"Hey, Roj?" Elijah Shelby was picking up my stuff and eyeing me askance. "You okay? You look like you seen a ghost. Bad news?"
But momentary hope burst over me and I thought: Ghost! Ghost! Stop her stop her you can stop her—
All around me the banalities of a small-town post office crowded with patrons, and the good old gaffer now radiating anxiety as he realized that something was really wrong, and I walked away still mind-shouting, pushed open the door, stood outside in the early morning sun yelling around the world into tomorrow's night.
Then I ran, through the parking lot and across South Street to my bookshop, and fumbled with the old-fashioned key, and tripped on the sill, nearly dropping the precious disk. To the back room. Power up the player. (No. I couldn't print it. I never could.) Slip the videogram into the slot and fall into my old swivel chair. No longer shouting to the Ghost but pleading to the kind-eyed naked-hearted Jesus whose picture had hung on Tante Lorraine's bedroom wall. Don't let her! Don't let her! But I knew she had.
Her image smiled at me. She wore a plain Japanese robe and sat on her heels in front of a painted paper screen set in some outdoor courtyard or atrium. A small maple tree with spidery maroon leaves was visible behind the screen and there was a tinkling of falling water. Ume spoke to me with formality after the initial smile and bow of her head.
"Roger, my dear friend ... I have just returned from the Congress in Oslo. You know by now that there is a serious division among the operant leadership, brought about by our increasing despair over the unending violence that afflicts the world. The dream we once shared of leading humanity to permanent peace now stands revealed as mere arrogant presumption. How did we operants dare to think that we would succeed, when all throughout history well-meaning persons have tried again and again to foster peace, only to fail?
"We tried to show humanity a fellowship of the mind, a new society where suspicion and fatal misunderstanding could be banished from political relationships, fostering a climate where peace might flower. But instead of this, we opened a chasm wider than before—a gulf between operant and nonoperant. There is no fellowship, only envy and fear. There is no peace, only ever-spreading war.
"You know how previous Congresses of operants would reaffirm, at the start of the proceedings, the ethic of love and nonaggression exemplified by the illustrious martyr, Urgyen Bhotia. This philosophy, together with its correlate—that operant minds have an obligation to love and serve selflessly those minds who stand a step beneath on evolution's ladder—was never seriously challenged during the twenty years of Metapsychic Congresses preceding this one.
"O my friend! Now the challenge has been made.
"It seemed so innocent, didn't it, when the symposium on political activism ended in an implacable deadlock! On the one side were Denis and Jamie and Vigdis, championing nonaggression, and on the other side, insisting that operants must now defend themselves and their countries with mental as well as physical force, were Tamara and Zhen-yu and—the shame!—Hiroshi. My own countryman! And Tamara, the mother of us all! My soul turned to ice as these three revered ones opened their minds to the assembly and showed the reasoning that had led them to abandon the precious heritage of Urgyen.
"Yes ... one may see the logic. The Soviet operants have suffered more terribly than any. Now that the dictator is dead and the Politburo begs them to return and unify their collapsing nation, how can they say no? They are offered great political power. Once before they were betrayed, and they vow it will not happen again. One may see the logic!
"But from it flow the consequents.
"China fears the Soviet Union. It is rich in food and technology and its great northern neighbor starves for both as the civil war drags on in spite of the capitulation of Iran and the coup in Pakistan. And the rest of Asia contemplates with horror a conflict between the giants. What can save us? The Zap-Star net is unfinished. Now its defenses may be turned into weaponry! The EE adepts of every nation will survey the great laser batteries with increasing trepidation, wondering which country will first dare attempt the conversion ... Japan fears that China may already possess this capability—and that it will be used as a pre-emptive strike against the Soviets...
"Like an avalanche in my Hokkaido mountains, it has begun with a tiny slippage downhill. Soon it will be an unstoppable monster. We operants will lend it momentum. Yes. It was already happening in Oslo as we raised mental walls against one another, feeling the former mood of trust and goodwill begin sliding into an abyss. All of us, seeing the logic; forgetting the love and the dream.
