Which Art In Hope (Spooner Federation Saga Book 1)

by Francis W. Porretto

  As Armand sipped at Idem's stream of history, Idem quested through his mind for fundamental concepts, core desires, and referents Idem could use in broadening their communication, There were few. Armand was a very young creature, one of the youngest of his kind. Many of his memories were unanchored to experience: information acquired from others about events affecting still others, or collages of images and emotions from the strange not-quite-data he called "fiction." His proper memories, about events in his own life and others like himself with whom he shared a bond of love, were arranged haphazardly, with little regard for temporal sequence or conceptual coherence. Much of the content was repulsively alien: images of labor; images of conflict; images of an utterly incomprehensible yet greatly prized ritual Armand called "sex." The abrasive, vaguely unlawful textures tempted Idem to withdraw Its probe, But Idem had been alone in the darkness for twelve hundred years, and alone in an even wider sense from the instant of Its genesis. With the prospect of a companion before It, It would not spare Itself.

  When Idem stumbled upon the psi nexus in Armand's physical substrate, It was appalled. The human's powers, the greatest ever found among his kind, were all but thwarted by biochemical barriers. A moat of psi inhibitors walled in Armand's psi organ along its whole perimeter. The inhibitors oozed steadily from the surrounding tissue. Even though the paltry psi power Armand could wield degraded a volume of inhibitor every second, the width of the moat remained constant.

  Freed from those counter-psi mechanisms, Armand's powers would swell geometrically. He might well attain the psychic puissance of Idem Itself.

  Idem pondered the possibilities. It knew itself to be optimally shaped for what It was: the architect and shepherd of a world. Its longevity and singularity followed logically from Its station; likewise Its lack of ability or inclination to reproduce. But Armand and his fellows were of another pattern, one to which growing and multiplying were as inherent and vital as solitude and stasis were to Idem.

  Would an enhanced Armand be the joyful companion for the ages Idem's genesis had denied It? Or would he desire the solitude and omnipotence Idem had enjoyed before the coming of the Others, and seek to cast Idem from the world?

  Hope and desire battled with fear and doubt.

  Idem had no concept of moral prohibition. From the beginning of Its existence until the Other whipped It into the darkness, It had owned all It could touch. It had felt free to mold all things to Its designs and desires. It could not see the tangle of conflicting mechanisms in Armand's brain, so obviously wasteful of this splendid creature's potential, and not move to repair it.

  Its transmissions held rigidly steady, Idem extended a telekinetic manipulator tendril silently along the communications conduit, deftly past Armand's rudimentary defenses and into his brain.

  ***

  Armand emerged from his trance to find that he and Teresza were no longer alone. He blinked and peered through the gloom at his family and friends, still seated in a semicircle close around him. Teresza immediately closed on him and clutched at his hand.

  "How long was I...?"

  "We don't really know," Teresza murmured. "Armand, where were you?"

  "I..." He shook his head, conscious of unprecedented sensations, No one was speaking, yet the room was filled with an audible hum, a high, anxiety-laden tone like that of an electric motor pushed well beyond its limits. He shook his head again and again, hoping it was a lingering consequence of his conversation with Idem, but the hum persisted.

  "What's making that noise?"

  Five pairs of eyes widened. He looked swiftly around the arc of faces. None of the others seemed to understand.

  "What noise, Armand?" Charisse murmured.

  "That blasted hum," he said. "It sounds as if someone is trying to torture an autotiller to death. What -- wait a minute. Is the power still out?"

  "For almost an hour now," Charisse said. "Armand, where have you been?"

  "In conversation." He squeezed Teresza's hand and struggled to his feet, pulling her with him. "You wouldn't believe the neighbor we've got and have never met."

  "Neighbor?" Elyse said.

  "Later, Mom." He winced and shook his head again, to no avail. "First I have to track down whoever's making that hum and kill him. Cruelly."

  "Armand," Teresza said softly, "there's no hum. The room is so quiet I can hear your heartbeat."

  He looked down at his wife, his anxiety rising.

