The Intervention Part 39

"It could have been worse, Alk'ai, and the place was perhaps overspeciated. Residual populations have probably expanded to fill most of the vacant niches - to say nothing of the successful mutations. The grosser supernova damage to the biota seems to have healed. " "But the world is still ruined. "

He blinked his primary optics in doleful agreement. "It is no longer libidinously stimulating enough for the Gi and it is now too cold and dry for the Simbiari. It remains too warm, too deficient in oxygen partial-pressure, and too gravity-strong for us Krondaku. That leaves only the Poltroyans as potential colonizers - but the place is probably too warm for them as well, except in the circ.u.mpolar regions. "

"And don't forget, we'd also have to do ecological modification of a high degree to accommodate our little mauve brethren. This planet never did have enough sulfur springs or useful species of purple anaerobic photosynthesizers for their tastes. "

"Too true, " he agreed. "Shall we bother doing a surface recon? Or wouldst thou prefer that we simply mark it for a dead loss and minimize the insult to our freshly heightened sensibilities?"

She hesitated. "I would like to descend, Tok - if thou wouldst indulge me. We did spend so much time on the original survey. Besides, it's fitting to give it the utmost benefit of the doubt. "

"I agree. " Disdaining the instrumentation, he did a fast metapsychic farscan of the largest continent, which projected some distance into the North Temperate Zone. This part of the world, which had the most landma.s.s, was at the onset of winter; but there was as yet no snow on the ground and the vegetation was still adequately lush. "Let us visit the eastern coast of the major continent, Alk'ai. There is a great river now traversing the old continental shelf and a rather interesting embayment. "

"Very well. "

The survey vessel plummeted toward the planetary surface in a straight line, s.h.i.+elded by its rho-field from the constraints of gravity-inertia and by a temporary sigma-field from atmospheric ablation. The region Luma'eroo had selected was just at the terminator, and so they landed just as the sun was going down behind low hills, painting a dancing golden pathway across the indigo waters of the windswept bay. There was abundant plant-life. On the hills and on the exposed headland where the s.h.i.+p rested were stands of trees with st.u.r.dy ligneous stems and deep-green aciform leaves. Other species of trees in the lowlands on either side of the river showed the beginning of chlorophyll degeneration in their obviously deciduous foliage, which was stained in startling coppery, xanthic, and rubineous hues.

The Krondaku emerged carefully from the s.h.i.+p and moved with difficulty in the gravitational field that was nearly twice their racial optimum. They slithered over a ground cover of low-growing anthophytes. Some were dried out; others, still green, bore star-shaped pink, yellow, or white s.e.xual organs. The air tasted of terpineol, geranyl acetate, coumarin, and phenylethyl alcohol. There was also a distinctive chloride-iodide exudation from the marine organisms at the rocky margin of the sea. An offsh.o.r.e breeze made a rustling sound as it pa.s.sed through the needle-leaf trees, and waves crashed on the seaward side of the headland. Up in one of the trees, an invisible creature voiced a complex warbling ululation having a frequency between two thousand and four thousand cycles per second. Small white-winged animals in a ragged V-formation flew low over the bay waves, heading toward the open sea.

The two tentacled monsters contemplated the scene for some time, utilizing both their conventional senses and their ultrafaculties. The sun set and the cloudless sky turned from yellow to aquamarine to purple, studded with the first bright stars. The major moon, in its full phase, came up over the blackening eastern sea like a great disk of refulgent amber. One of the twin moonlets was also in view, s.h.i.+ning modestly silver through the silhouetted branches of a nearby tree.

"Ruined. " Dota'efoo spoke with emphatic finality. "In its present state, the planet is patently unfit for colonization by any of the coadunate races of the Milieu. "

"It's hopeless, " Luma'eroo agreed. "Ecological engineering up to the Tenth Degree wouldn't even begin to put it back into shape. " He ruminated for a few moments more. "Strange... it rather reminds me of their world. " And he projected an oafish racial image that had become a notorious target of low humor among less charitable Simbiari and Poltroyan planetologists.

"By the All-Penetrant - I do believe thou art correct. Shall we go back inside the s.h.i.+p and check the correlates?"

