Pliocene Exile - The Adversary Part 38

"There, your ambition didn't fit. But this Many-Coloured Land is a simpler world. You were even able to love here. And you dared to do it unselfishly, twice. You reached a species of mental integration. But that wasn't enough. Not for you! You were drawn toward Mercy, and driven to challenge Nodonn.

You wanted to be more than a powerful, successful person: You wanted to be King. And so, instinctively, you were drawn to two extraordinary minds-and you subsumed their attributes in an attempt to fulfil your ambition. Before the subsumption, you knew you were inadequate."

"But I tricked them into believing that I wasn't!'

"Yes. But you couldn't fool yourself. Look at the illusory bodies you wore: b.u.t.terfly, dragonfly, nighthawk, golden falcon.

Each one more potent than the last but still winged, elusive, flyaway. You were a counterfeit King, royal without being n.o.ble."

"c.o.c.k of the rock."

"With the ambition to rule a world ... This is why you committed the act of surpa.s.sing chutzpah: in spite of the mortal danger, subsuming those very metafaculties that might support true kings.h.i.+p. You were like a man living in a fine large home who nevertheless craves a palace. So one day your dream is accomplished and all the necessary building materials are delivered-"

"Burying and d.a.m.n near destroying the original house! I see."

"Most of this redaction you've done yourself. Dionket and Creyn and I helped you-I guided and they sustained-but the psychic insights that now provide a solid foundation are your own. Your palace is by no means complete, but now you have the blueprints for construction and the means to a.s.semble the parts into a harmonious whole."

"How long is it going to take to finish?"

"It may take years, or happen in an instant."

"You better pray for the latter, babe, for all our sakes! ...

One last thing, though, that I still don't understand. Why a lion?"

"You'll have to discover for yourself what it signifies in your own psyche, Aiken. It's obviously a kingly animal-but it has no wings. Sometimes it destroys its own young-and sometimes it defends the pride to the death."

"You mean, I can still blow it."

"You're a human being, dear, and you still have to face up to many choices. You can undoubtedly fail. The Trickster archetype is a strange one, not commonly personified. Perhaps it's just as well! You see, the Trickster is a person we simultaneously admire and fear. We know that he can hit and run-victimize us. But he also has the saving gift of laughter that enables us to abide in the midst of life's pain. He takes our pain onto himself, as a great psychologist once said. And that may help you to understand where the lion image fits. If you accept it as an integral part of your self, you can no longer be fugitive Mercurius, das.h.i.+ng about as the spirit wills. You'll have to relinquish some of the laughter and take pain in defending the pride; perhaps even lay down your life."

"Ha! It's the hyenas that better look out!"

Elizabeth had to laugh. "Oh, my dear. Go get 'em, Hermes Trismegistos-thrice-mighty leader."

"You can count on it," said the King.

II.

The Convergence

CHAPTER ONE.

During the first four years of the Rebel's exile, when resolution was still strong and optimism ran so high that some of the Ocala settlers dared to have children, appropriate technology was all the rage. There was really no necessity for roughing it, since the former scientists, military specialists, and planetary administrators had brought a vast collection of Milieu equipment with them. Nevertheless, low-tech achievement flourished as the exiles worked to turn their island into a home. Once they had recovered from their mental and physical wounds, most of the Rebels set about to develop one or more frontier skills.

For Walter Saastamoinen, who had been Deputy Chief Starfleet Operations (Strategy) under Ragnar Gathen, the vocational choice was a foregone conclusion. He took up the trade of his ancestors-s.h.i.+pbuilding. With the help of his former aide, Roy Marchand, and a dozen others (plus the elegantly complete data supplied by the computer library), Walter built a seventymetre four-masted sailing vessel that would become the princ.i.p.al freighter for the colony, transporting everything from minerals to Megahippus horses from the Antilles and the North and South American mainland to Ocala's first settlement at the head of Manchineel Bay.

She was named Kyllikki, after an enchantress in a Finnish epic, and her lines followed those of the old Pacific timber haulers, capacious but trim. She had a clipper bow figureheaded with a blonde witch, a long platformed bowsprit, a sweeping sheer, and a neatly tucked up counter stern. Her masts, the trunks of great longleaf pines from the virgin forests of Georgia, rose thirty-five metres above the black-mahogany deck and had a sportive rake.

