REMILLARD (V. O. ).
Perhaps an a.n.a.logy will help. There"s a peculiar group of living things called Myxomycetes - or, to give them their more prosaic name, slime molds. A slime mold is either an animal that acts like a plant, or a plant that acts like an animal. Officially, it"s a type of fungus. But it"s capable of independent movement, like an animal. In its usual form, the slime mold is like a tiny amoeba, flowing here and there on the forest floor engulfing and eating bacteria and other microscopic goodies. It eats, it grows, and in time it splits like a genuine amoeba into two individuals. In a favorable forest environment there will be thousands or even millions of these little single-celled eaters going about their individual business... But sometimes, the food supply gives out. Perhaps the forest dries up in a prolonged drought. In some way the individual cells seem to realize that it"s "unite or die" time. They begin to come together. First they form blobs and then rivulets of slime. These flow toward a central point and combine into a multicelled ma.s.s of jelly that becomes a real organism, sometimes more than thirty centimeters in diameter ... and it creeps along the ground. Some creeping slime molds look like pancakes of dusty jelly and some look like slugs, leaving a trail of slime behind. The organism may travel for two weeks, looking for a more favorable place to live. When it stops migrating it changes shape again - often to a thing like a k.n.o.b at the end of a stalk. In time the k.n.o.b splits open and releases a cloud of dusty spores that fly through the air. Eventually the spores come to earth, where warmth and moisture turn them into amoebalike individuals again. They take up their old life - until the next time things get rough and Unity becomes imperative...
TWO SHOT - REMILLARD AND MORENO - STEADICAM FOLLOWING -.
We discover them as they are approaching the exit of the RESEARCH FACILITY. Moreno is leaving.
MORENO.
And you really believe that human minds will have to come together in somewhat the same way in order to survive?
REMILLARD.
The idea seems very natural to a telepath, Mr. Moreno. It"s only a higher form of socialization, after all. To a tribe of primitives living at the clan level, the notion of a complex democratic society seems hopelessly bizarre. But primitives transplanted into industrial nations have often adapted very successfully. Think of some of the Southeast Asian hill folk who came to America in the 1970s and "80s. A World Mind is quite plausible to operants, and of course it would include nonoperant minds as well.
MORENO.
I don"t see how!
REMILLARD.
Neither do I... at the moment. But that"s the payoff that some of us metapsychic theoreticians envision. A society of the mind evolving toward harmony and mutualism that still lets individuals retain their freedom. That"s one of the topics we"ll be discussing in Alma-Ata next year, at the First World Congress on Metapsychology. We"ll deal with practicalities first, but then the universe is the limit! It may take a few thousand years to accomplish a World Mind, but I like to think of the meeting there in Kazakhstan as the first little blob of amoebas flowing together into a true organism. The creature is still tiny and not very effectual... but it"ll grow.
CUT TO MORENO CU - AGAINST PROGRAM LOGO (MATTE).
MORENO.
(addressing viewers) Denis Remillard"s vision is an amazing one - but then he is an amazing man. Perhaps, as the President said, a supermind. Right now there are at most a few hundred others like him scattered around the world. But tomorrow, and next year, and in the twenty-first century fast approaching, those superminds among us will multiply. And as they do, they"ll change the world. How they change it remains to be seen ... I"m Carlos Moreno for 60 Minutes.
FADE TO COMMERCIAL BREAK.
23.
FROM THE MEMOIRS OF ROGATIEN REMILLARD.
WHY HAD I done it?
What perverse compulsion had led me to top my nephew"s display of psychokinesis with one of my own, thus revealing my most closely guarded secret on a television program beamed around the globe?
Oh yes, I had been more than a little drunk at the time, having given in to the need to fortify myself against the invasion of my bookshop by Carlos Moreno and his squad of muckrakers. But to show my power so flippantly, with such cornball insouciance! I had to be cracking up.
