by Julian May
"I appreciate that. You might say that's why I'm here this evening. I've transmitted to my people direct orders for withdrawal. I intend to fulfill Mr. Remillard's conditions to the letter. You will let him know that?"
Laplace smirked and spat over the rail into the lake. From somewhere out on the water came an eerie warbling cry like demented laughter. "An owl?" Kieran asked.
"Nope. Loon. Alias the great northern diver, Gavia immer. Kinda relic of the late Neogene avifauna. Been yakkin' it up in these parts purt' near five, six million years. Long time to hold on to a sense of humor, but I reckon it helps a critter survive. Be seein' you, Mr. O'Connor. You be sure to tell Vic I was on the job. "
"I'll do that, " Kieran said dryly.
The gangling old fellow clumped off into the lodge's interior and Kieran let out a long sigh of pain. He closed his eyes, summoning the soothing black momentarily, and let it cradle him. Serene, he banished suspicion and anxiety and the gnawing in his groin; and when he opened his eyes he saw four bulky shapes wading out from a small heavily wooded cove a hundred meters or so down the shore to the right.
He flicked on the spotterscope and swung the barrel. A cow moose and her nearly full-grown triplets were feeding on water plants. He watched them for nearly ten minutes. The sky had gone to deep purple and the loons were cackling excitedly over toward the northern reaches of the lake, so Kieran aimed the light-amplifying device in that direction after programming the infrared mode to detect bodies in excess of ninety kilograms mass. The driving mechanism took over and Kieran kept his eye to the scope as it scanned the opposite shore, about twelve hundred meters away.
The target-grid flashed on. Gotcha! And Kieran zoomed in and found himself looking at another moose. But this was one of the most uncanny beasts he had ever seen, an enormous male standing half concealed among the dense second growth of balsam fir. His color was not the usual dark brown but burnished gray, like pewter; and the great rack of antlers, still dangling shreds of velvet, was whiter than bleached bone at the pronged edges and translucent with startling blood-veins in the broad, palmate centers and toward the base. The moose rubbed his fantastic skull adornment vigorously against saplings to scratch what must have been a colossal itch. Then he glared at Kieran from eyes like smoldering coals.
"I've named him Glaçon. Rather frivolous for such a massive brute, but it fit when he was a calf. He's a special pet. Genetically engineered albino. I always wondered what one would look like. "
Kieran continued his calm surveillance through the eyepiece. His farsight superimposed the image of Victor Remillard's face in the black forest portion of the visual field. "Glaçon... that means ice cube, doesn't it?"
"Or a cold-hearted devil of a person, " said Victor Remillard.
Kieran lifted his head from the scope. "He's beautiful. In this forest preserve of yours, he might even live to a ripe old age. " He didn't ask Victor if he would like to use the instrument. In farsight, the younger man was clearly his master. But that was not the metafaculty that mattered...
They faced off, the burly forty-three-year-old at his physical and mental prime and the dying old man. Kieran O'Connor's once olive skin was now sallow and deeply furrowed beside the thin-lipped Celtic mouth. The eyes were sunken, having the same insatiable ardor as Shannon's eyes; the mind behind them, however, had none of her fire but instead a beckoning well of unending night.
Come to me, said Kieran.
To me! Victor commanded.
Neither man moved.
The whooping of the loons reflected the laughter that flooded the aether. They disengaged and stood back.
Kieran shrugged. "We had to try. But it isn't really a stand-off, you know... You've won."
Victor was wary. "Explain."
"I must sit down, " Kieran said.
They moved to a couple of bogus Barcelona chairs and Kieran lowered himself with exquisite caution. "You know my physical condition. I will continue to survive on will power, however, until it suits me to end what I began. You are also probably aware that both the FBI and the Justice Department are rooting feverishly through my data banks, using methods both licit and illicit, determined to find or fabricate evidence that I am guilty of treason, conspiracy, racketeering, grand theft, and multiple counts of murder. "
Victor nodded.
"Do you know that your older brother Denis is responsible for this embarrassment of legal activism?"