When it came time to rig her, Walter's companions, full of romantic fancies about legendary windjammers, wanted to fit her with a full suit of square sails. The master s.h.i.+pbuilder pointed out that square-riggers required large crews, agile and fearless enough to climb the shrouds and swarm about the yards in all kinds of weather-not excluding the violent line squalls and all too frequent hurricanes that infested Floridian waters.

A fore-and-aft rig, while not quite so speedy or spectacular, could be worked from the deck, even by a gang of tyros. Furthermore, it lent itself to the installation of powered winches for hoisting and hauling and fully automatic reefing devices. Practicality and Walter's superior coercive faculty won out, and Kyllikki became a four-poster gaff schooner navigable by a crew of six.

When the charms of simple technology paled and Ocala enjoyed a brief spurt of highly sophisticated manufacturing, Kyllikki acquired a solar powered auxiliary engine that drove a pair of retractable cycloidal impeller rotors, similar to those in the all-terrain vehicles that the Rebels had originally brought with them from the Milieu. The schooner travelled widely to satisfy the need for exotic raw materials; she even served for a time as a floating drill-platform and as a pumping station for the big marine-ion concentrator. But then ambition declined among the castaways as the years became decades and Marc's star-search was perceived as fruitless by more and more of the former Rebels. Kyllikki shared in the creeping malaise, being converted into a party boat for bored degenerates. She chased whales up the Mississippi Embayment, carried nostalgic fun seekers to Pliocene New England, embarked on diving expeditions along the Spanish Main, transported cargos of ferocious fauna to the Zoo Island hunting preserve in the Bermoothes, and took part in the disastrous Costa Rican Volcano-Teasing Operation. Finally, and most memorably, the great schooner carried a large party of Rebels and their adolescent children on an epic tour of the Antarctic Islands. Walter's wife, Solange Forester, had been one of the twenty-odd people who elected to end their lives in the "clean white silence" of the glaciercrowned south.

When Walter returned to Florida, he made his son Veikko a present of Kyllikki and retreated into alcohol. But the young man made scant use of the enormous toy, and when the Children of Rebellion finally decided to flee Ocala, Veikko was secretly relieved when Hagen ordered that the schooner be scuttled.

Veikko took her to Sun Key Hole, fully intending to sink her in eighty fathoms. Then he thought of the cargo of memories she still carried, the loving care that Walter still lavished on her during his rare sober hours, and his maudlin protestations that one day soon he would straighten out and take them all sailing again. Veikko brought the s.h.i.+p back to Ocala and opened her petc.o.c.ks on the eastern side of Manchineel Bay, so that she lay softly on coral sand in the shallows with her tall masts awash at low tide.

It was from this inadequate grave that Marc Remillard had her raised, refitted, and made ready for the punitive voyage to Europe. Of all the motley sailing craft, sunken or still afloat, that const.i.tuted Ocala's small fleet, only Kyllikki had a hold deep enough to admit installation of Marc's cerebroenergetic enhancer. She was a key factor in his plans, as was her master.

Walter, rehabilitated with cruel efficiency by Jeff Steinbrenner, had wept as he piloted the schooner out of Manchineel Bay for the last time, outward bound for the Gulf Stream and the forbidden East Pa.s.sage. His fellow Rebels were touched by what they thought was a display of sentiment. No one dreamed of intruding upon his mind at such a moment. If they had, they would have heard his heart's cry to the fugitive younger generation on the opposite side of the Atlantic. Walter's telepathic powers were too weak to reach them, but he still had to attempt a warning, coupled with bitter reproach: If only you'd had the courage to kill the s.h.i.+p! If only you had done what I now lack the guts to do! Then your dream might have had a chance of success ... But we're coming after you now in Kyllikki. We'll stop you from opening the gate. Marc says you children can be peaceably restrained, but most of us fear for the worst. Run away, Veikko! Take Irena with you and whoever else will listen. Hide! Beware! Because Kyllikki's coming and she's carrying death.