After the fatal taping session in the shop, when we had all had our giggle and it occurred to me what a piece of lunacy I had perpetrated, I went on a towering binge. I missed the actual 60 Minutes telecast that took place on Sunday, three days later, as well as the debriefing party afterward that was given at the Metapsychology Lab, where Denis and his Coterie celebrated having thrown their bonnets over the windmill. Apparently only one person missed me, out of all that supposedly psychosensitive lot, and wondered where I had disappeared to, and figured things out, and had the compa.s.sion to come and ring the bell to my apartment and shout telepathically until I was roused from my stupor and coerced into opening the door...
Lucille.
"I knew it!" she exclaimed, pushing inside. "I just knew you"d done something stupid. Look at you! Roger, what are you doing to yourself?"
"Good question, " I mumbled, grinning down at her. But my drunken insolence quailed in the face of her terrible charity. I must have looked like a sodden scarecrow, half conscious and filthy; but she had helped tend her invalid father for years and had no trouble at all coping with me. She forced me to take a shower, dressed me in clean pajamas, and pummeled my brain until I swallowed a vitamin-laden milkshake. Then she put me to bed. When I woke up ten hours later she was still there, dozing in a chair in the parlor, and my hurrah"s nest of an apartment was now spotless and my entire stock of booze had been poured down the drain.
With my head throbbing like a calliope at full steam and my knees awobble, I looked in hung-over wonderment at the sleeping young woman, trying to think why she, of all people, had come to my rescue.
Her eyes opened. They were brown and very stern, and I couldn"t help remembering how she had sent Denis and me packing when we had first dowsed her out eleven years earlier.
"Why?" she said quietly, echoing my telepathic question. "Because I know just what came over you when Denis did his thing and you knew the jig was up. Poor old Roger. "
She stretched, then got up from the chair and looked at her wrist-watch. "Quarter to eight. I have a seminar at nine this morning, but there"s time to scramble some eggs. " She headed for my kitchen.
"What d"you mean you know?" I croaked, shuffling after. "I don"t even know! And what the h.e.l.l right do you have coming up here and interfering with me? Don"t tell me the f.u.c.kin" Ghost sent you!"
She began to crack eggs. The sound was like ax-blows against my tortured eardrums. I lurched and her coercion reached out and coolly tipped me into a kitchen chair. I let out a groan and caught my head before it bounced on the freshly polished maple table top. A few moments later she was shoving a cup of coffee under my nose.
"Microwaved instant, but strong enough to etch gla.s.s, " she said. "Drink. " Coercion locked on, stifling my instinctive refusal. I drank. Then she produced a nauseously aromatic plate of eggs with b.u.t.tered toast. My guts cringed at the loathsome prospect.
"Eat. "
"I can"t -"
YES YOU CAN.
Bereft of will power, I dug in. Lucille sat down opposite me and sipped tea, keeping the compulsion firm by maintaining eye contact. She was not a pretty woman but her face had that high-colored attractiveness indicative of a formidable character. Her dark hair was cut in a simple pageboy with the bangs just touching thick, straight brows. She wore a scarlet turtleneck sweater and jeans, and her hands were raw, the once polished fingernails damaged from the heavy housecleaning ch.o.r.es she had undertaken on my behalf.
As my stomach filled and my aching head deflated to a size approximating normality, I felt ashamed of my surly ingrat.i.tude and more than ever mystified that she should have been the one to think of me. She had been an occasional customer at the bookshop, showing a rather regrettable penchant for fantasy books featuring dragons. Her mind had always closed primly at my avuncular jests and resisted my attempts to put her onto a more sophisticated style of escapist literature. Lucille knew what she liked and stuck to it with Franco stubbornness. She was not even a full-fledged member of the Coterie, but only one of the more talented experimental subjects - a mere student - which made her a.s.sertion that she understood my mental state all the more improbable.
