SINCE THAT SUNDAY promised to be a hectic one, with two convention banquets and a fund-raiser dinner-dance scheduled at the hotel, I went to the 6: 30 A. M. Ma.s.s at the little church in Bretton Woods. It was a rustic place, dimmed by stained gla.s.s windows in abstract patterns. Hikers, golfers, and other resort employees like myself made up most of the somnolent, thinly scattered congregation. I arrived a few minutes late, so I slipped into a rear pew back in a dark corner. For this reason it was not immediately noticed when I died with my brother.
It happened during the sermon. My mind was wandering and I had become aware of an increasing sense of unease, only partly dulled by my semiwakeful state. The foreboding may have been an aspect of precognition; but I had no real intimation of catastrophe until I abruptly lost my hearing. I saw Father Ingram"s lips move but no longer heard his voice. In place of the background noises of shifting bodies, coughs, and rustling prayer booklets there was a great hush, hollow and portentous. I snapped into alertness.
Then came an appalling noise, a deep grinding rumble laced with a more shrill, undulating sound, like bra.s.ses wailing in dissonance or howls from a chorus of lacerated throats. It built to a thunderous crescendo as though the earth itself were being rent open beneath me. I was immobilized by shock. I remember wondering why the priest was oblivious to the tumult, why the other worshipers kept their seats instead of leaping up in panic, why the church roof remained firm when by rights it should have been tumbling down around my ears.
Any notion I had of being caught in an earthquake was disabused when I went blind. At the same time it seemed that a band of red-hot metal clamped about my breast and squeezed, stopping my heart and breath in an explosion of agony. I thought: a coronary! But I was only forty-four, in perfect health - and hadn"t the Family Ghost told me that I had a long life ahead of me? Lord, it"s a mistake...
The shattering racket and the pain cut off simultaneously. My body seemed immersed in a thick and swirling medium. All around me was darkness, a liquefied void that was neither air nor water. Then I realized that the black wasn"t empty at all; pictures were flashing in it, appearing and disappearing with subliminal rapidity almost like single-frame cinema projections displayed on dozens of small screens encircling me. I recognized early childhood scenes with Tante Lorraine and the young cousins, school days, Don and I blowing out candles on a joint birthday cake, Onc" Louie walloping the pair of us for some transgression, Christmas caroling in deep snow, fishing in the river, an embarra.s.sing freshman high school dance. The vignettes whirled faster and faster and I realized at last that they were memories, the accelerating replay of a life.
But not my life. Don"s.
For the first time I experienced real fear in place of stunned astonishment. The riot of images was acquiring a full sensory and emotional input and I seemed caught in an insane melange of sights, sounds, tastes, smells, visceral and tactile sensations. My mental voice cried Don"s name and I heard him babbling an incoherent, furious reply. All of the remembered scenes were showing me. And the emotional transfer revealed that my twin brother despised and hated me to the very depths of his being.
Why, Donnie, why?
The only reply was rage. The visions were drenched in it. I seemed to be at the center of a psychic tornado with Don"s mind flailing at me from every scene, hurt and degraded. His wife, his children, his friends flickered past, all wounded by his soul-sickness, all diminished, their attempts to help him rejected until it was too late. And he blamed it all on me.
But I don"t understand why!
I felt myself standing firm in the center of the vortex while he whirled, helpless, remembering the very worst of it: his rejection of Denis, his corruption of Victor, the torment he had heaped on Sunny and the other children during the years of alcoholism, his seduction of Elaine in a calculated desire to hurt and humiliate me. To my amazement I saw that he was desperately sorry for all those things, and had been for years. What lingered was the source of the sins, his abiding hatred of me. In the final scene of his life he punished himself for it, but the action was one of severance and not remorse.
Donnie, I don"t know why you hate me. But it"s all right. I"ve never hated you.
He said: You should have.
He controlled the machine with his own psychokinesis. I screamed, begging him not to do it, but of course it had already happened. The blades that cut him in half cut him free of me at last.
I opened my eyes. Bill Saladino, the limping old church usher, was nudging me with the collection basket and grinning. I fished inside my jacket for the envelope and dropped it in. Bill winked at me tolerantly land stumped away, carrying the little basket of offerings up to the altar to be blessed.
