Elaine rented a house in Bretton Woods and transferred the one-woman editorial office of her little magazine to its front bedroom. We made good use of the other one all throughout that enchanted summer and planned to marry in November, when her divorce action would be finalized. In those years the Catholic Church was ambivalent in its recognition of such marriages, and s.e.xual liaisons such as ours were considered to be sinful; but I was ready to defy a regiment of archangels for Elaine"s sake, and the guilt that must accompany the violation of one"s principles was banished to the deepest part of my unconscious. Only those of you, reading this, who are yourselves operant metapsychics can understand the inevitability of our s.e.xual merging, our excitement at the increasingly profound bonding that we experienced - the soul-mating that lovers have sought and celebrated throughout all the ages. Even though Elaine never attained full operancy in relation to other minds, she did become fully consonant with me. We spoke to each other without words, knew each other"s moods and needs through telepathic interchange, shared sensations, even reinforced each other"s ecstatic submersion. You lovers in the Unity would no doubt think our efforts pitifully naive and maladroit; but we thought ourselves in wonderland. Elaine"s previous partners, most especially her insensitive husband, had failed to arouse her; her inhibitions had restrained her from any attempt at remedy. But when she was with me there was no need for any cra.s.s eclairciss.e.m.e.nt. I knew her from the very beginning. It was the most amazing part of our love, and it also precipitated the ending because I was not wise enough to know the hazards of entering another"s most private place while utterly disarmed.
The four short months with Elaine were the happiest time of my life. Without her I would become a hollow thing - a mere spectator when I was not a puppet. Looking back, I can see that our separation helped bring the great scheme to fruition; but whether the Lylmik engineered it deliberately or whether they simply took advantage of our little tragedy must remain an unanswered question. The Ghost surely knows, but it is silent, just as heaven was silent when I prayed for the strength of character that might have carried me beyond fury and pride to the forgiveness that would be so easy to give now, nearly 140 years too late...
But let me tell the story quickly. First, the happy memories: Champagne picnics and love on an old Hudson"s Bay blanket in the deep woods beside Devil"s Elbow Brook.
A moonlit tennis game played in the middle of the night on a court at the White Mountain Hotel - and all the staff knowing about Elaine and me, and not daring to say a word because she was Somebody.
Pub-crawling with her in lowest Montreal on a Canadian holiday weekend, and defending her honor in a riot of psychokinetically smashed gla.s.sware when she was insulted by canaille even more drunk than we were.
Going down to Boston together, staying at the Ritz-Carlton, sitting on the gra.s.s for open-air Pops concerts, messing around the market, and never but never eating baked beans.
Taking jaunts to the Donovan family"s summer home at Rye where she tried to teach me to sail, then browsing for antiques among the tourist-trappy little coast villages until it was time to finish the day with a clambake or lobster-broil and love on the beach.
Sitting petrified beside her as she drove her red Porsche like a demon through the Maine woods, playing tag with highballing log trucks going eighty-six miles an hour.
Lovemaking on a stormy afternoon in my ancient Volkswagen stalled in the middle of a Vermont covered bridge.
Lovemaking in a meadow above her house at Concord, while monarch b.u.t.terflies reeled around us, driven berserk by the aetheric vibes.
Love in a misty forest cascade during an August heat wave.
Love in my hotel office at noon behind locked doors.
Love on a twilit picnic table, interrupted by voyeur bears.
Mad psychokinetic love in thirty-three postural variations.
Love after a quarrel.
Hilarious love.
Marathon love.
Tired, comfortable love.
And toward the end, a desperate love that did hold fear and doubt at bay for a little while...
There are memories of another type altogether, which I must deal with more briskly: One of the most disquieting was my realization that she would never be able to overcome the mental blockages causing her latency. She could converse telepathically with me, and Denis could "hear" her as well as probe her memories; but she was never functionally operant with others except when she was experiencing extraordinary psychic stress. Elaine"s mind thus seemed to belong to me almost by default, and I felt the first stirrings of real guilt: we were not one mind but two, and to pretend otherwise was to court disaster.
She was able to keep very few things secret from me. This gave me numerous opportunities to learn how to mask from her my own reactions of shock or chagrin - as, for instance, when I found out just how wealthy she really was. She cheerfully made plans for my gainful employment in Donovan Enterprises "after you give up your tedious little job at the hotel. " She had all kinds of ideas on how I might capitalize on my metapsychic talents (and how Denis could go far if we only liberated him from the clutches of the Jesuits). She wanted to expand Visitant magazine into a rallying vehicle for as-yet-undiscovered superminds. When I balked at these and similar enthusiasms she was hurt, resentful, and unrepentently calculating.