The mental anguish of the s.h.i.+p's master went unnoticed by the other forty-two people on board. For most of them, the first week of the voyage was a time of respite and tranquillity, a chance to recover from frantic weeks of preparation and the final tearing up of roots. It was a time to deny fear and squelch renewed doubts. Walter's crew kept busy with shakedown routine while the pa.s.sengers dozed on sun-drenched decks, lounged in the stern watching flying fishes skitter in the creamy wake, or perched in one of the crow's nests under a cobalt sky while frigate-birds wheeled overhead and the full spread of solar-panel sail thrummed in a smart breeze. During those brief idyllic days, the tired old Rebels attempted to purge their minds of all thought-leaving that to Marc and the ten surviving magnates who were his intimates-and instead merged themselves with the ent.i.ty who seemed more alive than any of them: the tall s.h.i.+p running strong on a sparkling ocean.

On 7 September, when they were a little more than 400 kilometres southwest of Bermuda, the wind freshened and the sky turned lead-grey. Kyllikki raced close-reefed through increasingly heavy seas and the pa.s.sengers stayed below, paying little attention to Walter's a.s.surance that no really severe weather was in the offing, only a chain of minor tropical disturbances.

A mood of dejection prevailed as the schooner endured intervals of nasty chop, through which she punched, hammering and shaking. Then came thundersqualls-and shorter tempers.

When the sun condescended to s.h.i.+ne, the sea heaved with great queasy rollers while the veering wind blew fits and starts. The prologue to genuine disaster was a near gale under dreary torn scud, the remnant of a moribund hurricane, before which Kyllikki plunged and ramped, more often than not hove down nearly on her ear.

Those of the pa.s.sengers who had not surrendered to seasickness were rendered lethargic and irritable at the continued close confinement, the unsettling motion, and above all, the noise.

Timbers creaked and groaned, winch motors squealed in the adjustment of sail, marching breakers hissed along the hull, the wind howled, the auxiliary engine powering the rotors cut in and out as Ragnar and the engineers worked to isolate some obscure malfunction, and the great s.h.i.+p's masts, spars, and rigging vibrated in a hundred inharmonious notes. It seemed that the magical barque of earlier days had suffered a sea change into a floating torture chamber. As the dirty weather prolonged itself into a fourth night, the barometer of morale aboard Kyllikki reached its nadir.

Patricia Castellane found herself alone in the grand saloon, whence all but she had fled. Supper, if she wanted it, would be a scratch affair; both Alonzo Jarrow and Charisse Buckmaster were prostrate with mal de mer and no one had volunteered to take over their culinary duties. Patricia decided she was not hungry. She tried to watch a Tri-D of Wagner's "Flying Dutchman", but its stormy cadences only made her feel worse So she turned the lamps low, huddled in a gyro-lounge reading a cla.s.sic thriller by Desmond Bagley, and sipped hot b.u.t.tered rum. The s.h.i.+p was heeled far to starboard, so that the belowsheer portlights on that side of the saloon were fully underwater.

She could see phosph.o.r.escent froth swirling by on the other side of the thick gla.s.s. The sight of it and the melange of noises were so mesmerizing that she finally dozed off-only to start wide awake as someone gripped her shoulder and an urgent telepathic voice said: Pat! Wake up-we need your help!

It was Cordelia Warshaw, looking like a soaked and bedraggled elderly child in stormgear three sizes too large for her.

With her was Steve Vanier, a former tactical a.n.a.lyst who was Walter Saastamoinen's second mate. His mind was shut tight as an oyster and his face bore a grimace of combined pain and fury. He held his right wrist against his chest with his left hand.

A trickle of blood seeped down the front of his gloyello coat and dripped into the fresh pool of water on the saloon carpet.

"It's Helayne Strangford," said Cordelia, thrusting a weatherproof jacket and sou'wester hat at Patricia. "She had a knife, and she got onto the bridge and attacked Steve at the helm."

"Must have had some drops squirrelled away after all, the crazy b.i.t.c.h," said Steve. "Walter fought her off. She was raving about saving the children. Wanted to wreck the s.h.i.+p."

"Oh, G.o.d," said Patricia.

Cordelia said, "Now she's climbed up to the Jiggermast crow's nest and says she'll jump. You know what a strong coercer she is. I don't think we'll be able to stop her. Tried to call the other magnates to help but only Steinbrenner responded."

"Fat f.u.c.king good he is," Steve muttered. He had been fumbling behind the bar and now downed a huge swallow of vodka straight from the bottle. "Ah, Jesus-that helps."