Don"s funeral was a big one, attended by scores of Remillards together with nearly two hundred others who had grown up or worked with him. He looked fit and handsome in his casket after the local croque-mort performed his duty; and the eulogy delivered at his burial Ma.s.s proclaimed G.o.d"s unsearchable ways as well as his compa.s.sion for the brokenhearted, to which category Don indubitably belonged. There was a good deal of sotto voce reference to "blessed release, " and the pious aunts rea.s.sured one another that alcoholism was a disease one simply couldn"t help. Sunny, supported by husky Victor at her left elbow and the slight but commanding Denis at her right, bore up well. Her eight younger children stood about her dry-eyed at the gravesight while the cousins and aunts and female neighbors wept.
The official verdict on Don was death by misadventure. Denis and Victor had driven their cars simultaneously into the logging site just as the runaway feller-buncher, with Don"s severed body still held in its grab-arms, struck a large stump with one of its tracks and tipped over into a ravine. The resulting mangle, and a double dose of coercion aimed at the green-faced investigating deputies, made plausible to anyone but an experienced logger the final report on Don"s demise. One of the witnesses, at least, was of unimpeachable reputation.
Denis and I were at the same motel, and the morning after the funeral we breakfasted together. He would be staying to help Sunny wind up Don"s affairs while I was heading back to the White Mountain Resort and the pre-Memorial Day rush. The coffee shop was crowded and noisy, but noise is immaterial when the conversation is largely mind-to-mind. The pair of us might have been father and son: a gaunt older man in a good summer worsted three-piece, thumbing through the Wall Street Journal, and a vaguely undergraduate-looking youth in a navy-blue jogging outfit whose extraordinary eyes were blanked out by dark gla.s.ses.
Denis lifted the plastic pot. "More coffee?" I think I"ve solved the mystery of my young siblings" nonoperancy.
I said, "Half a cup, maybe. "Victor"s certainly at the bottom of it - and maybe Don, too. It"s impossible that not a single one should have inherited telepathic ability, given the fact that your mother has occasionally shown flashes of the talent. Jeanette and Laurette were telepathic as infants but then seemed to lose it. I"m not sure about the others - "Sugar?" It was the same with the other six. They were born with higher faculties but had them deliberately suppressed by aversion-conditioning: mental punishment. I got hold of the youngest, Pauline, who"s seven. She was vulnerable through grief and shock and it was easy for me to - to - I suppose you"d call it hypnotize - render her receptive to my command that she regress to babyhood and describe her impressions of Victor and Papa. It was clear what had been done. Poor little Paulie! But Papa had nothing to do with it, thank G.o.d. It was all Victor.
The ruthless young b.a.s.t.a.r.d!... But how was it possible? He would have had to suppress the babies when he was still just a kid himself! How old was he when the girl twins were born? Four? And then Jackie and Yvonne and the boy twins coming bang-bang-bang and George just after you bachelored at Dartmouth in "80 that"d make Vic ten - and he would"ve been twelve when Paulie arrived my G.o.d my G.o.d no innocent kid could do such an evil thing - [Detachment.] I"ll have to show you some of my juvenile psychiatric case histories. He could do it, all right. Nothing is more self-centered than a toddler. Why do you think some of them have tantrums? They want the world to turn around them. Most children outgrow that mindset and discover altruism. It"s useful for survival, actually. But there are exceptions: sociopaths. Vic certainly seems to fit the profile. At first he acted to secure his position as Papa"s favorite. Later, his motives would have become more complex. Power-oriented. You see the way he"s going. He"s an uneducated man, just as Papa was. A shallow thinker with a stunted conscience and tremendous drive and overweening conceit. Papa had those attributes, too, but he lacked self-confidence because he was afraid of his psychic powers. Also, he"d been inculcated with moral values from earliest childhood, which Vic hadn"t, and guilt warred with egoism, leading to ultimate destruction. Vic is a much tougher nut than poor Papa. Even without higher faculties he"d be something to reckon with. I have a feeling that being a pulpwood tyc.o.o.n is only the beginning of his ambition...
"Want to pa.s.s me a little more strawberry jam? Thanks. " What the devil are we going to do?
He mind-screens like the Chase Manhattan Bank vault. I can"t see into him and I can"t budge him a millimeter with coercion. I"m virtually certain he"s used his powers in shady ways for self-aggrandizement. Those logging contracts, for instance, and the big bank loan for capitalization of the company. Pure coercion. And there are rumors that at least two pieces of his equipment were acquired via moonlight requisition. Watchmen and guard dogs are no problem for an operator like Vic. (They wouldn"t be to me!) And G.o.d knows enough logging gear gets stolen by purely normal thieves...
