The Adversary - 4 (6 page)

The two of them pounced on Manion and tore off the docilator headpiece. He staggered, convulsing, as the Florida landscape melted into concentric expanding shells of colour. They held him while his muscles bucked and spasmed. Pat's redactive douche calmed while Jeff's numbed the recollection of anguish; and at last his brain settled into its normal rhythm and he could stand alone.

Trembling, with blood trickling down his chin from his bitten tongue, he forced their hands away with his psychokinesis. The social aspect of his mind was so tattered that he was unable to contain the malicious satisfaction that welled up as he discovered why they had come.

"Felice nailed him?" Manion began to laugh. Steinbrenner's coercion lashed out to no effect. Docilated, Manion had been barely biddable; free, he was a rock of intransigence. "Let the bastard boil in his own devil-rig!"

"Alex, it's not just Marc!" Patricia cried. She took one of Manion's hands. Her skin was icy in spite of the June heat.

"We're all in danger. And the children. The metaconcert operation-we don't know what's happened. Owen Blanchard is dead, and Ragnar Gathen's son and God knows how many others in Europe. We don't know about Felice. Marc's data input to the computer cut off at the moment of the d-jump-"

In spite of himself, Manion found his interest aroused. "Her mind generated a real upsilon-field? Barebrained?"

"We think so. She seemed to appear right there in the observatory and ... attack Marc in some way through the cerebroenergetic equipment."

Manion chuckled. "Well, well. What a nasty surprise."

Patricia was drawing him along the white pathway toward the observatory entrance. Some twenty of the veteran Rebels were standing about exuding an emotional farrago to chill the blood.

Steinbrenner's thought was thunderous.

Go to the lodge!

Go to your homes! Anywhere away from here. He's alive and we'll have him safe in the regen tank as soon as Diarmid & Dierdre get here with transport. NOW GET OUT.

With much mental murmuring, the people began to disperse.

Manion was lost in his own thoughts, animosity vanished in the face of an intriguing problem. "A d-jump! Now when was the last time we tried to confirm one at the IDFS? 2067? Yes ... an adolescent from one of the black worlds. Engong, was it? But he only translated across two kilometres and we-"

Patricia interrupted. "You're going to have to confirm the event with a retrospective dynamic-field analysis. Kramer can't hack it and we must confirm Felice's excursion. Listen to me, Alex!" Her anxiety flamed out at him. Her mind displayed the terrible possibility. "We think Marc's still alive inside the CE rig. But the scanner's nearly burnt out and we have no conscious communication from him. We don't dare open the armour-"

Manion nodded. His smile was gone. "Until you confirm that the person inside is Marc Remillard. Yes. An interesting point."

They entered the observatory at the same time that Peter Dalembert and Ragnar Gathen were hustling Helayne Strangford out. Steinbrenner handed over the docilator.

Helayne's powerful, crazed mind latched onto Manion.

"Don't help them, Alex! Let Marc die in that damned cerebroenergetic enhancer of his! Then we'll be sure that the children aren't-"

The voice fell abruptly silent. Patricia urged Manion inside.

It was dark with the dome closed, the temperature at least ten degrees cooler. Only a handful of the senior Rebels remained.

In the centre of the chamber was the hydraulic lift cylinder with the recliner carriage lowered. On it, gleaming under a small spotlight but opaque to the mind's eye, was a mass of black cerametal armour. Alexis Manion shrugged free of Castellane and approached the sinister form.

"So you miscalculated again, did you?"

The display screen and the loudspeaker that normally provided communication with the hidden CE operator remained mute. Manion strolled to the vital-signs monitor and studied the readouts, then looked over the offerings of the crippled brainscanner. There was no identifiable pattern to the subperceptual emanations coming from the bulky mass of armour, only the assurance that inside, someone or something was alive.

"Are you Marc Remillard in there?" Manion inquired archly.

"Or little Felice?"

"That's what you're going to find out for us, Alex," said Jordan Kramer. He stood at the main console of the computer with Van Wyk dithering behind him. The Keoghs had finally arrived with the first-aid unit. Warshaw helped them to position it next to the carriage.

"You'd trust me?" Manion swept the minds of his fellow magnates with a mocking fillip. "Marc didn't. That's why he zombied me."

Gerrit Van Wyk said, "We have to trust you, Alex. Analysing this damn event is beyond my competence, or Jordy's. Only you can tell us whether Felice jumped back to Europe after she zapped Marc. If she's still here-if she subsumed Marc and we open that rig and let her out-she could wipe out Ocala!"

