Intervention

by Julian May

  The President had complimented him dryly on his prudence and per­spicacity. Denis had responded that those qualities had taken on sur­vival value, given the present mood of the country toward operants. The President had earnestly assured him that the mood was changing for the better, to which Denis had replied sadly that he, personally, had seen scant signs of improvement in operant-normal relations — and if Mrs. Tremblay's accusations of a massive conspiracy by secret operants could be proved, the Sons of Earth and other bigots would have a field day, and the operant image would be tarnished almost beyond redemption. The President had laid a big hand on Denis's shoulder and urged him to have courage. After the November election it would be possible to take ac­tion in a number of important areas. But right now... Tremblay! Denis had promised to do his best, and report his findings only to the Presi­dent.

  The door opened, and Gerry Tremblay came in.

  "Hello, Denis. " Here I am and yes I know I look like hell I've lost ten kilos and my colitis has turned my ass to a disaster zone and I'm even starting to go fucking bald and my wife is knocked up with some un­known operant's brat and my father-in-law says All's Forgiven What the Hell You Can Be an Arbitrager! and why the devil did you have to come NOW four days before I get out of this fucking hole?...

  "Gerry, I'm sorry to bother you. I know how you feel. We all do. But I must ask some important questions. "

  SUREyoumust! WhatthefuckgotintomedidIreallythinkIwassavingAll OperantsfromBAUMGARTNERTHEARCHFIEND? The arrogance! The lunacy! ThefriggingdipshitBOOBERYofit...

  It was Denis's almost invariable custom to veil his eyes from those he engaged in conversation. His direct gaze tended to paralyze normals and throw operants into a state of near panicky screen-slamming. Even his family could be shocked into speechlessness when he inadvertently let the power flood out instead of reining it back behind the social mask that the real superminds were still learning to wear. As Gerry Tremblay's mental speech babbled on, all fouled with self-pity and mortification, Denis looked at the table top. He had placed a pen and a jotting pad there, useless props. The ranting continued and he picked up the pen and drew a square. Then he drew a star, and a circle, and a cross, and three parallel wavy lines.

  Gerry said, "Oh, hell. The Zener cards!" And then he was laughing and half crying, remembering the very beginning of their relationship, thirty-three years ago, when a weird twelve-year-old kid had come slog­ging down into a dusty granite quarry in Barre, Vermont, and asked him to put down his jackhammer for a few minutes and take a little test that could be really important...

  Denis said: We used those cards. The old-fashioned ESP pack that Rhine had made famous. And you called them one hundred percent Gerry and nearly wet your jeans because you had no idea. None at all.

  Yeahyeahyeah! And the test wasn't for your benefit it was for me so I'd come away to Dartmouth with you and Glenn and Sally and Tucker and the rest of the Coterie... Oh God Denis how did it turn to this shit?

  "Listen to me, Gerry. There's still something important you can do. If you like... do to make up. "

  Gerry stiffened. "What I did — I did because I thought it was right. That's what I'll say until I die, Denis. I won't disgrace us. It was a hell of a dumb move, maybe even crazy, but no disgrace to operancy."

  Denis lifted his eyes.

  Gerry Tremblay's mouth opened in an unvoiced scream. He covered his face with his hands and his shoulders began to shake.

  You know you know God you know —

  I don't know all of it Gerry but I must. Shannon has confessed a lot of it. First to Nell Baumgartner and then to the President himself. Is it true that Kieran O'Connor is a powerful operant?

  Of course not.

  Is it true that he's been misusing his powers for years breaking every law in the book to build up a personal fortune manipulating politicians even coercing Baumgartner to run and then when he saw his puppet slipping away in desperation he —

  NO NO NO!

  Is it true that Kieran O'Connor has set up a clandestine control center for Zap-Star?

  ... whattheHELL???

  So you didn't know. Gerry sit up. Take your hands away from your face. Do it.

  Yes.

