by Julian May
Almost as though some emotional switch had been thrown, Cyndia suddenly relaxed. Her sobbing ceased and she extricated herself from my embrace. We stood facing one another.
“I’m all right now,” she insisted. “I’m sorry I lost control.”
“Cyndia, for God’s sake! Tell me what Denis meant!”
She shook her head, blew her nose, and wiped her face with more Kleenex. “I’m the only one who can deal with it. It needn’t concern you, Rogi. I—I must ask you to promise not to tell anyone else about this. Especially Jack.”
“Are you out of your mind?” I yelled. “Marc intends to resurrect Mental Man, and Denis tells us they’ll be Hydras! We’ve got to tell Jack and Dorothée and Davy MacGregor and the Galactic Magistratum and the whole goddam Lylmik Quincunx! We’ve got to warn your father and the Rebel Council that Marc’s gone off his rocker—”
“Listen to me!” she said, exerting all her coercion. “You misunderstood Denis when he spoke of Mental Man as a reborn Hydra. He was speaking metaphorically, not literally. Mental Man is a danger in Himself—not as a true Hydra. I came to that realization some time ago, after an agony of soul-searching. There are things about the Mental Man project that I haven’t told you. That I don’t intend to tell you! Just believe me when I say that I’ll put a stop to it. There will be no more Mental children. I can deal with this situation. I’m the only one who can.”
“Damn cocksure of yourself, aren’t you?” I shot back. “So all-fired certain you can make Marc change his mind! Well, I’ve known him a helluva lot longer than you have, and I think he’ll do exactly as he damn pleases. You want to know what else Denis told me? He said that he and Marc were the most dangerous men ever born! He warned me that Marc might do something awful to Hagen. To his own son.”
The blood drained from her face. “I knew it.”
“What did Denis mean?” I demanded.
“It doesn’t matter.” She turned her back on me. “I’ll see that nothing happens to Hagen or Cloud. And I’ll put an end to Mental Man. But you mustn’t interfere, Rogi. Or let Jack or the others know. They can’t stop Marc. Only I can.”
“If you’re wrong,” I said grimly, “God knows what’ll happen.”
She spun about. Her tear-grimed face was stubborn. “I know my husband. I understand his obsession and I know how to defuse it. I love Marc. I can do this, Rogi. You must believe me.”
I couldn’t take any more. Heading for the door, I said, “Have it your way, then, and the hell with you! I’m outa here. I’ll wait on the front stoop for Ti-Jean.”
“You won’t say anything to him?” she pleaded.
I made a dismissive gesture. “No. What can I tell him that’d make any sense? But I swear to God, if Marc’s determined to bring back Mental Man, you’ll never persuade him otherwise.”
“Persuasion,” said Cyndia Muldowney, “was not quite what I had in mind.”
I went stomping back through the house, fuming with rage, and on the way I met the nanny, Mitsuko Hayakawa, with the kids. Hagen was just shy of his second birthday, towing a little wagon with a Steiff dinosaur for a passenger, and Cloud was still a babe in arms, nearly six months old. I stopped for a minute and tried to be sociable, but bad vibes blanketed me in an invisible miasma and the poor children didn’t want to have anything to do with me.
I wouldn’t see them again until nearly thirty-one years later, when they returned from the Pliocene Epoch through the time-gate, finally escaping the fate that their father had planned for them.
Jack came back nearly three hours later, after Thierry took pity on me and gave me something to eat. Ti-Jean was as serene as ever, but he did tell me that the meeting with Marc had gone badly. I didn’t have the heart to press him for details. Although Jack never said anything to me about it, I think Marc must have told him the truth about Mental Man—perhaps in some attempt to win approval for the scheme. All I know for certain is that from that day on, the brothers were adversaries, not friends, and their antagonism would not be resolved until the culmination of the Metapsychic Rebellion that was rapidly approaching.
29
SECTOR 12: STAR 12-340-001 [NESPELEM]
PLANET 7 [DIOBSUD] PLANET 2 [OKANAGON]
16-17 SHUKSAN [31 DECEMBER—
1 JANUARY] 2082–2083
HE HAD BEEN NAPPING IN HIS CABIN ON THE PSS VULPECULA, conserving his strength, when Owen Blanchard’s powerful coercion woke him.
