Inside the surging vehicle, studying the electronic displays on its console, Victor Remillard hardly seemed to be the black mental menace her father had described. His bare head was a mass of tight dark curls. He wore a one-piece Thermatron ski-suit with all the high-tech options — temperature control, spot massage, com-unit, stereo sound-surround, and locator beacon — ready for anything. (But she wore her old red North Face jacket and pants with the Ski Patrol patch from Snowbird! One up. )
She said, "My father's off in Vienna, where the Third Millennium has already come. He and his plutocratic friends are at a fancy-dress ball like the last act of some Strauss operetta. Next week he takes control of the Dione satellite-engineering consortium — the one that's to build the European section of Zap-Star. "
"Nice for him. "
"I'm to be its nominal CEO. "
"Nice for you. "
"Daddy expects me to be a figurehead. " She smiled, letting just a bit of her supposed scheme to seize control of the consortium seep beneath the margin of her outermost screen. Victor jumped on it, just as she knew he would, and crashed the frangible barrier for a thorough scan of what lay behind. He was sure that he'd laid her mind wide open — just as her father was always sure. But Shannon's true self was secure behind the secondary shield, letting the intruder see only what she permitted him to; and as Victor sorted through what he believed were the plans and dreams of Kieran O'Connor's daughter, he himself lay vulnerable to her... and she entered softly.
God — he was strong! By no means as intelligent and demonic as her father, and with ambitions predictably narrow in scope. But what a coercer, and what brutal unformed creativity was there, waiting only to be molded and directed! He would do. Oh, yes, he would do.
She finished her lightning penetration long before his scan was complete. He had noticed nothing, and when he finally withdrew, smiling in a patronizing way at her callow scheme to rule the consortium, she simulated dismay at the mental violation and then pretended to sulk.
"You'll have to do a lot better than that if you expect to put one over on your old man. "
She let him wait, repaired outer barrier back in place, and then said, "I suppose you could think of a better plan. "
"I might. " His eyes were fixed on the snow-depth-and-density monitor and he throttled back. They had passed the dark bulk of the shuttered Halfway House and come into the open. There were great drifts blocking the way now, some of them six meters high. Victor studied their contour and composition and the nature of the rocky terrain buried beneath them, then geared down to clamber over. An unsecured boot-bag tumbled toward the rear of the cabin as they ascended a steep incline, zigzagged, then came back more or less to horizontal and proceeded up the invisible road.
Shannon said, "Nicely done... So my little plots interest you, do they? I thought you wanted to form an alliance with my father. You could report my contemplated subversion to him, you know, and score. "
"Perhaps I'm playing an altogether different game. Just like you. "
The powerful headlights of the Sno-Crawler lit a hairpin section of the way that doubled back along a precipice skirting the Great Gulf, another big cirque on the north side of the mountain. They had passed above the tree line now, but rime-coated scrub decorated the crags and sparkled as though it were coated with sugar. Victor accelerated, conquered a small avalanche fall, and headed up the icy Five-Mile Grade, an exposed section that had been swept clear of loose snow by the nor'easter winds. Tonight the air was still. Victor punched a control button deploying the tread spikes and the crawler chewed its way upward.
