by Julian May
Yuri exclaimed: You would have us submit tamely to our enemies? Die rather than kill in self-defense?
Yes.
Tamara said: You want us to be like Mahatma Gandhi. But our system of values says we have a right to kill mortal enemies.
True... and yet your Avatar allowed his enemies to kill him.
Yuri said: We are not martyrs! We have a great plan and it requires living leaders. You yourself said it: We are the vanguard we can lead the world to peace!
Never if you kill to prevail. Never if you use the mind-powers that way. Think! What was hard in the beginning becomes more and more easy. Think! The once stricken conscience becomes dulled. Think! Who are you going to lead? Your peers? What of the lesser minds? What if they fear you and will not follow? Will you coerce and kill? Think of your children watching you and learning. Think.
Tamara said: Urgyen your message is hard to hear harder to accept. I don't know if I can accept it. But I do believe it...
Her husband rounded on her. "How can you? After all we have suffered together — how can you?"
She placed her hand on her swollen body. Inside, the fetus leapt. "I think it has to do with motherhood, " she said.
Urgyen nodded and smiled. "Yes. And fatherhood. "
Yuri looked from one to the other in confusion. Both of their minds were open to him, showing. But he still could not understand.
3
SUPERVISORY CRUISER NOUMENON [Lyl 1-0000]
10 JULY 1979
"THE FORMER LAMA shows a coadunate sensitivity rare among humans, " said Eupathic Impulse. "How gratifying. "
"He typifies an abhorrence of violence found mainly among Easterners of the Buddhist persuasion, " Homologous Trend said, "and among the English. The trait is, as one has noted, regrettably uncommon. "
"Making the coadunation of the World Mind that much more unlikely, " Asymptotic Essence said.
"In the unlikelihood is the greatest glory, " said the poet, Noetic Concordance.
"All very well for one to look on the bright side of a situation that's hopeless, " Impulse said.
"One supposes that it was inevitable that perverse operants, such as the lamentable O'Connor, would use their higher mind-powers aggressively and for personal gain, " Trend observed. "Such flawed personalities, are, after all, outside of the mainstream of mental evolution. But one regrets most deeply that a pivotal operant such as Yuri Gawrys, so estimable in other respects, has seen fit to use his metafaculties to kill. "
"The temptation was overwhelming to one of his mind-set, " Essence said.
"One fears he does not represent an isolated case, " Impulse added. "On the contrary, he is probably typical, given that the most dynamic of the irrupting operant minds share the moral view of the West, not the East. Even Yuri's mate Tamara, inculcated with gentleness and true coadunate principles during her formative years, and assenting intellectually to the truth of the Tibetan's admonition, will undoubtedly succumb to the use of violence under extreme provocation. Human females will kill to defend their children even as they counsel them to embrace peace. "
Noetic Concordance radiated sorrow. "Then the Tibetan's warning was in vain?"
"One may hope, " Trend said, "that his message will have a positive influence upon other human minds at a more favorable point in mental evolution. "
"Strange, " Asymptotic Essence mused, "that the lama should have so fortuitously conceived this advanced insight, and gone counter to his naturally retiring disposition to deliver it to Yuri and Tamara. If one had not noted the Tibetan's indubitably authentic mental signature, one might be forgiven for suspecting that he was none other than Unifex, masquerading again in human guise. "
"Indeed one might!" Concordance agreed.
"Now there is an oddity, " Eupathic Impulse remarked. "That It should take pleasure in simply walking among the lower life-forms!"
"It empathizes so closely with them, " said Concordance. "Should one be surprised when It assumes their physical form?"
"Yes, " Impulse said shortly. "Krondaku may do so routinely, but it violates dignity and custom for a Lylmik to take on the material aspect of a client race. "
"One is being a bit stuffy, " Trend suggested.
