The Noborn King

  “I can’t waste time examining incipient red giants,” Marc said. “Our chances are slim enough if I stick with the likely prospects.”

  “Our chances are nil, now that the kids are gone,” Van Wyk exclaimed. He struggled out of his chair and reached for the vodka decanter, then lugged frantically at the bottle that seemed welded to its tray.

  Helayne Strangford’s laugh was strident. “If I can’t have mine, neither can you, Gerry! Watch the end coming, cold straight sober! Or do we postpone it. Marc? Do we? Are you going to ask us to help you kill them? Our own children? So that we’ll be safe?”

  She had come to the table and stood over Marc with a contorted face and fists pressed into her thighs, taut as an overtuned string in spite of Steinbrenner’s heroic redaction job of an hour previous. From his own depths the Angel of the Abyss considered her threat and reacted mercifully. Helayne collapsed into Steinbrenner’s waiting arms, overcome by a simple motor paralysis and simultaneous muting of her speech; but her understanding was left intact. The physician lowered her onto a couch. Dalembert and Warshaw propped her up with cushions.

  “It will be a hard decision for all of us, Helayne,” Marc said. “You love Leila and Chris and little Joel, and Ragnar loves Elaby, and the Keoghs love Nial. and Peter and Jordy and Cordelia love their children and grandchildren.”

  And you, the silenced mind accused him.

  “And me,” Marc acknowledged. He pushed back his chair and rose. One of the screened jalousie casements was slightly ajar and moths were coming in and orbiting the lamps. He pulled the latch to, casually exterminated the insects, and stood leaning against a porch pillar with his hands thrust in his pockets.

  “Cloud and Hagen are all that I have left of Cyndia. It was necessary that I bring them here, to share my exile. Wrong, but necessary.” His gaze swept the others. “Just as it was wrong, but human and understandable, for the rest of you to reproduce here in the Pliocene. We hoped we could revitalize our dream, transmit it to the young ones. All of us failed in that—and I failed doubly, in not finding a world that would come to our rescue.”

  “There is still time,” Patricia said. “Centuries, if we choose to use them! If we have the courage.”

  “We took our risk in the Rebellion!” snapped Jordan Kramer. “My first family died on Okanagon, in case you’ve forgotten, and Dalembert’s son was in the Twelfth Fleet. Don’t lecture us on courage. Castellane. As for love, we all know you’re incapable—”

  “Jordy,” said Marc. One winged brow lifted. No mind-thrust was needed to cut off the physicist’s tirade. Sick-faced, Kramer turned his back on the rest of them and stared into the night.

  Ragnar Gathen’s slow voice came from a shadowy comer. “The star-search was a wonderful idea, one that gave us hope, made this exile more bearable. But the children . . . they never knew you as we do, Marc. So now, when they see a possibility of release from this prison that we chose for them, they must seize it.”

  “When the time-gate reopens,” Van Wyk stated, “we die. Or have our personalities obliterated after the humiliation of a public trial.”

  Gathen said, “Elaby promised me that the children would destroy the time-gate after passing through.”

  “Hagen would do otherwise,” said Marc. “Not consciously, perhaps. But somehow the gate would remain open, and the agents would come.

  Sweet-faced little Dr. Warshaw nodded. “Marc’s right. And his child isn’t the only one harboring retributive sets. The only safe course open to us is killing them all.” She stroked one of Helayne’s hands. The paralyzed woman’s eyes were shut, pouring tears.

  “It does seem to be the logical solution,” said Patricia. “If even a few of the children survive to show Aiken Drum that data on reconstructing Guderian’s apparatus, sooner or later he’ll undertake the job himself—with or without the help of the manufacturing equipment that the children stole. I’ve analyzed the probability.”

  “We endorse Castellane’s conclusion,” said Diarmid Keogh. The mind of his sister Deirdre projected the remorseless image of the concerted psychoenergetic blast they would all have to synthesize to bring the resolution.

  The leader of the Metapsychic Rebellion was looking blindly toward the wall of the house. Looking eastward. “There is another possibility. A risky one.”