Elaine"s loyalty was ardent. Nevertheless she was unable to disguise her disappointment when I was less than a success at a meeting with her brother the eminent Congressman, her other brother the wheeler-dealer land developer, and her sister the Back Bay socialite do-gooder. Elaine plainly regretted my lower-cla.s.s origins, my lack of appreciation for the cosmological bulls.h.i.t espoused by her Aetherian clique, and my persistently old-fashioned religious faith - which wasn"t at all like the trendy version of Catholicism made socially acceptable by the Kennedy clan.
I introduced Elaine to the Remillards at a disastrous Fourth of July barbecue in Berlin thrown by Cousin Gerard. Poor Elaine! Her clothes were too chic, her manners too high-bred, and the covered dish she contributed to the rustic buffet too haute cuisine. She compounded the debacle by speaking elegant Parisian French to old Onc" Louie and the other Canuck elders, and by admitting that her family were Irish Protestants. The only Remillards who weren"t scandalized were little Denis and my brother Don. Don was, if anything, too d.a.m.ned friendly toward her. She a.s.sured me that there was no telepathic communication between the two of them; but I recalled his coercive exploits of yesteryear and couldn"t help feeling doubt at the same time that I cursed myself for being a jealous fool.
Later that summer, when we would briefly visit Don and Sunny to pick up or drop off Denis, whom we often took on outings, Elaine was distant or even covertly antagonistic toward my brother. At the same time she claimed to pity him and pressed me to "see that he got help" in combating his alcoholism. I knew that any effort on my part would be worse than useless and refused to interfere - which provoked one of our few serious quarrels. Another took place in early September, when I took Denis back to Brebeuf Academy and revealed his metapsychic abilities to Father Jared Ellsworth, as the Ghost had instructed me to do. Elaine was irrationally convinced that the Jesuits would "exploit" Denis in some nameless way. I a.s.sured her that Ellsworth had reacted with sympathy and equanimity to the revelation (he had even deduced some of the boy"s mental talents already); but Elaine persisted in her fretting over Denis, and her att.i.tude toward him was so oddly colored and tortuous that I was unable to make sense of it until long after the end. The end. G.o.d, how I remember it.
It was late in October on a day when the New Hampshire hills were purple and scarlet with the autumn climacteric. We had gone on a season-end pilgrimage to the Great Stone Face, just she and I, and finished up at a secluded country inn near Franconia. It was one of those terminally quaint establishments that still draw Galactic tourists to New England, featuring squeaky floors, crooked walls, and a pleasant clutter of colonial American artifacts, many of which were for sale at ridiculous prices. The food and drink were splendid and the proprietors discreet. After our meal we retired to a gabled bedroom suite and nestled side by side on a sofa with lumpy cushions, watching sparks from a birchwood fire fly up the chimney while rain tapped gently on the roof.
We had been talking about our wedding plans and sipping a rare Aszu Tokay that the host reserved for well-heeled cognoscenti. It was to be a simple civil ceremony down in Concord, with one of her distinguished Donovan uncles officiating. Later we would have a small supper "for the wedding party only, " which effectively meant no Remillards except me. I listened to her with only half an ear, drowsy from the wine. And then Elaine told me she was pregnant.
I recall a thunderous sound. It may have come from the storm outside the inn, or it may have been purely mental, my psychic screens crashing into place. I remember a fixed-frame vision of my hand, frozen in the act of reaching for the decanter. I can still hear Elaine"s voice prattling on about how she was so glad it had happened, how she had always wanted children while her ex-husband had not, how our child was certain to be a paragon of "astromental" achievement, perhaps even more brilliant than Denis.
Incapable of speech or even a rational thought, I sat gripped by a grand refusal. It could not be. She had not said it. I think I prayed like a child, entreating G.o.d to cancel this thing, to save my love and my life. I would repeat the same futile supplications later through the bleak winter months as I tried in vain to conquer myself and return to her; but always love would be obliterated as it was at that h.e.l.lish moment, wiped out by a blast of volcanic rage and fatally wounded pride.
Of course I knew who the father was.
I finally turned my face to her, and I know I was without expression, my howling despair inaudible beyond the closet of my skull. Elaine cowered back against the cushions, shrinking from the exhalation of pain and menace.
"Roger, what is it?"
Her mind was, as always, completely open to me. And now that her thoughts concentrated on the certainty of the life growing within her, I could perceive a complex skein of memories woven about the embryonic node. The confirmation would be there.
