There was a simple remedy for the irrational fear of a single individual. I had worked it myself on Fidelity Swift. But it was a temporary thing, like a clever actor making an audience believe in a character being portrayed. We operants would be able to disarm the fear of some of the normals some of the time—for a little while. But how would we convince them of our amity over the long haul?
Sunk in the old malheur, I went up to my room to stash the book purchases before going to supper. As I came back into the corridor I was reminded by the number of costumed figures prowling about that the masquerade and meet-the-pros party was in full swing down in the hotel's grand ballroom. There would be music and drinks and conviviality, and such a mob scene that nobody would bother thinking twice about my sinister mental attributes.
The down-elevator door opened to reveal a chamber jammed with exotic fun-seekers. I spotted a squad of youths dressed in medieval battle-gear, a nubile lass with flaming hair and a four-foot "peace-bonded" sword, wearing what seemed to be a bikini of silver poker chips, a Darkoverian mother with two Darkoverian moppets, a statuesque black woman in a white satin evening gown with a little white dragon perched on her shoulder, a stoutish middle-aged gent clad in a conservative suit whose mundane appearance was belied only by the propeller beanie on his head, and a large ape sporting emerald fur and illuminated eyeballs, who had neglected to use a personal deodorant.
"No room! No room!" chorused this bunch as I made to enter the elevator. The ape opened its mechanically augmented white-tusked jaws and stuck its carunculated tongue out at me.
But there is, occasionally, justice in this world. I speared the smelly ape with my most potent coercive impulse and commanded: "Out!" It complied like a lamb and I took its place to universal plaudits. We made a nonstop trip to the ballroom level.
The party had attracted nearly two thousand people. Perhaps half were in fancy dress. A live band played things like "Can You Read My Mind?," "Rocket Man," "Annapurna Saucer Trip," Darius Brubeck's "Earthrise," and John Williams's "Theme from Gnomeworld." In between sets the convention Toastmaster introduced the artists and writers present, and a spotlight tried to pick designated stars out of the crush. There were also parades of the more spectacularly costumed fans across the stage. Those who were particularly beautiful, humorous, or technically awesome received warm ovations.
I headed immediately for the nearest open bar. By the time I had downed three Scotches, I felt considerably cheered. I had repinned my convention badge so that my name was mostly obscured by the lapel of my suit coat. Five attractive ladies (and one flamboyantly gorgeous transvestite, whose gender I detected too late to worry about) danced with me. I introduced myself to the convention Guest of Honor, a tottering nonagenarian survivor of the Golden Age, and by dint of the most gentle coercion and a speedily fetched raspberry seltzer got him to personally inscribe a copy of Boskone's commemorative edition of his early short stories.
And then I withdrew to the sidelines for a breather ... and had my first shock of the evening when I saw Elaine.
Even though she was now over fifty, she was still breathtaking. Her tall slender figure was clad in a long gown of some lightweight metal mesh that flowed from her neck to the floor like molten gold. Her arms, shoulders, and back were bare. The dress's collar was a wide, upstanding band of gold adorned with stones like blazing orange topazes. She had a single heavy bracelet of the same jewels. Her hair was blond now, piled high on her head in an intricate coiffure of stiffly arranged ringlets sparked with gold glints. She was dancing with Dracula.
I gulped down the dregs of my latest Scotch and pressed toward the dance floor. Poor Drac didn't have a prayer in the face of my coercion. For some reason the band was playing a melodic standard, "Old Cape Cod." Elaine stood there among the other dancers, dismayed by the abrupt retreat of her caped and befanged escort, not yet noticing me. I do not recall what my thoughts were. Perhaps seeing her after so many years had drained my brain of everything except the irresistible compulsion to be near her again.
I took her into my arms and we picked up the beat. She stared up at me, wordless. Her mind said: Roger!
"Voulez-vous m'accorder cette danse, Madame?"
"No!...Yes." Oh, my God.
"May I compliment you on your dress. It's much too chic to be a costume." How appropriate that we should meet again at a bal travesti. Do you come to Boskone often?
"No," she said. "This is my first time. My daughter thought I'd find it amusing. She's—she's a rabid science-fiction fan."
Your daughter ... Don's daughter ... she would be twenty. May I ask her name?
"Annarita Latimer. She's there, costumed as Red Sonja."
My eyes followed her mental indication and I was surprised to see the strapping redheaded wench in the silver-dollar bikini. She was too far away for me to scrutinize her directly for operancy, and I am unable to detect operant auras in lighted places. So I simply asked, "Did she inherit the mind-powers?"
"I—I think so." She won't let me in, Roger. There's a barrier, like a shining wall of black glass. One doesn't notice it except at very close range...
That explained my failure to spot her operancy in the elevator.
"What does Annarita do?" I asked easily. "Is she going to college?"
"She's at Yale Drama School. I think she'll be a very good actress."
"Sans doute," I murmured. "And your husband?"
The music was ending. We applauded, and then the M.C. took up the microphone to announce the costume prizes. I led Elaine to the edge of the dance floor, where Dracula waited, glowering.
