INTERVENTION (42 page)

"The conference has nothing to do with Dr. Sampson. It is an entirely different matter."

"Good," said Lucille shortly. Then she relented at Vigdis's hurt reaction to her asperity and apologized. "Don't take me seriously. I'm still tensed up over the experiment... Did I tell you Bill wanted to give me a diamond for Christmas? His late mother's ring. But I refused. As long as I'm still his patient, there mustn't be even a hint of—of our commitment. But the analysis is nearly complete."

She opened the Cat House door and bent down to put Minou inside. The place harbored five Maine Coon cats, three Siamese, and two other Abyssinian kittens, all breeds noted for metapyschic precocity. The animals lounged on carpeted ledges and shelves, peered from padded lairs, slept in baskets, clambered up feline gymnastic equipment, and lurked amid a well-chewed jungle of potted plants. Minou ignored the lot and made a beeline for the feeding station.

"Is it your family's disapproval of Dr. Sampson that makes you so downhearted?" Vigdis asked, bending to scratch the head of a Siamese that had come to caress her ankles.

"They're being very pigheaded, and it's so damned unfair! I thought they'd be happy when I told them Bill wanted me to marry him."

"A psychiatrist and his patient," Vigdis murmured. "There are ethical considerations—"

"To hell with that! And that's not what's bugging Mom and Dad. They don't want me to marry
anyone.
" They don't understand they only know their own stupid fear and Bill the doctor was supposed to cure me of it exorcise it make me normal like them and instead he
loved
it loved
me
and they can't stand that it proves them wrong and proves me good and lovable and them wicked because they hate and fear me and they'll be sorry Bill and I will make them feel so small so ashamed make them bum with shame burn burnburn
BURN WITH SHAME—

The cats shrieked.

As if some switch had been thrown, the room exploded in a clamor of tormented kitten squeals, full-throated Siamese yowls, and the lynx-roars of frenzied Coon cats. The women dashed out into the hall and slammed the door.

"Uff da!" said Vigdis.

Lucille had gone white. "I'm so sorry! The poor little things! God—will I ever get this thing under control?"

Vigdis put an arm about the trembling girl. "It's all right. Your creativity was energized inadvertently. You must expect that to happen sometimes when you are tired or stressed. The cats were not harmed, only frightened."

Lucille repeated dully, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry." Sorry my mind is perverse sorry my folks don't like Bill sorry they fear me
does Bill!
sorry they don't love me but just let
him
love me—

Lucille be strong. You want to be loved of course so do we all.

I think ... he may be afraid too.

Yes. He may. You must face that. Your Bill is a normal.

He understands!

He is twice your age an experienced clinician yes he very likely does understand and I am sure he loves you very much even if he is also afraid. But normal! Oh Lucille my child I should tell you ... but how can I? Your parents may have known in their hearts loved you more than you realized ... but how can I tell you how—

What?

Lucille ... I loved a normal man. We married before my faculties became operant under the tutelage of Professor MacGregor but then afterward the difference the terrible difference I did not want to believe what the wisest operants warned me about I knew my love would be strong enough but in the end Egil divorced me the price paid for becoming operant is permanent alienation from normal human attachments.

I don't believe it!

It is true.

It can't be ... the way you said. Bill loves me! He knows exactly what I am and he loves me.

He cannot know you. Your mind is closed to him. Your true self will always be unknown and you can only love him rejecting lying—

"No!" Lucille said aloud.

The cats had fallen silent and the old building creaked in the blustering wind. Somewhere in an empty office a telephone rang five times before being switched to the answering machine.

Vigdis said, "It's getting late—nearly six. I must go back to the test chamber and finish up." Her mind had veiled itself, withdrawn from the younger woman's defiance. "Please don't forget to meet with Denis before you leave."

Vigdis hurried away and Lucille stood there for several minutes, seething with resentment, before going downstairs to the room on the main floor that had once been the kitchen of the saltbox and now served as a coffee room for the research staff. It had been furnished with cast-off furniture. To honor the holiday season, there was an eighteen-inch spruce tree decorated with multicolored LEDs sitting on an old lab cart in front of the window.

