INTERVENTION

by May, Julian; Dikty, Ted

  Finster hit the pause button of the recorder and shifted position. Inky ripples spread out in circles from the johnboat. The water was now littered with insect bodies and the bass, sated, had retired for the night. Finster prayed that soon Victor would, too.

  He whispered a few more translations and comments as the young man led his visitor down the front steps of the cabin and walked with him to the Alfa Romeo. A next meeting was set up, to include the other members of the Canadian gang. Then the Spider's headlamps flashed on, making two paths of wavering light on the lake that stopped short of Finster's boat. The car backed, turned, and drove off along the shore road.

  Victor Remillard's mind was strangely aglow. He stretched, yawned, then walked down the path to the small dock in front of the cabin, where he stood looking out over the lake with his arms folded.

  Finster's boat began to move slowly toward him, dragging its sash-weight anchor.

  "Oh, shit," muttered the mind reader. "Shit a brick."

  He lunged for the three-horse outboard mounted at the stern and yanked the starting cord, producing pathetic burbling sounds. He yanked again and got a few apologetic pops. Cursing, he fumbled the small oars into their locks and flailed desperately at the water while the boat picked up speed, moving in the opposite direction.

  "Turn me loose, dammit!" There were other cabins on the shore, some with lights. He yelled: "Help! Help!..." But his voice died away to a croak, lost in the summer chorale of frogs, crickets, and katydids.

  Nothing left to do! The tall silhouette at the end of the dock was barely ten yards away. Finster ripped buttons from his soggy sportshirt to get at the .357 magnum Colt Python in its underarm holster. He lifted the gun with both hands and tried to aim, but the Colt seemed to have a life of its own and the blood-hot metal fought to squirm out of his grip, and when he clung to it, it became heavy as the lead sash-weight anchor and tried to break his wrists, and then he saw that the barrel was pointed at his right kneecap and his finger was tightening on the trigger, and he screamed and flung the thing sideways and it fell overboard and Vic laughed.

  I'll jump out! his mind howled. And I can't swim but I'd rather drown—

  He was drowning.

  Drowning in his own vomit that had flooded up his throat and into his windpipe. He made a terrible noise as he crashed against the low aluminum gunwale, his head and upper body hanging over the side, his eyes wide open beneath the dead-black water. And the mental voice:

  Don't be any more stupid than you've already been. Not until we have a chance to talk.

  Talk?...

  He was sitting upright, wet only with his own perspiration, and the boat glided smoothly up to the dock and stopped. A hand was extended to help him climb out.

  He looked up. The zillions of stars in the summer sky outlined a tall, good-looking young man with dark curly hair. His mind was a simmering blur.

  "Talk?" Finster repeated out loud, a wan chipmunk grin trembling on his lips.

  "Come up to the cabin," Victor told him curtly, and turned his back to lead the way off the dock. When the mind reader hesitated, something seemed to clamp his heart with red-hot pincers, making his knees buckle; but in a split second the pain was gone and he stood upright again, and the damn frog growled over his shoulder, "Grouille-toi, merdaillon!"

  Finster needed no translation. In fact, he was inclined to agree with Victor's rude assessment of him. It was the royal screw-up of his life—what was left of it—and he was a certain goner. Once this realization came, Fabian Finster's spirits paradoxically lifted.

  "Sit there," Victor ordered, when they came through the screen door onto the cabin porch. Finster lowered himself into a wicker chair with cretonne cushions. Did he dare ask for a beer?

  Something awful lit up behind Victor's eyes. "I could squeeze your brain like a grapefruit, Finster. I could force you to tell me everything you know about the ones who sent you to spy on me, then kick your ass out of here with nothing but scrambled eggs left inside your skull. I've already done that to a couple of snoopers. One was a Russian—can you believe it?—offering me three hundred grand to get him into my brother's laboratory. I took his money very gladly and he disappeared without a trace. The woods are lovely, dark and deep, Finster. You could go the same way ... or maybe not. You've got a certain familiar smell about you."

  And he lifted his mind-screen to give the barest glimpse of reprieve.

  "All right!" Finster shouted, breaking into a guffaw of relief. "I dig what you're thinking, amigo! Do I ever!"

  "Oh, yeah?" Victor's voice was like ice, and the tantalizing image the mind reader had grasped so desperately did a chameleon shift and faded to imminent doom. Finster sat up straight, waiting for it.

  But Victor was smiling. "You're not one of my brother's stooges. You're not from the government. You're not a Red. Your mind's spread open like a planked salmon, Finster. I know exactly what you are."

  "I'm a crook, Victor," Finster said. "Just like you. And I'm here following orders from another crook—who is definitely not just like you. He's big. Maybe the biggest, pretty soon. You reading my mind?"

  "Better than you know. Tell Kieran O'Connor exactly what I say, Finster ... Stay away from me. If your people try to interfere with me, I'll send them back to O'Connor's office in Chicago to die, right in front of his fancy desk. But you also tell him that I have certain plans. If he lets me alone, here in my home territory, maybe the day will come when the two of us have things to say to each other. It won't be soon. But when one of us really needs the other, I'll talk to him ... Do you think you can remember my exact words, Finster?"

