"Logically," Essence said, "the Americans should not feel threatened. There are any number of robot surveillance satellites that can be co-opted as backup spy-eyes—and Omega knows both nations still have parity in nuclear weaponry. But the space station was a symbol of national pride as well as security, and the Soviets will certainly exult over the disaster while the Americans will feel naked to hostile scrutiny. And when has human warfare ever been logically motivated?"
"Listen to this," Noetic Concordance broke in. "An experimental apostrophe, but having possibilities: O Meteor! Frost-cauled detritus of primordial cataclysm, fatal vagrant..."
"One detects a soupçon of bathos," said Asymptotic Essence with regret.
Eupathic Impulse was less charitable. "You certainly can't use the meteor as the subject of the poem. It was a Pi-Puppid. How can one possibly compose an elegy on a Pi-Puppid? Now if the thing had belonged to a meteoric cloud having more intrinsic grandeur—say, if it had been a Beta-Taurid or even an Ursid—"
"I have the revised probability analysis, " Homologous Trend declared, displaying it without further ado.
Asymptotic Essence voiced the mutual dismay. "A threat to the Intervention Scheme? Surely not!"
"Beyond a doubt," Homologous Trend affirmed, "if one carries the proleptic analysis to the eighteenth differential, as I have done. The cuspidal locus results from my injection of the character of the American President. His background and his marketing genius link him inescapably to the destiny of the (at base) commercial orientation of the failed space station. Now his bellicose, jingoistic opponents will prevail. The next American station will be austere—and entirely military. With the dire consequences that you see in my projection of events for the next twenty years."
Eupathic Impulse strove for neutrality of tone and failed. "One might ask why the Supervisory Body failed to investigate the critical nodality of the space station earlier—and why we didn't take steps to protect the precious thing?"
"In the first case, " Trend said, "it is the responsibility of Atoning Unifex, acting with us in Quincunx, to define situations susceptible to such investigation. In the second case, overt protection would have violated the Scheme as it stands: Shielding the space station against meteoroids of consequent mass would require use of a sigma-field (which the Earthlings would surely have detected with their radio-telescope array); or else a preprogrammed hyperspatial matter trap (which as we know is unacceptably hazardous in a solar system having significant casual interplanetary traffic); or else we should have had to deploy a guardian vessel authorized to zap, deflect, grab, or otherwise dispose of intrusive space flotsam (which would grossly contravene the Oversight Directives)."
"Well, now what?" Eupathic Impulse asked.
Trend said, "The event requires contemplation by all five entities of the Lylmik Supervisory Body, acting in the aforesaid Quincunx."
"Anyone know where It is today?" Asymptotic Essence asked.
Noetic Concordance shrugged mentally. "Either extragalactic or lurking about that college again. We'd better call."
The four combined in metaconcert: Unifex!
One responds.
[Situational image] + [probability analysis].
Serene preoccupation. Oh, yes. The collision was today, wasn't it!
Reproach. One might have shared one's prescience.
Well, I didn't exactly use prescience ... but I do apologize. There is no need for concern or action on your part with respect to this situation.
One disputes the probability analysis of Homologous Trend?!
Not at all. I plan to cope with the matter personally.
! [Forbearance.] Indirectly, one presumes, rather than through rescue of the space station.
Oh, yes. The station's nodality hinges upon its use in weaponry surveillance. I shall simply render the entire concept of spy-eye satellites obsolete. Metapsychically. The planetary Mind has already evolved the capability. Bifurcation is imminent. I do not violate the planetary Will in this but, as it were, anticipate the determination.
One of your esteemed Remillards?
No. The Scottish connection has been working on this particular speciality. Given a gentle nudge, there should be a satisfactory manifestation within the critical time-period, restoring the original coefficients of the sexternion and putting our Intervention Scheme back on the rails.
Comprehension. Most gratifying—and ingenious.
I really should have contemplated the matter with you prior to the space-station disaster, however, in order to have spared you needless distress. My absent-mindedness is getting to be a scandal. I become rapt in nostalgia, to say nothing of my joy in the unfolding of the metapsychic World Mind at long last ... Now you must excuse me.
"Gone again," Asymptotic Essence said. "Ah, well."
"One notes how confident It remains," Homologous Trend remarked.
Noetic Concordance said, "It has a unique perspective."
"One hopes," Eupathic Impulse added astringently, "that It knows something we don't know about these contentious larvae, validating Its confidence in them..."
"The probabilities are in Its favor." Homologous Trend said, "as one might expect."
The four entities shared certain ironic retrospections. Then they waited. Eventually, Eupathic Impulse said, "There goes the destruct signal for the space station."
"O Fireball!" declaimed Noetic Concordance. "O perished pride of rigid circumstance—"
The other three Lylmik settled back to study the spectacle while the poet's mind continued its commemoration.
