“I shot without thinking because I was in New York, and I was afraid.
“Again and again since that time, I’ve lashed out, for the most logical- and noble-sounding reasons—because I was afraid. It’s an entirely human reflex, and one that probably was of great use to the Neanderthal. But Cro-Magnon began suppressing it, and we’ve got to complete the job if we’re ever going to live in peace with the Muskies. I had to defeat my fear before High Mistral would let me perceive him—I think by sheer force of will he could have held me at a lower plane of awareness, and I think he would have. I had to grow up, as you gentlemen put it.
“Muskies occupy a peculiar ecological niche. They’re perpetually being whirled into the unexpected, and have little to fear in the way of natural enemies. That’s not to say that they don’t know fear—but when they do feel it, their impulse is to catch a stiff wind to elsewhere and think about it. From the High Musky point of view, our panic response to the unknown made us dangerously insane. Contagiously so. They decided to remain aloof and contact us only through the lower Muskies.”
“The Muskies told me I had to ‘go higher’ to reach the High Muskies,” Wendell said, shaking his head, “and for ten years I thought they meant physically.”
“High Mistral could have come down and sat in my lap,” I told him dryly, “if there’d been any reason to. High Muskies keep their bodies parked in the stratosphere, not because age has diminished their mass—although it has, considerably—but because it’s a better neighborhood up there. To hang out down here they’d have to develop the same sort of subconscious sentries I used to have—and as we all learned, that sort of thing is alien to their whole being.”
“One thing puzzles me,” Wendell spoke up. “This emotional contagion business—do you mean to say that the Muskies who attacked you so savagely when you came here—?”
“…were my own kill-frenzy, all the poison in my skull embodied in the temporary insanity of a few passing empaths.”
“Then how did you manage to communicate with the Zephyrs at Jordan’s Cave? Why didn’t they sense the murder in your heart and become deranged?”
“They might have—if they had only come by in response to Mike’s request. But High Zephyr apparently followed enough of the conversation to become interested, and ‘seconded the motion’ with some kind of dire compulsion. The Zephyrs were insulated from my rage, partly because it was not directed at them, and partly because they were fixated on the accomplishment of an utterly imperative task: to wit, fetching me back to your EEG/EMG/PDQ, Mike.”
He was lounging in the doorway, hands in his coveralls. “I thought it was snappy service I was getting,” he said, and smiled. “Good night, you two.”
“Good night, Michael.”
“Dream good dreams, Mike.”
Wendell looked a bit awkward when Mike was gone, and I remembered a thing I had nearly forgotten. “Wendell?”
“Yes, Isham?”
“When I wanted to get the Zephyrs to off Jordan for me, I had great difficulty reaching the undermind. Then when I cut loose of killing him, I was able to achieve rapport to a degree. Do you know why?
“Because when I made that decision, I figured I was completely licked, just finally and forever fucked. Jordan had Alia and the jig was up. And so they were able to ‘let me in’ for the same reason you’ve gotten along so peacefully with Muskies for twenty years—which is the same reason you’ve never gotten any farther with them than you have.”
He looked puzzled and a bit hurt, but I plunged on.
“I despaired, Wendell. I despaired, and instead of disturbing them, it rolled right off their backs. Despair isn’t an emotion they find dangerous or threatening.
“To them it’s just utterly incomprehensible.”
His face became very old for a long time. And then gradually years seemed to melt from it, and its deep lines became only a record of history. He smiled, a much softer and younger smile than the one I’d seen that morning.
“Isham,” he said wistfully, “do you think perhaps some day somehow you and your hundred and forty-four microvolts could take along a hitchhiker?”
“Wendell,” I said, grinning fiercely, “I purely hope so.”
After he had gone I lay back on the familiar bed and looked around the room I remembered so well. In days and nights past it had been a battleground, the scene of huge warring emotions and bitter interior dialogues, a place where my subconscious fomented bloody conflict.
Right at the moment it seemed like a very peaceful place.
I awoke to find myself running full-tilt down the hallway.