  I'm going to probe you. To get the truth of it as you see it. There will be no follow-up at all as far as you're concerned. When I've finished I'll wipe out every trace of this visit so O'Connor will never suspect what's been done. We'll nail him through conventional investigation. He can't have covered every trace of his manipulation if it's as massive as Shannon says. Will you consent to the probe? You know it has to be voluntary.

  I —I —

  I know O'Connor's done something to you Gerry. I can see it a kind of command-inhibition compelling absolute loyalty. But I think I can crack it. I'll be as careful as I can.

  I — I — Denis I love him. I love him and he's a filthy swine a madman —

  Be calm Gerry.

  Can — can you wipe that out too?

  I could try. There's a chance that he'd know and it would be risky for you because you wouldn't remember any of this. But I think I could retain a semblance of the bondage. I'll try.

  Thank you Denis thank you all right DO IT God do it help me get him out of me —

  "Gerry, I'd like you to sit back in your chair and relax. Take deep breaths. "

  "Okay. "

  "Close your eyes now. If you like, you can farsense these Zener fig­ures I've drawn on the pad. But see nothing but them. Think of nothing else. "

  "All right. "

  Gerry Tremblay closed his eyes and summoned up the familiar old markings.

  Only a moment or so later, when he opened his eyes again, a guard was at his side and he was walking back toward his cell. He wondered whether he was losing his marbles. For the life of him he couldn't remember why they'd fetched him out of his cell.

  Oh, hell. What difference did it make? Come Friday he'd be out of here for good, and he could pull his shit back together and make a brand new start.

  26

  FROM THE MEMOIRS OF ROGATIEN REMILLARD

  I WENT TO the Hanover post office to do my regular first-thing-in-the-morning pickup. It was just across the street from the bookshop and, in those days, provided more convenient service than electronic mail or parcel express —as well as being considerably cheaper.

  It was 24 September 2012, two days after the calamitous Metapsychic Congress in Oslo. Because it was a Monday the box was full of letters and cards and junk mail, as well as several videograms and the inevi­table "Please call at the window for package" notices. I joined the long line of patrons and began to sort my stuff, at the same time carrying on half a conversation with Elijah Shelby who was standing just ahead of me. He ran a desktop publishing company out of his home on River Ridge Road and patronized my shop fairly often.

  "Tough about the way things fell apart in Norway, " Shelby said.

  "Serves the heads right for scheduling a symposium on operant po­litical activism, " I said. "They asked for a reeraw and they sure as hell got one. I warned Denis not to force the issue. "

  "Reckon your nevvy'll be coming home with his tail between his legs. Media kinda made mincemeat of him, didn't they?"

  "Denis is no coward, " I said shortly. "Takes balls to stand on your principles... and you don't want to believe everything you read in the newsplaques, Lije."

  "Mf!" said Shelby. My mention of the great innovation in commu­nication struck a sour note with the publisher. The programmable liquid-crystal reader-plaques had already spelled the doom of printed periodicals and paperback ephemera; and the newer large-format plaques with improved color-imaging that had just come out of China were bound to take a nasty bite out of conventional book publication.

  One of the videograms addressed to me was from a plaque outfit. They were haranguing booksellers, urging them to install the latest top-of-the-line state-of-the-art super-glamorous reader-plaque recorder-dispenser unit — priced at a mere $189,000.00 if you hurried to take a
dvantage of this one-time-only special offer. I deep-sixed the expensive advertising piece in the post office's waste bin, along with the rest of the junk mail.

  The second videogram, a jumbo floppy, was from Denis, origin Oslo, transmission time last Saturday. He always conscientiously sent me the proceedings of the Metapsychic Congresses even though most of the papers and panel discussions were far over my simple head. I rarely bothered to play them — but I'd play this one, all right, and bring plenty of popcorn.

  The third and last videogram was from Ume Kimura, origin Sapporo, transmission time 1915 hours tomorrow...

  No!

  I clutched the little disk in its flimsy envelope with both hands, letting the rest of my mail tumble to the floor. You didn't. You couldn't. Not because of what happened at the Congress...