11
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, EARTH
2 MAY 1990
HE HAD COMPLETED the mental exercises that he was accustomed to perform at the start of each business day, and now Kieran O'Connor stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling window of his office and let his mind range out. His aerie was on the 104th floor of the Congress Tower, Chicago's most prestigious new office building, and from its vantage point he could oversee thousands of lesser structures, hives of concentrated mental energy that invigorated his creative mind-powers at the same time that they stimulated his hunger. Kieran had known other great cities—Boston, where he was born in poverty and educated in Harvard's affluence; Manhattan, where he had apprenticed in a law firm having a sizable Sicilian fraction among its well-heeled clientele—but the effete and tradition-bound East was an unsuitable home base for a unique upstart such as himself. Instinctively he had come to the dynamic heartland of North America, to this city notorious for its cavalier misprision and polymorphous get-up-and-go. Chicago was the perfect place for him; its commerce was thriving, its politics disheveled, and its morals overripe. It was a coercer's town with bioenergies that matched Kieran's own, not suffering fools but welcoming bullies with open arms—a bottomless wellspring of novelty, hustle, and clout.
From his high place Kieran looked out across a bristling forest of skyscrapers, a grid of crowded streets, green bordering parklands along the Lake Michigan shore that flaunted lush tints of spring. Countless cars ant-streamed along the multiple lanes of the Outer Drive. The lake waters beyond were a rich iris-purple, paling to silver along the eastern horizon. Outside the breakwater was a dancing sailboat. On a whim, he zeroed in on it and was rewarded with the ultrasensory impressions of two people making love. He smiled and lingered over the emanations momentarily, not with a voyeur's vulgar need but in dispassionate reminiscence. He had other pleasures now; still, the resonances were good...
A chime sounded, pulling him back to reality.
He turned away from the window and went to his enormous desk. The polished surface mirrored a single yellow daisy in a black vase and a photograph in an ebony frame—Rosemary holding the infant Kathleen, little Shannon in a white pinafore clinging to her mother's skirts. Rosemary and Kathleen would never grow older, but Shannon was a moody fifteen-year-old now, resisting initiation into her father's world. The phase would pass; Kieran was sure of it.
The chime sounded again.
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Kieran touched one of a line of golden squares inset into the rosewood desk-top. A compact communication unit lifted into ready position. Arnold Pakkala looked out of the screen with his deceptively distant expression. His colorless eyes seemed to study a potted fig tree behind Kieran's right shoulder.
"Good morning, Arnold."
"Good morning Mr. O'Connor. You'll be interested to know that Grondin has checked out and approved two more California recruits. They'll be flying in to the corporate training facility next week."
"Excellent."
"Mr. Finster is standing by on the Washington land-line. However, I must also advise you that Mr. Camastra's car has just entered the Tower parking garage. He must have taken an early flight from Kansas City."
"Hmm. He'll be in a stew so we won't keep him waiting. Let me know as soon as he gets up to the office. There's time for the Finster call, I think. Put him through, full-sanitary scramble."
"Right away, sir."
The communicator screen displayed a sequence of security codes punched up by Kieran's executive assistant. Eventually these dissolved into a close-up of Fabian (The Fabulous) Finster, whose engaging smile featured two large upper incisors separated by a comical gap: chipmunk teeth. Most people were so captivated by that droll grin that they failed to take note of the icy green eyes above it. When Fabian Finster had earned his living as a bottom-of-the-bill mentalist in Nevada casino shows, he had enhanced his naturally striking appearance with neo-zoot suits trimmed in blinking LEDs. Now that he was one of the confidential agents of Kieran O'Connor, Finster strove for a more conservative image and had taken to Italian silk suitings and striped ties, with nary a trace of glitz. But the show-biz aura still clung to him, and he still performed occasionally to keep up a front, even though most of his time was now occupied by more serious and lucrative activities.
Kieran said, "We'll have to make this quick today, Fabby. Did you wrap up Senator Scrope?"
"Tighter than a rattlesnake's ass, chief. You should have seen his face when I mentioned the number of his secret Icelandic bank account ... Our pipeline into the Armed Services Committee is now secure. Damn good thing, too. Reading politicians' minds is like snorkeling in a sewer. Shit galore—but you got one helluva time finding the one piece you really need before you drown in the utterly extraneous."
Kieran laughed. "Congratulations on doing a super job. I suppose you're worn out with the effort now and ready for a quiet gig at the Hotel Bora Bora."
The mentalist's grin widened. "I can read your mind all the way from here ... almost. You got something interesting cooking, I wouldn't mind giving it a spin. Provided I don't have to stay in Washington. After digging in the brains of these politicos for six months, I'm fed to the teeth. Really makes a guy appreciate the lucid crumminess of the Mob mind."
"What I have for you is an excavation with a good deal more class. How would you like to go Ivy League, Fabby? Do a little investigating for me at Dartmouth College up in New Hampshire?"
"Ah hah. You want me to sniff around that ESP project!"
"So you've heard of it."
"I even read the new book by that Dartmouth prof that hit The New York Times best-seller list. It took me two weeks—what with having to look up all the big words—and I'm still not sure the guy said what I think he said."
Kieran's tone was incisive. "I had no idea that parapsychology research was being taken so seriously by legitimate institutions. Jason Cassidy and Viola Northcutt are looking into the work being done at Stanford on the West Coast, but I want you to find out what this man Denis Remillard is up to—especially what practical applications of the higher mental powers might lie behind the theoretical considerations set forth in his book."
