INTERVENTION

by May, Julian; Dikty, Ted

  Victor decelerated, changed course to avoid a dangerous cornice of snow, then headed for the rim again. A moment later they stopped. He cut the engine and extinguished the exterior and interior illumination. Side by side, still imprisoned in their harnesses, they sat looking over the drop-off. There were sparkling strings and clusters of tiny building lights in the Wildcat Ski Area and along Pinkham Notch, where houses and roadside establishments lined the highway. Only a few cars and trucks were abroad. Most of the drivers had evidently found some congenial place to wait the Millennium out.

  Victor unfastened his straps and hers. They went into the back of the cab to put on their ski boots and other equipment. Shannon unpacked the flares and checked her wristwatch. It was four minutes until midnight. Together, they climbed onto a rippled ice crust, carrying their skis. Victor had left the keys of the crawler in the ignition and now he slammed the door shut without locking it.

  "Are you just going to leave the thing here?" she asked.

  He gestured toward the summit. The antenna complex and other small structures were barely visible against a velvet sky dusted with incredible numbers of stars. In one of the buildings shone a little yellow light.

  "Somebody from the weather station will put on fangy showshoes and come down for the machine in the morning. It's a good thing the weather's calm. Some of the windblasts across this rock pile could blow our little ten-ton ice-buggy clear to Massachusetts."

  They bent to their bindings and put on hard hats with heated visors. Neither had poles. Psychokinetics, whose minds are able to exert motive power affecting their own bodies, rarely have need of them.

  Shannon peeled the wrapper from her magnesium flare, activated the ignitor, and held the smoky white light aloft. In an instant it cleared and blazed brightly. Over to the east, fireworks were exploding above Wildcat's slopes and a river of golden luminescence had begun to flow downhill. The new year had arrived and skiing torchbearers celebrated the unabated progress of time.

  Shannon said, "Happy New Millennium, Victor."

  He lifted his unwrapped cylinder. The tip lit with a loud concussion, activated by his own psychocreativity. "Happy postponement of doom, Shannon. For a little while, anyway."

  She said: Will you help me? Not merely to kill him you understand he must be taken down at the peak of his hopes when he thinks the black Absolute is within his grasp.

  When?

  It's years away ... but I'll let you know. Go your own way for now never act to threaten Daddy directly and you'll be safe from him. He's afraid of you at the same time that he's attracted. He'll wait. I have a plan of my own worked out. I'll explain it at the bottom of the slope after the schuss going back through the woods...

  All right.

  They maneuvered to the lip of the chasm. The descent was not vertical, it only seemed to be—a perfect expanse of powder, unimaginably deep, fresh, and clean.

  GO.

  Their minds pushed them off. They were on their way, flares held high, training twin plumes of nebulous white like a pair of comets on straight parallel paths into the dark.

  14

  STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN, EARTH

  10 DECEMBER 2003

  TRUMPETS PLAYED A fanfare and the orchestra began the national anthem. Queen Victoria Ingrid and her entourage entered the assembly hall of the Konserthuset and the audience, including Lucille Remillard and Gerard Tremblay up in the loges, rose to its feet. The ceremony had begun and the honors would be bestowed, too late to do any good.

  Lucille's dark-green velvet gown was heavy, and she adjusted its folds unobtrusively with her PK. The metafaculty also served to hoist the tops of the wretched long white gloves, which persisted in slithering unmodishly down toward her elbows. Her feet, crushed into high-heeled pumps, ached in spite of her distrait attempts at self-redaction and so did her full breasts, deprived of baby Severin's milking for this one day of vain celebration. Some of her discomfort must have been evident, for Gerry Tremblay took her left arm to steady her, projecting his usual solicitude.

  Oh Gerry never mind I'm all right.

  None of your bitching darling I can tell when I'm needed your faithful esquire at your service m'lady Prop-Ups & Resuscitations Our Specialty.

  Will you at least stay on the intimate mode or do you want every meta in the place to know the laureate's wife has sore feet and bursting boobs? There! Her Majesty's seated and down we go... aah.

