Diamond Mask

by Julian May

  Dee nabbed Marc during the Ladies’ Choice waltz. At first he had attempted to demur because of the difference in their heights: he was over 40 centimeters taller than she, and the black jack-o’-lantern of the CE helmet made him even taller.

  But she said, “You can’t back out of Ladies’ Choice, Big Boy!” She took both his hands in hers and gave him a coercive nudge that made his eyes widen. Then he laughed at her audacity, and they swung out onto the floor together. She was so light on her feet that they seemed to complement each other perfectly, a pair of graceful grotesques, and many of the other couples stopped to watch.

  But she found it impossible to get into his mind.

  No fair! she said. You’ve got the hat energized haven’t you.

  He said: The E16’s internal power source won’t move mountains, but it’s quite adequate to Diamondproof me. You’ll simply have to take my word that I’m neither Fury nor part of Hydra.

  “A likely story,” she said aloud. She tried to pull away from him but he held her gloved hands tightly. “Let go.”

  “Don’t make a scene. You wanted to dance. Do it.”

  “You big bully!” The diamond mask hid her fury at being momentarily outmaneuvered, but after a moment’s hesitation she submitted.

  Marc only laughed. He had not bothered to extend his augmented power to an external disguise, and she could easily see through the bulky CE helmet with its zany stuck-on features to the ironically smiling face beneath. It was safe to assume that he could see her face, too.

  “I’m delighted to meet you, Dorothea Macdonald. Since you’ve had a go at probing the other Remillards, I believe it’s only fair to give me a turn with you.”

  Her dancing feet never missed a beat but the eyes above the glittering mask hardened. “Try it.”

  He did, gently at first and then with building intensity, calling at last upon the maximum enhancement potential available with the limited power source of the helmet. His mental probe would have cracked a Krondaku Grand Master; it did not faze the fifteen-year-old girl.

  “Bonté divine! You are a prodigy, aren’t you, Diamond Mask! Your mind-screen’s as strong as Jack’s.”

  “Good.”

  “You’re hostile … what a shame. And we’ve just met.”

  “Let’s not pussyfoot,” she retorted. “You were expecting me to do just what I did. Your CE equipment is set for the augmentation of coercion—not creativity.”

  The black jack-o’-lantern nodded. “The helmet is capable of enhancing only one metafaculty at a time. Switching it over requires the insertion of a different brainboard. It’s not difficult. The original interface will be plugged back in before I perform my bag of tricks later in the evening.”

  “What are you going to do to me now?” she asked calmly. “Prosecute me for felonious mental trespass against members of your family?”

  “I’m going to waltz with you,” Marc said.

  “No warning me off the Remillard preserves with threats of legal retaliation?”

  “Your enemy is ours. Believe me! We should join forces, not work at odds. My brother Jack would like to—”

  “No!” For the first time, her silver-clad body faltered. “I don’t want anything to do with that—with him.”

  “He’s human,” Marc said softly. “He was very impressed by your probing this evening. He says he couldn’t have done anything approaching it without cerebroenergizing. You’re an appalling young woman, Diamond Mask. I hope the Lylmik waste no time magnatizing you. You’ll join our elite little club then, whether you want to or not.”

  “If they make me a paramount, I’ll carry out whatever duties the position entails.” Her tone was stilted.

  “Paramount Grand Masters have no special obligations aside from the usual duties of a magnate, but sometimes suggestions are made. It was suggested that Jack and I take a bash at the Satsuma seismic problem. We did and we got lucky. But I nearly died.”

  “How?”

