The Adversary - 4 (21 page)

He stared, uncomprehending.

"That beautiful flash of harmonious function," she said. "He was bypassing the old torc-generated neural circuitry completely, using more than the fresh channels we'd opened.

He slipped into true operant metafunction."

The Heretic was sitting on the edge of the couch now, and as he listened his fingers went to the gold at his own throat. "The baby's mind functioned metapsychically without the torc? As yours does, and that of the King?"

She nodded. "When I designed this salvage program, I naturally based it upon human paradigms-metapsychic patterns similar to those imposed upon the young children I taught back in the Milieu. A certain percentage of human offspring are potentially operant-but metafaculties almost never develop optimally unless the young mind is trained. The process is rather like learning to talk. Oral communication is an immensely complicated business that we tend to take for granted, but a child won't learn it unless his brain receives the proper input, preferably at a very early age when volition is very strong.

Gaining full access to one's spectrum of metafunctions also depends largely upon education-although under special circumstances the process can become virtually instinctive. There's a lot we still don't know-especially about repressive factors that tend to keep a person nonoperant in spite of strong latencies."

"As happened with Felice."

"And Aiken," she agreed. "The two of them eventually did attain operancy, but by very different routes. Felice's painful breakthrough was similar to the procedure I used on Brede Shipspouse. But Aiken's ... As I said, there are things we don't know. It seems that, occasionally, persons with exceptionally great latencies can raise themselves by mental bootstraps to the higher level. Certainly the pre-Intervention human metas were almost all self-taught. But once our race was inducted into the Milieu, we depended upon preceptive techniques taught to us by the exotics. For example, we laid the groundwork for childhood metapsychic education by telepathic interaction between mother and fetus."

Minanonn uttered a weak laugh. "With our torcs, things are much simpler!"

"Simplest doesn't equate with best." Her tone was sharp.

"Babies wouldn't need to learn to walk if you cut off their legs and grafted their bodies to efficient motorized carts!"

His head dropped. "You're right, of course. I'm not thinking too clearly." He scrubbed the sweat from his brow with the back of one great hand. "Goddess, but I'm tired. Toward the last, I was afraid I'd let you down. We finished that segment just in time."

"You did very well," she reassured him. But even as she spoke she slid an adroit lancet-probe into his mind, and was shocked at the profundity of his fatigue. She herself was drained, but the Tanu hero, unused to husbanding his strength during prolonged and concentrated actions, seemed to have strained his coercive faculty almost to the breaking point. The digital clock on the nursery wall showed that they had been working for nearly eight hours. It was past two in the morning. "You're going to have to rest now," she told him. "What we did was very hard work."

"You don't have to tell me that!" He rose shakily from the couch and looked down on the child, who had drifted off to sleep. "I feel as though I'd just fought a Grand Combat singlehanded. But he was the only antagonist."

"The minds of children are far less fragile than those of adults.

It's a survival thing."

He sighed, and managed a rueful smile. "Well, I'm game to work him over again tomorrow night if you are."

"Minanonn-" She hesitated, then laid a hand on his enormous forearm. "We'd better wait a while longer. Three days."

His blond brows shot up, and then his eyes brightened in alarm and comprehension. "That bad, eh?"

She nodded. "It's not your fault. You're one of the finest coercers I know. But the job is fiendishly difficult. The concentrated small-scale thrusting-"

Minanonn said to the baby, "Oh, you tough little beggar.

More than a match for a worn-out warrior like me." He moved toward the door and asked Elizabeth, "Shall I tell Mary-Dedra to come?"

"Not yet. I want to reexamine the redacted regions of the child's brain first, while he's still quiet. Goodnight, Minanonn.

And thank you."

When he had gone she resumed her seat beside the little bed and studied the commissures with her deep-seeing eye. The baby's pain was temporarily in abeyance; but was he really improved? His fever was still high and there were new blisters forming in the neck area. Tough, Brendan might be-nevertheless, he was still very likely doomed. The bludgeon technique of mind alteration had been effective, but it was much too slow.