"I am saddened and shamed. In my pride I had cultivated tsuki-no-kokoro—the mind as calm as the moon. I tried to lead and teach. I never coerced. But I cannot create within myself that selfless power, that Center of vision that my people call the hara, that would give me courage to continue. I am a proud and foolish woman who long ago turned away from her own family, and again and again my mind shows me a small girl bringing humiliation upon her father. I must escape this girl and her shame.
"O my friend! The pleasure we shared was good. The comfort we gave one another must be your remembrance of me, and not this image of pain. Burn the disk, Roger. Nakanai de kudasai. Sayonara."
***
She knelt silently then. There was no mat beneath her, only polished flagstones. She closed her eyes and her body tensed and I knew she was summoning the psychocreativity from what she called her Center.
There was only a split second of flame before the video recording went to black.
She had told me to destroy the disk: I could not. She had told me, in Japanese, not to cry: I did. But I did obey her request to remember our sharing; and I remember it now and possess, for a little while, my own tsuki-no-kokoro.
27
PITTSBURG TOWNSHIP, NEW HAMPSHIRE, EARTH
31 JULY 2013
"YOU WANTA WAIT here on the deck, Mr. O'Connor, Vic should be back from his swim in a jiff. Coolin' off nicely out here now that the sun's down. Varmints be comin' down to the water. You might like to catch a scan of 'em. Visitors often do."
"Thank you, Mr. Laplace," Kieran said. "That might be interesting. What kinds of wildlife do you have in these parts?"
"Moose, bear, panther—Vic even reintroduced woodland caribou couple years ago, when he first closed off Indian Stream Valley to the public. These north New Hampshire woods'll soon be back the way my ancestors knew 'em. Damn good thing, too."
"You're descended from the voyageurs?" Kieran inquired politely.
"Them—and the Abnaki. Figure I got my long-sight from the Redskin side of the blanket and my coercion from the Canuck." The gray-haired caretaker nodded toward an impressive instrument mounted on one of the deck railings. "Now some heads—uh—some operants like to use the spotterscope for spyin' wildlife if their long-sight gets a mite bewildered by the woods and the lake and all. Feel free. That there's a light-amp with optional warm-body targeting adjustable to the 'proximate size of the varmint you wanta scan. Try around four to six hunnerd kilos for moose, seventy to one-twenty-five for whitetail deer or bear ... or a man."
Limping slightly, Kieran went to examine the scope. "Does Victor Remillard find much use for this?"
Laplace let out a pitying guffaw. "You gotta be kidding!" Then the mien of exaggerated civility was back in place and he said, "Well, you just make yourself t'home while I take care of a few things. Like I said, Vic'll be along soon."
He turned and started to shamble away, then turned to say, "Not that I wanta give you a hard time, since Vic did say he was expecting you. But you had your orders from Mr. Fortier. Those heads of yours in the limo—they were told to go all the way back to the main Pittsburg road and wait. They ain't done that. I think you better flash 'em your telepathic high-sign."
Kieran said, "I'll do that, Mr. Laplace. A misunderstanding."
This time the operant yokel's deadpan expression was clearly contradicted by the contempt of his mental undertone. "And while you're at it, give a shout to th
em four fellers pussyfootin' this way through the woods along the south shore. Tell 'em to get their asses and their arsenal back the way they come from before they fall into a bog ... or somethin'."
Imbeciles! Adam Amie damnyou didn't I tell you I'd handle this on my own get out and call off those piss-aitist commandos!
Kier we only wanted to maximize our options in case—
GET OUT! "Well, I'm sorry about that, Mr. Laplace. An overzealous subordinate took it upon himself to countermand my explicit instructions."
"A damn shame. But no harm done, I reckon. I try to see to that, Mr. O'Connor. We're just a little two-bit lash-up compared to your organization—but we get along."
"I appreciate that. You might say that's why I'm here this evening. I've transmitted to my people direct orders for withdrawal. I intend to fulfill Mr. Remillard's conditions to the letter. You will let him know that?"