  "Hey, Roj?" Elijah Shelby was picking up my stuff and eyeing me askance. "You okay? You look like you seen a ghost. Bad news?"

  But momentary hope burst over me and I thought: Ghost! Ghost! Stop her stop her you can stop her —

  All around me the banalities of a small-town post office crowded with patrons, and the good old gaffer now radiating anxiety as he realized that something was really wrong, and I walked away still mind-shouting, pushed open the door, stood outside in the early morning sun yelling around the world into tomorrow's night.

  Then I ran, through the parking lot and across South Street to my bookshop, and fumbled with the old-fashioned key, and tripped on the sill, nearly dropping the precious disk. To the back room. Power up the player. (No. I couldn't print it. I never could. ) Slip the videogram into the slot and fall into my old swivel chair. No longer shouting to the Ghost but pleading to the kind-eyed naked-hearted Jesus whose picture had hung on Tante Lorraine's bedroom wall. Don't let her! Don't let her! But I knew she had.

  Her image smiled at me. She wore a plain Japanese robe and sat on her heels in front of a painted paper screen set in some outdoor courtyard or atrium. A small maple tree with spidery maroon leaves was visible behind the screen and there was a tinkling of falling water. Ume spoke to me with formality after the initial smile and bow of her head.

  "Roger, my dear friend... I have just returned from the Congress in Oslo. You know by now that there is a serious division among the operant leadership, brought about by our increasing despair over the unending violence that afflicts the world. The dream we once shared of leading humanity to permanent peace now stands revealed as mere arrogant presumption. How did we operants dare to think that we would succeed, when all throughout history well-meaning persons have tried again and again to foster peace, only to fail?

  "We tried to show humanity a fellowship of the mind, a new society where suspicion and fatal misunderstanding could be banished from political relationships, fostering a climate where peace might flower. But instead of this, we opened a chasm wider than before — a gulf be­tween operant and nonoperant. There is no fellowship, only envy and fear. There is no peace, only ever-spreading war.

  "You know how previous Congresses of operants would reaffirm, at the start of the proceedings, the ethic of love and nonaggression exem­plified by the illustrious martyr, Urgyen Bhotia. This philosophy, to­gether with its correlate — that operant minds have an obligation to love and serve selflessly those minds who stand a step beneath on ev­olution's ladder — was never seriously challenged during the twenty years of Metapsychic Congresses preceding this one.

  "O my friend! Now the challenge has been made.

  "It seemed so innocent, didn't it, when the symposium on political activism ended in an implacable deadlock! On the one side were Denis and Jamie and Vigdis, championing nonaggression, and on the other side, insisting that operants must now defend themselves and their countries with mental as well as physical force, were Tamara and Zhen­yu and — the shame! — Hiroshi. My own countryman! And Tamara, the mother of us all! My soul turned to ice as these three revered ones opened their minds to the assembly and showed the reasoning that had led them to abandon the precious heritage of Urgyen.

  "Yes... one may see the logic. The Soviet operants have suffered more terribly than any. Now that the dictator is dead and the Politburo begs them to return and unify their collapsing nation, how can they say no? They are offered great political power. Once before they were be­trayed, and they vow it will not happen again. One may see the logic!

  "But from it flow the consequents.

  "China fears the Soviet Union. It is rich in food and technology and its great northern neighbor starves for both as the civil war drags on in spite of the capitulation of Iran and the coup in Pakistan. And the rest of Asia contemplates with horror a conflict between the giants. What can save us? The Zap-Star net is unfinished. Now its defenses may be turned into weaponry! The EE adepts of every nation will survey the great laser batteries with increasing trepidation, wondering which country will first dare attempt the conversion... Japan fears that China may already possess this capability — and that it will be used as a pre­emptive strike against the Soviets...

  "Like an avalanche in my Hokkaido mountains, it has begun with a tiny slippage downhill. Soon it will be an unstoppable monster. We operants will lend it momentum. Yes. It was already happening in Oslo as we raised mental walls against one another, feeling the former mood of trust and goodwill begin sliding into an abyss. All of us, seeing the logic; forgetting the love and the dream.

