INTERVENTION (2 page)

The Ghost said: I am a Lylmik. I am the entity charged with the guidance of the Family Remillard through your agency, just as I've always claimed to be. And now I come to you with one last task—

"Shit—I knew it!" Rogi howled in mortal anguish. Three stunning detonations from aerial bombs announced a flock of golden pinwheels. They zoomed heavenward in a tight formation, fissioned into hundreds of small replicas of themselves, then rained down toward the skeletal treetops, whirling and whistling like demented birds. There were vocal and telepathic cheers from the crowd. The brass band in front of the inn played louder. Metapsychic operants among the students were mind-shouting the final verse of the old college song with drunken exuberance:

Eleazar and the Big Chief harangued and gesticulated.

And they founded Dartmouth College, and the Big Chief matriculated.

Eleazar was the fa-cul-tee, and the whole curriculum

Was five hundred gallons of New England rum!

"All my life," Rogi moaned, "haunted by a damn exotic busybody masquerading as the Family Ghost. Why me? Just a quiet man, not very clever, hardly any metabilities worth mentioning. No world-shaker, just a harmless bookseller. Most insignificant member of the high and mighty Remillard Dynasty. Why me? Persecuted! Pushed around with-out any common consideration. Forced into one dangerous situation after another just to carry out your damn Lylmik schemes and forward the manifest destiny of humanity ... unless it all hatched in my own unconscious."

Like starry dandelion puffs, colossal pompoms of Dartmouth green and white exploded high over the Old Row. The wind strengthened, stirring more and more snow into the air.

Patiently, the Ghost said: You and your family were the key that opened the Galactic Milieu to the human race. The work required an exotic mentor because of the psychosocial immaturity of Earth's people and the pivotal role of you Remillards. And while I admit that you were called upon to endure mental and physical hardship—

"You should be ashamed, using me that way. Playing goddam God." Rogi gave a maudlin snuffle. He had the flask out again and emptied it with a single pull. "Nobody ever knew I was the one—your catspaw. Always another pot you wanted stirred, another piece of manipulation, meddling with this Remillard or that one. Uncle Rogi,
galactic agent
provocateur! And you used every dirty trick in the book to keep me in line, tu bâton merdeux."

The Ghost said: Your family would have been aware if we had tried to coerce them, and they never would have accepted direct counsel from nonhumans—especially in the pre-Intervention years. We had to work through you. You were the perfect solution. And you survived.

A cascade of white fire poured from the sky behind the library, silhouetting its lovely Georgian Revival tower. Psychokinetic adepts among the spectators took hold of the falling sparks and formed them into Greek letters and other emblems of college fellowship. The crystal dust of the blown snow began to mix with heavier flakes running ahead of the predicted storm.

Rogi's eyes glittered with fresh moisture. "Yes, I survived it all. A hundred and sixty-eight winters and still going strong. But good old Denis had to die before he ever reached Unity, and Paul and his poor Teresa ... and Jack! My Ti-Jean, the one you exotics call a saint—for what good it does him. You could have prevented all their deaths, and the billions of deaths in the Rebellion! You could have had me warn Marc, shown me some way to stop him. You could have used me prop-erly, you cold-hearted monster, and nipped the conspiracy in the bud before it ever came to war!"

The Ghost said: It had to happen as it happened. And in your own heart, Rogatien Remillard, you know that the tragedies brought about a greater good.

"Not for Marc! Not for poor Marc the damned one. Why did he have to end that way? My little boy! I think he loved me more than his own father—nearly as much as he loved Ti-Jean. He almost grew up in my bookstore. My God, he teethed on a mint copy of Otto Willi Gail's
By Rocket to the Moon!
"

The Ghost said: So he did ... I remember watching him.

"And yet you stood by and let him become the greatest mass murderer in human history—that brilliant misguided man who could have done so much good, if only you'd guided
him
instead of using an impotent old fart like me as your puppet."

The fireworks were reaching a crescendo. Great jets of vermilion fire rose from the four points of the compass behind the trees and nearly converged overhead. In the dark at the zenith, in the midst of the glare, there appeared a dazzling white star. It vibrated and split in two and the paired lights began to orbit a common center, drawing intricate figures like laser projections. The stars split again and again; each set drew more detailed designs about the central focus until the sky was covered with a blazing mandala, a magical pattern of spinning wheels within ornate wheels, white tracery in ever-changing motion.