Laplace smirked and spat over the rail into the lake. From somewhere out on the water came an eerie warbling cry like demented laughter.
"An owl?" Kieran asked.
"Nope. Loon. Alias the great northern diver, Gavia immer. Kinda relic of the late Neogene avifauna. Been yakkin' it up in these parts purt' near five, six million years. Long time to hold on to a sense of humor, but I reckon it helps a critter survive. Be seein' you, Mr. O'Connor. You be sure to tell Vic I was on the job."
"I'll do that," Kieran said dryly.
The gangling old fellow clumped off into the lodge's interior and Kieran let out a long sigh of pain. He closed his eyes, summoning the soothing black momentarily, and let it cradle him. Serene, he banished suspicion and anxiety and the gnawing in his groin; and when he opened his eyes he saw four bulky shapes wading out from a small heavily wooded cove a hundred meters or so down the shore to the right.
He flicked on the spotterscope and swung the barrel. A cow moose and her nearly full-grown triplets were feeding on water plants. He watched them for nearly ten minutes. The sky had gone to deep purple and the loons were cackling excitedly over toward the northern reaches of the lake, so Kieran aimed the light-amplifying device in that direction after programming the infrared mode to detect bodies in excess of ninety kilograms mass. The driving mechanism took over and Kieran kept his eye to the scope as it scanned the opposite shore, about twelve hundred meters away.
The target-grid flashed on. Gotcha! And Kieran zoomed in and found himself looking at another moose. But this was one of the most uncanny beasts he had ever seen, an enormous male standing half concealed among the dense second growth of balsam fir. His color was not the usual dark brown but burnished gray, like pewter; and the great rack of antlers, still dangling shreds of velvet, was whiter than bleached bone at the pronged edges and translucent with startling blood-veins in the broad, palmate centers and toward the base. The moose rubbed his fantastic skull adornment vigorously against saplings to scratch what must have been a colossal itch. Then he glared at Kieran from eyes like smoldering coals.
"I've named him Glaçon. Rather frivolous for such a massive brute, but it fit when he was a calf. He's a special pet. Genetically engineered albino. I always wondered what one would look like."
Kieran continued his calm surveillance through the eyepiece. His farsight superimposed the image of Victor Remillard's face in the black forest portion of the visual field. "Glaçon ... that means ice cube, doesn't it?"
"Or a cold-hearted devil of a person," said Victor Remillard.
Kieran lifted his head from the scope. "He's beautiful. In this forest preserve of yours, he might even live to a ripe old age." He didn't ask Victor if he would like to use the instrument. In farsight, the younger man was clearly his master. But that was not the metafaculty that mattered...
They faced off, the burly forty-three-year-old at his physical and mental prime and the dying old man. Kieran O'Connor's once olive skin was now sallow and deeply furrowed beside the thin-lipped Celtic mouth. The eyes were sunken, having the same insatiable ardor as Shannon's eyes; the mind behind them, however, had none of her fire but instead a beckoning well of unending night.
Come to me, said Kieran.
To me! Victor commanded.
Neither man moved.
The whooping of the loons reflected the laughter that flooded the aether. They disengaged and stood back.
Kieran shrugged. "We had to try. But it isn't really a stand-off, you know ... You've won."
Victor was wary. "Explain."
"I must sit down," Kieran said.
They moved to a couple of bogus Barcelona chairs and Kieran lowered himself with exquisite caution. "You know my physical condition. I will continue to survive on will power, however, until it suits me to end what I began. You are also probably aware that both the FBI and the Justice Department are rooting feverishly through my data banks, using methods both licit and illicit, determined to find or fabricate evidence that I am guilty of treason, conspiracy, racketeering, grand theft, and multiple counts of murder."
Victor nodded.
"Do you know that your older brother Denis is responsible for this embarrassment of legal activism?"
"No..."
Kieran smiled sourly. "He and his partisans are also behind the recent spate of bills introduced into Congress that will empower operant investigators to meddle in the affairs of persons like you and me. The amendment permitting mental cross-examination was only the beginning, you know."
