The Mutant Prime

by Haber, Karen

  Table of Contents

  INTRODUCTION

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  EPILOGUE

  THE MUTANT PRIME

  KAREN HABER

  Phoenix Pick

  An Imprint of Arc Manor

  **********************************

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  The Mutant Prime by Karen Haber. Introduction copyright © 1990 by Agberg Ltd. Text copyright © 1990 by Karen Haber. All rights reserved. This book may not be copied or reproduced, in whole or in part, by any means, electronic, mechanical or otherwise without written permission from the publisher except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any actual persons, events or localities is purely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author and publisher.

  Tarikian, TARK Classic Fiction, Arc Manor, Arc Manor Classic Reprints, Phoenix Pick, Phoenix Science Fiction Classics, Phoenix Rider, The Stellar Guild Series, Manor Thrift and logos associated with those imprints are trademarks or registered trademarks of Arc Manor, LLC, Rockville, Maryland. All other trademarks and trademarked names are properties of their respective owners.

  This book is presented as is, without any warranties (implied or otherwise) as to the accuracy of the production, text or translation.

  Digital Edition

  ISBN (Digital Edition): 978-1-61242-169-8

  ISBN (Paper Edition): 978-1-61242-168-1

  Published by Phoenix Pick

  an imprint of Arc Manor

  P. O. Box 10339

  Rockville, MD 20849-0339

  www.ArcManor.com

  ****

  Special thanks to Lou Aronica, Janna Silverstein,

  David M. Harris, and Alice Alfonsi

  For Bob, of course

  ***

  INTRODUCTION

  .

  The seasons move along. The outsiders who have lived submerged among us for so long move into even greater prominence. The world has grudgingly begun to accept the concept that a subculture of not-exactly-human beings with superior mental abilities has existed on our world for hundreds of years, hidden away right in our midst, dwelling virtually invisibly in a worldwide secret ghetto of its own making.

  And now an even more unnerving possibility presents itself to an uneasy mankind: the possible emergence of a supermutant, a genetic freak gifted with extrasensory powers that make him as superior to ordinary mutants as the mutants are to the normal population.

  That’s the premise of the second volume of this quartet of Mutant Season books. The characters of Volume One are some fifteen years older now. The rhythms of their adult lives seem set, for better or for worse. The mutant Michael Ryton, locked in a difficult marriage with his turbulent mutant wife Jena, has moved into control of his family’s aerospace engineering firm. Michael’s troubled sister Melanie, a mutant in whom the mutant powers never developed, has begun a new life for herself as a journalist. Kelly McLeod, the nonmutant woman whose youthful romance with Michael Ryton ended in anguish for them both, is now an officer in the Air Force space service.

  And then comes a sudden bewildering telepathic warning: BEWARE THE SUPERMUTANT! BEWARE THE SUPERMUTANT! A startled world turns to its television screens and hears a silent voice telling a frightened anchorwoman, “I can talk to everybody in your audience without opening my mouth.”

  Perhaps the position of the mutants in the American society of the early twenty-first century as this second volume opens can be seen as similar to that of the American blacks not long after the civil rights victories of the 1960s. The legal barriers that had stood in the way of their advancement into the mainstream of American life had been overthrown; the official position of the government was one of absolute equality of opportunity; the majority of the citizens now gave lip service, at least, to that concept.

  But what would happen next—for the blacks in the post-Martin Luther King period and the mutants of tomorrow—was far from certain. Would the once oppressed underclass (in the case of the blacks) or the carefully camouflaged special minority (the mutants) be able to consolidate its victories and move on to true integration with the majority faction? Or would the progress of the minority seem so threatening to the majority that a reactionary movement of new repression would arise?

  The experience of the blacks in the 1970s and 1980s was a mixed one: gains on the one hand, losses on the other, old problems replaced by new dilemmas. A substantial number were able to find room for themselves in areas—housing, employment, politics—from which they had formerly been largely excluded. Others, less fortunate, discovered that although they were now legally entitled to ride at the front of the bus if they cared to, they were still forced to contend with repression of a more covert kind and their lives were not significantly better than they had been in the old days of open discrimination.

  On balance, though, fundamental and probably irreversible changes in the American racial situation did take place in the two decades after the civil rights era. And the United States of America of 1988 saw the surprising spectacle of the Jesse Jackson presidential campaign—the first time a black political figure had seriously sought the nation’s highest office.

  Though few political analysts saw much likelihood of Jackson’s winning the nomination of his party and none envisioned him as being capable of attaining the presidency in 1988, the mere fact of his candidacy, and of his obtaining a substantial number of white votes in the primary elections, were both developments that would have been unthinkable in the America of only a few years before. In the vocabulary of The Mutant Season and its successors, Jesse Jackson as plausible black presidential candidate can be seen as a kind of supermutant, a figure unexpectedly rising above the supposed limitations that contained his race and breaking a path into startling new territory.

