INTERVENTION (41 page)

No wars?

We have never experienced interplanetary aggression. Our Milieu is far from perfect, but its citizens are secure from exploitation and institutionalized injustice. No individual or faction may flout the will of the Concilium. Every citizen-entity works toward universal betterment at the same time that it is encouraged to fulfill its personal potential. Ultimately, the goal of our people is to obtain that mental Unity toward which all finite life aims.

"Grand dieu," I whispered. "£a, c'est la meillure!" Without thinking, I had turned left onto Lebanon, a major thoroughfare. My heart soared like that of a six-year-old on Christmas morning. I had thrust aside all my doubts as to the authenticity of the Ghost. If it was a figment, its delusions were comforting ones. I asked:

How many planets belong to this Milieu?

Thousands. Our present coadúnate population includes some two hundred thousand million entities—but only five races. This is a very young galaxy. Eventually, all thinking beings within it who survive the perilous ascent of technology's ladder will find Unity with us. My own race, which was the first to attain coadunation (the mental state leading to Unity) has the honor and the duty of guiding other peoples into our grand fellowship of the Mind. Nearly a quarter of a million juvenile races are currently under observation, and six thousand of those have a high civilization ... but you humans are the only candidates approaching induction.

Jesus Christ! When I tell Denis—

You will tell no one, least of all Denis. These revelations are for your own encouragement, given because you demanded of me good reasons for your continuing cooperation.

Denis deserves to know!

He would be distracted from his great work. He must go on his own way for now, assisted by you in secret. His trials—and there will be many—will be
his
incentive.

God, you're a cold-blooded bastard! Suppose I tell him in spite of you?

Denis would not believe you. You are being very silly, Rogi. Your obtuseness wearies me.

"Sometimes," I whispered with a certain malicious satisfaction, "I get pretty sick of me, too! Poor Ghost. You picked a weak reed for your galactic shuffleboard game."

There was a spectral chuckle: I myself have had my own ups and downs ... but here we are in front of the real-estate office. Mrs. Mallory awaits your decision on the bookshop rental.

I felt in my hip pocket for the two keys she had given me, one for the Gates House store and one for the apartment upstairs. The two pieces of brass were cool in my hand. God knew what they would unlock in my future.

The Ghost said: I have a small token for you. Look in the gutter.

I did, and there among the leaves and pebbles and gum wrappers was a gleam of red. I picked up a dusty little key ring. At the end of its short silvery chain was a novelty fob, a red glass marble of the type we kids used to call "clearies," enclosed in a wire cage.

Well? asked the Ghost.

Don't rush me, dammit! I said. Then I opened the office door and went in to sign the lease on my haunted bookshop.

HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE, EARTH

22
DECEMBER
1990

T
HE TEST CHAMBER
was heavily insulated against sound, temperature change, and extraneous electromagnetic radiation. Its air was filtered and its lighting dim and blue, which latter turned the ruddy color of the kitten's fur to grizzled gray and its amber eyes to smoky topaz. In the ceiling were video and ciné cameras, radiation detectors, and other environmental monitors, focused on the cat and on Lucille Cartier. The young woman, wired with body-function electrodes, sat in a chair at one end of a heavy marble balance table. The kitten perched opposite her on the table top; the twin EEG transmitters mounted near the inner base of its ears were only two millimeters in diameter and almost completely concealed by the fur. On the table between Lucille and the cat was the ceramic platform of a hermetically sealed, ultrasensitive recording electro-balance. It looked rather like a medium-sized cheeseboard with a glass dome cover.

Vigdis Skaugstad's telepathic voice said: Ready Lucille?

Lucille said: Steady&ready. Minou too.

The kitten said: [Play?]

Lucille said: Soon now wait be good.

Vigdis said: Systems running scale hot GO.

