by Julian May
In the experiment, a fifty-five-gallon drum full of water had been buried six feet deep in a freshly plowed area of field. The witch held his Y-shaped divining rod by the two short arms and extended the thing ahead of him as he slowly walked up and down the furrows. The camera showed close-ups of his face, staring at the ground with rapt attention, eyes wide behind the eyeglass lenses, sweat beading his forehead. Then the camera pulled back and we saw the witch plodding toward us, stick outstretched.
And the point of the stick suddenly dipped down.
There didn't seem to have been any causative movement of the old man's hands: the stick just revolved a bit and pointed to an area near the witch's feet. The tiniest glimmer of a smile crossed his lips. He backed up, let the stick rise, then walked over the spot once again. A dip. He approached the spot from the sides. As if with a life of its own, the stick turned down perpendicular to the earth.
"I reckon she's there, " said the witch.
Two sturdy fellows with shovels stepped forward and the soft dirt began to fly. In a few minutes the drum lay revealed in an open pit; its bung was removed and water gurgled from it. The witch allowed as how he could find water "mebbe eighty percent of the time. " He was the fourth generation of his family to have the gift and apparently the last. His children and grandchildren, he said, lacked confidence. Then he added, "But there ain't much call for water-witching nowadays anyhow. Folks feel a little foolish about it. They'd rather call in a geologist — nevvamind he hands 'em a whoppin' bill for his services, so long's he's scientific. But the old way still works... "
It worked for Denis, too — but only after six months of self-training. I watched him mind-hunting many times, first using the atlas, later poring over a series of aerial photos I'd purchased for him at the cost of an arm and a leg. I had very little seekersense myself (youthful experiments in imitation of the water-witch had proved that), but it was possible for me to share the boy's search by means of our mental rapport. He would sit at a table in a species of trance, the forked twig moving slowly over the surface of the map, and what passed through his mind was almost magical.
We have all flown in aircraft at night and looked down on the scattered jewel-lights that mark towns and settlements. The higher one is, the more indistinct the luminous splotch; but descend, and the individual streetlamps and lighted windows and slowly moving ground-cars become clearly visible. Denis's seeking looked rather like a night flight, when seen by my mind's eye. When he first began to hunt he sensed only bright fuzzy masses that signified concentrations of ordinary mentation: thinking people. But in time he learned to sharpen his focus, to sort the sapient blur into a sparkling collection of separate minds. They were multicolored, bright and dim, large and small. Just as a dowser for water or minerals visualizes the object of his search, then directs his higher senses to find it, so Denis conjured up the quintessence of "operant" mental energy and went hunting for it during a variant of the classic out-of-body experience.
The first operants he viewed, in a targeting operation, were his father and his brother Victor in Berlin. Initially it was hard for him to avoid the instinctive use of their mental signatures; but when he had conquered this technical glitch he was able to see the adult mind and the child only as tiny beacons of higher function, distinct in the miasma of normally talented thought. Don's younger children, who numbered six at that time, glowed dim and latent — a tragedy that Denis and I would understand fully only years later. But Don was a fitful variable star and nine-year-old Victor burned like a baleful ember hiding in a half-extinguished campfire.
Denis never farspoke them, never hinted to them what kind of a search he was engaged in. "It wouldn't be good for them to know, " he told me in that sober, young-old way of his. And of course he was right. The patient search for kindred spirits began to pay off in June 1979, when he finally located Glenn Dalembert's mind in the congestion of metropolitan Manchester. We set off on a frantic ground-search then, me driving the Volvo and Denis, entranced, sitting beside me with his finger hovering over a tattered aerial survey sheet. (By then he had been able to discard the witch hazel wand, to his manifest relief. ) Panic set in when it became evident that our target was on its way out of Manchester.
