INTERVENTION

by May, Julian; Dikty, Ted

  I liked the placards that Baumgartner's people made, said Kieran. Let's drink to that: "The best is yet to come."

  The others repeated his spoken words. Kieran sipped his champagne, but Griff and Viola tossed theirs down and went for refills.

  "I'll hand it to the General," Viola said. "He was strong. A lot better than we ever dared hope."

  "That viewing-with-alarm speech fingering the Meta Brain Trust's influence on the Democrats struck just the right note," Griff said. "Shot our boy up a good sixteen percent in the polls. It was a gamble, but we really proved that America's love affair with the operant clique is just about kaput. Before this campaign, I doubt that one voter in a hundred knew what metacoercion was—or redactive probing either."

  "Neither did the General," Northcutt put in with a cynical grin. She was a heavyset blond woman in her late forties, one of Kieran's earliest recruits, who had become his best operant head-hunter. Viola had vetted all the presidential campaign personnel, both operant and normal, to make certain that only loyalists would be able to exert influence on Baumgartner. Even so, the General had proved less psychologically malleable than they had hoped.

  "Before we lock Baumgartner in as our millennial candidate," Kieran said, "we're going to have to make certain that he has no suspicion that his mind was manipulated during this campaign. We may have pressed too hard when he balked at the anti-Soviet speech in October."

  Viola shrugged. "Len and Neville felt it was important that the General express doubt about the Kremlin's commitment to peace. We had the posthypnotic suggestion done prudently. Doc Presteigne handled it when the General had gas for some root-canal work."

  "But it didn't work," Kieran said. "You forgot that Baumgartner was a warm chum of the cosmonauts back in the pre-Mars days. He sincerely believes that the Russians have abandoned their expansionist philosophy. You can't depend upon a posthyp to overcome a strong conviction any more than you can coerce over the long term."

  "How will we convince him, then?" Viola asked.

  Kieran extracted his feet from among the mess of coffee cups, empty beer and seltzer bottles, and snack food that crowded the cocktail table. "When the hard-liners on the Politburo take charge, Baumgartner won't need convincing."

  "Hard-liners?" exclaimed Griff. "Take over when!"

  Kieran poked through a platter of ravaged deli noshes until he found a whole-meal cracker with a hard-boiled egg slice and a shaving of lox. He dabbed it artistically with mustard. "When the present General Secretary dies... and civil war breaks out in Uzbekistan."

  Viola and Griff stared at him. He showed them a mental schematic with a number of key elements blanked out.

  "Jesus God," whispered Griffith.

  "It's nothing you two have to concern yourselves about for a while yet," Kieran said. He popped the tidbit into his mouth and chewed it up, then downed the remainder of the champagne. "What you will have to deal with is Baumgartner's immediate future. Griff, I want you to find him a sinecure position on one of our foundations—say the Irons-Conrad. I want him completely divorced from the military-industrial complex and big business in the public mind. Our lad is a political philosopher now, asking questions and providing answers."

  "Speaking of which," Viola interposed, "we still have that matter of Baumgartner possibly suspecting that he's being manipulated. It's going to be tricky doing a deep-scan without his cooperation, you know. We've never tried it on a person who wasn't being—actively recruited to the inner circle."

  "We've got to know," Kieran insisted. "Whatever it takes. It's imperative that Baumgartner have no inkling of our own operancy. He'll only carry conviction in the next phases of our political campaigning if he firmly believes that operants are dangerous—a threat to normal humanity."

  Viola was frowning as she thought. "For a proper ream-job, the subject has to be rendered unconscious for something like thirty-six hours. No way to handle that without hospitalizing him. We'll have to come up with something that will satisfy him and the PR people. Nothing psychiatric. We don't want to risk an Eagleton fuck-up."

  "Eyes," said Griffith. "I had an uncle, had some kind of eye thing. Terrible headaches, then lost the sight of one eye. The docs fixed him, he was good as new."

  "Sounds usable," Viola said. "Presteigne would know what the ailment is and how to simulate the symptoms. Very likely both the headaches and the blindness can be voodooed—by Greta, maybe. Baumgartner won't suspect a thing when we bring in our own eye specialist..."