"But I do understand, " she said, reading my subvocalizations. "You and I are really quite a bit alike. Both of us are still trying to adapt, asking questions about ourselves that desperately need answers. "
I glared at the nervy little chit, mopping my plate with the last of the toast. Her coercion slid aside as I managed to prop my mental barricade into position.
She only smiled. "There"s a person who"s helped me to find some answers, Roger. I think he could help you, too. I"m going to come back here this afternoon at three o"clock and take you along with me to meet him. "
"No, you aren"t, " said I. "Don"t think that I"m not grateful to you for shoveling me up and putting this place back in order after my lost weekend - but I"m quite all right now. I don"t need any help from your friend. And don"t think you can force me. You"ll find I"m not nearly so susceptible to coercion when I"m compos mentis. "
She leaned toward me earnestly. "I wouldn"t coerce you to come. That wouldn"t be any use. But you must, Roger! You know that you"re seriously in need of help. Everybody knows."
I laughed. "So I"m the talk of the town, am I? A disgrace and an embarra.s.sment, sans doute, to my nephew the distinguished supermind! And which one of his brilliant young colleagues have you pegged to drag the black sheep out of his alcoholic wilderness?"
"None of the Coterie. I want you to talk to my own a.n.a.lyst, Dr. Bill Sampson. He isn"t an operant at all. But he has more insight - more caring competence - than that whole d.a.m.ned labful of superior metapsychic p.r.i.c.ks. Denis included."
Oh my G.o.d. I squeezed my crusty eyelids shut.
She babbled on. "When I felt how deeply afraid you were there in the bookshop, with the TV people closing in and Denis put in the position of having to demonstrate his PK, I was just appalled. Then you defied it! I knew right then that I"d have to do something to help you. Take you to Bill. He helped me lick my dragons and he can help you -"
Lightning struck.
Now I knew why I had made that lunatic gesture in front of the TV cameras, why I had berated myself so that her mind"s ear overheard, why I had admitted her to my squalid sanctum, asking if my own special dragon had sent her.
It had.
Poor little kindhearted Lucille! Let me reinforce my mind-screen, hiding from you the blaze of certainty. It had been more than a year ago that I was admonished to break up your love affair with Dr. Bill Sampson, and I put the notion completely out of my mind. But synchronicity is not so easily denied... and here we are, and there the inevitability awaits us.
Once again I am not a man but a tool. And how is the dirty deed to be done? (Neither she nor Sampson are fools, and any blatant action, such as reporting the prima facie breach of doctor-patient ethics, would tend to solidify their liaison rather than sever it. ) No, I would have to be both subtle and direct.
All that is really necessary is to show old Sampson the truth.
The psychiatrist is a normal, but he is clearly enthralled by the metapsychic phenomenon in his beloved. Show him how he has played the romantic hero, rescuing a malleable young Andromeda from the mental rock where she chained herself as dragon-meat. The princess is tender and grateful now; but her chains can be taken up and worn again at any time - and they can be stretched to fit two minds as easily as one when reality inevitably intrudes on the glamour. Then she will destroy the mortal lover as well as herself, surrendering to her dragon"s fire...
Does he think that love will transcend? Then show him what operancy really means - what a mature operant can do - what she will be able to do someday! Now, blinded and gentled, she shrinks from prying into the deeper layers of his mind. But pry she will, and she"ll find the petty, cruel, and unworthy thoughts that flit through every human mind, no matter how loving, and in her hurt she"ll fling them into his face. Show him how easily it"s done! And then coerce him. Show how his darling will be capable of violating his sovereign will, should the mood come upon her. Show him the PK! Give him just a hint of the healing faculty"s flip side! And then the clincher. Project the image that every operant, even the most n.o.ble, holds deep in his heart when he compares himself to lowly normals. Show him Odd John"s truth.
