Pliocene Exile - The Adversary Part 14

Elizabeth said: Marc you have no idea how you're complicating my job as de facto dirigent of Pliocene Earth. I doubt that Brede's plan for my G.o.dmothering her people took you and your meddling young into account ... I've told Aiken about your travel preparations and he's quite upset. He takes his kingly duties rather seriously and I suspect that he'll resist any impertinencies with all his newly acquired might. Do you take my meaning? No doubt you witnessed the two metafunctional subsumptions he pulled off. I'm hard to impress these days-but I must admit to a definite bogglement at that little ploy.

Were the eyes a trifle narrower, the mouth more tight?

Elizabeth said: I want to forestall any violent confrontation between you and Aiken. Let me mediate. I could prevent disastrous miscalculations on both your parts ... Aiken is no longer the metaprodigal prankster you dealt with before you went into the tank. He's changed vastly since June. In outlook as well as in aggressive potential! He debugged the metaconcert program you gave him and he's been drilling his golds in the technique.

These torc-augmented mentalities may be crude but they can amount to a respectable potential when stacked. If Aiken gathers enough people together and acquires full use of the powers he subsumed he'll be more than a match for you ...

Consider carefully before you act. Advise your hothead children to do the same. We can have peace Marc! Won't you at least talk to me about it? ...

The shape out on the balcony was dissolving into a starpunctured wraith even as she persisted in her futile pleading.

She s.h.i.+fted from the short range to the distance-spanning mode, calling Marc's name, then broke off. The vision s.h.i.+mmered and disappeared without a trace.

The mental linkage between Elizabeth and Creyn severed.

She exclaimed, "d.a.m.n the man for his arrogance!

d.a.m.n him!"

She lowered her head onto her arms and burst into tears.

Creyn the Redactor came to her and knelt beside her chair.

She found herself clinging to him while pent-up anxiety and exasperation poured out of her; the old temptation to withdraw loomed more ominously than ever before.

The Tanu's mind was discreetly closed. There was only his enormous physical presence, the strong embracing arms, the chest warm and superhumanly broad, the steady exotic heartbeat.

When she stopped weeping, she said, "I'm a b.l.o.o.d.y idiot."

"The release is good for you. Very human. Very Tanu, too, for that matter."

"I've done the best I could. When I woke up after the Flood at Redactor House and took this job on, I really intended to do my best. Back in the Milieu, the job of dirigent-planetary overseer, that is-traditionally went to the person who didn't want it. And G.o.d knows, that's me! But ... I'm bungling it, Creyn. Can't you see? All of you think that a Grand Master Fa.r.s.ensor and Redactor should be a metapsychic wizard, and all-wise demiG.o.ddess. But I was only a teacher back in the Milieu, not a trained administrator or socioeconomic a.n.a.lyst.

How can I be the ombudsman and arbiter for a crazy mixed bag of factions like this? ... And now this wretched galactic Napoleon coming at me from his North American Elba! ...

Brede called me the most important woman in the world. What arrant nonsense! Look at the terrible mistake I made with Felice.

I had no idea how to deal with a dangerous personality like her.

Aiken's successful intervention was entirely his own idea ...

And soon he'll be coming here, wanting me to help reintegrate his mind. The subsumption has given him a case of mental indigestion that could lead to a breakdown if he doesn't get help soon. What shall I do? If I integrate those faculties he stole, he might turn into another Felice. If I let him fall apart, Marc or his children will have a free hand! I don't know how to handle situations as complex as this, Creyn. I'm wrong for the job.

A diligent in the Milieu has a vast support organization-the enforcing arm of the Magistratum, all the resources of the Concilium to advise, the Unity to strengthen and give solace.

But I'm all alone."

He said, It would help if you could love us.

She shrank from him. As always when he dared approach this dangerous ground, the mental wall sprang up.

He said, You could learn to make a beginning with one who loved you.

Creynmyfriend no I don't can't no ...

He spoke aloud. "It's the way of both our races to need the beloved other. Not to strive alone. You know that I've loved you almost from the first time we met in Castle Gateway. Neither of us was a willing solitary then. It was the death of your Lawrence as much as the apparent loss of your metafunctions that drove you to exile. And I myself was widowed scarcely a year when you came to us. I could only stand back then, watching you being used, a p.a.w.n of the Great Ones. But later ... when I was able to serve you, to help on the exodus from Aven, to a.s.sist you here at Black Crag ... in all my life I've never been happier. My heart aches to share it with you."

The walls were high and adamant, but she had her arms tightly around him. He said, "Listen to what your body says. Neither Tanu nor human is mere disembodied mind. You knew love's dual expression once, back in the Milieu with your husband, and it helped you to love the thousands of children you taught.

Now you live in another world ... but you can learn to love again."

She spoke gently. "You're the dearest friend I have. I know what you're offering, what you hope to do for me, even though you know I don't love you in a s.e.xual way. But it can't work-"

"It has for others, in your world as well as mine." His mind tone reflected wistful self-mockery. "And we redactors aren't without skill in such matters."

"Oh, my dear." Her head lifted and they drew apart. The tears had started again; impulsively, she showed him a glimpse of burning memory. "If it could only be so simple! But you said it yourself: I did love once. If only I hadn't already known a real marriage in the Unity ... "

"Is the gulf so great?" he cried. "Am I so far beneath you-so inferior?"

She wept, completely sealed in.

He said, "You raised Brede to operancy, even started to initiate her. Do the same for me. In time we could forge a Unity of our own!" He was no longer holding her but standing upright, a towering red-robed figure with rubies and moonstones gleaming in his belt and a golden torc around his neck.

"Brede wasn't a Tanu." Elizabeth's voice was dull. Slowly she rose from her chair and went to the fireplace where the logs of stone pine had fallen apart and were fitfully aglow. Using the hook of the poker, she pulled them back together, then worked the leather bellows until a few small flames sprang up. "Brede belonged to a more resilient race. In some ways more human than yours; in other ways, less. She was incredibly old and this gave her mind a monumental fund of endurance. And she was the s.h.i.+pspouse! Her mate left her a special legacy that engendered the mind-expanding ordeal that we shared.

Shared, Creyn!"

He nodded. "My own pain is not sufficient ... "

"I don't know any way to strengthen you so that you could survive the ascent to operancy. So that I could survive it with you. Can you understand what I'm trying to tell you, my dear?

Look into me very carefully. What an adult latent like yourself would have to go through in order to open those new mental channels-"

"I'd suffer anything to make you love me!"

"You'd die.

I'm incompetent! It's beyond me! I can't make you operant any more than I can save poor Mary-Dedra's blacktorc baby. Don't you think I would set all your minds free if I could? If I only could ... "

Somehow she was clinging to him again and they stood at the eastern windows. He said: Don't give up Elizabeth. Don't be tempted by the fire. Endure. If you can't love then be consoled by the devotion of those who need you. Pray for a resolution.

Elizabeth laughed out loud. "Brede waited fourteen thousand years to die. Will I have to wait six million?"

His long fingers touched her swollen eyelids, drying tears and leaving coolness. "Turn your thoughts. Look at the stars and compose yourself. Downstairs they're waiting for us, and have been for hours."

"Poor Minanonn. I don't know what to tell him, either."

In spite of herself, she found her eyes drawn to the sky. "How strange! That tight grouping of very small stars, down near the horizon. I wonder if they could possibly be the Pleiades? It was a funny little cl.u.s.ter four hundred light-years from my home planet of Denali, and the same distance from the Old World-from Earth. We colonists were very sentimental about it."