Marc. The fleet’s in co-orbital position.
Thanks Owen. Please alert the other ops and tell them to proceed to their CE bays and invest.
You’re not coming to the bridge to address them yourself?
I think not. This exercise will either work or it won’t work. There’s nothing to be gained by a pep talk. What’s the final estimate of our window of opportunity?
Four-pip-zero-two-one minutes. You’ve got exactly two hours until occultation per your sked.
Mock planetesimal in orbit?
Shining like the Moon over Miami and traveling like a bat out of hell. It’ll simulate a very plausible satellite-smasher to our tame stargazers back on Okanagon if they do a proper enhancer hack-job.
Excellent. Let’s hope they don’t have to simulate a near miss! Well I’m on my way …
Marc broke mental contact with Blanchard, donned the monitor-studded black coverall with its neck-ring seal, went to the personnel conveyor, and hit the S-BAY pad with his PK. He had been sleeping in the captain’s cabin of the Vulpecula on its brief billion-klom voyage from Okanagon, and so his ride was solitary.
When the door whisked open he stepped out into what had once been the starship’s shuttlecraft bay. The three spaceboats normally carried by a Twelfth Fleet cruiser of the Vulpecula class were absent and the entire compartment was now dedicated to ten 600X CE enhancers, their auxiliary equipment, and their bulky power supply. The chamber was also newly lined with refractory cerametal and capable of being enveloped in an SR-80 sigma-field that would safely contain a small thermonuclear device. In the event that the CE exercise went awry and the operators destroyed themselves, the Vulpecula and its crew had a fair chance of survival.
Waiting for Marc were the nine people who shared prime focus for the psychocreative metaconcert: Alex Manion, Dierdre and Diarmid Keogh, Hiroshi Kodama, Patricia Castellane, Helayne Strangford, and Adrien, Catherine, and Severin Remillard. Marc wasted no time greeting them, but projected into their minds a farsensory image of what lay outside the starship:
The planet Diobsud, largest gas-giant in the Nespelem solar system, was seventh from the sun (Okanagon being second) and slightly smaller than the Old World system’s Jupiter. Marc’s mental image showed the world half-lit. Its cloud bands were white, pale yellow, and dusty chocolate-brown, a drab contrast to Jupiter’s turbulent atmosphere, and its rings were tenuous and unspectacular. As if to make up for these esthetic deficiencies, Diobsud had an extensive collection of satellites. Five of them, including Satellite XV, which now loomed less than 300,000 kilometers away from the PSS Vulpecula and the 155 other commandeered Fleet vessels that comprised the little Rebel armada, were relatively huge—between 9,000 and 11,000 kilometers in diameter, very nearly the size of Okanagon.
Satellite XV, newly named Cible by Marc himself in ironic celebration of the occasion, had been chosen for the critical exercise because of its near-terrestrial density and its favorable position in orbit. To the mind’s eye, it was a relatively featureless peach-tinted sphere, presently half-lit like its primary, clothed with a smoggy atmosphere that hid the mostly ice-covered surface. In about two hours, the bulk of Diobsud would shield Cible from the view of anyone in the vicinity of Okanagon. The eclipse would last slightly longer than four minutes, during which time the metaconcert would do its work.
The moon’s new name was French for “target.”
“The subterfuge measures are in place,” Marc told his companions. “If all goes well, the mock planetesimal made of inflated Ronlar will seem to have impac
ted Cible during its eclipse by Diobsud. At least two local astronomers on Okanagon—good Rebels, needless to say!—are recording optical observations of the planet and its satellites, supposedly for orbital perturbation studies. A small sneetch of the computer-enhancement program should insure that the disruption appears to be a regrettable but normal occurence.” He paused. “Are there any questions?”
The nine looked at him, saying nothing. Then Severin Remillard lifted a languid, black-gloved hand. “If this stunt comes off, will we be able to see poor old Cible blow? It’s not every day you get to wreck a world.”
“My farsight will remain in peripheral mode, non-enhanced,” Marc said rather coldly. “If you like, I’ll cancel the symbolic iconography of the metaconcert at the critical moment so that we all have a real visualization of the event.”