"Interesting article here in the Journal. Want a look? Seems Senator Piccolomini"s narcotics bill has a good chance of pa.s.sing. "
Do you mean to say there"s nothing we can do to stop that young freebooter?
"Let"s see. Hey - bad news for the pot smugglers!" Getting legal proof of his wrongdoing would be very difficult. And what"s to prevent him from coercing a jury even if we did get the goods on him? A h.o.m.o superior criminal has the odds in his favor. And if one tries to counter him using his own weapons... well, you saw what happened to Papa.
I exclaimed out loud, "Doux Jesus - you can"t be serious! I told you the way it was. I shared it!"
But I was there. With Victor. He"s a terrific screener, but he let the triumph leak. I was standing there spewing my guts out and he was crowing!... Papa was a morbid and self-hating man, like most alcoholics, but that night he"d been scared into asking for help for the first time. He wasn"t sunk in despair, he was reaching for a way out. Taking a first step onto a very shaky bridge across a black canyon. And somebody cut that bridge somebody sabotaged his newborn hope somebody planted a powerful coercive incitement to suicide that reinforced his own underlying tendency toward death: Victor! He knows I know. He knows I can"t do a thing about it.
Can Victor... hurt you?
No more than Papa could. [Concern.] But I"m not so sure about you, Uncle Rogi. Your mind is pretty transparent, especially about emotion-charged matters. Your sharing of Papa"s death... if Victor found out, he might think you were a threat. I"ve been considering ways to protect you.
I pushed away my plate. "I don"t think I"ll finish these hot cakes after all. Waitress! Will you give us our check, please?" Christ Denis what a crock of s.h.i.t maybe Don was right after all powers cursed - A long time ago you said that what you"d really like to do is open a bookstore in a quiet college town.
... You"re right. I"d almost forgotten.
You"re a topflight convention manager. You could probably get a job in hotel management somewhere else in the country. But Hanover really needs an antiquarian bookshop, and if you were there you wouldn"t be alone. There are nearly forty of us working at Dartmouth now, research a.s.sistants and subjects in my lab. You could help us. And I"m certain we could protect you.
"Somehow, " I said, smiling, "I don"t think I"d be in serious danger here. I have a strong belief in guardian... angels. "
"Don"t be a fool!" Even through the dark gla.s.ses I could see Denis"s eyes blaze and feel the searing force of his mind that took hold of me like a puppy. He released me instantly as I reacted with fear and astonishment. His mental speech was anguished: I should have been able to save Papa from Vic! I ran away from the situation at home shut out what I knew was happening did it to survive and because I believed my work more important than my biological father"s life but I should have saved him should have loved him and didn"t and I"ll always blame myself always feel him dying dying lost in despair and I won"t lose you the same way d.a.m.n you Rogi can"t you understand?... One day I"ll find a way to checkmate Vic. Until then the powers are cursed and perhaps we are too but I"ll find a way to redeem us and if that isn"t megalomania I don"t know what it is maybe I"m crazier than Vic and more futile than Papa but I must go ahead. I must! Please help please understand please know who you are to me why I need you...
"Denis, " I said, reaching across the table. "Tu es mon vrai fils. "
Tears were streaming from behind his dark gla.s.ses. At my touch he lifted his chin and the drops of moisture vanished. "That"s creativity, " he said softly in response to my start. "A psychic power we"ve just begun to investigate, perhaps the capstone for all the rest. Let me show you, Uncle Rogi. Join us. "
Love and a sudden inexplicable revulsion warred behind my mental barricade. Prudence dictated that I safeguard myself from Victor. But as for becoming closely involved with Denis and his crowd of youthful operants... no. By no means.
The waitress handed me the check. I calculated the tip and fished in my wallet for bills. Denis and I headed for the cashier.
You must come with me to Hanover! His coercion was poised. Ordinarily, I could fend him off readily (as I had been able to fend off Donnie and Victor) but there was a chance that if I drove him to extremes he might feel compelled to bludgeon me down. For my own good. I couldn"t let that happen.
So I smiled over my shoulder at him.
"I think, " said I, "that I"ll call the shop The Eloquent Page. "
10.
