Diamond Mask (Galactic Milieu Trilogy) (54 page)

“Smart-ass female!” The old bookseller retrieved the newspaper
and took a hefty slug of his own drink—which she noted was by no means unadulterated fruit juice, as her own had been. “Go ahead and take your walk, then! But just remember there are lots more ways to eliminate people than by burning ’em up and sucking their minds with highfalutin kundalini metawhatsit! A Hydra could just drop a coconut on your head with PK, for chrissake. You’d be just as dead!”

She couldn’t help laughing. “I’ll keep my farsenses alert. Where’s Malama?”

“Gone to the supermarket in Poipu. She figured you’d nap for a while longer. I was supposed to keep an eye on you.”

“That’s very sweet, and I appreciate it. But I’m going to go over to Spouting Horn Park and sit on the rocks and do some heavy thinking. I don’t want to be followed. Agreed?”

Rogi rustled the newspaper reproachfully, but he said, “Agreed.”

She left Malama’s house and walked along the shore road until she came to the parking lot and viewing area above the formation called the Spouting Horn. It was a gray, chilly morning and the surf was monstrous. There were a few tourists leaning on the railing, taking pictures of the famous natural wonder. Below the lookout were dark, flattened masses of lava periodically inundated by the surging sea. From time to time an especially high wave forced its way beneath a submarine shelf with a large lava tube in it, compressing air within the narrow tunnel and ramming a mass of water through it. With a roar, a spectacular fountain would erupt from a blowhole amongst the flat rocks, spraying saltwater over 15 meters high and causing the drenched tourists to shriek. The Spouting Horn was one of Kauai’s best-known scenic attractions.

Smiling, she moved further down the shore and found a niche among the rocks and flowering shrubs where she could watch the sea in privacy. It was still windy and cold, but she fixed that by slightly increasing the temperature of the air flowing over her bare skin. Thermal modifications were among the more easy metacreative actions.

Three brave sailboarders in shorty wet suits had come from the small boat harbor at Kukuiula Bay and were zipping up and down a few hundred meters offshore. Now and then one of the colorful craft would capsize, only to be righted again and resume its perilous dance on the waves.

I’ve got to be like that, too, Dee thought. I mustn’t brood
about what’s finally happened with Fury and get all in a state. I’ve got to pick myself up, make sure all the bits and pieces are working properly, and then refine my plan to trap Hydra.

It was going to be a great deliverance, finally being able to shut Fury out of her dreams, even if the trade-off was unending vigilance against Hydra attacks. Fury would certainly send its remaining minions after her soon, now that she had defied it. With Alvarez dead and no clue to the identities or location of the others, she would never recognize her assailants until the last moment, when they combined in metaconcert, singing their deadly mindsong as they prepared to drain the life out of her.

Was she really a match for them, as she had so glibly assured Uncle Rogi? The probabilities were favorable—providing she was awake, alert, and not diminished by bodily injury or any other disability. Malama had promised to teach her a more sensitive version of her own “instant wake-up” program that would sound a mental alarm if an intruder touched her mind or body while she slept. That would ensure her safety during her most vulnerable time. She could even hide inside a small sigma-shield if she became ill or weakened—but of course it was quite impractical to use such a device when she was awake and going about her daily life. Nor would she want to. Luring Hydra out of hiding—not barricading herself against it—was her principal priority.

The most worrisome aspect of the hunt was what she now decided to call the Coconut Factor, after Uncle Rogi’s shrewd insight. Unlike Fury, the three human minions were not limited to subtle mental assault. They could come at her individually, without using their telltale metaconcert, and attack her in some purely physical way—with a laser gun, a bomb, poisoned food, even the dreaded falling coconut. Jack, that creepy Superthing, might be able to clothe his brain in invulnerable psychocreative armor, but she was not yet capable of such mental virtuosity.