"With pleasure. My plasm aches from this burdensome gravity. "

The two Krondaku reboarded and went again to the control room, where the computer confirmed Luma'eroo's hunch. The weighted compatibility percentage was an amazing 98.

"And so, in the most unlikely event that they are admitted to the Milieu, our poor little orphan planet would undoubtedly be among the first worlds to be colonized by them. " Dota'efoo called up some additional data. "Here is a noteworthy item. They recently sent an exploration team to their most hospitable neighbor planet - a dusty red frigid-desert hulk with an exiguous atmosphere. They are also constructing orbiting habitats in a futile effort to siphon off their excess population. "

"Idiots. Why don't they simply limit procreation?"

"It is contrary to the prevailing ethic of certain racial segments, and others are too ignorant to appreciate the reproductive predicament of their planet. Thou must understand, Tok, that these people are even more fecund than the Poltroyans, and this poses technical difficulties for practical contraception as well as motivational ones. Their princ.i.p.al means of population control are famine, abortion, a high infant death-rate among Cla.s.s Two indigenes, and war. "

"Those amazing humans!" Luma'eroo lifted four tentacles in a gesture of puzzlement. "If the Lylmik are truly intent upon foisting them upon the Milieu, we are in for some interesting times. I think we may someday be grateful, Alk'ai, that there are numbers of solar systems on the far side of the Galaxy that await our personal scrutiny. "

His mate allowed a barely perceptible risibility to enter her mind-tone. "And yet, they do have a certain reckless courage. Imagine a race of their cla.s.sification seriously attempting to colonize a nearly airless, frigid-desert planet... or worse, artificial satellites!"

"It surpa.s.ses understanding. "

Dota'efoo summoned a last modic.u.m of data from the computer. "If Earthlings are accepted into the Milieu, their overpopulation problem will become an a.s.set overnight. As of now, we have 782 ecologically compatible planets within a 20,000-light-year radius of their home world all surveyed and ready for settlement. " She flicked a dismissive tentacle at the viewport, with its moonlit seascape framed by evergreen trees. "And this place makes 783. "

"Frightening. They'd very likely overrun the Galaxy in a few millenaries... "

Dota'efoo shuddered. "Let's get out of here. "

Her mate activated the rho-field generator to full inertialess and sent the survey vessel screaming into interplanetary s.p.a.ce.

6.

FROM THE MEMOIRS OF ROGATIEN REMILLARD.

ON THE FACE of it, there was nothing suspicious about the accidental deaths of my three nieces.

The twins Jeanette and Laurette, who were twenty-one, and their sister Jacqueline, two years younger, were driving home from a ski weekend in North Conway early in January 1995 when their new RX-11 went out of control on the icy highway, crashed, and burned. Denis flew back from Edinburgh, where he had been called as an expert witness for the defense in the sensational trial of Dr. Nigel Weinstein. Once again he and Victor supported their widowed mother through the ordeal of an old-fas.h.i.+oned Franco-American veillee, funeral Ma.s.s, and cortege to the family plot in the cemetery outside Berlin, where the girls were buried next to their father.

Sunny was not just grief-stricken, she was devastated. Both Denis and I detected nuances of irrationality beneath the stuporous anguish that cloaked her mind, but neither of us recognized the fear. Denis had to return to Scotland immediately. He urged me to stay in Berlin for the week following the funeral to make a closer a.s.sessment of his mother's mental health. When I told him that Sunny seemed in the grip of a morbid depression, he asked a colleague from the Department of Metapsychology, Colette Roy, to come to Berlin for consultation with the Remillard family physician. Dr. Roy, Glenn Dalembert's wife, had been studying the abnormal psychology of operants and was the best redactive prober (outside of Denis) working at that time at Dartmouth. Her examination of Sunny was inconclusive and she urged that I bring Sunny to Hanover for a further evaluation at the Hitchc.o.c.k Clinic. Sunny adamantly refused to go. She said she would not leave the other five children, who ranged in age from thirteen to eighteen, even when Victor offered to pay for a full-time housekeeper. The terrible anxiety that Sunny displayed at the suggestion that she leave her rather fractious adolescent brood was diagnosed by Dr. Roy as just another symptom of the depression; but in this Colette was mistaken. Sunny, the mother of two metapsychic giants, had managed for all her latency to screen her innermost thoughts with a thoroughness none of us dreamed possible.