"I was living in a world of phantoms, or animated masks. No one seemed really alive. I had a queer notion that if I p.r.i.c.ked any of you there would be no bleeding but only a gush of wind... "
Learn the truth, Dr. Bill Sampson. Then find a normal woman to love and leave Lucille Cartier to her metapsychic destiny. Learn the easy way, from somebody who learned the hard way.
"Roger, " Lucille said. "Please come with me this afternoon. It will all be for the best. "
"I hope so, " I told her. "G.o.d, I hope so. "
24.
SUPERVISORY CRUISER NOUMENON [Lyl 1-0000]
4 JUNE 1992.
WHEN THE FANATICS successfully smuggled the second of the Armageddon devices into place, and that place was the Israeli nuclear weaponry works at Dimona, the portents were such that h.o.m.ologous Trend felt impelled to consult with its three fellow ent.i.ties.
"One must admit, " Trend told the others, "that my anatomization of the probability lattices is somewhat disorderly - but that"s Earth for you. However, the resultant inevitably leads to still another global crisis capable of disrupting the planetary s.e.xternion - and Intervention. "
"One"s sensibilities churn, " Eupathic Impulse said, upon viewing the a.n.a.lysis. "From this one locus proceed conflicts not only in the Middle East, but also in South Africa, Uzbekistan, and India. "
"One is chagrined, " Asymptotic Essence said, "given the worldwide flowering of goodwill after the Scottish Demonstration, to note that the group instigating the atrocity stubbornly persists in its ancient tribal hostility mode. Other Earth populations at higher and lower levels of sociopolitical organization experienced positive transformational nuances as a result of MacGregor"s ploy. What"s wrong with this bunch?"
"Status Three indigenes, " Noetic Concordance observed sadly, "are a perverse and difficult lot, more likely to stall in metapsychic development than other cla.s.sifications. Status Threes vest authority in puppet rulers dominated by a powerful priestly caste. The intellectual establishment is subservient, and upward mobility of individuals is limited according to their profession of orthodoxy. The higher mind-powers - even elementary creativity - tend to be repressed, except insofar as they serve the narrow religious objective. The mind-set is intolerant, reactionary, xenophobic, and more than a little silly. Fanaticism is a prime activator of psychoenergies and the view of consequents is minimal. Even this impending catastrophe is seen by the perpetrators as a glorification of the All. "
Eupathic Impulse said, "One has a sneaking suspicion that this particular terrorist group wants to get its licks in before the inspection teams of the UN Nuclear Nonproliferation Agency include persons adept in fa.r.s.ensing. "
Trend waved all this thought-embroidery aside. "You three agree with my dire prognosis. Do you also agree that the gravity of the situation demands that we summon Atoning Unifex for a contemplation?"
"One regrets having to disturb It, " Concordance said. "But if Earth is to be spared this profound trauma, overt action will have to be taken. "
Asymptotic Essence permitted itself the barest hint of vexation. "Another deliberate skew of the noogenetic curvature? That will make three inside of fourteen months, including the rescue of MacGregor from the Mafia hit-man and the augmentation of the Alma-Ata group"s coercion of the Soviet TV net. How long must we keep this up? If Earth"s Mind were treated in a normal manner, it would never achieve coadunation!"
Eupathic Impulse was inclined to agree. "Intervention in due season is one thing: continued interference with significant nodalities on the evolving mental lattices is quite another. If it were any ent.i.ty save Unifex commanding this most atypical wet-nursing, one might have the most serious misgivings. "
"One of the most notable incongruities is our own physical presence here, " Noetic Concordance reminded the others. "One questions why the Supervisory Body does not simply work through the Agent Polities, who are more than a little scandalized by our partic.i.p.ation. "
"One may question, " Eupathic Impulse noted wryly, "but one doesn"t necessarily get straight answers. "
h.o.m.ologous Trend said, "One must trust Unifex. "
Eupathic Impulse said, "If It would only share Its prescience!"