Jack Remillard had gone to Okanagon in his personal starship, not only to identify the body of “Clinton Alvarez” but also in hopes of finding clues to the identity of the other three killers. Dee doubted that he would learn anything of value. Even if the other Hydras had lived on the cosmop planet, they would surely have fled as soon as Alvarez was arrested. Fortunately, it was unlikely that any fugitive Hydra-units could have already reached Earth from Okanagon. Only the ultra-express starships operated by the Krondaku—and Jack the Bodiless—would have been able to make the trip in less than four days. Humans
booked passage on such vessels only rarely. It was unlikely the killers would have risked their new identities by doing so and calling attention to themselves.

There was another reason why Dee thought she would probably remain safe from the Hydras for some time yet. Up until this morning, Fury had at least harbored a forlorn hope that she would accept its blasphemous Choice.

She shuddered. To be condemned to share her body with that monster! What an abominable fate! But how in God’s name would Fury have been able to move from its Remillard host to her? It had no life except as an abnormal adjunct persona hiding within a human brain.

Didn’t it?

She shivered again. The wind had increased slightly and she was obliged to thicken her warm, creative shelter. One of the windsurfers seemed to have given up after being dunked continually, but two valiant sails still hurtled at high speed out among the swells.

What I must do, she told herself, is set myself up as soon as possible in a perilous situation impossible for Fury and the Hydras to resist … It will have to be before my sixteenth birthday on January 20. The Lylmik are bound to call me to Orb then for my initiation, and after that there’ll be the Concilium session. And heaven knows what work assignment if they do designate me a magnate and a paramount. I’ll have to do my best to set my trap during Christmas break.

Where? … No doubt an opportunity will present itself.

Should I take Jack into my confidence?

No, she decided. Remillards were responsible for producing Fury and Hydra. One of them
was
Fury. Besides, if she asked for Jack’s help, he’d want her to yield up the Hydra metaconcert score—less one voice—so that he would have an equal opportunity to identify the killers. She would not make it possible for him to cheat her of doing her solemn duty. It was her obligation to bring her mother’s killers to justice, not Jack’s.

Should she notify the Magistratum?

Again, she decided the answer was no. Local police could bring the Milieu Enforcement Arm in fast enough once she’d done her work. Let the Magistratum use the Cambridge machine on the villains once she’d captured them and forced them to identify Fury at last. She was willing to leave
that
monster to the Remillards. Its paradoxical existence was utterly beyond her
experience. Let Jack deal with it. He was as inhuman as Fury was, and he was the only one of his family above suspicion.

Or was he?

What had Fury said in the last dream, castigating so-called evil servants of the Lylmik?
Jack is one of them and so is his brother Marc.

Then Marc Remillard was not Fury, either.

But she couldn’t possibly ask that sardonic older man for assistance or even confide in him. He’d outwitted her very nicely out on the dance floor at the party, and he’d certainly betray her plans to Jack. There was also the distinct possibility that Fury had lied about Marc being its enemy. No. There was only one way for her to undertake her crusade, and that was alone.

She canceled the warm air, got up from her rocky seat, and followed the path back to Spouting Horn Park. There were a few curio peddlers among the trees beyond the public lua, their stands shielded from the wind by flapping plass tarps. Only a single tourist vehicle remained in the parking lot. The periodic hissing roar of the blowhole punctuated the sound of the booming surf.

Then she heard shouts over by the lookout.

“Oh, God—Mikey!” a man cried out. “Help! Somebody get help! Mikey! Get up! Run! Quick!” He moved clumsily toward the end of the railing as he continued to shout, a tall and strong-looking man but one who was rather overweight and encumbered with flopping zori sandals.

Dee dashed across the grass verge and looked down toward the Spouting Horn. A boy six or seven years old wearing a red-and-white striped shirt was lying facedown on the rocks less than two meters away from the big blowhole. Foamy water was draining away over the slippery black surfaces into the heaving sea and into the sinister crevice in the lava.

“Get help!” the man shouted, catching sight of Dee. He started down the rocky embankment. “My little boy—he must have slipped away and gone down there while I was in the john! Maybe one of the spouts knocked him over and—oww!” He tripped and fell, uttering curses. The boy still hadn’t moved.