“MIKE!” I roared. “WENDELL! Up and at ’em—scramble. Red alert.” I tore past their rooms without waiting for reply. I noted that I was carrying my old one-heeled pair of shoes in my hand, the rest of my clothes pinned against my chest by my arm. Then I was tearing around a corner, bare feet giving excellent traction.
I didn’t take time to dress until I had the truck started and backed around to the front doors of Butler. It was a rosy dawn. By the time I zipped up my shirt, Mike and Wendell had arrived. Neither was the least bit bleary-eyed or befuddled, for which I was briefly grateful. “Mike,” I ordered, “go scrounge food and water for a day or two, and a couple of blankets, and coats for all of us. Wendell, get aboard and direct me to the Organic Chem building—I want to fuel up.”
“There’s gasoline here,” he began.
“Too inefficient—I want all the horsepower and mileage I can get, and that means pure grain alcohol.”
He shut up and climbed into the truck with a limberness that belied his years. We sped across the campus through tall grasses, and I prayed for an absence of broken beer bottles. There were two spare tires in the bed of the truck, World War II unstoppables on modified rims, but I figured to need them both: Mike had left Fresh Start with six. We crashed up a flight of steps and onto College Walk, and now I know what a milkshake feels like.
“Doesn’t burning alcohol affect your carburetor?” was all Wendell asked.
“Sure—cleans it out and keeps it that way. Only reason they ever started using petrol was that it used to be the cheapest thing imaginable. Waste product of kerosene production.”
We alkied up and stowed a number of drums of the stuff in silent haste, then sped back to Butler. Mike was waiting with a two-day-on-the-road survival kit that showed rapid, careful thought, and he had it aboard almost before we stopped. He vaulted over the tailgate, blond mane flying, and waved wagons-ho. With a screech of tires and the roar of an indignant transmission, we tore around Butler and onto the street. It was tricky having to let go of the wheel to shift gears, so I left her in second.
Mike climbed in the window as we sailed down Amsterdam Avenue, swerving around obstacles, on and off the sidewalk, averaging forty per. He slid next to Wendell and ran a hand through his blond hair.
“Lot of Muskies following us,” he said conversationally.
“I know.”
They both waited patiently until I had a clear stretch which allowed me to give driving less than total attention, which pleased me deeply. “Got a visitation,” I said then, “in the nature of a news bulletin, from High Mistral. He preempted a dream to tell me that a large army is massing at Jordan’s Cave. They keep looking to the west and rattling their sabers.”
“How many?” from Mike. (I was twice as pleased—that no one had asked if it couldn’t have been only a continuation of my dream. It’s nice to be respected by men like these.)
“‘Names of Names,’ was the phrase he used—analogously speaking, of course. He said their vibes stank.”
“Why the hell are we heading south? The tunnels must be…”
“Small detour. The armory. I want to pick up some firepower.”
Wendell looked startled. “I thought you’d given up the sword, Isham.”
“Sure. But if I go to dicker with a man who wears one, I will, too. It keeps him from slaying you out of hand, and it’s peachy for misdirect
ion. Or self-defense.”
“Oh,” he said, and Mike nodded.
The truck raced downtown, paced by a five-Name battalion of Muskies.
Chapter Sixteen
We left New York through Harlem, the only route we knew for sure was clear. Only it wasn’t, entirely. A panel truck that Mike had jacked up out of the way had fallen over again, blocking access to the bridge. Wendell remained in the truck while Mike and I jumped out to fix things. It was while we were setting the jack that I smelled them.
I straightened quickly, and Mike looked up in surprise. “Grey Brother,” I whispered, and by then he could hear them.
There were hundreds of them, a vast army that chittered and scurried. They came from the river banks and from the deserted ghetto itself, around smashed autos and through mounds of bones. We had seen occasional packs on our way through Harlem, but nothing approaching this number. Some were the size of tomcats. They were like a great grey carpet of death.
A flamethrower was beside me in the truckbed. It might even be operable. There were incendiary grenades, and a comparatively inefficient but psychologically-appealing Browning spray-gun. I kept my hand at my side, palm open, and faced the army of rats.