When Denis returned to New Hamps.h.i.+re after Weinstein's acquittal and pleaded with her, Sunny finally agreed to a two-week course of treatment at Hitchc.o.c.k, with monthly outpatient checkups to follow. She also said she would accept domestic help in the big house on Sweden Street that Denis and Victor had bought for her four years earlier. Victor interviewed and rejected a parade of Berlin applicants, and eventually hired one Mme. Rachel Fortier of Montreal, an amazonian femme de charge who came with the highest references and eye-popping salary requirements. Sunny accepted the housekeeper with apparent goodwill, and by the second week in February things seemed to be going back to normal.

So I went to a science-fiction convention.

Every year since 1991 I had attended Boskone, a sedate gathering of fantasy buffs, writers, artists, booksellers, and academics. Those unfamiliar with such meetings may get a hint of the general atmosphere when I say that I, a known operant and close relative of one of the most famous metapsychic personalities in the country, was looked upon as nothing out of the ordinary by the convention-goers. I was just another bookseller, not to be mentioned in the same breath with genuine celebrities such as the best-selling author of Tessaract One, the producer of the Gnomeworld video series, or the first artist to do on-the-spot lunar landscapes.

Sometimes at these conventions I shared a table in the dealers' room with a fellow bookseller, offering middling rarities and telling all comers about the much greater trove of goodies to be found at my shop in Hanover. Sometimes I just circulated and perused the other dealers' wares for likely items, or bought a few pieces of artwork, or attended the more bibliophilic panel discussions, or sat in on readings by my favorite authors. I scarcely ever bothered with the endless round of parties that was a feature of convention nights, preferring in earlier years to do my serious drinking in solitude. The only festivity I attended was the combination masquerade and meet-the-lions bash that traditionally took place on Friday evening. There one might legitimately sc.r.a.pe up acquaintance with notables, so as later to be in a favorable position to offer them modest sums for their hand-corrected proofs, typescripts (a surprising number of science-fiction writers still refused to process their words), autographed first editions, or literary curiosa of a marketable sort.

Boskone x.x.xII was held at the Sheraton-Boston. When the dealers' room opened on Friday the tenth I made my rounds of the tables and greeted old friends and acquaintances among the hucksters. The antiquarian pickings seemed leaner than in other years and the prices higher. Very few new books were now being published in the hardcover format; even first editions from the big houses were issued mostly as large paperbacks. Regular paperbacks, on the other hand, proliferated like fleas on a spaniel in August in response to the reading explosion of the '90s. Desktop printing technology had given rise to a host of cottage publishers of every stripe - fantasy not excluded - and limited collector's editions of every Tom, d.i.c.k, or Mary with even the most tenuous claim to fame crowded the good old stuff off the tables.

I did manage to find firsts of the G&D Fury by Henry Kuttner, and a fine copy of the remarkable science-fantasy World D in the London Sheed & Ward edition of 1935.

As I d.i.c.kered for the latter with a bookseller acquaintance, Larry Palmira, I became aware of a strange hostility in his manner. At first his subvocalizations were too indistinct to decipher; but as we settled on a final price somewhat higher than I had hoped for, I heard him say: And you won't coerce ME into going a buck lower dammitall so go try your mental flimflam on some other nebbis.h.!.+

I signed the credit-card slip and gave it to him smiling. He bagged my book and said, "Always great to do business with you, Roj. Drop in when you're in Cambridge. "

"I'll do that, Larry, " said I, and walked away thinking hard.

I decided to test my suspicions and stopped at the booth of another dealer friend, Fidelity Swift, pretending interest in a Berkley paperback first of Odd John, ludicrously overpriced at twenty-five dollars. She let me beat her down a little. Then I looked her in the eye and murmured, "Come on, Fee, gimme a break. You better be nice to me, kiddo. You know what they say about not getting a metapsychic p.i.s.sed... "

"No, " she laughed. "What do they say?" In her mind was a fearsome image: Nero's garden lit by human torches.

