The Adversary

by Julian May

  "I know," Marc said. "I'm trying to decide if it's worth it."

  4

  THE STORM engulfed them; but before Hagen and Cloud could articulate a single thought, the King's mind spoke irresistibly:

  Sleep. Put it all aside now. All fear all anxiety all decision. There is only the dark and the water and the wind. The world sleeps invisible below and you on high are secure and guarded. Sleep...

  They awoke totally refreshed, seated side by side on a glass bench in a starlit garden. The faint tinkle of tiny bells in the trees and a partial glimpse of a tower delineated in yellow and violet sparks told them that they were back in Goriah, in the castle grounds.

  Hagen pushed off his hood and looked at his wrist chronometer. It was only a little after one in the morning. "My God, it took that Tanu, Minanonn, nearly four hours to carry us to Black Crag. The King's flown us back in less than ninety minutes!"

  "With a detour to Roniah," said a deep exotic voice from the shadows.

  Cloud was on her feet, straining her farsense. "Kuhal," she whispered.

  The Second Lord Psychokinetic stepped out onto the silver lawn. There was a human woman with him.

  Bewildered, Hagen managed to say, "Is that you, Diane?"

  "The King sent us both," said the daughter of Alexis Manion. "He said—and I quote—'It's been a long time since any of you had a fun-break. Go downtown and play. Tomorrow you can come back to the castle and we'll discuss the future.'"

  "Did—he tell you where we'd been?" Hagen asked.

  Kuahl said, "He told us everything. He said he had his reasons."

  Cloud nodded and spoke as if to herself. "We're not to be allowed to keep it a secret."

  A breeze blew up from the Gyre of Commerce, carrying the eerie skirling of an electronic bagpipe. Kuhal drew Cloud aside. "The King may not have realized, when he arranged this meeting, that you and I had agreed to set a wall between us. He knew we still farspoke one another over the leagues and shared our hearts' troubles. He saw that we were friends—"

  "And mistook it for love," she said.

  "It has always remained so, on my part."

  Cloud moved away from his touch. "And so you have been brought here to influence my decision. And Diane to sway Hagen."

  "I think you misjudge Aiken deeply. His motive was kindness, not machination."

  "Perhaps you're right."

  They walked along the shrub-bordered path, leaving the other couple behind at the lily pond. Mushroom-shaped glass lamps lit the way to an obscure gate in the garden wall that opened into the town greenbelt. Cloud kept her mind veiled. She still had the storm-suit hood covering her hair and the taut skin made her slender figure almost sexless, a glimmer of white moving along beside a demigod in barbaric High Table vesture.

  "Through all the turmoil of the last month," he said, "you farspoke me from this very garden."

  "Papa watched us," she said. "He says he didn't listen."

  "What matter if he did? The guilt owing to the Flood is his as well as yours. He might have gained insight, as you did."

  Cloud laughed, a sad, quiet sound. "Papa has enough guilt of his own to make the Flood deaths seem irrelevant. I doubt that he thinks of the event from a moral standpoint at all. We children asked his help in an expediency, and he condescended. But the crime was ours."

  "You are sorry," Kuhal said.

  "Most of us are," she admitted, "now. Now that we perceive you as real people instead of inconvenient abstractions standing in the way of our great undertaking. Yes, we're sorry ... but remorse isn't really enough, is it? Sterile brooding over the wrongs we've committed doesn't help. Not when the wrongdoing was so appalling."

  His mind reached out in empathy, only to strike the mental shield.

  She said, "As we flew down to Black Crag, I mind-spoke at some length with Minanonn the Heretic, asking him how he had found peace after realizing the futility of the battle-religion. He told me that a change of heart isn't really sufficient recompense for a great sin. It has to be affirmed by some kind of repentant action or the mind can't purge guilt, and if we try to deny this, then the soul finds its own penance, as Papa's has tried to do. But in his case, where he consciously rejects atonement, there will never be any true peace ... Hagen and I and the others don't reject the idea of recompense, as Papa has. But we don't know how to atone for what we did to your people."

