by Julian May
He never learned — unlike his father-in-law, Kieran O'Connor — that it had been Shannon who sent little Amanda to visit her grandfather on 29 October 2007, and also arranged for Dr. Fairweather to join the nominating delegation at the last moment.
20
OVERSIGHT AUTHORITY VESSEL
SADA [Simb 220-0000]
PODKAMENNAYA TUNGUSKA BASIN USSR, EARTH
20 JUNE 2008
THE HUGE SIMBIARI Authority flagship and its attendant fleet of twenty-six smaller observation vessels descended slowly and openly, in broad daylight, over the event site. By order of the Lylmik Supervisors, the commemoration was to be deliberately conspicuous, reminding the populace of this war-torn Earth nation of a truth they had once championed — that human beings were not alone in the starry universe.
On the bridge of the Sada, Captain Chassatam, his Executive Officer Madi Ala Assamochiss, and Senior Oversight Magnate Adassti watched the view-screen, which was in terrain-proper mode, as the wilderness of verdant bogs and conifer thickets drew closer and closer.
"Approaching stasis altitude, " said the Exec.
"Very well, " said Captain Chassatam. A fast farsight sweep told him that the formation was perfectly organized, and seconds later it hovered motionless some six hundred meters above the taiga. One level of his mind commanded the attention of all crews, while another signaled the Simbiari chaplain stationed in the topside bubble to organize and energize the solemn metaconcert aimed at coercing God.
O Source and Sustainer of Life! Our minds and the Mind of the Simbiari Polity in all the far-flung reaches of the Galaxy praise you this day at the site where your martyrs, the crew and survey personnel of the Observation Vessel Risstimi, did one hundred planetary orbits ago choose to sacrifice themselves rather than bring great harm upon the innocent people of a world placed under their care. Help us to understand and appreciate your martyrs' extraordinary act of love. Console the bereaved among us who lost kin and dear friends in the event. If it should be your will, give us the courage to emulate their selfless action freely and without fear, confident as they were confident that you will receive our undying minds into the Great Mind even as our bodies perish. We trust that you will welcome us one day as you welcomed them into your Divine Milieu of unending peace and light, love and joy. Praise to you, Author of the Universe and exemplar of perfect Unity! Praise throughout all space and time! We Simbiari say this with one Mind.
WE SAY IT!
"A chopper approaches from Vanavara, " the Exec noted, inserting its image into a corner of the view-screen. All three Simbiari scrutinized the tiny craft with their farsight and did a surface probe of the humans within. Lettering on the body of the helicopter indicated that it belonged to the local reindeer-herders' collective.
"I'd hoped for a higher-status set of eyewitnesses than this, " the Magnate said rather peevishly. She mopped green mucus from her face. As the senior personage present it had been her duty to express ritual sorrow during the prayer.
"They've closed down the air bases at Ust'-Ilimisk and Tura, " the Captain said. "They'll have to send jets from Krasnoyarsk. "
"Military observers always receive higher credibility ratings from Earthlings, " Magnate Adassti said. "I hope they're not asleep at the switch down there at PVOS. "
The Exec said, "The chopper carries a pilot and the local stringer for the Evenk People's Video Net. The journalist has remembered to load his camera and take off the lens cap, and he's framing a fair shot of the fleet. "
"Thanks be to sacred Truth and Beauty, " the Magnate sighed.
The small craft came whop-whopping over the spruces, following an erratic course. The Magnate turned her thoughts to higher things, reminiscing out loud in what she hoped was a comradely fashion.
"My sainted Auntie Bami Ala was among the Tunguska martyrs. I recall her clearly, even though I was a mere toddler when she left on her first exotic assignment. She was only a TechOne with the Taxonomical Service, but very keen at the thought of bringing Milieu enlightenment to a suboperant world. Dear Auntie... She showed me my first visuals of humans. I had to fight to keep from gagging at the first sight of them — those horrid dry skins, like Poltroyans only ranging in pigmentation from dusty black to fish-belly pink. She explained their strange physiology and shocked me to the toe-webs. No algae symbionts in the epidermis, so they were constantly eating and excreting through a hypertrophied gastrointestinal tract — even making a ceremony of foodtaking. And I had thought that the Gi were uncouth! Auntie told me about the primitive state of human technology and psychosocial development, and then scandalized me even more by admitting that the Lylmik had the highest hopes for Earth. But I'll tell you, Captain, that even now I can hardly imagine a more unlikely candidate-world for coadunation of the local Mind. "
"I don't know, " the Captain said. "They may give us a run for the money in the high-tech field. Their rate of advancement has been little short of stupefying. " He waved a hand at the wealth of ingenious mechanisms that crowded the bridge of the Sada. "Give humanity a few more decades and they'll have most of this. With their elaboration of the Universal Field Theory, they've been able to begin work on gravo-magnetic propulsion. And it's only a fluke that they haven't tamed fusion yet. Fooling around, wasting their resources on manned-satellite schemes. If they only knew that we have nearly eight hundred worlds for them!"