"You mean, is the guy up to anything dangerous to us —or is he just blue-skying around?"
"Precisely. Remillard's book is a very unlikely best seller. It's difficult to read and its conclusions are veiled to the point of deliberate obscurantism. He almost seems to be bending over backwards to make his data appear prosaic. Of course he couldn't squelch the inherent sensationalism of the topic completely, even with the pages of dry statistics and the academic jargon. His experimental verification of telepathy and psychokinesis is one of the hottest scientific stories of the century. But I have a feeling that Remillard is holding back. I want to know what other psychic experimentation might be going on at Dartmouth that the good doctor has decided not to publicize ... for prudence's sake."
"Jeez," mused The Fabulous Finster. "If certain parties start taking mind reading and animal magnetism seriously, what's going to happen to our edge?"
"Work me up a complete dossier on Denis Remillard. Get as much information as you can on his close associates as well. I'm particularly interested in how many adept mentalists he's recruited for his research. How powerful they are. How committed."
"You want me to turn head-hunter if I turn up any live ones?"
"Use the utmost discretion, Fabby." Kieran's eyes rested for a moment on the photo of the late Rosemary Camastra O'Connor and the two lovely children. "This is a dangerous game. The government may have infiltrated the Dartmouth project—or even foreign agents. Remillard's book hints at a worldwide network of cooperating psychic laboratories beginning to achieve significant results after years of fumbling and marking time. I want to know if there's any truth in that idea, or if it's only wishful thinking."
"I get the picture."
"One last thing. If Remillard or any of his people show the least hint of being able to probe your mind, get out of there fast and cover your tracks."
"I understand," came the cheerful reply. "Not to worry, chief. I won't screw up. I've noticed how people who cross you seem to get these weird cerebral hemorrhages..."
"Senator Scrope's wrap-up nets you a cool Bahama million, Fabby. The payoff on Remillard's organization could be even bigger. Goodbye."
Kieran touched a golden square, breaking the scrambler patch. The screen went dark. Almost immediately, another square inset on the desk began blinking red.
Kieran keyed the intercom. "I'll see Mr. Camastra at once, Arnold." He recessed the com-unit into the desk, performed a brief Yoga transmutation designed to lift his coercive energies to the highest level, and sat back to await the arrival of his mafioso father-in-law.
"You heard, Kier? You heard? He didn't veto! I got the word from Lassiter in Washington on the car-phone just as we exited the Kennedy!"
Big A1 Camastra stormed into the room. His cyanotic lips trembled in fury and a small driblet of saliva trailed from the corner of his mouth. The two bodyguards accompanying Chicago's Boss wore expressions of apprehension.
"I heard, Al. I've been expecting this." Kieran came around his desk, solicitous, as Carlo and Frankie helped Big Al settle his bulky body into the office's largest leather armchair.
Al raved, "That yellow-belly bastard! That fink! He's just gonna hold the bill until tomorrow without signing it, then it automatically goes into law even without his signature."
Kieran nodded. "The President wants the law but he didn't want to give public affront to its opponents."
"What the hell kinda religious man is he? Goin' against the Catholic Bishops and the Council of Churches and the NAACP and the fuckin' PTA, for chrissake? They all lobbied for the veto. We all knew he'd have to veto! How could he do this? God—you know what this means? It's Repeal all over again!"
"Boss, take it easy," Carlo pleaded. "Your bionic ticker ... you gotta calm down!"
"A drink!" Big Al roared. "Kier, gimme a drink."
"Al, you shouldn't," whined Frankie, catching Kieran's eye and shaking his head frantically. "The doc in K.C. said—"
Kieran O'Connor lifted one hand in peremptory dismissal. The two bodyguards stiffened and their eyes glazed. Both of them turned, completely docile, and left the room—oblivious to the fact that Big Al had enjoined them only five minutes earlier not to leave him alone with Kieran O'Connor under any circumstances.
Th
e don had forgotten his own order. He was leaning back in the chair, one puffed and blotchy hand over his eyes, muttering imprecations. Kieran busied himself at an antique sideboard where cut-glass decanters sparkled in the sunlight. "A little Marsala won't hurt you, Poppa. I'll have some, too. It's a nice virginale that DeLaurenti discovered and sent in to New York on the Concorde last week. If you like it, I'll have a couple of cases sent out to River Forest."
Kieran took one of the filled glasses and wrapped the old man's tremulous fingers around it. He let healing psychic impulses flow from his body to Camastra's through the momentary flesh contact. "Salute, Poppa. To your health." Kieran lifted his own glass and sipped.
A bitter smile cracked Big Al's pallid features. "My health! Madonna puttana, you should have seen those vultures giving me the eye in Kansas City, wondering if I'd drop dead right in front of 'em so's they could call off the Commission meeting and the vote!"
"The flight back has tired you out. You should have gone home to rest instead of coming downtown directly from O'Hare. Everything will work out fine. The Commission did as we expected. I won't have to exert mental pressure on them directly." He raised his glass to the old man again and returned to his seat behind the desk.
INTERVENTION Page 28