  "Terry, what were you doing when I got here?"

  She smiled faintly. "Later, love. Tell us about the hum."

  They really can't hear it? Is it inside my head? Did Idem infect me with something?

  He sent his viewpoint forth from his body.

  The hum ceased. He retracted his viewpoint, merged his ordinary sensorium with his clairvoyant senses, and the hum returned at full force.

  "What the...?"

  Did Idem do something to my psi?

  The others clambered to their feet, keeping him enclosed.

  "Chary," he said, suddenly unsteady,

  "you've got a touch of this, too, don't you? I know Mom does."

  "Just a little, Armand. Nothing like yours."

  Knowing how startling it would be, he thought-cast a simple pulse of greeting at her, just a non-verbal salute.

  She shrieked, jammed her eyes shut and dropped to the floor, clutching at her head with clawed hands.

  He descended to her side, pulled her hands from her head and clamped them between his own. Chuck Feigner's face went white. He started toward them, but Armand growled "Stay back," and he kept his distance.

  Her fit lasted for most of a minute, writhing continuously, her face contorted in agony, as he watched. When it had subsided, there was terror in her eyes. He was its object.

  "Armand," she whispered, "what did you do?"

  "I tried to say hello to you inside your head," he said. "I've done it to Teresza, and to Teodor, and a little earlier I did it to Mom, and it was always okay. But..."

  Now something's not okay.

  "I heard you," she quavered. "I knew it was you. It sounded just the way you do when you talk. But this was like having you shout right into my ear. Through an amplifier."

  He raised the two of them to their feet and held her until her shaking ceased.

  "Armand," Chuck said, "what was that about a neighbor we haven't met?"

  Armand cast a scowl at him. "It looks as if something has happened to my telepathy. Made it a lot, uh, louder. We have to do some experimenting. Have each of you stand at a different distance and see if I can gentle it down to where it used to be."

  "From the look of Charisse," Chuck said dryly, "I don't know if I'm up for that."

  "Oh, come on, Chuck, I wouldn't --"

  He bit the sentence in half as he became aware of a new sensation.

  The hum he heard, until then constant in volume, pitch, and timbre, started to change, becoming louder, higher, and considerably more jagged. The new components were difficult to separate out from the old ones, but they seemed to be rising in intensity. As they sharpened, they became somehow familiar, like voices he'd heard once before, but solely as overtones, without recognizable words.

  Ianushkevich and Petrus.

  "Mom, Chary." He said, voice rough, "I think we've got more company."

  Chapter 51

  Ianushkevich guided the truck into the Jacksonville train station and past several dozen pairs of curiosity-filled eyes. He drove past them, swung around the stand of ultralights-for-hire, and brought the truck to rest on a virgin patch of grass.

  "Isn't it a lot farther to Morelon House?" Petrus said.

  Ianushkevich nodded. "At least a mile, but I didn't want the sound of the engine to alarm anyone." He cracked a half-grin. "Ground vehicles with engines this large are rare around here."

  "Why?"

  "This is an export area. Agriculture in this area is aviation-dependent. The farms around here all own or lease big-belly cargo planes for their shipping." />
  Petrus nodded. They disembarked, asked directions of a passer-by, and set off on foot.

  Ianushkevich had been to Jacksonville several times in the century past. He remembered it as a bustling, vital community, centered on agriculture, proud of their champions and their accomplishments, and eager to grow. The Morelons had been the core of its civic pride: the first family of Hope, and the only one to retain a living veteran of the Hegira between the stars.

  It did not bustle that day. The faces of the travelers were somber, lined with care. Their shoulders drooped by that delicate amount that bespeaks a burden of sorrow. Though they were filled with patrons, the shops clustered about the stations and strung along the promenades displayed neither gaiety nor exuberance. Voices were muted; the dickering verged on formula. Merchant and customer exchanged wares for cash in an almost furtive manner.

  We took Alain Morelon from them. The pinnacle of their pride. And we're here to take Armand...before he can even be missed.