"No... "
Kieran smiled sourly. "He and his partisans are also behind the recent spate of bills introduced into Congress that will empower operant investigators to meddle in the affairs of persons like you and me. The amendment permitting mental cross-examination was only the beginning, you know. "
"I know. All these years, they couldn't touch us. Denis knew what I was doing, but there was never any way he could prove it. He couldn't even prove I was operant — much less that I used the powers to take what I wanted. "
Kieran said, "A mechanical aura-detection device — ostensibly for use in identifying and classifying the faculties of operant newborns — is undergoing tests at the University of Edinburgh. Professor Jamie MacGregor will be demonstrating it at this year's Metapsychic Congress. "
Victor said nothing. But his mind transmitted both a query and an image of an intricate control console emplaced in a blind tower in the countryside west of Chicago.
"You want an explanation of that. " Kieran smiled and nodded almost absently. The pain was far away for the moment. "I should have thought it would be obvious. It's the key to ultimate victory. Once the victory would have been mine. Now I'm offering it to you. "
Kieran spoke on, slowly and simply, clothing the ludicrous notion of ruling the world through the Zap-Star's threat with a glowing plausibility, but at the same time making certain that Victor recognized the scheme as the fever-dream of an aging megalomaniac. The crude brain of the self-centered entrepreneur would be immediately aware of the gaping flaws in logic. He would visualize other ways of using Zap-Star, feasible ways. He would humor the madman, intuitively accepting Kieran's genuine need of him, but never grasping the hidden motive. As to the goal of the Absolute... its apprehension was as far beyond Victor Remillard as were the stars that had begun to twinkle in the summer sky of New Hampshire.
"It can all be yours. I've completed the instruments of transfer — of merger, actually, granting you control of everything I own. Once I'm gone, the feds have nothing. My corporations exist as independent legal entities and they're as legitimate before the bar of justice as any American business. All you need do is help me finish off our mutual enemies. "
"Denis? His Coterie at Dartmouth?"
"All of them, " Kieran said. "The metapsychic leadership of the world. The operant meddlers. They'll be right here in New Hampshire in mid-September having their annual confab. Even the breakaways from Russia and the Orient have agreed to send delegates for one last meeting. I can't touch them... but you could. I could show you how. Help you. My agents will see that the local chapters of the Sons of Earth are armed and equipped. You and your people — completely unknown to the government agents — provide the leadership and then disappear, leaving the mob to take the blame. "
Victor said, "And then?"
"I die. And you take everything I have. I've worked out the details in a way that should satisfy you. Three of my closest associates — the men who were with me from the beginning — are prepared to brief you on the entire operation, beginning to end, mind-screens down. You have as many of your people sit in as you like. "
"When can these associates of yours be here?"
"They're in the limousine that brought me, " Kieran said, "the one that your efficient long-sighted caretaker made certain I sent back to the Pittsburg Junction before you put in your appearance. "
Victor laughed. "Pete Laplace is the best farsensor I've got. Loyal as a Labrador retriever. With him and his old twelve-gauge hanging around, I'm as safe out here as a baby in a cradle. It's
just a damn shame that his IQ's only around eighty-six. "
"He seemed sharp enough to me... Well, Victor — what's your answer? Will you put those spoilers away for me and let me die happy?"
"Kieran, I'm only sorry I didn't think of the idea first! Let me get on the phone and get a few of my boys up from Berlin. It won't take more than an hour. Your bunch can follow them back in here. Meanwhile, you might like to join me in a little snack. "
Kieran closed his eyes. Sequestered behind impregnable walls, safe in the secret depths, he gave thanks to the Black Mother. In the end is the beginning. In death the source of life. Let Thy belly the void take us in. Dam dham nam tam tham dam dham nam pam pham
"Pete?" Victor was shouting. "Pete, you rapscallion — where are you hiding? We've got company coming and I need —oh, for God's sake! Kieran, you want to come in here and get a load of this? He's out like a light on the sun-porch couch, with the Browning tucked under his cheek and an empty bottle of Wild Turkey clutched to his chest! I guess I'll have to do my own cooking. "
28
FROM THE MEMOIRS OF ROGATIEN REMILLARD
IN AUGUST 2013 I encountered the Family Ghost again — at the White Mountain Resort.
