INTERVENTION (8 page)

I went through all the books in the juvenile department that dealt with the brain, then checked the adult shelves. None of the books even mentioned the mind-powers that Don and I had. The Berlin library was rather small and it had no serious volumes about parapsychology, only a few crank books listed under "Occult Phenomena" in the card catalog. Hesitantly, I went to the librarian and asked if she could help me find books about people who had extraordinary mind-powers. She thought very hard for a moment, then said, "I know the very book!"

She gave me one of the old Viking Portable Novel collections and pointed out Olaf Stapledon's
Odd John
to me. Concealing my disappointment at the fiction format, I dutifully took it home, read it, and had the living hell scared out of me.

The book's hero was a mutant of singular appearance and extremely high mental power. He was Homo superior, a genius as well as an operant metapsychic, trapped in a world full of drab, commonplace normals, most of whom did their fumbling best to understand him but failed. Odd John wasn't persecuted by ordinary humans; there were even those who loved him. And yet he was tormented by loneliness and the knowledge of his uniqueness. In one chilling passage, he described his attitude toward other people:

I was living in a world of phantoms, or animated masks. No one seemed really alive. I had a queer notion that if I pricked any of you, there would be no bleeding, but only a gush of wind. And I couldn't make out
why
you were like that, what it was that I missed in you. The trouble really was that I did not clearly know what it was in
myself
that made me different from you.

John's alienation led him to set up his own self-centered moral code. He financed his ambitions by becoming a ten-year-old burglar; and when he was caught at it by the friendly neighborhood policeman, he had no compunction about murdering the man to escape detection.

Later, when John was in his teens, he merely treated other people as pets or useful tools. He thought great thoughts, used his remarkable talents to make a lot of money, and traveled around the world in search of other mutant geniuses like himself. He found a fair number and proceeded to establish a secret colony on an island in the South Seas. (The inconvenient original inhabitants of the place were coerced into mass suicide; but the superfolk held a nice feast for them first.) Once John and his mutant friends were secure on their island, they set out to organize a combination Garden of Eden (they were all very young) and technocratic wonderland. They were able to utilize atomic energy by "abolishing" certain nuclear forces through mental activity. They had all kinds of sophisticated equipment at their command, yet chose to live in rustic simplicity, often linked telepathically to an Asian guru of like mind who had remained at home in his lamasery in Xizang.

The colony made plans for the reproduction of Homo superior. The young mutants "reviewed their position relative to the universe," attained a transcendental quasi-Unity called astronomical consciousness, embraced the exotic mentalities inhabiting other star-systems—and discovered that they were doomed.

A British survey vessel stumbled onto John's island in spite of the metapsychic camouflaging efforts of the colonists. Once the secret was out, the military powers of the world sent warships to investigate. Some nations saw the colony as a menace; others coveted its assets and schemed to use the young geniuses as political pawns. Attempts at negotiation between Homo sapiens and Homo superior broke down permanently when the Japanese delegate put his finger on the basic dilemma:

This lad [Odd John] and his companions have strange powers which Europe does not understand. But we understand. I have felt them. I have fought against them. I have not been tricked. I can see that these are not boys and girls; they are devils. If they are left, some day they will destroy us. The world will be for them, not for us.

The negotiating party withdrew and the world powers agreed that assassins should be landed on the island, to pick off the supranormals with guerrilla tactics.

Odd John and his companions had a weapon, a photon beam similar to an X-laser, that they might have used to fend off an invasion attempt; but they decided not to resist, since then "there would be no peace until we had conquered the world" and that would take a long time, as well as leaving them "distorted in spirit." So the young mutants gathered together, focused their minds upon their atomic power station, and obliterated the entire island in a fireball...

"You've got to read this story, Don," I pleaded, with my mind leaking the more sinister plot overtones that had frightened me—the hero's icy immorality that contradicted everything I had ever been taught, his awful loneliness, his totally pessimistic view of ordinary mankind faced with the challenge of superior minds.

