INTERVENTION (75 page)

TREMBLAY
:
Papa why are you black now!

O'CONNOR
:
The Absolute is black and I reside there. When there was neither sun nor moon nor earth nor planets nor starry universe there was the dark and in it was calm and an end and there will be again.

TREMBLAY
:
Black the deep black the inaccessible black from which all things come and to which they go ...

O'CONNOR
:
Yes! Clever son beautifulbrained son to see in the dark the form of the Formless the meaning of the enigma yes yes the source of life is death and all light finds its end in deep night in the negation of the Absolute.

TREMBLAY
:
God!

O'CONNOR
:
He is light we reject him and his burning.

TREMBLAY
:
No no no LIGHT CREATION LIFE GROWTH DIFFERENTIATION COMPLEXIFICATION MENTATION COADUNATION UNITY LIGHT...

O'CONNOR
:
A sham a joke a cruel hoax they lead only to pain. Creation groans! He is a God of pain we are born in it live in it die in it he wills it for all his creatures for all growth is pain inescapable. But there is a secret way I know a way I share with my beloved ones in a great antithesis! We do not create we destroy the dark is our birthright our Black Mother whose belly is a void that takes us in... dam dham nam tam tham dam dham nam pam pham... to consummation.

TREMBLAY
:
Papa Papa I don't understand I'm afraid of the dark!

O'CONNOR
:
Darkness is fearful only when viewed by the fleeing turn around accept it embrace it know it love it.

TREMBLAY
:
But how!

O'CONNOR
:
Make your own darkness behind closed eyes follow me along the Left-Hand Path an old neglected way but one that annihilates the corrupting Light the painful Light follow me into the Black and together we will know a moment of ineffable beauty the one perfect and final joy: leading all into the void.

TREMBLAY
:
I understand. It's true. I'm tired of pain. Show me. Papa show me...

O'CONNOR
:
Come.

***

O'CONNOR
: ...Gerry? Can you hear me, boy? Gerry?

TREMBLAY
: God. Kier? What happened. Jesus, did I pass out?

O'CONNOR
: Seems like it. How do you feel now?

TREMBLAY
: A little woozy. But I think I'm okay. Dammit, there's this flu thing going around back East...

O'CONNOR
: I'm going to take you out to the house and we'll have Doc Presteigne check you out.

TREMBLAY
: Listen, I'm feeling okay. Really!... Now, this lobbying you wanted me to do on President Baumgartner. You realize that a freshman Congressman's influence on a President of the opposition party is going to be just about nil—

O'CONNOR
: Not so. He's going to like you, Gerry. And listen to you! He will do as you want as I want just as you will...

TREMBLAY
: You want me to coerce him.

O'CONNOR
: That's an ugly word.
Persuade
him!...And the message you'll be getting across is a very important one. We were discussing it just before you dozed off on me, boy. Do you remember? We want Baumgartner to
keep pressing for antioperant legislation.
The Benson Act is dead, but we can lobby for other laws that will be in our best interests. Laws restricting operants. Who is in a better position to warn the country about operancy's dangers than you, Gerry? You've seen them conspiring to take power... You know what mischief ambitious or evil-minded heads are capable of.... Don't you Gerry?
Don't you!

TREMBLAY
: Yes.

O'CONNOR
: President Baumgartner has begun to get soft. We put him in the White House and now that he's a shoo-in for a second term the bastard's forgotten who his friends are! His mind is normal, but he's a tough nut, Gerry. He was an astronaut and a corporation president, you know. Nobody's patsy.

TREMBLAY
: Your other people can no longer handle him...

O'CONNOR
: So
you're
going to work on him. Subtly. Using posthypnotic suggestion and subliminal hints most of the time and saving direct coercion for critical situations. He must never have the remotest notion of what you're up to. You'll have to be artful in the presentation of your public persona as well. On the face of it, you'll be a liberal Democrat championing the rights of operant metapsychics and other minorities.

TREMBLAY
: Yes.

O'CONNOR
:
You see my overall plan, don't you Gerry! The Tightness of it the brilliance the inevitability!

TREMBLAY
:
Yes yes oui oui mon cher Papa...

O'CONNOR
: Fine! Now let's get our coats. The rush-hour traffic on the East-West Freeway should be past now, and we'll have an easy trip out to the house. [Touches office-garage key-pad.] Frankie? You want to bring the Bentley around? Thanks a lot.

WASHINGTON, DC, EARTH

20
JANUARY
2005

W
ITH HER WAY
cleared by the Secret Service bodyguard, Nell Baumgartner rushed into the Capitol Rotunda. To be late for her husband's second inauguration! Oh, please, God, she begged. Not that... And the
news!
How would Lloyd react? Should she tell him now or wait until after the swearing-in ceremony?

Agent Rasmussen, holding her arm, said, "It's going to be okay, Mrs. Baumgartner. The Chief Justice is just coming up to the platform. You're going to make it."

The huge white-marble chamber was chilly even though it was packed with people—members of Congress, White House staffers, influential Republicans, and personal friends and relatives of the First Couple. Outside a blizzard was raging, and so the inauguration was being held indoors for the first time since 1985. The blizzard had delayed the First Lady's dash from Reagan Jetport. She had landed in Washington only a half hour earlier after flying from the bedside of her two-year-old granddaughter, Amanda Denton.

The Marine Band finished playing as Agent Rasmussen and the First Lady reached the platform. She composed herself, took a deep breath, and smiled radiantly at her husband. His returning smile echoed relief. The child was going to be all right.