The sprawling white-stucco wedding-cake hotel at the western foot of Mount Washington seemed hardly to have changed at all from the days when I had worked there as its convention manager. It was as ridiculously posh and Edwardian as ever and served the same sumptuous meals, and in spite of America's depressed economy it was still crowded with virtually the same type of clientele — upscale young families, hiking fanatics with sybaritic base-camp tastes, and herds of nostalgic oldsters on expensive guided tours. The latter now arrived by X-wing airbus instead of the diesel motor coaches of my day; but they still wore lapel badges, and they were still escorted by pretty young women, and the old ladies still cheeped and tittered eagerly while the old gents looked glum and resigned.
I had come to the hotel on business, to consult with the youngster who occupied my erstwhile position, one Jasper Delacourt. Ten years earlier the Twelfth Congress on Metapsychology had been held at the resort and Denis had roped me into making the arrangements. "Who," he had asked me reasonably, "could do a better job of it?" And so I did, and the hotel's Olde New England kitsch had charmed the socks off the foreign scholars, who found it a refreshing change from the modern university locales that had characterized most of the other Congresses. The cog railway had been a big hit, and the more able-bodied operants tramped around on Mount Washington during their spare time, marveling over the relict ice-age flora and the oddly portentous ambiance around the summit.
This year's Congress (which many people at Dartmouth feared would be the last) was also scheduled to be held at the resort, and so it was only natural that I should do a reprise of my 2003 duties. I had made most of the arrangements by phone and data-link months earlier; but as September approached I drove over to wrap things up in person.
Jasper Delacourt bounced up from behind his desk as I entered his office and wrung my hand. The hotel was extremely happy to be hosting twenty-eight hundred delegates during the somnolent post-Labor Day season.
"Roger, you old sonuvagun! God, you look great. Ten years, you haven't aged a day, my man!"
"You look pretty fit yourself, " I lied. "The Congress committee over at Dartmouth is really very pleased that you could accommodate us, given the more modest budget this go-around. "
Jasper sighed. "Things are tough all over. I can level with you because you used to sit in this seat, right? I have to hustle my ass off scratching up tours and conferences and sales meetings to keep this hulk topped off. If we had to depend on straight vacationers, we'd belly-up. "
I chuckled. "It wasn't all that different in '90, when I left. "
He studied me narrowly and I could see his mind doing calculations. "Jeez — that long ago? But I thought — How the hell old are you, anyhow?"
"In a week I'll be sixty-eight. "
"Holy moley, " Jasper groaned. "What — d'you get your seltzer from Pounce de Leeon's fountain, man? I'd of said forty-five ten years ago and say the same now. I mean, you got that lived-in look and Miss Clairol never made a dime off those silver curls — but sixty-eight? No shit?"
I shrugged. "Kind of runs in the family. I reckon I'll fall to pieces all at once at seventy... But don't let me waste your time. I know you've got a lot to do. Mainly, I want to noodle with you on the matter of our big Saturday night banquet on the twenty-first. Our attendance will be a couple of hundred short of last time, but you remember how we had tables packed cheek-to-jowl in the Grand Ballroom, and out in the hall, and even filling up the Fern Salon. There were closed-circuit TV monitors spotted around so the speeches could be heard by the nonfarsensitive. But, Jasper... metapsychic operants want to experience the full nuance spectrum when somebody sounds off! Conventional sensory input and ultrasensory. Is the speaker delivering with a straight tongue and mind — or is he or she peddling tosh? Listening to a TV just doesn't cut the mustard with an audience of heads. We've got to think of something else — and I don't mean a buffet. "
"Roger! Roger!" he chortled. "I'm way ahead of you, my man."
With a flourish, he produced a folder bound in fake leather and smacked it open on the desk, pressing the upper right-hand corner. Ta-dah! A twenty-by-thirty plaque, playing a full-color loop showing a series of lap dissolves of a luxurious mountaintop restaurant: exteriors at sunset, in sun-drenched daylight, in a majestic snowy night; interiors showing the place tricked out as a cabaret, hosting a bar mitzvah, wining and dining some affair of the New England Medical Association; close-ups of Lucullan feasts and après-hike fireside cheer. The book-plaque even had background music, for God's sake: Edward MacDowell's New England Idyls.