I knew I should leave those memories of hers untouched. It was the only forlorn hope left to me. I must not look into the secret place but seal it forever, pretend that the child"s father was someone else. Anyone else.
The secret places. All rational beings have them and guard them - not only for their own sakes but for those of others. Who but G.o.d would love us if all the secret places of our minds lay exposed? I knew how to conceal my own heart of darkness; it is one of the first things an operant metapsychic learns, whether he is bootstrap or preceptor-trained. Only a few poor souls remain vulnerable always, trapped in the shadow-country between latency and conscious control of their high mental powers. Elaine was one. Open. Without secrets.
"Roger, " she pleaded. "Answer me. For G.o.d"s sake, darling, what"s the matter?"
Don"t look. She loves you, not him. To look would be a sin - against her and against yourself. You aren"t a truth-seeker, you"re a fool. Don"t look. Don"t look.
I looked. Our love had been sinful, and I must be punished.
She was calm as I lifted my barriers at last, showing her the incontrovertible fact of my own sterility, and the theft of her secret, and what made her betrayal impossible to forgive.
"If it had been anyone but him, " I said. "Anyone. But, you see, I wouldn"t be able to live with it. "
She looked me full in the face. "Once. It happened once - that first time you took me to meet your family, at that silly Fourth of July barbecue. It was madness. I don"t know what came over me. It happened before I realized - without my wanting it. "
No secret place. Poor Elaine. You had wanted it.
I saw the entire episode etched in her memory and knew I"d see it forever. Don focusing the full force of his coercion, her fascination and willing surrender, Don laughing as he took her by the rockets" red glare, kindling in her a stupendous series of o.r.g.a.s.ms like chain lightning. And his child.
"I can"t live with it, " I told her.
"Once, Roger. Only once. And now I hate him. "
No secrets at all... Anyone but him. d.a.m.n the mind-powers. d.a.m.n him! But never her.
"Roger, I love you. I know how much this must hurt. I feel the hurt.
But I honestly thought the child was yours... that the thing with your brother was a piece of idiocy better left forgotten. " She tried to smile, showed me a glowing mental image. "You love little Denis. He"s Don"s child. "
"I couldn"t help it. Denis is different. Sunny was different. "
"I"m only fifteen weeks gone. I could -"
"No!"
She nodded. "Yes, I see. It wouldn"t make any difference, would it? It would make matters worse. "
I let the wretched contents of my mind seep out: The child will be brilliant. Don"s mental faculties are far more impressive than mine, in spite of his flaws. As you know. Goodbye, Elaine.
"Roger, I love you. For the love of G.o.d, don"t do this!"
I must. I love you I will always love you but I must.
I walked to the door and opened it. Aloud, I said, "I"m going to take your Porsche back to the White Mountain Hotel. In the morning, I"ll send one of our drivers back here with it. There are a few things I must get from the house in Bretton Woods, but I should be out of it before noon. I"ll leave my key. "
"You fool," she said.
"Yes. "
I went out and softly closed the door after me.
Elaine married Stanton Latimer, a prominent Concord attorney, that November. He gave her child, Annarita, his name and they were a happy family until his death in 1992. The distractions of motherhood - and the decline in flying-saucer sightings after 1975-led Elaine to abandon Visitant. She turned her leadership talents to environmental activism and campaigned against acid rain. In time she decided that she had imagined the more improbable facets of our liaison.
Annarita Latimer grew up to be an actress of vibrant and unforgettable presence who had a triumphant, tempestuous career. Like her mother, she was a powerful suboperant. Annarita"s third husband was Bernard Kendall, the astrophysicist, who sired her only child, the fully operant Teresa - known to historians of the Galactic Milieu as the mother of Marc Remillard and Jack the Bodiless.
21.
SUPERVISORY CRUISER NOUMENON [Lyl 1-0000]
10 MAY 1975.
THE SIMB SHUTTLE saucer made its ingress into the immense Lylmik vessel in the manner of a lentil being swallowed by a whale, and the four senior members of the Earth Oversight Authority gathered in the shuttle"s airlock to watch the curious docking maneuvers.
"I hate coming aboard Lylmik s.p.a.cecraft. One is so likely to become overstimulated. " The Gi representative, RipRip Muml, whiffled its plumage in a gesture of libido suppression and sealed off four of its eight sensory circuits. "Strange that the Supervisory Body should want to meet with us here in Earth orbit instead of simply transmitting its instructions mentally. "
The Simb magnate, Lashi Ala Ada.s.sti, watched the scene outside the viewport with rapt fascination. In spite of her high position in the Oversight organization, she had never before been invited to visit a Lylmik cruiser. "I"ve given up trying to fathom the motives of the Supervisors, especially those relating to this perverse little planet... Sacred Truth and Beauty! Will you look what"s happening out there in the parking bay?"
