Dark Genesis: The Birth of the Psi Corps (26 page)

Walters. I’m alone, unarmed. I need to talk to you.

He scanned the valley below, searching for the source. Whoever it was probably had him in line of sight, and he didn’t like that. By the river. Morning. The man approached with his hands open, a gesture as ancient as humanity. Stephen did not reciprocate-he kept his gun up. Thirty paces away the stranger stopped, pushed back the hood of his parka.

“Fedor?”

“Yes, of course. Who else would they send to find you?”

“You crazy Siberian. I’m amazed you’re still alive.”

“I love you, too, my friend. How are you?”

He regarded the dark-haired man for a moment.

“You tell me, Fedor. Have you come to kill me.”

“The Corps is mother, the Corps is father, Stephen. I’ve come to bring you back, not kill you. The director sent me.”

“Did he? What does the director care about me?”

“Come, come, moi droog. I know your mission. I know, also, that you must be near-how is it in English?-near the end of your rope. You’ve been out far too long, too long away from the family. But now it’s over at last.”

“Over? Or do they just want the boy?”

“He belongs with us-you know that. Only the Corps can care for him properly. We tried to get word to you before, before the bloodshed-“

“Yes, what about that? I’ve killed my own kind, Fedor. I-it was part of my orders, but-“

“It’s forgiven. No one will even know.” Stephen lowered the rifle. “I can go home?”

“Yes. It remains only to get the boy, and this Matthew Dexter. Then-“

Fedor understood what was happening even before Stephen did himself. Before he could lift the nose of his rifle, the Russian was reaching behind him. As his hand snapped back over, now holding a pistol, Stephen’s own muzzle finally came up, and the explosions rang together. Together, they pitched backward into the snow. Son of a bitch! Stephen sent. He couldn’t move his body at all, but there was no pain, either. Fedor’s touch was losing strength fast. You love them. Why didn’t you tell me, moi droog? 1 wouldn’t have-You shot me! Stephen sent, angrily. Se f defense. 1 saw it coming. Your mind-Stephen understood, now. It’s true. Fedor, I’m sorry. You can’t understand. I understand you have killed me. What else is there to understand . Ah, God! It’s so stupid for me to die because you were in love and didn’t know it. Stephen tried once more to rise, but couldn’t. I’m sorry Fedor, he said again. I wish I had some vodka. And a smoke. 1 wish … Stephen had the impression of a door swinging open, slamming shut, light, then silence. He lay there, just he and the sky, and for the first time in his life he thought he felt truly at peace. He awoke on a sledge. Matthew was pulling it, the brushmen and Remy walking on either side.

“Matthew-” he managed

“Shh, Stephen, you’ve lost a lot of blood.”

“Not important. I’ve got to tell you some things.”

“It can wait.”

“Maybe not. I-I’m sorry, Matthew. I didn’t understand.”

“Understand what?” Matthew stopped, tumed toward him.

“A while ago I said that the resistance only worked because of you and Fiona. I made it sound like an insult. The thing is, you guys-” He clenched his teeth at a hard, deep pain. “The thing is, most teeps turn rogue not for some abstract cause, not for some high ideal, but because life is stacked against them. Their lives are misery-hunted, hurt, never anywhere long enough to make friends. Searching for just a minute of happiness in years of pain. They go on because they hope. If they had no hope, they’d join Psi Corps or take the sleepers. “But hope is so fragile, Matthew. It’s the easiest thing to kill. And yet there you two are, in the eye of the strnn, and everyone can see how you feel, feel how you feel. They can see it’s not stupid to hope. You love each other, and so they love you. II think I’ve known it for a long time, I just didn’t want to see it.”

“Because I destroyed your hope,” Matthew whispered.

“No. No. Listen to me, Matthew. I wanted Fiona. She gave me desire, not hope. Only you guys together gave me that. Only the both of you.” He licked his cracked lips. “There’s something else. I want you to scan me. I want you to know everything.”

“You aren’t strong enough for that.”

`But if I die-“

“You won’t die,” Matthew said. “We’ve got our connection. Baraka Industries sent a chopper three hours ago. We’re going home.”

“Where-” He coughed on what felt like a live coal. “Where is home this week?”

“You know. Wherever Fiona is.”

