The Intervention (Omnibus)

by Julian May

  It is the vital field of the world, Denis said. Life and Mind interacting. The biosphere forms a latticework that is entire but the noösphere the World Mind permeates it only imperfectly as yet and so the field is sensed by our minds only as a whisper.

  I asked: When this World Mind finishes weaving itself together what will there be?

  And my nephew said: A song.

  We came to Japan and touched its shimmering arc. But there was no time for me to seek Ume, although I thought of it; and a moment later we were decelerating over China, flying low above the great Yangzi River basin, one of the most populous regions of the world. It was full daytime there, of course — and the minds blazed. The perception was overwhelming to me and I lost all sense of direction and differentiation; but Denis bore me onward, his goal now in view, and in another instant we were poised above the metropolis of Wuhan and ready to get down to business.

  Denis said: Now we must do the real metaconcert Uncle Rogi. The flight was only a peripheral linkage a kind of piggyback ride. What I want you to do now primarily is relax. We are going to fuse our wills so that we have a single purpose. That's what metaconcert is. ONE WILL one vector for the channeled faculty in this case the close inspection of a thing inside a small laboratory in a modest building of the university. When I ask it you must help me to penetrate using all the strength you have. Do you understand?

  Yes.

  You may feel yourself fainting don't be concerned I'll hold you the vision will be mine even if you fail but hold out as best you can for as long as you can.

  Yes.

  Now.

  It seemed that the sun rose. What had been drab was fully colored and what had been merely bright now became supersaturated with a bril­liance that would be intolerable to physical eyes. At that time there were some six million people living in close proximity in the Wuhan tri-city area, and about ten thousand of them had some degree of operancy. Naturally most of these were concentrated in the university district, which lay east of the Yangzi near a small lake. We seemed to plummet out of the sky. Abruptly the mind-constellation effect was gone and we were there, wafting along a modernistic concourse where crowds of students and academics streamed in and out of buildings, rode bicycles, or lounged about under leafless trees soaking up a bit of late-autumn sunshine.

  Denis knew where to go. We passed through the white-stone outer wall of a smallish structure, entered offices where people worked at computer terminals or shuffled papers, much as they do in any univer­sity, and then we reached the lab. There were three men and two women inside, and from the paraphernalia I knew at once that it was a metapsychology establishment. The so-called barber-chair, with its ap­paratus for measuring the brain activity of a "performing" operant, was virtually identical to similar devices at Dartmouth. Around the chair on the bare concrete floor was a ring about three meters in diameter, stud­ded with little gadgets all wired together, the whole attached by several heavy cables to a bank of equipment racks. Some of the front panels were demounted and electronic guts hung out, which the scientists tinkered with.

  Denis said: When I was here earlier I examined this stuff and recorded the gross details of the circuitry. Now I want to try microscrutiny. Hang onto your hat Uncle Rogi. I'll try to be as quick as I can...

  He zeroed in, and I felt as though my eyes were being torn out of my skull — but of course my physical eyes had nothing to do with the ultrasensory scan; the pain was somewhere in my nervous system where farsight impulses only partially belonging to the physical universe were being amplified in some terrible esoteric fashion by my nephew's supermind. The brightness was awful. In it detailed pictures of God knew what were flickering like flipped pages in an old-fashioned book. I saw them distorted, sometimes whole and then fragmented like jigsaw puzzles. They made no sense and the rapidity of the image-change was indescribably sickening. I think I was trying to scream. I know I yearned to let go of Denis, to stop the agony, but I'd promised. I'd promised...

  It ended.

  Somewhere, somehow I was weeping and racked with spasms. I knew that — and yet another part of my mind stood aside, upright and proud of itself for having successfully endured. The suffering faded and my farsight once again perceived the Chinese laboratory.

  Denis said: That was very good. The test subject has arrived. I'm going to break concert for a moment and check her out.

  The supernal vividness of the scene faded to a washed-out pastel. I saw that only one of the scientists in the room was an operant. His aura was a pale yellowish-green, like a firefly. And then the door opened and in came a young woman with an aura like a house afire, stuffing the last of a sweet rice cake into her mouth and licking her fingers. She wore a smart red leather jumpsuit and white boots with high heels, and greeted the scientific types in a bored fashion before plopping down in the barber-chair. One man hooked her up while the other researchers com­pleted their equipment adjustment, closed the panels, and went out — leaving the operant alone.

  Denis re-established the metaconcert. Once again every detail of the place was extravagantly clear and I noticed for the first time a parabolic dish hanging above the operant's head. It looked something like a lamp reflector with a complex doodad at the center.

  In an adjacent control room, the crew was powering up. The operant leader gave a telepathic command and the test subject began to count steadily in declamatory farspeech. The brain-monitoring systems were all go.