  Wrenching silence.

  “I see them,” Marc said. ‘The ATV modular combine is moving very slowly through the region of calms and light winds called the horse latitudes. Their sails are useless, since they’ve channeled all of their PK into the main impeller. It would be rather easy to blast them out of the water. It would be much more difficult to heat up a large air mass somewhere southeast of their position and maneuver it to blow them back home to us.”

  “Is it possible?” cried Peter Dalembert, his mind a garboil of conflict.

  “How about it, Jordy?” asked Marc.

  ‘They’re pretty far out.” Kramer was dubious as he did the calculations. “Damn near two thousand kilometers, thanks to their initial push. And we can’t simply heat air from scratch, you know. We have to locate a suitable tropical low that will respond to our hype-up, then move it in. One like this.” He showed Marc an image. “Anything like that north of the equator?”

  “No,” Marc said.

  Kramer shrugged. “There you are. We could wait a week, even two, before one showed up. They could be across by then—or into the zone of prevailing westerlies, where we wouldn’t have a dimbuck’s chance of forcing them back.”

  There’s this,” said Marc, presenting another meteorological image to the physicist. “Off the African coast.”

  “H’mm. Not too shabby, if we could boot it back west. It also has the potential of pushing them onto the Moroccan shore if we find that we can’t raise enough wind to bring them home.”

  “Damnut, Jordy,” Steinbrenner growled, “we’ve got enough watts to divert hurricanes from Ocala—so why is it so bloody tricky to conjure up a useful wind?”

  “Diverting an air mass is a whole ’nother thing from hyping one up, Jeff. Or moving it counter to the planetary winds that prevail this time of the year. We have forty-two minds left to work with, but six or seven are virtually worthless for a PK-creative job. Whatever we try, it’s going to be hellaceous tough on the operators.”

  “And the children will fight back, count on it,” Diarmid Keogh reminded them. Deirdre projected the memory of the vicious squall that the fugitives had engendered on their first day out, and Diarmid appended, “You’ll see that it was our own dear Nial leading the push to drown his lovin’ da and mumsy—and working mighty handily with Phil Overton and your Hagen, Marc, for all that the lads are noncoadunate. Yes, we must assume that every mind among the children will resist.”

  “They have photon weapons, too,” Van Wyk said tremulously.

  “Don’t talk like an idiot, Gerry,” said Patricia. “Marc’s here now. None of those portable zappers can touch us. They’d be inside Marc’s coercive range before the zappers had line-of-sight on Ocala.”

  “They’ll use everything they’ve got,” Van Wyk persisted.

  “Perhaps fight to the death,” Warshaw added softly.

  Marc had gone back to contemplation of his earlier farseen vision. “We might try to save the children. Above all, gain time to increase the number of options. Don’t forget Cloud and Elaby and Owen in Europe, with Felice temporarily absent from her lair and Aiken Drum susceptible to manipulation. I must have time to think, to study the situation.”

  “You’ve had twenty-seven years,” muttered Van Wyk recklessly.

  But Marc was far away. “If we find that we can’t turn the children back, we can certainly deflect them away from Europe. If they’re driven onto the African coast, we’ll have a chance to mind-zap the equipment and still spare their lives. Neutralize their threat until we can mount our own action. Yes . . .

  He came back to himself, to touch each mind with a split second’s coercive force, then the more hypnotic
persuasion.

  “The star-search! If it had succeeded, it would have been our salvation an acceptable substitute for our old dream that failed. My dream—my failure that drew you along with me. You and the other faithful ones chose to follow me here to the Pliocene and try again. And again, I’ve failed. Our children cling to their own dream, and I’ve been forced to consider the implications of their choice. I have done that for twenty days as I ranged the stars—and here again tonight while we looked for solutions to this dilemma. The final decision will be mine. But tell me how you would vote. Now.”

  “Kill them,” said Cordelia Warshaw.

  Patricia agreed. “It’s the only safe course.”

  There was a moment of hesitation, but only Gerrit Van Wyk joined the two women in the death pronouncement. The others chose the more dangerous course.