“Do something!” shrieked the father. “If that thing goes off again, it might wash him right into the blowhole!”

Without stopping to think, Dee vaulted over the rail and began to slide down. The man, halfway down the slope among the tumbled chunks of lava and dried sea grass, was still trying to struggle to his feet.

Dee lashed out at the child with her coercion, but he was unconscious and did not respond. Before she could muster the creative-psychokinetic energy to lift him she, too, lost her footing on the slippery rocks and fell headlong toward the half-submerged lava bench.

As she tried to arrest her fall she was aware of an eerie, anticipatory moaning sound. Then the Spouting Horn erupted and she was enveloped in spray. Something struck her a sharp blow on the head and she saw a burst of brilliant light. Roaring water smashed her against the rocks, pushing her, pulling her, tumbling her helpless body over and over until she was sucked down into a whirling maelstrom.

Somewhere underwater she regained consciousness, lifted her head into air, and coughed and spat until she breathed again. She seemed to be down in a well more than three meters deep. The sides were weed-encrusted black rock studded with barnacles and other razor-sharp shellfish that sliced her hands as she instinctively clutched at them. The water around her surged up and down, reflecting the pattern of the lesser waves that always preceded and followed the biggest, but it was clearly becoming more shallow as the blowhole drained. Occasionally her feet, still encased in trainers, touched the rocky floor.

Suddenly she saw that the lava tube was L-shaped. Its horizontal section became visible, filled nearly to the top with water as each swell marched shoreward. The outlet terminated many meters away in the direction of the open sea. Something red-and-white bobbed on the dim, foamy surface halfway down the tunnel.

Oh, sweet Jesus. It was the little boy.

She was still disoriented, dizzy, nauseated from the seawater she had swallowed. Her head was a throbbing drum of pain and her higher mindpowers seemed inaccessible, as though she had forgotten everything she had ever learned about their use. All the lifeforce she possessed persisted in functioning at the most primitive level of being: that of bodily survival. She had to escape from the blowhole, taking the child with her, before the next great wave pounded and smashed both of them to death against the walls of the lava tube.

But how?

Psychokinesis. The mind’s power over matter. Focus the PK impulse internally, not externally. In her injured condition, the metapsychic force she could muster was pitifully feeble; but it might be sufficient to bolster her flagging muscles.

She took a deep breath, surface-dived, and headed toward the small drifting body. The tunnel pinched to less than a meter in diameter in some parts. Its walls harbored other forms of marine life—anemones, starfish, mussels, anchored seaweed. Many small rocks and white chunks of broken coral rolled about the tube’s bottom in murky water full of sand and other suspended matter. Perhaps one of those rocks, flung out by the last eruption, had struck her on the head.

Her right arm was going numb, not functioning properly. She kicked with all her diminishing strength against the increasing buildup of water pressure. Another huge storm-swell was beginning its leisurely progress toward shore.

She touched human flesh under water. Saw a wavering shape.

The boy seemed to have drowned. His eyes and mouth were wide open and his hair streamed like pitiful strands of algae. The red-and-white shirt had turned to black-and-gray in the underwater twilight. She grasped one of his limp arms in her good left hand and attempted to swim toward the spot of bright water marking the seaward mouth of the tunnel.

The pressure of the inflowing water was growing harder and harder to resist. She was making no progress. Then she was actually moving backwards! Her PK, once rated beyond grandmasterclass, had dwindled almost to nothing.

The weight of the sea was forcing her inexorably backwards. In despair, she yielded to the pressure and was flung head over heels against one of the tunnel walls, almost losing her grip upon the child. The water around her had become a chaos of swirling bubbles, nearly opaque. Once, when her head was above water, she saw another opening in the solid rock of the tunnel roof—the dead-end chamber where the air would be compressed by the largest waves, eventually causing both the sounds and the fountain of spray.

A mighty surge slammed her into the roof, sending new flashes of pain through her skull. She refused to relinquish her grip on the boy, even though her increasing weakness made it seem that he was actively pulling her toward the blowhole.