The Adversary - 4 (53 page)

His mind opened, showing a black thing roughly humanoid in shape, self-contained, armoured against the world, divorced from its unnecessary body, its ultrasenses prowling the galaxy on a never-ending search for other minds like itself-and finding none, resolving to make such minds.

Don't cry, Hagen. Don't be afraid. It's only Papa ...

Hagen said, "He's got a second suit of armour there in Kyllikki, ready for me."

Diane screamed.

He folded his arms around her then and held her to his breast.

The white antelope skin of the storm-suit was soft, warmed by the living flesh inside, faintly redolent of wax and tanning compound and human sweat. The face that looked down at her was haggard, wet with tears, in need of a shave, the jaw trembling with tension and still scarred on the left side with the psychosomatic stigma of the hook. A face that was almost Marc's.

"He won't let us go," Diane whispered in terror.

"With Aiken Drum on our side, we can give him a damn good run for his money," Hagen said. "And if the old wolf starts getting too close to the fleeing sleigh - well, I can always make Marc a present of the other nut. Then he'd have his Mental Man and we'd be free of him for ever."

She burst into tears, and then she was laughing with him, and then the laughter was smothered in their kisses. He said, "Come on, babe," and led her to the starproof shadow of a flowering daphne. After they had coupled they lay on their sides, face to face and body to body, clinging to one another. The turf was dewy and none too soft and a chill breeze stole over the pond, but still they lay together sharing warmth and breath.

"I wish we could have made Mental Man tonight," he said.

"Damn that implant."

"I'll ask Becky Kramer to take it out tomorrow."

"The kid will be born in the Milieu," Hagen said, "or we'll just fly away, babe. The three of us. Okay?"

"Yes."

They held each other more tightly and let the mental images drift from one mind to the other. Fears. Elizabeth's reassurance.

Dangers. The possible failure of the Guderian Project. Alexis Manion's persistent reassurance last winter in Ocala that they would only find fulfilment in the Unity ... as would their child.

"And it'll be immortal, like you," Diane whispered tremulously.

"Self-rejuvenating," Hagen corrected her. "And in case you're fearful of losing your endearing young charms, let me remind you that some of the time-travellers in our lab went through four refit jobs in tanks back in the Milieu, and would likely have kept up the good work indefinitely if they hadn't hankered for the primitive life here in the Pliocene."

Diane giggled. "Can't you imagine the consternation among all those sensible stay-at-home Milieu folks when we pop through the time-gate and tell them we have the grandson of Mental Man in embryo?"

Hagen made an indelicate noise. "That'll be the first shock.

If this thing works out, we'll be lucky if the whole exile population doesn't come along with us. Cloud and her faerie prince aren't the half of it."

Diane was quiet for a long moment. "Hagen-she wouldn't stay, would she? She says she doesn't love Kuhal. She wouldn't be tempted to sacrifice herself for the rest of us, would she?"

"For Papa's sake, you mean? Don't kid yourself! In the first place, you were all too right when you noted that in the Mental Man game, the male of the species has natural advantages over the female. Papa wants me. Why do you think he let Cloud go to Europe with Elaby and the others, but kept me there in Ocala? I'm to take his place."

"Cloud has the genes," Diane insisted. "Marc could use her."

"She wants Unity more than any of us! Cloud and Elaby were the first ones to be convinced by Alex that rebellion was the better part."

"But Elaby's dead, Hagen, and Cloud says she'll never fall in love with anyone again and risk the pain-"

"My cerebral sister wouldn't know love if it bit her on the ankle. No matter what she says, she and Kuhal will follow right along with the rest of us ... and if you think our offspring will rock the Milieu, what about a Tanu-Remillard cross?"

"We Manions have our hidden marvels, too. Let me show you one."

There followed a good deal of laughter and other pleasantry.

But all too soon the stars dimmed and disappeared behind an overcast. As the first drops of rain from the next storm fell upon them, they helped each other to dress and had a last kiss. Then Hagen spun a small psychocreative umbrella and they walked under it back to the Castle of Glass, intending to give their decision to the King.

Aiken was not at home.