"Captain, " the Executive Officer warned, "the exotic aircraft is venturing too close to the rho-field coronal zone. Shall I push it off?"
"Do so. We can't have the thing dropping out of the sky like a zapped mosquito... That's better. Neat work with the pressor, Madi Ala. We'll give him just a few more minutes and then send him off. The emotional tone of the pilot is turning flaky. "
"The journalist must make an explicit record of our presence, " Magnate Adassti averred. "The Lylmik were emphatic on that point. "
The Captain sipped carbonated water from his platinum flask with a certain air of disdain. "Does the Supervisory Body really believe this manifestation will divert the Soviets from their internal conflicts? Frankly, with the way things are going down in Transcaucasia, I doubt that a mere fleet of starships over the Stony Tunguska will even make the evening news. "
"Vulgar cynicism is hardly called for, Captain. " The Magnate was somewhat starchy over his minor breach of decorum. Rehydrating oneself among equals or in informal situations was certainly acceptable. But the Captain had not even bothered to ask her permission before drinking, and the Executive Officer was a subordinate! Flight crews were a roughhewn lot, regrettably egalitarian.
The Captain only chuckled at her subliminal rebuke. "It looks to me as though the Soviet Union is only a half skip away from complete disintegration. Cynicism seems quite justified. "
"Nonsense. The nation may be battered, but its economy and governmental structure are still basically intact. The reports of our presence here will be sent to Moscow and eventually disseminated throughout the planet. As to what good the manifestation will do... we can expect benefits to accrue over the long term. "
"Earth hasn't got a long term. If the Lylmik hold off Intervention much longer this whole Second Oversight Phase will be a wasted effort. We'll find ourselves with a suboperant world again! The normals are starting to kill off coadunating minds down there, you know. "
"Unfortunately, this is true, " the Magnate admitted. "If only the imprisoned Soviet operants had embraced a pacifistic stance, as their colleagues in other countries advised them. Poor misguided ones! The military dictator in the Kremlin was badly jolted by the mass escape attempt of the aggressively empowered adepts. Nearly fourteen hundred minds lost to the overall coadunation effort... I fear that an ethic of nonviolence is a tough bolus for many Earthling operants to swallow. "
"The bunch at Darjeeling stayed peaceful — until the Muslim mob tore them to pieces. On this planet, metapsychic operants may be in a no-win situation. It's happened on other worlds. "
"T
he Lylmik still hold out hope. On the other hand, the revised schema postulates that Intervention must occur within the next five years here, or it probably will not occur at all... "
"Captain, the helicopter is retreating, " said the Exec.
"Yes, Madi Ala, I see. The poor pilot's had enough. He's frightened nearly out of his mind. He didn't have nearly as much to drink today as the journalist. "
A telltale blinked an alert and the Exec said, "Now we are being scanned in the infrared by a Soviet satellite surveillance system as well as by the phased arrays at Krasnoyarsk. Is this allowable?"
The Captain passed the buck to the Magnate, who said, "Affirmative. But obscure any attempt at configuration fine-scan of the Sada by light-amplifiers. I don't want us to be too blatantly on the record. We'll remain in position for a few more minutes and let EuroSat ZS spot us on its next sweep. Three sightings should provide modest credibility and give the Earthlings something to think about besides killing one another. "
"Very well, " said the Captain. He was watching the view and slurping from his flask again, radiating overfamiliarity. "You ever been landside in Siberia, Magnate Adassti?"
She gave up on any attempt to maintain a refined atmosphere and hauled out her own water supply, indicating to the Exec that she should also feel free to imbibe. "No, most of my work here has been administrative. I have gone abroad during the past five orbits monitoring the Metapsychic Congresses... Montreal last year after they decided not to risk Moscow; Paris, Beijing, Edinburgh — all large cities. And before that I attended the session held in a quaint rural hostelry in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. Bizarre!... I presume, Captain, from your reference to mosquitoes, that you yourself have visited Siberia. " She shuddered. The insects were insanely fond of Simbiari body fluids.
