INTERVENTION (86 page)

"Along with other unscheduled diversions."

Pyotr eyed Remillard with trepidation. "You think there will be serious trouble?"

"Some kind of trouble. We're doing our best to make certain that it's not serious."

"One would think that in a great and powerful country like the United States, such threats to public order would not be tolerated."

Remillard laughed shortly. "We have a saying: 'It's a free country.' And it is, Dr. Sakhvadze—for better and sometimes for worse. The Sons of Earth and the other antioperant crazies can demonstrate against us to their heart's content just as long as they don't trespass on the private property of the resort. They got a little overenthusiastic last night, and a few of them ended up in the slammer, but the mob was still unfocused. Disorganized. What we're afraid of is that another element may be moving in—a more professional type of troublemaker."

"Why don't your EE operatives investigate and forestall these—these—"

"Goons," Remillard supplied. "I'm sure that New Hampshire is doing its best. And my nephew's people have an informal group of EE watchdogs keeping an eye out. But it's the old problem in EE surveillance, Doctor—given a limited number of pEEps, where do you look?"

The old psychiatrist rose to his feet. "Quite so. Well, I think I shall go back to the hotel. It would be prudent of me to return before my grandchildren miss me. The demonstration last night was very worrying to them. They warned me not to go out alone."

Remillard still sat on one of the benches, tossing a key ring with a colorful fob from one hand to the other and frowning thoughtfully. "They're quite right to worry. It was a nasty moment when the pickets broke through the outer line of security guards and charged down the hotel driveway. The mental vibrations scared the hell out of me, I can tell you ... It was really a primitive kind of metaconcert, that mob mind. A mass mentality with an identity and a will of its own—just for those few minutes, until the impetus faltered and the thing shattered into individuals again. Thank God there weren't more than a couple of hundred out there ... I couldn't sleep a wink last night after it was over."

"And so you came out here."

Remillard nodded. "A long time ago I worked for the hotel. This little shelter out on the golf links used to be one of my favorite thinking spots." He flipped the key chain high, snatched it out of the air with one hand, and stuffed it into his pocket. "But I guess I've thought enough for this morning! Time for breakfast, and then I'll have to make arrangements for a special power-source for Professor MacGregor's doohickey."

"Shall we walk back together?" Pyotr suggested. "Then I will have complied with my grandchildren's directive at least partially, and they will have no occasion to scold me."

Remillard hauled himself up and stretched. "Those young fussbudgets give you a hard time, you just send 'em on to me! Let's go."

Pyotr laughed. "Fussbudgets! Doohickey! What a colorful language English is."

"I don't know that those words are English, Doctor—but they're sure Yankee. Just like me."

Pyotr's eyes gleamed. "Yes ... I do recall now that you are a native of this region, Mr. Remillard. Perhaps you will be able to tell me whether or not there are ever any earthquakes hereabouts?"

"Why, yes. We do get one, very rarely."

"I knew it! I knew it!" Pyotr exulted; and then at the puzzled expression on the other man's face, he apologized. "I will explain my strange question in just a moment. But, please—first I have one other urgent query: What is kryptonite, and why do the Sons of Earth covet it?"

Rogatien Remillard exploded in laughter.

"But it was on the placards of the demonstrators!"

Still chuckling, Remillard asked, "Have you ever heard of Superman?"

"Nietzsche's famous Übermensch? Most certainly."

Remillard regained his composure with some effort. "Not that Superman. Another one, a kind of American legend."

"I have never heard of him, no. But I would be most interested to leam about this folkloric hero. I presume there are mythic analogs to the operant condition in the American Superman's tale?"

"I never really thought about it that way—but I guess there are."

Together, the two of them started back for the resort hotel, with Rogi telling the story slowly and carefully so that the old man would be sure to get the joke.

***

"The Gi! Of course it was the Gi," Homologous Trend said. "One is most vexed with the silly things! What
did
they think they were playing at?"

"No real harm has been done," said Asymptotic Essence. "Let one's tranquillity prevail. There was only a minimal matter-distortion effect. One doubts whether any seismograph in use among the Earthlings would have been able to record the anomaly at all."