  "I am saddened and shamed. In my pride I had cultivated tsuki-no-kokoro — the mind as calm as the moon. I tried to lead and teach. I never coerced. But I cannot create within myself that selfless power, that Center of vision that my people call the hara, that would give me courage to continue. I am a proud and foolish woman who long ago turned away from her own family, and again and again my mind shows me a small girl bringing humiliation upon her father. I must escape this girl and her shame.

  "O my friend! The pleasure we shared was good. The comfort we gave one another must be your remembrance of me, and not this image of pain. Burn the disk, Roger. Nakanai de kudasai. Sayonara. "

  She knelt silently then. There was no mat beneath her, only polished flagstones. She closed her eyes and her body tensed and I knew she was summoning the psychocreativity from what she called her Center.

  There was only a split second of flame before the video recording went to black.

  She had told me to destroy the disk: I could not. She had told me, in Japanese, not to cry: I did. But I did obey her request to remember our sharing; and I remember it now and possess, for a little while, my own tsuki-no-kokoro.

  27

  PITTSBURG TOWNSHIP, NEW HAMPSHIRE, EARTH

  31 JULY 2013

  "You WANTA WAIT here on the deck, Mr. O'Connor, Vic should be back from his swim in a jiff. Coolin' off nicely out here now that the sun's down. Varmints be comin' down to the water. You might like to catch a scan of 'em. Visitors often do. "

  "Thank you, Mr. Laplace, " Kieran said. "That might be interesting. What kinds of wildlife do you have in these parts?"

  "Moose, bear, panther — Vic even reintroduced woodland caribou couple years ago, when he first closed off Indian Stream Valley to the public. These north New Hampshire woods'll soon be back the way my ancestors knew 'em. Damn good thing, too. "

  "You're descended from the voyageurs?" Kieran inquired politely.

  "Them — and the Abnaki. Figure I got my long-sight from the Redskin side of the blanket and my coercion from the Canuck. " The gray-haired caretaker nodded toward an impressive instrument mounted on one of the deck railings. "Now some heads — uh — some operants like to use the spotterscope for spyin' wildlife if their long-sight gets a mite bewil­dered by the woods and the lake and all. Feel free. That there's a light-amp with optional warm-body targeting adjustable to the 'proximate size of the varmint you wanta scan. Try around four to six hunnerd kilos for moose, seventy to one-twenty-five for whitetail deer or bear... or a man. "

  Limping slightly, Kieran went to examine the scope. "Does Victor Remillard find much u
se for this?"

  Laplace let out a pitying guffaw. "You gotta be kidding!" Then the mien of exaggerated civility was back in place and he said, "Well, you just make yourself t'home while I take care of a few things. Like I said, Vic'll be along soon. "

  He turned and started to shamble away, then turned to say, "Not that I wanta give you a hard time, since Vic did say he was expecting you. But you had your orders from Mr. Fortier. Those heads of yours in the limo — they were told to go all the way back to the main Pittsburg road and wait. They ain't done that. I think you better flash 'em your tele­pathic high-sign. "

  Kieran said, "I'll do that, Mr. Laplace. A misunderstanding. "

  This time the operant yokel's deadpan expression was clearly contra­dicted by the contempt of his mental undertone. "And while you're at it, give a shout to them four fellers pussyfootin' this way through the woods along the south shore. Tell 'em to get their asses and their arse­nal back the way they come from before they fall into a bog... or somethin'. "

  Imbeciles! Adam Arnie damnyou didn't I tell you I'd handle this on my own get out and call off those piss-artist commandos!

  Kier we only wanted to maximize our options in case —

  GET OUT! "Well, I'm sorry about that, Mr. Laplace. An overzealous subordinate took it upon himself to countermand my explicit instruc­tions. "

  "A damn shame. But no harm done, I reckon. I try to see to that, Mr. O'Connor. We're just a little two-bit lash-up compared to your organization — but we get along. "