CHAPTER 2

Senator Khalid Ahmed of the United Islamic Nations (UIN) had a sleek face, the eyes of a tiger, and a smile that meant nothing at all. That he appeared on the comscreen and not in person diminished his presence not in the slightest.

“Director Vacit,” he said. “I hope you are well today.”

“Very well, thank you, Senator. What can I do for you?”

“You can explain to me why you are preparing the Varona for a Venus run. Correct me if I’m wrong, Director, but I’m fairly certain that-as lead boils on its surface-there are no rogue telepaths on Venus.”

“You never know where you will find rogues, Senator.”

“Mr. Vacit, you have never been known for your humor. I respectfully suggest that it is too late in your career to begin trying to build a reputation for it. We both know where rogues can be found—here, on Earth, on every continent, in every country. And yet, oddly enough, though you direct a well-funded, highly organized institution with broader discretionary powers than any similar organization on or off Earth, these rogues seem to not only be thriving, but doing more damage each day. Bombings all over the globe. Schoolchildren snatched from testing lines. Three reeducation camps `liberated’ in as many months. And here you want to jaunt off to Venus.”

“There’s been a murder there, on the orbiting station.”

“Fine. Send a telepath-on the next supply transport.”

“The killer may have been a rogue telepath, as I told you, and thus the matter requires Psi Corps investigation.”

“In that case, I require the details of the case.”

“You will have them. When I return. I’m already on Station Prime, and our departure window draws near.”

“Perhaps you can simply tell me why the director of Psi Corps needs to go along on a simple murder investigation.”

“It’s within my boundaries as director.”

“Yes, it is. But that isn’t a reason.”

Kevin replied with a simple shrug. Ahmed turned a shade darker.

“I have to tell you, Director, many of us have grown concerned over leadership at Psi Corps. You might want to keep that in mind.”

In other words, some of you have begun to think yourselves powerful enough to retire me, Kevin thought, as he acknowledged the statement by inclining his head and severing the link.

“Sir?”

“Yes, Ms. Alexander?”

He turned and immediately had to catch himself as his Earth-born reflexes again betrayed him in the zero gravity They still had an hour or so of turnaround-it was always wise to run a few tests on the fusion drive before kicking it back on for the deceleration leg of the journey. Even though he understood that, he would be happier when he had weight again, even if it was the result of confused inertia rather than the product of real gravity.

“May I ask a question?”

“You’ve been my assistant for what fifteen years now? I suppose you may.”

“Why are we going to Venus?”

“Such impertinence,” he responded wryly.

“Yes, sir, I know, but after four days in a ship, one begins to wonder these things.”

“Aren’t you enjoying your book? Isn’t it keeping your interest ?”

“Yes, sir. I mean, l suppose. Did this Bester ever write anything else?”

“Yes, he did, and it is probably the second-best work of twentieth-century speculative fiction. The one you’re reading is the best. You don’t agree?”

“I haven’t read much science fiction, modern or ancient. It’s well , the language is strange. It’s amusing that they refer to ‘scanning ‘ as `peeping,’ though. I suppose I don’t really see the point in the literature as a whole. All in all, Bester did a poor job of forecasting the future.”

Vacit fingered his chin.

“The point of science fiction isn’t to predict the future, but to imagine it. Those are two very different things. I didn’t understand either, when Senator Crawford introduced me to the subject, but over time I finally grokked it.”

“Sir?”

“Never mind.”

“I’ll keep reading, sir.” She hesitated. “And if you can’t answer the question, sir-about why we’re going to Venus-you can just tell me so, rather than distracting me.”

“We’re going to Venus to find what was in the hole in Antarctica ,” he said.

Her eyes went very wide, not something he often saw them do anymore. It reminded him of the much younger intern who had walked into his office, long ago.

“What makes you-why Venus, sir?”

He composed himself, reached out to make certain that no one else was within ear-or mindshot. No one was. Besides himself and Natasha, there was the flight crew-all P3s or under-and two Psi Cops, both presently asleep aft. As for electronic spies, his personal team had debugged the Varona.

“This is for you only. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Years ago-before you were born-I touched an alien artifact, one IPX had found on Mars. Not Centauri, not Nam, but produced by a technology like we’ve never seen-until that fragment you and I found in Yucatdn. The same technology, Ms. Alexander. Organic in nature, very advanced.”

