INTERVENTION

by May, Julian; Dikty, Ted

  Uncle Rogi ... We're almost ready to leave for the banquet I presume and pray you've found nothing.

  In the boiler-room was a poker game that I was strongly tempted to sit in on and in one of the empty salons a delegate from Sri Lanka and one from Greece were interrupted in the midst of researches into comparative metanooky. There is no sign of Mrs. Tremblay and no sign of Vic dieumercibeau'.

  None of us has sensed their presence either. Lucille's probably right when she says they cleared out long ago if they were ever even here I've notified the President he gave me a goodwill message to read at the banquet one could almost believe he was sincere ...

  Buck up mon fils. Go have your feast my only regret is not getting to see the boys tricked out in black tie.

  [Image: Interior X-wing skybus. Dim flashes of lightning through rain-streaked small windows. Multiethnic delegates in formal dress settling into seats. Whispers and apprehensive giggling. Lucille smiling white-faced TWO GAWKY PENGUINS STRAPPED IN ON EITHER SIDE OF A SMALL CHUNKY ONE.] There. I'm sorry they don't look more cheery.

  Mille merde Denis what a glum and qualmish crew all you need is a band playing "Nearer My God to Thee" Go! Go! It will be all right! Follow your damned gleam my son Follow the Great Carbuncle to the uttermost height!

  Au revoir Uncle Rogi.

  Standing there at the head of the stairs in the fast-emptying lobby, I heard the first of the X-wings take off for the mountain summit. It was full dark outside and the rain was only moderate, with faint growlings of thunder. On top of Mount Washington the weather was bound to be worse; but the transports were so reliable and sturdy that they could have made the trip safely in a hurricane. The storm would provide a piquant contrast to the luxurious surroundings and the good food. After the banquet they could all gather around the four fireplaces in the chalet's main lounge and promise to mend their battered ideals. With a little bit of luck even Tamara Sakhvadze far away in Moscow would soul-travel to the festivities and take heart...

  Well, it was time for me to renew my futile quest. I checked my watch and noted that it was nearly seven. The business offices of the hotel would be nearly empty now, as would the delegates' rooms. The only dense collections of people would be in the hotel kitchens, where the cleaners were still at work, and in the two bars where a few media types and other nondelegate hangers-on had gravitated. The hotel's Security Chief, Art Gregoire, came in the main entrance shaking raindrops from his jacket and spotted me.

  "Hey, Art. What d'ya say?"

  "Is that you, Roj? Thought you'd be up at the big feed."

  "Got business to take care of. Things looking okay?"

  Gregoire shrugged. "Once we get the folks up the hill, we figure it's pret' near all over. Only a handful of half-drowned pickets left. Me and my gang'll keep an eye on the X-wing pad and cruise the hotel to make sure no loony-tune tries to torch 'er. The county mounties and the rent-a-cops went into town to grab a bite and dry their socks. We need 'em, we know how to get 'em."

  "Any action over on the other side of the mountain—by the Carriage Road?"

  "State fuzz says there ain't diddly. Nope, the Sons've given you heads a free pass tonight. You lucked out with the rain."

  He went off to scrounge supper in the kitchen and I headed toward the executive offices to get on with my search. As if Shannon Tremblay would be hiding among the file cabinets...

  I stood outside the manager's office with my eyes closed and let my scanning ultrasense rove into the nearest rooms. There was no trace of any mental emanation on the operant "band" and no clearly farsensed vision of normal people lurking about, which I would have perceived had any operant been deliberately suppressing his aura.

  But there was something.

  I unlocked the computer center with my passkey and turned the lights on in the windowless rooms, and at that moment I heard a noise—a faint scraping sound—and realized that it came from the storeroom on the far side of computer operations.

  I tried to farscan through the storeroom door. I couldn't.

  Rooted to the spot, I probed the mysterious obstacle. Behind the wood and plaster lay psychic energy of an appalling absorptive kind. It was not a barrier—the little room was filled with it, and it was opaque and magnetic and colder than death.