  Kieran nodded. "Work it out as soon as you can. I want to keep him newsworthy. I can see him doing lecture tours and hosting fund-raisers for the by-elections in '98. There are at least four Senate seats that could go Republican in the Bible Belt if we play our cards right and pick up on the antioperant sentiment building there."

  "It'll build a lot faster," Viola muttered, "once we get good old Señor Araña on line!"

  Griffith said:?

  Viola looked guiltily at Kieran, but he lifted a dismissive hand. "I was going to tell Griff about it anyhow."

  "A step-up in the antioperant crusade?" Griffith asked.

  "Exactly," said Kieran. "You know that my overriding concern is to insure that operants not loyal to us are barred from government service or political office. Even more important is to stir up grassroots sentiment against the metapsychic clique. I suppose you noticed the article in the Times this weekend about the Swiss banking group's plans to hire telepathic investigators."

  "No! God—if they do it, the Japanese'll be next. And next thing you know, the Justice Department or the Treasury'll want their own Metasnooper Corps, and our organization will be up the well-known excremental watercourse!"

  "Not if I can help it," said Kieran O'Connor. "Fortunately, we still have a Republican-packed Supreme Court. Next year my people in Chicago will engineer a test case to get a ruling that any form of operant screening of employees by private corporations is an invasion of privacy and unconstitutional. That will lay the groundwork for further action... such as the efforts of Araña. Why don't you tell Griff why we happen to be in New York, Viola?"

  She grinned as she fished her suede boots out from under the cocktail table and began to put them on. "Our great and good buddy, The Fabulous Finster, has bagged us a very big fish indeed, and he is arriving tomorrow at Kennedy with this recruit figuratively tucked under his arm. The man's name is Carlos María Araña, and he is an unfrocked Dominican, late of Madrid, where the authorities were only too willing to be rid of him."

  "Araña?" Griffith blinked. "Hey—didn't he start that fanatical antioperant movement in Spain? What was its name—Hijos de Putas?"

  Viola Northcutt guffawed. "Come on! Hijos de la Tierra, Griff. The Sons of Earth. Kier figured it was time for them to open a North American branch." She stood up, stamped her feet the rest of the way into her footgear, and brushed the crumbs from her skirt. "We're going to play off Araña's fanaticism against Baumgartner's reasoned opposition to operant influence. The Spaniard will play dirty and Baumgartner will deplore his intolerance. I mean, we don't really want to burn the confessed operants at the stake, do we? Not yet... Where'd you hide our coats, Griff? Kieran and I have to get back to our platonic little nest at the Plaza and get some sleep. Our cucaracha is coming in on Iberia's early flight tomorrow and poor Finster's going to need all the help he can get."

  Kieran stood up, yawned, and laughed. "Don't you worry about a thing, Vi. Fabby's tamed Señor Araña very thoroughly. It was a tough assignment—perhaps the toughest he's ever had to handle. But he's delivered the goods."

  "They don't call him Fabulous for nothing, eh?" Warren Griffith helped Viola on with her coat, then assisted Kieran. "I wouldn't mind meeting this Finster, Kier. If it wouldn't compromise your security arrangements, of course."

  Kieran smiled. His mind touched that of his associate, giving both reassurance and warning. "Maybe another time, Griff. Fabby will be dead beat, and I have other matters to discuss with him before he leaves for Moscow o
n Friday."

  Moscow! Kier don't tell me that's the way—

  "I wouldn't dream of telling you, Griff. You're a man who thinks for himself. That's why you're part of my organization. I'll be getting in touch with you soon on the Petro-Pascua acquisition."

  But Kier the man's a moderate the first reasonable Russian leader we've ever dealt with you can't—

  I can. Make no mistake about it Griff if it suits my purposes and it does I can. "Thanks a lot for playing host. Don't bother to see us out. Vi and I can find our own way."

  10

  ALMA-ATA, KAZAKH SSR, EARTH

  15 SEPTEMBER 1997

  A CHILL SETTLED quickly over the plaza in front of the Lenin Palace of Culture once the sun dropped behind the parched hills. Yellow leaves, prematurely fallen in the great drought that had plagued Central Asia that year, were swirled by the sharp breeze around the dusty shoes of Colonel Sergei Arkhipov, who sat on a bench near the Abai monument, waiting.