If only Minanonn were stronger, Elizabeth lamented. She was sure that the redactor-coercer configuration was the correct one in this case. Strength. That was the key ...

The baby slept. Strong little Brendan, whose unfolding mind had fought the torc instead of adapting. Were the children who succumbed always the fighters, always the ones hovering closest to natural operancy? Aiken Drum in the fullness of young adulthood had resisted his torc and conquered it.

How?

But Aiken would not know, being, as he was, a natural talent, inexperienced in metapsychic analysis. And even though he was by far the greatest coercer in Europe, she did not dare ask him to assist her in the child's redaction. Aiken was too badly damaged himself, too near dissolution.

She slumped back in the chair, brooding, and felt a welcome cool breeze brush her bare shoulders. If only the wretched hot weather would break and an honest thunderstorm recharge the atmosphere with negative ions. Then she might be able to make sense of it. Not only solve the problem of the black-torc babies but the greater question as well, her own mountain of challenge, erected by Brede.

The wind intensified and she let herself luxuriate in it, reaching back to lift her hair. "Oh, that's wonderful," she murmured.

"I'm glad you like it. I wish I could manage the storm for you, but the range is too extreme."

She whirled about, galvanized by astonishment, then froze to see Marc Remillard watching her from just outside the open window. This time, the cross-sectional halo effect of the mindenhancing equipment was reduced to an indistinct shimmer and his body, suspended in midair, seemed completely material. She could see the play of muscle beneath the tight black pressuresuit as he lifted his right hand, palm forward, in the familiar Milieu metapsychic greeting that invited physical as well as mental touch.

No! she cried in instinctive revulsion, leaping from the chair and backing away.

A fresh wave of chill air emanated from him. He smiled sadly, one side of his mouth lifted slightly higher than the other. The hand dropped slowly to his side.

"You're really here," she stated, rather than asked.

"As you see, Grand Master."

"It's a genuine hyperspatial translation? By mind-power alone?"

"The cerebroenergetic enhancer assists me in generating the upsilon field, but I do the actual d-jump-and the return, of course-under my own steam."

"I presume you learned the program from Felice. Did she injure you seriously in the process?"

Instead of replying, he demanded, "Where is she? I've been unable to farsense her aura, even with the CE rig augmenting my search faculties to the maximum."

Elizabeth showed him the site of the girl's tomb alongside the Rio Genii, the impervious globe of the room without doors buried deep in the rockfall. "Felice is beyond your reach, Marc.

You'll have to look for another partner."

The shadowed eyes seemed to twinkle. "You've left yourself vulnerable, Grand Master."

She stood straight. "Why don't you come inside and do your worst? We've learned a few things in the Milieu since your damned Rebellion! All metas learn self-defensive manoeuvres to forestall the kind of coercive manipulation you and your confederates used. And for Grand Masters, there's a last recourse against mind violation that I'd almost welcome using at this point."

"Perhaps I'd better stay where I am. For both our sakes. The CE rig persists in following me through hyperspace like Mary's little lamb. Unless your chalet has reinforced floors, I might prove a perilous guest in more ways than one."

Fascinated in spite of herself, she asked, "Do you mean that the machine will stay behind, once the translation program is properly edited?"

"Oh, yes. And the coverall, too, if I wished." He made a Gallic gesture. "However, I'll retain it to spare you the sight of my scars."

"What do you want?" she asked, tiring of the verbal fencing.

He nodded at the sleeping baby. "His problem interests me.

It's not unlike certain matters that once occupied me ... au temps perdu."

"I'm sure Brother Anatoly would agree."

He laughed. "You feel a certain affinity?"

"For another member of the Frankenstein Club? Oh, yes.

But I'm a comparative amateur in meddling with the course of human evolution. I lack your self-assurance as well as your paramount qualifications. Take this black-torc business-I'm bungling it and the baby will likely die, but I can't help feeling that it would be for the best. If I save Brendan and the others like him, what future would they have in this poor damned land? I don't need Brede's clairvoyance to foresee what's going to happen when you get to Europe. There will be a war over the time-gate site."