Her mind told me hurriedly: Stanton died three years ago Roger now I am married to him. "Gil, darling! Let me introduce you to a very dear old friend of mine, Roger Remillard. Roger, this is my husband, Gilbert Anderson." The Third, she appended telepathically.
Dracula shook hands with me as though I were Von Helsing. His features, blandly handsome aside from the well-fitted orthodontic fangs, wore a pensive, well-bred little frown. "Remillard ... Remillard. You wouldn't by any chance be related to—"
"It's really a very common Franco-American name," I said. "Thanks for letting me dance with Elaine. We haven't seen each other in years. Are you enjoying the convention?"
He uttered some hearty inconsequentialities, deftly extracted from me my modest means of earning a living, and decided I was no threat after all. "Maybe we can get together for lunch or something later on this weekend."
"Great idea. Let's try to do that," I replied with equally false enthusiasm, simultaneously reassuring Elaine that I was out of it. I asked her: What is he? Upper management? Stockbroker?
She said: VP and chief corporate legal officer.
I said: It figures given the fangs.
And then I pretended to see someone across the crowded room that I had to speak to, so I bid the pair of them adieu. Fleeing, I told her: You are more lovely than ever be happy chérie and never never have anything to do with metapsychic operants...
Then I hurried out of the ballroom, wretched again, and sought a dark corner to lose myself in. I found it in one of the hotel cocktail lounges. Hunched on a stool at the bar, I ordered a double vodka on the rocks.
When I had finished it my brain was as incapable of telepathic reception as any normal's.
And so he had to tap me on the shoulder to get my attention.
I peered groggily at the intruder standing behind me. It was a tall young man with dark curly hair wearing a Flying Tiger jacket, haloed by a fierce neon-red aura. Victor said, "I might have known I'd find you here getting sloshed. On y va!"
He took hold of my arm firmly and seized my mind in a grip like a pit bull's. I saw stars and lurched against him. A rude rummaging was going on in my head, punctuated with offhand thrusts of pain. I was unable to speak. Victor whispered urgently in French, trying to get me out of the bar, but my feet weren't moving. Then something inside my skull seemed to crumple and I moaned out loud and began to walk, biddable as any zombie.
"That's better," said Victor. He steered me toward the elevators. "You're all checked out. We'll go up to your room and pick up your things."
"What ... what the hell?" I protested.
The elevator was crowded with noisy conventioneers. Victor pressed the button for my floor. I didn't know what kind of mischief he had wrought in my brain, but I was sobering rapidly and was once again able to understand mental speech. I also had a hideous headache.
He said: We're driving north Uncle Rogi up to Berlin Maman needs you and I'm taking you to her.
I said: Sunny?...Dieu is she all right what's happened is it serious have you called Denis—
Shut up Uncle Rogi. There is no crisis. When I said Maman needed you I was speaking generally. She needs you if she is to get well and I am to be freed from Denis's meddling.
The elevator door opened and we got out. My head was swollen with lava and the corridor rolled from side to side like a skiff caught in the trough of storm waves. Victor held me up, inserted the coded plastic key-card into the slot of my room door, and thrust me brutally inside. I staggered to the bed and collapsed on it. Muttering obscenities, my nephew relaxed his hold on me and went into the bathroom to gather my things.
Going horizontal must have helped my brain by increasing its blood supply, and I regained a measure of self-control. What the devil was going on? What did Victor really want?
He came out of the john carrying my pajamas and a pouch of toiletries. "What I want is a simple matter, Uncle Rogi. Maman has been very upset for quite some time. She has... suffered from disturbing fantasies. About me." He went to the closet and pulled out my seat bag and two-suiter and began to stuff my clothing into them. "Her problems have affected my younger brothers and sisters. Interfered with my plans for their future. It didn't matter so much when they were just kids, but now that they are approaching an age when they can be useful to me, I can no longer permit Maman to indulge herself by undermining my influence over them. I was very disappointed at having to write off the girls."
Slowly, I sat up. He had his back to me as he emptied a drawer of some Operator #5 magazines I had intended to sell.
He said, "I urged Maman to go to Hanover, to put herself under Denis's care in long-term resident therapy. It would have been the ideal solution. As you know, she refused to leave the younger ones in my charge. She suspects, you see—as she came to suspect in the case of Papa."
"So you were responsible for Don's death."
Victor zipped up the cases with great efficiency, got my parka from the closet, and tossed it to me. "Papa killed himself, as we all know. He was a pathetic, self-destructive sot. So are you, Uncle Rogi, but you are much more intelligent and I think your death wish is probably as spineless as the rest of your character." He opened the outer door. "Let's go."
I had no choice. His coercion scooped me off the bed like a back-hoe. I teetered along after him with terrible speculations oozing out of my mind. As we waited for the elevator I asked him:
Why did you kill the girls?
He shrugged. "Ces garces, elles étaient chaudes lapines." Their rebellion took the form of promiscuity. It was disgusting. I had hoped for alliances with some of my associates. It is an excellent way of cementing loyalties you see but these sistersluts balked. They took my gifts made promises then did as they pleased. Coercion as you know has its limits. Perhaps I was too domineering during their early adolescence and fear made them reckless. At any rate it was not working and they were behaving scandalously bringing the family into disrepute. I will not have that.