  From time to time as his ulcer gnawed, Sergei would slip an antacid tablet into his mouth. What he really needed was food; but he could not leave his post until the first afternoon session of the Sixth Congress on Metapsychology ended, and Donish furnished a report upon his fellow delegates' state of mind.

  Finally, people began to emerge, hurrying down the palace steps as if eager for their own suppers. Most of the longbrains went off into the park on the left, on their way to the Kazakhstan Hotel where the foreigners were being lodged. Numbers of locals, heading for the buses, came straight down Abaya Prospekt and passed directly in front of Sergei's bench. One of these was a compact young man in a green windbreaker who carried a canvas briefcase. His hair and complexion were dark and he wore a squarish black skullcap with white embroidered designs on the sides.

  Deliberately, Sergei projected a thought as this man approached: Move faster blackarsed longbrain my poor stomach is devouring itself I was sure you would stay in your fucking meeting all night.

  "And good evening to you, Comrade Colonel!" The young KGB agent, Kamil Donish, smiled good-humoredly and sat down on the bench. "An outstanding panel on psychoenergetic projection's more benign aspects went a bit overtime. There was this Italian, Franco Brixen, who reported that his people at the University of Torino have been able to inhibit the growth of malignant neoplasms in rats—"

  "Tishe!" hissed Sergei irritably. "What do I care about such trivia? Tell me the mood of the operant delegates—their feelings on the matter of the Islamic riots, especially—so that I can pass the information on to the General Secretary's aides before his speech tonight."

  "They regret our use of extreme force. But you can hardly expect them to side with Muslim fanatics who label them allies of Satan."

  "Don't play your longbrain games with me, Kamil. I'm not feeling well and I want straight answers. Are the foreign operants satisfied that we have acted properly? Do they accept our reassurances that the uprisings were isolated occurrences, and that the situation is now under control?"

  Kamil's black eyes flashed. "Comrade Colonel, you remain obstinately a man of your time. Of course they don't! The whole world can see what is going on in Uzbekistan through the mental vision of their EE adepts. The only reason that the global news reports have downplayed the matter is that there is voluntary restraint being exercised by the operants themselves. They give their local journalists the bare details of our troubles, but without sensational embellishment that might inflame world opinion. The Soviet Union is being given the benefit of the doubt! Oh, yes—there are some bleeding-hearts among the delegates who deplore our killing of the so-called innocent bystanders during the storming of the Bukhara airfield. But most of the Congress attendees are politically sophisticated persons who realize the gravity of the situation—the danger of civil war. Most nations of the world are on our side, Comrade Colonel. They have no wish to see the Central Asian Republics explode like Iran and Pakistan."

  "But do they worry about their safety here in Alma-Ata?"

  "Certainly not," Kamil said. "They know that the nearest fighting is more than a thousand air-kilometers away. They are also aware that this is a modem city, with a minimal number of Shiite fanatics among the populace. Operants who had any doubts about their personal welfare stayed at home. The majority accepted the assurances of Academician Tamara Gawrys-Sakhvadze that Alma-Ata welcomes them even more eagerly than it did in 1992. The Comrade General Secretary can make his little speech tonight without fear of any hostile response."

  "Well, that's a relief. You longbrains are all the Secretary's darlings—the showpiece of his much vaunted policy of Otkroveyinost'. If he got a cold reception from the foreign delegates at the Congress, certain persons in Moscow would be encouraged in their attempts to discredit him." Sergei's mind showed an image of a tightrope-walker.

  "Discredit him—and us." Somberness spread over Kamil's face. "You are not part of the Twentieth Directorate, Comrade Colonel, but you are quite aware of our critical role in the New Soviet Openhearted Society that the Secretary has championed. All loyal citizens have rejoiced in the new freedoms and the acceptance of personal responsibility for progress. But Otkroveyinost' would be impossible without the EE monitoring function of the KGB Twentieth."

  "Oh, you are all certified heroes," Sergei agreed archly. "Just do your job efficiently and pinpoint the terrorist reactionaries without at the same time scaring the simple-minded to death! Especially the Muslim simple-minded."