  Marc showed her. “In this configuration, I was the prime focus, the one actually directing the flow of energies. Unfortunately, we had failed to calibrate our atypical mental potential precisely enough, and because of this the metaconcert suffered a dysergistic failure. What we call an all-systems zorch—a funny name for a not-so-funny phenomenon. The pressurized atmosphere inside the deep-drilling machine we rode in suddenly ionized into white-hot plasma because of misdirected creativity. Jack might have had a pico-sec’s warning through the proleptic metafaculty—the one that allegedly sees the future—or perhaps his mind just outraced the expanding ions. At any rate he cut out of the concert and spun a psychocreative shield around me that saved my bacon. The ionization was gone as fast as it came but the cab of the driller and part of its instrumentation were fried. The surface crew descended and rescued us within two hours. Then Jack and I modified the config of the concert, climbed into a new deep-driller, and tried again. The second time was the charm. We were able to diminish the friction within the fault zone—to ‘lubricate’ it with a creative injection of carbon—and minimize the danger of a serious quake in that area for a useful number of years.”

  “Why wasn’t your brother burnt to a crisp in the plasma blowout?”

  “He was in his natural mutant form. It seems to be invulnerable. At least, nothing’s ever been able to harm him yet.”

  The music ended and Marc and Dee applauded.

  “Thank you for the dance,” she said. Will I be expected to undertake mortally dangerous work like this if I’m named a paramount?

  Marc said, “It was my pleasure, Citizen Macdonald.” Only if you feel you must. You’re free to make your own choice.

  The band began to play a techno variation of “Pompton Turnpike” and Lucille Cartier and Denis Remillard materialized out of the crowd.

  “Your mother insists on having a whirl with you, Marc,” Denis said. “I think she wants to make certain you’re all in one piece.” He bowed to Dorothea Macdonald. “If you’ll accept a default partner, my dear?”

  “I’d be honored, Professor Remillard,” she said.

  As they danced away she slipped carefully through Denis’s mindscreen, slid the probe home, and began to weave the bypass structure.

 

  Fury. I expected you earlier. It’s a goddam catastrophe.

 

  Is it ruined then? Your great scheme for the Second Milieu?

 

  The other units can … carry on successfully without me until you recruit more?

 

  I’m ready to do it right now. Farewell Fury. Farewell SELVES …

  The man known as Clinton Wolfe Alvarez died in his sleep of a massive myocardial infarction approximately three hours after he was arrested and placed in a holding cell in the Metropolitan Jail of Okanagon’s capital city. The body was not discovered until the next morning, by which time there was no possibility of resuscitating him in a regeneration-tank.

  DNA analysis eventually identified the deceased as Quentin Frederic O’Neill Remillard, the fugitive son of Severin Remillard. This information was kept confidential by the Galactic Magistratum. The vehicular homicide case fabricated against the erstwhile Citizen Alvarez was classified as “solved” by the death of the suspect.

  19

  KAUAI, HAWAII, EARTH 2 NOVEMBER 2072

  THE DREAM CAME TO HER FOR THE LAST TIME WHILE SHE WAITED ON the island with Uncle Rogi for Jack to complete his investigation on Okanagon. After two nearly sleepless nights as a result of Malama Johnson’s huna therapy, she found herself finally relaxing on the breezy lanai of the little house in Kukuiula. Her eyes closed and she slept.


 

  Mummie? You’re crying. What’s wrong?

 

  There’s no need, Mummie. The Halloween party was a perfect chance to probe Jack’s mind. To know just what kind of threat the Great Enemy poses. You can’t contend against a foe you have no data on. Surely you realize that.

 

  I didn’t think of it that way.

 

  Nothing has changed in our relationship. I’m as committed to you and the Second Milieu as I ever was.

 

  Uncle Rogi is no one’s lackey, Mum. And Malama Johnson is simply a friend of his that we’re visiting—

 

  She’s a traditional Hawaiian healer. A practitioner of natural redaction. She’s been helping me with the inhibitions that prevent me from using the full spectrum of my metafaculties—

 

  Oh, Mum. Malama Johnson is a Catholic, just like I am. She’s a dear, harmless old soul who teaches me how to make flower leis when she’s not helping me sweep out the last of my mental garbage. She’s a kahuna lapaau, not one of the black-magic anaana kind. Her use of the higher mindpowers is restricted to her work as a healer amongst her people here in the islands.

 

  I—I find that hard to believe.