Shannon said, "My father thinks he has control of my mind. My loyalties. From the very beginning, he's used this — this technique to bond his associates to him irrevocably. "
"It's pretty obvious the technique didn't work on you. "
"It does when I'm with him. Then I'm like all the others, under his spell... Even at other times I can belong to him. When I'm lonely and afraid of myself and everything else and want it all to end, then I'm caught in his vision of the Absolute, and I know Daddy's way is the only way that makes sense... But then he loosens his hold. Perhaps he's too caught up in other things to bother with the little satellite minds orbiting him and worshiping... And I remember how he bound me. The fire racing up my spine and exploding my senses and burning my resistance to ashes. It should have taken — the bonding. But it didn't, not fully. I think Daddy may have been inhibited because I was his daughter, and his will didn't finalize the personality conjunction. It took me a long time to remember. To know why my own world had died along with the honest love — daughter's love — I had felt for him. Now, when I love him, he's not my father. When I'm myself, and I know who he is and what he did to me, I hate him. "
The sudden explosion of approval — of kinship — that escaped him was a profound shock to her and a revelation. He said, "Hate. That's your antidote. Mine, too. But I've known it forever. "
She had the ski gloves in her lap and she pulled each finger carefully, straightening it, before rolling the gloves and tucking them into her jacket. "He'll try to bond you, too. It's the only way he'll allow operants to be associated with him. "
Victor let out a harsh bark of laughter. "Y a pas de danger!... Or as you micks might say — in a pig's eye! I'd like to see him break into my skull—"
"He doesn't. That's not his way at all. He makes us love him. With those who aren't — aren't naturally inclined to accept him, he uses a hypnagogic drug to weaken their psychic defenses, then seduces them. If the person recognizes what's being done, he kills them. He's killed one hundred and eighty-three natural operants and bonded forty-six. He finds most suitable ones when they commit certain crimes. Scams. Conspiracies. There's a kind of suboperant signature that he recognizes. The people themselves don't realize that they have the powers. In the seduction, he shows them what they can be, with his help. It's wonderful. That's why we'll do anything for him, commit any atrocity. The man who assassinated the Russian Premier and the Grand Mufti of Central Asia was one of his. Daddy has a lot of reasons for wanting to foment war. His Zap-Star satellite defense system needs concrete global villains as targets — not just scattered groups of Islamic hotheads. "
"He's got it right, " Victor conceded. His knuckles tightened on the wheel as the vehicle entered the Cutoff Track, bypassing another notch that was full of deeply drifted snow. "He's done a damn good job consolidating power. My operation is small potatoes in comparison. But it won't stay that way. "
"If you oppose him directly, " Shannon said, "he'll kill you. If you try to join him, you'll end as I have. Bound. "
He was silent for several minutes, guiding the big machine through a chaos of compacted white ice blocks. Despite the strut suspension that dampened the worst of the lurching, the cabin bounced and tilted and flung its occupants against their seat harnesses like rag dolls until they finally exited the Cutoff and came back onto the buried Carriage Road proper.
Victor said, "They all want to bind us, Shannon. Starting with our parents, of course, at the very beginning. They say they love us and then make conditions. They try to hold us back, to keep us from climbing above their own puny level. They want to live through us — on us! — like some kind of psychic vampires. That's what love is. At least your father's version makes no bones about it. "
"I never thought about it that way. "
"Well, start. Your unconscious mind knew and you started to hate and you started to free yourself. I've always hated them all and I've never been bound. I take the little empty ones and use them, and crush the mind-fucking lovers. I'll crush your father someday, and my brother Denis, who's even worse. "
"Daddy'll get you if you let him near you. I know what your scheme is. You think you can marry me and hold him off long enough to take what he has. But you won't be able to help yourself. I can sense it in your soul. The — the attraction. Daddy wouldn't have to drug you. You'd find him irresistible. "
H
e was scowling, punching up snow-depth read-outs as the vehicle crept through looming blue-white corridors. "Maybe I'd bond him to me! Suppose you tell me just how he works it. "
Shannon opened her mind instead and showed him.
Merde et contremerde! Loathing spilled from Victor's mind before he sealed off.
She said: The bliss of it and the welcome pain are long gone and now the Absolute is formless and dry and all that drives me is the need to bring him down to take the power away and have him know that I did and for that I need your cooperation.
Victor swore again in French. He superimposed the snow-condition analog on the true-terrain display and discovered that the blip of the crawler was off-course. Somewhere they had missed the Alpine Garden Link just above the Six-Mile Post of the road. It was only a simple hiker's track cutting in a southerly direction across the windswept upper shoulder of the mountain. The crawler reversed, growled slowly backward in its own tread-prints. The headlights withdrawing made the snow-plastered crags seem weirdly artificial, like stage sets fading out.
Shannon said: You must help me. I warned you in time. I saved you from him.
Shut up! Let me think!
He saw the way on the right, rough as hell but open, along a gentle slope below Nelson Crag. He began to smile, retracted the ice-spikes, and deployed the flanges. The Sno-Crawler roared as he gunned the engine. "Only two kilometers left to go... Tell me: how much is your old man really worth?"
