He laughed. "You feel a certain affinity?"
"For another member of the Frankenstein Club? Oh, yes.
But I"m a comparative amateur in meddling with the course of human evolution. I lack your self-a.s.surance as well as your paramount qualifications. Take this black-torc business-I"m bungling it and the baby will likely die, but I can"t help feeling that it would be for the best. If I save Brendan and the others like him, what future would they have in this poor d.a.m.ned land? I don"t need Brede"s clairvoyance to foresee what"s going to happen when you get to Europe. There will be a war over the time-gate site."
"Not if Aiken cooperates with me instead of with my son.
You could show Aiken where his best interests lie."
She laughed bitterly. "You"re a fool if you think I can exert that kind of influence. Aiken does as he pleases. If he"s decided to help your children escape from you, nothing I say or do will deter him."
The hovering dark shape drifted nearer, sending a wash of chill air ahead. Hastily, Elizabeth covered the baby.
"Your protestations of helplessness lack conviction," Marc said. "Perhaps you have your own reasons for encouraging the building of a Pliocene time-gate."
"And what about your motive for preventing it?" she retorted. "Are you really so afraid that the Magistratum will come after you? Or is it that you would prefer to see your children dead rather than lose them to the Unity you couldn"t accept?"
"You misjudge me," he said. "I love them. Everything I"ve done has been for them. For all human children. For Mental Man crying to be born-"
"Let it be, Marc!" she cried. "It"s over-it has been, for more than twenty-seven years! Humanity chose the other way, not yours!" A great weariness oppressed her and she felt her eyes sting. The strong mental walls she had erected against the commanding presence of the Milieu"s challenger wavered, weakened. She was vulnerable and he knew it-but he forbore. She whispered, "Let your children go. The Milieu will welcome them. Turn your ship around and return to North America. I"ll do my utmost to insure that the Pliocene side of the time-gate is permanently closed, so that you and the other Rebels will be left unmolested."
"How will you do that?" he asked. "By going back to the Milieu yourself?"
She turned her head away. "Leave us alone, Marc. Don"t destroy our little world."
"Poor Grand Master. It"s a difficult role you"ve chosen.
Almost as lonely as mine." The sound of his voice intensified and she looked up, startled, to see that he was actually standing on the broad sill of the window. There was no longer any trace of ghostly machinery surrounding him. As in a dream, Elizabeth watched him step down and walk slowly to the infant"s wicker bed, leaving wet footprints on the parquet floor. The exudation of cold air was no longer apparent. He was fully materialized, divorced from the mind-enhancing equipment. One gloved hand gripped the rim of the baby basket and she heard the fibres creak. His grey eyes beneath their heavy winged brows held hers.
"Show me the program you"re using in the child"s redaction.
Quickly! I can"t sustain this stasis for more than a few minutes."
Her mind had gone numb, beyond fear. She summoned the program and displayed it.
"Very ingenious. Is it entirely your own construct?"
"No. Great chunks of it come from the preceptive courses I used when teaching children at the Metapsychic Inst.i.tute on Denali."
"Redactive science has come a long way since my day ... I would judge that this program of yours is fully capable of effecting a cure."
"It"s too slow." Her admission was starkly clinical. "At the rate I was going with Minanonn, the procedure would take more than twelve hundred hours. The baby would almost certainly die before we could finish."
"All you need do is magnify the coercive loading. At that minute focus, the child"s mind can endure ten times the pressure Minanonn delivers." He had gone into the small brain, scrutinizing, testing. The baby stirred and exhaled a soft cooing sound, smiling in his sleep.
Elizabeth said, "I can only utilize a single auxiliary mind in this configuration. Phasing in a coercive metaconcert is out of the question."
"I was thinking of something quite different." Marc withdrew his redactive faculty and took two steps backward. "We would have to wait until Manion and Kramer and I solve the problem of maintaining my translation in stasis-holding off the rubberband effect that tends to pull me back to the takeoff point of the jump. We couldn"t risk that happening in mid redaction.
Even with a maximum feed of coercion, it will still take more than a hundred hours to finish the little chap off."