  On the count of ten a mirrored dome sprang into existence, hiding the woman in the chair from view. Simultaneously, her telepathic speech cut off. The dome was approximately hemispheric, shaped like the top half of an egg and apparently as slick as glass. It did not quite touch the hanging reflector, but the ring of small components on the floor had been swallowed.

  Before I could express my astonishment, Denis said: One more push Uncle Rogi. The best that you can do... through that mirror surface!

  Our conjoined minds thrust out, and this time I did lose conscious­ness, after enduring only the briefest flash of mortal agony. When I recovered my senses, I found I was sitting on the sofa in my apartment in Hanover, my head throbbing like the legendary ill-used hamster in the classic dirty joke. I heard the sound of retching in the bathroom and water running in the sink. After a few minutes Denis came out, tow­eling his wet hair and looking like the living dead.

  "Did we get through the goddam thing?" I whispered.

  "No, " said Denis.

  "It was a mechanical mind-screen, wasn't it... The thing they said couldn't be made?"

  "I never said it. " Denis went slowly to the coat closet and dragged out his Burberry. I had never seen him look so terrible, so vitiated. His emotions were totally concealed.

  "D'you realize they can stop Psi-Eye with a thing like that?" I nattered.

  "The Chinese can do anything they damn well please behind it and the EE monitors would never know! If you can't punch through it, then no meta on Earth can... Is there any way at all to open it up?"

  "Destroy the generator, " Denis said. "Aside from that — I don't know. We'll have to build our own and experiment. " He opened the outer door. "Thank you again for your help, Uncle Rogi. "

  "But we're back to square one!" I cried. "The Chinese are paranoid about the Russians and vice versa. They'll start the arms race all over again or even pull a pre-emptive strike!"

  "Good night, " my nephew said. The door closed.

  I spat one obscenity after him on the declamatory farspeech mode and damned if Marcel didn't stroll out of the kitchen and eye me with sardonic humor. He leaped to the gate-leg table where the half-full bottle of Laphroaig still stood, and cocked his great whiskers at it.

  "Best idea I've heard all night, " I told him; and I settled down to finish off the Scotch while the icy rain lashed the window and the cat took his place again at my feet.

  22

  NEW YORK CITY, EARTH

  4 MARCH 2012

  THERE WERE A handful of operants at the Sloan-Kett
ering Institute, so Dr. Colwyn Presteigne had kept his mental shield at max­imal strength during the entire three hours of the consultation. The strain — to say nothing of the emotional trauma resulting from the diagnosis — hit him in the taxi. He only regained consciousness at his destination, with the panicked cabbie yelling at him over the intercom and the doorman of the Plaza peering anxiously through the open door. "Oh, for God's sake, it's all right, " Presteigne growled. "I only dropped off to sleep for a moment. " He pushed his credit card through the slot in the armored barrier. "Take fifteen. "

  "May I help you, Dr. Presteigne?" The doorman solicitously raised his umbrella and extended a white-gloved hand.

  "Never mind. " The physician retrieved his card, climbed out, and strode into the hotel. Arnold Pakkala was waiting in the lobby.

  He said: ?

  Presteigne's features were set again in their habitual cast of thought­ful benevolence. His mind was impenetrable beneath the outermost social level. He said: Tell Kier I'm on my way up.

  Arnold said: ???

  Presteigne turned his back on the executive assistant and headed for the elevator. He braced himself to resist any coercion; but Arnold only stood there trying without success to forestall the escape of inarticulate grief, then turned away toward the house phones.

  Adam Grondin opened the door to the suite when the physician ex­ited the elevator. More diffident than Arnold, he made no attempt to seek information. "The Boss is in the sitting room. "

  Presteigne nodded, slipped off his topcoat, and took the folder out of his briefcase. "See that Kier's things are packed up. He'll have to go in right away. "

  "Shit, " Grondin whispered. "Shit shit shit... "

  "Put a call through to Mrs. Tremblay and ask her to wait on hold. I think he'll want to tell her himself. "

  "Okay, Doc. "

  Presteigne went into the sitting room and carefully closed the door behind him. Kieran was standing at the window in his dressing gown, his hands locked behind him.

  "Sit down, Col. Take a drink. Don't bother to say it — just open wide. "

  Mute, his vision blurring with tears, the physician obeyed.

  Kieran O'Connor looked out over Central Park. Rags of mist infil­trated the budding trees. A policeman on horseback stopped at a bench where a vagrant lay covered with newspapers and began speaking into his walkie-talkie.

  "It's interesting, " Kieran said, "that it should have hit me this way. One could make an interesting case for divine retribution — if it weren't for the fact that I won't let this stop me. "

  "But, Kier, it's metastasized. Both the lymphangiography and the bone isoenzyme tests show —"

  "I don't need that much longer. "

  "I've made arrangements to have you admitted immediately under a fictitious name —"

  "No. "

  "But you've got to!"

