The Nonborn King
Manetti finally sat down on a protruding rock and gazed at the mountain looming above them. "What a perfect place this is to begin the ascent! How do you hke the West Col for starters?"
"Quite feasible, I should say. We're at—er—5924 meters, which leaves quite a respectable jaunt to the summit." His voice lowered. "It was the reason I came to the Pliocene, you know. To find this, if it existed, and climb it. Well—I've got this close."
"Maybe it'll be a short war."
Basil was looking around the perimeter of the vadey with a small monocular. "Devilish tight place to get into without an aircraft. You'd have to come in from the north. Almost a straight-up slog from the Wallis valley of the Rhône. A logistic nightmare."
"No sweat as long as you have the two flyers tucked away in the Vosges. Then later, when the Lowlife Air Arm is trained, you can shift this frozen fleet to a more convenient spot. None of my business, of course ... but aren't your precautions against theft of the flyers just a trifle extreme?"
"Chief Burke's orders, old chap. Like the biblical centurion, I am merely a man subject to authority. And rather glad to be."
Aldo got up and stretched. "Well, we might as well call down the others, then get back to the Ship's Grave for the second batch. Looks like we'll have no trouble getting them all ferried today."
"We'll have to post extra guards at the crater tonight," Basil said as they walked back to their flyer. "With only the two aircraft left now to take us back home ... well, 'Quis custodiet ipsos custodes,' as your old countryman Juvenal will one day remark."
"I might be tempted myself," Aldo laughed, "if I only knew how to drive one of the things. And if I wasn't so eager to climb Rosa with you some fine day, compare mio."
"We're so close to finishing our task, Aldo. If something should go wrong now—"
"What could? Tomorrow, we fly home!"
Basil's expression was pained. "There have been—er—hints of trouble."
"Thongsa again?" Aldo's lip curled. "Not to worry. Phronsie's got that little pillroller so scared he won't even go to the loo without company."
"Something more ominous, I'm afraid. I shouldn't burden you, Aldo. As expedition leader, I shall have to deal with the matter as best I can."
"A centurion's lot is not a happy one. He had to give orders as well as take them, I recall."
The two of them crunched along wordlessly for a few minutes. In spite of the altitude and the surrounding snowfields, the sun was hot They stripped off their balaclavas and opened their survival vests. The parked aircraft was still half a kilometer away.
"If Chief Burke were here," Basil said, "he'd make the necessary command decision in a trice. I'm afraid my own blood's too thinned by centuries of civilization to make me properly ruthless ... May I pose an abstract problem to you?"
The suddenness of the question took Aldo off guard. "Go ahead."
"Suppose that last night a trusted member of our company proposed treason, speaking to another member of our company. The second member, being secretly one of my—er—enforcers, notified me of the treacherous proposition after having temporized with the potential renegade."
"Jesus H. Christ!"
"Suppose this potential traitor is a person who has behaved in an exemplary fashion up until now. Suppose the person is possessed of extraordinary talents that we had counted on utilizing when we begin adapting the aircraft for combat. Suppose this person is not a pilot and therefore hoped to suborn one in order to implement his treason—"
"To do what, for God's sake?"
"To turn over an aircraft, and the approximate location of this parking site, to Aiken Drum. In return for the usual perquisites."
"Keeping this abstract," Aldo muttered, "you seem to have two fairly clear choices. Numero uno. You kill the fucking bastard out of hand before he finds himself a pilot with shakier loyalty. Numero due—and this one holds good only if the guy's ready valuable—you lock him up tighter than a Lylmik's bum and let him live as long as he cooperates."
Basil pursed his lips and nodded in agreement. "And which of those options, in your view, represents the most prudent choice?"
"Well ... so far, the guy's done nothing but talk. Right?"
"Correct. And the proposition made to my informant was couched in the most ambiguous possible terms. Its basic intent was plain, however."
"Oh, hell, I don't know," Aldo said. "You've only got this peacher's word. What if he read the other guy wrong? What if your boy has some private little axe of his own to grind?" Manetti wiped perspiration from his forehead.
"The possibilities had occurred to me, too."
"Why not keep the traitor under surveillance? Maybe even let him know your doubts about him? He might back off, figure the game's not worth the risk. Then you'd Still be able to use him. Good rhocraft technicians don't grow under every bush in this Pliocene Exile."
"True." They were approaching the flyer. "I appreciate your counsel, Aldo. I think you've helped me. A harder-hearted man would have chosen a more uncompromising course. But you and I ... mountaineers are such romantics at heart I'd like to give everyone the benefit of the doubt"
Aldo began to climb up the aircraft boarding ladder. He smiled over his shoulder at the don. "A little artful psychology can do the job just as well as the big fist."
"I hope you're right" Basil said. "I do hope you're right."
***
Basil groaned, shifting on the decamole cot Someone was shaking him by the shoulder. There were staccato voices outside the tent and a wdd sound of weeping. It was very dark.
"Basil, wake up." Bengt Sandvik was urgent. "Emergency."
"Oh, no."
