Victoria took a deep breath and tried to steady herself. "Mom --"
Her mother waved dismissal and surveyed her disheveled room with a glower. "You've never appreciated the need for caution. I don't know why I thought coming here would make a difference."
"Mom --"
"Be quiet, Victoria. If this is the price of your new-found salary, you'd be wise to renounce it. Look at you! Like something left over from a mortuary, and still not dressed at high noon. Are your employers going to compensate you for the decline in your grades? And what about your health?"
"Mom --!"
"Will you please leave off with your foolishness and listen to your mother for once? What good would any amount of money do you if you burned out your brain? Or have you discovered that Armand prefers his women with lobotomies?"
Victoria snarled and loosed her forces. Elizabeth Peterson's face went white as she flew backwards and crashed into the wall, her limbs spread-eagled and immovable.
"Victoria!"
Victoria seized her panties from the day before with another telekinetic thread, wadded them up and rammed the wad deep into her mother's mouth, ending her part of the conversation. She gagged and tried to force it out, but Victoria held it in with an invisible piston.
"Oh, it's my turn to speak now?" Victoria said. "Thank you, Mother. How considerate of you. Exactly the sort of graciousness an aspiring Morelon should possess." Rage rose molten and swift within her. The conditioned-in control mechanisms she'd developed over the endless years of her childhood rose in response. In an unprecendented surge of secondary fury, she kicked them aside and let her volcano fountain unchecked.
"Armand's not available anymore, Mom," she said. "You didn't know that? My, my. How could a sharpie like you not have noticed his fiancee and her new engagement ring? Or all the goings-on at Morelon House two weeks ago? What did you think they were celebrating over there, Sacrifice Day?"
Elizabeth Peterson whimpered and grunted, but no intelligible word made it through the wad of cloth in her mouth. Victoria kept her limbs pinned tightly in place.
She'd never had that much power before, had never possessed such fine and facile control over multiple threads of force. Keeping her mother bound and gagged was costing her almost no effort. She felt sure she could handle a dozen more such prisoners without straining her capacities. In the ecstasy of her rage and the satisfaction from her power, the memory of her earlier torments seemed unimportant.
If this is spinoff from Ethan's jelly, maybe it's worth the price.
"But I haven't given you the latest news yet, Mom. This new job of mine is really neat. Lots of potential for promotion. Why, I've even been told that I might be a goddess some day. Some day really, really soon. How would you like to have a goddess for a daughter? Someone who could do as she pleased with the whole world and never answer to anyone for it?"
Elizabeth Peterson's eyes went very wide.
"What, you don't understand that? Well, maybe it isn't necessary. Come to think of it, maybe you're not necessary. Let me ponder that just a moment more. We might be able to settle all our old arguments right here and now. Wouldn't that be wonderful?"
She scanned the room for an appropriate instrument with which to exact retribution. It soon occurred to her that the most appropriate one was already deployed.
Won't even make a mess, that way.
She bore down a trifle harder on the tendril that held her mother's gag in place. The wad of cloth worked into the back of Elizabeth Peterson's oral cavity and slithered into her trachea. Her eyes bulged and her chest heaved. Her face turned first bright red, and then a cyanotic blue as she convulsed frantically but uselessly against the intrusion.
Two minutes later it was over.
When she was satisfied, Victoria let her mother's lifeless body collapse to the floor. The corpse fell onto its face, arms still spread as if crucified.
A gasp came from the open door of the room. Victoria whirled. Ethan Mandeville stood there, transfixed by horror.
"Hello, Ethan. To what do I owe the pleasure?"
His eyes darted from Elizabeth Peterson's corpse to Victoria's face.
"What -- what --"
She snorted, yanked him fully into the room with a telekinetic tendril, and slammed the door behind him.
"Nothing you need concern yourself about. Were you worried because I didn't show at ten? No need, as you can see. Still, I'm glad you stopped by." She shed her robe, stepped to her dresser and pulled open her underclothes drawer. "I was headed to the Genet Center anyway, and I'll be glad of your company. You see," she said, waving casually at her mother's still form, "this was really your doing."
