by Julian May
“When were you intending to make this trip?” I cleverly conveyed seesaw vibes, hinting that I might be starting to cave in.
“Just as soon as I finish my dissertation on hierarchical lattices in tau-field coupling. Say, two weeks from now. The first week in November.”
I uttered a sigh of spurious near-capitulation. “Did it slip your mind that there are three more Hydras hiding somewhere in the woodpile? They’re probably all High Fives! In metaconcert, the quartet would certainly be able to zap you to scrapple—even if you are a bush-league paramount. And Hydra would cook my poor old goose for damn sure if you roused its suspicions—no matter how I tried to hide.”
My cowardice provoked a pitying smile. “If I can probe members of the Remillard Dynasty without their knowing it, I can do the same to a Hydra.”
“You’ve got to promise,” I muttered, “that you won’t try anything with this suspect unless we can get close to him in some public place.”
Quick as lightning, she flung her arms around me and planted a kiss on my cheek. “I promise! You won’t be sorry you helped me, Uncle Rogi.”
“I hope to hell not …” The woodpecker was at work again, and I got out my image recorder and started fiddling with it, careful to keep my mental screen at max.
“There’s no assurance this man is a Hydra-unit, of course,” Dorothée said in an odd tone of voice. “He could be perfectly innocent or even an agent of the Lylmik like Gran thought. But if he does turn out to be one of Fury’s henchmen, I’ll be well on the way to nabbing the rest of them as well.”
“How? The others could be on any human world in the Milieu.”
“I have something Fury wants very much. Me! And if it can’t have me, if I break off the games I’ve been playing with it and tell it to go to hell …” She turned away, but not before I had seen a new look on her face, as grim as that of a mountaineer who must conquer a lengthy, mortally dangerous pitch if the climb is not to end in failure.
Suddenly I knew what Dorothée’s long-range scheme was. My appalled expression gave away what my screened mind concealed.
“That’s right, Uncle Rogi. If I deliberately reject Fury, it will send Hydra to kill me. But if I know the true mental signature of even one of the units, I’ll be ready for them.”
“Jésus! You’re hardly more than a child, Dorothée! The Hydras are—”
“I know what they are,” she said bleakly. “I met two of them face to face and I … perceived … all four of them just after they’d committed the murders in Scotland. Fury can change the superficial mental signatures of the Hydras, which is why they’ve been able to remain at large. But it can’t change their true metapsychic complexus—the total assay of higher faculties in each mind. The MPC is unique in every mature operant. Even more individual than a DNA scan. Ordinarily, only an expert in coercive-redactive probing can fully analyze an adult mind, and Milieu law requires the consent of the probee before the procedure can be carried out. But of course, I don’t face those limitations.”
“Ça n’a pas de nom!” I wagged my head at the gall of her.
She flashed me a sudden smile, supremely self-confident. But an instant later her mask was back in place and when she spoke, her voice was low and intense. “I’ll never forget what my ultrasenses showed me that day in the Islay death-cave. At the time, I couldn’t understand what was happening. I was like a baby hearing some horrible off-key chord of music played by a symphony orchestra. I had no idea what kind of instruments were making the sound, much less the harmonic pattern of the metaconcert—which is analogous to the intricate vibrations of the air molecules that actually produce musical sounds.”
“But you did remember the whole? The—the song of the Hydra?”
“I remember.”
“Could you transfer the data to another operant mind?”
She shook her head. “I won’t.”
“I see.” But something still puzzled me. “Why do you need to go to Okanagon, then? Why risk probing this guy when you could flush the Hydra out at any time simply by telling Fury to take a flying fibrillation?”
“It would be a safety precaution. If I probe this individual and discover that he’s a Hydra-unit, my knowing his true mental signature will enable me to track him with my farsight. In time, I’d learn the identity of the other units through him—”
I brightened. “Then you could blow the whistle on them without baiting a trap with yourself!”
