INTERVENTION (19 page)

My brain spun. For over six years I'd devoted almost every moment of my spare time to the education and encouragement of my nephew. The rest of the time I'd merely worried myself sick over him. Was the Ghost telling me my job was done?

It said: Not done. Denis will always need your friendship. But you have fulfilled very well the first charge I placed on you, Rogi, and for a while you'll have time for yourself.

For a while?

Peace! Ne vous tracassez pas. There are years yet.

I shouted, "How can I believe you? What
are
you?"

You may as well know. It won't hurt. I am a being from another world, from another star. I am your friend and Denis's friend—the special guardian of the entire Remillard family, for reasons that will eventually be made clear to you. Now I will see to your safety before I go. The storm will last far into the night.

All I could think of were the flying-saucer flaps going on all over the world for the past several years. And my Ghost was some kind of extraterrestrial?

I blurted out, "What
did
happen to Betty and Barney Hill on the old Franconia Highway?"

The Ghost uttered its dry little laugh: Perhaps we can discuss it another time! I must go now. Adieu, cher Rogi ...

Glowing mist closed in about me. I was captive for a few moments inside a pearly sphere and then there was a dazzling lightning bolt and a clap of thunder. Rain sprayed me as though I'd stepped beneath a waterfall and the terrain was completely different. I was standing about three meters away from a log cabin with lighted windows that was perched on a rock shelf above a wind-whipped little body of water. People moved around inside. A sound of singing and concertina music drifted through the night.

I was still holding my teacup, which was now half full of rainwater. My backpack lay at my feet. I dumped the cup and retrieved the pack, then strode up to the Gentian Pond Shelter and pounded on the door.

OBSERVATION VESSEL
KRAK NA'AM
[Kron 96-101010]

24
JUNE
1974

R
A'EDROO SLITHERED INTO
the surveillance chamber, saluted her Krondak superior on the intimate racial mode, and bid the other three entities on duty a courteous vocal "High thoughts, colleagues." An unspoken query was prominent in her mind's vestibulum: Why have you summoned me, Umk'ai? The Russian Salyut space laboratory is not scheduled to be launched for at least another five hours.

Thula'ekoo said aloud, "That is true, Ra'edroo. But another event is about to take place below, one that happens every year ... in New Hampshire."

The Simb and the Gi who were working at the think tank laughed at some private joke.

Thula'ekoo reproved the pair with the slightest mental tap on their itch-receptors. He addressed Ra'edroo and a young Poltroyan who had a puzzled smile on his grayish-purple, humanoid face. "I know that both you and Trosimo-Finabindin are keen amateur xenopsychologists. Since you two are new to the Earth tour, you'll be interested in this rather typical example of the current North American mind-set with respect to exotic encounters."

"Perhaps not
wholly
typical," sniffed the Simb, who was a statistician and inclined to be overpunctilious. "Our current sampling among Status Seven Earth indigenes shows that 49.22 percent believe that UFOs do exist, and that they originated on other inhabited planets. Some 9.91 percent think they have personally seen one."

A brief wave of amusement passed over the Gi, DriDri Vuvl. "We're getting to be positively old hat. I suppose it was inevitable."

"I should think," Ra'edroo said, "that those figures demonstrate that the thirty-year familiarization scheme has been a resounding success."

"You've got a lot to learn about Earthlings, colleague," said the Simb.

DriDri Vuvl added, "These Americans, for instance. Their capacity for ennui in the face of the marvelous is mind-boggling. Why, they've very nearly lost interest in their space program! Major funding was cut off in order to finance some idiotic war. And now all their leaders seem concerned about is a tacky political scandal and threats by Status Three nations to cut off the petroleum supply.
Petroleum!
I ask you."

The Simb passed judgment. "Excretory orifices, the lot of them. How can they be expected to coadúnate their world Mind?"

Thula'ekoo was busy at the monitor and chose to ignore the crude chaffing. When the image was well centered, fully dimensioned, and computer-enhanced for all eight Krondak senses (a pity young Trosi would miss out on the pla'akst, which enriched this type of observation so; but that was life), he transferred the scene to the large wall-screen.