  Pauvre de toi.

  Oh shut up ... Goodness what a lot of diamonds! And furs do you suppose that's a sable it must be good grief what a difference from the ceremony for Jamie and Tamara at Oslo last year so friendly and modest—

  —excepting the bomb scare!

  Oh for heaven's sake you know what I mean even the King was as friendly and downtoearth as anyone but this crowd LordLord ostentation to the eyeballs I've never seen anything like—mate-moi ça! Can those be real emeralds let me deepsee... goodGod they are I see the inclusions and they're like walnuts!

  There goes the brass section again darling afraid we'll have to rise again for the entrance of the heroes—

  "No, madame and monsieur," came a whispered voice. "That will not be necessary."

  Lucille turned in surprise. The seat on her right, which had been empty during the entrance of the Queen of Sweden, was now occupied by a distinguished-looking older man in white tie.

  "This time," he continued softly, "only the Queen rises to honor the laureates as they enter. On this night, you see, they are mental royalty. Her equals."

  "How charming," Lucille murmured. The music swelled as the laureates, paired with members of the Swedish institutions who had voted them the honor, entered the auditorium. To Lucille, the scene was unreal: the gilded hall with its statuary, rich drapery, sconces, and flags, the young Monarch in her sparkling white dress and tiara, standing at stage left giving anachronistic homage, and, above all—her husband. Yes, there was Denis, looking insignificant beside the Valkyrie splendor of a female professor of psychiatry of the Karolinska Institute, who would introduce and laud him. She scarcely noticed the other honorees of the evening; but behind them were seated rows of laureates from years past—including Jamie MacGregor and Tamara Sakhvadze, who had received the Peace Prize in 2002. Lucille would never have intruded her mind upon Denis at that moment; but she did not hesitate to call out to Tamara and Jamie on their intimate modes. Both looked up toward the loges where relatives of the laureates and other dignitaries were seated. Tamara smiled and projected understanding and comfort. Jamie projected an image of a winking eye and a species of mental cartoon, in which a rather tatty figure with a Nobel medallion hung about its neck sat on a snowy street comer proffering a beggar's cup; behind it was a sign: BROTHER, CAN YOU SPARE A GRANT?

  The laureates and the others bowed their heads respectfully to the Queen and took their seats as the music played on, and then there was applause, and the Nobel Foundation chairman approached the lectern to give his salutatory address.

  The man beside Lucille said, "It is an occasion for metapsychic operants to celebrate, is it not? There is your supremely talented husband, finally receiving the recognition he has long deserved, and his two great colleagues among the previously honored laureates, and the Prize in physics goes to Professor Xiong Ping-yung, for his formulation of the new Universal Field Theory incorporating life and mind into the mathematical fabric of the universe."

  "And he's probably asking, just like we are," Gerry Tremblay put in, "whether anyone but a handful of academics and this overdressed Swedish mob scene cares."

  The old gentleman chuckled quietly. "Things are that bad in your country?"

  "And in most others," Lucille said. "It's a grand gesture being made here tonight, but one would appreciate it more if the pickets outside the Concert House went away."

  "My country is a free one, as is yours, madame. But very many of us welcome you wholeheartedly." He bent minimally over her hand. "I am Dr. M. A. Paulson of the Karolinska. You are known to all, Madame l
a Doctoresse, and also the famous Dr. Tremblay."

  "Not so famous as some," Gerry said, with a light laugh.

  "It is well known that you are an eminent colleague of the Remillards, Doctor. Your own researches into coercivity are a foundation-stone upon which other researchers have erected many a scholarly edifice. Including tonight's Laureate in Medicine. Professor Remillard has been unstinting in his praise for your work, and his debt to you."

  "We're members of the same team," Tremblay said. "Everything I am, I owe to Denis." His eyes were on the platform. "I'm the one who feels honored that he was able to make use of my findings."

  Lucille said, "Gerry and Professor Glenn Dalembert have worked with my husband almost from the beginning, Dr. Paulson. And there've been many other colleagues at Dartmouth making their own invaluable contributions to the field of metapsychology." She smiled. "Even I."