I thought: Merde dans sa coquille! And said, "d.a.m.ned if I can remember. Double sawbuck, last offer. Cash on the barrelhead. "

"Sold!" Relief gushed out of her like blood from a cut artery. The nightmare picture faded but her deep disquiet was now obvious.

I handed over the money and took my prize, saying goodbye while I broadcast the most benignant vibes I could conjure up, superimposed upon an image of her that shaved off thirty pounds and ten years and arrayed her plain features in idealized s.e.xuality.

"See you around, Roger, " she breathed, all apprehension swept away. I winked and hurried out of the dealers' room.

The trial. The G.o.ddam Scottish trial!

Weinstein had been extremely lucky to win the famous "Not Proven" verdict permissible under Scots law. The lunatic clergyman he had incinerated was unarmed, and witnesses had testified that the old man had offered no threat or resistance when Weinstein ran him down. Only some fancy psychiatric footwork about diminished responsibility due to temporary derangement and Denis's testimony about the inadvertent projections of creative flame exemplified by "Subject C" and doc.u.mented in his laboratory (Lucille's ident.i.ty was disclosed only to the judge) brought about Weinstein's acquittal. Even then there were dark editorials about "persons of special privilege" flouting the common law of humanity. The Metapsychic Congress, held four months before the trial, had attempted to antic.i.p.ate and disarm public apprehension by pointing out that only a minuscule percentage of operants possessed mental faculties that could be cla.s.sified as threatening to ordinary mortals. There were more rea.s.surances later. How many normals, given Weinstein's provocation, might not have been carried away as he was to the point of violence? In the United States, Weinstein's immolation of the mad murderer became the most hotly argued case since a quiet electronics technician had shot four aggressive young muggers on a New York subway back in the '80s. Behind the rational argumentation and scholarly disputations on the dark side of the unconscious lurked something uglier and more atavistic. The man who had slain Jean MacGregor and Alana Shaunavon had denounced them as witches, and quoted the Bible as justification. Of course intelligent modern people understood that metapsychic powers were a natural consequent of human evolution. There was nothing devilish or black-magical about them. But on the other hand...

There was a simple remedy for the irrational fear of a single individual. I had worked it myself on Fidelity Swift. But it was a temporary thing, like a clever actor making an audience believe in a character being portrayed. We operants would be able to disarm the fear of some of the normals some of the time - for a little while. But how would we convince them of our amity over the long haul?

Sunk in the old malheur, I went up to my room to stash the book purchases before going to supper. As I came back into the corridor I was reminded by the number of costumed figures prowling about that the masquerade and meet-the-pros party was in full swing down in the hotel's grand ballroom. There would be music and drinks and conviviality, and such a mob scene that n.o.body would bother thinking twice about my sinister mental attributes.

The down-elevator door opened to reveal a chamber jammed with exotic fun-seekers. I spotted a squad of youths dressed in medieval battle-gear, a nubile la.s.s with flaming hair and a four-foot "peace-bonded" sword, wearing what seemed to be a bikini of silver poker chips, a Darkoverian mother with two Darkoverian moppets, a statuesque black woman in a white satin evening gown with a little white dragon perched on her shoulder, a stoutish middle-aged gent clad in a conservative suit whose mundane appearance was belied only by the propeller beanie on his head, and a large ape sporting emerald fur and illuminated eyeb.a.l.l.s, who had neglected to use a personal deodorant. "No room! No room!" chorused this bunch as I made to enter the elevator. The ape opened its mechanically augmented white-tusked jaws and stuck its carunculated tongue out at me.

But there is, occasionally, justice in this world. I speared the smelly ape with my most potent coercive impulse and commanded: "Out!" It complied like a lamb and I took its place to universal plaudits. We made a nonstop trip to the ballroom level.

