a liquor store but I guess he had radar.
    “You could buy decent booze,” Max said. “We’re not broke.”
    “I don’t want decent booze,” Tauber replied. “Ye’ll spoil me.”
    “So who gets the cot?” I asked. “Should we draw cards?”
    “You’d get rooked, son,” Tauber laughed. “Reading cards is how they check if you’ve got the power.”
    “I don’t sleep much anyway,” Max said. “I’ll take the cot.”
    Tauber had the bottle drained in fifteen minutes. He started singing after that—not loud but not good either and Max flipped on the TV in self-defense. A few minutes later, Tauber was dead asleep. Max went to wash up. I settled onto the other bed and stared at the tube. I would have stared at anything that moved at that point.
    The news stations were running tributes to the Indian Premier, or they would have been tributes if anybody had anything nice to say about him. The people interviewed were stepping carefully, trying to be respectful without outright lying. And then there was the daughter, Aryana Singh, serene and focused, Western makeup and a very stylish white head covering.
    “I have been thrust into a situation I could never have foreseen. As head of my father’s party, I will be Premier of India until elections are held. In the interim, I am beholden to nothing but my own conscience and my father’s memory.”
    Usually, that was about as much politician as I could stand, but, this time, I kept listening. There was something in her voice, the ring of a real person struggling to handle the curves, the way we all have to. I felt sorry for her, tell the truth. Politician is a bad job if you have any instinct for being real.
    “In today’s world, danger comes not simply from rival states but from all sorts of enemies in the shadows, organizations that seize power without accepting the responsibility that comes with it. Organizations that use fear to corrupt.
    “To break the cycle, we must first stop measuring power by the damage we can visit on others. I have ordered the High Command to prepare to dismantle all of India’s nuclear warheads. My father was invited to the G8 Conference on Monday; I shall go in his place and propose that all countries holding nuclear weapons agree to dismantle theirs as well. India will be first if the others agree to follow.”
    Max came out of the bathroom in time to hear the back end of her statement. “Is this a mindbender thing?” I asked. “It’s pretty freaky.”
    He shook his head immediately. “This gives people hope,” he answered. “Governments don’t pay for hope.” He stared at the TV for a moment. “It is odd,” he admitted, heading back to the bathroom.
    The head of the opposition party called for Singh’s