Then it"s done G.o.d done. He"s latent but safe. Remove torc ... whatareyouDOINGMarcwhatareNO!! STOP STOP ABADDON STOP DEVILb.a.s.t.a.r.d STOPSTOPSTOPLet me lead. You need not die. And so ...
[E C S T A S Y.] ... it is done. And so easily.
You-you let us go?
Poor Elizabeth. Of course.
Later, he said, "I"m profoundly sorry that I had to use force.
But it never again would have come so easily for him as it did at that moment. He was ripe, ready; and I felt the end justified the means. I knew you wouldn"t suicide. Your unconscious realized that I was no threat, even if your panicky conscious tried to tell you otherwise."
"You devil," she said, nearly paralysed with revulsion.
"I"m only a man, as you are only a woman." His tone was level, almost scolding. "And one, au fond, more comfortable in the subordinate mode, as your late husband Lawrence undoubtedly realized. You might keep that in mind as you ponder your personal predicament."
"No wonder your children hate you! And the Milieu ... "
Wearily, he turned away, moving toward the window.
"Neither you nor the baby was harmed. And he"s operant."
A syntactical probe gave her confirmation of the diagnosis.
The infant lay sleeping, his mind cycling in bright dreamlessness.
His skin was a normal rose-ivory colour; the only traces of the fierce blistering were tiny bits of dry crust about the torcless small throat.
Elizabeth sank back into her chair and let her eyes close, fatigued to the uttermost depths of her soul. She heard Marc say:"Children ... You and Lawrence thought your work was more important, and learned your mistake too late. I never intended to have natural children, either. Not after genetic engineering of the normally sited human brain was proved impracticable. Not with my heritage! The vicissitudes overcome by the saintly Jack must have their place in the history texts of your post-Rebellion Milieu. But I doubt whether you know the truth about me and the others-Luc and Marie and poor d.a.m.ned Madeleine, and the stillborn ones and the teratoid abortions, and Matthieu, who would have killed me before birth if I hadn"t antic.i.p.ated him and struck first. Oh, we were a little less than the angels, we Remillards, if the truth be told. One saint and a myriad of sinners! And all except the lucky one, chained to our weak flesh, distracted by its needs, afflicted by the chemical reactions we call emotion. And doomed like all the rest of humankind to evolve only through endless, slow, pain-filled generations-until I thought I had found the way to force evolution"s hand. I foresaw a billion human minds released, free and immortal: all of them my children. Engendering Mental Man would have been fatherhood enough for me ... "
There was silence. She saw him standing in front of her, dressed again in the familiar black, but with a golden circlet fastened about one wrist. Brother Anatoly"s brocade robe was like a puddle of blood on the floor at his feet.
She said, "But you did father Hagen and Cloud."
"Cyndia wanted children, and I loved her."
"But you couldn"t love them?"
"Of course I did. And do. I brought them to this place, knowing they would grow up flawed, less than I, because it was impossible to abandon all that I had left of my dreams. My children still have the potential within them-and not only Hagen and Cloud, but all the others as well. If they"ll only follow me."
"You don"t understand at all why they want to escape you!"
Her voice was tense with loathing.
"Their vision is limited, like their minds."
"Marc-they simply want to be free!"
He said patiently, "When they were younger, they accepted their destiny willingly. But there were problems on Ocala, attrition among the weaker-minded of my old a.s.sociates, and I was away on the star-search too much of the time. The children were seduced from the ideal, primarily by a man named Alexis Manion, who had once been my closest friend."
"He"s in the history texts, too. The one who attempted to disprove the Unity concept."
Marc uttered a brief laugh. "You"ll be interested to know that he changed his mind."
"He discovered the truth, you mean! The Unity is the only way humanity can continue to evolve naturally. You and your followers were mistaken in thinking that it threatened individuality. Evolution toward a Galactic Mind is an inevitable consequent of intelligent life. Coadunation doesn"t shackle our minds, it sets them free! It"s our nature to need others, to move toward universal love. All the races of thinking ent.i.ties realize this, even those that are premetapsychic. That"s why your children seem to have instinctively perceived the truth of what Manion told them. Why they reject your plan that seems such a logical shortcut to perfection."
"It would work."
"It"s too draconian, too devoid of any semblance of love. It would have resulted in an isolation of humankind from the rest of the Galactic Mind. Your scheme has a certain objective grandeur, but its artificiality is just as much of a dead end as the golden torcs of the Tanu."
"We could transcend the human condition," he insisted, "giving every human mind what Jack had!"
What Jack had. Finally, Elizabeth understood.
For the first time, she reached out and took Marc"s gloved hand. "Don"t you see? With Jack it was the other way around.
Your brother never embraced his inhumanity. Even though his terrible mutation set him irrevocably apart, he insisted on belonging with all the rest of us. You saw Mental Man as the ideal human-but he was too wise to make that mistake. That"s why he had to oppose you, even though he loved you. Why he and his wife laid down their lives to end your Rebellion."
"Leaving me widowed, immortal, and d.a.m.ned." He spoke lightly, and his fingers transmitted a faint pressure to underline the jest. Then their hands fell apart. The baby was awake and cooing. "It"s time I left, and time you took Brendan to his mother."
He went to open the door for her. At the slight sound, Dedra and the priest, who had been sleeping propped up against each other on the bench, sprang to their feet. The mother burst into tears, and Brother Anatoly prayed a thunderous blessing that roused the entire household. As the corridor filled and jubilant bedlam prevailed, Marc slipped back into the nursery.
A towering robed form waited for him. "My name is Creyn.
I am Elizabeth"s friend and guardian. So the work with the child is complete?"
"You saw," said Marc shortly. "And no harm was done to Elizabeth. Stand away from that window so that I can go."
"You have raised Brendan to operancy. Now do the same for me."
"G.o.d-you can"t be serious!" The man in black levitated and hovered, silhouetted against the dawnlit sky. A nimbus of spectral machinery formed about his body. His hair stirred like water-borne tendrils and he winced as a line of tiny dots st.i.tched across his shining brow.
"If the little one could survive the procedure, so could I,"
Creyn said. "I entreat you."
The transfixed head regarded him with blind eyes.
You fool.
Do you know who I am?
"You are the Adversary, fated from all time to provoke our people. I know what you did in your future world and I know what you did here for the child. I also know what you must do during the aeons between. Help me and I will help you."
I need no help.
"You do. I know where you are to go, and what the work is.
You do not. And my Guild is the custodian of the mitigator, which not even the science of your Milieu possesses. Transform my mind. Raise me to her level and I will give it to you, along with the truth."