"Finish him?" Elizabeth"s voice was a faltering whisper.
Marc"s mind engaged hers on the intimate mode: Together we could heal him completely. With certain emendations of your program we might even raise him to permanent operancy.
"Work with you?
But I could never-"
"You could never trust me?" The asymmetrical smile was self-mocking. He tapped the side of his head and greenish drops flew from his dripping hair to splatter the window frame. "I"m barebrained at this end of the d-jump, Elizabeth. There would be no danger to you if we use the program exactly as formulated-coercer-inferior, with you retaining executive function. You"d be quite safe from ... diabolical influence."
He seemed to step outside into the night. The semitransparent cerebroenergetic equipment reformed about his levitant body and he began to recede rapidly; but his mental voice was distinct: I want to do this. Let me help you.
She asked, "How long do you think it will take you to solve the stasis problem?" And thought: Am I mad? Am I actually taking his proposal seriously-willing to trust him?
He said: I"ll need at least a week. Perhaps a bit longer. Can you keep the child alive that long?
"Minanonn and I can continue the procedure. If no complications turn up, the baby should survive. I think ... "
And a fading ironic comment: Perhaps Brother Anatoly can storm heaven.
Then the starry sky was empty and the infant wailed-hungry, cold, and in need of changing.
CHAPTER TEN.
The former Mr. Justice Burke, stripped to breechclout and moccasins, knelt spraddle-legged in the canoe hidden in the reeds and waited for the waterbuck to slosh a metre or so nearer, within positive dub-shot range. This time he couldn"t miss.
The sun above the marshland of the Upper Moselle valley was a bra.s.s porthole into h.e.l.l. Sweat trickled from beneath Burke"s headband into his eyes, blurring the approaching antelope. He blinked slowly, breathed in shallow pants, held the taut bowstring against his cheek. His kishkas were contorted in a frightful ache; his skull pounded; his cramped hamstrings added their pangs to the hangover"s anguish. Then he saw that the buckthorn arrowshaft was warped-and this final evidence of incompetence wrung an unvoiced "Gevalt!" from his rebuking aboriginal conscience. He shifted aim in a futile attempt to compensate, and let fly.
The arrow nicked the waterbuck across the withers. The animal leaped, floundering in hock-deep water. Partially chewed plants drooled from its mouth. Peopeo Moxmox Burke of the Wallawalla whipped another arrow into position and shot again, wide of the mark. The antelope bounded off in a series of great splashes. Frightened mallards took to the air ahead of it and a pied swan, hooting, exploded up from a patch of sawgra.s.s. Then it was quiet again except for Burke"s muttered curses.
He lowered the bow and let it drop onto the canoe bottom.
Taking up the paddle, he dug in deeply and sent the boat shooting out of the natural blind into open water, heading for the thin shade of a taxodium cypress. After he had moored to one of the half-submerged knee-roots, he took a long drink from his skin bota. Something seemed to tw.a.n.g behind his eyeb.a.l.l.s.
He drank again and his sight cleared. Grunting, he worked himself into a comfortable position and began to examine the rest of the arrows.
Almost all of them were off true.
He picked up the bow. The laminations of yew wood were separating as the cement succ.u.mbed to decay. The twisted sinew of the bowstring was frayed and weak. Even the buckskin quiver was spotted with mildew and gaping at the seams. Small wonder that he hadn"t managed to take a single antelope! The bow and arrows, like the rest of his Native American paraphernalia, had lain neglected on the shelf of his wigwam for long months during his southern adventures. Since his return to Hidden Springs, he had been too busy planning countermeasures against the encroaching Firvulag to take time to hunt.
What in the world had been in his mind this morning, prompting this primitivist folly?
He had flung himself out of Marialena Torrejon"s bed, abruptly awake, with the ringing declaration that there would take place that night a great feast-an official celebration of the great news!-and he himself, freeleader of the Lowlives, would provide game for the entree.
"You want another party?" Marialena asked blearily, disentangling her plump limbs from the linen sheets. "Hombre, que te jodas! I"ve got a head like an exploding volcano after last night-"