The Intervention Part 25

"Tu paries d'une idee a la con! They don't even like each other. And what about poor old Sampson?"

An unavoidable casualty of Earth's mental evolution. His wounded heart will recover. The deflation of the Cartier-Sampson liaison will be one of your most critical tasks in the months ahead. When Lucille is free, she will naturally gravitate to Denis, her metapsychic peer, and the genetic advantage of their union will become self-evident to her. If it is not, you can discreetly press the point.

"Me? Me?" I was sandbagged by the casual arrogance of the Ghost. "You think this girl's some kind of computer I can reprogram?"

You'll find a way to work things out. You must. Sampson is hopelessly latent, an unsuitable mate for this young woman who is so highly endowed with the creative metafunction. It is unfortunately true that she and Denis have clas.h.i.+ng temperaments, but this is not an insuperable barrier to a fruitful marriage. Lucille will be an ideal professional partner for Denis as well. Her drive and indomitable common sense will counter his tendency to brood and vacillate. There will be continuing tension between them, especially in the later years. It is then that your own supportive role - and your fortuitous proximity - will be most advantageous.

"I'm your mole, you mean! Put into position for continuous meddling with people who aren't even born yet - isn't that it?" I pulled myself together. Although the street seemed to be deserted, it would hardly do for local residents to look out of their windows and discover a middle-aged loufoque haranguing an elm tree. I walked on to the east, where the street curved into Sanborn Road and the wooded precincts of the Catholic church.

Sternly, I addressed the Ghost in mental speech: I see very well the role you intend for me. I am to be your agent provocateur, interfering with upcoming generations of Remillards like some evil genius in a G.o.ddam Russian novel!

Nonsense. Your influence will be entirely beneficial. You will be needed. Your qualms are understandable, but they will fade as the importance of your mental nurturing manifests itself.

If I refuse the commission - ?

I cannot coerce you. If your compensatory influence is to be effective, it must be freely given. The unborn Remillards needing your help are not ordinary human beings, however, and your sacrifices on their behalf will have far-ranging consequences.

How... far?

Rogi, vieux pote, I have already said it - but you refused to accept the implication. And so I will be explicit, so that you will know exactly what is at stake. You are a member of a remarkable family: one that will one day be the most important on Earth. Denis and Lucille's children and grandchildren are destined to become magnates - leaders, that is - of the Human Polity of the Concilium of the Galactic Milieu.

"C'est du tonnerre!" I cried, aghast, and my mind asked the halting question: Are you telling me that we... the planet Earth... will become part of a galactic organization within my lifetime?

There was a furious honking and a sarcastic voice that called, "Howsabout it, Charley? You gonna stand in the street till you grow roots?"

I snapped out of my daze to see a laundry van two feet away from me in the middle of Sanborn Road. There must have been something in my face that turned the young driver's impatience to concern. "Hey - you feeling all right?"

I lifted one hand and hastened onto the sidewalk. "I'm okay. Sorry about that. "

The driver eyed me uncertainly, then shrugged and drove on.

The Ghost said: My dear blockhead.

You, the ent.i.ty who reads this, will doubtless think the same of me. Had not the Ghost told me long ago that it was a being from another star, that its intentions were benevolent and our family was of crucial importance? A man possessed of the least modic.u.m of imagination might have deduced some design behind these uncanny maneuverings - always supposing that the spectral puppet-master was real and not the perverted manifestation of my own unconscious.

I made an attempt to gather my scattered wits. "When will this... invasion of extraterrestrials happen?"

Never! Rogi, you are a prize idiot! Le roi des cons! Why should we invade your silly little world? The starry universe is our domain and our cherished responsibility, and we come to a world only when we are called.

"Elaine and her people called you, " I muttered bitterly. I reverted to mental speech when I noticed a workman cutting the lawn of the church across the street: Why didn't you respond to Elaine's appeal, mon fantome? All her people asked was that you bring us the blessings of your galactic civilization before we're destroyed in a nuclear holocaust. Wasn't that a good enough reason for you to bestow your cosmic CARE packages on Earth?

The Milieu does not dare to contact a developing world until the planetary Mind attains a certain maturity. Premature intervention would be hazardous.

To whom?

To the planet... and to the Milieu.

