The Golden Torc

by Julian May

  "What you ask is virtually impossible, Brede. A young meta usually begins training before birth. The mental enlargement is intensified in early childhood—this is the kind of work I devoted my life to before my accident. A person with masterclass potential must expect to spend thirty years or more adapting to the full Unity. Enlighten you?...You invited me to inspect your intellectual potential and I'll agree that psychounion between us two is not utterly impossible. But that torc of yours presents a wall and a snare all at once. You think of yourself as operant. But, believe me—you aren't. Not truly. And without genuine metafunction you can't know the Unity or any of the rest of the Milieu essence."

  The calm thought came: It is foreseen that one day my people will partake of this essence.

  "Foreseen by whom?"

  By me.

  Elizabeth came away from the railing and stood in front of the Shipspouse. Upon their first encounter Brede had revealed that she belonged to a race different from that of the other exotics. She was of less than medium height, with eyes that were carnelian-brown instead of blue or green. Her face, the lower part exposed now that she had once again removed her baroque respirator, lacked the preternatural beauty of the ruling Tanu race but was comely enough, appearing middle-aged. Brede wore a gown of metallic red fabric that was styled in a different manner from the thin flowing robes of the Tanu. It was trimmed with red-and-black beading and over it she wore a black coat with trailing bell sleeves and borders of red flame-shapes. Her huge chapeau, also black and red, was aglitter with jewels and had a black veil floating from it. The costume, except for the ornate breathing equipment, reminded Elizabeth of one of the tapestries from the Middle Ages that had adorned the grand salon back at l'Auberge du Por-tail. There was an archaic aura about the Shipspouse, a flavor of some thing conspicuously absent from the other exotics. Brede was no barbarian, no oracle, no priest-mother. All of Elizabeth's attempts at analyzing her had thus far proved futile.

  "Tell me what you want from me," the human woman said. "Tell me who you really are."

  The Shipspouse lifted her bowed head, revealing a sweet, patient smile. For the first time, Brede voiced her thoughts aloud.

  "Why will you not mindspeak with me, Elizabeth?"

  "It would be imprudent of me. You're more formidable than the others. As both of us know."

  Brede rose from the bench. Her breath began to come painfully again and she raised the respirator for relief. "This atmosphere—so suitable for my Tanu and Firvulag people—is rarified for one of my stock. Will you come inside my home? The oxygen is enriched within, and we can also seclude ourselves in my room without doors, and these hostile minds will no longer be able to weary you with their importunities."

  ]ump Elizabeth! Don't let Twoface Brede fool you take you from onlyescape. She worst of usall! Go back cliffside and jump jump...

  "The compulsion is getting rather annoying," Elizabeth agreed. "But I'm capable of dealing with it."

  "The attack of the Host represents no threat to you?"

  "In order for their compulsion to work, it would have to be strong enough to completely override my superego and will. They'd almost have to dismember my personality and reintegrate it on a lower, complaisant level. There's a great crowd of them pecking at me now and the directing intelligences are respectably strong. But none of them—not severally and not working together—can summon the power to compel my suicide. Who are they? Can you recognize any of them?"

  "The four directors are leaders among Nontusvel's Host. The PK adept is Kuhal, Second Lord Psychokinetic to Nodonn. Imidol is the coercer, a battle-champion with small mental subtlety. The farsensor is Riganone, a female warrior who sees herself as the successor to Mayvar—an amusing conceit! The fourth, the redactor, represents a more serious challenge, although perhaps not in the compulsive mode. He is Culluket, the King's Interrogator, whose loyalty lies with his mother Nontusvel and her Host rather than with his father, the Thagdal. Culluket's faculties for deep-probe and mind alteration are second only to those of Dionket the Lord Healer. But healing is not the work for which Culluket is known. It would not be wise for you to encounter him at close range until you are conversant with certain aggressive techniques in use among our less principled element."