A wild chase on the southbound lanes of the turnpike followed, and once we almost lost Glenn; but we bagged him at long last in a hilarious and touching scene at Benson's Wild Animal Park, where he had a summer job coercing elephants in a small circus. The young man reacted to our telepathic revelations with equanimity and took an instant shine to Denis. The boy was stunned to learn that his newfound metapsychic ally was an undergraduate at Dartmouth. Glenn Dalembert became the first member of the now-famed Coterie and would become a champion of metapsychic rights during the dark pre-Intervention years. A few weeks after finding Glenn, Denis tracked down the second Coterie stalwart, Sally Doyle, in her home at Troy. She was a minor celebrity in her hometown because of a knack for finding lost persons and things. She had graduated valedictorian of her high school class that year, and in the fall (quelle surprise!) she was to enter Dartmouth. Once again Denis was astonished at the coincidence. I, as you might imagine, remained unruffled.
We located only two other operants that summer. One was an elderly invalid, Odette Kleinfelter, whom we nearly frightened into cardiac arrest with our telepathic greeting — and hastily disqualified from recruitment. The other contactee was a Nashua girl a year younger than Denis. When we confronted her, she fixed Denis with a redoubtable glare and snapped: "I suppose you think you're pretty smart!" Except for her metapsychic gifts, which we did not fully appreciate at that time, she seemed a bright but unexceptional child with that streak of mulish stubbornness that occasionally characterizes Franco-American females. Denis was leery of her, and for some years she would remain on the periphery of the growing body of young operants. In 1979 there was no hint of the girl's future role in the metapsychic drama. Her name was Lucille Cartier, and one day she would become Denis's closest colleague, his wife, and the mother of the Seven Founding Magnates of the Human Polity of the Concilium. But that was far in the future, and I will reserve Lucille's story until a later point in this narrative.
That fall, shepherded by Glenn Dalembert and Sally Doyle, Denis entered Dartmouth College. His seekersense quickly pinpointed three other suboperants among the student body, who were gathered into the Coterie through telepathic rapport. Two of these, a senior named Mitch Losier and a sophomore named Colette Roy, had been entirely unaware of their psychic talents until close contact with Denis brought about an accelerated floraison. The third, Tukwila Barnes, was a Puyallup tribesman from Washington state. At the time of Denis's matriculation Tukwila was a seventeen-year-old junior in the college's premed program, a genius well aware of his talent for hands-on healing and soul-travel who was wise enough not to acknowledge his unorthodox skills publicly. He was a wary mind-screener who completely eluded Denis's dowsing, and only revealed himself after observing the activities of the Coterie for more than six months.
As Denis devoured the undergraduate curriculum in three hectic terms, he found time to ferret out three more operants whom he induced to enroll at Dartmouth. Gerard Tremblay was a happy-go-lucky worker in a Vermont granite quarry, nineteen years old, with no idea that he was a suboperant telepath. Gordon McAllister, the only one of the Coterie who would choose physics over psychology or psychiatry, was twenty-six and operating the family potato farm in Maine when he was tapped. He had always known that he was a bit fey, but out of filial piety had repressed his psychic tendencies as frivolous and un-Presbyterian. The final, and oldest, Coterie member was Eric Boutin, who had worked for nearly ten years as the service manager in a Ford dealership in Manchester before Denis discovered him. Boutin's boss wept unashamedly when the most uncanny diagnostician of auto malfunction in the state of New Hampshire enrolled as a Dartmouth freshman at the age of thirty.
Denis received his Bachelor of Arts degree in June of 1980, applauded
by me, his Coterie, his mother, and a goodly contingent of Remillard relations. Don did not attend. In 1983, when Denis was a mature and self-possessed sixteen, he was awarded an M. D. from Dartmouth Medical School. This time I escorted to the ceremony not only Sunny but also eight of her children — including the infant, Pauline. Twenty-four other Remillards made the journey to Hanover to celebrate the triumph of the family prodigy. Don, however, suffered a diplomatic attack of flu and remained in Berlin, attended by the adolescent Victor. They were not greatly missed.