"And one should remember, " Concordance appended, "that It is in love. "
"It is in New Hampshire even now, " said Essence, "having completed its contemplation of the supernova in the Soulpto Group that threatened to irradiate the planet of the Shoridai. It saved them by interposing a gas-cloud — then sped back to Earth when It perceived an urgent necessity to harangue its slow-witted catspaw. "
"That one, " said Impulse darkly. "He would have used the powers to kill also, if he had not been restrained. The very agent of Unifex — a reprobate!"
Noetic Concordance's mind smiled. "Oh, I don't know. He rather grows on one. "
4
FROM THE MEMOIRS OF ROGATIEN REMILLARD
MILIEU BIOGRAPHIES OF my nephew Denis have covered the latter years of his childhood in considerable detail, thanks not only to his diaries but also to the reminiscences of his teachers and fellow students. For this reason I intend to highlight only a few incidents from that time.
First, let me correct a persistent error. Denis was never seriously endangered by Pentagon or CIA zealots seeking to utilize his talents for intelligence gathering or experiments in "psychotronic" aggression. Other young operants did suffer from the compulsory enlistment attempts of official (and highly unofficial) groups; but Denis went unharassed, thanks to his Jesuit protectors at Brebeuf Academy and later to the Dartmouth Coterie, who formed an ad hoc Praetorian Guard as well as a circle of intimate friends during Denis's college years.
One story I must tell deals with the way Denis finally made contact with the Coterie and his other early operant associates, using a method so crude that he was too embarrassed even to mention it when he became a respected academic. His biographers assume that he instinctively used the declamatory mode of farspeech, calling out in a generalized fashion. They seem to think that when his developing powers reached an adequate level, numbers of isolated operants automatically responded.
The truth is otherwise — and much more droll.
After our encounter with Elaine Harrington, Denis was firmly convinced of the existence of other operants, and he made many attempts to contact them via telepathy. Working together, the boy and I checked out his "broadcast range" by the simple expedient of having him bespeak me as I traveled to prearranged New England locales. Although intervening mountain ranges tended to block or interfere with his mental messages, as did the sun and electrical storms, we discovered that Denis could farspeak me reliably over a distance of more than a hundred kilometers. When he operated out of Brebeuf near Concord in central
New Hampshire, as he usually did, he could theoretically blanket our own state, plus Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and most of Connecticut — as well as a fair-sized chunk of Maine and those parts of upper New York that weren't shielded by the Adirondacks. Our record long-distance exchange during his school years covered 166 kilometers, between Brebeuf and East Hampton, Long Island, where I visited friends in 1977.
Nevertheless, in spite of his success in farspeaking me, Denis had no luck at all in contacting other telepaths using a generalized broad-spectrum hail. His mental CQs remained futile howls into an aetheric rain-barrel, messages lacking addresses, until that day in 1978 when we first tried the seriocomic tactic I dubbed Operation Witch Hazel.
It was in November, when Denis was eleven and in his final term of study at the academy. I had come down on a delicate and rather sticky mission: to break the bad news to Fathers Ellsworth and Dubois that their prize prodigy would not, after all, be matriculating at Georgetown University next year as they had hoped — and quite taken for granted. Denis himself had no objections to attending the Jesuit institution. It had a fine medical school and its faculty, secretly briefed by my nephew's clerical mentors, was qu
ite willing to accommodate a twelve-year-old genius with a supernormal psyche.
But the Ghost had other ideas.
My interview with the good fathers was an uncomfortable one. Following the Ghost's suggestion, I told Ellsworth and Dubois that Georgetown, being situated in Washington, DC, was too susceptible to infiltration by government agents or other parties who might take an unhealthy interest in Denis's talents. (This maneuver of mine was undoubtedly the source of later rumors that Denis was actually pursued by unscrupulous psychological-warfare specialists. ) The priests were deeply disappointed when I told them that I had already arranged for Denis to enter Dartmouth College, a venerable Ivy League school in western New Hampshire. My arguments in favor of Dartmouth must have had a paranoid flavor — and even worse, smacked of ingratitude after the special pains taken by the Brebeuf faculty in the first five years of the boy's education. The two priests tried hard to change my mind; but I had my orders, and so I prevailed. With Don's total abdication of responsibility, I was Denis's de facto guardian and the decision was mine to make. In the end, I cheered them up. Dartmouth was a small college but it did have a school of medicine sympathetic to the concept of metapsychic research. It was nearby, in the beautiful town of Hanover on the Connecticut River. It had been founded in 1769 and numbered among its alumni such luminaries as Daniel Webster and Dr. Seuss. Above all, because of its quixotic and individualistic atmosphere, it was about the last place in the world likely to be infiltrated by the CIA, the lackeys of the military-industrial establishment — or the KGB. So the matter was settled.