Don refused. He said he didn't have time and that I shouldn't get worked up over a dumb, old-fashioned book. It had been written in 1935, and by an Englishman! I said it wasn't the story itself but what it said about
people like us
that was important. I bugged him about it and finally wore him down, and he waded through the novel over a period of two weeks, keeping his mind tight shut against me all that time. When he finished he said:

"We're not like that."

"What d'you mean, we're not? Okay—so we aren't geniuses and we'll never be able to make a million bucks on the stock market before we're seventeen like John did, or invent all that stuff or found a colony on an island. But there are things we do that other people would think were dangerous. Not just the PK, but the coercion. You're a lot better at it than me, so you ought to know what I'm talking about."

"Big deal. So I fend off guys in hockey or nudge One' Louie to cough up a little money when he's half lit."

"And the girls," I accused him.

He only snickered, dropped the book into my hands, and turned to walk away.

I said: DonnieDonnie when people findout they'll hate us just like they did Oddjohn!

He said: Make sure they
don't
find out.

***

Don and I were late bloomers physically, puny until we graduated from grammar school—after which we shot up like ragweed plants in July. He was much better looking and more muscular, with a flashing grin and dark eyes that went through you like snapshots from a .30-06. His use of the coercive metafunction that used to be called animal magnetism was instinctive and devastating. From the time he was fourteen girls were crazy for him. Don Remillard became the Casanova of Berlin High, as irresistible as he was heartless. I was his shadow, cast by a low-watt bulb. Don was husky and I was gangling. His hair was blue-black and curled over his forehead like that of some pop singer, while mine was lackluster and cowlicky. He had a clear olive skin, a dimpled chin, and a fine aquiline nose. I suffered acne and sinus trouble, and my nose, broken in a hockey game, healed rapidly but askew.

As our bodies changed into those of men, our minds drifted further apart. Don was increasingly impatient with my spiritual agonizing, my manifest insecurity, and my bookish tendencies. In high school my grades were excellent in the humanities, adequate in math and science. Don's academic standing was low, but this did not affect his popularity since he excelled in football and hockey, augmenting genuine sports prowess with artful PK and coercion.

Don tried to educate me in that great Franco-American sport, girl-chasing; but our double-dating was not a success. I was by nature modest and inhibited while Don was the opposite, afire with fresh masculine fervor. The urges awakened in me by the new flood of male hormones disturbed me almost as much as my repressed metafunctions. In Catholic school, we had been lectured about the wickedness of "impure actions." I was tormented by guilt when I could no longer resist the temptation to relieve my sexual tensions manually and carried a burden of "mortal sin" until I had the courage to confess my transgression to Father Racine. This good man, far in advance of most Catholic clergy of that time, lifted the burden from my conscience in a straightforward and sensible way: "I know what the sisters have told you, that such actions bring damnation. But it cannot be, for every boy entering manhood has experiences such as this because all male bodies are made the same. And who is harmed by such actions? No one. The only person who could be harmed is you, and the only way such harm could come is if the actions become an obsession—as occasionally happens when a boy is very unhappy and shut away from other sources of pleasure. Keep that in mind, for we owe God the proper care of our bodies. But these actions that seem necessary from time to time are not sinful, and especially not mortally sinful, because they are not a serious matter. You recall your catechism definition of mortal sin: the matter must be
serious.
What you do is not serious, unless you let it hurt you. So be at peace, my child. You should be far more concerned with the sins of cheating on school exams and acting uncharitably toward your aunt and uncle than with these involuntary urgings of the flesh. Now make a good act of contrition..."

When I was sixteen, in 1961,I emerged a bit from my broody shell and had occasional chaste dates with a quiet, pretty girl named Marie-Madeleine Fabre, whom I had met in the library. She shared my love of science fiction. We would walk along the banks of the beautiful Androscoggin River north of the pulp mills, ignoring the sulfurous stench and taking simple joy in the dark mirrored water, the flaming maples in autumn, and the low mountains that enclosed our New Hampshire valley. She taught me to bird-watch. I forgot my nightmares of Odd John and learned to react with forbearance when Don mocked my lack of sexual daring.