Manion hummed "Here's a How-De-Do." He frowned as he examined a screenful of dubious probability graphics prominently labelled: EVENT UNCONFIRMED.

"Whoever is inside that armour," Patricia said, "is gravely injured. If you force us to let Marc die, then I'm going to kill you, too, Alex."

"Perhaps I'd be grateful, Pat."

Kramer held out the command mouthpiece. "We know you care deeply about the children, Alex. Marc wants to save them, but we don't know what his plans are. Without him, we have only one option to prevent the reopening of the time-gate. An ugly one."

Suppose I lie to you about the analysis?" Manion retorted.

"Let Felice cook our collective goose if she's in there? Then I'd be certain that the kids get their chance."

The frustration and fury of the other ex-conspirators impinged on the mental screen of the dynamic-field specialist. Uselessly.

Van Wyk's control, always precarious, began to falter. His mind cried out: He might lie he might! He did before we never twigged when he & kids planned damned Feliceploy firstplaceSuddenly weary, Manion said, "Oh, shut up, Gerry." He took the computer microphone from Kramer's hand and began to speak rapidly.

The others fell back. Psychic tension drained away, leaving dullness leavened by faint hope. As the multicoloured probability edifices formed and reformed smoothly on the visual display, Manion whistled "I Am the Captain of the Pinafore" through his teeth. Finally he froze an elaborate construct and simultaneously shot a blast of mathematical esoterica at the minds of Kramer and Van Wyk.

"There you have it. Explicit enough even for you two Scheissphysiker. A single dimensional translation confirmed, together with the rubberband-effect withdrawal hypersnap. Your overmodulated hell-load must have finished Felice off. Probably the Little King as well. The PC equivalent was in the seven hundreds, for Christ's sake."

"We had vague intraconcert perception of some kind of mental fusion," Cordelia Warshaw insisted.

"Felice never fused to Marc," Manion stated. "For my money, the damn girl's dead as mutton." He addressed himself again to the command mouthpiece, erasing the analysis and calling up a heavy artificial i-mode carrier. It was tuned to a certain mental signature with a precision none of the others could have achieved.

"You there in the armour! Do you hear me?"

The all but worthless scanner showed that someone inside the black mass did.

"Tell these fools who you are. I've called up an EK ident.

All we need is one conscious thought sequence."

From the speaker came a crackling stutter. The visual flickered. The analytical display said: ID UNCONFIRMED.

Patricia Castellane took the microphone. "Marc, it's Pat.

Communicate with us. Use either the mechanism or your farsense. We must know whether your mind is still integral.

Please, Marc!"

The speaker rustled, a breath stirring dry leaves. The screen said: ZH? JE? [PHONEME AMBIGUOUS] And the analysis: ID UNCONFIRMED.

Dr. Warshaw, working at the backup terminal said, "We need more than that."

"Marc, we want to help you," said Patricia. "Just speak to us."

A buzz fading to a hiss. ZH? JE? SS? [PHONEMES AMBIGUOUS] ID UNCONFIRMED.

"Ask him for his name," said Warshaw.

As if speaking to a young child, Patricia asked, "Quel est ton nom, cheri?"

JE SU? SOO? SU? JE SUIS = "I AM." [FRENCHAMERICAN DIALECT] "Ton nom! Quel est ton nom, mon ange d'abime?"

JE SUIS LE TENEBREUX = "I AM THE DARK ONE."

[FIGURATE USAGE? CF. POEM 'EL DESDICHADO' BY GERARD DE NERVAL (PSEUD. LABRUNIE, GERARD, 1808-1855).] "Gotcha!" exclaimed the psychotactician. The metallic accents hung in the air. On the screen the glowing words persisted, and confirmation of the mental signature shone in the lower righthand corner: IMS POSITIVE: REMILLARD, MARC ALAIN KENDALL 3-602-437-121-015M.

Gerrit Van Wyk was blubbering. Ragnar Gathen turned away, expelling a great sigh. Diarmid Keogh and his mute sister exchanged lightning thoughts with Steinbrenner and readied the cephalic envelope of the emergency life-support equipment.

JE SUIS LE TENEBREUX LE VEUF L'lNCONSOLE LE PRINCE D'AQUITAINE A LA TOUR ABOLIE ABOLIE ABOLIE CYNDIA MY GOD CYNDIA DON'TAlexis Manion laughed. Patricia Castellane gave an inarticulate cry and dropped the command microphone. Pseudospeech reverberated inside the dark-boned chamber: MA SEULE ETOILE EST MORTE! CYNDIA ... MON LUTH CONSTELLE PORTE LE SOLEIL NOIR ... J'AI DEUX FOIS VAINQUEUR TRAVERSE L'ACHERON FOR NOTHING. THE BITCH IS DEAD JACK. SHE'S RUINED ME BUT SHE'S DEAD.