With the Ellsworth-Dubois ordeal behind me, I was glad to escape by taking Denis for a stroll into the gray and leafless woodland adjacent to the Brebeuf campus. The clouds hung low and there was a smell of snow in the air. Early frosts had withered the low-growing plant-life. Fragile rinds of ice crusted the puddles along the path. The boy and I walked for an hour or so, discussing Dartmouth and making plans to visit it over the upcoming Thanksgiving vacation. Then the conversation turned to a vexatious old topic: Denis's continuing futile attempts to farspeak other telepaths.
"I've been thinking over the theory of telepathic communication, " the boy said. "Trying to discover why you and I can farspeak over long distances — while I have no luck when I call out to others. " He de-toured so as to walk through a deep drift of maple leaves, kicking them into the air with childish satisfaction. "The first possibility — and the most rotten! — is that there simply aren't any receptive minds within my telepathic radius. I just can't believe that. I feel them out there! They're probably unaware of their powers for the most part, but some of them might have a gut conviction that they're different from the rank and file of humanity... Now the second possibility: The minds are there but they don't hear me for some reason. I have to find out why my transmissions don't reach them even though I can farspeak you. "
Little chickadees, lingering tardily in the woods before their annual withdrawal to town and farmyard during fast winter, sang as we crunched along. I said, "The problem might simply be that your closet telepaths aren't listening! Look how we ignore the sounds made by these birds while we concentrate on each other's voices. "
"That's a good point. The unknowns out there aren't expecting a telepathic message. They don't think such things are possible. So when farspeech inadvertently reaches them, they may not recognize it for what it is. They could think it was a daydream, or some notion cooked up by their own brains, or even a ghost or something. "
"Mm, " I said.
"If they were seriously expecting a farspoken message it would be entirely different. You know that our own head-skeds were carefully planned. We were both alert and waiting at the time we'd arranged to communicate — and I knew where you would be. It didn't matter that your mind has a relatively puny receptive faculty —"
"Thank you very much!"
His solemn little face broke into a grin. "Nothing personal. Your mind is a weak telepathic transmitter and you're not a very sensitive receiver. But my mind makes up for it. I put out a high-powered signal that you can read, and I listen for you with an ultrasensitive mental antenna. Theoretically, I should be able to bespeak other weak or untrained telepaths — if only they knew enough to listen for me. " His mind flashed a farcical display advertisement:
TELEPATHS OF THE WORLD!
TUNE IN YOUR MENTAL EARS
WITHOUT FAIL
NEXT TUESDAY, 8: 00 P. M. EST
FOR AN IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT!
He added aloud, "Of course we'd never dare do it. And even if we did, the very people we wanted most to reach would ignore it completely. "
"Eventually there will be a public acknowledgment, " I said. "You will be able to discuss the powers openly someday... "
He nodded. "When I'm grown up, and I have my research facility and a suitable aura of academic respectability. " The irony on his young face was almost tragic. "But it's so tempting to take a short cut!" "You're talking like a child. "
He wryly agreed. Then he gave me a sidelong look. "You've saved me from making a lot of mistakes, Uncle Rogi. I'm just beginning to understand that. And the way you got me away from Papa — to this school, where I'd be safe and able to grow. Now this business of going to Dartmouth instead of Georgetown. I trust your judgment and you know I'd never try to probe your motivation. But I hope that someday... "
All I said was, "At the proper time. "
He sighed. We walked along in vocal and mental silence for several minutes, and then he returned to our previous topic of discussion.