 

  No. I only want to study it scientifically from all aspects, to make certain—

 

  I know. I still must ask whether the Second Milieu exemplifies this truth. And whether I’m the one to promulgate it.

 

  You know I’m not … a person of unswerving self-confidence. When you tell me I must lead the human race into the Second Milieu all by myself I feel overwhelmed—

 

  I—what do you mean?

 

  How … do I make this Choice?

 

  You mean I must open myself?

 

  Without reservation?

 

  What will happen then?

 

  That’s incredible. It’s like … the Annunciation.

 

  With the Cosmic Mind residing inside my body.

 

  Whose body does the Mind inhabit now?

  <… What?>

  The Mind. Where is it now?

 

  Will you answer my question?

  Mummie?

 

  That’s not true, and you know it.

 

  I’d like to help, Fury. Neutralize the anger and relieve the unending pain. There must be a way to reintegrate the broken parts of you. To heal you.

  …

  Tell me whose body you live in.

 
  Rogi came out of the house carrying a tray with two frosty glasses of pineapple juice and a durofilm printout of the island newspaper. “So you’re awake after all. I was hoping you’d finally get a few hours of rest.”

  Dee managed a wan smile. “I did doze a little.”

  He gave her a drink and sat down in one of the other chairs with the paper. “You ought to reconsider letting Malama help you with the insomnia.”

  “There’s no need. I don’t think I’ll be troubled with sleeplessness again. Malama has enough to do, teaching me the huna discipline. It’s fascinating the way she’s been able to release some of the most intractable of my residual mind-blocks in just the two days I’ve been here. Things Catherine and her people couldn’t touch.”

  “Well, Jack told you she was special. He says she worked with him even before he was born. I don’t know whether to take him seriously or not. It sounds pretty peculiar.”

  Dee’s expression darkened. “Jack is peculiar. I still can’t believe I agre
ed to come here and do this. You’re a very persuasive man, Uncle Rogi. If it had been only Jack urging me to come to Malama, I’d have turned him down flat.”

  “You don’t have to be afraid of Ti-Jean, Dorothée. He has your best interests at heart.”

  She sighed. “So people keep telling me.” She set her untouched drink aside, got up from the chaise, and stretched. Her hair was in two braids and she wore a pair of tattered shorts and one of Rogi’s gaudy old Hawaiian shirts knotted beneath her small breasts. “I think I’ll take a walk down along the shore. The surf ought to be spectacular this morning after the storm.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Rogi said with a smile, throwing his newspaper aside and climbing hurriedly to his feet.

  “No, thanks. I have to sort some things out in my mind. I’d really rather go alone. I know you and Malama mean well, but you two have hardly let me out of your sight since I arrived. And that’s silly. She verifies the MP ID of everyone on the island each night when her mana’s strongest. There are no Hydras here. And even if there were, I’d know them the instant they combined in metaconcert to attack me. And I’d get them.”

  Rogi sat down again, glowering. “You’re too damned sure of yourself. How can you be so positive you’re stronger than they are?”

  “For starters, there are only three of them now. One of the Hydras is dead. Jack will find out that the DNA of Clinton Alvarez matches that of Quentin Remillard.”

  “How do you know that for certain? You been watching Jack on Okanagon with your farsight?”

  “No … but I’m sure of it, all the same. And there’s another reason why I’m confident I’m a match for the remaining Hydras. They consider Jack to be Fury’s Great Enemy. If they could have drained the lifeforce from him with mindpower, they would have done it years ago. They haven’t—ergo, they can’t. My own mental defenses are at least the equal of Jack’s, but the Hydras don’t know it.”

  “Smart-ass female!” The old bookseller retrieved the newspaper and took a hefty slug of his own drink—which she noted was by no means unadulterated fruit juice, as her own had been. “Go ahead and take your walk, then! But just remember there are lots more ways to eliminate people than by burning ’em up and sucking their minds with highfalutin kundalini metawhatsit! A Hydra could just drop a coconut on your head with PK, for chrissake. You’d be just as dead!”