"An interesting spectacle, but hardly unnerving, " remarked the Krondaku, Rola"eroo.
"I"ve seen it a dozen or so times myself. " The Poltroyan magnate shook his head. "But it still rattles me. It"s as though we were being digested!"
The saucer rested on a kind of animated turf, pearly tendrils that rippled in peristaltic waves as they propelled the small s.p.a.cecraft slowly along. A few meters away, on either side of the shuttle"s path, plantlike excrescences apparently made of luminous jelly were sprouting up with graceful regularity; they unfurled pallid leafy ribbons and undulated in a questing fashion in the direction of the pa.s.sing ship. Some of the larger plants "fruited, " producing crystalline structures that opened to discharge glittering powder that swirled around the shuttle viewports like saffron smoke. Behind these pseudo-organisms were rising much taller ones that resembled gla.s.sy tree-ferns and opalescent feather-palms. These soon formed an impenetrable jungle alongside the saucer, a bright corridor with purple obscurity lying ahead. The smaller ribbon-bearers became more and more numerous and their appendages reached out to caress the moving vessel"s sides. It was like sailing underwater through a twisting tunnel alive with glowing albino kelp.
"By their s.p.a.cecraft ye shall know them, " the poetical Gi murmured. "Ours are preposterous and ramshackle, and their operation is so circ.u.mscribed by the reproductive habits of our crews that no other ent.i.ties dare ride in them. Krondak ships are bleakly functional and those of the Poltroyans cozy and baroque, while Simbiari craft like this one we are riding in are paragons of high technology. But how can one cla.s.sify the Lylmik ships?"
"Peculiar, " suggested Rola"eroo, "like the race that produced them. " The others laughed uneasily.
The Poltroyan, a dapper little humanoid wearing heavily bejeweled robes, shared his meditation. "We never really see the Lylmik, even though they must inhabit forms that are manifestations of the matter-energy lattices. They are not pure mind, as some have speculated - and yet they enjoy a mentality unfathomably above our own. They will tell us very little of their history - nothing of their nature. They are infallibly kind. Their zeal in furthering the evolution of the Galactic Mind is formidable, but they often seem capricious. Their logic is not our logic. As RipRip Muml has noted, this ship of theirs is an embodiment of the Lylmik enigma: it is lush, extravagant, playful. Certain of our xenologists have speculated that the enormous cruisers are themselves aspects of Lylmik life, symbionts of the minds they transport. We know that these beings are the Galaxy"s most ancient coadunate race, but their actual age and their origin remain a mystery. Our Poltroyan folklore says that the Lylmik home-star Nodyt was once a dying red giant, which the population rejuvenated into a G3 by a metapsychic infusion of fresh hydrogen sixty million years ago. But such a feat is beyond Milieu science, contradicting the Universal Field Theory. "
"Our legends, " the Krondak monster said, "are even more absurd. They suggest that the Lylmik are survivors of the Big Bang - that they date from the previous universe. A totally ridiculous notion. "
"No sillier than ours, " said RipRip Muml. "The more simple-minded Gi believe that the Lylmik are angels - pseudocorporeal messengers of the Cosmic All. An unlikely hypothesis, but not inappropriate for mentors of our Galactic Mind. "
An impatient frown had been deepening on Lashi Ala"s emerald features. "We Simbiari don"t tell fairy-tales about the Lylmik. We accept their guidance at the same time as we resent their arrogant condescension. Look how determined they are to give these Earthlings favored treatment. The planet is a Lylmik pet! And yet the Supervisory Body seems blithely ignorant about just how unready for Intervention Earth is. How many times during the Thirty-Year Surveillance have we Simbiari been obliged to save the barbarians from accidentally touching off an atomic war? How many more times will we have to rescue the planetary a.s.s during the upcoming pre-Intervention phase? All of us know that there is no way this world"s Mind can achieve full coadunation prior to Intervention. Earth will be admitted to the Milieu in advance of its psychosocial maturation! Sheer lunacy!"