***
Armand sat at his desk and struggled to think.
He stared unseeing through his window. The Gallatin campus, a landscape of serene, contemplative repose, stretched beyond. It might as well not have been there. He could think of nothing but the exchange on which he'd eavesdropped an hour before.
The psi researchers' heated exchange had been disturbing enough, but he'd come away with far more. Their minds had been filled with jarring images. Images of endless wasted fields where nothing would grow. Images of children sick and spindly as no children of Hope had ever been. Images of men fighting and killing for one more mouthful of anything that would keep life in their bodies. Images of men dying from starvation and violence, in numbers beyond the imagination of anyone on Hope.
There were more. Images of Victoria, in a finery no one on Hope had ever sported, sealed into a subterranean prison. Images of themselves stationed before a bank of video monitors, scrutinizing Vicki's body language and her choice of pastimes with which to pass the days of her captivity. Images of them watching some other figure, just as richly dressed, just as securely immured, but gaunt and rigid, obviously locked in unbearable suffering, alone in a stone-walled chamber, on a luxurious bed.
Gods of Hope.
They're managing the whole planet through psi. They need a focus, a central figure to channel and coordinate the effort. Without one, the planet will become hostile to Earth-derived life. But it's nothing they can admit to their chosen victim beforehand. Because...?
Because it consumes his life. And he has to renounce all the rest of life to do it.
He needed no further explanation for the absurd salaries they were paying him and Victoria.
I could save Vicki. I could tell her what's up. But then what? What would happen to Hope?
Chuck Feigner was in his accustomed place, hard at his accustomed pursuit: on his bed, flat on his back, reading a weighty philosophy book. Tonight it was a tome on ethics. The big sophomore's constancy was a thing to marvel at. He dated, certainly, and he had the usual share of extra-curricular involvements, but on any evening of any week, he would most likely be found just as he was that night: supine, with four or five pounds of serious reading denting his chest. His ready smile and casual manner gave no clue to the intensity or focus of the mind beneath.
He seemed unaware of the turmoil that bubbled beneath Armand's skin.
"Chuck?"
"Hm?"
"What have you read about...responsibility?"
Feigner's eyes turned toward him. Something complex and unfathomable passed behind them. He laid his book aside and sat up. His face was solemn.
"Why do you ask?"
Abruptly, Armand found that it was he who occupied the hot seat.
"Well, you know, on Old Earth they had notions about crimes of omission. When someone had the power to prevent a catastrophe, but wouldn't do it, or didn't think of it, he usually got pilloried for it later."
Feigner nodded. "Doesn't square with our ideas, does it?"
"Uh, no."
"It's a tough nut. The Judiciary had a case along those lines in the late third century A.H. The patriarch of the Kramniks knew about a massive fertilization error the Prossers were committing, but the two clans weren't getting along, so he kept his mouth shut. The Prossers lost their whole crop f
or two seasons running. Closest Hope ever came to a regional famine. The ruling was unanimously in Kramnik's favor, but you could tell no one was happy about it."
"No onus on the Kramniks?" Armand said.
"None."
"How does that...strike you?"
Feigner's mouth thinned to a single pained line. He laced his fingers together and stared at them for a long moment.
"I can't see it coming out any other way. No one can force another man to accept a responsibility. It runs counter to everything we believe. But if I'd been a Judiciar, I'd have been sick about it, too. Still, the ruling changed nothing. Glenn Kramnik was a villain, and everyone knew it. No one would buy from him, sell to him, or speak to him. It was less than two months before he hauled stakes. No one this side of the land bridge ever saw him again."
"Oh." Armand turned to look out the window again. From the corner of his eye he saw his roommate's smooth visage crinkle with a puzzled frown.
"Just something you were noodling over, Armand?"
"Uh, yeah."