As Lucille entered the room, Denis Remillard turned away from the coffee machine near the Christmas tree, holding two steaming cups. Of course he must have known exactly when she would arrive...

"Good evening, Professor Remillard," she said stiffly. "Dr. Skaugstad said you wanted to see me."

"Sugar?" Denis lifted one of the cups. "The half-and-half is all gone, I'm afraid."

"Black is fine." As if you didn't know!

As always, his mind was fathomless below its socially correct overlay. He was dressed for the weather in a red buffalo-plaid shirt, corduroy pants, and Maine hunting shoes from Bean's—an incongruously boyish bête noire who held out the coffee mug to her with a noncommittal smile. His awful blue eyes were averted, watching the snow outside the window.

"They say we'll get another eight inches before tomorrow. It'll be rough for travel."

Lucille said, "Yes."

"I'm glad that your creativity run was successful. The implications of the mass pickup on the simulacrum are almost more intriguing than the metaconcert effect."

"Vigdis has staked out the metaconcert paper," Lucille said sweetly. "That leaves the mass gain for yours."

Denis nodded, still looking out the window. "You might be interested in an article in the current issue of
Nature.
A man at Cambridge has suggested a mechanism for the psychophysical energy transfer, based on the new dynamic-field theory of Xiong Ping-yung."

"No doubt the Chinese Einstein will connect us mind-freaks to the real universe in due time, and the Triple-A-S will heave a great sigh of relief. But if you don't mind, I'll give the six-dimensional math and lattice-construct theory a miss for now. Too many other things to think about." She set her coffee down, untasted. "Just what was it you wanted to discuss with me, Professor?"

"A certain problem has come to light." Denis spoke slowly, keeping his tone casual. "At parapsychology establishments in California, New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, workers have been approached and offered enormous salaries as an inducement to join a secret unit being formed at the Psychological Warfare School of the Army Research and Development Center at Aberdeen, Maryland. Persons who declined—and we believe most did decline—were then subject to great pressure by the Army representatives. In several cases, the pressure amounted to virtual blackmail. The more polite decliners were urged to set up a psychic-research data pipeline to the Pentagon. The military is particularly interested in the areas of excorporeal excursion, long-distance coercion, and the psychocreative manipulation of electrical and electronic energy."

"The bastards!" Lucille exclaimed. "It's the atomic weapons thing all over again! Whether we like it or not, we're going to be used—"

We are not.

She gaped at him. He turned from the window so that his eyes caught hers for an instant like a cobra mesmerizing a rabbit. An instant later he lowered his gaze and she was left floundering.

He said, "The human mind is not a docile piece of machinery, Lucille—especially not the mind of an operant metapsychic. Perhaps some time in the future we operants may leam to disguise our thoughts so thoroughly that we can deceive one another readily in moral matters—but that time hasn't come yet. Any operant sympathetic to this insane Mind Wars concept will be expelled from our research projects. Sent to Coventry. Thank God the point is moot thus far."

"You're positive nobody's gone over?"

"Nearly so. However, if certain overzealous Pentagon types discover just how close we really are to psychic breakthroughs of global importance, they may resort to more dangerous tactics. The advent of excorporeal excursion alone will turn foreign policy on its ear ... So we won't be able to remain passive in the face of this threat. The people at Stanford are going to blow the whistle on the dirty recruitment tactics—especially the attempted extortion. When the scandal breaks, public and Congressional outrage will dig the grave for the Army's Mind Wars scheme."

"And then they'll leave us alone?"

"I'm afraid not. I'm certain that the military will continue to try to penetrate our research groups for intelligence purposes. But I'm determined that this will
not
happen here at Dartmouth, where so many strong operants are concentrated. So far, we seem to be secure. Very few normals outside of the college administration are aware of what we actually do, and I've examined all of our workers and operant subjects without finding a single person who was suborned by Pentagon head-hunters. That is—I've examined everyone except you."

"Well, nobody's tried to buy me or dragoon me. God help them if they tried!"

"I have to be sure of that," said Denis.

"You—what?"

The eyes took hold of her again.

"I must be quite certain."