  "Some of my coreligionists are deficient in social consciousness," Kamil admitted. "This modern Age of the Mind has come too quickly for them to assimilate. According to the Prophet, magic is one of the Seven Ruinous Sins—and we operant metapsychics are accused of its practice. Furthermore, it is being said that the Last Days are upon the earth, and our appearance is one of the signals thereof. The KGB's reliance upon EE monitors inflames the reactionaries and makes even loyal Muslim citizens fearful."

  "And so the powder keg at the southern belly of the USSR grows hotter each day—and I, for one, do not see any simple solution to the mess," Sergei said. "Thus far, the General Secretary has been lucky. The outbreaks have been small enough to be put down by the militia or by the KGB's own Border Regiments. But if the antioperant paranoia grows, the jihad movement may spread from the Shiites to the vast numbers of Sunni Muslims in Soviet Central Asia. Then nothing less than the Red Army will suffice to control the insurrection—and we will all be in a very deep arsehole."

  Sergei's imagination drew a portrait of Marshal Yegor Kumylzhensky, the hard-liner Minister of Defense and longtime Politburo opponent of the General Secretary. The figure had horns, wolfish teeth, and brandished a tactical missile as an erection.

  Kamil giggled. "You are getting very good at that for a shortbrain, Comrade Colonel. You should take the operancy exam again sometime."

  Sergei swore and spat on the pavement. A pretty young woman passing by frowned at the uncultured behavior.

  "She labels you a crude old fart," Kamil whispered slyly.

  "I can read her mind well enough," Sergei growled. "As for you, you are an insubordinate blackarse who would have been shot for speaking to your superior in such a way back in the old days."

  "Old days! If those old days still prevailed, you would be waiting for American missiles to blast your family to bits. And the Soviet citizenry would be drinking itself to death instead of reveling in Japanese VCRs and North American movies and British silver-disc music and satellite-transmitted sports programs from half the countries of the globe. Cheer up, Comrade Colonel. It's not such a bad brave new world! Who would ever have thought that the KGB would be applauded as good guys?"

  Sergei shook his head and took another antacid tablet.

  Chuckling, Kamil unsnapped his briefcase and took out a minicorder. "Here are my hushaphone comments on the opening session of the Congress and the afternoon panels. There is really nothing extraordinary going on that the General Secretary need be concerned about. We operants are worried about our image world
wide, and about the unreliability of our techniques for detecting clever psychopaths among us. We are concerned about the U.S. government's proposal to ban operants from seeking political office. The Congress is not, by and large, worrying about the status of operants in the Soviet Union. Our nation is looked upon by most of the delegates as a progressive place, ascending rapidly into high-tech prosperity after shelving an ill-considered political experiment. Our successful juvenile suboperant screening program is admired, as are the new schools for accelerated EE and telepathic training. The Japanese think that their operant teaching techniques are superior. Perhaps they are. Tomorrow is education day and there should be lively discussion."

  "Fuck the lot of you and your discussions," said Sergei wearily. "All I care about is smooth sailing for the General Secretary's speech tonight—and then two weeks' rest cure in Sochi for my poor aching gut."

  Kamil Donish arose from the bench. "Do svedanya, then, Comrade Colonel. I'll look for you in the audience tonight. Try to calm your tummy with some nice yogurt or rice pudding before you come, though. You don't want to make your sensitive longbrain neighbors uncomfortable."

  Sergei threw an obscene mental menu suggestion of his own after the departing young agent. It was blithely ignored. Longbrains! What an arrogant and nonconformist lot they were—more loyal to each other and their global clique of do-gooders than to any motherland! The General Secretary was taking a colossal risk, pinning his policy to them. By far the majority of Soviet longbrains were not even Slavs! Look at Kamil—a Tadzhik, one of the fast-breeding Asian groups that now outnumbered the true ethnic Russians. The Twentieth Directorate of the KGB and the academic metapsychic groups swarmed with blackarses, Caucasians, and Mongoloid riffraff ... but then, so did every other segment of Soviet society, operant or normal. What a hell of a world...