“I think I do prefer,” said Severin, “but just this once, mind you. Later on, when we get serious, I’d just as soon stick with the nice clean icons.” After a beat, he bespoke a deliberate addition: It might help minimize the guilt.
Adrien said, “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Sevvy!”
His elder brother only smiled.
Hiroshi Kodama said, “I recommend that from this point forward, we think only of our strategic objective—the freedom of the human race. Whatever personal misgivings we have must not be allowed to divert us from the goal we have all agreed to pursue.”
“Nice speech,” said Severin.
“You may withdraw from the metaconcert if you prefer,” Marc said, his mind-tone scrupulously neutral. “Olivia Wiley is standing ready as backup.”
“No. I’ll pull my weight this time—and when the chips are down, too, God help me.” Severin spun about and marched toward the row of gaping black full-body rigs that stood on the other side of the bay.
Marc said, “Let’s invest.”
In the beginning was the double constellation.
The larger one was a beehive swarm of one thousand five hundred and fifty stars, most of them green, varying in hue and magnitude, softly humming a myriad of quasi-musical notes. The smaller grouping was a circle of nine white sparks that maintained a figurative silence. A single blue-haloed individual hovered at the circle’s center.
The target was still invisible in the symbolic realization. Until the metaconcert was established, Cible was irrelevant.
The Conductor began. His song was a nearly inaudible basso drone at the start, the tempo irregular. As the volume intensified, so did the azure radiance of his corona. Subtle filaments of gold, reaching forth in two dimensions, linked the other nine minds of the focusing team into a starry wheel. It began to turn and a rhythmic triadic song commenced, a simple canon creating a biconvex lens that slowly acquired concentric internal rings, rippling and fluctuating. The executive song’s tempo was andante, deliberate. Only when the song was well established and the lenticular rings clear and rainbow-bright did the beehive of subsidiary grandmaster minds begin to assume a structure and musicality of its own.
The Conductor orchestrated the generator edifice patiently, as he had done during the tedious practice sessions back on Okanagon that had consumed the previous six weeks. Over half of these energy-source metaconcert members were highly experienced El8 geophysical specialists who had needed only to familiarize themselves with the new full-body equipment. To these Grand Masters, the 600X cerebroenergetic enhancer was an exhilarating step-up, a sophisticated mind-tool that freed them from the physical constraints they had labored under earlier. They now had a metaphorical starship to ride in, where before they had been confined to mundane mental vehicles restricted, as it were, to solid ground. Their song was a meld of soaring horn-calls, still pianissimo in volume. The framework of mental energies that these virtuosi built was topographically complex, residing in six dimensions. Its colors were those of high-level creativity: vivid emerald, aquamarine, and limpid tourmaline-blue.
The CE novices were incorporated last by the Conductor, shepherded into place, reassured, conjoined one by one. The role of these minds in the metaconcert generator would be largely passive. They would contribute vital energies to the fabric of the great structure, and sing with voices as filling and implicit as those of massed strings and sustained winds. Most of the subsidiary Grand Masters were creators, glowing a duller green than their more experienced colleagues; but there were knots of other colors as well—redactive scarlet, coercive sapphire, the sun-gold warmth of the psychokinetics, the violet stability of grandmasterly far-sensors. The whole constellation was harmonious and symphonic.
The Conductor surveyed the finality of the generator, making minute adjustments to timbre and pitch. Then he introduced the target.
It was a torus, a kind of transparent donut-shape enclosing a madly swirling number of small smoky spheres, each with a dot of dull garnet smoldering in its heart. The Cible icon was both chaotic and resistant, symbolizing the relatively tiny, dense metallic core of the moon that would have to undergo a critical transformation in order to bring about the demolition of the stony outer envelope.
Diobsud occulted Cible and the window of opportunity opened.
The Conductor commanded the generator energies to cohere, to amplify, to emerge. The song of the metaconcert was a choral thrust. A shaft of white light spurted out of the large structure, passed through the lens, and impaled the torus along its horizontal axis.
Immediately the bounding spherules froze.