  "Your father has offered you one possible course of action," Kuhal said. "Mental Man could be a force for wisdom and goodness in this galaxy."

  Her mind-veil parted briefly, letting irony escape. "It could—if Papa and Hagen weren't part of the scheme. But I know my father better than anyone. He says that Hagen and I would be the administrators—but he'd never let us be. Not while he lived. And if my brother killed him—as he would, inevitably—Mental Man would carry the mark of Cain, just like all the rest of the human race."

  "And mine," Kuhal said.

  Her mind flashed a smile. "You do understand."

  "We understand each other, Cloud. And I think you speak of this now only to bolster your courage, for you know very well what you must do, what decision you must make—and convince your brother to share."

  "Hagen's going to be terribly afraid, Kuhal. Back on Ocala, when Alexis Manion first began to talk to us about the Unity as an alternative to Papa's plan, Hagen was almost paralyzed at the very notion of defiance. As much as he feared Papa and wanted to escape, the thought of confronting a Galactic Mind in the Milieu—becoming a part of it—frightened him still more. We're a self-centered lot, we Remillards. Jealous of our individuality."

  "Don't I know that!" The yearning insufficiency reached out to her. The need. "And love does mean a surrender of some part of the heart's sovereignty. But not subordination, Cloud. Not in real love. And not in this Unity we must all join, either, if it is as Elizabeth's mind shows it. Your father's rejection of the Unity was part of his greater rejection of love in favor of power."

  "You're wrong! Papa does love us. And he loved Mama to the point of unreason. He's passionately concerned with the welfare of the human race—"

  "In the abstract, perhaps. But not the untidy, bloody-minded verity of real people."

  She refused to respond to this.

  Kuhal said, "I understand very well why your father was called the Angel of the Abyss. The Goddess leads and teaches her children, trying to bring them to maturity, and weeps over their obtuseness. But Abaddon would force his offspring into perfection."

  Cloud's mind smiled. "You don't know how lucky you Tanu are to have perceived deity as a goddess. Mothers are much more inclined to let their children grow up at their own pace."

  They came to the garden gate. The lights of the city twinkled through the open woodland and they heard crowd noises. The sound of music was much louder, the pipes wailing some restless chase tune.

  "Do you think you'll have much trouble convincing Hagen?" Kuhal asked.

  "I'll have most of the others on my side, with the principal exception of Nial Keogh, who's a vicious little power seeker. Some of them, like Diane Manion, are simply timid about going to the Milieu and more inclined to accept the devil we know rather than the one we don't. But I think I'll be able to handle things. You'll help, won't you? Thanks to your advice, I was able to do a pretty good job smoothing over the mess after that stupid attack on the King's life at the iron foundry. No doubt you'll be able to suggest some ploys for dealing with this situation as well."

  "Politicking," he said whimsically. "Why shouldn't I know the game? I've been at it for more than four hundred years."

  She started, then laughed. "Yes. You have, haven't you? You Tanu live so long. How long do you live, Kuhal?"

  "It's been said that we seldom see three millennia out, the perils of the battle-company being what they are, and the shortage of Skin practitioners. I was most fortunate to have you as my redactor."

  "You began to love me even then," she accused him. "That's what made your healing so effective. Bodura
gol said so."

  "It was mutual."

  "It wasn't! We simply have mental affinity. We're very close, but that's not the same as love."

  "It's a beginning," he suggested.

  "You'll always be my dearest friend. But—"

  "You don't wish me to follow you through the time-gate? My presence would be an embarrassment to you?...Very well. I will stay here."

  "No!" she cried. For the first time she let her barriers down. "I don't really love you—but what would I do without you?"

  His mind responded with a formless outcry, human in its joy born of desolation. He held both her hands and she felt the electric warmth of his life-force flow through their clasped fingers and set every nerve ending in her body ablaze. Joined in a single aura, thestately robed figure and the small white-clad one filled the dark corner of the garden with rosy gold light. It lasted only an instant. Then they walked hand in hand through the gate.