"I went down once, not long after the martyrdom. One of my academy mates crewed on the Risstimi. What a sight it was! The burnt trees just beneath the blast zone were standing upright, but all around them was this vast elliptical area of trunks smashed flat and radiating outward. Not a single Earthling was harmed. But if the crew of the Risstimi hadn't hung on to the failed control system mentally, the ship would have continued right across the continent and impacted on Saint Petersburg, where nearly two million people lived at the time. "
"Truth!" exclaimed the Exec. "I didn't know there were that many. "
"I wonder if this damn planet will ever appreciate what we've done?" the Captain mused. "Not just what the Risstimi crew did, but all the rest of it. Sixty thousand years of watching and guiding and cosseting, all the while praying that the silly clots wouldn't botch it."
Magnate Adassti had a grim little smile on her emerald lips. "If Intervention does take place and we undertake the proctorship, we'll make sure the Earthlings are properly grateful. Shaping up minds as barbarous as these for full Concilium participation is going to require heroic psychocorrectional measures. After what they've put us through—"
"Captain, " said the Exec. "We have a wing of MiGs zeroing in on us from Krasnoyarsk. "
"It's about time, " the Magnate snapped.
The officer hesitated, then blurted out, "Farsense Monitoring reports that the Soviets think we may be a Chinese secret weapon. "
"Chinese?" blared the Captain. "Chinese? Can't the flaming idiots recognize a flight of UFOs when they see one?"
Magnate Lashi Ala Adassti dripped green heedlessly over the shiny instrumentation console as she swallowed great gulps of charged water. "Up the Cosmic All!" she blasphemed. "The nincompoops!"
"So much for that brilliant Lylmik ploy, " the Captain told her. "Your orders, Magnate?"
"Get us back into orbit and invisible. We'll be hearing from the Supervisory Body soon enough. "
21
FROM THE MEMOIRS OF ROGATIEN REMILLARD
THE FLIGHT OF flying saucers detected over Siberia made a very minor news splash. The videotape of the event — which was sold to Western news agencies for an enormous sum by the Soviet government — was exquisitely detailed, so much so that it was deemed a masterpiece of special effects by the ciné wizards of Industrial Light and Magic. NASA analysts said that no spacecraft propulsion system known to science could account for the movement of the alleged saucers. They simply defied Newton's Laws of Motion. These adverse judgments, coupled with the suspicious date of the sighting, on the anniversary of the Tunguska meteorite fall, led most authorities to dismiss the tape as a hoax.
Over the next couple of years there were other saucer reports from different parts of the world — none quite so spectacular as the Siberian affair, but nevertheless impressive in the aggregate. Alas! The world was so preoccupied with mundane troubles that the notion of extraterrestrial visitors caused no excitement at all. So the saucers were back again? Big deal. So was the rain in Spain, the Dust Bowl in Oklahoma, and Killer Smog in London and Tokyo.
Feeling very low one dreary November evening in 2008 (I had just finished composing a long and querulous videogram to Ume, who had moved back to Sapporo the previous summer), I sat in my apartment above the bookshop, reading and drinking. The book was an old favorite, a peerless historical novel by H. F. M. Prescott called The Man on a Donkey. The booze was Laphroaig, a lovely dusky malt that Jamie MacGregor had brought over on his last visit. Sleet rapped at the storm windows, the fire was low in the Franklin stove, and my stockinged feet rested on the warm shaggy belly of my cat Marcel, who was asleep on the claw-shredded ottoman.
The doorbell rang. It was after 2300. Reluctantly, I sent my farsight down into the street entryway, where I saw Denis. Setting the Prescott aside with a sigh, I extracted my feet from their cozy shelter and padded over to the buzzer.
Come up, I told my nephew. Is anything wrong?
Yes and no. I just want to talk to you if you don't mind.
I am not quite blotto.
I'll redact you sober.
You do and I'll sic Marcel on you...
I opened the hall door and he came in, dripping.
"I walked from the lab, " he said, taking off his raincoat. "What a rotten night. "
I got another tumbler, splashed in Scotch, and held it out to him. Denis rarely indulges, but it didn't take telepathy to know what he needed. He flopped down on the sofa, took a belt, and sighed.