Well, don't cut it too fine! Detente's on a fast track to h.e.l.l again and every other tin-pot nation in the Third World seems to have an atomic bomb ready to defend its honor. You wait too long and your flying saucers might land in a radioactive slag heap!

The likelihood of a small nation detonating a nuclear weapon is unfortunately high. But the prospect of full-scale nuclear war between the great powers is infinitesimal at the present time. The danger seems destined to escalate with the pa.s.sage of time, but my prolepsis indicates that the Great Intervention will almost certainly take place before your civilization destroys itself.

Well - when do you land, for chrissake?

When there is worldwide recognition of the higher faculties of the mind, and when those faculties are used harmoniously by a certain minimal number of humans.

Are you talking about the kind of thing Denis is working on?

Denis and many others. Metapsychic operancy is the key to lasting peace and goodwill among disparate ent.i.ties - human and nonhuman. To know the mind of another intimately is to understand, to respect, and ultimately to love.

Then all of the citizens of your Galactic Milieu have the higher mental powers - telepathy and psychokinesis and all that?

The spectrum varies from race to race and from individual to individual. But all Milieu minds share telepathic communication and our leaders.h.i.+p enjoys formidable insight. In matters of gravity there can be no duplicity among us, no misunderstanding, no irrational fear or suspicion.

No wars?

We have never experienced interplanetary aggression. Our Milieu is far from perfect, but its citizens are secure from exploitation and inst.i.tutionalized injustice. No individual or faction may flout the will of the Concilium. Every citizen-ent.i.ty works toward universal betterment at the same time that it is encouraged to fulfill its personal potential. Ultimately, the goal of our people is to obtain that mental Unity toward which all finite life aims.

"Grand dieu, " I whispered. "ca, c'est la meillure!" Without thinking, I had turned left onto Lebanon, a major thoroughfare. My heart soared like that of a six-year-old on Christmas morning. I had thrust aside all my doubts as to the authenticity of the Ghost. If it was a figment, its delusions were comforting ones. I asked: How many planets belong to this Milieu?

Thousands. Our present coadunate population includes some two hundred thousand million ent.i.ties - but only five races. This is a very young galaxy. Eventually, all thinking beings within it who survive the perilous ascent of technology's ladder will find Unity with us. My own race, which was the first to attain coadunation (the mental state leading to Unity) has the honor and the duty of guiding other peoples into our grand fellows.h.i.+p of the Mind. Nearly a quarter of a million juvenile races are currently under observation, and six thousand of those have a high civilization... but you humans are the only candidates approaching induction.

Jesus Christ! When I tell Denis - You will tell no one, least of all Denis. These revelations are for your own encouragement, given because you demanded of me good reasons for your continuing cooperation.

Denis deserves to know!

He would be distracted from his great work. He must go on his own way for now, a.s.sisted by you in secret. His trials - and there will be many - will be his incentive.

G.o.d, you're a cold-blooded b.a.s.t.a.r.d! Suppose I tell him in spite of you?

Denis would not believe you. You are being very silly, Rogi. Your obtuseness wearies me.

"Sometimes, " I whispered with a certain malicious satisfaction, "I get pretty sick of me, too! Poor Ghost. You picked a weak reed for your galactic shuffleboard game. "

There was a spectral chuckle: I myself have had my own ups and downs... but here we are in front of the real-estate office. Mrs. Mallory awaits your decision on the bookshop rental.

I felt in my hip pocket for the two keys she had given me, one for the Gates House store and one for the apartment upstairs. The two pieces of bra.s.s were cool in my hand. G.o.d knew what they would unlock in my future.

The Ghost said: I have a small token for you. Look in the gutter.

I did, and there among the leaves and pebbles and gum wrappers was a gleam of red. I picked up a dusty little key ring. At the end of its short silvery chain was a novelty fob, a red gla.s.s marble of the type we kids used to call "clearies, " enclosed in a wire cage.

Well? asked the Ghost.

Don't rush me, dammit! I said. Then I opened the office door and went in to sign the lease on my haunted bookshop.

14.

HANOVER, NEW HAMPs.h.i.+RE, EARTH.