  ***

  "But it solves everything, darling—don't you see?" Diane Manion was desperately eager. "This way, there'd be no worry about the Milieu treating us as criminals, no fear of being punished or possibly ostracized because of who we are ... You say Marc lied to you. But only about inconsequential things! The really important matter—that all of us children should share in the creation of a grand new race of ultrametapsychics—was true! It's what Marc has said all along. What we learned from Falemoana and Dr. Curtisand Trudi when we were little children. But now your father's dream isn't far off in the future, or dependent upon some altruistic race coming to fetch us off this godforsaken planet. It's now! We can leave here and begin the work!You and I can have an army of super-Cubs of our own, Hagen! I wouldn't mind the other. I mean, it would be all test tubes and artificial nurture, just like the nonborns in the Milieu colonies, so I couldn't possibly be jealous. I'd be proud! Darling— you are the key to this whole glorious idea—not Cloud! If what you say is true, then your sister has only a single ovary. Perhaps one hundred thousand gametes if they all proved viable, which they wouldn't. But you—"

  "Lucky me." Hagen laughed softly. "I'm a male, and I could sire millions and millions. With banked sperm and a little tissue culture, Mental Man could propagate for aeons even if I should die. Accidentally."

  He was standing at the shore of the garden pond, not looking at her. The night-blooming waterlilies gave off a pineapple fragrance. Diane had been almost totally unaware of his mood, so thick had been his mental screening. He had simply confirmed the report that Aiken had given Diane about the meeting with Marc, then asked her for her reaction. Now hehad it.

  "It's not as though we wouldn't have children of our own," she protested.

  "And how will you feel when it comes time to take the babies' bodies away?"

  "Bodies ... away?"

  Hagen whirled about, seizing her by the arms, crushing them through the light fabric of her Tanu gown. "That's part of it, you little fool! Not just for the artificially engendered children—for all of them! They're to be bodiless, like my sainted Uncle Jack, to force them to utilize their full mental potential. Naked brains that conjure up psychocreative disguises to hide their inhumanity! But better than Jack—oh, I'll hand Marc that! They'll be immortal, and able to hook themselves into cerebroenergetic enhancers whenever they please, without being inconvenienced by primitive appendages such as arms or legs or hearts or guts. Brains without faces! Without lips to kiss or hands to touch each other. Neat, efficient brains with needle-electrodes in them, glowing white-hot with great thoughts! What will they think about, Diane? Will they dream? Will they find things to laugh at? Will they love each other? Will they love us and thank us for making them that way? Will they, Diane?"

  His mind opened, showing a black thing roughly humanoid in shape, self-contained, armored against the world, divorced from its unnecessary body, its ultrasenses prowling the galaxy on a never-ending search for other minds like itself—and finding none, resolving to make such minds. Don't cry, Hagen. Don't be afraid. It's only Papa...

  Hagen said, "He's got a second suit of armor there in Kyllikki, ready for me."

  Diane screamed.

  He folded his arms around her then and held her to his breast. The white antelope skin of the storm-suit was soft, warmed by the living flesh inside, faintly redolent of wax and tanning compound and human sweat. The face that looked down at her was haggard, wet with tears, in need of a shave, the jaw trembling with tension and still scarred on the left side with the psychosomatic stigma of the hook. A face that was almost Marc's.

  "He won't let us go," Diane whispered in terror.

  "With Aiken Drum on our side, we can give him a damn good run for his money," Hagen said. "And if the old wolf starts getting too close to the fleeing sleigh—well, I can always make Marc a present of the other nut. Then he'd have his Mental Man and we'd be free of him forever."

  She burst into tears, and then she was laughing with him, and then the laughter was smothered in their kisses. He said, "Come on, babe," and led her to the starproof shadow of a flowering daphne. After they had coupled they lay on their sides, face to face, and body to body, clinging to one another. The turf was dewy and none too soft and a chill breeze stole over the pond, but still they lay together sharing warmth and breath.

  "I wish we could have made Mental Man tonight," he said. "Damn that implant."

  "I'll ask Becky Kramer to take it out tomorrow."

  "The kid will be born in the Milieu," Hagen said, "or we'll just fly away, babe. The three of us. Okay?"