The Conductor modified the lens, narrowing and intensifying the beam. One by one, the spherules seemed to migrate to the poles of penetration, melting together, expanding to fill the opposing sections, their glowing hearts merging and brightening in stately ascending harmony. At the finale the confining torus dissolved and there were twinned red flares like beads on a brilliant needle. The metaconcert roared to a crescendo.
The red flares coalesced into a singularity. At its center a writhing spider of white flame bloomed and died in a thunderous detonation. The symbolic image disappeared. The metaconcert withdrew and there was silence. What would happen next was beyond its control. The disruption of the lunar core had begun.
Marc showed his colleagues the real Cible, a darkened sphere faintly salmon in color, illuminated by starlight. It was apparently unchanged. A tiny body, the mock planetesimal, streaked toward it on an oblique impact trajectory and vanished without a trace into the satellite’s atmosphere.
Cible emerged from Diobsud’s shadow into sunlight again.
Abruptly, the moon seemed to inflate, like a being catching a last painful breath. Auroral rays sprang briefly from its poles. Shock waves of gas ionization sped toward the equatorial region, the yellow of nitrogen and the pale red and steel-blue of argon, blotched with monstrous bolts of static electricity. The waves collided and expanding rings of plasma burst into being, giving Cible the aspect of a miniature Saturn. As the gases attenuated, the watchers saw the satellite’s thick rind of surface ice shatter crazily. But the enormous fractures were visible only for an instant before dazzling white steam boiled up, momentarily creating a new atmosphere. It thinned almost immediately, driven into space by the devastating heat generated by the modified core.
Now the metaconcert saw the rupturing lithosphere, cracks hundreds of kilometers in width that glowed with red and gold pulsations on Cible’s night quadrant, intricate movements traced by clashing seismic waves that caused the crust to ripple and shimmer. Glowing flecks, thrown outward like spades from a bonfire, were in reality immense gouts of molten magma—some having enough momentum to achieve orbital velocity and batter the gaseous ring of the devastated little world.
Marc said: EXPLICIT.
It was finished. The mind-image of Cible disappeared.
The metaconcert disbanded. Its shaken orchestral participants emerged from their black shells and gathered in small silent groups in their respective CE bays, studying the aftermath now with their own farsenses. The 156 starships of the Rebel fleet were far enough from the event to be unscathed, but Class 2 met
eoroid screens were erected as a precautionary measure until the time of departure.
Cible did not perish utterly. It was too massive to disintegrate. Most of its atmosphere was gone, however, along with nearly all of its water. Over the next five hours, long after most of the weary metaconcert members had sunk into stuporous slumber during the journey back to Okanagon, the wounded satellite continued to cool and subside. Smoking ridges like far-flung webs of thick scar tissue gradually covered the crustal fractures. In a few places, upwellings of thinner magma spread out to form maria, oceans of stone that were smooth at first, then increasingly pocked with small craters as suborbital debris fell back to the surface. The new volcanoes would continue to pulse fitfully for years, sending up umbrella-shaped clouds of ash that would gradually bury the lunar surface beneath a powdery regolith.
Cible had been lifeless before and it was lifeless still, a celestial body inconsequential except to a handful of local astronomers and the CE operators who had used it as a practice target.
She had sent Thierry and Mitsuko and the children to a hotel in Chelan Metro for the night, and when Marc returned from the Sector Base she met him at the front door of the deserted house, dressed in a gown and negligé of cherry silk.
“Was it successful, Marcas?” Cyndia asked, drawing his head down to lightly kiss his mouth. But she knew the answer already from his tight smile and the emanation of fatigued satisfaction that seeped from beneath his carelessly crafted mindscreen.
“We achieved the objective. The seven hundred novice Grand Masters formed an adequate subrogate structure in the creativity generator. Their energy output was inferior to what Mental Man’s would have been, but the cobble worked. We’ll be able to do the demonstration if it proves necessary. Beyond that, it’s anyone’s guess.” He pulled away from her embrace, shaking his head. His burning gray eyes were deep-sunken and there was a hectic flush on his cheekbones. He had not bothered to shower off the dermal lavage from the CE rig. The lightweight athletic suit that he wore was stained with sweat and pungent chemicals.