My one chance had come. I said to Malama, “I’ve got to have a quick word with Jack and Diamond.”
In a trice I seized the dancing newlyweds by their free hands. While Lucille spluttered furiously and the pipes skirled, I waltzed the couple back inside the hotel and slammed and locked the double doors of the parlor. They laughed and thought it was some kind of prank until they saw my face. Then both of them sobered.
Dorothée said anxiously, “Uncle Rogi, what is it?”
I sagged into a handy chair. People were pounding on the doors, yoo-hooing and laughing and calling out arch witticisms.
“I wish there was another way to do this,” I said, “but there isn’t. Read my mind, for God’s sake! As quick as you can. Then laissez le foutu bon temps rouler.”
With that I cancelled my mindscreen and opened the relevant thoughts about Fury’s identity to them.
The sense of liberation I felt after they’d drained me was overwhelming. Leaving the poor lovers stunned and incredulous (the bashing on the outer door and yelling was approaching riotous dimensions), I fled into the corridor of the hotel’s lower level, intent on summoning an egg-limo and getting the hell out of there. They could send me my piece of wedding cake via UPS.
As luck would have it, I passed the open entry of the Cave Lounge on my way to the main staircase. Given my state of imminent mental collapse, it was a dim and appealing sanctuary and I said to myself: “Why the hell not?” I’d survived the wedding ordeal and successfully passed on the crucial intelligence to Ti-Jean and Dorothée. Who was now more deserving of an altered mood than moi?
I lurched inside, draped myself over a barstool, and took off my slightly mashed top hat. The place seemed deserted. “Hello?” I croaked. “Are you open?”
From somewhere in back a soothing voice replied, “I’ll be right there, sir.”
It was very dark in the bar and almost quiet. The bridal couple had evidently unlocked the door of the parlor and escaped, and the tumult had subsided. The orchestra was playing “In a Sentimental Mood.” I heaved a great sigh, ran a shaky hand through my sweaty silver curls, and let my eyes close. Safe! I’d told the great secret and now the Dynasty would have to take responsibility for the fates of Denis and Anne. The matter was out of my hands.
“What will you have, sir?” Still bemused, I heard the disembodied voice of the barkeep.
“Wild Turkey. Double. Straight up.”
“Right away.”
I felt myself drifting away on a tide of overwhelming release. No more worry, no more fear. The sensation was almost as delightful as the terminal excorporeal excursion I’d experienced while drowning. Limp as a dishrag, I rested my eyes, breathed deeply, and enjoyed Duke Ellington’s music.
I heard the faint sound of a glass being set down before me. “Was it a nice ceremony, sir?”
I cracked an eyelid wide enough to let me home in on the 101-proof elixir of life. “Peachy. Just peachy.” Imbibo, ergo sum!
The bartender went away, his footsteps tapping on the stone flags of the floor. I heard him moving some chairs around over by the entrance to the lounge. Then the sound of music cut off abruptly and it got darker. He’d closed the doors. I straightened, finally back among the living, and turned toward him to ask for a refill.
Parnell Remillard was standing there.
“I’m in a lot of trouble because of you, Uncle Rogi,” he said casually. “But before I get the hell out of here I figure I might as well even the score. Just for my own personal satisfaction.”
I tried to yell and my vocal cords came unstrung. I tried to far-speak a warning to Marc, but the grim smile on the Hydra’s face told me that my telepathic ability had also been coercively squelched.
He took a single step toward me, still disguised in his waitron’s outfit. His eyes were dead. And so, I realized in a shocked instant, was he. Whatever had once been human in Adrien and Cheri’s lost son had died long ago, surrendered to his almighty god and controller, Fury. Parnell’s mind was self-aware, the vital lattices still animated his body, and his aura burned bloody crimson; but he was a dead man by some awful choice of his own. He had died even before he was born.
I slid off the barstool. He was less than three meters away, poised momentarily to enjoy my terror.
“No metacreative shit this time, old man,” he said in a friendly fashion. “Too bad I can’t drain your lifeforce properly, but I’ll give you a few good lessons in pain before I break your neck with my bare hands. They’ll find your drunken bod at the foot of the lobby stairs. A tragic accident! And so inconsiderate of the old lush to spoil the wedding reception.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and tuned the Hydra out. There was only one thing that might save me now, and it would require every bit of concentration I could muster.
As a young man, I’d experimented with yogic exercises called pranic spirals. The inspiral was supposed to help concentrate the mind’s creativity, and the outspiral … did the opposite. I’d only half believed in the archaic discipline then, as I’d only half believed in the entire concept of metapsychic power; but the outspiral thing had twice saved my bacon, surprising the hell out of me.
Perhaps there was a chance I could surprise Parni, too.
I am not normally operant in creativity. But every normal human being possesses a considerable latent store of the metafaculty, and I prayed I could extract enough energy from my mind and body to defend myself against the Hydra. With my eyes still tightly shut I lifted my arms and spread my feet, assuming the posture I’d called Leonardo’s X-Man.