22 DECEMBER 1990.

THE TEST CHAMBER was heavily insulated against sound, temperature change, and extraneous electromagnetic radiation. Its air was filtered and its lighting dim and blue, which latter turned the ruddy color of the kitten's fur to grizzled gray and its amber eyes to smoky topaz. In the ceiling were video and cine cameras, radiation detectors, and other environmental monitors, focused on the cat and on Lucille Cartier. The young woman, wired with body-function electrodes, sat in a chair at one end of a heavy marble balance table. The kitten perched opposite her on the table top; the twin EEG transmitters mounted near the inner base of its ears were only two millimeters in diameter and almost completely concealed by the fur. On the table between Lucille and the cat was the ceramic platform of a hermetically sealed, ultrasensitive recording electro-balance. It looked rather like a medium-sized cheeseboard with a gla.s.s dome cover.

Vigdis Skaugstad's telepathic voice said: Ready Lucille?

Lucille said: Steady&ready. Minou too.

The kitten said: [Play?]

Lucille said: Soon now wait be good.

Vigdis said: Systems running scale hot GO.

A white baby spot flashed on, illuminating the gla.s.s-covered balance plate. Simultaneously the blue lighting faded away, leaving most of the room in darkness. Lucille began to hum monotonously. She was still only imperfectly operant in creativity and the music helped to suppress her insistent left brain and induce the necessary lowering of the intercerebral gradient. She stared at the dazzling balance plate, trying not to "will" too forcefully, urging the primal power that resided in her unconscious mind to flow toward the controlling conscious. In this way primitive humanity had summoned its G.o.ds, worked its magic, achieved transcendence, even compelled reality: by bridging unconscious and conscious, right brain and left, in this subtle, quasi-instinctual way that had been all but lost with the advent of the conquering word. Verbalization, a left-brain function, had given birth to human civilization - but at a price. The ancient creative powers were repressed, and lived on mainly in the archetypal guise of muses, those flashes of artistic inspiration or illuminating insight that welled up from the soul's depths almost without volition. And the old magical aspects of creativity, the ability to direct not only the "mental" dynamic fields but also the fields generating s.p.a.ce, time, matter, and energy, were relegated to the dreamworld in most individuals.

It had been so for Lucille Cartier until four months earlier. Then, bowing at last to the counsel of her a.n.a.lyst, she had agreed to undertake training at the Dartmouth Metapsychology Laboratory that would raise her latent mind-powers to operancy. "The faculties are part of you, " Dr. Bill Sampson had told her, "and you'll have to accept the fact. And learn to control them - or they'll control you. "

So she had come at last to the gray saltbox building. To her great relief, Denis Remillard had a.s.signed her a congenial and nonthreatening mentor. Vigdis Skaugstad was a visiting research fellow from the University of Oslo, a specialist in psychocreativity. She was thirty-six, pug-nosed and rosy, with very long flaxen hair that she braided and wound about her head in a coronet. Vigdis's own psychic talents were unexceptional, but she was a gifted teacher; and her tact and empathy had led Lucille to overcome most of her deep-seated repugnance toward the research program - if not her dislike of its young director. Working with Vigdis, Lucille had learned telepathy very easily. This most verbal of the higher powers quickly a.s.sumes a "hard-wired" status in the brain of a talented person, as do most of the related ultrasenses. But Lucille's other significant faculty, creativity, had required a tedious, almost Zenlike regimen to raise it to the operant level. It was still far from reliable. Lucille took training exercises almost every day from Vigdis, and at the same time worked toward her doctorate in psychology. Thus far she had sedulously avoided socializing with other operants, except for an occasional lunch with Vigdis.

The laboratory cats, on the other hand, were her dear friends.

The animals were used in many different experiments, especially those involving telepathy, a feline long suit. Lucille's special affinity with the cats had at first provoked jokes among the staff about witches and their familiars; but the jos.h.i.+ng had cut off in short order when Lucille seemed to establish a genuine mental linkage with one particular kitten, leading to an apparent creativity manifestation that was having its first controlled test today.

"Ooh, Minou, " Lucille crooned aloud. And to the cat: Let's do it baby you and me let's do it together again... together Minou!

The kitten's large ears swiveled and its pupils widened as it stared fixedly at the s.h.i.+elded balance platform. It saw the image in Lucille's mind and it knew what she was trying to accomplish.

So it helped.

