Babylon 5 10 - Psi Corps 01 - Dark Genesis - Birth Of Psi Corpus (Keyes, Gregory)

by Birth Of Psi Corpus (Keyes, Gregory)

  chapter 2

  Lee cheered along with everyone else when the actinic glare of a small, new star appeared above the Lunar horizon. The probe had actually been launched half an hour before, of course, from the ugly snout of the mass driver he could barely see poking up from the Von Braun Shipyard a kilometer away. While cost-efficient, a mass-driver launch offered no sound and fury, no glare of rockets. By long tradition, it was the first flash of the engines that signaled a successful launch. Still clapping and grinning, he turned to face the reporters. "I'd just like to say how gratified I am to be here," he began, as the ruckus calmed to a general murmur. "I feel greatly privileged and enormously excited. There were those who said that this moment would never come that the curiosity that carried humanity from continent to continent and from world to world had begun to dwindle. Here is proof that they were wrong." Hands shot up everywhere as he paused. "Well," he said, "I had a longer speech planned, but you folks seem pretty eager." He selected Robert Tanaka, one of the front row of reporters. "Bob? What can I do for you?" "I'd just like to know how it feels, Senator, to be vindicated. And what do you think the aliens will be like?" "Well, Bob, in keeping with the dignity being a senator of the Earth Alliance carries-ah, hell, it feels damn good." He waited for the chuckles to float around. "But let's keep this all in perspective. Our experience with tachyon emissions is mighty limited, and for all we know that signal the DeepProbe detected could have come from a natural source. But still, this is what I-and many others-have wanted for a long time. The DeepProbe network was put in place four years after tachyons 27 were proven to exist. The Heimdal probe will upgrade the system at a bargain price, and I think one day-maybe sooner than you think-she'll answer your second question." "Thank you, Senator." "Very welcome. What about you-Ms. Bochs, isn't it?" "Yes sir, with Izvestia International. I was wondering how you respond to Senator Tokash's recent statement that you have mishandled the telepath problem." He felt the smile freeze on his face. "Well, I was hoping we could chat a bit more about the hope and future of humanity before we retreated back to the Neanderthal cave of politics. But if we have to go there, let's carry at least some of what we've seen today with us-some hope and faith in ourselves as a race. Senator Tokash has his own point of view, to be sure. He and I have differed about many things-the Heundal project itself, for instance, which many of you may remember he opposed not long ago. As for the telepath `problem'-we're dealing with the issue as sensitively as we can." "Some charge that you would make telepaths second-class citizens." "Yes, on the one hand-and on the other I'm criticized for not rounding them all up and throwing them into death camps. It's easy to make sweeping and extreme statements. It's harder to deal with complex reality. The truth is that we have to regulate telepaths, and at the same time we must respect their rights as citizens . I wish we could have avoided the regrettable incidents of the past few months, and I pray we've seen the end of them." "Senator, regarding your proposal for a specific committee on telepaths-" "Yes. The Privacy and Technology Committee was a good stopgap, but telepathy is not technology. This is a special problem that needs special attention. I've proposed a Committee on Meta- sensory Regulation." "Can you respond to the rumors that Senator Tokash has been appointed head of that committee instead of you?" Lee was proud of himself-he kept his smile in place. "I'm sure that the president will appoint whoever she feels will do the best job. If that's Tokash, then I trust her judgment." * x~ * Alone, he wasn't so cool, as the shards of an empty decanter settled to the floor of his room with the patience of snowflakes. Breaking things on the Moon lacked a certain satisfaction, but the moment of rupture, when even the smallest fragments ballooned outward like a dust cloud, made up for the lack of calamity. He had to retreat into the small washroom until the air filters took care of the danger the fragments posed to his lungs. It had been too long since he had been off planet, way too long. His instincts were betraying him like those of a rookie. When he reemerged and finished cleaning up the room, he felt calmer. He checked his messages and found among them a discouraging note from Tom Nguyen. Tokash would almost certainly get the committee. That wasn't right-it was his hearings that had begun it all, his voice the world had clung to. Now Tokash wanted to take that away from him. But what could he do? Nothing, not on the Moon, and he was stuck here for several more days, at least. By the time he returned to Earth, the decision would be made. He put on his weights and began calisthenics, working his muscles savagely. Whether people knew it or not, they responded better to a man who looked capable than one who did not. Sweat was just beginning to collect in improbably large droplets when the room link warbled. "Sound only," he told it. "Yes? Senator Lee Crawford here." There was a small pause, and then, "Senator Crawford? This is Alice Kimbrell." "Dr. Kimbrell, how nice to hear from you. To what do I owe the pleasure?" "I'd like to talk to you, as soon as is convenient." That raised his brows. No three-second delay-Alice Kimbrell was on the Moon. "What does this regard?" "Something very important." "Very well. How about the Ix Chet, in one hour?" "I would prefer somewhere less public." "Indulge me, if you don't mind. It's almost lunchtime anyway." The Ix Chel was, like everything on the Moon, small, but made up for that in elegance. Dug into a hillside, it featured a thick dome that filtered