She shook her head. “I’d still have to let Hydra come after me. My evidence would have been obtained illegally. My private convictions are insufficient grounds for making a citizen’s arrest—or even reporting the suspects to the Magistratum as possible perps of the Islay murders.”
The pileated woodpecker hammered again, drilling after some hapless grub that thought itself safe deep within a mass of solid wood.
“For the final confrontation,” I said, with forlorn hope, “I presume you’d find some way to bring in the authorities.”
Dorothée brushed lunch debris from her jeans. She opened her daypack, took out her own camera, and peered through it, adjusting the settings using me as the subject. Her face was concealed behind the device as she said, “I haven’t decided yet. I won’t let Hydra escape, if that’s what’s worrying you.”
That was hardly my principal concern, but I had no intention of letting her know that. Secure within my mental ramparts, I tried frantically to think of the best way to stop the child from committing this piece of suicidal folly. And of course there was my own precious ass to consider, too. All very well for her to say I could keep out of the way while she did her mental assault; but Hydra knew me. If Mister High Five caught Dorothée in the act, it would be child’s play for him to discover who’d brought her to Okanagon. Then good night, nurse!
Two weeks.
I had a little over two weeks to come up with some way to forestall the trip to Okanagon. I couldn’t stop her all by myself. I needed help—and from a magnum cranium that couldn’t possibly be Fury.
Only one person filled the bill. If I called him today, he’d either come to the rescue in his private express starship or think of some other way to checkrein Dorothée. Meanwhile, I’d have to hide out so the crazy kid couldn’t catch me with my screen down and uncover my ploy.
I’d go to Kauai! To Malama Johnson, pretending it was just an innocent visit to an old friend. Dorothée might be able to track me there with her ultrasenses, but the powerful Hawaiian kahuna woman would keep me safe from kidnapping or premature bean-spilling.
Until Ti-Jean came to the rescue …
“Would you rather go home now, Uncle Rogi?” Dorothée had the grace to look slightly ashamed of herself for having bullied me.
“Not on your life!” I said cheerfully. “Let’s go snap that damned woodpecker. You get a farsight fix and I’ll work out the best way to sneak up on it without scaring it away. I’m pretty good at that sort of thing.”
Ti-Jean figured out a way to save both of us, but it was a close squeak.
He was on Satsuma with Marc, winding up an important CE geophysical project. When I called him via subspace from Kauai, got him to focus his ultrasense on me, and farspoke him the lunatic scheme of Dorothée, it took him a full half-minute to figure out how to salvage the situation.
His mind said to me: Our work here on the Japanese world has been a great success. We managed to avert a seismic catastrophe and we’re heroes. I don’t think there’s a piece of fireworks left unburnt on the entire planet. Now here’s my plan: Marc wants to celebrate the triumph with his research associates and friends as soon as we get back to Earth. He’s going to throw a big Halloween party at his place on Orcas Island. See that you and the girl come, and I’ll take care of the rest.
When I televiewed Dorothée and invited her to the party, she very nearly refused to attend. But I wheedled her insidiously, pointing out that she’d asked for my help—and here I was, offering her an unprecedented chance to catch the entire Remillard
Dynasty off guard and further refine her Fury probability researches.
“Nothing lowers inhibitions like a masquerade,” I asserted with a telling wink, “even when the participants are hotshot operants. They’ll all be drinking and dancing and carrying on and trying to fool their friends with mental disguises. You can slither around in the thick of the wingding, slipping in the mental shiv. I’ll introduce you as my girlfriend Surya. All you have to do is fake the aura of a barely operant person when you’re first introduced and then keep your own walls up.”
Dorothée finally agreed to go … if only because it presented her with a perfect opportunity to examine the otherwise inaccessible psyches of Marc and Jack. She also told me that on the day following the party—which was Halloween proper—she and I would be off like a couple of bats out of hell, en route to Okanagon.
“I’ll meet you at the masquerade on Orcas Island,” she said, crackling with authority. “Wear a decent costume. I guarantee I’ll have one that’ll knock your socks off.”