"Minou, Minou, ooh-ooh, " sang Lucille.

The little animal's whiskers c.o.c.ked forward in antic.i.p.ation. It uttered a barely audible trilling sound, the hunting call of the Abyssinian breed, and its black-tipped tail twitched. Except for its relatively large ears and eyes, its conformation and color were almost exactly those of a miniature puma.

"Ooh-ooh-ooh. " Here it comes kitty here it comes...

The insubstantial image, brought forth from Lucille's memory.

[Amplified by kittenish predatory l.u.s.t. Oh, fun!]

A smudgy cloud had begun to form above the center of the ceramic balance pan. It was ovoid, smaller than an egg, with a pointed anterior and a humped posterior.

"Ooh!"

[JumpjumpNOW!]

Impatiently, the kitten darted forward and batted the gla.s.s dome. The psychocreative image s.h.i.+mmered as woman and cat faltered in their mental conjunction, then sharpened as they drew together again.

"Ooh-ooh, naughty Minou, not yet wait until we're through. " Good baby yes work with me sit still help MAKE IT keep it under the gla.s.s don't let it get away until it's here stay stay work with me...

[Mouse!]

Yes.

[MOUSE!].

The form was still translucent, in the early stage of materialization that Vigdis Skaugstad had called "ectoplasmic Silly Putty. " But the mousy shape was entirely plausible and becoming more detailed with pa.s.sing seconds. Snaky little tail. Jet-bead eyes. Tiny ears and whiskers - shadowy, yet, but placed where they belonged. (And how many patient hours had Lucille spent beside the cage in the critter room of the Gilman Biomedical Center, committing those anatomical details to memory so that her mind's eye and creativity function would be able to resummon them whenever she commanded it... ) The illusion became opaque. It settled onto the ceramic balance platform beneath the gla.s.s dome. It had four feet with claws, a fur-clothed body that shone sleek under the bright spotlight.

[Warmth of MOUSE smell of MOUSE twitchy allure of MOUSE!]

The kitten crouched, waggling its rump, stamping its hind feet in preparation for the spring - "Nooh-ooh, ooh-ooh. " Not yet Minou not yet wait baby you can't get at it under the gla.s.s wait soon soon...

Abruptly, the read-out on the electro-balance went from zero to 0.061 ?g. The mouse simulacrum began to move, its eyes sparkling and its nose sniffing. It scuttled obliquely off the pan and went through the thick lead gla.s.s of the dome cover, heading for the table edge.

The kitten sprang.

Squeee!

[Gotcha!]

The psychocreative mouse vanished.

Lucille Cartier sat back in her chair and sighed, while the room lighting brightened to normal incandescent and the Abyssinian kitten bounded about, searching for its elusive prey. The test-chamber door opened and Vigdis Skaugstad came in, all smiles.

"Wonderful, Lucille! Did you notice the ma.s.s gain?"

"Not really. I was too busy making the mouse squeal. Minou is so disappointed if it doesn't. " Lucille reached into the pocket of her flannel skirt and took out a little ball with a bell in it, which she threw to the kitten. Her face was weary and her mind dark.

Vigdis began to disconnect the body-function monitors that had been pasted to the human subject. The kitten abandoned the ball to mount an attack on the dangling electrodes.

"No no, kitty, " Vigdis scolded. "Behave yourself-or maybe next time we wire you. "

"Minou wouldn't cooperate then, " Lucille said, disentangling the small paws. "She won't perform unless the experiment is fun. I should be so lucky. "

"It was hard on you?" Vigdis's kind, china-blue eyes were surprised. "But you said doing the materialization was always an amus.e.m.e.nt for the two of you - and your heart and respiration level were not significantly elevated during the activity. "

Lucille shrugged. "But now we aren't just playing. The mouse isn't just a pounce toy, it's an experiment with the data all recorded for a.n.a.lysis. "

"But the experiment was a great success!" Vigdis protested. "And not just the materialization - although it was the best you have ever done - but the fact of the metaconcert! This is our first experimental confirmation of two minds working as one. Your EEG and the cat's were like music, Lucille! I shall write a paper: 'Evidence of Mental Synergy in a Human-Animal Psychocreative Metaconcert. ' "

"That's a new term, isn't it? Metaconcert?"