  "Thanks for the warning. A perverted redactor might be able to get into my autonomic nervous system while I was asleep or emotionally distraught. I'll have to spin a special stem-shield—maybe a trap, too. We had problems along this line many years ago in the Milieu, before the Unity had reached full maturation, with all human metapsychics assenting to the common moral imperative. The self-defensive maneuvers are still taught to young metas ... just in case."

  The compulsion now built to a near-hysterical crescendo as Elizabeth walked at Brede's side on the path through the orange grove. There were lurid threats of Tanu gang-rape and mutilation; visions of suffering, exploited daughters yet unborn; wheedlings that promised death-peace and a reuniting with Lawrence; even—belatedly—logical arguments for self-destruction based on the genetic ramifications of the situation.

  Elizabeth turn back! Better for you for allhumans in Exile allTanu as well if you die! Don't listen Twoface Shipspiderspouse lies! Turn back and jump! Jump!

  There were oranges on the ground, for Brede was not served by ramas. The distinctive smell of citrus-mold blended with the flower perfume; the trees carried blossoms simultaneously with the fruit. Elizabeth reached up and picked a pendant globe.

  The mental voices keened at ultimate strength: Don't! Don't turn away from release! Don't lose opportunity Elizabeth! Escape impossible within roomwithoutdoors! Turn back! Jump! Turn back... BE GONE.

  (Bubblesnapripplequench.) (Withdrawal.)

  Brede's amplified voice said, "Now they know you were fully aware of their attack."

  "They had to find out sooner or later. I prefer sooner."

  "They'll try again. More of them. Queen Nontusvel has more than two hundred surviving children."

  "Let them try! The compulsion-aggression would be ineffective if they amplified their efforts a thousandfold. Your people and their torcs! They don't achieve true mental synergy at all! They can't marshal the proper force behind a multimind thrust. They're primitive and sloppy—out of phase and out of focus. And out of their league, if you follow my idiom."

  O cruel in aloof superiority O proud Elizabeth.

  She paid no attention to the unspoken reproach. It had been an irritating day. As they walked toward the small white villa, Elizabeth peeled the orange and ate the small segments. The flesh of the fruit was dark in the moonlight, adding another brick to the edifice of her indignation: It was a blood orange.

  Elizabeth's voice was snappish as she said, "You won't get anywhere being subtle with me, Brede. I never was much good at diplomatic byplay, even back in the Milieu. I want to know whose side you're on and what expectations you have of me. And just what is this room without doors?"

  "You need have no fear of it. It cannot hold one such as you. But it will keep the Host away from you, body and soul, for as long as you remain within its sanctuary. I had hoped that you would stay with me. We could ... teach one another. There is ample time, nearly two months before the Combat, where I foresee a climactic resolution."

  The last pieces of orange rind fell from Elizabeth's hand. She slowed as they came out onto a small patch of lawn in front of the villa. Brede's house bore none of the usual Tanu faerie lights, but stood in Grecian simplicity framed by cypresses. It was a dwelling fit for the mystery woman, lacking any exterior openings.

  The half-masked face of the Shipspouse looked up at her, entreating. It seemed to say: More than all the rest, we two are exiled.

  "What happens if our attempted meeting of minds is unsuccessful?" Elizabeth inquired.

  "Then you will do what you must." Brede was apparently unperturbed. "Shall we go in together?"

  Side by side, the two of them crossed the grass, came onto the pillared porch of the little house, and passed through
the smooth marble wall.

  Into peace.

  Elizabeth could not help letting a great sigh escape her lips. Mental as well as physical silence enveloped her—the kind that had once provoked such anguish back at the Metapsychic Institute on Denali, where the therapists had tried in vain to reestablish contact with her regenerated brain. But now—how welcome the stillness! It brought surcease from the background noise of all those lesser psyches that had mumbled and squealed and droned and piped their thin discordancies even when they were not actually reaching out in childish insolence or daring a frontal attack against her very ramparts. They couldn't reach her, of course; but there was still the battering ... In the Milieu, such mental static was shut out by the overwhelming harmony of the Unity. Here, until now, there had been relief from it only in that cocoon of fire that was the last terrible refuge of a suffering, self-centered soul.