Parni let out a coarse guffaw. “You trying to surrender or something? Too late for that, asshole!”
Ignoring him, I summoned my body’s creative power, bending the vital lattices pervading me, squeezing them like a sponge until the essential lifeforce began to pool and glow golden-hot in the region of my heart, my center. I urged that energy clot into motion, making it trace a flat spiral through the middle of my body—first downward, curving through my solar plexus, then back up to my trachea and the thymal remnant. I opened my eyes. A swelling radiance illuminated the dark room—not Parnell’s bloody aura but a new clear amber light moving inside my thorax. I had become as transparent as glass, a kind of human lantern.
The Hydra froze in its tracks, dead eyes wide, unbelieving.
I made the golden comet of life-energy accelerate in its spiral path. It dove downward to my spleen, traversed the suprarenals, left my body for an instant, and then swung back through the thyroid gland in my throat.
“What the fuck?”
I barely heard Parnell’s astonished shout. Every bit of my willpower was focused on keeping that shining ball of gold within its controlled outspiral. It illuminated the root chakra at my tail-bone and grew, soaring up in an ever-expanding blaze to my thalamus, dazzling my eyes, racing faster and faster, touching the left elbow of my upraised arm, the left knee and the right, my right elbow, the crown of my head, left hand, left foot, right foot—
Yes, Hydra, it’s for you. A part of my life.
As the golden ball of energy spiraled into my right hand I lowered my arm and pointed my finger straight at Parnell Remillard’s distorted face. Every nerve in my body seemed to discharge in an orgasmic explosion that momentarily stunned me witless and left me blind.
[IMAGE: Transparent skull sunlit from within jaws wide before dissolving jewel bones in centripetal whorl crumble chiming golden corona devouring red flameball fading … fading to white ash]
I felt myself tumbling down to the flagstones, meeting them so softly and painlessly that I might have been a scarecrow stuffed with feathers. My ears rang with a colossal reverberation. There was a peculiar wooden clatter. I fought to stay conscious, won the contest, hoisted myself up on hands and knees, opened my eyes.
The Hydra was gone. So was approximately half of a stout oaken tavern stool that had been close to him when my metacreative bolt hit. Where Parnell Remillard had stood was a scattering of gritty stuff that looked mor
e like spilled white sand than ashes. The truncated stool lay in the middle of it. No steam, no smoke, no charring. No other evidence of any incinerating heat. Except for the ruined stool, the lounge was undamaged. I seemed to know instinctively that the gong-tone still echoing faintly in my ears had been heard by no one but me. The end of my nose, the tips of my fingers, my toes, and another cherished portion of my anatomy experienced an odd lingering warmth, but otherwise I felt righteous, fit, and chipper—better than I had in weeks.
I’d killed a man for the second time in my life, and I really hadn’t the least notion how I’d managed it. I experienced not a shred of remorse. Both Hydra and Fury had been condemned to death in camera by the First Magnate of the Human Polity, and I had simply acted as his terrible swift sword.
On one of the tables lay a discarded durofilm printout of the Boston Globe. I knelt and carefully scraped Parni’s mortal remains onto a sheet of the newspaper and folded it up. He measured less than three cups full, and some of that had to be oak ashes. Humming along with Duke Ellington, I took the small package into the handsomely appointed gentlemen’s restroom adjacent to the lounge. Fortunately, there was no one there.
I dumped Parni into one of the old-fashioned water closets, made the sign of the cross just in case, and flushed. Then I spruced myself up, retrieved my top hat, and went off to get some champagne and dance at the wedding.
10
KAUAI, HAWAII, EARTH 18 JUNE 2078
LET ME TRY PLEASE LET ME TRY! LOOK AT THEM SILLY BESOTTED young idiots they’ll be so distracted at the Moment that their defenses will be down I’m SO close it would be easy—
—not a mental attack no something purely physical laser-weapon or firearm longrange or obliterate with micronuke or even puree them with sonicdisruptor—
Despair. If I had only arrived in time to assist that fucking idiot Parni! If only YOU had helped him kill Rogi before the secret was passed on.
I will do whatever you command. But how will you avoid detection now? How will you avoid extinction?
Beloved Fury I put my trust in you … Shall I return to Okanagon then and resume my work among the Rebel leadership there?
!!! Fury is THIS the great plan?
I want him. Not as another Hydra but as a slave.
Goodbye dear Fury.
They timed it to perfection, reaching the Hawaiian Islands just as the sun touched the sea in the west, descending in a cloudless sky, hovering just above the light-painted water until the dazzling solar globe slipped down, down, into the horizon’s coin-slot. And as the last bit of it vanished—
Green flash.
“Wonderful!” she exclaimed, bouncing up and down in her seat like a delighted child.
“Make a wish,” Jack said.