He set his coffee mug down beside the little Christmas tree and closed the distance between them. His psychic barricade, that wall of impregnable black ice, was dissolving now and she could see for the first time a hint of the mentality that lay behind. It was even worse than she had feared. The coercion was impossible to resist, as cold and impersonal as the northeast wind driving the blizzard. What a fool she had been to think that he had tried to coerce her before! He'd done nothing—only
talked,
exerted ordinary persuasive force. She had been left free, then, to make her own choice.

Now there was no choice.

Dissolving, berating herself, helpless before his invasion, she could only watch as he posed the questions and read the replies her mind passively delivered up. Humiliated, too supine even to rage, she found herself suddenly alone; and her only memory was of a mind-voice, as unexpected as a razor cut:

Thank you Lucille. All of us thank you. We're very glad that you are one of us...

The window drew her like a magnet. She pressed her nose against the frosty pane and looked out into tumultuous white. The snow-bleared red of his Toyota's taillights shone at the exit of the parking lot and then disappeared.

She was all alone in the laboratory building. A curl of vapor arose from her neglected coffee cup, sitting beside the empty one Denis Remillard had left behind. The Christmas tree blinked against the backdrop of the storm.

One of them.

Am
I one of them?

Lucille turned out the room lights, leaving the little tree lit, and went upstairs to make her peace with the cats before going to supper.

EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, EARTH

11
APRIL
1991

A
CLASSIC SCOTCH
mist fell on the tenements and closes of Old Town, rendering the quaint streetlighting even more inadequate than usual, but the two persons who stalked Professor James Somerled MacGregor had no difficulty at all keeping track of him. His gangly figure was a blazing beacon to the psychosensitive as he tramped through the murk, haloed by a raging crimson aura lanced with occasional fresh bursts of white indignation. His subvocal thoughts, more often than not, were broadcast heedlessly on the declamatory mode.

Two million quid! The bloody cheek of it!

Oh, aye! He'd been expecting something like this to happen once the EE work reached the critical transition from theoretic to practical. He'd alerted the other metapsychology research establishments actively studying the function to keep a sharp watch for attempts at subversion. And now this! The low, furacious skites hadn't made their move in America or India or West Germany—they'd tried it
here,
in Scotland, on his very own patch that he'd taken such pains to secure!

Of course loyal Nigel had told the CIA where to stuff their fewking proposition. Whereupon the spooks had piled insult upon insult by telling him that he couldn't hope for a better offer from MI5, who were hamstrung by recent budget cuts. Then they'd hinted that he would enjoy life a lot more in a nice Maryland condominium than in a guarded compound in the Negev Desert or a GRU facility on the outskirts of beautiful metropolitan Semipalatinsk!

Small wonder that Nigel's creative metafaculty had run slightly amok at that point, setting the Yanks' attaché cases on fire and prompting their hasty withdrawal. Nigel had bespoken his boss at once, and he and Jamie had held a council of war in Nigel's Canongate rooms, with the windows open to disperse the stench of scorched cordovan, and tumblers of Laphroaig to calm their righteous ire. Now that the security of the Edinburgh Parapsychology Unit was compromised, there seemed little hope that they could continue on the cautious schedule of action championed by Denis Remillard and Tamara Sakhvadze and the other operant conservatives, who advocated delaying the public announcement of EE capability until there were at least a thousand adept practitioners scattered around the world. This move on Nigel by the CIA meant that other intelligence agencies would soon be homing in on the EE workers. Once the world militarists became aware of the advanced state of EE, they might risk a neutralization scheme of draconian scope in order to preserve the strategic status quo.

The only thing for it was to do a media demonstration just as soon as possible.

Once the news was out, the risks would be diminished—if not quite eliminated. World opinion would help safeguard the adepts from any blatant pogrom or conscription attempt. Yes ... that was the only way to go. There'd be resistance from Tamara and Denis to overcome. Their timetable had been carefully reasoned. And Denis would certainly balk at participation in a demonstration, since he'd stuck his neck out so far in the publication of
Metapsychology.
Right, then—Jamie would gladly put his own cock on the block. They'd do the media demo right here at Edinburgh University. Probably take until autumn to set it up. Meanwhile, they'd all have to take precautions, just as young Alana Shaunavon had urged that very afternoon. Curious, her having that premonition of danger...