The expedition leader pulled himself up and thumbed his wrist chronometer. It was almost four. His head spun from a belated touch of mountain sickness and he could barely understand what Bengt was saying. He groped for his boots and stuffed his feet into them.
"... cracked Nazir over the skull and tried to grab the Number One flyer ... if Mr. Betsy hadn't come by with the stun-gun ..."
"Who?" Basil asked wearily. He knew who.
"Aldo Manetti. And he had the Baroness along to do the piloting for him."
Basil threw on a shirt and went out of the tent. Taffy Evans had a hammerlock on the mountaineer, who was Still groggy from the stun charge. Baroness Charlotte-Amalie was tense in the grip of Phronsie Gillis. Betsy, efficient in a zippered flight-suit but Still wearing the wig, had the prisoners covered with his Husqvarna.
Basil stepped closer to Aldo. "So you weren't able to settle for numero due after all."
Aldo's head lolled and he spat weakly. Saliva dribbled on his dark chin.
Basil turned away, consulting his watch again. "Well, it's nearly dawn. Time we were breaking camp." He looked off at the two tall aircraft silhouetted against the graying starry sky and the crater lake. "A pity there are no trees here. But the drop from the belly-hatch should be sufficient."
"What are you going to do?" screamed the Baroness.
"Tie the two of them to the landing struts of Number One until we're ready."
"What are you going to do?"
"Hang you, my dear," Basil said. Then he went back into his tent to finish dressing.
3
BODURAGOL, chief redactor of Afaliah, sat on his stool in the middle of the womb-dark Skin chamber, his eyes closed and his mind given over almost completely to his work. The great innovation had been an unqualified success. Both patients had improved markedly since he had thought of pairing their highly compatible enantiomorphous psychokinetic functions within the light yoking of his own redactive matrix. The atrophied right hemisphere of the male brain, especially, had undergone significant regeneration under the influence of the female's powerful iatropsychic input. The simultaneous acceleration of the woman's healing had been purely serendipitous. The scientist in Boduragol was fascinated by the outcome. The sentimentalist was gratified.
The bodies stood side by side in the suspensors, chaste as alabast
er statues wrapped in clinging, transparent cauls. On one mental level, the Tanu man and the human woman were actively cooperating with the redactor. On another more intimate mode, behind a firm barrier, they were simply talking.
CLOUD: But, don't you see that it was almost the same for your generation as it was for ours? Your parents decided your destiny for you in advance. You had nothing to say about it and were forbidden to question their judgment. Neither did we.
KUHAL: How could it be any other way? Our people left the Duat Galaxy in order to be free. Free to follow a life we believe in. Was it not the same for yours?
CLOUD: Our parents said so. And for many years, we believed them.
KUHAL: But now you do not. Well ... we Tanu also have our heretics.
CLOUD: Analytical criticism is not heresy if one is truly free.
KUHAL: You impute that we are not?
CLOUD: My generation was constrained by ignorance, inertia, even fear. The questioning was painful, dangerous. Ultimately necessary, nonetheless.
KUHAL: I do not understand.
CLOUD: Shall I tell you something of our story?
KUHAL: We have time ... yes. Perhaps we Tanu have let ignorance and inertia rule us as well. In our relations with you. We knew only one small segment of your race: the voluntary time-travelers. The nonmetapsychics seemed to be useful servants. The latents we accepted into our family of the mind. Only Nodonn perceived the immense hazard in our developing relationship; but most of us would not listen to his warning. Blindness was more comfortable.
CLOUD: I know.
KUHAL: Do not let me distract you from the tale. Begin at the beginning. Tell me how metapsychic operants arose among you. Tell me how the Rebellion took root.
CLOUD: You know that the people of Elder Earth were slowly developing into natural operancy some millennia before they were contacted by exotic races and inducted into the Milieu.
KUHAL: This has been explained to us by our human Genetics Master.
CLOUD: The operants who lived toward the end of the twentieth century were fast approaching the adept status of coadunate minds. They were very circumspect about revealing their abilities to normal people. Certain ones—especially those with strong coercive or creative talents—used their metafaculties for personal aggrandizement. Others who were more altruistic studied the mental powers, using themselves and other operants as test subjects. Eventually, these scientists developed the special educational techniques that brought quasi coadunation to numbers of their fellows. They put together a small, imperfect replica of the Milieu's Coadunate Mind and broadcast the fact of their existence. This was the "beacon" that virtuady forced the Milieu to initiate the Great Intervention of 2013, in spite of the fact that most humans were still ethical primitives ... higher on the scale of psychosocial maturation than you Tanu, but still barbarians compared to the other five coadunate races.
KUHAL: So you and I are both primitives! The mystery of our compatible heritages becomes somewhat less murky. But do not let me digress.
CLOUD: One of the principal centers for metapsychic research on Earth was at Dartmouth College, a small learning institution in North America. The two people in charge of the department prior to the Intervention were Denis Remillard and Lucille Cartier. They were both significantly operant and came from a similar ethnic background. Shortly after they became colleagues, they married. They were my great-grandfather and great-grandmother. Denis and Lucille had seven children, all powerful operants. The youngest and most talented was my grandfather, Paul, who was born the year after the Intervention and trained in utero by means of exotic procedures that later became standard. Paul became known as the Man Who Sold New Hampshire. Because of his efforts, this small area in North America became the planetary center of metapsychic operations as Earth entered the mainstream of the Milieu.