gentle blue Earthlight into the room. The light was picked up by the water rushing from behind one curved wall. Water on the Moon was a precious thing, mined from brittle, powdery seas--the corpses of long-dead comets. The colony had tons of it, but to see more than a cupful at a time was rare. To be all but surrounded by it was a miracle, and he silently toasted the owner's enterprise in having the restaurant butted up against one of the nodes of the colony's cooling/water-processing torus. The place was packed to capacity when Alice Kimbrell walked in, but she had no trouble spotting him when he stood. He admired her as she approached. He liked something about her eyes, and the crisp wear of her modest grey suit, almost like a uniform. "Dr. Kimbrell," he said, extending his hand. She took it, stiffly. "Senator." "Please, have a seat." Once she had done so, he flashed her a smile. "Quite a coincidence, both of us bein' on the Moon right now. Did you come to see Heimdal launched? I could've gotten you front-row seats." "I came to see you." He raised an eyebrow. "I'm flattered. That's an expensive jaunt for a private citizen." She acknowledged that with a curt nod. "I heard you were here." "I'll be in Geneva in six days. Or you could have called me." "It's too important to wait-or to trust to the cornlinks." "Really." "Yes. And I still wish we had gone somewhere more-private." He broadened his smile. "My papa used to say you ought not to bend to tie your shoe in the neighbor's pumpkin patch." "What does that mean?" "Well, a pumpkin is a sort of big-" "I know what a pumpkin is. 1 mean, what are you implying?" He idly tapped one of his chopsticks. "How many reporters do you see right now?" She looked around. "None." "There are two, at least. If I'm to meet with the woman who turned the world upside down, I want to do it where everyone can see. If you came to my room, they might wonder what secret we were exchangin'. Worse, they might think we were joining the Ex- sex club. You want to see that in the papers?" The waitress, a small, whine-haired woman with a heavy Austrian accent, chose that moment to arrive. "Drink with dinner?" "Scotch. Laphroig," Alice said. "Make mine an Evan Williams." Alice raised an eyebrow. `They keep a bottle just for me. I am the hero of this colony, you know.11 'lyes, but-conect me if I'm wrong-isn't Evan Williams fairly cheap, awful stuff?" "Cheap, yes, awful, yes. But it's the oldest distillery in North America, which has to count for somethin'. More to the point-it reminds me of where I'm from and who I am. Now Laphraoig, that's good, expensive stuff." "It reminds me of who 1 am," Alice replied. The drinks arrived. "Here's to knowin' where you're from," Lee said, and they clinked glasses, and both took a drink. "Healthy stuff," he observed. "It'll grow moss on Lunar soil." He cocked his head quizzically. "So what are we here to talk about, Doctor?" "Can they hear us? The reporters?" He shrugged. "It's against the law to eavesdrop. I ought to know, I'm on the Technology and Privacy Committee." He leaned forward. "You must
feel very pleased. The last of your critics have pretty much shut up, haven't they? Now that so many studies have replicated the findings you published." She stared at him. "Vindicated? How can I feel vindicated by the deaths of more than ten thousand people? The massacre Wednesday in Shanxi? The bombing in Utah? The rioting in Chicago-the spacings in Armstrong?" "All right," he soothed. "I get your point. Dr. Kimbrell, as you must know, every new discovery has its price. These findings would have been published, with or without you." "I realize that, Senator. But the very simple fact is that it was me." Her sipping escalated to a moderate gulp. "And you were dragged through the heap for it. And now that that's done, you're draggin' yourself through the heap." "No. Just taking responsibility." "Which brings you to me? Because I can't imagine that you flew all the way to the Moon to take advantage of my credentials as a psychotherapist." That got a small smile from her. "No. I came to see you because I want to be involved. Involved in the solution." "And you think I'm the solution? That's very flattering, Doctor. But you didn't think so when I initially invited you to advise me. What's changed?" "I've followed the hearings closely, as you might expect." "Get you another scotch?" She hesitated a moment, staring blankly at her empty tumbler. "Yes." "I'm sorry, you were saying?" "I think you have conducted the hearings in as sane a manner as possible, but they've made things worse." He frowned. "Surely you see that they're necessary, Dr. Kimbrell ? It's unfortunate, but telepathy is too powerful a tool-and a weapon-not to be regulated. What do you think the killings are all about? People are afraid, afraid that the person next to them might be reading their minds." "They're jealous." "That, too. Human society is structured around secrets, around limited disclosure. Success has always meant being able to navigate in that world, guess the unspoken, erect a facade. And now we find that there are people who have the inborn ability to simply cut through all that. Would you like to play poker with a telepath? Or trade stocks against someone who could secure inside information simply by being in the room with the right person? It's not so much a matter of specifically regulating telepaths as it is of making certain that existing laws regarding privacy and disclosure aren't violated by them." "And yet you are specifically regulating telepaths-telepaths can't be lawyers, or stockbrokers, or Olympic fencers-" "Plenty of precedent for that. Specific exclusions were spelled out for the use of the radar tap, too, when it was invented." "These are people, not listening devices." "They are both, I'm afraid, which makes regulation all the more necessary. People won't stop killing telepaths-and people they suspect of being telepaths-until they stop