The party had attracted nearly two thousand people. Perhaps half were in fancy dress. A live band played things like "Can You Read My Mind?, " "Rocket Man, " "Annapurna Saucer Trip, " Darius Brubeck's "Earthrise, " and John Williams's "Theme from Gnomeworld. " In between sets the convention Toastmaster introduced the artists and writers present, and a spotlight tried to pick designated stars out of the crush. There were also parades of the more spectacularly costumed fans across the stage. Those who were particularly beautiful, humorous, or technically awesome received warm ovations.

I headed immediately for the nearest open bar. By the time I had downed three Scotches, I felt considerably cheered. I had repinned my convention badge so that my name was mostly obscured by the lapel of my suit coat. Five attractive ladies (and one flamboyantly gorgeous transvest.i.te, whose gender I detected too late to worry about) danced with me. I introduced myself to the convention Guest of Honor, a tottering nonagenarian survivor of the Golden Age, and by dint of the most gentle coercion and a speedily fetched raspberry seltzer got him to personally inscribe a copy of Boskone's commemorative edition of his early short stories.

And then I withdrew to the sidelines for a breather... and had my first shock of the evening when I saw Elaine.

Even though she was now over fifty, she was still breathtaking. Her tall slender figure was clad in a long gown of some lightweight metal mesh that flowed from her neck to the floor like molten gold. Her arms, shoulders, and back were bare. The dress's collar was a wide, upstanding band of gold adorned with stones like blazing orange topazes. She had a single heavy bracelet of the same jewels. Her hair was blond now, piled high on her head in an intricate coiffure of stiffly arranged ringlets sparked with gold glints. She was dancing with Dracula.

I gulped down the dregs of my latest Scotch and pressed toward the dance floor. Poor Drac didn't have a prayer in the face of my coercion. For some reason the band was playing a melodic standard, "Old Cape Cod. " Elaine stood there among the other dancers, dismayed by the abrupt retreat of her caped and befanged escort, not yet noticing me. I do not recall what my thoughts were. Perhaps seeing her after so many years had drained my brain of everything except the irresistible compulsion to be near her again.

I took her into my arms and we picked up the beat. She stared up at me, wordless. Her mind said: Roger!

"Voulez-vous m'accorder cette danse, Madame?"

"No!... Yes. " Oh, my G.o.d.

"May I compliment you on your dress. It's much too chic to be a costume. " How appropriate that we should meet again at a bal travesti. Do you come to Boskone often?

"No, " she said. "This is my first time. My daughter thought I'd find it amusing. She's - she's a rabid science-fiction fan. "

Your daughter... Don's daughter... she would be twenty. May I ask her name?

"Annarita Latimer. She's there, costumed as Red Sonja. "

My eyes followed her mental indication and I was surprised to see the strapping redheaded wench in the silver-dollar bikini. She was too far away for me to scrutinize her directly for operancy, and I am unable to detect operant auras in lighted places. So I simply asked, "Did she inherit the mind-powers?"

"I - I think so. " She won't let me in, Roger. There's a barrier, like a s.h.i.+ning wall of black gla.s.s. One doesn't notice it except at very close range...

That explained my failure to spot her operancy in the elevator.

"What does Annarita do?" I asked easily. "Is she going to college?"

"She's at Yale Drama School. I think she'll be a very good actress. "

"Sans doute, " I murmured. "And your husband?"

The music was ending. We applauded, and then the M. C. took up the microphone to announce the costume prizes. I led Elaine to the edge of the dance floor, where Dracula waited, glowering.

Her mind told me hurriedly: Stanton died three years ago Roger now I am married to him. "Gil, darling! Let me introduce you to a very dear old friend of mine, Roger Remillard. Roger, this is my husband, Gilbert Anderson. " The Third, she appended telepathically.

Dracula shook hands with me as though I were Von Helsing. His features, blandly handsome aside from the well-fitted orthodontic fangs, wore a pensive, well-bred little frown. "Remillard... Remillard. You wouldn't by any chance be related to -"

"It's really a very common Franco-American name, " I said. "Thanks for letting me dance with Elaine. We haven't seen each other in years. Are you enjoying the convention?"