“I see. Sir, you might have told me about this-“

“The artifacts of which I speak are among EarthGov’s most highly classified secrets, Ms. Alexander. I shouldn’t be telling you about them even now. I do so only because of the great trust I have in you.”

“Yes, sir. I appreciate that, sir.”

“Then you will appreciate that what I tell you next is more than classified-it is unknown to everyone except me.” She nodded. “The fragment from Yucatán-did you perceive anything unusual when you handled it?”

“Not really, sir—but I’m only a P5.”

“The artifact from Mars had a certain-signature. When I touched it, I felt - I suppose I must call it awe. Ms. Alexander, you must know me well enough to know that I despise the unempirical , the untestable, particularly when considering them as a basis for action. I distrust what cannot be objectively verified. “Perhaps that is why I have waited all these years to act, to do anything about this, to even try to verify what I suspect because the basis of my suspicions are so-questionable.” He paused to let that sink in.

She did know him well. She didn’t prompt or cajole him, but waited for him to continue, knowing he would.

“I must digress again. When I was very young-eighty years ago, when I was four my mother died. She was holding me. She was a powerful teep, and I was, too, even at that age. I went with her, when she died, via a sort of involuntary deathbed scan. I went beyond the doorway, and I think I almost stayed there. I saw a Shalako-a sort of spirit my mother’s people believe in. I felt it was good, and kind, and very powerful. And then it became my mother, giving me a gift. “I’ve always believed that the gift was real, in some sense. I think she gave me some of her strength, enhanced my abilities. As you know, the scales can’t rate me, but I think I’m at least a P13. But since Antarctica, I have begun to question whether that is all that happened.”

“You felt something in Antarctica, I remember.”

“Yes. I felt a death-trace, one so old that it shouldn’t have been there. I’ve sent Pl2s back to that site since-without telling them, of course, what to expect-and they felt only a faint presence, nothing like what I perceived. The same with the artifacts-while P12s feel something, they seem to receive no impressions as clear as my own.”

“But, as you say, sir, you are stronger than they. And at least you’ve obtained objective confirmation that your experience was the result of some external cause.”

He nodded reluctantly.

“The death-trace in Antarctica was-familiar to me. It was something like the Shalako, from when I was young. And like the artifact from Mars and found, but stronger-stranger, and yet, more familiar. It was”- he struggled-“almost as though this was a piece of me. A part of myself I recognized.”

“That’s not an uncommon phenomenon, sir, especially with teeps.

“No, it’s not, but in most cases it is an illusion, a trick of the mind. And so I wish to test this, as best I can. You asked what this has to do with Venus. The impression I got in Antarctica was of two beings, two Shalako, two-whatever they were. One had died, and it was his trace I felt. You remember the story you told me? About the two brothers who battled the lords of death? One died, and his essence remained on Earth, the other lived and became the morning star?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The morning star is Venus.”

Natasha finally looked a little troubled.

“Sir, I hope you have more to go on than that.”

“I do,” he said, feeling frustrated. “But it’s in here.” He tapped his skull. “It’s like I’ve known it for a long time. Like it’s always been there. Yet it took you, and fifteen years, to convince me to actually trust it.”

She considered that for a moment, then looked at him frankly.

“Sir, if you say you trust a feeling-well, I trust it, too.”

“Thank you, Ms. Alexander. There is a bit more-something a little more substantial. You remember that satellites had, in times past, mapped a gravitational and magnetic anomaly at the Antarctic site? Well, I’ve located a similar anomaly on Venus-so similar that it matches to within ninety-eight percent both in strength and dimensions. It’s at the Venusian south pole. So it may be that I’m not entirely crazy. Nonetheless …” He paused.

“Yes?”

“Ms. Alexander, if you ever suspect I have gone mad, or even senile-I count on you to tell me.”

He expected her to laugh it off, but instead she pursed her lips thoughtfully.

“Sir-I don’t think you’re mad, or senile. I’ve never thought so. But there is something I don’t understand. It’s been bothering me for some time now.”

“That being?” He felt her scanning-not him, but for “peepers.” “Don’t worry,” he assured her. “Nothing is leaving this cabin unless we want it to.”