Then it froze. It was fire-lace for a moment, then broke into fine shards of silver that still held the wondrous pattern. The night was webbed in a giant constellation of impossible intricacy. Down on the campus the crowd released a pent-up breath. The tiny diamond-points faded to darkness. The show was over.

Uncle Rogi shivered and pulled his muffler tighter. People were hurrying away in all directions now, fleeing the cold. The band finished playing "The Winter Song" and withdrew into the shelter of the Hanover Inn, there to drink the health of Eleazar Wheelock and many another Dartmouth worthy. Sleigh bells jingled, the wind roared in the white pines, and fresh falling snow curtained off the tall sculpture of the Tanu knight on the Dartmouth College Green.

"Whatever you want," Rogi told the Ghost, "I won't do it."

He darted off across rutted Wheelock Street, dodging a Model A Ford, a wasp-colored Ski-Doo, and a replica post-coach of 1820 vintage carrying a party of riotous Poltroyans.

The unseen presence dogged Rogi's heels. It said: This is the centennial year of the Intervention, 2113, and a year significant in other ways as well.

"Et alors?" sneered Rogi loftily. He headed back on Main Street alongside the hotel.

The Ghost was cajoling: You must undertake this last assignment, and then I promise you that these visitations will end ... if at the end you wish it so.

"The devil you say!" The bookseller came to a sudden stop on the brightly lit sidewalk. There were roisterers all around, shouting to one another and filling the aether with farspoken nonsense. The celebrating students and visitors ignored Rogi and he in turn shut out all perception of them as he strained his mental vision to get a clear view of his tormentor. As always, he failed.
Frustration
brought new tears to his eyes. He addressed the Ghost on its intimate mode:

Thirty goddam years! Yes, thirty years now you've let me alone, only to come back and say you want to start all over again. I suppose it's to do with Hagen and Cloud. Well, I won't help you manipulate those poor young folks—not even if you bring a whole planetful of Lylmiks to lay siege to my bookshop. You exotics don't know how stubborn an Earthling can be till you try to cross an old Canuck! To hell with you and your last assignment—et va te faire foutre!

The Ghost laughed. And the laugh was so different from its characteristic dispassionate expressions of amusement, so warm, so nearly human, that Rogi felt his fear and antagonism waver. He was overcome by a peculiar sense of déjà vu.

Then he was startled to discover that they had already reached South Street and were just across from The Eloquent Page, his bookshop. In this part of town, away from the college buildings and drinking establishments, the sidewalks were nearly deserted. The historic Gates House, with his shop on the first-floor corner and the white clapboard of the upper storeys blending into the thickening storm, had only a single lighted window in the north dormer: the sitting room of his third-floor apartment. He hustled up the steps into the entry on Main Street, pulled off a glove, and thumbed the warm glowing key-pad of the lock. The outer door swung open. He looked over his shoulder into the swirling snow. The laughter of the Ghost still rang in his mind.

"Are you still there, damn you?"

From inside the hallway, the Ghost said: Yes. You will not refuse me, Rogi.

The bookseller cursed under his breath, stepped inside, and slammed the door. Stamping his feet, he shook himself like an old hound and untwined the red muffler. "Go ahead—coerce me! But sooner or later I'll break away, and then I'll sic the Magistratum on your self-righteous, scheming ass! I'm a Milieu citizen and I've got my rights. Not even the Lylmik can violate the Statutes of Freedom and get away with it."

The Ghost said: You're half drunk and wholly ridiculous. You've worked yourself into a frenzy without even knowing what my request is.

Rogi rushed up the stairs, past the doors of darkened offices on the second floor, until he came to his own aerie. He fumbled in his pocket for the famous key ring with its gleaming red fob.

"You've set your sights on Hagen and Cloud—or on their kids!" he said wildly. He flung the door open and nearly tripped over Marcel, his great shaggy Maine Coon cat.

The Ghost said: My request does concern them, but only indirectly.