(Ho, grey brother,) I something-more-than-thought. (I am returned. You cost me an arm, some days past.)
(Let there be peace among us.)
There was no response that I could detect. But they watched in silent stillness as we completed the removal of the wreck, climbed into the ancient cab and drove north. Mike was white and sweating as we pulled away, and Wendell’s face was ashen.
“What did you say to them?” Mike asked a few miles later.
“‘Hello,’” I replied. “About all I could get across, I think. They’re even farther behind us than we are behind the High Muskies. But I touched them.”
“Good lord,” Wendell breathed. “Can even that war be ended someday?”
I made the best time I could, but after the second spare blew out it took me twelve swearing hours to locate a usable tire in Kingston. It was damn near twenty-four hours after we left Columbia that I halted for the last time on the Interstate, five miles from Fresh Start. I killed the headlights, left her idling, got out of the cab and fell flat on my ass. I had been sitting in one position for a long time.
Consequently, of course, the injured part was anesthetized, so I felt little pain. I saw stars—but then, it was five A.M. under a cloudless sky. After a long while I managed to get back up on my stilts, and swayed like a half-sawn tree. It was difficult walking with my knee-joints locked, but I managed it until I felt I could stay upright unbraced. The two older men meanwhile followed my example with much more circumspection, and made a much better job of it.
“The equipment’s back home,” Wendell said, limping up to join me.
“Don’t need none o’ them fancy doodads,” I drawled. “Do it all right in muh own haid. Oh, High Mistral could get his body here quicker if there was an EM carrier for him to home on—but I want to know what he sees from up there.”
He nodded. I pulled out a joint and lit it. Mike came up in time to take the next toke, and as he passed it back to me Wendell intercepted it and took a hit himself. We made no comment; and the three of us smoked in silence for a few minutes. Then I sat down and hurled my self skyward.
I was a Pre-Exodus airline pilot, looking down at a living city by night. Below, against utter blackness, a million pinpoints of light shone like reflections of the stars on some vast puddle, but grouped in patterns that showed human purpose. The lights were human minds, selves. There were two groups: one that represented the sleeping population of Northtown, and a much larger, more closely bunched nebula that was the Agro Army.
It lay immediately to the east, moving slowly over the top of the East Mountain toward the Nose. I watched it for a timeless while, understanding it as an entity, empathizing to the point where I felt I could predict its course and purpose. It tasted vaguely like Jordan.
I studied the whole double-cluster, made extrapolations. They were bad. I stepped up the magnification and tried tasting individual selves. It was oddly difficult—so much of me was mingled with High Mistral that the selves I perceived were weirdly out of focus—like trying to recognize a favorite poem from a translation into a strange language. It had nothing to do with the fact that the minds I touched were mostly asleep—that should have made the subconscious clearer than ever. Was that Krishnamurti? Yes, it seemed so. He was awake, quite excited, and deeply angry. That one there was Jordan for sure, and that one was Helen Phinney, sleeping fitfully.
There were three that startled me for a moment—they consisted, in part, of slightly distorted reflections of my own self. One was Alia, of course. But who were the others? Who in Fresh Start loved me that much? I put it aside; the sum total of several dozen tastings suddenly tabulated itself and shrieked for my attention. Technos were waking up by the dozens, spraying feverish clouds of emotion, and the Agros too reached a peak of excitement.
The battle of Fresh Start was nigh.
Leaving a thought-flash for High Mistral that might have taken a day to write out, I wrenched myself from my exalted plane and dove headlong back into my skull.
The shock of returning to my body was much less severe this time. I leaped to my feet and began running in circles around the truck. Wendell and Mike stared at me, half-convinced I’d gone round the bend.
“Get your legs back in shape,” I hollered. “We’ll need to be spry pretty soon.”