  The mind reader shrugged, hooked one thumb around the lanyard that hung from his neck, and pulled out the Toshiba microcorder. "You're on the record, Mr. Remillard."

  "Then get out of here." Victor turned away, heading for the interior of the cabin.

  "No beer?" Finster ventured.

  "No beer."

  "Figures," Finster said. He went out the screen door, closed it very carefully, and headed for the dock.

  13

  FROM THE MEMOIRS OF ROGATIEN REMILLARD

  AS A BOOKSELLER, I have noted a curious thing: There are certain scientific books of epochal importance, titles recognized by every educated citizen in the Galactic Milieu, that nevertheless languish unread by modern people. One thinks of Darwin's Origin of Species, Freud's Interpretation of Dreams, Wegener's Origin of the Continents and Oceans, Weiner's Cybernetics, and other works that provoked controversy in their day—only to subside into banality once their contents had passed the test of time and merged with the common body of human knowledge.

  Denis Remillard's towering work, Metapsychology, is another that suffered this ironic fate. Now, 121 years after its publication, only a few scientific historians bother to read it. But I remember the uproar attending the book's appearance early in 1990, when it sold nearly 250,000 copies in hardback format during its first year and became the common coin of TV talk shows and articles in the popular press—an amazing performance for a highly technical work, bristling with statistics, written in a dignified and daunting style. Metapsychology presented for the first time an integrated scheme encompassing all forms of mental activity, normal and supranormal, with an emphasis upon mind's inter-relation to matter and energy. In a detailed and elegant series of experiments, scrupulously verified, Denis demonstrated how the so-called higher mind functions are inherent in the mental processes of all human beings. He showed how every mind contains, in some measure, powers both ordinary and extraordinary. His keystone theory explained the unusual activities of psychic adepts in terms of operant metafunction, and the deficiencies of "normal" people as an aspect of metapsychic latency—where operation of the higher powers was either inhibited by psychological factors or precluded by a limited talent.

  Metapsychology provoked intense discussion—and a certain dismay—within the scientific establishment, since it presented hard evidence that the higher mental functions were genuine
phenomena and not merely dubious conjecture. Psychic researchers (and there were many besides Denis), after enduring decades of condescending tolerance or out-and-out ridicule from their conservative peers, basked in a new and unprecedented atmosphere of respect as they found themselves courted by the media, by sundry government agencies, and by commercial exploiters scenting a new growth industry that might eventually rival aerospace or genetic technology. Numbers of hitherto clandestine operants "came out of the closet" as a result of Denis's book and became involved in serious research projects. There were also legions of quacks—astrologers, tea-leaf readers, spoon-benders, and practitioners of black magic—who enjoyed a brief heyday riding the coattails of the legitimate metapsychic movement. The public was entertained for months by debates and squabbles among the mixed bag of opposing psychic factions.

  Denis himself remained largely aloof from the altercations his book had spawned, distancing himself from popular journalists, television interviewers, and other purveyors of mass titillation. He had not yet publicly revealed that he himself was one of the principal subjects of his experiments, nor were other operant workers at his Dartmouth laboratory identified by name to nonprofessional investigators. Attempts to make an instant celebrity of the author of Metapsychology were doomed by Denis's humorless and erudite manner, his penchant for quoting statistics, and his total lack of "colorful" personality traits. Media snoops found lean pickings at the scene of his researches, a drab old saltbox on College Street in Hanover, across from the Hitchcock Hospital parking lot. The metapsychology lab's personnel was loyal and close-mouthed, giving superficial cooperation to reporters and interested VIPs while making certain that no really sensational data came under outside scrutiny.

  Fortunately for the disappointed newsmongers, there were plenty of less diffident psychic researchers at other institutions who were more than eager to fill the metapsychic publicity gap. These basked in the limelight and hastened to publish their own researches—as well as their critiques of Denis's magnum opus. Since most ordinary people have a gut belief in the higher mental powers, the public at large reacted positively to the opening of the new Metapsychic Frontier. There were surprisingly few commentators, in those early days, who envisioned any problem in having an elite population of operants living and working among "normal" humanity ...

  Late in 1990 when the Mind Wars scandal broke and it was revealed that the Defense Department of the United States had attempted to pressure psychic researchers into undertaking classified projects, public opinion experienced its first anti-meta shift. But this was destined to be swept away in the fresh furor that came the following year, when Professor James Somerled MacGregor of Edinburgh University revealed to a stunned world the first truly practical application of mind-power. MacGregor's demonstration was a total vindication of Denis's theories. It was also responsible for opening a rift in the human race that not even the Great Intervention would heal completely.