18
ORCAS ISLAND, WASHINGTON, EARTH 30 OCTOBER 2072
May I/WE ask why we should go dearestFury?
[Jealousy.] She’s not to be trusted. She should have been killed as soon as her paramount potential was identified. I/WE have told you this again and again. Why must you even consider recruiting another unit? We’ve become invincible! Any two of us can control the most powerful Grand Master in the Human Polity. Celine and Quint are progressing splendidly on Okanagon and Parni and I have the EuroRebel contingent eating out of our hands. It was laughably easy to eliminate the Sánchez woman before she reported the Cambridge mental laser experiment to the university authorities.
Thank you. It would be more … gratifying if I/WE had more of your personal attention.
I/WE can give you all the help you need! You never should have approached her. She’s dangerous and her full metapotential is still unclassified. She may even exceed the Great Enemy in certain faculties. If you let her live long enough for the Lylmik to initiate her and affirm her paramount status she may discover exactly what you’ve been doing. She may discover YOU.
Let me/US kill her! I/WE are afraid of her! She’s as dangerous as the Great Enemy. More dangerous!
“Just one minute more,” Masako Kawai said to her husband. She stood before a dressing table scattered with cosmetics, studying herself in the mirror. “This awful rice powder isn’t covering properly. My face should be whiter for an authentic Samurai-lady look.” She took up the powder puff again.
“You’re a dream of beauty, Masa,” Hiroshi Kodama reassured her. “That peach-colored kimono is quite the loveliest one I have ever seen. How fortuitous it is that the Seattle area has so many citizens of Japanese ancestry. These costumes Shigeru Morita borrowed for us are marvels of authenticity.” The voice of the Satsuma Dirigent was muffled by his mempo, a demonic iron mask that was part of the magnificent reproduction bushi armor he wore. The fierce Samurai walked his gloved fingers up the exquisite lady’s silken back and tickled her neck beneath the elaborate black wig.
“Stop it, Hiro! It took me half an hour to anchor that thing properly.” She applied more powder to her nose.
The warrior chuckled wickedly, abandoning the Standard English of the Human Polity to speak in Japanese. “You forget, Masako-chan, that I am now your lord and master! Your very life belongs to me to dispose of as I wish.” The hands crept beneath her arms, onto her breasts.
“If you attempt an assault on my ivory citadel wearing that armor,” she said, speaking the ancient language with considerably more precision, “you will destroy my borrowed costume and possibly do your own precious jade stem an irreparable injury.” Wriggling out of his grasp, she tucked a small dagger called a kaiken into her obi along with her fan, turned to him, and reverted to English. “I’m ready. Let’s have a look at you.”
Docile now, the Dirigent of Satsuma let his wife retie the cords of his kabuto helmet in a more symmetrical bow, after which she kissed his iron nose. “You’ll be roasting inside that mask before long,” she said, “but I must say that you look madly sexy. Let’s buy some costumes like these and take them back to Satsuma with us for our private amusement. We’ve endured frontier hardships long enough. Now that the quake danger is defused, I’d like some attention paid to my own seismic stresses.”
He bowed formally to her. “As you command, Lady.”
Hiroshi Kodama and Masako Kawai had come to Earth for business reasons, together with several other Satsuma officials, on the same starship as Marc and Jack Remillard. Later in the week there would be meetings in Seattle at CEREM, the new corporate affiliate of Marc’s research establishment that was headed by Pete Dalembert and Shigeru Morita. The Japanese planet was prepared to open negotiations for an important sale of cerebroenergetic equipment. Meanwhile, Hiroshi and Masako were houseguests in Marc’s huge, many-leveled home.