"I don't know. I doubt that he does. He controls more than a hundred big corporations, a TV network, two airlines, a major oil company, five big aerospace contractors — and that's only in North America. He has links to conglomerates in Europe, Japan, and Korea. "
"What about this political thing? Does he really control the Republican Party?"
"Not the whole thing. That'd be impossible — even for him. He does own four Senators and nineteen Representatives from key states. The politicians aren't operants, of course. Some are bought and paid for, some know they're the tools of special interest but don't realize that their strings are pulled by Daddy, and a few believe they've managed to retain their integrity even though they've accepted Daddy's help. Like the President of the United States. "
"President Piccolomini? My ass!"
"President Baumgartner. He'll win the Millennial election next fall.
Daddy's troupe of media consultants and PR hotshots and political-action committee fronts have it all worked out. Baumgartner is a forceful spokesman for law and order. He's hawkish on the Arab countries that have cut off our petroleum supplies and he's wary of Russia and China. He's willing to accept Daddy's antioperant strategy in order to exploit the backlash against President Pic. You know how antsy the normals have been getting, worrying about operants turning into thought police and that kind of malarky. The Sons of Earth thing was started deliberately in this country by Daddy's agents just to work up tensions for the upcoming election. "
"Your old man is antioperant? I don't get it. "
"Daddy sees Pic's Brain Trust and all the public-spirited operants as a personal threat. And they are, Victor. If there is ever any organized metapsychic education program in this country and operants become numerous and powerful, Daddy is bound to be exposed as an operant himself. A maverick one. He'll be ruined. Not financially — he's beyond that. But his edge will be lost. His source of power. "
They drove on and on, over a surface that was now much smoother, tumbled granite rubble almost completely buried in deep, crusted snow, and wind-scoured slabs of rock that had been planed by the ice-age glaciers. In the hollows and in the lee of the occasional crag were drifts. Glittering spicules of ice danced in the crawler's headlights. On their left, the whiteness fell away to black and they began to skirt the top of Tuckerman Ravine at last. They could see the Headwall itself, a precipitous apron of untouched silver under the waning moon, which had risen above the crest of Wildcat and Carter Dome.
Victor decelerated, changed course to avoid a dangerous cornice of snow, then headed for the rim again. A moment later they stopped. He cut the engine and extinguished the exterior and interior illumination. Side by side, still imprisoned in their harnesses, they sat looking over the drop-off. There were sparkling strings and clusters of tiny building lights in the Wildcat Ski Area and along Pinkham Notch, where houses and roadside establishments lined the highway. Only a few cars and trucks were abroad. Most of the drivers had evidently found some congenial place to wait the Millennium out.
Victor unfastened his straps and hers. They went into the back of the cab to put on their ski boots and other equipment. Shannon unpacked the flares and checked her wristwatch. It was four minutes until midnight. Together, they climbed onto a rippled ice crust, carrying their skis. Victor had left the keys of the crawler in the ignition and now he slammed the door shut without locking it.
"Are you just going to leave the thing here?" she asked.
He gestured toward the summit. The antenna complex and other small structures were barely visible against a velvet sky dusted with incredible numbers of stars. In one of the buildings shone a little yellow light.
"Somebody from the weather station will put on fangy showshoes and come down for the machine in the morning. It's a good thing the weather's calm. Some of the windblasts across this rock pile could blow our little ten-ton ice-buggy clear to Massachusetts. "
They bent to their bindings and put on hard hats with heated visors. Neither had poles. Psychokinetics, whose minds are able to exert motive power affecting their own bodies, rarely have need of them.
Shannon peeled the wrapper from her magnesium flare, activated the ignitor, and held the smoky white light aloft. In an instant it cleared and blazed brightly. Over to the east, fireworks were exploding above Wildcat's slopes and a river of golden luminescence had begun to flow downhill. The new year had arrived and skiing torchbearers celebrated the unabated progress of time.
Shannon said, "Happy New Millennium, Victor. "
He lifted his unwrapped cylinder. The tip lit with a loud concussion, activated by his own psychocreativity. "Happy postponement of doom, Shannon. For a little while, anyway. "
She said: Will you help me? Not merely to kill him you understand he must be taken down at the peak of his hopes when he thinks the black Absolute is within his grasp.