  Marc spread the new construct before them, the revision that might insure their own safety while granting their off spring’s wish to return to the Milieu. There was an equal probability that the plan would spell the doom of all of them—and the unsuspecting inhabitants of the Many-Colored Land as well.

  “This is what I shall do,” Marc said. “Will you follow me?”

  In a single telepathic acquiescence, the former members of the Galactic Concilium reaffirmed his leadership.

  “Very well. I’ll contact Owen tonight. Tomorrow we begin modification of my star-search equipment and construction of a new vehicle. We will maroon the defecting children in Africa, and see that they remain there until we’re ready for them. If no unforeseen screw-ups develop, we should be ready to go to Europe about the end of August.”

  3

  FELICE MOVED RESTLESSLY ABOUT THE BALCONY OF BLACK Crag Lodge, a farouche woodland sprite in a white leather kilt, doe eyes flicking and nervous farsenses sweeping the mountain forest like a beacon.

  “You’re safe here,” Elizabeth insisted. She stood in the doorway, dressed in the old red denim jumpsuit that the girl would remember from the auberge: a friend, an anchor to the past. Every day for more than two weeks now the raven had flown up to the chalet, perched on the upper balcony and turned into a frightened young girl. And every day, in spite of Elizabeth’s expert persuasion, the raven had refused to slay, flying away after an ever-lengthening interval of conversation. Today, Felice had dared to remain for more than two hours.

  “There were bad nightmares last night, Elizabeth.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m going to scream out loud soon. If I do that, I’ll die. I’ll drown in gold and shit.”

  “Unless you let me help you,” Elizabeth agreed.

  The mad eyes seemed to swell enormously. Talons sank into Elizabeth’s brain—but before they could do harm the Grand Master redactor slipped an adamant barrier into place. The mind-grip slipped, clenched impotently against unyielding slickness, then withdrew.

  “I—I didn’t mean to do that,” said Felice.

  “You did.” The redactor’s voice was sad. “You’d kill anything that threatened to love you.”

  “No!”

  “Yes. Your brain is short-circuited. The pleasure-pain pathways are anomalously fused. Shall I show you the difference between your mental structure and one I would call normal?”

  “All right.”

  The images, of awesome complexity but bristling with labels that even this untaught child could comprehend, formed in the vestibulum of Felice’s mind. She studied the two brains for nearly fifteen minutes, hiding behind her own screen. And then a crack opened and d shy thing peeped out.

  “Elizabeth—? This brain is mine?”

  “As close an approximation as I can produce, without actually entering you.”

  “Whose is the other?”

  “Sister Amerie’s.”

  The girl shuddered. She came away from the balcony railing and approached Elizabeth, a pale and tiny figure, utterly forlorn. “I’m a monster. I’m not human at all, am I?”

  “You can be. All of this is in your unconscious—and since your opening of the Straits of Gibraltar, it has profoundly affected your conscious mind as well. But you can be healed. There’s still time.”

  “But not. . .much time?”

  “No, child. Before long, you’ll be incapable of the volition necessary to permit redaction. You must freely let me in, you see. You’re much too strong for me to overpower. And even if you do freely submit, your healing is going to be a very hazardous undertaking for me. Until you came here, until I was able to scan you at close range, I didn’t realize how hazardous.”

  “I could kill you?’

  “Easily.”

  “But you’d still try to help me?”

  “Yes.”

  The elfin face with its pointed chin tilted up. The dark eyes swam with unshed tears. “Why? To save the world from me?”

  “Partly,” Elizabeth admitted. “But also to save you.”

  Felice’s eyes shifted. An odd little smile appeared. “You’re as bad as Amerie. She was after my soul. You’re a Catholic, too, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “What good is it—here, in the Pliocene?”

  “Not much, sometimes. But the basic lifeway remains, and I must try to adhere to it.”

  The girl laughed. “Even when you doubt?”

  “Especially then,” said Elizabeth. “You’re very clever, Felice.” She drew back from the doorway, turned and went across the room to where two chairs stood before a large window “Come in and sit down.”