"How in the world did they do it?" Eupathic Impulse was more intrigued than appalled, now that it was plain that no calamity had taken place.

"The phenomenon was generated by an empathy spasm of the collective Gi conscious," Noetic Concordance explained, "that took place as they commiserated with the aged Earthling's poignant meditations. The harmonic passed from the mental lattices to the consonant geophysical ones, setting off the tremor. One notes that the
reverse
of the phenomenon is common enough. Trust the Gi to come up with a unique twist."

"Trust them to come up with arrant nincompoopery," said Trend. "One is strongly inclined to excuse the Gi Fleet from further participation in this convocation. Given the delicacy of the approaching climax, the consequences of its lapse could have been extremely serious."

"The Gi are contrite," Essence said. "They have taken our rebuke to heart. They pledge that they will henceforth control the racial tendency to emotional ebullience."

"They'd jolly well better," Trend declared, "or they can watch the finale from the backside of Pluto! Don't they realize that Unifex is in the process of exerting Its ultimate influences? As It draws the skeins of probability taut, the slightest skew off the median may confute the solidifying nodes."

"Surely not," Eupathic Impulse protested. "Not on the very threshold of Intervention!"

"The resolution rests now with the operant Earthlings," Trend told the other three, "and possibly with the great Interloper Itself, whose ways remain as mystifying as ever. The rest of us are permitted only to watch and pray. Join with me, fellow entities, to remind the fleet of this solemn fact."

The four Lylmik minds projected the thought, using the imperative mode; and it was affirmed by each and every one of the invisible starships hovering expectantly about the planet Earth—ships of the Krondak Polity, the Poltroyan, the Simbiari, and even the penitent Gi—summoned from every part of the 14th Sector of the Galactic Milieu in hopes of hearing the Intervention signal that only Atoning Unifex might utter.

Together with the great living cruiser of the Lylmik Supervisors, the convocation of exotic vessels numbered twenty thousand seven hundred and thirty-six.

***

The main dining room of the hotel was crowded for breakfast; but because most of the guests were operants who exerted effortless subliminal compulsion upon the hard-working waitrons, things ran very smoothly. None of the service personnel realized that they were being gently coerced. Nevertheless, because their minds were in a receptive frame, they were able to visualize the needs of the patrons even though they themselves were normals. There were no miswritten orders, no tables that were neglected while others were overserviced, no perfectly cooled cups of coffee topped off on the sly by overzealous pot-wielders. There was not even much noise, since the delegates who had gathered for this final day of the Metapsychic Congress did most of their conversing on the intimate telepathic mode—cool and smiling on the outside while they voiced their apprehensions or complaints mentally.

Rogi came into the dining room after seeing Pyotr safely to the elevator and waved off the maîtress d'. "Thanks, Linda. I'll just join my family."
But send somebody pronto to take my order I'm starving to death there's a good kid...

Lucille and Denis and their three oldest children were well into their meal as Rogi slipped into the empty chair at the big round table near the window, sitting between Philip and Severin. A waiter appeared at once and Rogi ordered oeufs dans le sirop d'érable and hot sourdough bread.

Yucko!

The telepathic critique slipped out of the mind of ten-year-old Severin as the rest of the family greeted Rogi verbally. Lucille looked at her son and the boy gave a start and sat up very straight. He said, "I beg your pardon, Uncle Rogi. It was rude of me to make such a comment."

"De rien." Rogi smiled. "Eggs in maple syrup are an old-fashioned Franco dish. Even though they aren't on the menu, the chef knows well enough how to prepare them. When I was a child my Aunt Lorraine used to make them for us on special occasions ... when our spirits were in need of a lift."

"It's that kind of a day," Denis conceded.

"The vibes," Philip observed, "are mucho malific."

"And two carloads of deadheads just showed up at the main gate to start picketing!" Severin added.

Lucille said: Sevvy. How many times must I tell you not to use that epithet particularly in vocal speech when there are normals about who may hear you...