  "But the synthesis," Paulson whispered. "That is always the critical matter, is it not? So many workers, all adding their share to the growing body of knowledge—and then the one brilliant mind fashions of the bits and pieces a coherent whole."

  "That's Denis, all right," said Gerry Tremblay. "And tonight he's finally being honored for it. It's a scandal that it's taken this long."

  "Some of us on the Committee think so, too, Dr. Tremblay," the Swedish scientist said. "But the Karolinska, especially, is a most conservative body. We do not honor persons for a single discovery so much as for a continuing career of excellence."

  "Oh, come on!" said Gerry archly. "It's all politics, and you know it. Denis's seminal work was Metapsychology, and that was published thirteen years ago. Since then he's just been elaborating on the theme. We all know why you waited so long, even though he's been nominated a dozen times—and we know why the Norwegians took ten years to cough up the Peace Prize for Jamie and Tamara. They're the real scandal. Everybody in the whole damn world knows they deserved to get the Nobel years ago, but the petty politicians hesitated to set a precedent by honoring superior mentalities. That's been Denis's problem, too—and even old Xiong's. He's been plugging away at his theory for damn near twenty years out there in Wuhan University. He was even nominated in 1988! But when the operants acknowledged their powers publicly, he did, too. Just a bit of telepathy and creativity, hardly enough to bother about when the rest of his brain—the conventional part—has Einstein beat six ways from Sunday. But that was enough to put your Royal Academy of Science in a snit, wasn't it? Old Professor Xiong wasn't playing fair—he was a superbrain!"

  Heads were turning as Tremblay's passionate whispering became more and more audible. The elderly Swede listened with his head bowed. A burst of applause signaled the end of the Nobel Chairman's address and Gerry sat back, lips tight. Lucille's gloved hand stole over the armrest and squeezed Gerry's hand.

  Simmer down Don Quixote...

  And the Committee only coughed up the Prizes out of guilt now that the metas are being persecuted now that the normals have turned on us...

  Gerry. You're off intimate again and there must be other metas in the audience. Please.

  "What you have said is sadly true, Dr. Tremblay," Paulson admitted. "But we have tried to make amends, as the Norwegian Nobel Committee did in the case of Professor MacGregor and Academician Sakhvadze. We are dismayed by the disgraceful enmity that operants have had to suffer. Much of it has been due to fear and misunderstanding. Can you believe that normal-minded persons of goodwill have come to appreciate your predicament more fully with the coming of public demonstrations of intolerance?"

  "We would like to believe it," Lucille said softly.

  Down on the stage, a member of the Royal Academy of Science was proclaiming the merits of Xiong Ping-yung in Swedish. When he concluded his remarks, he addressed a few sentences of recapitulation in Chinese, addressing the old mathematician directly. Then the laureate rose from his seat, crossed the stage to the Queen, and bobbed his white head. Unlike most members of the glittering assembly, Xiong was dressed only in a simple black suit with a high collar. With their farsenses, Lucille and Gerry Tremblay could perceive the exchange of remarks between the laureate and the young Queen.

  "I bow to you, Queen Victoria Ingrid, not as one who kowtows to royalty, but to honor the beautiful living symbol of a great nation that has honored me."

  The Queen shook his hand, a glint of humor in her eyes. "I congratulate you, dear Professor Xiong. Here is your citation, and your medallion. Later, when you sit beside me at dinner in the Stadshuset, you must explain your Theory to me. If you can help me to make head or tail of it, I will gladly bow again to you."

  The old man laughed delightedly, made a second obeisance, and returned to his seat amid applause.

  "In years gone by," Dr. Paulson whispered, "the poor old chap would have had to go down off the stage via a flight of stairs to greet the monarch—then go up those stairs backward in order to show the proper respect! Our late King Gustaf abolished the custom. We Swedes do progress, you see, but slowly. It is the same all over the world. Old ways make way for the new, but often only after precarious and tentative transitions."