  I think I knew at once that he was inside. I tried to give telepathic warning to Denis—to anybody. But as I uttered the mind-shout I knew it had gone no farther than the boundary of my skull. I walked without volition down the neat rows of desks with their VDTs and data cabinets and posture chairs and stood before the closet, waiting for the door to open. In there was insanity and a lust that had no relation to any natural human appetite. In there, something had hungered and fed and still hungered. Even though it wore the shape of a man it had metamorphosed into something altogether different—and done it by its own will.

  A barely heard click. The knob turned and a long shadowed streak grew as the door swung inward. Not a single beam of light from the computer room penetrated that palpable blackness—but nevertheless, I saw Victor holding her. Both of their bodies were lit with a flickering blue-violet halo. Only his lips were bright, drinking the final dying scarlet radiance from the four-petaled energy-flower that seemed to be imprinted at the base of her spine.

  Then it was finished.

  The devouring darkness vanished. Room light shone on Victor, who regarded me without surprise and beckoned me to come closer and admire what he'd done. It was as if he knew I would recognize the pattern as the evil opposite of Ume's fulfillment of me. He was fully clothed in a gray suit, but every stitch had been burned from the corpse of the woman who lay at his feet. The body was charred and crackling, and up the spine and on the head were seven stigmata of white ash, marking where he had fed from each psychic energy-font in turn—beginning with the most rarefied and continuing to the root. I had no doubt that in place of Ume's joy there had been excruciating pain.

  "There'll be more," he told me calmly. "Only I won't have to exert myself in the burning. It's interesting that you understand. I want—I want to know more about what it is. I think you may be able to tell me. Am I right?"

  "Yes." No no no no...

  Victor laughed. "Come along with me and watch."

  ***

  In my nightmare, I followed him docilely out of the hotel. We went without being challenged to one of the hotel parking lots at the north end of the grounds, where a highway department van stood in the shadows. The rain had nearly stopped but there was still a good deal of lightning flashing in the east, in the direction of the mountain.

  I was dimly aware of another man sitting behind the wheel of the van. It was old Pete Laplace, who had worked at the cog during my years at the hotel. I got into the back of the van and we drove off.

  Vic said, "The boys ready to take off on sked?"

  "Ready as they'll ever be," said a dour Yankee voice. "Poor stupid bastards." He cackled, then swore as the van hit a pothole and lurched. We turned to the right and I knew we were on the back road leading to the cog base station.

  "We're going to take my Uncle Rogi along with O'Connor," Vic said. "You three old gaffers ought to enjoy the fireworks together. You get steam up okay?"

  "I know what I'm doin'," the oldster snapped. "Just hope t'hell you do, Vic. Still say you shoulda gone in the airyplane."

  "Not on your life, Pete. That mob of heads claim to be pacifists, but you don't catch me betting my ass on it ... Slow down, dammit. We're almost to the Upper Falls turnoff."

  My personality seemed to have fragmented. One portion was howling in panic-stricken horror, while another quite calmly submitted to Victor's continuing coercive hold, acknowledging him as my master whom I would serve without question. And then there was a third psychic chunk. This was the smallest and shakiest of all, stomped to a frazzle and nearly buried in the mental cataclysm that had overwhelmed me. This part of my mind told me to hang in there and wait for my chance. It was the damn fool part of my personality, so of course it w
on out. I've often wondered whether other heroes were made that way, too.

  The van made a sharp turn and screeched to a halt. Vic and the poisonous old party climbed out. When they returned they were supporting a tottering form. Far be it from the richest man in the world to ride in the back of a muddy van, so they strapped him securely into Vic's seat, and my nephew came back to sit silently with me while we traveled the last few kilometers to the cog railway base station.

  The place was dark as the inside of your hat, without a sign of life. But one of the antique engines had its firebox aglow and the steam up, and its smokestack threw sparks on both sides of the track that sizzled as they hit the puddles. Old Pete clambered into the engine cab, and Vic and O'Connor and I got aboard the unlit coach that traveled ahead. No blast on the whistle marked the train's departure. It simply hissed like a fumarole, clanked, and set off chugging and rattling toward the cloud deck that hid the summit.