"I've thought of another reason why my farspeech might not reach other telepaths; signal incompatible with receiver. The AM/FM thing. "
"Could be, " I agreed. "Our voices can whisper, talk, yell, sing. Why shouldn't there be different modes of telepathic output?"
"I believe there must be at least two. You know, when we're home in Berlin, how you and I can bespeak each other without Papa or Victor listening in? That's a sort of private mode. But there's a public mode, too — the way we farspeak when the message comes to you and me and Papa and Victor all at once. "
He stopped walking, frowned, and cogitated. Then he said, "What if that private kind of telepathy is the most efficient kind? What if it's coherent farspeech, say, sort of like a laser beam of light! Public mode might be more like a streetlamp — casting light in all directions but only illuminating a small, nearby area. You need a tight beam for lighting up faraway objectives. Maybe thoughts need to be beamed, too. "
"Makes sense. "
His face went gloomy. "But if that's true, then my random telepathic calls can never work. I don't know how I aim the beam... I suppose I recognize your mind-pattern and tune to it in some instinctive way when we go private, or when we do long-distance farspeaking. But how will I ever find out the mental signatures of unknown telepaths?" He was thinking hard, and in a moment he brightened. "I bet they'd hear me if I spoke in public mode right up close to them! Then I wouldn't need any signature. After all, I heard Elaine okay when she was half a mile away on Mount Washington that first time, and later she could hear me when we were a couple hundred yards apart. Funny, though. I never seemed to be able to go private with her."
I let that one lie. "You can hardly travel all over the country farshouting in crowds, hoping to scratch up other telepaths. It would be prohibitively expensive, slow, and boring beyond belief. "
"There ought to be another ultrasense for locating people, " the boy growled. "A seekersense. "
We were going downhill, toward a little brook. The low ground had moisture-loving red alder trees and occasional small thickets of witch hazel. The clouds opened briefly, letting a shaft of sunlight lance down, and from a distance it seemed that the leafless branches were wrapped in a yellow haze. Then I realized that the witch hazel shrubs were in bloom. I pointed out the phenomenon mentally to Denis. It was a small bit of botanical sorcery repeated every late fall in the New England woods.
"Weird old witch ha
zel, " Denis said. "No wonder the early folks thought it was magic."
"That's why they used it for dowsing, I guess. You can find water by divining with just about any kind of wooden rod, or even a piece of wire. But the experts say that nothing works quite so well as a branch of witch hazel. I remember reading about one dowser who could find water just by moving a forked witch hazel stick over a map. "
"It's your mind that does the finding, " the boy said absently. "The stick probably just helps you to focus the —" He broke off abruptly. His eyes met mine and we found ourselves mind-shouting in unison:
Seekersense!
"The guy really used a map?" Denis whispered.
I nodded. "Found water on the island of Bermuda, as I recall. From here in the States. "
"It's a cockamamie idea. Totally bananas. To think that I might be able to dowse out telepaths with a forked stick and a road map. "
"Only, " I said pointedly, "if you believe you can. But it can't hurt to try. I have a large-scale Delorme Atlas of New Hampshire in my Volvo... "
"Even if I did manage to find people, we'd still have to drive to the place where they were so I could send out a public-type hail. We'd still have to do some hunting. "
"It can be managed, " I told him, "provided you don't turn up eight hundred prospects. " I reached into my pocket for my trusty penknife, and led the giggling boy into a witch hazel thicket to select a suitable forked stick.
I only saw a water dowsing operation once, and that was on television back in the '50s when I was just a kid. The program was one of those down-around-home local documentaries that were common then, and featured a famous "water-witch" from Hancock in the southern part of the state. I remember being disappointed, after the narrator's exciting build-up, when the witch turned out to be a balding elderly man with a lantern-jawed Yankee face and eyeglasses framed in black plastic. His clothes were unexceptional and his manner laconic — until he took up his forked stick.