We jogged until we felt the blood pounding in our calves and thighs, then clambered aboard the truck again. It was coming dawn. “They’re going to take the Nose,” I explained as we got under way. “It’s sound tactics—they can command both sides of the tracks, and just throw mud downhill until there ain’t no more Fresh Start. Jordan’s a good general.”
“Collaci is too,” Mike said over the roar of the abused engine. “Isn’t he prepared for such an obvious move?”
“In a general way, yes—but these boys came along quick and quiet, and somehow or other none of our friendly neighbors tipped us off. Teach’ just found out they’re coming, and it’s too late to stop ’em now.”
“Oh, boy!”
“Yep. Be a bloodbath, one way or another, unless we can head it off. Christ, some of those poor stupid bastards are armed with pitchforks. Here’s my notion.” I explained what I had worked out with High Mistral on one plane of awareness while I had been reconnoitering on another.
“But surely Jordan has the Gate blocked,” Mike objected, “if only from the other direction.”
“Hell, no,” I disagreed. “Now that Dad’s dead, he’s not especially interested in harming any people—he just wants to burn Fresh Start to the ground. He’d be just as happy if the folks all scampered out the Gate and into the woods. But they won’t,” I added grimly.
Sure enough, there was no one near the Gate. The building itself wasn’t there—apparently it had been the loud noise I’d heard from my jail cell a few weeks back. There were Guards around, but when they saw us and smelled the incredible number of Muskies they dove for cover. We smashed through the actual gate without slowing, and turned neither right nor left, plunging off the road and onto the field behind the school building, on a direct beeline for Security HQ.
It was a helluva ride. The ground was uneven, and the shocks on the truck were purely decorative. The gravel around the pond nearly killed us and three Technos on foot, but I managed a four-wheel float that carried us past them and between two massive willow trunks. Bark kissed both door handles.
Six Names of Muskies entered and left my mind so quickly as to not interfere with my driving. (Awaiting your orders) was all they said, and I gave some to four Names.
There was a milling crowd of armed men and women clustered around behind the security and administration buildings. Crude breastworks joining all the buildings that fronted on the Nose had been recently erected, and trained troops huddled behind them, nervously fing
ering their weapons. I could see a flanking team trotting cross town, hoping to sneak into the West Forest and make a surprise attack up the bridge of the Nose, but I didn’t think much of their chances. Fighting uphill sucks.
The top of the Nose was crawling with Agros, outlined against the dawn sky.
Collaci didn’t think much of the flank attack either. As we arrived he was putting his own energy into setting up mortar emplacements behind Security HQ. He looked up to see us coming to a screeching halt, watched the left front tire explode the moment we stopped, grinned briefly and ran toward us.
From around in front of the building came the sound of megaphoned voices being hurled up and down the mountainside.
“Teach’,” I cried, jumping from the truck, “let me parley.”
“What the hell are all those Muskies doing up there?” he asked suspiciously, eyes and nose on the skies.
“Remember the last time I parleyed for you?” I shot back.
His eyes came back to me at once. They recognized Wendell, and widened. “Let’s go talk to Krish,” he said, and spun on his heel.
Krishnamurti was kneeling behind the meager shelter of a pile of packing crates in front of the jail, a battery-powered megaphone in his hand. We ran broken-field to join him, but were not fired on. I saw George’s face at the barred side window as I passed, and ignored him.
“…WAY I SEE IT,” Jordan was bellowing through an old-fashioned acoustic megaphone, “SO WHY DON’T WE TALK THIS OVER? WE BOTH REASONABLE MEN; I DON’T WANNA HURT YO’ LITTLE GIRL. WHITE FLAG MEETIN’, JUS’ YOU AN’ ME. WHAT YOU SAY?”
Krishnamurti looked over his shoulder, did a triple-take when he saw me and Wendell, then went inscrutable. “He knows something,” Collaci told him, jabbing a finger at me. “I think you should give him the squawkbox.”
“Him?”
“He won’t sell us out, Sarwar,” Collaci said simply. “I trust him.”
Krishnamurti started, his jaw dropping. Without a word, he handed me the megaphone. He smelled terrible.
Telempath Page 20