  The winners of the Literature Prize and the Chemistry Prize were proclaimed, but Lucille watched and listened with a distracted mind. Paulson was right, of course. Right about the dangerous transition period. But could he also be right about the normals beginning to understand? The metapsychic backlash had only intensified since President Baumgartner took office. His abolition of the Brain Trust and sponsorship of the Benson Act prohibiting operants from seeking public office or serving on law-enforcement bodies was a savage piece of prejudice that the Supreme Court was debating even now. Of course the law was unconstitutional! It had to be...

  Chin up Luce darling illegitimis non carborundum.

  I'm sorry Gerry I know it's stupid of me to be brooding here.

  The Nobel Prizes are going to give operants increased status you know help us to face down Baumgartner and the witch-burning yahoos the Court will rule in our favor it's got to we're citizens and the Benson Act is de facto disenfranchisement.

  Of course it is. Why can't the normals get it through their heads that operancy is only relative? Its seeds are in every human mind! We can't go back to the Dark Ages operancy IS and it will continue to be. The trait has evolved and now it's becoming manifest in the population and you might as well try to outlaw brown eyes!

  That's becoming plainer and plainer to them but they still hold the power and are afraid of losing it ... And we're going to do something about that too.

  ? Gerry ? Is this another one of her great notions?

  She has a name. You'll have to use it eventually when she becomes my wife I know you disapprove of her ideas but she's right the only way to avoid being oppressed is to have clout. Power.

  ... You are serious about her then.

  Emilie agreed to a no-fault divorce last week. I didn't want to distract you or Denis with it. You were so excited about Stockholm. We're doing it as amicably as possible. Em will keep the house in Hanover and the kids and continue her part-time work at the Department. As for me ... I didn't want to bother you with that either but I'll be leaving Dartmouth. Leaving academia. Shannon and I will be moving down to Cambridge. When the Benson Act is struck down, I'll run for Congress.

  My God!

  We operants have a lot to offer to normal society. But we're imbeciles if we sit by like pacifistic fools and let them set up the scaffolds. Massachusetts! Home of that old American custom burning witches! It's going to be our rallying point—

  Another of Shannon O'Connor's ideas?

  She's operant too ... even if only a little bit.

  Sometimes I wonder about that!...Gerry please don't present this to Denis as a fait accompli leave your options open for just a little while longer discuss it with him with Glenn and Sally and Mitch and the others we NEED you—

  Not anymore you don't. What I had to give Denis took. And good luck to him.

  !!...

  "I have the ho
nor to present now our Nobel Laureate in Medicine, Professor Denis Remillard of Dartmouth College in the United States of America."

  The elderly Swedish doctor was nudging her gently, breaking her out of her distraction and pointing to the glittering stage. Denis was advancing toward the Queen, bowing in the graceful Japanese fashion, from the waist, as Ume Kimura had taught him, speaking to Her Majesty with smiling lips and grave, shadowed eyes. He received the leather box with the medal and the portfolio containing the citation, bowed again, and returned to his place. Lucille applauded wildly, realizing that she hadn't farsensed a thing her husband had said to the Queen.

  The ovation continued as the final honoree of the evening retired, and then a few brief words from the chairman closed the ceremony. The trumpets blared for the last time, the Queen withdrew, and the musicians played a sprightly Hugo Alfven piece as a recessional for the laureates and the others on stage. Cars would be waiting outside to carry them, their relatives, and other honored guests to the gala dinner at the City Hall.

  Lucille realized with a start that her cheeks were wet. "Gerry, wait for me while I go to the powder room. I'm a mess."

  She fled, leaving Tremblay standing in the aisle behind the loges with Dr. Paulson.

  "Will you be going to the dinner?" Tremblay inquired politely.

  "No, I have had quite enough excitement for tonight. I will bid you adieu, Doctor. But before I go, please accept a bit of advice from an old man."

  Gerry tried to look receptive.

  "You feel in your heart that Denis Remillard wronged you by not granting you sufficient credit for your work. Whether he did or not is immaterial. Do not let your envy and disappointment drive you to a reckless course of action that may bring disaster upon you and all of your operant associates."