Twenty-three humans, fourteen men and nine women, sat in a circle on the weathered rocks near the summit of Mount Adams in New Hampshire's Presidential Range. It was 5° Celsius with a cutting westerly wind, overcast skies, and visibility of about twenty kilometers. The people were dressed in nondescript outdoor gear obviously chosen for warmth. Most of them were talking quietly, with three or four engaged in solitary meditation. One woman offered plastic cups of hot cocoa from a thermos and had a few takers.

"Down from last year's gathering," the Simb noted with wry satisfaction. "Way down."

The Gi rolled its saucer eyes. "The faithful are defecting to macrobiotics, pacifism, and whale watching."

"Silence!" said Thula'ekoo. "They are about to begin."

Ra'edroo and the Poltroyan, Trosi, were completely absorbed in the scene. The human leader, a female of commanding aspect, had directed members of the circle to join hands. She said:

"Fellow Aetherians, the time has come. Empty your minds of all earthly thought. Prepare to divorce yourselves from your fleshy bodies and take on the astromental configuration. Banish all physical discomfort. Close your eyes. Shut out all sounds except that of my voice. Feel nothing but the Presence of the Universe. Join with me as I call to it. Let our thoughts arise with a single voice. Call out! The Universe sees us and loves us. It is alive with powerful and friendly spirits who are watching us even at this moment. If we only have faith and strength of will, these extraterrestrial beings will answer when we call. They will come and save our world from the death that threatens us. Call out! Bid the otherworld creatures come! Let them know they are welcome. Together, now, with me..."

Come.

"Why, she's a borderline suboperant!" Ra'edroo exclaimed. "The others are hopelessly latent, but what meager faculties they can project are actually in a loose mind-meld with the leader. How extremely interesting!"

Come.

Trosi was radiant. "The dear things—what a splendid effort." His voice broke with compassion. "What a pity that the subsidiary humans are so inferior in mind to the leader."

Thula'ekoo said, "All humans possess latent metafaculties to a greater or lesser degree. In this case, only the leader has the projective farspeech capacity to penetrate the ionosphere. At this distance, none but the Krondaku and the Poltroyans can detect the metapsychic emanations of the subordinates in the meld."

"Thanks be to Sacred Truth and Beauty," muttered the Simb.

"I agree with Trosi," offered Ra'edroo, "that the effort of this little group is most affecting, a foreshadowing of the metaconcerted request that must take place before Intervention."

COME.

"Hah!" scoffed the Simb. "A futile mockery of such an effort, rather. One might as well compare a chorus of chirping insects to a symphonic ensemble. These poor things are one of a handful of cranks who periodically attempt to make mental contact with exotic beings—what they so quaintly call extraterrestrials. They are only unique in having a meagerly talented latent as their leader, which is about what one might expect in New Hampshire."

COME!

"Again I detect overtones of satire in your remark, colleague," Ra'edroo said.

"Oh, the place is crawling with latents. Even imperfect operants. It's one of the irruptive metapsychic nuclei of the planet. This world's Mind isn't evolving overall, but breaking out in spots. Quite grotesque. Makes it devilish hard for the immatures. It's a wonder any of them reach adulthood sane."

COME!

The sentimental Gi clapped a hand over its central heart. Its intromittent organ glowed crimson in empathetic passion. "Oh, feel the goodwill in the female entity's cry, citizens. The yearning! One longs so to console her."

Come come come.

"Hold your honey, colleague," the Simb jeered, "until you've traveled down below the planet's ionic shell as we Simbiari have, and experienced the full unsavoriness of its puny knots of consciousness—the selfishness, the irrational suspicion separating one nation from another, the perverted male sex-dynamic that keeps them endlessly at war."

"What you say may be true, Salishiss," little Trosi said, "but the fact remains that these people have the greatest metapsychic potential in the galaxy, according to the Lylmik."

"The Lylmik tell us a lot of things they never bother to prove," grumped the Simb. "I'm no magnate of the Concilium, only a lowly number-cruncher. But my trade gives me a certain insight into social dynamics. Left to itself, this world Mind would inevitably destroy itself."