  Felice hesitated. The redactor felt the swirl of conflicting emotion agitating the girl, stark fear fighting against the genuine love-need that still abided, nearly crushed beneath the burden of guilt and perversion.

  Keeping her own eyes on the view beyond the window, the rolling hills of the Montagne Noire, the distant gleam of Lac Provençal, Elizabeth slipped into one of the chairs. The raven still had not flown. Felice watched, and then a sinuous little probe tried to slip past the redactor’s defenses: curious, desperately hopeful.

  Elizabeth covered her face with her hands and prayed. She lowered her barrier completely and said, “Look into my mind if you wish, Felice. Be gentle, child. See that I’ve told you the truth—that I desire only to help you.”

  The thing entered. . .tempted. . .came closer. . .inadvertently revealed a glimpse of itself. O God see the pathetic betrayal of the poor infant girl by her wretched parents. Had it made her incapable of responding to any parent figure?

  “You love me?” Incredulity. . .the fury held in abeyance. . .

  “I had no children of my own, but I loved many of them. And healed them, and taught them. It was my life in the Milieu.”

  “But none of them . . . were as bad as me.”

  “None needed me as much as you do, Felice.”

  The girl was sitting in the other chair, leaning toward the figure in the red jumpsuit with the hidden face. It was only Elizabeth! She who had been kind back at the auberge, convincing the officials to relinquish chaining her to the chair after the attack on Counselor Shonkwiler. Elizabeth who had bungled the elk-hunting, then showed such gratitude when Felice took over the distasteful skinning and gutting task. Elizabeth who had been so sad about losing her husband. Who had learned to pilot a balloon so that she could fly free and at peace in the Pliocene . . . only to give up that freedom and peace so that Felice might escape Culluket.

  “I believe you,” said a small voice. The monster receded into the far distance.

  Elizabeth lowered her hands, straightened, smiled. “Shall I tell you how it would be done?”

  Felice nodded. Her cloud of platinum hair was electric with excitement.

  “First, we’ll need to work in a safe place, where the discharges from your mind won’t be a danger to others. Have you ever heard of Brede’s room without doors?”

  Felice shook her head.

  “It’s a mechanical mind-screening device of great power. Brede used it as a refuge, when the pressure from other mentalities became too g
reat to bear. When she was within it, she could see out by means of her farsight—but no other mind could reach her. Brede let me share this refuge for a time. Before she died in the Flood, she gave the device to my friends so that I might have it here. The room without doors isn’t a prison. Those inside can leave it at will. But if I am to undertake your healing, you must agree to slay inside the room with me for the duration of the treatment. Perhaps several weeks.”

  “I agree.”

  “There is another condition. Now that I know how strong you really are, I would like to use helpers in certain phases of your healing. I’m not as strong as I was in the Milieu. You remember that I had lost my metapsychic powers and only regained them with the shock of passing through the time-gate.”

  “I remember. Who would be the helpers?”

  “Creyn and Dionket.”

  The girl frowned. “Creyn is all right. I’m not afraid of him. But the Lord Healer . . . he’s stronger than my Culluket, and yet he didn’t stop the torture. He was too cowardly. And now he hides away in the Pyrénées with Minanonn and the stupid Peace Faction most of the time, instead of helping his people fight the Firvulag. I think that’s despicable!”

  “You don’t understand Dionket. Nevertheless, you must accept my need of his assistance.”

  “How would you use the two exotics? They could never hold me, you know.”

  “Not using their own powers. But I would program a number of specialized mental restraints that they would operate while I was occupied with more complex healing functions. Think of a surgeon going deep into the body, using retractors and hemozaps and other devices to allow a clear field of work. Dionket and Creyn will free me from having constantly to monitor your defense mechanisms while I perform the catharsis.”

  Felice was silent. The great brown eyes were abstracted, seeming to watch a fire-backed eagle that wheeled slowly in the cloudless May sky. At last she said, “And when it was all finished, would I be good?”

  “You’d be sane, child. Only God knows the other.”