  The mutants of Karen Haber’s Mutant Season books have already made the leap into national politics. Volume One of the series gave us Eleanor Jacobsen of Oregon, the first mutant member of the United States Senate—ultimately the victim of a bizarre assassination plot hatched by a fellow mutant with presidential ambitions. By the time of Volume Two, the presence of mutants at all levels of power in industry and the government is taken pretty much for granted; and though there has not yet been a mutant President or even a mutant presidential candidate, no one would regard it as astounding for such a figure to appear in the next few years.

  But the analogy between blacks and mutants breaks down here.

  Both groups, the real ones of our world and the imagined ones of these novels, are minorities that have had a hard struggle against the fears and prejudices of the majority race that surrounds them. Gradually, after years of careful planning, they have come forward into a situation of equality of opportunity.

  Equality of opportunity is one thing, however, and equality of ability is another. It has been the position of many white supremacists that blacks are less than human, that they are a life-form inherently inferior to whites. Therefore the chief goal of the blacks in twentieth-century America has
been to obtain recognition of their fundamental humanity—to demonstrate that they are something more than beasts of burden suitable only for service as slaves, to show that they are, in fact, full members of the human race, entitled to the same legal privileges as the whites who brought their ancestors in captivity to the New World. It is not an issue seriously in dispute any longer, except in South Africa, where the black-white conflict is still in an earlier phase.

  The mutants are more than human, though. Perhaps all they want politically from the America of the early twenty-first century is equality, but there is no getting around the fact that they are an advanced form of the human species, or perhaps some new species entirely. No well-meaning political rhetoric can hide the uncomfortable truth that the mutants are capable of telepathy, of telekinesis, of all manner of astounding things beyond the understanding of mere normals.

  For the two races to be able to live in peace, side by side, thus becomes an exercise in harmony that makes our recent real-world civil rights campaigns seem like kindergarten stuff. No one but the most confirmed racist would try to assert, nowadays, that the blacks are an inferior form of the human race who must be confined to their own districts, their own lunch counters, their own restrooms, their own sections of the bus. They differ somewhat from the majority population in their physical appearance, yes—but that is no reason to deprive them of any of their rights of citizenship.

  The mutants, though, are not only a minority group—and in a generally conformist society like ours, minorities are always in danger of some oppression—but are undeniably superior. True, their only demand is for equality, the right to live as they please without fear of persecution or discrimination; but the real problem for the nonmutant majority is that equality isn’t the essential issue. What the normals need to do is to arrive at an acceptance of one stunning, gigantic fact: They’re better than we are.

  The first volume of the Mutant Season books showed the United States of the near future doing a remarkably good job of overcoming the not very surprising bigotry and fear that the revelation of the mutant presence in its midst would create.

  But now, with the superior mutant minority just barely assimilated into American life, to have to come to terms with the realization that an even more potent human form may have emerged, an actual supermutant—

  It may be asking a little too much.

  —ROBERT SILVERBERG

  Oakland, California

  October 1989

  CHAPTER ONE

  .

  The dome was dear and crystalline and the deep black bowl of space pressed up against it, the sharp light of stars pricking the airless void. Then the stars disappeared behind a filament of fine white lines: a deadly cobweb. Kelly McLeod stared at it in horror. The unthinkable had happened: One of Moonstation’s main domes had cracked.

  Death should make some sound, she thought. Even in the vacuum of space—a musical note to herald the end.

  Instead a shrill klaxon split the air. The clank of safety doors slamming closed added a grim percussive counterpoint to the siren’s wail. Kelly tucked her dark hair under the collar of her orange pressure suit, sealed the helmet, and moved toward the main corridor.

  Too late, she thought. I’m probably too late.

  She walked as quickly as the cumbersome suit would allow. Sweat matted the hair to her forehead, her neck.

  Thank God the shuttle trolley was connected to the south port. No safety doors to cut through. And no corpses. Yet.

  The dome had been deserted because of the early hour: Kelly had drawn night shift, and for once, she was grateful. She was halfway to the airlock when she saw someone, unsuited, clinging to a steel fiber handhold. It was Heyran Landon, the mutant commander of the shuttle, her immediate superior. Where was his pressure suit? Had he heard the alarm and bolted from his quarters without thinking?

  No time for questions. Kelly cast about the hallway for the suit depot. Every corridor had one; emergency preparation was a fact of life on Moonstation. Ah, there it was, red light blinking on the left, halfway down the wall. She pried it open, pulled out an orange acrylic oxygen mask with its robe, and managed to wrap it around the suffocating man. He nodded weakly, golden eyes half-shut through the mask. Mutants were rare enough in the service without adding Landon to the casualty list.

  Part of the dome imploded with a muffled roar. The air around them became a pale blue gale rushing out into the vacuum. Life-giving atmosphere roared past, pulling papers, screens, furniture in its wake. Kelly dodged a pink wallseat torn loose from its moorings and grabbed at the handholds attached to the walls. At least they didn’t give.