  Victor and O'Connor ignored me completely as they conversed on the intimate telepathic mode. I discovered only one of the infamous secrets that the dying old villain passed on to the hungry young one. God only knows what other bizarre thoughts they shared. They were both madmen by any civilized standard, and yet sane enough to recognize and still embrace the evil that their minds created. They were not mistaken, not misguided or deluded; they were only terribly and mysteriously bent and I have long since given up trying to understand them. The little train climbed valiantly into the sky, taking one to death and the other to oblivion. I could only huddle in my seat, half frozen now that we approached the tree line, praying that one of the unsuspecting operants in the chalet above us would turn his mind downward, penetrate the dense granite bulk that blocked line-of-sight view of this part of the track from the summit, and sound the alarm.

  ***

  The coach tilted more and more steeply and the little engine undertook its most severe challenge—a trestled section called Jacob's Ladder with a grade of more than thirty-seven percent. My night-sight, dimmed by Victor's coercion, saw that O'Connor was clinging like a limpet to the seat in front of him, a grimace of what I took to be excitement distorting his wasted features. We had been passing through dense cloud ever since beginning our ascent of the ladder; but now we broke free as we approached the Westside Trail crossing and there were sudden flashes of lightning from the towering cumulus massed to the east. In another moment it would be possible for us to see the Summit Chalet silhouetted against the skyline ... and the people in the chalet would have a greatly enhanced chance of farsensing us.

  But Victor's elderly henchman knew his stuff. The deafening clatter of the cogs gripping the steel rack between the tracks diminished to a portentous clickety-clack, then stopped as the engine ground to a halt. The smoke cloud, blasted by high winds, raced uphill ahead of us. Surely someone would see it—

  "It doesn't matter now," Vic said. The locomotive clunked and wheezed and in a moment the rear door of the coach opened and Pete thrust himself in, grumbling about the chill.

  "This is it, Vic. Get 'em up here damn quick before we're spotted."

  "Higher!" Kieran O'Connor croaked. "I want to see the chalet go!"

  "Shut up," Victor said. "Look there—to the north."

  O'Connor keened: "Aaah!"

  "Now you can get 'er rolling again, Pete!" Victor's voice was triumphant. "Our own X's are on their way in!"

  The old man dived for the rear door, which was still open. And at that moment Victor's hold on me eased as he broadcast some powerful farspoken command to the approaching aircraft. I flung myself from my seat, rolled downhill toward the door, and was outside feet-first and tumbling down among the frost-encrusted granite boulders before Vic could stop me. Somewhere in my trajectory I had smashed into that aged rascal, Laplace. I heard his wail echo thinly among the crags, then cut off abruptly.

  God—now what? Uphill! Keep as much rock as I could between me and that young devil, Vic, and yell my brains out:

  DENIS!DENISTHEY'RECOMINGFORTHECHALETIN AIRCRAFT! DENIS DENIS FOR GOD'S SAKE VIC & O'CONNOR HAVE ARMED AIR CRAFT ATTACKING CHALET—

  I hear you Uncle Rogi.

  Coughing and gasping with the cold, I toiled upward over the rock-field. Behind me, I heard the engine give a mighty chug, then start uphill once again. Vic had probably taken the controls himself. There were two X-wings and neither of them had navigation lights. Up above the cloud deck, there was enough fitful moonlight shining between the thunderheads to show the planes approaching fast around the shoulder of Mount Clay; but they weren't gun-ships, they were ordinary domestic transports, half the size of the ones used to ferry the Congress delegates up the mountain.

  DENIS THEY'RE GOING TO LAND! STOP THEM! ZAP THEM SOMEHOW USE CREATIVE METACONCERT!

  I heard for the first time other minds—hundreds of them—but the lightning-fast moral debate was incomprehensible. The pair of X-wings hovered nearly over my head, their roaring drowning out the howl of the wind. Only my continued scrambling kept me from freezing.

  DO SOMETHING! I pleaded.

  Another mind-voice, one of surpassing power with a signature that was completely unfamiliar, said:

  Together! Hit them together! Let me show you how ...

  A white fireball soared against the sky, arching over the crest from the direction of the chalet. It struck the central boss of the X-wing rotor housing on the lead aircraft and seemed to be absorbed soundlessly. But the sudden drop in the noise level was the aircraft's engine cutting out.

  That's the way! Join with me again. Together...

  NO! another voice pleaded, and I knew it was Denis.

