Pliocene Exile - The Adversary Part 40

Don't jump. Come down and let us help you.

DarlingChris ... darlingLeila ... preciousJoel. HEwantskillthembutlknowhowstop. Kill the other minds. Deprive devilangelexecutor of metaconcertcooperators make HIM helpless!

Weak! HUMAN! ... And that's exactly what I have done you know.

This last was delivered in a tone so matter-of fact and complacent that the seven people at the foot of the mast were momentarily taken aback. And then Steve Vanier came pounding up the after companionway ladder and emerged on deck with his brain bursting with horror. He shouted: "The Keoghs-both of them stabbed to death in sick bay! And she must have gone into the cabins that weren't locked-" Crimson images tumbled from his mind. Helayne's manic laughter pealed in the cloud-wracked sky.

Nanomea Fox kept the spotlight steady on the swaying figure.

Helayne called out in a crooning voice, "Walter! Come up, dear. Help me. I promise I won't jump if you come." The force of her coercion was an irresistible siren call. Walter, blank-faced, started for the mast as Fox and Marchand stood helplessly by.

"No, Walter!" Patricia screamed. And then the mental tentacle coiled about her own will, commanding her to climb, and Roy, and ...

Jeff Steinbrenner whipped the carbine from Laroche's paralysed hands and fired without aiming. There was a sizzling report and a bloom of light like St. Elmo's fire. Something seemed to take wing, uttering a final sound like a seabird's cry. Fragments of wood and metal and severed rope rained onto the deck.

They all looked up at the broken, empty crow's nest, and then braced themselves to go below.

As the dark armoured form materialized on its improvised cradle, the docilated man sitting in the dark corner of the hold finally broke his silence. "Commodore's gig approaching!

Bosun, your pipe! Mister Kramer, hoist the swallowtail of the Rye Harbour Yacht Club!"

"Shut up, Alex," said Patricia Castellane, "or I'll phase in the algetics at max, so help me G.o.d."

Alexis Manion subsided, but a sly smile played over his lips.

He got up from his chair and strolled closer as Gerrit Van Wyk pulled the helmet hoist into position and Jordan Kramer monitored the divestment.

When Marc was free of the armour he said, "The stasis held perfectly for three hours thirty minutes. I think I've got it licked.

How did it look on this end?"

Kramer said, "Perfect. No sign of anomalous field-warp of bilocation phenomena. We'll have Manion do an a.n.a.lysis in depth, but it looked mighty good in overview. How far out did you go?"

"Eighteen thousand six hundred and twenty-seven light-years.

To Poltroy. Testing my limits and indulging my curiosity."

"Was the translation still apparently instantaneous?" Van Wyk asked.

"Yes," said Marc. "There doesn't seem to be any equivalent of the subjective hours or day spent in the grey limbo by superluminal stars.h.i.+p riders. I'd estimate I was in the hyperspatial matrix thirty subjective seconds on each of the d-jumps. It takes longer breaking through the superficies at each end, of course."

He stepped into the miniature shower cabinet and threw out the pressure envelope coverall. The water sprayed hot, sending steam clouds rising among the cable-draped oaken s.h.i.+p timbers.

"So you went to Poltroy, my beamish boy?" Alexis Manion carolled.

"I'd forgotten that the place was mostly glacial during the Pliocene," Marc said. "Fortunately, the locals took me for a slumming G.o.d and lent me some furs, or I'd have had to stay in the armour. It would have spoiled the experiment." Patricia came up with a towel and a dressing gown. "I think I finally have the d-jump program fully a.s.similated. I expect to work out further refinements, but the technique is quite workable now. I can take the armour with me as a safety precaution against a hostile environment, or leave it suspended in the superficies out of the way, or even send it back home to wait until I whistle, cutting off entirely from the systems at this end of the warp."

He smiled, tying the belt of the robe. "It's the d.a.m.nedest feeling, going superluminal without a s.h.i.+p. But it was even spookier actually visiting a world in the flesh that I farsaw on the star-search."

Kramer asked, "Is there discomfort pa.s.sing through the hyperspatial boundary, as one experiences on a stars.h.i.+p?"