  ***

  To digress momentarily from the earthshaking to the jejune, I must note that 1990 was also the year that I started my bookshop, The Eloquent Page. Nowadays the place has quasi-shrine status, but I continue to resist attempts by various busybody groups to institutionalize it. The shop persists under the original proprietor at its address of 68 South Main Street, Hanover, New Hampshire. For the sake of Galactic tourists, I have a section devoted to works by and about famous Remillards. (I even have for sale a few fragile copies of the first edition of Metapsychology, exorbitantly priced. Inquiries are invited.) However, my stock in trade remains, as always, one of the largest collections of rare science fiction, fantasy, and horror books in New England. My shelves hold no modern liquid-crystal book-plaques; every volume is printed on paper—and a goodly percentage of them are still sturdy enough to be read. I welcome browsers of all races, even Simbiari, provided they utilize the plass gloves I keep available and refrain from dripping green mucus on the stock.

  The choice of the bookshop premises was not mine. I had initially decided to rent a place farther north on Main Street, closer to the Dartmouth campus, where there was much heavier foot traffic and where my business instincts assured me that trade would be brisk. This intention, however, was thwarted by an old acquaintance.

  I remember the sunny autumn day that the rental agent, Mrs. Mallory, took me on a round of inspection. Even though I had already expressed my preference, the lady insisted on showing me one last vacant property.

  "It's such a pretty place, Mr. Remillard," she told me, "the corner shop on the ground floor of the historic Gates House building, across from the post office. A marvelous example of the Late Federal style, absolutely the ideal ambiance for a bookshop! The premises are a tad smaller than the location down by the Hanover Inn—but so much more evocative. And there's a lovely large apartment available on the third floor."

  I agreed to look the place over, and it was everything she had promised. The apartment, in fact, was virtually perfect. The store itself, however, seemed far too small for the type of establishment I was then contemplating, a combination of used books and current hardbound and paperback volumes. I told Mrs. Mallory that I found it charming but unsuitable.

  "Oh, dear! I really thought you'd like it." She gestured at the old beamed ceiling, the frowsty little nooks at the rear. "The atmosphere of antiquity—can't you feel it?" And then she smiled conspiratorially and said in a lowered voice, "It's even haunted."

  I paused in my inspection of the bay display window, polite incredulity on my face. "Interesting. I'm sure having a ghost in one's bookshop would be quite a novelty, especially since I plan to specialize in fantastic literature. But I'm afraid the place really is too small, and too far from the campus to attract much evening trade—"

  And then I felt it. Without conscious volition, I had let my seekersense range out, the weak divination faculty I had been practicing under Denis's tutelage with a view toward guarding myself from intrusions by Victor or other undesirables. I had managed to learn how to detect the distinctive bioenergetic aura of fairly strong operants, such as Denis, Sally Doyle, or Glenn Dalembert—provided that they were within a radius of ten meters or so and not shielded by thick masonry or some other barrier.

  And now, scanning this old frame building's empty corner premises, I farsensed the presence. I stood rooted to the spot, sweat starting out on my forehead.

  Mrs. Mallory was chattering on: "...and if you're sure you'll need more space, we might talk to the owner, since the little coffee shop next door might not renew its lease and it might be possible to double the square footage available..."

  I seemed to hear someone say: Tell her you'll take it.

  Who's there? my mind cried. Whothehell is that?

  "I beg your pardon?" said Mrs. Mallory.

  I shook my head. It was in the back room.

  "I know!" she exclaimed brightly. "I'll just let you stay and look the place over at your leisure, both the store and the apartment, and you can drop in at my office later with the keys and let me know what you've decided."

  "That will be fine," I said. The sound of my voice was distant, dimmed by my concentration on the detecting ultrasense. It was coming out of the back room into the main part of the shop. Mrs. Mallory said something else and then went out, closing the street door firmly behind her. Dust motes eddied in the brilliant sunbeams shining through the display window. As I began slowly to turn around for the confrontation, an idiotic extraneous thought flickered across my mind: In late afternoon, I would have to make some provision so that the strong sunlight would not fade the books.

  There's an awning. All you have to do is lower it.

  "Bordel de dieu!" I spun around, exerting my farsense to the utmost, and detected an all-too-familiar aura. It had no form, nor was there anyone visible in the shadowed rear of the shop.

  The Family Ghost said: It's been a long time, Rogi. But I had to be certain that you took this place and not the other.

  "Ah, la vache! I might have known..." I stood
with one hand braced against the wall, laughing with relief. "So you've been haunting this shop, have you?"

  The previous tenant was a trifle reluctant to vacate and I had to insure that the lease would be available. Sometimes it's perplexing, trying to determine precisely which occasions require my personal attention. My overview of the probability lattices is by no means omniscient, and after such a long time my other faculty is unreliable.

  "So! You've made up my mind for me and I'm to be forced to rent this place even though it's too small. Is that it? My poor little Eloquent Page and I will go broke just to satisfy your ineffable whim."

  Nonsense. You'll do well enough if you stock antiquarian books and forget about the cheap ephemera. The clientele will seek out your establishment and pay suitably high prices for collector's items, and you can also do mail-order business ... Be that as it may, it is not your destiny to achieve commercial prosperity.