"The President called me earlier today. "
"He should be feeling pretty high, " I opined. "The landslide victory to end all landslides. He's got his third term — and probably a fourth and fifth if he wants them —"
"Uncle Rogi, do you remember when I was a kid, and just learning to do long-distance scanning? We didn't call it EE then. It was just mind-traveling. "
"Sure, I remember. You'd drag me along. Only way I ever got very far out of Coos County, mentally speaking. "
"What we were doing was a farsensory metaconcert, a mind-meld. I didn't know that, either. You know, it's a funny thing. I've never been able to go metaconcert with anyone except you and Lucille. Glenn says I'm too wary, too jealous of my mental autonomy to be a team thinker. Lucille thinks I may just be afraid to trust... Whatever it is, it's there. And I want to excurse tonight with a partner — someone who will magnify my own sight. Luce is out. Now that she's pregnant again I want to keep her as tranquil as possible. "
The implication was dire. "And this EE's likely to be anything but, eh?"
"I tripped out myself earlier this evening, right after the President's call. He told me that the Secretary of Defense had the wind up over something his Psi-Eye people had spied. He asked me to check it out. "
I poured myself another finger of Scotch and downed it before Denis could stop me. "What happened? A nuke on the Kremlin?"
"It's in China... whatever it is. I couldn't get any more of a handle on it than the Washington pEEps. That's why I need you. Minimal though your solitary output is, when it's yoked with mine I should experience a magnification up to threefold through synergistic augmentation."
"Your humble servant, " I muttered. Mini
mal!
Denis dragged the ottoman over to the couch, displacing Marcel, who hissed bitterly at the imposition and slunk off to the kitchen. "Sit here beside me. We can put our feet up and it'll be nearly as good as the barber-chairs at the lab. I suppose I should have asked you to come down there, but —"
"You knew I wouldn't, and it doesn't make a damn bit of difference where we do it. "
"No. It doesn't. "
The body contact was unfamiliar and disquieting. Good God, was I afraid of him? His mind was utterly silent. Wide open. Waiting. I closed my eyes and still saw the living room through mind-sight, but I made no move toward him. I turned the kitchen wall transparent and saw the cat opening the breadbox to steal an English muffin. I had forgotten to fill his food dish. I kept on going out through the house wall and saw the oddly unshadowed streets slick with freezing rain and cars going up and down Main Street with tires and wiper blades crunching.
Denis said: Come.
I said: All right all right it's just been a hell of a long time since you were in my skull and you were only a kid then and now tu es un gros bonnet the Biggest Mindshot of the lot and I do want to help you but what you ask of me ah Denis a Franco father cannot stand naked before his son —
No no it won't be like that metaconcert among adults isn't that kind of merging please don't worry. This will not be like your experiences with Ume or Elaine those were an altogether different type of mental intercourse believe me trust me I am only Denis the same little Denis et tu es mon vrai père! Ça va Uncle Rogi?
Ça va ça va mais allez-y doucement dammit!
He took me away...
I am not much of a head. I use telepathy without a qualm, of course, and do everyday things such as deep-scanning letters before opening them and tracking potentially light-fingered customers around the shop and anticipating the moves of idiot drivers. But the larger faculties I use grudgingly (except with the ladies!) and there is almost always a sense of uneasiness after the fact, as if I had indulged a secret vice. Excorporeal excursion is ordinarily very difficult for me. I can "call" over fairly long distances, but to "see" — much less use other ultrasenses — is an exhausting piece of work when it is not completely impossible. I had braced myself for the joint trip with Denis, expecting the usual exertion. But what a difference! I hardly know what to compare that mind-flight to. There are certain dreams, where one does not really fly but rather takes giant steps, one after the other, each one covering the proverbial seven leagues. Long ago, when I had eavesdropped on the mind of little Denis as he slowly scanned New Hampshire for other operants, I had seen on the eerie mindscape the jewel-like clusters of "light" that mark the positions of living human brains — the latents glowing dimly, the operants blazing like tiny stars. There was something of this effect as Denis and I loped westward across the continent, each heroic bound covering a greater distance and attaining a greater height than the last, until at the Pacific Coast we soared up without pausing and described a vast arc above the mindless dark of the northern ocean. But was it mindless? There were none of the starlike concentrations, but there was something else: an intricate whispering coming not from below but from all around me, as if millions upon millions of infinitesimal voices were carrying on conversations — or even singing, since the sensation had a rhythmic pulsation to it, a tempo that was ever changing and yet somehow orchestrated...