Marc nodded. "I'm mes.h.i.+ng with an upsilon-field. No matter whether the thing is generated mechanically or metapsychically, it still hurts to go through it. D-jumping does away with the extended subs.p.a.ce vector-the subjective time-lag spent in the grey limbo. But the pain factor seems to have its usual component-geometric increase with the distance jumped. I was nearly at my limit with the hop to Poltroy, but teleporting about the Earth is no more uncomfortable than worrying a hangnail."

Alexis Manion c.o.c.ked his head impishly and sang: If this is true, it's jolly for you; Your courage screw to bid us adieu!

And go and show both friend and foe How much you dare! (I'm quite aware It's your affair.) Yet I declare I'd take your share. But I don't much care.

I don't much care ... I don't much care.

Marc surveyed him without rancour. "Let's get you out of that docilator and put you to work, Alex. I want a detailed study of this operation."

He slid his powerful redactive faculty into the mind of the dynamic field specialist to prevent severe disorientation as the mind-altering headset was removed. Manion winced, blinked, then ma.s.saged his eyelids with his fingers. The underlying hatred was there still, but it was masked almost immediately by a peculiar elation.

He said, "We have a little surprise for you, Marc! While the cat was away, the mad mouse played."

Patricia hurried to forestall him, running her own high-speed reprise of the shambles. Manion glowed in perverse satisfaction while Kramer and Van Wyk stood mutely by, confirming that Helayne had indeed murdered fifteen people-including.

Kramer's wife, Audrey, and the former Concilium magnates Dierdre and Diarmid Keogh and Peter Dalembert-before she herself had been shot dead by Steinbrenner. A few others had been wounded by the madwoman, Arkady O'Malley seriously.

"Bon dieu de merde," breathed Marc, his mind glaring bright.

"You could apply for that job on Poltroy," Manion suggested archly, "but the natives might prefer a less graphic job description."

Marc stood motionless. His face had gone livid and his eyes were those of Abaddon. Alex Manion's body was lifted into the air and seized by a ma.s.sive convulsion. His eyes bulged and oozed blood from a dozen pinpoint haemorrhages. He uttered an animal scream at the same time that his brain flooded the aether with agony. Then he was sprawled on the planks, his limbs racked with clonic spasms, half drowned in vomit, soiled and stinking in his own voided excrement.

Marc looked down at him dispa.s.sionately. "Tu es un emmerdeur, Alex. It's fortunate for you that I still have a sense of humour. You aren't seriously damaged. Do the field a.n.a.lysis tomorrow."

The gabbling pain-ridden thing collapsed, unconscious.

Without another glance, Marc took Patricia by the elbow, steered her past the stricken Van Wyk and Kramer, and went out to the after companionway.

"Just say the word," Patricia said as they climbed to his cabin in the stern deckhouse, "And I'll deep-six that swine myself. It wouldn't surprise me to find that he was the one who gave the dope to Helayne, hoping that something like this would happen.

It was his poison that turned her against you in the first place-and corrupted the children as well! Now we've lost the Keoghs, our top redactors. And Peter-"

"Poor Keoghs," Marc mused. "Siegmund and Sieglinde. At least they went in style! But whoever would have thought that Peter Dalembert would die in his bed?" He opened the cabin door and held it courteously.

"When we found him, his eyes were open. And his face"-she projected the vision-"quite calm. A creator of his power should have been able to s.h.i.+eld himself from Helayne's knife. If he had wanted to."

Marc went to the built-in cooking unit and activated it, then opened a clothes locker. "I had counted on Peter's devotion to Barry and Fumiko and little Hope to counterbalance his rather blatant death wish." His smile was distant as he tossed underwear, jeans, and a jersey onto the bed. "Another of my miscalculations. Obviously, Peter thought that I'd be unable to stop the children without harming them."

Patricia was silent.

"But you never did think much of the forebearance notion, did you, Pat?"

"I'd follow any plan of yours. Do whatever you say. Always.

You know that. I don't give a d.a.m.n about Mental Man any more, Marc. Only you." You are my angel, too terrible to love, condescending to share your life with me, to give me fierce joy even when you have none. Why have you none? Your great scheme is still feasible. We don't need Cloud and Hagen and the other children as long as we have the genes and the brain.