When?
It's years away... but I'll let you know. Go your own way for now never act to threaten Daddy directly and you'll be safe from him. He's afraid of you at the same time that he's attracted. He'll wait. I have a plan of my own worked out. I'll explain it at the bottom of the slope after the schuss going back through the woods...
All right.
They maneuvered to the lip of the chasm. The descent was not vertical, it only seemed to be — a perfect expanse of powder, unimaginably deep, fresh, and clean.
GO.
Their minds pushed them off. They were on their way, flares held high, training twin plumes of nebulous white like a pair of comets on straight parallel paths into the dark.
14
STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN, EARTH
10 DECEMBER 2003
TRUMPETS PLAYED A fanfare and the orchestra began the national anthem. Queen Victoria Ingrid and her entourage entered the assembly hall of the Konserthuset and the audience, including Lucille Remillard and Gerard Tremblay up in the loges, rose to its feet. The ceremony had begun and the honors would be bestowed, too late to do any good.
Lucille's dark-green velvet gown was heavy, and she adjusted its folds unobtrusively with her PK. The metafaculty also served to hoist the tops of the wretched long white gloves, which persisted in slithering unmodishly down toward her elbows. Her feet, crushed into high-heeled pumps, ached in spite of her distrait attempts at self-redaction and so did her full breasts, deprived of baby Severin's milking for this one day of vain celebration. Some of her discomfort must have been evident, for Gerry Tremblay took her left arm to steady her, projecting his usual solicitude.
Oh Gerry never mind I'm all right.
None of your bitching darling I can tell when I'm needed your faithful esquire at your service m'lady Prop-Ups & Resuscitations Our Specialty.
Will you at least stay on the intimate mode or do you want every meta in the place to know the laureate's wife has sore feet and bursting boobs? There! Her Majesty's seated and down we go... aah.
Pauvre de toi.
Oh shut up... Goodness what a lot of diamonds! And furs do you suppose that's a sable it must be good grief what a difference from the ceremony for Jamie and Tamara at Oslo last year so friendly and modest —
— excepting the bomb scare!
Oh for heaven's sake you know what I mean even the King was as friendly and downtoearth as anyone but this crowd LordLord ostentation to the eyeballs I've never seen anything like — mate-moi ça! Can those be real emeralds let me deepsee... goodGod they are I see the inclusions and they're like walnuts!
There goes the brass section again darling afraid we'll have to rise again for the entrance of the heroes —
"No, madame and monsieur, " came a whispered voice. "That will not be necessary. "
Lucille turned in surprise. The seat on her right, which had been empty during the entrance of the Queen of Sweden, was now occupied by a distinguished-looking older man in white tie.
"This time," he continued softly, "only the Queen rises to honor the laureates as they enter. On this night, you see, they are mental royalty. Her equals. "
"How charming, " Lucille murmured. The music swelled as the laureates, paired with members of the Swedish institutions who had voted them the honor, entered the auditorium. To Lucille, the scene was unreal: the gilded hall with its statuary, rich drapery, sconces, and flags, the young Monarch in her sparkling white dress and tiara, standing at stage left giving anachronistic homage, and, above all — her husband. Yes, there was Denis, looking insignificant beside the Valkyrie splendor of a female professor of psychiatry of the Karolinska Institute, who would introduce and laud him. She scarcely noticed the other honorees of the evening; but behind them were seated rows of laureates from years past — including Jamie MacGregor and Tamara Sakhvadze, who had received the Peace Prize in 2002. Lucille would never have intruded her mind upon Denis at that moment; but she did not hesitate to call out to Tamara and Jamie on their intimate modes. Both looked up toward the loges where relatives of the laureates and other dignitaries were seated. Tamara smiled and projected understanding and comfort. Jamie projected an image of a winking eye and a species of mental cartoon, in which a rather tatty figure with a Nobel medallion hung about its neck sat on a snowy street corner proffering a beggar's cup; behind it was a sign: BROTHER, CAN YOU SPARE A GRANT?