Noetic Concordance said, "Of all our vague and absent-minded Lylmik race, It is the most terribly preoccupied. And weary. One intuits that It would transfer the burden of Galactic mentorship and submerge Itself in the Cosmic All in a trice, were It not faithful to some great overriding dynamic -"
"Which It declines to share, " Impulse said.
"We must trust It, " Trend reiterated, "as we have since the dawn of the Milieu, when It selected us four from all the eager Lylmik after manifesting the Protocol of Unification. Unifex has shared... as much as It has been able to do so. You know our racial Mind"s limitation as well as its strengths. We are ancient and tending toward stagnation, conservative and over-fond of the mystical lifestyle. Unifex"s great vision of a Galactic Mind was able to electrify us, to send us beyond the Twenty-One Worlds in search of other, immature Minds that we might shepherd toward coadunation. Toward Unity. That, if you will, was the great outrage Unifex committed: the initiation of the Milieu. You younger ent.i.ties have let the memory of it slip away in your earnest contemplation of present anomalies. "
"Yes, " the three admitted. For some time they filled their minds with the Milieu"s essence and drifted, serene.
But Trend recalled them. "The two Armageddon devices are in place. Action, if it is to be taken, must be taken soon. Let us summon Unifex. "
They called in metaconcert.
And It was there with them, glowing in the liquid-crystal films of the star-cruiser"s innermost heart, emanating its familiar emotional mix of affection and crotchety longanimity.
The Quincunx formed. The problem was set forth.
Unifex told them: "One may take no preventive action. This awful event happens... as it must and as it has. "
"May we ask why?"
"To unite the World Mind more fully in pain, as it has failed to unite in joy during the past seven months of premature celebration. This calamity is only one in the ultimate educative series leading toward the climax: pain upon pain lesson upon lesson ordeal upon ordeal. "
"We suggest, in all respect, that the teaching process might be less radical. As you saw from your contemplation of the problem as formulated, there is a distinct probability that the United States and the Soviet Union will abandon their newborn rapprochement and be drawn into a fresh posture of hostility. The operant human minds will no longer be viewed as an a.s.surance for peace, but rather as a hindrance to necessary war!"
"Nevertheless, we will not forestall the detonation of the Armageddon devices. " Unifex"s mind-voice was sorrowful, but It declined to reveal the thought-processes - proleptic or otherwise - that had led to Its judgment.
The four subsidiary Lylmik ent.i.ties came as close to outright dissent as they had ever done in the two-million-year life of the Quincunx. "We suggest that it may be unloving of you to fob us off on this grave matter without resolving some aspect of the paradox. Do you base your decisions upon a.n.a.lysis of the probability lattices, as we do, or are you privy to some recondite data-source that influences your special treatment of the planet Earth?"
"I may not tell you that... What I may tell you is that the lessons to be learned by the Earthlings must be learned most especially by the operant minds. It is these, not their contentious latent brethren, who must mature in Light if there is to be an Intervention. The majority of the operants must decide freely that their mind-powers must never be used aggressively. Never. Not even in a cause that their intellects perceive as good. And because this truth is counter to one of the deepest imperatives of human psychology, its apprehension will be attained only at a fearful price... a price that will not be fully paid until after the Intervention. "
The four were aghast.
Unifex said, "O my friends, I admit that I have not been sufficiently forthcoming since our Earth visitation began. I admit that I have reserved data and allowed myself to be submerged in perplexity. But I have forgotten so much and the chasm between the human mind and our own is so vast... You are aware that Earth"s nodalities are more critical to the future of the Milieu than those of any other world - and yet our own role in its mental evolution remains unclear to me. Often I must act through feeling rather than through logic! This world, unlike the worlds of the Krondaku, Gi, Poltroyans, and Simbiari, does not occupy a place clearly defined in the larger reality. I have been able to penetrate its mystery only partially myself, by processes outside of intellection. So I can only beg you to bear with me... and in return, I shall offer you a species of metaphor. If you attend to it, certain aspects of the Earthly paradox may be clarified. "