A white baby spot flashed on, illuminating the glass-covered balance plate. Simultaneously the blue lighting faded away, leaving most of the room in darkness. Lucille began to hum monotonously. She was still only imperfectly operant in creativity and the music helped to suppress her insistent left brain and induce the necessary lowering of the intercerebral gradient. She stared at the dazzling balance plate, trying not to "will" too forcefully, urging the primal power that resided in her unconscious mind to flow toward the controlling conscious. In this way primitive humanity had summoned its gods, worked its magic, achieved transcendence, even compelled reality: by bridging unconscious and conscious, right brain and left, in this subtle, quasi-instinctual way that had been all but lost with the advent of the conquering word. Verbalization, a left-brain function, had given birth to human civilization—but at a price. The ancient creative powers were repressed, and lived on mainly in the archetypal guise of muses, those flashes of artistic inspiration or illuminating insight that welled up from the soul's depths almost without volition. And the old magical aspects of creativity, the ability to direct not only the "mental" dynamic fields but also the fields generating space, time, matter, and energy, were relegated to the dreamworld in most individuals.

It had been so for Lucille Cartier until four months earlier. Then, bowing at last to the counsel of her analyst, she had agreed to undertake training at the Dartmouth Metapsychology Laboratory that would raise her latent mind-powers to operancy. "The faculties are part of you," Dr. Bill Sampson had told her, "and you'll have to accept the fact. And leam to control them—or they'll control you."

So she had come at last to the gray saltbox building. To her great relief, Denis Remillard had assigned her a congenial and nonthreatening mentor. Vigdis Skaugstad was a visiting research fellow from the University of Oslo, a specialist in psychocreativity. She was thirty-six, pug-nosed and rosy, with very long flaxen hair that she braided and wound about her head in a coronet. Vigdis's own psychic talents were unexceptional, but she was a gifted teacher; and her tact and empathy had led Lucille to overcome most of her deep-seated repugnance toward the research program—if not her dislike of its young director. Working with Vigdis, Lucille had learned telepathy very easily. This most verbal of the higher powers quickly assumes a "hard-wired" status in the brain of a talented person, as do most of the related ultrasenses. But Lucille's other significant faculty, creativity, had required a tedious, almost Zenlike regimen to raise it to the operant level. It was still far from reliable. Lucille took training exercises almost every day from Vigdis, and at the same time worked toward her doctorate in psychology. Thus far she had sedulously avoided socializing with other operants, except for an occasional lunch with Vigdis.

The laboratory cats, on the other hand, were her dear friends.

The animals were used in many different experiments, especially those involving telepathy, a feline long suit. Lucille's special affinity with the cats had at first provoked jokes among the staff about witches and their familiars; but the joshing had cut off in short order when Lucille seemed to establish a genuine mental linkage with one particular kitten, leading to an apparent creativity manifestation that was having its first controlled test today.

"Ooh, Minou," Lucille crooned aloud. And to the cat: Let's do it baby you and me let's do it together again ... together Minou!

The kitten's large ears swiveled and its pupils widened as it stared fixedly at the shielded balance platform. It saw the image in Lucille's mind and it knew what she was trying to accomplish.

So it helped.

"Minou, Minou, ooh-ooh," sang Lucille.

The little animal's whiskers cocked forward in anticipation. It uttered a barely audible trilling sound, the hunting call of the Abyssinian breed, and its black-tipped tail twitched. Except for its relatively large ears and eyes, its conformation and color were almost exactly those of a miniature puma.

"Ooh-ooh-ooh." Here it comes kitty here it comes...

The insubstantial image, brought forth from Lucille's memory.

[Amplified by kittenish predatory lust. Oh, fun!]

A smudgy cloud had begun to form above the center of the ceramic balance pan. It was ovoid, smaller than an egg, with a pointed anterior and a humped posterior.

"Ooh!"

[JumpjumpNOW!]

Impatiently, the kitten darted forward and batted the glass dome. The psychocreative image shimmered as woman and cat faltered in their mental conjunction, then sharpened as they drew together again.

"Ooh-ooh, naughty Minou, not yet wait until we're through." Good baby yes work with me sit still help MAKE IT keep it under the glass don't let it get away until it's
here
stay stay work with me...

[Mouse!]

Yes.

[MOUSE!]

The form was still translucent, in the early stage of materialization that Vigdis Skaugstad had called "ectoplasmic Silly Putty." But the mousy shape was entirely plausible and becoming more detailed with passing seconds. Snaky little tail. Jet-bead eyes. Tiny ears and whiskers—shadowy, yet, but placed where they belonged. (And how many patient hours had Lucille spent beside the cage in the critter room of the Gilman Biomedical Center, committing those anatomical details to memory so that her mind's eye and creativity function would be able to resummon them whenever she commanded it...)