  Kieran laughed. "You doctors ... so accustomed to controlling life-and-death decisions." Don't be a fool Col what do I care for your damned palliatives your brain-weakening chemicals I've lived with pain all my life I'll accept this too and keep my power until the Black Mother takes me in and all the rest as well it's perfect it's even appropriate Her jest at my expense Her proof that I'm the one loved most just as She always said where's your faith where's your love I'll redact the damn thing fend it off mind over matter you know it can be done you know other oper-ants have done it why not me?

  Kier you don't assay that highly in the redactive metafaculty. Some minds are good at healing and some aren't and self-redaction is the least-understood aspect of the metahealing process all bound about with unconscious factors that can enhance or inhibit —

  Kieran turned around, halting the doctor's expostulations with a gen­tle impulse. "Enough, Col. I agreed to your tests because — because I was interested. I guess I always suspected something like this would happen as I got down to the wire. It's just another omen."

  "Without any sort of treatment the pain will become unbearable."

  "I can bear anything, for good reason." Except disloyalty . . .

  Presteigne lowered his head in capitulation. "You're the Boss." He hesitated. "I asked Adam to put in a call to your daughter. I thought you'd want her to know. I'm sorry if I presumed."

  Kieran's face stiffened. A wraith-image of Shannon, strangely dis­torted, flickered across his adamantine mental screen. And then it was gone and he was smiling. "Col, assuming your worst-case scenario — that any attempt at self-redaction on my part will be ineffective — how much longer will I be able to raise it?"

  "If you're capable now it's some kind of fucking miracle! Please ex­cuse the morbid pun."

  But Kieran was chuckling in appreciation. "All right, that's plain as the proverbial pikestaff! I think the best thing to do then is to get back to Chicago. You go out and tell Shannon that all this was a false alarm. That I'm fine."

  Presteigne sighed. "You're the Boss," he said again.

  Still laughing quietly, Kieran turned back to the window. "Poor little girl. She'll be so relieved."

  23

  EXCERPTS FROM:

  the new york times "SCIENCE TIMES"

  I MAY 2OI2

  Sigma-Field Seen as the Key to Cheap and Reliable Fusion Power. Application also seen in development of mechanical mindscreen.

  By BARBARA TRINH

  Special to The New York Times

  PRINCETON, N.J.— The long-awaited breakthrough in the devel­opment of small nuclear-fusion power systems was confirmed with the demonstration last week of MIPPFUG at Princeton University's Institute for Energy Research. MIPPFUG (the acronym stands for Miniature Proton-Proton Fusion Generator) differs from conventional fu­sion reactors in that it utilizes a "bottle" formed out of a sigma-field to contain the intensely hot fusion reaction, rather than currents of electromagnetism.

  For more than 50 years, scientists have been frustrated in attempts to tame fusion by the inherent limitations of the electro­magnetic confinement system, which re­quires massive radiation shielding and elaborate safety precautions. Fusion pow­er-plants have remained uneconomical up until now not only because of their com­plexity, but also because a typical deute­rium-tritium fusion plant produces only about one tenth the power of a nuclear fission reactor of the same size.

  The new sigma-field confining system is fail-safe — unlike the magnetic one, which stores up enough energy to possi bly destroy the reactor in a split second in case of a malfunction. The sigma-field system has the additional advantage of absorbing the gamma radiation produced in the proton-proton fusion process uti­lized in MIPPFUG. Where this absorbed radiation "goes" is still one of the great mysteries of the booming new branch of science known as dynamic-field physics.

  According to Dr. George T. Vicks, who developed the sigma-field mechanism for the MIPPFUG project, the "bottling" of fusion energy is only the first of what may eventually be a host of valuable ap­plications of the sigma.

  "A sigma is basically what the science-fiction writers like to call a force field," Vicks says. "It's a six-dimensional thing bound into the spatial dimensions of our space-time continuum. That sounds complicated — and it is! But you can un­derstand rather easily what a sigma can do if you think of it as a kind of invisible wall. There are different kinds of sigmas. The one for MIPPFUG acts as barrier to the enormous heat of nuclear fusion."

  Other types of sigma-fields, Vicks says, can block out other types of energy — or even matter.

  "Sometime in the future," Vicks says, "we'll be able to design sigmas that act as roofs or meteor-barriers or shields against radiation or weapons. A sigma- field might even make a good umbrella! It could form the basis for those tractor beams that science fiction has spaceships use to push or pull or grab things out in the void."

  An even more exotic application of sigma technology would be in the world's first effective mechanical thought-screen.

  "So far," says Carole McCarthy, an associate of Vicks at Princeton, "no one has been able to come up with r
eliable barriers to telepathy or EE or other men­tal powers. This is because thought doesn't propagate in the four dimensions we call space-time, as sound and other forms of energy do. Mental impulses propagate in a six-dimensional entity we call the aether. The sigma-field, which also has six dimensions, might just be able to mesh with the aether in a way that would stop thought impulses cold."