  But this—

  "Do you like my room?" asked Brede.

  "I do," said Elizabeth. Both her mind and countenance smiled.

  The exotic woman lowered her respirator. "There is an elevated partial pressure of oxygen here, which promotes euphoria. But the mental stillness is the most precious attribute of this room without doors. We two may reach out, but none may enter."

  The exterior of the villa had been modest, with classic perpendicular lines; but the walls inside curved and arched away into immense distances. They were midnight-blue with ever-changing fragile patterns of faint carmine and silver, reminiscent of oil-sheen on deep water. There were pictures—projections, rather—of two deep-space vistas: a barred-spiral galaxy trailing two great arms, and a planet whose landmasses wrinkled into high mountains, having blue seas in rounded basins resembling lunar maria.

  The furnishings of the room were simple, nearly invisible because they were made of the same dark stuff as the walls. There were a few chests, shelves holding colored glass cylinders with magnetic imprints that were Tanu audiovisuals, a pair of long couches, several featureless cubes the size of footstools. Hovering at eye level against one wall was a small piece of sculpture, an abstraction of a female figure. Three blue lights were ranged around it. In the center of the room (or what might have been the center, if the walls had not approached or receded as one concentrated on them or ignored them) stood the most striking piece of decor: a low oval table that glowed milky white, flanked by two dark padded benches. On the table was a glass model that Elizabeth assumed represented some intricate protist organism such as a marine radiolarian.

  "An image of my Ship," Brede explained. "Let us be seated and I will begin the sharing by telling you of our journey."

  "Very well." Barriers firm, Elizabeth sat with clasped hands, looking not at the Shipspouse and her room of wonders but at the small diamond ring on her own right hand.

  ***

  Aeons ago in our distant galaxy [Brede said] there lived a sentient race on a single small planet orbiting a yellow sun. When this race first achieved a written history it had but a single body form and a single mental pattern. With the passing of millennia it developed a high technology and the gravo-magnetic transport, which enables vessels to travel at velocities approaching that of light without being restricted by the limitations of inertia. Suitable planets within practical range were colonized and a federation established. But then there was an interstellar war, and for long years the shattered colonies were separated from their mother-planet not only by the gulfs of space but also by a profound deterioration of culture. One daughter-world alone—my own planet of Lene—retained limited space-travel capability, using primitive reaction engines for brief forays into its own solar system.

  Back on the mother-planet, which was called Duat, the great war had provoked melancholy changes. Damage to the land and atmosphere led to climatic alterations. The high mountains became a wilderness of snow; the precipitous valleys, though semitropical, were largely overcast and foggy. Over a thousand generations, the native people evolved two body forms, both different from the parent stock that had colonized the daughter-worlds so many years before.

  The upland race, the Firvulag, dwelt in wintry austerity for most of the year. They were mostly small in stature and physically tough. Their culture was simple, with the technological conservatism and cooperative social patterns that often prevail in harsh environments. Isolated for long periods in their snowbound caves, they consoled themselves not merely with handicrafts but more especially with mental diversions designed to preserve sanity. They developed the ability to conjure entertaining visions and pseudomaterial manifestations, as well as many other refinements of the psychoenergetic metafunction that you of the Milieu term "creativity." They also achieved a form of farspeech and farsight that enabled them to contact distant brethren without venturing into the deadly storms. The Firvulag became true, if limited, metapsychics, and they prospered.