The illusion became opaque. It settled onto the ceramic balance platform beneath the glass dome. It had four feet with claws, a fur-clothed body that shone sleek under the bright spotlight.

[Warmth of MOUSE smell of MOUSE twitchy allure of MOUSE!]

The kitten crouched, waggling its rump, stamping its hind feet in preparation for the spring—

"Nooh-ooh, ooh-ooh." Not yet Minou not yet wait baby you can't get at it under the glass wait soon soon...

Abruptly, the read-out on the electro-balance went from zero to 0.061 μg. The mouse simulacrum began to move, its eyes sparkling and its nose sniffing. It scuttled obliquely off the pan and went through the thick lead glass of the dome cover, heading for the table edge.

The kitten sprang.

Squeee!

[Gotcha!]

The psychocreative mouse vanished.

Lucille Cartier sat back in her chair and sighed, while the room lighting brightened to normal incandescent and the Abyssinian kitten bounded about, searching for its elusive prey. The test-chamber door opened and Vigdis Skaugstad came in, all smiles.

"Wonderful, Lucille! Did you notice the mass gain?"

"Not really. I was too busy making the mouse squeal. Minou is so disappointed if it doesn't." Lucille reached into the pocket of her flannel skirt and took out a little ball with a bell in it, which she threw to the kitten. Her face was weary and her mind dark.

Vigdis began to disconnect the body-function monitors that had been pasted to the human subject. The kitten abandoned the ball to mount an attack on the dangling electrodes.

"No no, kitty," Vigdis scolded. "Behave yourself—or maybe next time we wire
you.
"

"Minou wouldn't cooperate then," Lucille said, disentangling the small paws. "She won't perform unless the experiment is fun. I should be so lucky."

"It was hard on you?" Vigdis's kind, china-blue eyes were surprised. "But you said doing the materialization was always an amusement for the two of you—and your heart and respiration level were not significantly elevated during the activity."

Lucille shrugged. "But now we aren't just playing. The mouse isn't just a pounce toy, it's an experiment with the data all recorded for analysis."

"But the experiment was a great success!" Vigdis protested. "And not just the materialization—although it was the best you have ever done—but the fact of the metaconcert! This is our first experimental confirmation of two minds working as one. Your EEG and the cat's were like music, Lucille! I shall write a paper: 'Evidence of Mental Synergy in a Human-Animal Psychocreative Metaconcert.'"

"That's a new term, isn't it? Metaconcert?"

"Denis coined it. So much more stylish than mind-meld or tandem-think or psi-combo or those other barbarisms you Americans are so fond of, don't you think?"

Lucille only grunted. She stood up, transferring the kitten to her shoulder.

Vigdis said, "We shall have to repeat the experiment, and similar ones. Eventually, we will want to try the metaconcert with you and a powerful human operant, such as Denis."

At the door, Lucille whirled around. "Not on your life!"

"But he would be the best," Vigdis said, gently reproving.

"Not him. Anybody but him!"

"Oh, my dear. If there were only some way I could help you to overcome your antagonism toward Denis. It was all a misunderstanding, your earlier feeling that he was trying to force you to participate—"

"I have the greatest respect for Professor Remillard," Lucille said, heading out into the hall. "He's brilliant, and his new book is a masterpiece, and he's had the good taste to let me alone during most of my work here. Let's keep things that way ... Now I'll take Minou home, and then I'm off to finish my Christmas shopping."

Vigdis followed as Lucille headed for the Cat House, an opulently furnished playroom where the resident animals ran free. "Lucille, I'm sorry but there is something you must do first. I didn't want to upset you before the run, but it is very important that you speak to Denis before you leave for the Christmas break. He is waiting for you in the coffee room."

Oh
Vigdis!

Lucille you must. Please.

"If he has any more friendly admonitions about Bill, I'm going to be awfully pissed, holiday season or not!" Lucille stormed. "I've had enough flak from my family without Denis adding his contribution."