  A second ball of psychocreative energy flew up like a meteor and zapped the other X-wing. Both ships were in uncontrolled descent, windmilling with the deactivation of their engines. They pranged in not more than five hundred meters away from me, down the northwestern flank of the mountain. There were no explosions and no flames, and although my ultrasenses were impeded by trauma and the intervening crags, I knew that the occupants of the aircraft had survived and were pulling themselves together to begin a ground assault.

  I cried: DENIS THEY CRASHLANDED YOU DIDN'T KILL THEM—

  He said: I never tried. Most of us didn't.

  I was scrambling uphill as fast as I could. Fortunately, at that point there was a footpath along the right-hand side of the cog track. As I came out of a hollow I saw the train again, chugging slowly along the skyline and trailing its spark-shot plume of smoke.

  VICTOR IS DIRECTING ATTACK FROM COG! HIT THE TRAIN!

  I heard laughter in the aether: Yes. Hit the train. Together with me now!

  Another bolide arose. This time I saw it materialize just above the chalet roof and move purposefully in a flat trajectory toward the little train. But it faltered in flight and began to wobble, and instead of hitting the engine it bounced along the roof of the coach and then dove down onto the track ahead. There was a sharp flash. The coach bucked and slewed and fell off to the side. The sound waves reached me moments later—a detonation followed by a prolonged grinding crash as the coach left the track and toppled onto the icy boulders. The engine had slammed on its brakes. It screamed to a stop before reaching the damaged section of track and stood silhouetted against moonlit thunderheads on the skyline above me. Its firebox glowed hellishly and the rising gale blasted smoke over its trailing tender. A figure jumped from the engine cab.

  UncleRogiD U CKH

  I did—just in time. A bullet fweenged off a rock a few centimeters above my head. I had completely forgotten the crashed X-wings and their complement of armed thugs. The warning had come from little Severin, who now told me:

  They're creeping upon you they have infrared GET OFF TRAIL!! I'll help create decoybodyglow COME UPMOUNTAIN HURRY!! SLEETSTORM COMING...

  I said: Putain de bordel de merde!

  Sewy said: You can say that again.

  Another bullet struck, far off the mark to my left. Bruised and shivering, I resumed my climb uphill.


  31

  MOUNT WASHINGTON, NEW HAMPSHIRE,

  EARTH

  21 SEPTEMBER 2013

  VICTOR REMILLARD GRASPED the old man by the coat lapels. The head lolled and there was a bleeding gash across the forehead. But Kieran O'Connor was alive.

  "What the hell did you think you were doing?" Victor shouted. "I should—I should—"

  Kieran's eyes opened and he smiled. "You should kill me. But it's totally unnecessary. Let me warn you, however ... one touch of probe or coercion, and I'll never answer your questions. And you do want the answers, don't you?"

  They saw one another in the shadowless eeriness of mental vision and ignored the strengthening wind that whistled through the broken coach. Victor was aware for the first time of a deathly stench emanating from the body of the dying man. Through the open shirt, he could see that the telltales of the painkilling mechanism had gone dark. No agony he could inflict on Kieran O'Connor could surpass what Kieran had already freely embraced.

  "You took charge of those operants when Denis wouldn't." Victor was accusative. "You knit them together in some kind of mental unit and squeezed out those globs of energy that downed the aircraft and derailed the train."

  "The procedure is called metaconcert," Kieran told him. "An idea quite foreign to your mentality. I wasn't at all sure that I could work it. With my own people, the results have generally been unsatisfactory. But these fully operant minds ... marvelous!"

  "You fucking old bastard! You shot down my men—tried to kill them!"

  "Nonsense. The craft are engineered to soft-land in case of power failure. Only the incompetence of your pilots and the rough terrain caused the damage, and most of your people were uninjured."

  "Then why?"

  Kieran indicated the Summit Chalet, blazing like a jewel box on the mountain above them. "They needed teaching, these silly pacifists. A revelation of their own power. The Russian operants have already learned the lesson and so have a few other groups. But these idealist leaders resisted the inevitable. They were too much influenced by your brother and MacGregor. An aggressive metaconcert was unthinkable for such minds—until they were given suitable incentive."