SUPERVISORY CRUISER NOUMENON [Lyl 1-0000]
26 APRIL 1990.
FOUR LYLMIK MINDS watched from their invisible vessel as the last civilian evacuees from the American s.p.a.ce station boarded the commercial shuttle Hinode Maru. The smaller American orbiters were still mated to the station"s half-completed drive-unit while their crews completed the demolition arrangements.
The vector of the meteoroid that had struck the manned satellite might have been calculated with diabolical precision. The impact had killed the orbital velocity needed to keep the structure circling the Earth at its temporary alt.i.tude of five hundred kilometers, as well as killing six workers. The twenty-three other persons aboard the station survived because of the airlock system connecting the "Tinkertoy" units. These had suffered only minimal damage; but the power-plant that might have restored the velocity of the station was unfinished, and kicking such a huge satellite back into orbit by means of auxiliaries would have taken more booster engines than the Western world, j.a.pan, and China possessed. The addition of Soviet boosters would have sufficed to save the station. However, in addition to its multinational commercial facilities, research labs, and astronomical observatory, the American station had also included a module with functioning military surveillance apparatus. The Soviets had declined to a.s.sist in the salvage; and now the elaborate station, only a few months short of completion, traveled a rapidly decaying orbit that doomed it. Rather than await the inevitable reentry and fall to Earth, the United States had decided, for strategic and safety reasons, to blow it up.
"The waste, the dashed hopes, " Noetic Concordance mused. "The discrepancy between the promise of this great station and its abortion, brought about by a mere chunk of nickel-iron coated with ice... The situation is fraught with nuance. I shall compose a poem. "
"You"d better wait until I finish a.n.a.lyzing the disruption of the probability lattices, " h.o.m.ologous Trend warned. "This event may have a truly nodal significance. "
"Then perhaps I"d better plan an elegy. "
"A dirty limerick, rather, " Eupathic Impulse suggested, "dedicated to the low-orbit proponents at NASA. If they"d been satisfied to build a smaller station at high orbit, as the Soviets did, a hundred meteor hits couldn"t have knocked it down. But this close-in structure was more economical - a.s.suming that no large object disrupted its delicately maintained low orbit during construction. One concedes that the odds were all in the Americans" favor! But, let"s see:
The engineers trusted to luck, Since they wanted more bang for the buck... "
"Please, " h.o.m.ologous Trend admonished.
Asymptotic Essence said, "I think I perceive some sources of your anxiety, Trend. The new detente between the United States and the Soviet Union is lamentably fragile. In spite of their joint Martian Exploration Project, the ancient political dichotomy persists. The loss of this American station will be viewed by the strategists of both nations as a disruption of military parity. "
"Oh, well, of course, " Eupathic Impulse conceded. "One need only a.n.a.lyze the psychological dynamics at work. The Americans knew that their s.p.a.ce station was immensely superior to the Soviet one from a standpoint of technological sophistication, and it was also to be a showcase of international goodwill. This made the Americans chockfull of condescending magnanimity. (They love being Grandfather to the world even more than we Lylmik do!) The Soviet-American Mars expedition was intended to be only the beginning of a new era of scientific, economic, and cultural intercourse between these two powers. Now, however, the Americans stand humiliated. The impetus toward camaraderie in outer s.p.a.ce is disrupted. Worse, the Soviets will have a strategic advantage - at least until the Americans put up a new s.p.a.ce station. (Two years? Three? The American economy is already strained. ) One hopes that Trend"s computation does not point toward the death of detente, but one must also keep in mind that we are dealing with ethical primitives. "
"Logically, " Essence said, "the Americans should not feel threatened. There are any number of robot surveillance satellites that can be co-opted as backup spy-eyes - and Omega knows both nations still have parity in nuclear weaponry. But the s.p.a.ce station was a symbol of national pride as well as security, and the Soviets will certainly exult over the disaster while the Americans will feel naked to hostile scrutiny. And when has human warfare ever been logically motivated?"
"Listen to this, " Noetic Concordance broke in. "An experimental apostrophe, but having possibilities: O Meteor! Frost-cauled detritus of primordial cataclysm, fatal vagrant..."
"One detects a soupcon of bathos, " said Asymptotic Essence with regret.