  Meanwhile, in the lowlands of this same Duat, a second racial type flourished—tall and slender and pale-skinned, with light-sensitive eyes, as was suitable in a warm climate with heavily overcast skies. This ancestral Tanu population struggled slowly back to a level of high technology. They never evolved into operant metafunction, as the Firvulag did; instead they developed the mental amplifier you know as the golden torc, which made their latent metafunctions imperfectly operant and gave them a crude but satisfying simulacrum of psy-chounity—the "mind-family" relationship that you have observed among our people and among the golds and silvers and grays of this Many-Colored Land...

  There was always a strong strain of aggression in the people of biracial Duat. The Tanu and Firvulag were perennial antagonists, although neither group wreaked more than superficial damage upon the other because of a reluctance to penetrate far into enemy territory. The ritual battles became the basis for a simple religion that prevailed for another sixty generations—until Duat was contacted once again by explorers from the reborn Interstellar Federation.

  Yes ... we regained the stars, we daughter-worlds. While our ancient home-planet went its separate and peculiar way, we rediscovered the gravo-magnetic drive. But there was more! We entered into a wonderful symbiosis with the titanic sentient organisms that came to be called Ships. They were capable of superluminal travel through the exercise of their own minds, generating what you would call upsilon-fields by means of a unique ultrasense. If the Ships were suitably motivated, they would carry a thousand or more of our people along with them in an implanted capsule, soaring to the uttermost parts of our galaxy in minutes—hours, at most. As you may have already guessed, the Ships could be motivated only by love. And each Ship that served us had as Spouse a woman of my race.

  The dimorphic population of Duat was welcomed into our federation. Their golden torcs proved to be compatible with the minds of many, but by no means all, of the people living on the former colonial worlds. A torc-wearing elite came to power; and after only four generations, our confederation was experiencing a Golden Age of cultural and technoeconomic expansion.

  Like all Golden Ages, ours came to an end. Descendants of the original Tanu and Firvulag, who were zealous endogamists, carried their ancient enmities to the stars, precipitating a new series of ruinous wars. After much suffering, peace was restored; but our federation decreed that the remnant of Firvulag and Tanu purebloods must abjure the battle-religion and mingle their genes so that the basis for the old hatred would be obliterated. Most of the dimorphic population eventually agreed to this. But one diehard segment refused and demanded the right to emigrate to another galaxy. This request was denied and their unconditional surrender required. They fled, only a thousand Tanu and Firvulag, to a remote world near the tip of one spiral arm, where they prepared to battle to the death among themselves in a last gesture of apocalyptic defiance.

  One person only was sympathetic to their original plea for exile. This woman was blessed—or afflicted—with more than the ordinary Shipspouse's share of the metafaculty of prolepsis. You would call this prescience or foresight. She foresaw that the small mob of m
alcontents, so useless in their own galaxy, would have a catalytic effect in another star-whirl younger and less mentally evolved, where the great longevity and mental power of the exiles would have a beneficial influence on the slowly coalescing local Mind. The vision was a cloudy one. But it was sufficient to inspire this person to offer the services of herself and her Ship to carry the exiles away...

  Thus we came.

  And the human time-travelers came.

  And you came.

  ***

  "At this point," Brede admitted, "my prescience fails me. The arrival of people from Earth's distant future gave me great concern, upsetting as it did the Tanu-Firvulag balance of power that had prevailed up until about seventy years ago. I still have not fully assessed the impact. The survey now being conducted by your friend Bryan will possibly provide data necessary for my ultimate judgment—although neither King Thagdal nor any of the rest have thought deeply on what would have to be done should the verdict be unfavorable to further human participation."

  "Humanity," said Elizabeth, "occupies a similarly equivocal position among the coadúnate races of the Galactic Milieu."

  "The human advent has brought about many advantageous changes—and not merely technoeconomic and eugenic. Factions among both the Firvulag and Tanu—especially hybrid Tanu—have begun to weary of the traditional contention and reach out toward a more civilized philosophy. It may well be that the assimilation of latent humanity into the Tanu population is a desirable thing. But you—!

  "No anthropological survey will assess my impact."