DAVID M HENLEY The Hunt for Pierre Jnr. Reviewed by Folly Gleeson

This future world takes the ethical dilemmas and tendencies of our own time on some scary trajectories. In the earth of the far future, a world of 20 billion inhabitants who are living under domes and experiencing a life controlled by the World Union, Peter Lazarus is a telepath, a psionic. We meet him in the process of turning himself in to the Services, the military arm of the ruling party called the Primacy. Offering himself to the rulers is dangerous for him, and he has remained free for 30 or so years by making himself inconspicuous. His psionic powers make him a threat that needs to be controlled. He gives himself up because he believes that Pierre Jnr, son of two telepaths, is a worse threat to the World Union and that he has caused Peter’s sister’s suicide. Pierre is certainly powerful and he is only eight years old. The World Union usually confines telepaths to prison islands and once on the islands they are isolated and rendered powerless, but Pierre is wandering freely around the world educating himself and controlling people as he wishes. There is no doubt that he is dangerous but so far he has evaded capture. The Services has tools that can help control psionics: the symbiots, robot semi-creatures that can be used to enforce orders and inflict pain:

Peter had never had a symbiot, but he knew all about them – that’s why he feared them. Having a symbiot was like having a second brain, one permanently connected to the Weave, and everyone of age wore one, but it also meant Services would always know where he was and could use the symbiot against him. The one he was being fitted with was specially designed for suspects like him and could torture and kill if instructed to do so. He shivered as the scales spread, reinforcing his bondage a millimetre at a time.

In this world of the future, all citizens are connected to the Weave, a technology that provides information and also allows for the Will of the citizens to be understood and responded to by the ruling elite. Rather like a voting system with a fairly immediate response (Clive Palmer might like it!). The Weave is a nice metaphor for connectedness, like the web but far more extensive and indeed invasive:

The Will of the people could change in an instant, theoretically. It took only a significant proportion of the Citizenry to recast their opinion for the hierarchy of society to shift, but there were some unfaltering factors that slowed the pace of change.

Pierre’s extraordinary psionic powers (both telepathic and telekinesic) cause extreme fear, expressed on the Weave. The Will’s response to this fear results in a new Prime – leader of the Primacy – being installed. He is Ryu Shima, scion of a very powerful family, part of a very definite hierarchy with some interesting members. He intensifies the search for psionic people and initiates a crack military search for Pierre, who continues to elude him and subvert his operatives. Recruited to hunt Pierre are Tamsin Grey, a powerful female telepath, Colonel Pinter, a retired Services member, Geof Ozenbach, an expert weaver and Peter. The recruits complement each other and the group works well; however there is great deal of mistrust. As well, a group sympathetic to psionics is beginning to form and to garner support, and this is having its own impact on the Weave. So an impending conflict is taking shape. This novel is imaginative and intelligent. Henley creates a very logical world with many of the trends and tendencies of our own time shown in all their possible scary trajectories. Should people with special abilities be controlled? How much freedom can people expect in a world so overpopulated? How will computers affect our lives in the future? Can we bioengineer creatures ethically? The relationship between the Will of the people and the Weave is quite interesting too; it is as if digital voting has flowered into a sort of intuitive democratic response. In many ways the story is preparing the scene for further developments, with the characters being set up like chess pieces. Henley writes pragmatically and this is enjoyable because one is not asked to explore the emotions nor to empathise with the characters, but simply to enjoy the scope of the plot and the developing mystery of Pierre and his plans. Technically, I liked the way the separate communication vectors – telepathy, Weave connections and ordinary speech – have a typeface each, making the often complex interactions quite clear. I enjoyed this novel; however it really ends with a gauntlet being thrown down, so I look forward to a sequel. David M Henley The Hunt for Pierre Jnr Voyager 2013 PB 416pp $27.99 David M Henley is appearing at the 2014 Sydney Writers Festival and at the Supernova Expo in Sydney and Perth in June. Folly Gleeson was a lecturer in Communication Studies. At present she enjoys her book club and reading history and fiction. You can buy this book from Abbey’s here. To see if it is available from Newtown Library, click here. SMSA members can check the Library here.