feeling threatened by them. That won't happen without regulation." She nodded. "I know. But you agree, as matters stand, that the hearings are only making things worse-you daily present potential abuses that most people haven't even thought of. The fact that you regulate these abuses is meaningless-" "-because we still have no way of knowing who the telepaths are. Exactly. And so we worry people more and more without giving them any tangible hope. But what else is there to do?" She was silent for a moment, taking a significant drink of her new scotch. He leaned forward and said, very softly, "You know what we can do, don't you?" She stared hard at the table. "I'm going to lose my job," she said very simply. "I'll never work in academia again if I do this. I need some guarantees." "You'll have them. You want a job, you've got it. Money." She suddenly seemed very young, very vulnerable. "I have money, Senator-how do you think I got to the Moon? That's not my concern. I want to know that this will be handled right. I don't want to place another loaded gun in the wrong hands. I. . ." "You came to me because you thought I would do the right thing." She nodded. "A paper just came across my desk. It involves gene sequencing-" "The telepathy gene?" "It's not so simple as that. No one has found any gene that seems to control for telepathy. It appears to be like intelligence, an emergent property found in many different genes. But the author of this paper did find a marker." "Really? What do you mean?" "Most of us are now postulating that telepathic ability is either a recent mutation or the result of an isolated one that has only recently entered the global gene pool. For instance, one of the Highland New Guinea groups may have had telepaths for a thousand years, but since they were isolated from the rest of the world until relatively recently, the genes didn't get around." "I follow you. That would explain a lot." "Yes, it would. Unfortunately, as it turns out, it isn't true. The mitochondria) DNA of fifty demonstrated telepaths was analyzed and correlated with their family histories and other genetic tests of relatedness. As I'm sure you know, mitochondria) DNA is passed only through the mother's line--it isn't affected by the father's at all, but only by very gradual random mutation--the rate of which is known. A brother and sister have virtually identical MDNA, cousins slightly divergent sequences, and so on. Initially, there were some problems with mutation rates, but that was all corrected for by the Vasquer calibration-" "Yes, I'm aware of all of this. So this analysis did not indicate that these telepaths have a common heritage?" "On the contrary. More than half of them had MDNA that were near perfect matches. Too perfect. Other genetic data---and that the individuals have no ancestors in common in recorded history." He shrugged "Good records on most of humanity weren't available until a hundred years ago. I don't see the point " "The point is, this mutation they all share seems to be less than a hundred years old." He stared at her for perhaps ten heartbeats as that sank in. "Holy shit," he said. He looked around. "Okay, you were right, I was wrong. Press be damned, let's get out of here." "I thought you said the reporters aren't listening?" "I doubt they are. I doubt anyone is-I come to this place because they keep a randomly modulated interference wave going that jams most peepers. But there is an old art called 'lipreading '-come on. We'll finish this in my room, which I know is safe." The train arrived with a faint vibration, but no sound-the tube it traveled in was at the Moon's surface pressure. As the car doors kissed their gaskets against the entry ports, Lee gave one of the private cars his personal code that let them in. Once they were insid e , he confirmed it for billing via a retinal scan. "That's better," he said, as the train glided into motion. "Now. Who else knows this?" "I'm not sure. The authors of the paper, of course, and anyone they've told. I haven't told anyone else. I gather from your reaction you understand the implications." "Yep. Our telepath friends were engineered. The question now is-by whom? The old United States? That's where most of them have turned up." "Only because that's where the original testing was done. We've got a good worldwide distribution, now." "That might be meaningless-they might form some elaborate spy network, or something. Or it could be corporate. Or-frik." He felt the hairs on the back of his neck pricking up. "I need time to think about this." "Where are we going?" "Hmm? My room is near Malibu Station. Maybe ten minutes from here." "I would have thought things would be closer together." "Never been to the Moon before? Grissom is a mining colony, so buildings tend to sprawl a bit, mostly along this line, toward the water mines at Malibu. Ever since the depressurization of the old dome, nobody wants to be in the basket with all of the rest of the eggs." "I should think you would be particularly wary," she said. He shook his head in grim agreement. "I've seen enough people die of explosive decompression in one lifetime, thank you. And been too close, myself." "Is that why you left the colony?" "That's part of it," he said. "Your wife died in the accident." "No offense, Dr. Kimbrell, but this is a little personal for me." "None taken. And I'm sorry." They continued in silence for a moment. "I'm glad you brought this to me," he said at last, reaching to grip her hand. "You did the right thing." "I hope so." She did not move his hand. The train sighed to a stop, and unexpectedly, their door slid open. "Excuse me," Lee told the man who stood framed in the entry. "This is a private car, and as you can see=' Then it hit him. The door shouldn't even have opened. He was bolting up from his seat when the man stepped quickly in, a nine- millimeter pistol trained on his heart. "Sit back down, Senator," the man said, softly. chapter 3