Neither was the Guderian Project laboratory, its personnel, the giant sigma-generator, or the twenty-one aircraft that had been parked in the castle courtyard.

There was pain of translation and then he hung in the grey limbo, not for a subjective instant as during his former d-jumps, but for an excruciating quarter of an hour, since he was experimentally transporting three tons of inert matter in addition to his regular armour. He endured while the stubborn fabric of space bent to his mind's command and the hyperspatial catenary was executed: a nonline drawn through a nondimensional region by a nonforce.

Imprisoned inside the refrigerated and ultrapressurized CE rig, the supercharged brain was deprived of all normal and all metasensory input. Hyperspace was without form and void. He was fully conscious and self-possessed within its matrix, as though he rode a superluminal starship; but there the analog ended. If he had been on a ship he might have slept or read or taken light exercise or eaten or amused himself in any number of ways, trusting to the ship's crew and machinery to translate him across more than 14,000 light-years of interstellar space.

Instead, he was the ship.

He had no artificial guidance system, no computerized routefinder such as a starship captain had, no engine powered by fusing nuclei to energize his passage. The equipment worn by his brain served only to assist in puncturing the superficies. It let him enter hyperspace via an upsilon-field gateway: but once inside the grey limbo, there was only the mental program to provide direction and impetus. It was a wondrous program, purchased at great price, and its use was not for the fainthearted.

Seeming to move along an invisible cable hung between two worlds, the d-jumper did not dare to relax his concentration for an instant. His attention must not falter, must not be distracted from the goal by a single vagrant thought. The goal alone was life. If his mind relinquished it for the millionth part of a second, he would be lost.

He held fast through the endless and horrific minutes, knowing only the goal. It was a star: G3-1668 in his catalogue, a sun he had never bothered to name. He farsensed it more than seven years ago and rejected it because the people were premetapsychic and apparently useless for his purposes. Now, however, of the three star systems that were potential cradles for Mental Man, he judged this one to be the most promising.

So he named the sun Goal, and filled his mind with it in order to forget the events that must be taking place back on Earth In time he reached the terminal superficies. His brain flared, drawing heavily upon the cortical augmentation reserves to suck in more energy. He spun the upsilon-field, thrust the three tons of ballast rock through it, and then followed himself. He knew hideous agony and uttered a cosmic groan. Then he hung in space, surveying the scene with his mind's eye.

A yellow star lit half of a white-swirled blue marble. It was the fourth planet of the Goal system, home of the indigenous race. He studied it with his farsense for several hours, savouring the respite from pain, then wished himself and his cargo to the surface. This time the d-jump took less time than an eye-blink and caused less discomfort than a plucked lash. The teleported rocks, for whose sake he had risked his life, lay in an undistinguished heap. Some of them were still crusted with frozen mud from the Seine estuary.

Marc forgot them. He emerged from his armour, rendered himself invisible, and walked among the unsuspecting exotic people for two days.

They were bipeds, approximately humanoid in form and approximately saurischian in derivation. They were intelligent, peaceable, and had a birthrate that was probably too low ever to admit of their attaining the "magic number" of ten thousand million living minds, the normal minimum required for coadunation. The planet had an advanced technoeconomy that kept its people prosperous and healthy. Its biomedical establishment was sophisticated enough to support the Mental Man breeding program. It was an attractive world, with an ecology as congruous to human life as any colonial planet of the Milieu.

The people were a hardworking and worthy lot, with a psychosocial index that would suggest rapid adaptation to a benevolent despotism.

It was a world, he thought, that would do nicely. Here, under his aegis, Mental Man would burgeon and flourish and expand His bright dominion from star to star through the aeons to come, the all-conquering and immortal Mind.

And in six million years, there would remain not a trace of Him.He could not pray for the desired outcome. It did not exist and would hot. He wondered: Can I will it?

After two days of observation in the Goal star system, depressed to the depths of his being, Marc d-jumped back to Kyllikki. He farspoke Elizabeth on Black Crag and said: Tell me.

She said: The children gave me their response and asked me to relay it to you.

Very well.