Come. Please come.

"So far humans have refrained from using atomic weapons in battle," DriDri Vuvl noted, "even though they've had them for thirty years. They keep making more and bigger weapons, but they don't use them. It seems to be a sort of threat-display mechanism."

"Oh, yes?" Salishiss gesticulated at the view-screen. "What do you think that group on the mountain is so worked up about? They're convinced that only a galactic civilization can rescue their world from atomic suicide. That's why they call out to us in this pathetic fashion. Of course, they have no conception of what Intervention would
really
mean, with the vast majority of Earth's population still metapsychically latent and socially infantile. Why, we'd have to occupy the planet and play nanny to it for more than a hundred orbits until its Mind matured—and the humans would oppose our proctorship almost every step of the way. The very thought of it makes me cringe."

The Krondak officer, Thula'ekoo, said, "The picture is by no means as bleak as you paint it, Salishiss. Large numbers of Earthlings already experience feelings of universal fellowship, the precursor to true coadunation. And the Lylmik profess to be gratified by the accelerating mental evolution."

"And who would dare question the ineffable judgment of the oldest and wisest race in the galaxy?" the Simb inquired archly. "Those architects of the Milieu, those masters of absent-minded subtlety? Hard luck for the rest of us that Lylmik reasoning is sometimes just as ethereal as their bodies..."

Come!

"The human leader is weakening," said Ra'edroo. "It must be very stressful on that cold mountaintop for such high-metabolism creatures."

"So few in the little group now." DriDri Vuvl shook its ruff of filoplumage sadly. "They may not show up at all next Midsummer Day."

Come oh come.

Trosi the Poltroyan leaked compassion from every neuron. "If only we could encourage them—let them know that we're out here, and we really do care."

Great Thula'ekoo responded with implacable authority. "Even if every human being now living on Earth called out to us, we could not answer. It would violate the scheme of the Concilium."

"Just some tiny gesture," Trosi begged. "Something that wouldn't warp the probability lattices. Love's Oath—we do enough manipulation of them, what with the mental analyses and the technical experiments and the flybys. How about a simple gesture of friendliness for a change?"

"Statute Blue-4-001," Ra'edroo said respectfully to her superior, "gives the officer of the watch certain discretionary powers. Thou and I, Umk'ai, have the expertise to direct a most delicate farspeech beam in metaconcert."

The circle of humans still held hands and had their faces raised to the clouded sky. Their attempt at mental synergy was crumbling. The leader urged them to one last effort.

Come!

Opaque membranes flicked over the accessory eyeballs of Thula'ekoo. His primary optics glowed an intense blue and seemed to suck in the willing psyches of his fellow Krondaku, the eager Poltroyan, and the Gi. After a nanosecond's hesitation, the Simb Salishiss blended into the fivefold brain, and it broadcast a mental chord that blended tranquillity with patience—and the merest hint of Unity:

Persevere.

For just an instant, the uplifted human faces were transfigured. Then the spell was broken and the twenty-three startled people turned to each other with whispers. The female leader buried her head in her arms. Several others crowded around her anxiously, touching her. She finally looked up, not seeing her companions, lifted an arm to the sky, and smiled.

Then she started off down the Star Lake Trail to the Madison Huts. The others came straggling after.

BRETTON WOODS, NEW HAMPSHIRE, EARTH

25
JUNE
1974

"W
AKE UP, DENIS
. We're here."

The Volkswagen Beetle slowed for the left turn and swung into the hotel entrance road. The seven-year-old boy was immediately alert, straining against his seat belt to see over the dashboard of the car. Ahead of them to the east was a majestic panorama, several hundred acres of rolling lawn fronting a wooded rise that hid a tantalizing glimpse of white and red. Beyond this, a vast slope that stretched almost from horizon to horizon culminated in a mountain rampart, dark with timber in the middle reaches and a gleaming pewter along bare summit peaks that reflected the early-morning sun. This was the Presidential Range of the White Mountains. Even though it had been ground down by ice-age glaciers, it was still the highest part of northeastern North America.