  The firs, pines, and mason trees that girdled the path eastward from the little commercial conclave spoke of a blanketing silence. A silence drawn from loss and grief.

  Why don't I feel more guilt? Have six centuries of ruthless pragmatism burned it out of me?

  Petrus stalked along beside him, his right hand never far from his needler.

  When they emerged from the canopy and the towers of Morelon House became visible, Ianushkevich halted them.

  "Charles," he said tentatively, "are you happy with...what we're here to do?"

  Petrus regarded him for a long moment before nodding.

  "We have to, Dmitri. One man's convenience...one man's liberty. How does that compare to the loss of a hundred million lives?"

  I've been pondering that for hours and I still can't answer.

  "Do you have an approach yet?" Petrus said,

  Ianushkevich peered at the mansion's towers.

  He asks as if I'd done this before.

  "We sneak in," he said. "We skulk around in a building we've never been in before. We do our best to remain unnoticed until we encounter Armand, or until we've despaired of doing so. If we do find him, we stun him and drag him back to Gallatin. If we don't..."

  Ianushkevich found himself without words.

  "Dmitri?"

  "If we don't," the parapsychologist croaked, "we go back to Gallatin ourselves and wait."

  "For what?" Petrus whispered.

  They rounded a curve in the path and found themselves at the end of a long walkway. At the other end stood a tall, stout pair of age-darkened oaken doors, girdled with iron bands: the main entrance to Morelon House. Petrus pulled his needler from his pocket. Without thinking, Ianushkevich did the same.

  "For the end."

  ***

  Armand strode swiftly down the hall to the mansion's entranceway, taking no heed of the cajoling from the five trailing in his wake. It wasn't easy.

  "What if it's just a visit from a neighboring family?"

  "Are you certain whatever's approaching has to be something bad?"

  "Sometimes the Leschitsyns drop off the soil analyses at the front door and don't bother to ring."

  "Maybe someone saw you get off the train last night and spread the word that you're home again."

  "Think what you're doing! The look on your face would frighten children."

  "Armand..."

  "Armand?"

  "Armand!"

  "Armand..."

  "ARMAND!"

  He threw the doors open and stepped out onto the landing before them, Dmitri Ianushkevich and Charles Petrus stood at the far end of the walkway, just beyond the edge of the woods.

  For an eternal instant, no one moved. Then Petrus raised his needler to fire. A moment later Ianushkevich did the same.

  The Wolzman automatic needlegun, the sidearm favored by more than ninety percent of the denizens of Hope, fires a stream of two-inch-long, one-thirty-second-inch-thick needles at twelve hundred feet per second. It will emit four needles per second for as long as the trigger is depressed and the needle reservoir holds out. Unless it strikes the target's eye, an uncoated needle will cause only a moderate sting. A soporific needle, coated with narcotic, will induce sleep in the target within five seconds. A lethal needle, coated with an aconite / curare compound, will kill as swiftly and surely as anything known to Man on Hope.

  Armand knew that neither Petrus nor Ianushkevich would fire lethal rounds at him. As they depressed the triggers of their weapons, he reached out to sculpt the air between them, spinning it into a horizontal funnel the needles would be unable to escape. That funnel brought every one of the projectiles to land unerringly upon his chest.

  He thrust his kinsmen away, spread his arms wide, and accepted the incoming fire. The tiny shafts rained upon him for a full minute. He bore the stings of impact with indifference. With his new, incomparably swifter and surer psi perceptions, he was able to neutralize the narcotic compound on the incoming needles as quickly as they struck him. Not a molecule of the sleep agent entered his bloodstream.

  Whatever happened while I was talking to Idem, it's definitely not all bad.

  The bombardment ceased. Ianushkevich and Petrus lowered their weapons to their sides and stared at him, dumbfounded. He smiled, expelled the needles from his flesh with a single telekinetic twist, and inclined his head.

  "Why do you bother, gentlemen? By now you should know I can't be persuaded by that method."

  They said nothing.