Although Denis (as well as his Coterie) kept his extraordinary psychic powers under wraps during his study years, he continued to give his associates informal training. Mitch Losier, a methodical type who quickly became a seekersense adept, continued to trace other suboperants. Many of these were enticed to Dartmouth and eventually helped form the first North American operant nucleus. Denis served his three years' residency in psychiatry at the Mental Health Center associated with the college, and simultaneously took Ph. D. degrees in psychology and mathematics (the latter in the field of cybernetics). His intellectual precocity had attracted considerable public attention, of course, and certain anonymous benefactors helped to finance the first small ESP research facility that he set up and supervised as a postdoctoral fellow. For the next three years Denis worked with numbers of operant and suboperant metapsychics in this modest little laboratory. Members of his Coterie contrived to join him as they completed their own studies and residencies, sacrificing financial security for the advancement of mental science. During this time of metapsychic pioneering Denis published half a dozen cautious papers and skirted the morass of premature publicity that might have fatally tainted his image. Persistent media snoops — and there were some — were summarily dealt with by the mettlesome Boutin and McAllister, the designated enforcers of the Coterie. More subtle attempts at probing were sidetracked by certain persons high in the administration of the Dartmouth Medical School, who realized what a unique talent the college was harboring.
As rumors of remarkable psychic activities at Dartmouth strengthened, hard-nosed investigators attempted an end run around Denis by importuning his father. Don was then attempting to operate a small logging business, having been fired from the mill for intractable alcoholism. The sensation-seekers were discouraged by bilingual curses and the menaces of Victor, who was by then a hulking youth with a notably malevolent demeanor. Denis had made many attempts to bring Victor into his own circle of young operants, but without success. Victor's coercive faculty had come on strong, together with a raging jealousy of his older brother. He wanted nothing to do with higher education or metapsychic experimentation. Eventually he dropped out of high school and joined Don in the woods.
In 1989, having established himself as one of the premier psychic researchers in the country, Dr. Denis Remillard was admitted to the Dartmouth Medical School faculty as a research associate with the rank of Associate Professor of Psychiatry (Parapsychology). He was by that time twenty-three years old, almost totally alienated from his father and brother Victor, and committed to the work that would occupy him for the rest of his life... until his great mind was lost to humanity and the rest of the Galactic Milieu in the prelude to the Metapsychic Rebellion.
5
ALMA-ATA, KAZAKH SSR, EARTH
18 JANUARY 1984
ONLY OLD PYOTR Sakhvadze noticed the earthquake.
The rest of the spectators and the crowd of ice skaters in Medeo Stadium were completely oblivious. Any faint seismic whisper would have been drowned out by the loudspeakers playing the waltz from Yevgeniy Onyegin and the shouting of the children. It is true that the side walls of the gaily ornamented yurta warming tents out on the ice swayed a little, and their horsehair tassels danced; but that might just as easily have been caused by a stray gust from the Zailiyskiy Ala-Tau intruding for a moment into the ice-rink's sheltered bowl.
But Pyotr knew better.
He was newly come to the Central Asian metropolis of Alma-Ata to live with his daughter Tamara and his son-in-law Yuri Gawrys and their three children, after nearly ten years of exile in Ulan-Ude, ministering to the mental-health needs of the Buryat Mongols. On this winter afternoon he was performing grandfatherly duties, shepherding Valery, Ilya, and Anna — who were nine, seven, and four years of age — on a skating outing at Medeo. Pyotr had nearly begged off going because of the sick headache that had plagued him for the past two days; but the youngsters would have been very disappointed, and he wanted so much for them to learn to love him that he pretended he felt better. He drove them in Tamara's red Zhiguli up to the big alpine sports complex in the foothills south of the city. Medeo's rink was world-class, and so cleverly sited that even in midwinter one could usually skate in comfort without bundling up. The three children had joined the throng out on the ice, leaving Pyotr to watch from a front row of the stands.
He had huddled there nursing his headache in silent misery for nearly two hours, feeling cold in spite of the tatty fur greatcoat and shapka he had brought from Siberia. He sipped mint tea from an insulated bottle, felt very sorry for himself, and wondered if he had made a serious mistake allowing his daughter to "rescue" him from exile. Ulan-Ude wasn't the Russian Riviera like Sochi; but the Mongols were a vigorous and good-humored lot and the psychic dabblings of their shamans were strictly apolitical... unlike those of Tamara and her high-strung Polish husband.