"Not if Aiken cooperates with me instead of with my son.

You could show Aiken where his best interests lie."

She laughed bitterly. "You're a fool if you think I can exert that kind of influence. Aiken does as he pleases. If he's decided to help your children escape from you, nothing I say or do will deter him."

The hovering dark shape drifted nearer, sending a wash of chill air ahead. Hastily, Elizabeth covered the baby.

"Your protestations of helplessness lack conviction," Marc said. "Perhaps you have your own reasons for encouraging the building of a Pliocene time-gate."

"And what about your motive for preventing it?" she retorted. "Are you really so afraid that the Magistratum will come after you? Or is it that you would prefer to see your children dead rather than lose them to the Unity you couldn't accept?"

"You misjudge me," he said. "I love them. Everything I've done has been for them. For all human children. For Mental Man crying to be born-"

"Let it be, Marc!" she cried. "It's over-it has been, for more than twenty-seven years! Humanity chose the other way, not yours!" A great weariness oppressed her and she felt her eyes sting. The strong mental walls she had erected against the commanding presence of the Milieu's challenger wavered, weakened. She was vulnerable and he knew it-but he forbore. She whispered, "Let your children go. The Milieu will welcome them. Turn your ship around and return to North America. I'll do my utmost to insure that the Pliocene side of the time-gate is permanently closed, so that you and the other Rebels will be left unmolested."

"How will you do that?" he asked. "By going back to the Milieu yourself?"

She turned her head away. "Leave us alone, Marc. Don't destroy our little world."

"Poor Grand Master. It's a difficult role you've chosen.

Almost as lonely as mine." The sound of his voice intensified and she looked up, startled, to see that he was actually standing on the broad sill of the window. There was no longer any trace of ghostly machinery surrounding him. As in a dream, Elizabeth watched him step down and walk slowly to the infant's wicker bed, leaving wet footprints on the parquet floor. The exudation of cold air was no longer apparent. He was fully materialized, divorced from the mind-enhancing equipment. One gloved hand gripped the rim of the baby basket and she heard the fibres creak. His grey eyes beneath their heavy winged brows held hers.

"Show me the program you're using in the child's redaction.

Quickly! I can't sustain this stasis for more than a few minutes."

Her mind had gone numb, beyond fear. She summoned the program and displayed it.

"Very ingenious. Is it entirely your own construct?"

"No. Great chunks of it come from the preceptive courses I used when teaching children at the Metapsychic Institute on Denali."

"Redactive science has come a long way since my day ... I would judge that this program of yours is fully capable of effecting a cure."

"It's too slow." Her admission was starkly clinical. "At the rate I was going with Minanonn, the procedure would take more than twelve hundred hours. The baby would almost certainly die before we could finish."

"All you need do is magnify the coercive loading. At that minute focus, the child's mind can endure ten times the pressure Minanonn delivers." He had gone into the small brain, scrutinizing, testing. The baby stirred and exhaled a soft cooing sound, smiling in his sleep.

Elizabeth said, "I can only utilize a single auxiliary mind in this configuration. Phasing in a coercive metaconcert is out of the question."

"I was thinking of something quite different." Marc withdrew his redactive faculty and took two steps backward. "We would have to wait until Manion and Kramer and I solve the problem of maintaining my translation in stasis-holding off the rubberband effect that tends to pull me back to the takeoff point of the jump. We couldn't risk that happening in mid redaction.

Even with a maximum feed of coercion, it will still take more than a hundred hours to finish the little chap off."

"Finish him?" Elizabeth's voice was a faltering whisper.

Marc's mind engaged hers on the intimate mode: Together we could heal him completely. With certain emendations of your program we might even raise him to permanent operancy.

"Work with you?

But I could never-"

"You could never trust me?" The asymmetrical smile was self-mocking. He tapped the side of his head and greenish drops flew from his dripping hair to splatter the window frame. "I'm barebrained at this end of the d-jump, Elizabeth. There would be no danger to you if we use the program exactly as formulated-coercer-inferior, with you retaining executive function. You'd be quite safe from ... diabolical influence."