Dorothea squeezed her eyes comically shut, then popped them open. Her mind smiled. “Do I have to tell?”
“Not if you want the wish to come true.”
So she kept silent, knowing that he would never come into her mind without her explicit invitation. Her wish was Let me love him more. For in every nuptial pairing, one of the partners has a passion greater than that of the other, placing a heavier burden of love-sustenance on the one less engaged …
They were silent for a time, side by side in the cabin of the little starship, hands joined. He had changed into plain khaki pants and a loose puananala shirt for the honeymoon flight, and she wore denim shorts, sandals, and a blouse of soie-argentée with the sleeves rolled up.
“I’m glad we saw the green flash together,” she said. “It’s bound to be a good omen and we Scots are very keen on such things. I’ve heard about the sunset color-flash phenomenon, but on Caledonia the atmosphere is too full of moisture and volcanic dust for them to occur. When I came to Kauai before, I was too distracted by other things to think of watching for it.”
Jack put his arms around her and held her tightly. “You’ll never have to worry about Fury and the Hydra again. One of the things I’m going to teach you is the way to create an invincible shield—the kind that protects me from every type of physical and mental harm. It’ll take a little while, but you’ll find that I’m a pretty good kumu.”
Shyly, she probed the vestibulum of his inviting mind to find the meaning of the Hawaiian word. It meant not only “teacher” but “lover.” She lifted one of his hands to her masked face and he felt a kiss. “I’m glad this island will be our home on Earth,” she said. “New Hampshire is beautiful, but it’s a little too much like Callie: stern and rugged and indomitable. Not that I don’t love my planet and expect you to love it, too. But it’ll be good to have a gentler place to come to now and then, when things become especially difficult.”
And they will, their minds conceded. As the pressures of our work distract us, as the Rebellion intensifies, and as the deadly paradox of Fury is forced toward a final resolution.
“Damn that Rogi,” Jack said in a low voice. “Why did he have to pick our wedding day to spring his nasty surprise?… Did you notice that I redacted you to keep you from becoming too upset?”
She uttered a sly laugh. “No more than you noticed that I redacted you for the same reason! Poor old Uncle Rogi. He didn’t set out deliberately to spoil things. It was really the first chance he had to talk to us privately.” Her tone became somber. “Do you think his mind was recalling actual events in the case of the Hydra attacks?”
Jack hesitated. “He believed in the murderous fish just as he believed in Anne’s story about Denis being Fury. There’s no easy way that you and I can determine whether or not Rogi psychozapped Parnell in the hotel bar as he said he did, but I’ve told Paul about it and left it to him to investigate the matter or ignore it.”
“And the Denis/Fury theory?”
“It could very well be true. I’m afraid we’ll have to proceed as though it is true.”
“Rogi could be suffering from delusions.”
“No. He’s a strange old duck, but he’s far from delusional. He does possess extremely strong latent creativity, so it’s perfectly plausible that he might have zorched Parnell. And there’s something else about Rogi that you should know: He believes he has some sort of peculiar relationship with the Lylmik. Both Marc and Denis have commented on it in passing—disbelievingly, of course—but I think Rogi may be tellin
g the truth. There’s the Great Carbuncle, for instance. For years he’s joked that the Lylmik gave it to him. Did you deepscan the thing when he lent it to you for good luck during the diatreme event?”
“Why, no …”
“I did. And right at the center of the red diamond sphere is a sizable molecular anomaly that could be an infinitesimal natural flaw—but is more likely an artifact. The Carbuncle is some kind of machine: maybe a subspace transmitter, maybe much more. No conventional Milieu science I know anything about could have produced it. But the Lylmik could have.”
“Jack, this all seems incredible. I’ve rooted around in Rogi’s mind myself, you know. He’s a borderline neurotic, uncomfortable with his operancy. His habitual overindulgence in alcohol is certainly a symptom of personality imbalance—”
“Rogi’s not a true alcoholic. He abuses the booze when it suits him and lets it alone when he’s of a mind to. The man is an atavism, Diamond. An old-fangled type we don’t see very often in the Galactic Age.”
“He’s a gormless auld whaup!” But her Scots insult was overlaid with grudging fondness. “And I don’t see how we can commit ourselves to this Fury integration project solely on his unsupported mnemonic data. I really think we should wait until Anne comes out of the tank. Then you and I can deep-probe her in metaconcert. We’d not only corroborate or refute Rogi’s picture of the situation, but we might even be able to determine whether or not Anne herself is Fury.”
“It would mean waiting at least a year,” Jack said, shaking his head.
“Could we complete the preliminaries for Denis’s healing operation in less time? I’ve got to ream the Fury sig out of Rogi without damaging his dilapidated psyche, you’ve got to design a brand-new kind of CE brainboard and a self-contained power supply for the El8 helmet, and both of us have to work out a unique and untried metaconcert involving both coercion and redaction.”