There were still five of us living at home: Don and I and our younger cousins Albert, Jeanne, and Marguerite. That year we played host to a grand Remillard family reunion. Relatives came from all over New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine—including the other six children of One' Louie and Tante Lorraine, who had married and moved away and had children of their own. The old house on Second Street was jammed. After Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve there was the traditional réveillon with wine, maple candy and barber-poles, croque-cignols and tourtières, and meat pies made of fat pork. Tiny children rushed about shrieking and waving toys, then fell asleep on the floor amid a litter of gifts and colored wrappings. As fast as the big old-fashioned Christmas tree lights burnt out, assiduous boy electricians replaced them. Girls passed trays of food. Adolescents and adults drank toast after toast. Even frail, white-haired Tante Lorraine got happily enivrée. Everyone agreed that nothing was so wonderful as having the whole family under one roof for the holidays.

Seventeen days later, when the Christmas decorations had long been taken down, there was a belated present from little Cousin Tom of Auburn, Maine. We came down with the mumps.

At first we considered it a joke, in spite of the discomfort. Don and I and A1 and Jeanne and Margie looked like a woeful gang of chipmunks. It was an excuse to stay home from school during the worst part of the winter, when Berlin was wrapped in frigid fog from the pulp-mill stacks and the dirty snow was knee-deep. Marie-Madeleine brought my class assignments every day, slipping them through the mail slot in the front door while the younger cousins tittered. Don's covey of cheerleaders kept the phone tied up for hours. He did no homework. He was urged by the high school coach to rest and conserve his strength.

Everybody got better inside of a week except me.

I was prostrate and in agony from what Dr. LaPlante said was a rare complication of mumps. The virus had moved to my testicles and I had something called bilateral orchitis. The nuns had been right after all! I was being punished.

I was treated to a useless course of antibiotics and lay moaning with an ice bag on my groin while Tante Lorraine hushed the solicitous inquiries of little Jeanne and Margie. Don slept at a friend's house, making some excuse, because I couldn't help communicating my pain and irrational guilt telepathically. Marie-Madeleine lit candles to St. Joseph and prayed for me to get well. Father Racine's common sense pooh-poohed my guilt and Dr. LaPlante assured me that I was going to be as good as new.

In my heart, I knew better.

VERKHNYAYA BZYB, ABKHAZIYA ASSR, EARTH

28
SEPTEMBER
1963

T
HE PHYSICIAN PYOTR
Sergeyevich Sakhvadze and his five-year-old daughter Tamara drove south from Sochi on the Black Sea Highway into that unique part of the Soviet Union called Abkhaziya by the geographers. Local people have another name for it: Apsny, the Land of the Soul. Its mountain villages are famed for the advanced age attained by the inhabitants, some of whom are reliably estimated at being more than 120 years old. The unusual mental traits of the isolated Abkhazians are less publicized; and if questioned, the people themselves generally laugh and call the old stories outworn superstition.

Dr. Pyotr Sakhvadze's wife Vera had done so until less than a week ago, on the day she died.

Still numb with grief, Pyotr drove like an automaton, no longer even bothering to question the compulsion that had taken hold of him. It was very hot in the semitropical lowlands and Tamara slept for a time on the back seat of the brand-new Volga sedan. The highway led through tobacco fields and citrus groves and stands of palm and eucalyptus, trending farther inland south of Gagra, where the mountains receded from the coast in the delta of the great River Bzyb. The road map showed no Upper Byzb village, but it had to lie somewhere in the valley. Pyotr turned off the highway onto the Lake Ritsa road and pulled in at a village store at the lower end of the gorge.

"I'll buy us some bottles of fruit soda here," Pyotr said, "and ask the way. We don't want to get lost in the mountains."

"We wouldn't," Tamara assured him gravely.