"I know. All these years, they couldn't touch us. Denis knew what I was doing, but there was never any way he could prove it. He couldn't even prove I was operant—much less that I used the powers to take what I wanted."
Kieran said, "A mechanical aura-detection device—ostensibly for use in identifying and classifying the faculties of operant newborns—is undergoing tests at the University of Edinburgh. Professor Jamie MacGregor will be demonstrating it at this year's Metapsychic Congress."
Victor said nothing. But his mind transmitted both a query and an image of an intricate control console emplaced in a blind tower in the countryside west of Chicago.
"You want an explanation of that." Kieran smiled and nodded almost absently. The pain was far away for the moment. "I should have thought it would be obvious. It's the key to ultimate victory. Once the victory would have been mine. Now I'm offering it to you."
Kieran spoke on, slowly and simply, clothing the ludicrous notion of ruling the world through the Zap-Star's threat with a glowing plausibility, but at the same time making certain that Victor recognized the scheme as the fever-dream of an aging megalomaniac. The crude brain of the self-centered entrepreneur would be immediately aware of the gaping flaws in logic. He would visualize other ways of using Zap-Star, feasible ways. He would humor the madman, intuitively accepting Kieran's genuine need of him, but never grasping the hidden motive. As to the goal of the Absolute ... its apprehension was as far beyond Victor Remillard as were the stars that had begun to twinkle in the summer sky of New Hampshire.
"It can all be yours. I've completed the instruments of transfer—of merger, actually, granting you control of everything I own. Once I'm gone, the feds have nothing. My corporations exist as independent legal entities and they're as legitimate before the bar of justice as any American business. All you need do is help me finish off our mutual enemies."
"Denis? His Coterie at Dartmouth?"
"All of them," Kieran said. "The metapsychic leadership of the world. The operant meddlers. They'll be right here in New Hampshire in mid-September having their annual confab. Even the breakaways from Russia and the Orient have agreed to send delegates for one last meeting. I can't touch them ... but you could. I could show you how. Help you. My agents will see that the local chapters of the Sons of Earth are armed and equipped. You and your people—completely unknown to the government agents—provide the leadership and then disappear, leaving the mob to take the blame."
Victor said, "And then?"
"I die. And you take everything I have. I've worked out the details in a way that should
satisfy you. Three of my closest associates—the men who were with me from the beginning—are prepared to brief you on the entire operation, beginning to end, mind-screens down. You have as many of your people sit in as you like."
"When can these associates of yours be here?"
"They're in the limousine that brought me," Kieran said, "the one that your efficient long-sighted caretaker made certain I sent back to the Pittsburg Junction before you put in your appearance."
Victor laughed. "Pete Laplace is the best farsensor I've got. Loyal as a Labrador retriever. With him and his old twelve-gauge hanging around, I'm as safe out here as a baby in a cradle. It's just a damn shame that his IQ's only around eighty-six."
"He seemed sharp enough to me ... Well, Victor—what's your answer? Will you put those spoilers away for me and let me die happy?"
"Kieran, I'm only sorry I didn't think of the idea first! Let me get on the phone and get a few of my boys up from Berlin. It won't take more than an hour. Your bunch can follow them back in here. Meanwhile, you might like to join me in a little snack."
Kieran closed his eyes. Sequestered behind impregnable walls, safe in the secret depths, he gave thanks to the Black Mother. In the end is the beginning. In death the source of life. Let Thy belly the void take us in. Dam dham nam tam tham dam dham nam pam pham...
"Pete?" Victor was shouting. "Pete, you rapscallion—where are you hiding? We've got company coming and I need—oh, for God's sake! Kieran, you want to come in here and get a load of this? He's out like a light on the sun-porch couch, with the Browning tucked under his cheek and an empty bottle of Wild Turkey clutched to his chest! I guess I'll have to do my own cooking."
28
FROM THE MEMOIRS OF ROGATIEN REMILLARD
IN AUGUST 2013 I encountered the Family Ghost again—at the White Mountain Resort.
INTERVENTION Page 64