He uttered some hearty inconsequentialities, deftly extracted from me my modest means of earning a living, and decided I was no threat after all. "Maybe we can get together for lunch or something later on this weekend. "

"Great idea. Let's try to do that, " I replied with equally false enthusiasm, simultaneously rea.s.suring Elaine that I was out of it. I asked her: What is he? Upper management? Stockbroker?

She said: VP and chief corporate legal officer.

I said: It figures given the fangs.

And then I pretended to see someone across the crowded room that I had to speak to, so I bid the pair of them adieu. Fleeing, I told her: You are more lovely than ever be happy cherie and never never have anything to do with metapsychic operants...

Then I hurried out of the ballroom, wretched again, and sought a dark corner to lose myself in. I found it in one of the hotel c.o.c.ktail lounges. Hunched on a stool at the bar, I ordered a double vodka on the rocks.

When I had finished it my brain was as incapable of telepathic reception as any normal's.

And so he had to tap me on the shoulder to get my attention.

I peered groggily at the intruder standing behind me. It was a tall young man with dark curly hair wearing a Flying Tiger jacket, haloed by a fierce neon-red aura. Victor said, "I might have known I'd find you here getting sloshed. On y va!"

He took hold of my arm firmly and seized my mind in a grip like a pit bull's. I saw stars and lurched against him. A rude rummaging was going on in my head, punctuated with offhand thrusts of pain. I was unable to speak. Victor whispered urgently in French, trying to get me out of the bar, but my feet weren't moving. Then something inside my skull seemed to crumple and I moaned out loud and began to walk, biddable as any zombie.

"That's better, " said Victor. He steered me toward the elevators. "You're all checked out. We'll go up to your room and pick up your things. "

"What... what the h.e.l.l?" I protested.

The elevator was crowded with noisy conventioneers. Victor pressed the b.u.t.ton for my floor. I didn't know what kind of mischief he had wrought in my brain, but I was sobering rapidly and was once again able to understand mental speech. I also had a hideous headache.

He said: We're driving north Uncle Rogi up to Berlin Maman needs you and I'm taking you to her.

I said: Sunny?... Dieu is she all right what's happened is it serious have you called Denis - Shut up Uncle Rogi. There is no crisis. When I said Maman needed you I was speaking generally. She needs you if she is to get well and I am to be freed from Denis's meddling.

The elevator door opened and we got out. My head was swollen with lava and the corridor rolled from side to side like a skiff caught in the trough of storm waves. Victor held me up, inserted the coded plastic key-card into the slot of my room door, and thrust me brutally inside. I staggered to the bed and collapsed on it. Muttering obscenities, my nephew relaxed his hold on me and went into the bathroom to gather my things.

Going horizontal must have helped my brain by increasing its blood supply, and I regained a measure of self-control. What the devil was going on? What did Victor really want?

He came out of the john carrying my pajamas and a pouch of toiletries. "What I want is a simple matter, Uncle Rogi. Maman has been very upset for quite some time. She has... suffered from disturbing fantasies. About me. " He went to the closet and pulled out my seat bag and two-suiter and began to stuff my clothing into them. "Her problems have affected my younger brothers and sisters. Interfered with my plans for their future. It didn't matter so much when they were just kids, but now that they are approaching an age when they can be useful to me, I can no longer permit Maman to indulge herself by undermining my influence over them. I was very disappointed at having to write off the girls. "

Slowly, I sat up. He had his back to me as he emptied a drawer of some Operator #5 magazines I had intended to sell.

He said, "I urged Maman to go to Hanover, to put herself under Denis's care in long-term resident therapy. It would have been the ideal solution. As you know, she refused to leave the younger ones in my charge. She suspects, you see - as she came to suspect in the case of Papa. "

"So you were responsible for Don's death. "

Victor zipped up the cases with great efficiency, got my parka from the closet, and tossed it to me. "Papa killed himself, as we all know. He was a pathetic, self-destructive sot. So are you, Uncle Rogi, but you are much more intelligent and I think your death wish is probably as spineless as the rest of your character. " He opened the outer door. "Let's go. "

I had no choice. His coercion scooped me off the bed like a back-hoe. I teetered along after him with terrible speculations oozing out of my mind. As we waited for the elevator I asked him: Why did you kill the girls?