  "Yes."

  They held each other more tightly and let the mental images drift from one mind to the other. Fears. Elizabeth's reassurance. Dangers. The possible failure of the Guderian Project. Alexis Manion's persistent reassurance last winter in Ocala that they would only find fulfillment in the Unity ... as would their child.

  "And it'll be immortal, like you," Diane whispered tremulously.

  "Self-rejuvenating," Hagen corrected her. "And in case you're fearful of losing your endearing young charms, let me remind you that some of the time-travelers in our lab went through four refit jobs in tanks back in the Milieu, and would likely have kept up the good work indefinitely if they hadn't hankered for the primitive life here in the Pliocene."

  Diane giggled. "Can't you imagine the consternation among all those sensible stay-at-home Milieu folks when we pop through the time-gate and tell them we have the grandson of Mental Man in embryo?"

  Hagen made an indelicate noise. "That'll be the first shock. If this thing works out, we'll be lucky if the whole exile population doesn't come along with us. Cloud and her faerie prince aren't the half of it."

  Diane was quiet for a long moment. "Hagen—she wouldn't stay, would she? She says she doesn't love Kuhal. She wouldn't be tempted to sacrifice herself for the rest of us, would she?"

  "For Papa's sake, you mean? Don't kid yourself! In the first place, you were all too right when you noted that in the Mental Man game, the male of the species has natural advantages over the female. Papa wants me. Why do you think he let Cloud go to Europe with Elaby and the others, but kept me there in Ocala? I'm to take his place."

  "Cloud has the genes," Diane insisted. "Marc could use her."

  "She wants Unity more than any of us! Cloud and Elaby were the first ones to be convinced by Alex that rebellion was the better part."

  "But Elaby's dead, Hagen, and Cloud says she'll never fall in love with anyone again and risk the pain—"

  "My cerebral sister wouldn't know love if it bit her on the ankle. No matter what she says, she and Kuhal will follow right along with the rest of us ... and if you think our offspring will rock the Milieu, what about a Tanu-Remillard cross?"

  "We Manions have our hidden marvels, too. Let me show you one."

  There followed a good deal of laughter and other pleasantry. But all too soon the stars dimmed and disappeared behind an overcast. As the first drops of rain from the next storm fell upon them, they helped each other to dress and had a last k
iss. Then Hagen spun a small psychocreative umbrella and they walked under it back to the Castle of Glass, intending to give their decision to the King.

  Aiken was not at home.

  Neither was the Guderian Project laboratory, its personnel, the giant sigma-generator, or the twenty-one aircraft that had been parked in the castle courtyard.

  ***

  There was pain of translation and then he hung in the gray limbo, not for a subjective instant as during his former d-jumps, but for an excruciating quarter of an hour, since he was experimentally transporting three tons of inert matter in addition to his regular armor. He endured while the stubborn fabric of space bent to his mind's command and the hyperspatial catenary was executed: a nonline drawn through a nondimensional region by a nonforce.

  Imprisoned inside the refrigerated and ultrapressurized CE rig, the supercharged brain was deprived of all normal and all metasensory input. Hyperspace was without form and void. He was fully conscious and self-possessed within its matrix, as though he rode a superluminal starship; but there the analog ended. If he had been on a ship he might have slept or read or taken light exercise or eaten or amused himself in any number of ways, trusting to the ship's crew and machinery to translate him across more than 14,000 light-years of interstellar space.

  Instead, he was the ship.

  He had no artificial guidance system, no computerized routefinder such as a starship captain had, no engine powered by fusing nuclei to energize his passage. The equipment worn by his brain served only to assist in puncturing the superficies. It let him enter hyperspace via an upsilon-field gateway; but once inside the gray limbo, there was only the mental program to provide direction and impetus. It was a wondrous program, purchased at great price, and its use was not for the fainthearted. Seeming to move along an invisible cable hung between two worlds, the d-jumper did not dare to relax his concentration for an instant. His attention must not falter, must not be distracted from the goal by a single vagrant thought. The goal alone was life. If his mind relinquished it for the millionth part of a second, he would be lost.