Armand fished a note slip from the little tray on his desk, plucked a pen from his organizer, and began writing.
***
An unusually quiet knock sounded against Teresza's door. She looked up from folding her lingerie and said "Come in."
Armand entered and closed the door carefully behind him. From the instant her gaze touched his face, she knew that something was wrong. His forehead was creased with a web of worry lines she'd never seen before. His shoulders were set at an unnatural angle, as if some invisible weight lay upon his back. Even his gentle smile appeared false.
He took her in his arms and kissed her lightly, and she felt the tremor that ran through his body.
"About ready to go?" he said.
She nodded. "Five minutes more, okay?"
He said "Okay," fished a multiply folded slip of paper out of his breast pocket, and handed it to her before sitting down at her desk. She frowned at him, started to ask what was going on, and clamped her mouth firmly shut when he put a finger to his lips. The finger was visibly shaking.
She fumbled the paper open and read.
Don't say anything. I don't know who might be listening. I've just discovered that I'm in danger. I'm not sure how severe. I can't stay here, and I can't go back to Morelon House, maybe not ever again. If you want to come with me, you can take only one small bag. You'll have to leave everything else behind. I'm not sure you'll ever get to see your father again. I'm not kidding. It's very serious. I can't explain any further until we're far away. I want you with me more than anything in the world, but if you decide not to come, I'll understand, and I'll try to come back to you if I can. Nod if you want to go with me, shake your head if you don't.
Teresza's brain turned instantly to ice. Her eyes darted to Armand's face. He nodded once, very slowly.
There was something sinister about the psi program after all.
She held herself perfectly still as the life she had envisioned unreeled in the theater of her mind and faded to black.
Her home with her father in Henryville. Never again.
The great sweep of the Morelon fields where Armand had meant to work, caring for the land and feeding his fellows as sixty generations of his ancestors had done. Another hand would tend them.
Her future working there alongside him, helping him bring the humble sustenance of corn to the tables of Hope. Not to be.
Alain, Elyse, and Charisse Morelon, now as dear to her as her father had always been. Severed from her.
Armand himself, his huge hand folded around hers as they strolled the mason forests that girdled the university, their pace relaxed, with no cares to trouble either of them. Standing close to him on the promontory that overlooked the rapids in the Kropotkin, her arm around his waist, the only sound the sussurance of the water racing over the little falls. His body locked with hers in the night, their arms tight around one another, their intimacy silent and complete. A unit of two, foreordained before either was born, no more to be undone by any decision of hers than the law of gravity.
I can't leave him. It doesn't matter where he has to go. I can't leave him.
She hoisted the valise she'd packed for their weekend jaunt onto her bed and popped it open. She dumped out its less practical contents, crammed an extra pair of warm slacks, two blouses, a heavy sweater and a pair of walking shoes into the liberated space, and forced it shut. She turned to Armand with the valise clutched in her hand and nodded once.
He eyed the satchel, drew a deep breath and rose.
"Let's go, Terry."
She left the door unlocked behind them.
Chapter 20
Victoria stared silently at the monitors. The richly dressed figure on the plush bed was unnaturally still. He lay on his back, hands curled into fists, eyes wide open but unfocused.
"In that condition, he's still able to...to..."
"Protect the ecology of the planet? Yes," Ianushkevich said. "The necessary patterns were programmed into his backbrain. Until he dies, his autonomic system will strain to protect the entire world." The parapsychologist smiled sheepishly. "We couldn't have the antimony and copper flows rising unchecked while he slept."
"And you plan to use the same program on me?"
"An accelerated version. He won't last much longer. We have to get you...on station before his deterioration goes too much further. There's a risk of regional famines."
There was a nervous cough and a shuffling of feet behind her. She spun, found Charles Petrus and Einar Magnusson looking on with expressions of unease. Ethan Mandeville had slipped out of the chamber without giving notice.
"Why do I get the feeling this isn't a choice assignment, gentlemen?"