[Image: Daughter and son stand before hilltop stone castle rain lush grass path bordered white stones flat rock surface with Square.] Hagen: This is Castle Gateway Papa. We're standing on the site of the time-gate leading from the Milieu to the Pliocene.

The gate we all came through. We've thought about your proposition. Both of us. We've spoken to all the other children as well and conferred with the King but the decision was ours.

We've decided to go back to the Galactic Milieu. Back to the world that we were born in back to the mind-family that can help us find peace. We'd never have that with you. Mental Man could never be happy in the form you envision. Not unless each mind was a saint like Uncle Jack was. And saints aren't that common Papa! You aren't one and neither are Cloud and I.

We'll need a lot of help from our friends to make a success of life and so will our children. That's who Mental Man really is Papa ... our children. They're going to be human beings like their parents with bodies as well as minds. Not angels. They'll be frightened by their immortality just as you are ... and we are. But they'll be linked to billions of other minds who'll offer love and support and good counsel. We think that will suffice.

Cloud: We can't go your way Papa. Your vision is flawed.

Deep in your heart I think you know it. There were so many times you could have stopped us compelled us to submit to you even killed us and taken the genes. And yet you didn't. Find out why and perhaps you'll be able to resign yourself to letting us go. Look far back into your past Papa! Understand why you cast Mental Man in this inhuman mould and tried to force yourself and your children to conform to it. I think we are beginning to see the reasons why. Eventually we'll be able to forgive you and you must do the same for us. We'll take good care of your dream and see that it's nurtured in the Unity where it belongs. It will all be for the best. Trust us Papa ...

[Image: Son and daughter gesture walk up path rain falls on louring stone castle barbican gate opens glimpse inner courtyard people machinery weapons SILVER HEMISPHERE FLASHES INTO BEING enveloping entire castle Golden Manikin appears.] Aiken: I've moved the entire Guderian Project from Goriah to Castle Gateway. One of my loyal subjects has hooked up the big SR-35 sigma generator to a pair of SR-15s that I happened to have stashed away-and now Cloud and Hagen are safe inside the sigma-field with all the others. The psychoenergetic equivalent of the stacked screens is over 900 now. You don't have enough watts to break through even if you push your creativity to the limit with the enhancer and mesh all your old cronies into the metaconcert. There isn't a weapon in the Pliocene that can puncture that silver bubble Marc. Not even my photon Spear. Not even Felice could crack it! And the only one who can activate its airlock now is Me ... You're checkmated Marc. Your children told me they'd rather die than go your way. But they aren't going to die. I've taken them under my protection. They're going to finish the Guderian device and go through the time-gate into the Milieu. Right there inside Castle Gateway under the sigma-umbrella if need be. The device will work in there. Ask Alexis Manion if you don't believe me ... I don't want to fight you Marc. I want to resolve this mess peacefully if I can and tend to some other urgent business.

But if you insist on attacking the Guderian Project be assured that I'll defend it-and so will the minds that work in metaconcert with me. Thousands of them all meshed nicely now under my command in the program you gave me down at the Rio Genii ... I know that the schooner carrying your CE-rig power supply is somewhere in the Gulf of Armorica or the Seine Delta.

You've got her camouflaged with some kind of farsight buzzer.

But if you try to fight me I'll find Kyllikki one way or another and I'll nail her and nail you ... But wouldn't that be a tawdry way to end it now? Wouldn't it be more your style-and mine-to let the Truce prevail? Sail Kyllikki right up the Seine all the way to the Field of Gold-white flag up and screens off.

You and your Rebels are invited to be my guests at the Grand Tourney! Watch the games then kiss your kids goodbye and sail on back to Florida ... Think about it Marc. You have a lot of things to think about.

[Fading image.] Elizabeth said: That's the entire message. Aiken's told you the truth about Castle Gateway. He did move the Guderian Project there-in a single evening. He's regained his strength and integrated the powers of Nodonn and Mercy as well. Don't challenge him Marc. You'll only destroy the Many-Coloured Land to no purpose. Yield. Please!

Marc said: They've made their decision. Now I'll make mine.