She was dimly aware of people standing close by—the Vice President and his wife; the Senate Majority Leader, Benjamin T. Scrope; the Speaker of the House, Elijah Scraggs Benson; and there was the Party Chairman, Jason Cassidy, and beside him their old friend and long-time supporter, Kieran O'Connor, with his daughter Shannon and his son-in-law Congressman Tremblay. Shannon Tremblay's eyes were wide with concern. Had she heard about little Amanda's crisis? Nell Baumgartner gave the young woman what she hoped was a reassuring wink. An instant later she forgot Shannon as a Bible was placed in her hands—the one she would hold while the President took his Oath of Office.

The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court stepped forward, her face solemn. The President placed his left hand upon the book, which was opened to Psalm 8, the prayer he had recited years ago when he first set foot on the Moon. He raised his right hand.

"I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of the President of the United States and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Then the band was playing, and he was moving to the lectern where he would deliver the Inaugural Address, and she only had seconds to tell him, and she thought,
Should U
And it seemed that a voice was warning her to forbear, to let it be... but she knew what was in the speech Lloyd was about to deliver and she could not let him go ahead without knowing—

The music was drawing to a close. Swiftly, she stepped up to him and touched his sleeve. He turned.

"Little Amanda is all right, Lloyd," she whispered. "The neurologists at Johns Hopkins say it isn't epilepsy at all. Lloyd—our granddaughter is going to be a metapsychic operant. It was the spontaneous breakthrough from latency that caused the convulsions."

The President said only, "They're certain?" And Nell nodded, then stepped back.

The music stopped. All eyes in the Rotunda were on the President. He folded the sheets of paper he had just moments before placed in front of the microphones, and put them into his inside breast pocket. "My friends," he began, "the Inaugural Address I had prepared no longer seems appropriate. In order for you to understand why, I'm going to share with you some very startling news that my wife Nell has just brought to me..."

He paused, passing his hand across his forehead, and there were murmurs of amazement from the audience. But then he straightened and spoke resolutely for ten minutes, and at the end there was a shocked silence, and then subdued applause with a rising undercurrent of voices that the Marine Band finally drowned out with "Hail to the Chief."

Shannon O'Connor Tremblay said: Well Daddy?

And her father replied: It will be up to Gerry and he damn well better not let us down.

FROM THE MEMOIRS OF ROGATIEN REMILLARD

H
ALLOWEEN
2007.

I have a zapshot here before me to jog my memories of that day. It shows three cunning little devils—my great-nephews Philip, Maurice, and Severin, aged ten, eight, and four at the time—costumed as imps for the holiday, in a blatant piece of typecasting, by their long-suffering nanny Ayeesha.

Thanks to Ghostly confidences, I knew at the time that the boys would grow up to be Founding Magnates of the Concilium. Thanks to Ghostly compassion, I did
not
know that one of them would perish in the Metapsychic Rebellion of 2083, fighting to extricate the human race from the Galactic Milieu... But that is another story that must wait to be told. I will write now of events that led to the Intervention, and my own peculiar role as a bit player in them...

All that day, my bookshop had been under siege by poltergeists, for by then Hanover crawled with the offspring of operant metapsychics. Every Halloween, in the old American tradition, local merchants endured an endless stream of costumed youngsters extorting treats, the donation of which was supposed to render one immune from tricks. In my youth, trick-or-treat escapades were tame: soaped windows, upset trash cans, demounted garden gates, toilet-paper festoons on shrubs and—in the case of notorious neighborhood ogres—walks and porches defiled with smashed jack-o'-lanterns and rotten eggs. In the new Age of the Mind, however, Halloween had become the one day in the year when operant youngsters could release their inhibitions more or less with impunity. Reined in by parental coercion the rest of the time, the kids tended to go bananas once they put on their costumes and set out to pillage and plunder. By unwritten law the deviltry was restricted to those under the age of twelve, and no property was to be destroyed or rendered so befouled or bollixed as to require expensive repairs. Aside from that, the sky was the limit.

My bookshop, as I have mentioned, primarily suffered the onslaught of poltergeists. The books on the shelves would dance and tumble to the floor; the window displays (of expendable volumes) were in a perpetual state of manic frenzy; the little customer reading area in the front right-hand part of the store had chairs and ashtrays dancing and rag rugs curling and writhing on the floor. Poor Marcel LaPlume, my huge Maine Coon cat, had retreated to the basement storage room after being harassed one time too many by hailstorms of Cat Chow levitated from his dish and mind-generated static charges that set his fur crackling. I had a big bowl of Snickers candy bars as tribute to the invaders, but as often as not the operant children would thank me for the treat—then pull off the trick anyhow on their way out of the shop.

Another unwritten rule was that the depredations should cease by 2,200 hours. My shop was not ordinarily open so late on weekdays, but only a madman would have closed up early on Halloween and left the premises unguarded. That year, as the evening of pranks came to a close, I wondered why I had not yet been visited by Denis and Lucille's children. As it drew on toward quarter to ten, I concluded that they were saving me until last, and had planned some particularly gross piece of mischief for poor old Uncle Rogi.

My farsense tingled. I looked up from the catalog I had been perusing and caught a glimpse of disappearing horns and red grease-painted small faces outside. My deep-vision identified the lurkers and I braced myself.

The door opened by itself and the chime rang eerily. Three telepathic voices sang:

Did you ever think, as a hearse goes by,
That you might be the next to die?
They wrap you up in a long white sheet,
And bury you down about six feet deep!

Giggles, instantly squelched, came from the mind of four-year-old Sewy. The songsters paused... and I saw coming in the door and inching along the polished floorboards a flood of white, slimy little things—hundreds of them—glistening as they looped and squirmed into my shop. And the inevitable chorus of the old children's song: