INTERVENTION (90 page)

Then it was finished.

The devouring darkness vanished. Room light shone on Victor, who regarded me without surprise and beckoned me to come closer and admire what he'd done. It was as if he knew I would recognize the pattern as the evil opposite of Ume's fulfillment of me. He was fully clothed in a gray suit, but every stitch had been burned from the corpse of the woman who lay at his feet. The body was charred and crackling, and up the spine and on the head were seven stigmata of white ash, marking where he had fed from each psychic energy-font in turn—beginning with the most rarefied and continuing to the root. I had no doubt that in place of Ume's joy there had been excruciating pain.

"There'll be more," he told me calmly. "Only I won't have to exert myself in the burning. It's interesting that you understand. I want—I want to know more about what it
is.
I think you may be able to tell me. Am I right?"

"Yes."
No no no no...

Victor laughed. "Come along with me and watch."

***

In my nightmare, I followed him docilely out of the hotel. We went without being challenged to one of the hotel parking lots at the north end of the grounds, where a highway department van stood in the shadows. The rain had nearly stopped but there was still a good deal of lightning flashing in the east, in the direction of the mountain.

I was dimly aware of another man sitting behind the wheel of the van. It was old Pete Laplace, who had worked at the cog during my years at the hotel. I got into the back of the van and we drove off.

Vic said, "The boys ready to take off on sked?"

"Ready as they'll ever be," said a dour Yankee voice. "Poor stupid bastards." He cackled, then swore as the van hit a pothole and lurched. We turned to the right and I knew we were on the back road leading to the cog base station.

"We're going to take my Uncle Rogi along with O'Connor," Vic said. "You three old gaffers ought to enjoy the fireworks together. You get steam up okay?"

"I know what I'm doin'," the oldster snapped. "Just hope t'hell you do, Vic. Still say you shoulda gone in the airyplane."

"Not on your life, Pete. That mob of heads claim to be pacifists, but you don't catch me betting my ass on it ... Slow down, dammit. We're almost to the Upper Falls turnoff."

My personality seemed to have fragmented. One portion was howling in panic-stricken horror, while another quite calmly submitted to Victor's continuing coercive hold, acknowledging him as my master whom I would serve without question. And then there was a third psychic chunk. This was the smallest and shakiest of all, stomped to a frazzle and nearly buried in the mental cataclysm that had overwhelmed me. This part of my mind told me to hang in there and wait for my chance. It was the damn fool part of my personality, so of course it won out. I've often wondered whether other heroes were made that way, too.

The van made a sharp turn and screeched to a halt. Vic and the poisonous old party climbed out. When they returned they were supporting a tottering form. Far be it from the richest man in the world to ride in the back of a muddy van, so they strapped him securely into Vic's seat, and my nephew came back to sit silently with me while we traveled the last few kilometers to the cog railway base station.

The place was dark as the inside of your hat, without a sign of life. But one of the antique engines had its firebox aglow and the steam up, and its smokestack threw sparks on both sides of the track that sizzled as they hit the puddles. Old Pete clambered into the engine cab, and Vic and O'Connor and I got aboard the unlit coach that traveled ahead. No blast on the whistle marked the train's departure. It simply hissed like a fumarole, clanked, and set off chugging and rattling toward the cloud deck that hid the summit.

Victor and O'Connor ignored me completely as they conversed on the intimate telepathic mode. I discovered only one of the infamous secrets that the dying old villain passed on to the hungry young one. God only knows what other bizarre thoughts they shared. They were both madmen by any civilized standard, and yet sane enough to recognize and still embrace the evil that their minds created. They were not mistaken, not misguided or deluded; they were only terribly and mysteriously bent and I have long since given up trying to understand them. The little train climbed valiantly into the sky, taking one to death and the other to oblivion. I could only huddle in my seat, half frozen now that we approached the tree line, praying that one of the unsuspecting operants in the chalet above us would turn his mind downward, penetrate the dense granite bulk that blocked line-of-sight view of this part of the track from the summit, and sound the alarm.

***

The coach tilted more and more steeply and the little engine undertook its most severe challenge—a trestled section called Jacob's Ladder with a grade of more than thirty-seven percent. My night-sight, dimmed by Victor's coercion, saw that O'Connor was clinging like a limpet to the seat in front of him, a grimace of what I took to be excitement distorting his wasted features. We had been passing through dense cloud ever since beginning our ascent of the ladder; but now we broke free as we approached the Westside Trail crossing and there were sudden flashes of lightning from the towering cumulus massed to the east. In another moment it would be possible for us to see the Summit Chalet silhouetted against the skyline ... and the people in the chalet would have a greatly enhanced chance of farsensing us.

But Victor's elderly henchman knew his stuff. The deafening clatter of the cogs gripping the steel rack between the tracks diminished to a portentous clickety-clack, then stopped as the engine ground to a halt. The smoke cloud, blasted by high winds, raced uphill ahead of us. Surely someone would see it—

"It doesn't matter now," Vic said. The locomotive clunked and wheezed and in a moment the rear door of the coach opened and Pete thrust himself in, grumbling about the chill.

"This is it, Vic. Get 'em up here damn quick before we're spotted."

"Higher!" Kieran O'Connor croaked. "I want to see the chalet go!"

"Shut up," Victor said. "Look there—to the north."

O'Connor keened: "Aaah!"

"Now you can get 'er rolling again, Pete!" Victor's voice was triumphant. "Our own X's are on their way in!"

The old man dived for the rear door, which was still open. And at that moment Victor's hold on me eased as he broadcast some powerful farspoken command to the approaching aircraft. I flung myself from my seat, rolled downhill toward the door, and was outside feet-first and tumbling down among the frost-encrusted granite boulders before Vic could stop me. Somewhere in my trajectory I had smashed into that aged rascal, Laplace. I heard his wail echo thinly among the crags, then cut off abruptly.

God—now what? Uphill! Keep as much rock as I could between me and that young devil, Vic, and yell my brains out:

DENIS!DENISTHEY'RECOMINGFORTHECHALETIN AIRCRAFT! DENIS DENIS FOR GOD'S SAKE VIC & O'CONNOR HAVE ARMED AIR CRAFT ATTACKING CHALET—

I hear you Uncle Rogi.

Coughing and gasping with the cold, I toiled upward over the rock-field. Behind me, I heard the engine give a mighty chug, then start uphill once again. Vic had probably taken the controls himself. There were two X-wings and neither of them had navigation lights. Up above the cloud deck, there was enough fitful moonlight shining between the thunderheads to show the planes approaching fast around the shoulder of Mount Clay; but they weren't gun-ships, they were ordinary domestic transports, half the size of the ones used to ferry the Congress delegates up the mountain.

DENIS THEY'RE GOING TO LAND! STOP THEM! ZAP THEM SOMEHOW USE CREATIVE METACONCERT!

I heard for the first time other minds—hundreds of them—but the lightning-fast moral debate was incomprehensible. The pair of X-wings hovered nearly over my head, their roaring drowning out the howl of the wind. Only my continued scrambling kept me from freezing.

DO SOMETHING! I pleaded.

Another mind-voice, one of surpassing power with a signature that was completely unfamiliar, said:

Together! Hit them together! Let me show you how ...

A white fireball soared against the sky, arching over the crest from the direction of the chalet. It struck the central boss of the X-wing rotor housing on the lead aircraft and seemed to be absorbed soundlessly. But the sudden drop in the noise level was the aircraft's engine cutting out.

That's the way! Join with me again. Together...

NO!
another voice pleaded, and I knew it was Denis.

A second ball of psychocreative energy flew up like a meteor and zapped the other X-wing. Both ships were in uncontrolled descent, windmilling with the deactivation of their engines. They pranged in not more than five hundred meters away from me, down the northwestern flank of the mountain. There were no explosions and no flames, and although my ultrasenses were impeded by trauma and the intervening crags, I knew that the occupants of the aircraft had survived and were pulling themselves together to begin a ground assault.

I cried: DENIS THEY CRASHLANDED YOU DIDN'T KILL THEM—

He said: I never tried. Most of us didn't.

I was scrambling uphill as fast as I could. Fortunately, at that point there was a footpath along the right-hand side of the cog track. As I came out of a hollow I saw the train again, chugging slowly along the skyline and trailing its spark-shot plume of smoke.

VICTOR IS DIRECTING ATTACK FROM COG! HIT THE TRAIN!