  Hastily she hooked Landon to her belt, slid her arm around his back, and towed him, handhold by handhold, toward the airlock. But even in the lowered gravity she was fighting the pull of escaping atmosphere, losing ground.

  Would they make it? It wouldn’t be hard for her to hold them there, webbed to one of the walls. But the oxygen supply was finite. Landon’s would run out in six hours. Rescue was possible … all of the domes couldn’t have blown. But she and Landon were expected to be part of the rescue force.

  She clung desperately to the scalloped handhold, a dull throbbing building in her arm above the elbow. Dammit, why hadn’t she worked out more? Three months on Moonstation duty had weakened her, despite rotation and time off.

  Just as she decided to web them in and wait for help, Kelly felt a gentle push, as though someone had come up behind her and was leaning against her shoulders. She twisted around to look. The corridor was empty. The push became stronger, more insistent.

  Telekinesis.

  The hair on the back of her neck prickled.

  Half-conscious, Landon was using his mutant powers to propel them down the hallway.

  The airlock loomed before her, the round black doorway rimmed by double rows of blue acrylic seals around the seams. Before she had time to reach for the manual controls, the doors opened, she and Landon swept through into the trolley, and the doors sealed tight behind them. Kelly collapsed onto the nearest webseat. Landon sprawled next to her, seemingly unconscious. But they were safe.

  Strapping Landon in, Kelly checked the trolley pressure readings. They were normal. She scanned the dome interior and subsidiary corridors for life readings. Found none. Other domes had blown as well.

  I can’t think about that now. I won’t.

  She scanned the pressure readings in the building.

  Unstable.

  Let’s get out of here.

  She pulled the trolley away from the airlock and placed it in a low orbit. The radio began to squawk: transmissions from the dormitories below ground. She switched on the shuttle transmitter, wide band so that the French and Russian shuttle stations would catch it.

  “Moonstation Control, this is Trolley Four, Captain McLeod reporting. Dome C has imploded. Repeat. Dome C is gone. Related living quarters are at risk of violent decompression. Pressure suits are suggested for all inhabitants. Please supply your coordinates. I will request rescue assistance from the Dubrovnik and Brittany orbiters.”

  “We read you, McLeod. Stand by for transmission.”

  Kelly saw movement out of the corner of her eye. Landon sat up carefully and pulled free from the oxygen mask. His thin face was pale.

  “Are you all right, sir?”

  “I thought I dreamed it.” He gazed around the trolley, taking in the screen, webseats, blinking radio. His eyes met hers. “I’m fine, McLeod. You saved us both.”

  She handed him an orbit-ready pressure suit. “I think you saved us, sir. I’d be willing to bet a promotion that you gave us a telekinetic boost right through the airlock.”

  “So I didn’t dream that, either.” He stood up slowly, as though every bone in his body ached. Just as slowly, he donned the gray fiber suit.

  “I’d never have been able to get us both aboard,” she said. “That was some push.”

  “Nonregulation. But it worked.” A slow smile lit up his features fo
r a moment and faded. He turned toward the trolley controls. “Let’s get busy. Somebody’s got a hell of a problem on their hands. I wouldn’t want to sort out the blame for this mess.”

  “Yessir. Me neither.” The trolley’s blinking green LED screen registered reports from the surface of casualties from chain-reaction decompression. Don’t think about that now. Kelly took a deep breath and switched on the radio.

  “Lydda, when will you stop hiding? What are you afraid of?”

  Narlydda leaned back against the blue enameled wall of the satorifoam pool—a luxury her artwork had earned her—and gave him a scornful look. Skerry had been her lover now for three years, but sometimes he presumed too much.

  “Afraid? Do I seem afraid?” She lifted one long, greenish-tinged leg half coated in iridescent foam out of the bath and watched sparkling dream images float upward from the froth toward the skylight: a lavender horse with mane of fire, a fuchsia daisy with a yellow woman’s face at its center. “Yep. Oh, don’t laugh. I know you, lady. The bravado. The mask of aloofness, not to mention your elaborate disguises. And the frightened mutant peering out from behind them all, unwilling to take credit for her work. Especially now that you’ve gotten that fat commission from the Emory Foundation.”

  She blew sparkling foam at him. “Credit? Dear man, I take plenty of credit for my work. And Eurodollars. Diamonds. Selenium crystals. Real estate.”

  “Okay, so you’ve made a fortune. And welcome to it—you’re damned good. The darling of old and new money.” It was true. Everybody from the Nouveau Brahmins to the Seventh Column chip runners wanted a Narlydda original.

  “Don’t forget my simultaneous retrospective at the Getty/ Whitney and the Hermitage.” She grinned triumphantly. “Before the age of forty-five, I might add!”

  “Stop preening, Lydda. I’ve told you before what I think of your work. All I’m saying is you’re hiding your mutancy behind the name. The elusive Narlydda, who never attends openings. Is never photographed, holographed, videoed, or seen. You were tough even for me to track down. And I’m good.”