The Lost Perception by Daniel F. Galouye Page A

unleashed their fury in the greater metropolitan area. Ground-level detonation of the warheads, however, had mainly spared the central city from irreparable damage.
    True to the British sense of tradition, that section was restored before reconstruction spread into the environs. But the Thames River had been stripped of its riparian integrity, such that in many spots the watercourse sent coves and bays ranging far beyond its old banks and feeding many potholes where the bodies of persons recently gone Screamie were occasionally washed ashore.
    “I said,” Wellford began again, realizing he hadn’t yet caught Gregson’s attention, “you’ve arrived in time to help me celebrate. Yesterday I was supposed to buy the Screamie package. Either I didn’t, or I’m the most unperturbed Screamer you’ve ever encountered.”
    Gregson grimaced. “Going Screamie is nothing to joke about.”
    “I should hope not. But then, Lady Sheffington is.”
    “Who’s Lady Sheffington?”
    “In due time you’ll find out. Meanwhile, I was fairly fascinated by this morning’s fact sheet on your experiences. But I’m afraid you may not have been the first to bag a live Valorian.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “Tomorrow’s briefing. From the grapevine I’ve managed to gather the impression that Radcliff has already successfully interrogated a Valorian and is ready to disseminate results and conclusions.”
    At Trafalgar Square, even the sparse traffic in Pall Mall East had slowed to a halt. Gregson rolled up the cab window, trying to shut out the piercing shrieks of a hypodermic siren coming from the base of Nelson’s Column.
    The Screamer alarm had frightened the pigeons into wheeling flight that took them well out over Cockspur Street. Just when it appeared the birds would settle, the sharp, clanging bell of the Security Bureau Pickup Squad car, bearing along Whitehall, set them off again.
    “Let’s walk,” Wellford proposed. “Simpson’s is close by. Anyway, I have a score to settle with Lady Sheffington in the Strand.”
    Afoot, Gregson hugged the parapet overlooking the Square, ignoring the silent, apprehensive crowd that had gathered there. But when the squad car screeched to a halt in Cockspur across the square he couldn’t avoid staring towards the nearest recumbent bronze lion.
    Someone had placed the Screamer, as though in sacrifice to an idol, alongside the forepaws of the massive animal. It was a child—six at the most. His pale, bare calves trembled in unconscious reflex as terror bored in beneath the too-shallow pall of sedative.
    But at least he wasn’t screaming.
    Emergency pickup personnel charged onto the scene, placed the boy on a litter and bore him swiftly back to the squad car. The vehicle raced away, surrendering Trafalgar Square to somber silence, and the crowd drifted dispiritedly off.
    As Gregson headed into the Strand, he looked back. The Square was deserted, its stillness disturbed only by the pigeons that strutted in the shadow of a Lord Nelson who brooded over the horror that had gripped the heart of London on a quiet Sunday afternoon.
    Lady Sheffington, Wellford explained as they neared the building with gaudy lettering splashed across its façade, was indeed not a member of the peerage. If the “Lady” hadn’t been capriciously bestowed at christening, then it had been surreptitiously assumed, he ventured.
    Gregson read some of the gold-leaf streamers: “Fortunes Told,” “Know Thy Destiny and Be Prepared,” “Is There a Screamie Package in Your Future?”
    “It was Lady Sheffington who predicted you’d go Screamie?” he asked.
    Wellford nodded. “Now she must refund my money.” Then he anticipated the next question. “No. I don’t normally waste my time on soothsayers. I was just curious over the fact that three of them whom I know of happen to be ex-Screamers. Moreover, they’re all credited with amazingly accurate predictions, as is this one.”
    Lady Sheffington was