Three pairs of eyes did their best not to engage one another, or hers.
That poor sap's condition isn't coincidental.
"If I'm going to be putting myself at risk..."
"Tell her, Dmitri," Magnusson said. "Tell her exactly what I told him."
Ianushkevich nodded. He turned toward the monitors and stared fixedly into them, his hands clasped behind his back.
"It's not a risk, Miss Peterson. It's a certainty. He who undergoes the apotheosis remains in good health and sound mind for about fifty years. The longest reign was fifty-four years, the shortest forty-six. Toward the end the God loses his reason, then his control of his body, and then his life. The progression is remarkably consistent across all sufferers: paranoid delusions and inability to sleep, followed by assorted hallucinations in all five senses, loss of motor control, and loss of psionic control. At the end comes the disintegration of the cerebellum and pons, after which death is immediate."
Victoria's mouth fell open.
"And he -- he --"
Ianushkevich nodded. "He knew. We told him everything. He volunteered anyway."
"And the Hallanson-Albermayer series...?"
Ianushkevich stood silent. His face held more sorrow than she had seen on any other visage.
"You're working on a cure, right? You must be!"
The upward quirk at the corner of Ianushkevich's mouth only made him look sadder.
"A cure for disintegration of the brain, Miss Peterson? That happens to only one person every fifty years? One very special person, who's undergone a regimen of conditioning experienced by no one else alive? How would you propose to investigate such a syndrome -- bearing in mind that the sole subject on whom you could experiment is simultaneously responsible for safeguarding the lives of a hundred million people?"
She gaped at him. Presently he turned away to stare into the monitors once more.
"Of all the men of Hope, only its God, who takes upon himself the protection of all the life of the world, is foredoomed to die. We've been searching for the answer for twelve hundred years, ever since Emile Morelon, who first assumed the role and freed the remnant of the Hegira from subsistence rationing and bondage to hydroponics, slid into madness and death. But we still don't even have a theory ab
out why it happens. And we can't harness any resources beyond the Cabal to the problem."
Of course they can't.
It occurred to Victoria that before the Godhood had been revealed to be a sentence of death, she'd regarded it as the most extraordinary opportunity that anyone could want. As if shouted from a great distance, a faint voice in her head reminded her that the opportunity was no less for that.
With Armand out of reach, I'd probably only live to seventy or eighty anyway. How on Hope would I ever afford the Hallanson-Albermayer treatments without a rich husband? But if I were to take this, I'd be the most powerful, most valuable person on Hope...
A cloud formed in her mind, momentarily blocking the completion of the thought.
...and Armand would still be available to experiment on.
I could command them to do it. I could.
I could command the whole of Hope to pursue a therapy for me -- and woe be unto them if they refuse me!
She drew herself up straight, folded her arms over her breasts and turned slowly, sweeping the
Inner Circle magnates with what she hoped was a gaze of steel. "Gentlemen," she said, her voice sounding alien to her, "I'll take the post. Obviously I have to, or we'll all die. But I'll tell you right now: there are going to be some changes around here."
***
The air had chilled sharply as they rode north. On each of their two stops to refuel, Teresza had retrieved her bag from the motorcycle's panniers and fished out another sweater to layer over her other clothes. Well before they reached the Norsland settlements, the soil showed the glitter of frost.
Neither had said a word since their departure from the Gallatin campus, six hours before.
It was twenty miles from Norsland to the power cable's northern cusp: a stretch over which they saw few trees, no people, and nothing man-made but the cable itself. At the cusp stood the Midgard laser battery emplacement, northernmost of the Spacehawk facilities. From a distance, it appeared identical to every other of its kind: a hemisphere a hundred twenty feet in diameter, crisscrossed by orthogonal great-circle slits through which the snouts of the laser cannons could be moved at need. The power bus disappeared under the southern edge of the dome, providing the cannons with power from the web of fission reactors that spanned the continent.
Which Art In Hope (Spooner Federation Saga Book 1) Page 14