The headache grew worse, nauseating him with the pain. At last, when it seemed his poor head would explode, his eyes began to play tricks on him. The sunset-tinged snowy slopes that overhung the stadium started to shimmer, throwing off auroralike beams of an unnatural green color, and the bare rock areas were haloed with eerie violet. He felt the slight vibration of the earth tremor through the sensitive base of his spine and at the same time a lance of white agony seared his vision. He groaned out loud and tottered in his seat, nearly spilling the bottle of tea.
And then, a miracle!
His head cleared and was free of pain. The strange aura effect cut off abruptly. His muzzy brain snapped into a keen state of cognition. An earthquake! Yes! And accompanied by the same mental phenomena he had experienced twice before, in 1966 at the disastrous psychiatric conference in Tashkent, and just last year in Siberia, when a minor temblor had rocked the Lake Baikal basin.
It could not be a coincidence. It was a species of extrasense! And he shouted:
You see, children? I am one of you after all! This proves that I, too, have the soul-power!
Dizziness overcame him and he lost track of reality until he heard the anxious voice of Valery, his oldest grandson.
"Dedushka? Are you feeling all right? We... we heard you cry out. "
Pyotr was aware of the cheerful music again, and he saw the two boys and their little sister standing in front of him in their bright jackets and knit hats with pompoms. Their breath was coming in quick cloudy puffs and their dark eyes were wide with astonishment. A couple of adult skaters had also stopped because of the evident concern of the children, and a sturdy woman in a blue speed-suit asked, "Any problem here, comrade?"
"No, I'm fine, " Pyotr forced himself to say, giving a chuckle that was nearly giddy. "I nodded off and nearly slid out of my seat. Silly of me. "
The adults paid no more attention to him but his grandchildren crowded closer. Pyotr could sense the swift telepathic exchange passing between Valery and Ilya. Their faces were distant, almost frightening in their maturity. But little Anna reached out to him with mittened hands, smiling, her cheeks as shiny as the Aport apples for which Alma-Ata was famous.
"Your head feels better now, doesn't it, Dedushka?"
He squeezed her hands gently. "Much better, little angel. In fact — I think I have made a wonderful discovery!"
Ilya was almost accusing. "We heard your mind shout to us. There was a strange image, too. "
"Didn't you feel the ground tremble while you were skating?" Pyotr asked. "There was a small earthquake — and I pe
rceived it with both my body and my mind!"
"I didn't feel anything, Grandfather, " Valery said.
"Are you sure you didn't imagine it?" Ilya said.
Anna piped shyly, "I think I felt it, Dedushka. Was it sort of bright, and deep-down?"
"Yes, exactly!" Pyotr swept up the child, skates and all, and kissed her resoundingly. Then he crouched with a serious expression and told the three of them, "I detected the faint preliminaries to the earth tremor with some kind of an extrasense, and the actual shock, the discharge of seismic energy, was translated into a visual phenomenon. It's just as the village elder Seliac said more than twenty years ago: I, too, have the soul! I am one of you! A true extrasensor!"
The children stared at him blankly. Their minds shared subliminal comments that were as incomprehensible to Pyotr as the twittering of bats.
"Don't you see?" the old man said desperately. "My terrible headache was part of it, and I saw colored auras around the rocks as well. The important point is, I've had this type of experience before just prior to earthquakes, but I never realized its significance. Now I'm positive! Yes! It must be some new kind of psychic power — different from the telepathy or psychokinesis or out-of-body travel that your parents study at the Bioenergetics Institute. We must go home at once and tell them about it! It will be a wonderful surprise, and now perhaps they won't feel I'm such a useless burden —"
"You aren't a burden, Grandfather, " Valery said, but his smile was remote.
"Do we have to go home?" Ilya's mouth turned down at the corners.
''You said we'd stay until eighteen hours. I want to skate some more. I didn't feel any earthquake. "
Valery gave him a poke.