I heard laughter in the aether:
Yes. Hit the train. Together with me now!

Another bolide arose. This time I saw it materialize just above the chalet roof and move purposefully in a flat trajectory toward the little train. But it faltered in flight and began to wobble, and instead of hitting the engine it bounced along the roof of the coach and then dove down onto the track ahead. There was a sharp flash. The coach bucked and slewed and fell off to the side. The sound waves reached me moments later—a detonation followed by a prolonged grinding crash as the coach left the track and toppled onto the icy boulders. The engine had slammed on its brakes. It screamed to a stop before reaching the damaged section of track and stood silhouetted against moonlit thunderheads on the skyline above me. Its firebox glowed hellishly and the rising gale blasted smoke over its trailing tender. A figure jumped from the engine cab.

UncleRogiD U CKH

I did—just in time. A bullet fweenged off a rock a few centimeters above my head. I had completely forgotten the crashed X-wings and their complement of armed thugs. The warning had come from little Severin, who now told me:

They're creeping upon you they have infrared GET OFF TRAIL!! I'll help create decoybodyglow COME UPMOUNTAIN HURRY!! SLEETSTORM COMING...

I said: Putain de bordel de merde!

Sewy said: You can say that again.

Another bullet struck, far off the mark to my left. Bruised and shivering, I resumed my climb uphill.

MOUNT WASHINGTON, NEW HAMPSHIRE,
EARTH

21
SEPTEMBER
2013

VICTOR REMILLARD GRASPED
the old man by the coat lapels. The head lolled and there was a bleeding gash across the forehead. But Kieran O'Connor was alive.

"What the
hell
did you think you were doing?" Victor shouted. "I should—I should—"

Kieran's eyes opened and he smiled. "You should kill me. But it's totally unnecessary. Let me warn you, however ... one touch of probe or coercion, and I'll never answer your questions. And you do want the answers, don't you?"

They saw one another in the shadowless eeriness of mental vision and ignored the strengthening wind that whistled through the broken coach. Victor was aware for the first time of a deathly stench emanating from the body of the dying man. Through the open shirt, he could see that the telltales of the painkilling mechanism had gone dark. No agony he could inflict on Kieran O'Connor could surpass what Kieran had already freely embraced.

"You took charge of those operants when Denis wouldn't." Victor was accusative. "You knit them together in some kind of mental unit and squeezed out those globs of energy that downed the aircraft and derailed the train."

"The procedure is called metaconcert," Kieran told him. "An idea quite foreign to
your
mentality. I wasn't at all sure that I could work it. With my own people, the results have generally been unsatisfactory. But these fully operant minds ... marvelous!"

"You fucking old bastard! You shot down my men—tried to kill them!"

"Nonsense. The craft are engineered to soft-land in case of power failure. Only the incompetence of your pilots and the rough terrain caused the damage, and most of your people were uninjured."

"Then why?"

Kieran indicated the Summit Chalet, blazing like a jewel box on the mountain above them. "They needed teaching, these silly pacifists. A revelation of their own power. The Russian operants have already learned the lesson and so have a few other groups. But these idealist leaders resisted the inevitable. They were too much influenced by your brother and MacGregor. An aggressive metaconcert was unthinkable for such minds—until they were given suitable incentive."

"We'll knock them out! Your scheme—whatever the hell it is—can't work. The main vanguard of the local Sons of Earth took out the State Police barricade at the same time that the X-wings took off from Berlin. They're coming up the Carriage Road in trucks and four-wheelers right now. Even if that bunch in the chalet has called for outside help, it can't get here in time ... and you won't pull your metaconcert trick again."

Kieran was chuckling soundlessly, his breath forming small puffs of vapor in the freezing air. He said: Of course not it's no longer necessary NOW THEY KNOW HOW they are consecrated to the Mother without realizing it O Her jests O Her infinite wisdom behold the final generation shall call Her blessed—

Victor let go of the old man's coat. Kieran slumped back against the cracked windowpane, eyes closed, breathing in raspy bursts. Victor said, "I'm not going to waste any more time listening to your crazy shit. Whatever scheme you cooked up—whatever way you planned to use me and my people—it's not going to work. I'm calling off my men from the X-wings and we're getting the hell off this mountain. The Sons can watch their own asses and take the blame—"