Outside, the snow hissed against the double-glazed windows. The old wooden building responded to the storm's pressure with dozens of secret little noises. Rogi slouched into his sitting room. He dropped his coat and scarf over a battered trestle bench, sat down in the cretonne-covered armchair in front of the standing stove, and began to take off his boots. Marcel circled the bench purposefully, bushy tail waving. He broadcast remarks at his master in the feline telepathic mode.

"In the right coat pocket, probably frozen stiff," Rogi told the cat. Marcel rose on his great hind legs, rummaged with a forepaw that would have done credit to a Canada lynx, and hooked a doggie-bag of French fries left over from Rogi's supper. Uttering a faint miaow, incongruous for such a large animal, he transferred the booty to his jaws and streaked out of the room.

The Ghost said: Can it be the same Marcel, food-thief extraordinaire?

"The ninth of his line," Rogi replied.
What do you want?

Once again the strangely evocative laughter invaded Rogi's mind, along with reassurance:

You have nothing to be afraid of this time. Believe me. What we want you to do is something you yourself have contemplated doing from time to time over the past twenty years. But since you're such a hopeless old flemmard, you've put it off. I've come to make sure you do your duty. You will write your memoirs.

The bookseller gaped. "My ... my memoirs?"

Exactly. The full history of your remarkable family. The chronicle of the Remillards as you have known them.

Rogi began to giggle helplessly.

The Ghost went on: You'll hold nothing back, gloss over no faults, tell the entire truth, show your own hidden role in the drama clearly. Now is the appropriate time for you to do this. You may no longer procrastinate. The entire Milieu will be indebted to you for your intimate view of the rise of galactic humanity—to say nothing of Hagen and Cloud and their children. There are important reasons why you must undertake the task immediately.

Rogi was shaking his head slowly, staring at dancing pseudoflames behind the glass door of the stove. Marcel strolled back into the room, licking his chops, and rubbed against his master's stockinged ankles.

"My memoirs. You mean, that's
all?
"

It will be quite enough. They should be detailed.

Again the old man shook his head. He was silent for several minutes, stroking the cat. He did not bother to attempt a thought-screen. If the Ghost was real, it could penetrate his barrier with ease; if it was not real, what difference did it make? "You're no fool, Ghost. You know why I never got around to doing the job before."

The Ghost's mental tone was compassionate: I know.

"Then let Lucille do it. Or Philip, or Marie. Or write the damned thing yourself. You were there spying on us from the beginning."

You are the only suitable author. And this is the suitable time for the story to be told.

Rogi let out a groan and dropped his head into his hands. "God—to rake up all that ancient history! You'd think the painful parts would have faded by now, wouldn't you? But those are the most vivid. It's the better times that I seem to have the most trouble recalling. And the overall picture—I still can't make complete sense of it. I never was much good at psychosynthesis. Maybe that's why I get so little consolation from the Unity. Just a natural operant, an old-style bootstrap head, not one of your preceptor-trained adepts with perfect memorecall."

Who knows you better than I? That's why I'm here myself to make this request. To give help when it's needed—

"No!" Rogi cried out. The big gray cay leapt back and crouched with flattened ears. Rogi stared pointedly at the spot where the Ghost seemed to be. "You mean that? You intend to stay around here prompting me and filling in the gaps?"

I'll try to be unobtrusive. With my help, you'll find your own view of the family history clarifying. At the end, you should understand.

"I'll do it," Rogi said abruptly, "if you show yourself to me. Face to face."

Your request is impossible.

"Of course it is ... because you don't exist! You're nothing but a fuckin' figment, a high-order hallucination. Denis thought so, and he was right about the other loonies in the family, about Don and Victor and Maddy. You tell me to write my memoirs because some part of my mind wants to justify the things I did. Ease my conscience."

Would that be so terrible?

Rogi gave a bitter laugh. The cat Marcel crept back on enormous furry feet and bumped his forehead affectionately against his master's leg. One of Rogi's hands automatically dropped to scratch the animal's neck beneath its ruff. "If you're a delusion, Ghost, then it means that the triumph of Unified Humanity was nothing but the result of an old fool's schizophrenia. A cosmic joke."