"Mon zob!" I sneered—then nearly screamed out loud as he fetched my mind a blinding wallop.
Watch yourself Uncle Rogi ... So you find my yearnings after bourgeois respectability amusing do you? You weren't impressed by the progress of Remco Pulp and Chemicals? Perhaps you don't realize how far along I've come in the business world. Small wonder when we hardly ever see one another except at funerals. That will change.
The elevator arrived and we got in. I was so tightly controlled that I couldn't blink without the young bastard's permission. But he couldn't keep me coerced forever...
He said: No. And that's the problem overall. With Maman and the family and even with my notorious older brother! Unlike you Uncle Rogi I have ambitions. And they will require the close cooperation of others whose loyalty I can count upon. Yvonne is eighteen and compliant. She is not nearly so good-looking as her late older sisters but she has youth and my associate Robert Fortier will find her acceptable. Pauline unfortunately is still too young but she will mature.
Good God you're scheming up a fucking dynasty—
Tu l'as dit bouffi!
The elevator reached the lobby and disgorged us. Victor handed the two bags to me, deposited the card-key in the box at the desk, and thriftily had a clerk validate his parking ticket. Then we headed for the lower-level elevators. For the first time I began to realize what a desperate situation I was in. I still didn't entirely understand why he wanted me, but want me he did. He could coerce me into doing any number of things and lock me up incommunicado in the interim without Denis suspecting anything. Denis was, after all, distracted by matters of global importance; erratic behavior by his black-sheep uncle was only to be expected.
We descended into the bowels of the great hotel. The lowest parking level, where Victor had had to park his Porsche because of the convention crowd, was quiet, very cold, and virtually deserted. He drew me along in his wake as he strode to the sports car.
We'll take the interstates up to Hanover. Tomorrow we can begin making arrangements for your move. By the time Denis gets wind of it you'll be settled in Berlin and they'll be reading the banns at Saint Anne's.
The banns? ...
Of course. Don't you understand Uncle Rogi? You're going to marry Maman and relieve Denis's anxieties about her and help make certain that my surviving brothers and sisters remain under my control. And I'll find other uses for you too as time goes on.
"No!" I yelled. And from some mental reservoir I called up the power to snap his coercive lead. I flung the two bags at his head. He ducked and they skidded across the polished white hood of the car. He struck back at me and it was as though twin ice picks had been driven into my ears. I shrieked and almost fell, then recovered with a heroic act of will and tried to run. A mental thunderbolt struck me between the shoulder blades and seemed to sever my spine. I sprawled headlong, still screaming, and in seconds he was on me.
"Ferme ça, vieux dindon! Arrête de déconner!" Victor knelt on my chest and grabbed me by the hair. His eyes were like paired heliarc torches and I knew he could fry my gray matter and turn me into a drooling idiot if he chose ... but he didn't want to go that far. He needed me and so he hesitated with his psychocreative lobotomy, and I saw my last chance. The knot of fire ignited behind my breastbone and stark terror and prayer accelerated it into an out-spiral: around and around and around. Victor's blazing eyes dimmed with surprise and then alarm. He let go of my head and flinched, so that the ball of energy I shot at him did not strike his face but glanced along the edge of his skull just above the hairline, cauterizing a shallow furrow in scalp and bone.
He howled and fell off me. In desperation I rolled under a nearby Winnebago camper with my nerves on fire from the psychozap and most of my muscles turned to Jell-O. I knew I was a goner. I could hear Victor scrambling on the pavement and reviling me in French and English.
And then he dropped like he'd been brained with a sledgehammer.
I lay there in semidarkness, smelling the Winnie's chassis lubrication and a burnt-pork stench. Victor was utterly still except for slow, stertorous breathing.
There were measured footsteps approaching: klok ... klok ... klok ...the sound amplified by the dank concrete walls and pillars of the underground garage, that haunt of lurking urban menace. I felt my neck-hairs prickle and my guts go loose. I couldn't see the aura of the approaching operant because it was deliberately being suppressed; but I could feel
it, like the horrid quavering of the nerves when you stand under high-voltage power lines.
My view of him was cut off by the rows of parked cars until he came up to where Victor lay. I saw sturdy Timberland high-tops with red wool socks and black chinos stuffed into them. Arms enclosed in down mackinaw sleeves reached down to grasp Victor, taking the back of his belt in one massive hand and the collar of his jacket in the other. My nephew's body ascended out of view. The booted feet plodded to the Porsche and I heard a heavy thud, as if some vandal had desecrated the expensive vehicle by plonking a duffel bag full of books onto the roof. The car door opened and there was a softer thud. The door slammed.
The feet approached the Winnie and my two travel bags were set down next to it. The aetheric tension had dissipated and I felt enveloped in blessed relief.
A telepathic voice said: Victor will think you did it. That was quite a commendable mental effort of yours. It provided a neat cover-up for my necessary obtrusion.
INTERVENTION Page 48