The little boy sighed. "I'm sorry that I used the insulting expression," he mumbled; but his farspeech, imperfectly directed to his two older brothers, belied the apology:

Well they
are
dead from the neck up and they hate our guts and right this minute do you know what they're hollering at the delegates coming in from the other hotels? they're hollering FREAKS&HEADS! FREAKS&HEADS! YOUR MA SHOULDA KNOWED YOU WERE BETTER OFF DEAD! so who's really the deadhead huh? maybe we are to let 'em get away with that shit we should do like the Russians and show 'em what Heads can do to defend themselves if Assholes mess with us—

Denis said:
Severin.

Severin said: Oops.

Philip and Maurice, their eyes on their plates and their barriers in place, sat very still.

Denis said: Severin your Mama and I felt that you were mature enough to come to this Congress to participate in the life of the adult operant community at this crucial stage in our evolution. Some of the input you've experienced here is positive and some is negative but all of it should nurture mental growth.

"Yes, Papa," Severin said. But I just wish there was some way we could
make
the normals stop hating us
make
them like us for their own good and ours too—!

"Learning to like someone," said Severin's oldest brother Philip sententiously, "as opposed to the spontaneous goodwill experienced be tween compatible personalities, may take considerable time and require a large expenditure of psychic energy. Tolerance is particularly difficult for normals—who lack the insight faculties that we operants tend to take for granted. Normals almost invariably form value judgments according to prejudicial or superficial criteria."

"For example," Maurice chimed in, "a normal would look at Severin and see only a scowling young pipsqueak with egg on his tie ... whereas we, using metapsychic perceptions, can scrutinize his very soul and realize that beneath his unprepossessing exterior lurks a truly depraved little pillock."

I'll get you guys!
Severin declared.

Boys! said Lucille.

Rogi laughed. "Yes, they're boys, all right."

Denis glanced at his watch. "Professor Malatesta's symposium on psychoeconomic vector theory starts in five minutes in the Gold Room. Philip and Maurice—you won't want to be late."

"No, Papa." Still chortling mentally, the pair bade courteous farewell and sauntered out of the dining room. At sixteen and fourteen, they were both already taller than their father. Philip was doing postgraduate work in bioenergetics at Harvard. Maurice, winding up his B.A. requirements at Dartmouth, was toying with the notion of taking a degree in philosophy before entering medical school.

Rogi said to Denis and Lucille: There was an ugly undertone in that little bit of by-play among the boys. I think all three of them are scared silly.

Denis said: You're right of course.

Lucille said: None of them has ever had to face such a concentration of enmity before. You know what an operant sanctuary Hanover is. Philip's had a few disagreeable experiences at Harvard but that place is really too hypercivilized to permit any serious incidents. This encounter with the Sons of Earth in all their deep-dyed yahoo splendor has shaken my babies rather badly. One's first meeting with hatred en masse is apt to do that.

Rogi said: You might want to consider sending the kids home.

Denis said: The security people will keep the situation under control. The boys will have to face situations like this sooner or later. They may as well do it with the support of their mental peers.

Rogi said: Even Sewy? Denis he's
tenl

Denis asked his son, "What do you think about going home from the Congress a little early? You've had five days' worth. Phil could drive you and Maury to Hanover—"

Severin's face crumpled. "And miss the banquet on top of the mountain? When it might even
storm
up there?"

Denis tried not to smile. "I was concerned that the unpleasant aetheric nuances from the demonstrators might be upsetting."

Severin glumly stirred his cold scrambled eggs with a fork. "I can cope, Papa." ... But those ol' Sons better not mess with me!

Lucille said, "If you do stay we'll expect you to behave like an adult, Sewy. An operant adult."

"I promise to do my best, Mama."

"Good. Finish your breakfast then." She glanced appealingly at Rogi, posing a mental question: Would it be too much trouble for you to keep him with you for a while? Both Denis and I must sit on a rather boring panel.

Rogi said, "If you two would like to abandon us, feel free. Sewy and I will take our time eating and meet you later."

The waiter arrived with Rogi's meal as Denis and Lucille left. The boy showed immoderate interest in the big dish of eggs poached in hot maple syrup. They were accompanied by a goblet of freshly squeezed pink grapefruit juice and a smoking-hot loaf that sat on its own miniature breadboard. Rogi smacked his lips and tucked his napkin boldly into his collar. He turned the loaf on its side and sawed off a couple of aromatic slices, passing one to Severin.