"The Summit Chalet!" Jasper declaimed. "Dine in opulent grandeur far above New Hampshire's White Mountains. Visit the fabled haunt of the Great Spirit, where even today flying saucers have been seen wafting through the crystalline air!"
"I remember now, " I said. "When they demolished the obsolete antenna farm and transmitter complex four or five years ago, they granted the hotel a concession to build the chalet. Is it paying its way?"
"Not yet, " Jasper confided. "We went way over budget on the environmental adaptations. You know — to keep it from blowing off the mountain when the wind's three hundred kloms an hour. The engineers finally licked it, though. A tornado couldn't budge that thing now. And what a showplace! Those globetrotting heads of yours'll eat it up, Roj."
I was dubious. "We're talking about moving nearly three thousand people up there from the hotel, Jasper. In maybe an hour. And then getting them back down after the banquet. "
"No problem. We bring in ten X-wing shuttle buses, make three trips. "
"Who eats the transport costs?"
"Goes with the deluxe dinner package: prime rib or lobster, BP and veggie, sabayon dessert, nonvintage champers, gratuity included — ninety bucks a head. "
I whistled. "Jasper — the budget! Do you realize that Dartmouth is so strapped that they're remerging the Department of Metapsychology with Psychiatry again? My nephew, the Nobel laureate, is getting shucked of two thirds of his staff! The research grants are gone, the endowments are gone, and this will probably be the last time the Congress meets for Christ knows how long. "
Jasper leaned toward me. "Then make it a whangdoodle. Take 'em out in style. "
"I don't see how I can justify —"
"Do me one favor. Go up and look the place over. "
A van trundled me half a klom to the X-wing pad, which was tucked behind a sound-baffle wall hidden amidst greenery. In less than five minutes the versatile aircraft that combined the speed of a fixed-wing with the limited-space landing requirements of a helicopter whisked me to the top of Mount Washington. We landed in a bowl newly cut on the eastern shoulder of the summit. I recalled that environmentalists had bitterly protested both the landing facility and the new restauran
t, demanding that the old Sherman Adams Summit Building, a graceless structure built in the 1980s, be retained as a historical monument and the rest of the summit be left "in a state of nature. " However, since virtually the entire top of Mount Washington was covered with trucked-in rubble, and had been humanly modified in one way or another beginning in the 1820s, the natural-staters hadn't had much of a leg to stand on.
The Summit Chalet was designed to blend with the lichen-crusted granite and dazzling hoarfrost that characterized New England's highest point. The building was trifoliate, the three lobes having armor-glass windows all around, providing maximum windowside seating. Its rock-strewn roof was surmounted by a wide turret with an observation deck and open balcony, mobbed with tourists on that balmy summer afternoon. On the level below the restaurant were boutiques, souvenir shops, and a small museum, together with more open balconies. A covered tunnel led to a new sheltered terminus of the little old cog railway, which was exactly as I had remembered it. After a short inspection tour I was admitted to one of the lower balconies by the chalet's manager and left alone to think things over.
One of the primitive steam locomotives was toiling up-slope from the vicinity of the White Mountain Hotel, pushing its coach. The trails crisscrossing the summit had the same yellow-paint blazes. The grass-like sedges were desiccated, but here and there tufts of alpine herbiage grew green and indomitable, speckled with tiny flowers.
... The shivering boy standing at my side, pointing, his mind detecting the first empowered mind not of our own family.
... Hikers ascending in a line from behind the cog track, and little Denis's farsight lending me a glimpse of the second miracle: Elaine.
It had all begun right here. It would be an appropriate place for the farewell.
The wind was stiff that day, blasting in from the west, and my eyes misted over. I felt again the strange aetheric vibrations and an eerie sense of looming presence. The mountain that was sacred. The mountain that had killed so many. The mountain that had heard foolish dreamers crying out to the uncomprehending stars, and nurtured wild tales of frost-demons and Great Carbuncles and flying saucers...