KUHAL: And your family consolidated its dominance.
CLOUD: It was inevitable. Paul became the first human being elected to the Concilium, the governing body of the Galactic Milieu, which is composed entirely of masterclass metapsychics having profound skid in psychosocial analysis and problem solving. Later, four of his five children also served as magnates. Marc was the oldest. He became a Paramount Grand Master, one of the most powerful minds in the galaxy.
KUHAL: This is your father, the man catied Abaddon?
CLOUD: Yes ... That was the nickname he received during the Rebellion. In our holy book, there is a section telling of the last days of the world, when the forces of good and evil are engaged in a final confrontation. Abaddon is the leader of the demon army. He has other names: the Angel of the Abyss; the Destroyer. My Papa...
KUHAL: The war at the end of the world! It's part of our religious mythos as well. We call it the Nightfall War. When the persecuted Tanu and Firvulag were driven from their home planet to the edge of the Duat Galaxy, they thought that they would fight the Nightfall War themselves. But Brede intervened, and her Ship carried us to this starwhirl. Now Celadeyr and certain of his followers believe that the Nightfall War will be fought in the Many-Colored Land!...But you must forgive me, Cloud. Once again I interrupt. Tell me about your father's Rebellion.
CLOUD: I can't tell you very much. I was a year old. My brother Hagen was two. Both of our parents were involved in some colossal conspiracy to put the human race in absolute control of the Milieu. There was a grandiose scheme that Papa and Dr. Steinbrenner and some of the others devised that was supposed to eventually transform a group of us children into superbeings, ultrametapsychics. The rebels planned to inaugurate the scheme after the coup ... but of course, the coup failed. Papa has never talked to us about his plans for us children, and the record of it has been expunged from the computer in Ocala. I'm afraid that something about the plan must have been horrible, because Mama—Mama—
KUHAL: DO not articulate the thought. I can see. I'm very sorry.
CLOUD: Papa loves us. I can't believe he would have done anything evil to us. Not knowingly.
KUHAL: Tell me the rest of the story.
CLOUD: The Rebellion took place in 2083. It lasted less than eight months in its overt phase. A large number of human operants were involved, and millions of normals, too. Almost all of the lower-echelon rebels died—and so did numbers of innocent people on rebel-occupied planets. Eventually, Papa was defeated by his own younger brother, Jon, and Jon's wife, Illusio. Jon Remillard was a mutant. He was fourteen years younger than Marc. By the time he reached adulthood he had no body—only a naked brain that wore any sort of shape that struck its fancy. I know he sounds like a monster, but the Milieu made him a saint when he put down the Rebellion. Jon's wife was a Paramount, like him, a metaconcert specialist. She had only half a face as a result of some psychocreative mishap and never had it regenerated because the deformity became a kind of symbol of her authority. She wore a diamond mask.
KUHAL: Jack the Bodiless and Diamond Mask. Gomnol spoke of them ...
CLOUD: The pair of them died, but Papa lived. And he brought Hagen and me and a hundred or so of his surviving people through the time-gate.
KUHAL: I remember the black day I fought against the invaders in the Battle of the Grotto Wilderness. Our forces were massacred. King Thagdal ordered the incident blotted from our history after the invading humans disappeared across the Western Sea.
CLOUD: Papa took his people to North America. He didn't want to fight you. Many of his followers were badly wounded and he himself was half-dead from terrible brain-burns. We made a new home on an island off southeastern North America. It's very beautiful. We cad it Ocala. All of the other children were born there.
KUHAL: But you left it. Why?
CLOUD: When we were young, we could imagine nothing other than following our parents' chosen way. Papa had brought all kinds of equipment to the Pliocene. After he recovered, he set up a farsensing observatory and began to search the stars, looking for another race of metapsychics. He knew that if he found such a race, he could prevad on it to come and rescue us. He hop
ed to reinstitute his great dream of human dominion in a world six million years younger than the Milieu. A fair number of his original followers believed he'd be able to do it Papa ... can make you believe in him. But as the years went on, and thousands upon thousands of stars were searched with no result many of the older people became despondent. There were suicides—and murders. Some of the old rebels went mad and some psyched out on drugs and some just ... withdrew. We children watched it ad happen while we grew up. Finally, we began to think for ourselves, beyond Papa's futile dream. Felice was a catalyst. But we had been watching you long before she arrived. We put together a crude farsight combination and spied on you here in Europe as an entertainment.
KUHAL: Ah. The children of ennui while away tedious hours observing lower forms of life! We weren't real at all, were we, Cloud? Only ants busy in a nest. And one day, you thought you'd see what would happen if you let the water in—!
CLOUD: No!
KUHAL: Why did you help Felice destroy us, then?
CLOUD: We coveted your Many-Colored Land. Not in itself, but as a stepping-stone back to the Milieu.