They left the bedroom and made their way down the long, windowed upper hall. The house was constructed in Pacific Northwestern style from cedar, stone, and glass and seemed to grow out of the western flank of Orcas Island’s Turtleback Mountain. Almost every room commanded a view of the moonlit President Channel, other islands of the San Juan group, and even Vancouver Island far to the west. Flurries of moving lights in the air and among the tall Douglas firs down along the seashore signaled the arrival of guests by rhocraft or by groundcar from the submarine tunnel interchange at West Beach a few kilometers away.
Nearly two hundred metas had been invited to help celebrate the triumph of the Remillard brothers on Satsuma. Marc had arranged for the chef of the famous old Rosario resort on Orcas to cater a sumptuous buffet, and an amateur combo of operant musicians, all friends or associates of his, was tuning up on the awninged terrace. Hiroshi and Masako went down two flights of stairs to the ground floor and found themselves swept up in a colorful mob.
“To be a correct ancient Samurai woman,” Hiroshi whispered to his wife, “you should trail behind me by several respectful steps.”
“Jodan desho!” she retorted, snapping open her fan and taking his arm. “There are limits.”
Some masqueraders made no attempt to conceal their identities, while others had gone to extremes of mystification. Impromptu guessing games, accompanied by a good deal of raucous laughter and shouting, were de rigueur. With no nonoperants present who might be scandalized, the metapsychic partygoers were clearly ready for unrestrained tomfoolery. Historic ethnic dress seemed particularly popular, but there were plenty of traditional North American Halloween costumes as well—witches, wizards, Frankenstein monsters, ballerinas, cartoon animals, comic-book superheroes, pirates, nuns, and clowns. A rotund Falstaff escorted a bangled belly dancer, a top-hatted Marlene Dietrich clone fluttered false eyelashes seductively at a matador, Marie Antoinette simpered through a mask-on-a-stick at a vizarded Sherlock Holmes, a Lakota chief in war p
aint offered a drink to a demure Wonder Woman, the Mad Hatter cackled at a joke told by a Chinese dragon with a two-meter tail supported by psychokinesis, Achilles and Patroclus strolled together arm in arm, clad in golden Greek armor, and the band—with beaming Shig Morita conducting from the piano—launched into “Stray Cat Strut.”
It was a fine autumn evening, not too chilly. As Masako and Hiroshi came out of the house onto the terrace they encountered Lucille Cartier and Denis Remillard. Both wore doctoral academic gowns trimmed with the spruce-green and gold velvet of the School of Metapsychology.
“Komban wa!” said Denis, bowing cheerfully. He had recognized the pair from Satsuma at once. “You two look smashing. Lucille and I opted for just grabbing something out of the closet.”
“Shame on you for looking so comfortable,” said Hiroshi.
Masako, looking over Lucille’s shoulder, suddenly gave an unbelieving gasp. “Good heavens! Can that be Marc in the E16 helmet?” She indicated a bizarre tall figure in white-tie evening dress dancing with a Valkyrie. His head was almost entirely enclosed in a grotesque black CE headpiece with jack-o’-lantern features pasted on.
Lucille shrugged. “Who else? He says he’s a high-tech Brom Bones from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. I suspect he’ll do tricks with the equipment at the shank of the evening.”
“And is young Jack also among the masquers?” Hiroshi inquired.
“We haven’t found him yet,” Denis admitted, “although he’s certainly here. That was a fantastic piece of work those two did on your world. As I understand it, Kagoshima Metro is now safe from major tremors for at least fifty Earth years.”
“So the Milieu scientists say. We’re all very relieved that the largest settlement on our world is finally out of danger.” Hiroshi shook his armored head. “I still find it incredible that two human minds could have modified the crust of a planet. Even twenty years ago, such a feat would have been called impossible. Naturally, we cannot expect the two Paramount Grand Masters to come to our rescue regularly, so we’re establishing a CE training facility that will emphasize the geophysical applications of metaconcerted creativity. The governments of other worlds suffering crustal instability are helping in its financing and staffing. Okanagon will contribute teaching personnel. Your metaconcert programs, Denis, will be a valued part of the curriculum.”