Diarmid Keogh's PK hastily scooped up the fallen mouthpiece. He cut off the armour audio, letting the screen continue its mad flickerings, and initiated the divestment routine. The helmet hoist sent down its cables. Clamps latched onto the massive blind casque. Its dogs clicked open and it rotated a quarter turn. Liquid seeped from the juncture with the body casing, then gushed out in a small flood. The dermal lavage drainage had failed and Marc might be drowning.

Steinbrenner swore. "Activate the damned hoist! But easy.

God knows what's under there-"

Images!

They poured forth as the thought-opaque helmet lifted and the operator's head was uncovered: sights and sounds and feelings and smells and tastes, normal and distorted, concrete and fragmentary, evanescent and smashing. Memories. Hallucinations. Terrors. Ecstacies. The archetypal ragbag of the deep unconscious: mental cacophony, nightmare broadcast fortississimo, wide-open emotional stops shrillingblaringhissing above bourdon thunder-bellow. The whole wrapped in a web of incandescent pain.

Marc stop! they all screamed, crushed by the hurricane.

There was silence.

The head above the cerametal collar lifted slightly. Deepset grey eyes opened, showing enormous pupils. The silver-streaked curls dripped greenish fluid onto the forehead, where it mingled with blood from tiny wounds stitched by the withdrawn cerebral - electrodes.

"They're all dead," he said in a normal voice.

[Images: Snow Christmas lights sleigh Dobbin Cantique de Noel brass plaque Mount Washington dim in blizzard mad old man holding longhaired cat.] Patricia came closer. "Who is dead? Felice and Aiken Drum?"

"Cyndia and Jack and Diamond." The familiar smile lifted one side of his generous mouth. The bruised-looking eyelids closed.

[Images: Blue-white scintillating point of disaster. Mindwhisper: It's finished BigBrother now you must magnify too like it or not adieu dear Marc scent white pine fading gemlight crash of Unity triumphant.] "No significant trauma above the neck seal," Steinbrenner was saying. "The carotid circulatory shunts are intact and the helmet apparatus seems undamaged. Negative the cephenvelope, ready the body bag. You getting any joy on the deepredact, Diarmid?"

"He seems to be sustaining his autonomic system consciously." Keogh shook his head. "Very bad, Jeff. Dierdre says there's metabolic evidence of severe external trauma to the trunk and limbs. You know he's self-rejuvenating-able to handle any ordinary injury. But this time the angiogenetic programming is faltering from overload."

"We've got to get this body armour off," Steinbrenner said, "and see just what-"

"Wait," said Marc distinctly. His eyes opened again.

[Overwhelming scent of pine.] Steinbrenner and the two Keoghs froze.

"I'm sustaining refrigeration ... lavage ... in lower-body casing. When I exit the rig ... I must go switch-off to sustain my vitals. No communication. But first I must tell you-"

"Let us help!" they all exclaimed.

"No. Listen. Our experiment was a ... qualified success.

Felice is gone. Unfortunately, Aiken Drum is not. He's badly damaged. No doubt his healers will put him together again in due course, as mine will me."

"But what happened to you?" Patricia cried.

[Images: Blazing female shape materializing in midair.

Armoured form high on its carriage wrapped in astral fire from the neck down. Refrigeration and life-support labouring inside the ultradense cerametal as the demonic power seeps through the impermeable, attacks the inhumanly strengthened body within.

Femoral circulatory shunts and neuroceptors burned away, the entire sustenance load shifted to the carotids. Ice-blood and chemical amniotic fluid preserving internal organs, major skeletal units, and musculature. Psychocreative torch of the frustrated monstermind playing over vulnerable body surface, burning away all dermal elements to a depth of four millimetres, destroying hands and feet and external genitalia utterly. Then, unable to complete the Jackforming, forced to withdraw.] The genes!

"Safe. Don't worry. Three months in the tank and I'll be as good as I ever was."

The brain!

"I diverted my entire creative flux to my head the instant that she struck. My brain was saved ... most of it. Managed to force her out of the armour. Episode ... took less than half a second. Fortunately, shock is delayed in such cases. I was able to retain control of the metaconcert until we funnelled the final blast. Then ... diverted all energies to self-sustenance."

The eyes in their cavernous orbits glazed and the watchers flinched from a new transmission of agony. Marc's mind steadied. The old magnetism and reassurance flowed out to touch each one of them with confident warmth.