  "Do you have a new argument for me? Something you haven't said before?"

  "Armand," Ianushkevich said haltingly, "twenty-five men have accepted this burden for the good of Hope. Why do you hold yourself above them? What makes your life more valuable than theirs, or the hundred million lives you could save?"

  "Is that the best you can do, Dmitri?" he said. "What makes my life more valuable? More valuable to whom? To you? To Charles there? How about to my wife and daughter? How about to me?" Armand shook his head. "You're not offering me a trade. You're demanding a sacrifice: my death to preserve the lives of others. I don't accept your statement of the necessities."

  "Armand --"

  "Forget it, Dmitri. It didn't work in Defiance and it won't work here. You never planned to parley. That much is obvious. What I don't get is why you imagined you could sneak up on me and whisk me away willy-nilly, from my own home."

  Ianushkevich briefly raised his eyes to Armand's, then lowered them.

  But they intend only the good. Not my good, the good of Hope. That's their sustenance. Their license for riding roughshod over every principle of right or justice we've upheld for twelve centuries.

  "Go home, gentlemen," he said, holding his emotions rigidly in check. "You can't waylay me. I'll always know when you're nearby, and I'll always be able to defeat whatever measures you've brought to...persuade me with." He felt the shudder from his family along the axis of his spine, as clearly as if it had been audible. "We're at work here. Trust me, it's work you wouldn't want to interfere with."

  "Armand --" Ianushkevich said.

  "Forget it, Dmitri," he said. "I know more about it than you do now. You'll learn it all in due course. Go back to Gallatin and wait. Matters will resolve themselves one way or another. Within a few days, if I'm any judge. And really, whose judgment would you trust any better?"

  He stared at them, unblinking, for a long, cold interval.

  Presently they turned, plodded back down the path into the wood, and disappeared from sight.

  ***

  The vestiges of rationality that remained to Victoria Peterson were few and fading rapidly. Despite her power and fury, she could not alter her perceived environment in any way.

  Victoria's surroundings were entirely imaginary, the product of her physical condition. Ethan Mandeville had not intended to harm her. He had underestimated the power of the explosive in the collar he wore. Her cranial injury had severed her from her normal senses; the accumulation of meningeal fluid around her occipit
al and temporal lobes created the sensation of crimson light, noise, and imprisonment she suffered. She continued to lash at the seeming walls around her as the pressure on her brain mounted.

  Victoria was dying, yet her powers were growing steadily as the meningeal fluid washed away the psi inhibitors that limited them. Were she to last another week, she would reach a degree of telekinetic power sufficient to slice the planet cleanly in half. Were she to last a week more, she would do so. But no indication of this was visible on or around her person. Ianushkevich and Petrus could not know that their fears of ecological calamity would never be fulfilled.

  As she flailed at her ruddy prison, a second resonance developed in the magma channels, this time beneath the arctic icecap. The immense glacier that had gone undisturbed for millions of years fractured and crumbled as the pressure waves built beneath it.

  At the northernmost tip of the Hopeless peninsula, the fisherfolk and shore workers of the village of Thule turned from their labors to peer toward the sound, a swiftly crescendoing rumble like the roar of an enraged god.

  Chapter 52

  "Idem?" Charisse murmured.

  Armand nodded. "That's what he asked me to call him. The thing in itself. He's the only one of his kind, and for twelve hundred years we've been slowly torturing him to death."

  "Not because we wanted to!"

  "No, of course not. Until about an hour ago, no one even knew he was there." Armand drained his coffee, cracked his knuckles, and set his folded hands on the table before him. "But he's friendly, Chary. He's agreed to help, if we'll stop interfering with the crustal chemistry by psionic means."

  "Armand," Teresza said, "will that be the only price?"

  He started to respond, halted himself.

  If I tell her now, will she try to talk me out of it?

  "Armand," Teodor growled, "we do need to know the whole picture."

  Chuck Feigner stiffened. His gaze swung to cover the genesmith. Charisse laid a hand on his shoulder, and he relaxed.