The Krondaku remained stolid. "Should the Earth Mind deliberately opt for nuclear warfare during the next forty years, you know that the Intervention will be cancelled. Furthermore, Intervention is contingent upon a certain minimal metaconcerted action by human operants. If they cannot rise above egocentrism to the lowest rung of mental solidarity, not even the Lylmik can force the Milieu to accept them. "
Lashi gave a disillusioned grunt. "No other potentially emergent planet ever got such special treatment. "
"The Lylmik always have reasons for their actions, " the Poltroyan said, "incomprehensible though they may be to us lesser minds. If the Earthlings are destined to be great metapsychic prodigies, as the Lylmik maintain, then the risk of early intervention will be justified. "
"You can talk, Falto, " Lashi Ala shot back. "Your people haven"t been saddled with the bulk of the planetary surveillance and manifestation as we Simbiari have. Why the Lylmik didn"t appoint you smug little mauve p.r.i.c.ks as prime contractors for Earth, I"ll never know! You like humans. "
Rola"eroo came as close to chuckling as his phlegmatic race was capable. "Perhaps that is the very reason why Poltroy was not given the proctorship. Despite certain imputations of favoritism, I am convinced that the Lylmik desire a fair and just evaluation of humanity. And this" - he offered a magisterial nod to Lashi Ala - "the citizens of the Simbiari Polity will conscientiously provide. "
"Oh, well, of course, " she muttered.
RipRip Muml gave a delicate shudder. "Thanks be to the Tranquil Infinite that we have been spared close contact with Earth. Its artistic productions are exquisite, but the reverberations of violence and suffering are a sore trial to truly sensitive minds. "
"I"ve noticed, " said Lashi sweetly, "that you Gi are too sensitive for any number of tedious but necessary a.s.signments. "
The great yellow eyes blinked in innocent reproach.
Falto the Poltroyan interposed diplomatically. "We all do the jobs we"re best suited for, given the mind-set of the planet under evaluation. "
"And with a race as b.u.mptious as humanity, you Simbiari end up carrying the can!" RipRip gave its phallus a cheerful flourish.
Lashi responded with simple dignity. "We know very well that our people are still imperfectly Unified - and I did not mean to imply that we regretted our first a.s.signment as prime contractor to an emerging Mind. On the contrary, we are honored by the Milieu"s mandate. " She hesitated, a troubled expression crossing her now glistening face. "But the Oversight Authority concedes that Earth is an anomaly. It seems counter to all logic, therefore, that the Concilium should a.s.sign its proctorship to us, the most junior Polity in the Milieu. Surely this difficult and barbaric world would fare better under the more sympathetic guidance of Poltroy - or, even better, under the stern direction that the Krondaku vouchsafed to Gi, Poltroyans, and Simbiari alike. "
The Krondak magnate"s mind-tone was detached and serene. "My race has proctored more than seventeen thousand planetary Minds since the Lylmik raised us to Unity. Only you three survived to coadunation and membership in the Milieu. "
"We"ve never had a winner in seventy-two tries, " the Poltroyan admitted, "and we"re still smarting over the Ya.n.a.lon fiasco. A tough-minded Simb primacy might have saved that world... Don"t sell your abilities short, Lashi Ala Ada.s.sti. "
"You mustn"t feel downhearted or put-upon, " the hermaphrodite added kindly. "Think how the Unity will rejoice if you succeed! We Gi will never enjoy such a triumph. We"re too frivolous and s.e.x-obsessed ever to be appointed planetary proctors. No newborn coadunate Mind will ever call us its foster-parents - and we are the poorer thereby. "
A harmonious chord of chimes sounded in the mental ears of the four magnates. Outside the viewports the iridescent glow intensified. The shuttle-craft was approaching the terminus of the overgrown tunnel, an iris gateway of yellow metal that opened slowly like the expanding pupil of a great golden eye.
Welcome. And high thoughts to you, most beloved colleagues. Please debark and join us in the hospitality chamber.
The shuttle had halted at the gateway. Rola"eroo extended a tentacle and activated the hatch mechanism, admitting a billow of warm, superoxygenated atmosphere to the airlock. The four ent.i.ties toddled, strode, stalked, and slithered down the integral gangway, crossed a short expanse of anemonoid turf flanked by crystal foliage, and entered the Lylmik sanctum. The gate shut behind them.
It was rather dim inside, comfortably so after the brilliant part of the ship they had just traversed. The walls and flooring were gently corrugated, transparent, and seemed to be holding back an encompa.s.sing volume of bubbly liquid that swirled slowly in ever-changing eddies of blue and green. In the center of the room was a crescent-shaped table with three seats for the Gi, the Poltroyan, and the Simb - and a squatting spot for the ponderous Krondaku. Besides the furniture, which was austere in design and made of the warm yellow metal, the room contained only a low dais about three meters square, formed by slight exaggerations of the floor ribbing.