Eupathic Impulse was less charitable. "You certainly can"t use the meteor as the subject of the poem. It was a Pi-Puppid. How can one possibly compose an elegy on a Pi-Puppid? Now if the thing had belonged to a meteoric cloud having more intrinsic grandeur - say, if it had been a Beta-Taurid or even an Ursid -"
"I have the revised probability a.n.a.lysis, " h.o.m.ologous Trend declared, displaying it without further ado.
Asymptotic Essence voiced the mutual dismay. "A threat to the Intervention Scheme? Surely not!"
"Beyond a doubt, " h.o.m.ologous Trend affirmed, "if one carries the proleptic a.n.a.lysis to the eighteenth differential, as I have done. The cuspidal locus results from my injection of the character of the American President. His background and his marketing genius link him inescapably to the destiny of the (at base) commercial orientation of the failed s.p.a.ce station. Now his bellicose, jingoistic opponents will prevail. The next American station will be austere - and entirely military. With the dire consequences that you see in my projection of events for the next twenty years. "
Eupathic Impulse strove for neutrality of tone and failed. "One might ask why the Supervisory Body failed to investigate the critical nodality of the s.p.a.ce station earlier - and why we didn"t take steps to protect the precious thing?"
"In the first case, " Trend said, "it is the responsibility of Atoning Unifex, acting with us in Quincunx, to define situations susceptible to such investigation. In the second case, overt protection would have violated the Scheme as it stands: Shielding the s.p.a.ce station against meteoroids of consequent ma.s.s would require use of a sigma-field (which the Earth-lings would surely have detected with their radio-telescope array); or else a preprogrammed hyperspatial matter trap (which as we know is unacceptably hazardous in a solar system having significant casual interplanetary traffic); or else we should have had to deploy a guardian vessel authorized to zap, deflect, grab, or otherwise dispose of intrusive s.p.a.ce flotsam (which would grossly contravene the Oversight Directives). "
"Well, now what?" Eupathic Impulse asked.
Trend said, "The event requires contemplation by all five ent.i.ties of the Lylmik Supervisory Body, acting in the aforesaid Quincunx. "
"Anyone know where It is today?" Asymptotic Essence asked.
Noetic Concordance shrugged mentally. "Either extragalactic or lurking about that college again. We"d better call. "
The four combined in metaconcert: Unifex!
One responds.
[Situational image] + [probability a.n.a.lysis].
Serene preoccupation. Oh, yes. The collision was today, wasn"t it?
Reproach. One might have shared one"s prescience.
Well, I didn"t exactly use prescience... but I do apologize. There is no need for concern or action on your part with respect to this situation.
One disputes the probability a.n.a.lysis of h.o.m.ologous Trend?!
Not at all. I plan to cope with the matter personally.
! [Forbearance.] Indirectly, one presumes, rather than through rescue of the s.p.a.ce station.
Oh, yes. The station"s nodality hinges upon its use in weaponry surveillance. I shall simply render the entire concept of spy-eye satellites obsolete. Metapsychically. The planetary Mind has already evolved the capability. Bifurcation is imminent. I do not violate the planetary Will in this but, as it were, antic.i.p.ate the determination.
One of your esteemed Remillards?
No. The Scottish connection has been working on this particular speciality. Given a gentle nudge, there should be a satisfactory manifestation within the critical time-period, restoring the original coefficients of the s.e.xternion and putting our Intervention Scheme back on the rails.
Comprehension. Most gratifying - and ingenious.
I really should have contemplated the matter with you prior to the s.p.a.ce-station disaster, however, in order to have spared you needless distress. My absent-mindedness is getting to be a scandal. I become rapt in nostalgia, to say nothing of my joy in the unfolding of the metapsychic World Mind at long last... Now you must excuse me.
"Gone again, " Asymptotic Essence said. "Ah, well. "
"One notes how confident It remains, " h.o.m.ologous Trend remarked.
Noetic Concordance said, "It has a unique perspective. "
"One hopes, " Eupathic Impulse added astringently, "that It knows something we don"t know about these contentious larvae, validating Its confidence in them... "
"The probabilities are in Its favor. " h.o.m.ologous Trend said, "as one might expect. "
The four ent.i.ties shared certain ironic retrospections. Then they waited. Eventually, Eupathic Impulse said, "There goes the destruct signal for the s.p.a.ce station. "
"O Fireball!" declaimed Noetic Concordance. "O perished pride of rigid circ.u.mstance -"
The other three Lylmik settled back to study the spectacle while the poet"s mind continued its commemoration.