“Jesus, Marc! Just say we’re fucked and be done with it. You know you’re the only paramount mind the Rebellion’s got!”
“At present.”
Alex posed a wordless telepathic query.
Turning away, Marc let his gaze wander over the panorama visible through the polarized dome of the rhocraft. They were flying over a great body of gray-green water bordered by verdant mountains. Alex Manion waited.
Marc finally said, “Our Rebellion can succeed if it includes the participation of Mental Man.”
Manion exploded. “Oh, for God’s sake! Can we talk reality here? Even if you could implement that wacko scheme of yours, it would take decades to get the project off the ground.”
“Wrong. The genetic feasibility studies were extremely favorable, and Jeff Steinbrenner is establishing the initial embryonic assay parameters right now at the CEREM facility in Seattle Metro. I’ve built a new lab for him and given him carte blanche and unlimited funding.”
Alex goggled at his friend, struck speechless.
“The normal human brain is neurologically mature at nine years of age,” Marc said. “There’s a fair probability that Mental Man might mature much earlier. We’ve got to stall the Milieu’s Protocol of Unity until Mental Man is ready for combat.”
“It’d be immoral to use little children—”
“To guarantee the mental freedom of the human race? I think not. The Mental Man cadre would be educated from the beginning with an understanding of their duty. Their destiny. The young metapsychic operants of today are inculcated with similar principles by their parents and preceptors—often even before their birth. Is that immoral?”
“No, but—”
“When Jack was nine, he was intellectually adult. So was I. Only our emotions and bodies were immature, and our metafaculties had yet to reach their full potential. With our special training regimen, Mental Man will have his full faculties after five years. Perhaps much earlier.”
“But the project you described to me would change the children in a fundamental way—before they freely consented.”
“We would change them infinitely for the better. Insure that their minds are superior. If it were a matter of choice, I think you’d be surprised at the number of parents who’d opt for a Mental child over a product of genetic roulette, even if it didn’t have daddy’s brown eyes or mommy’s nose. I certainly would. Eugenics of the mind has been debated by scientists and ethicists for over a hundred and fifty years, but no one has ever had the courage to take it from theory to practice—probably because the results couldn’t be guaranteed by the available technology.”
“Well, one man tried …” Alex’s mind projected an image.
“Don’t be an ass!” Marc snapped. “Hitler was a madman, not a trained operant scientist with state-of-the-art resources at his command.”
His friend was shaking his head. “Marc, I don’t know what to say. I had no idea that Mental Man was anything more than … a bizarre fantasy of yours.”
“It’s far from bizarre. The life-supportive equipment required by the project already exists. Shig Morita refined and upgraded the nonborn in-vitro reproduction technology that’s been in successful operation for over sixty years. What’s new is our ability to preselect the embryos with paramount potential, using farsensory CE. Jeff Steinbrenner developed the basic sorting technique several years ago when he was a staffer at IVFF in Chicago. His goal then was a fairly simple one: to enhance the engendering of operant nonborns. But implementation of his research was considered too controversial by the shortsighted bureaucrats who enforce the Human Polity Reproductive Statutes. CEREM won’t be troubled by any such restrictions.”
“Would you care to show me a detailed précis of the entire Mental Man project?” Alex asked very quietly.
Marc smiled, still staring out the window. “Not yet. We’re still working a few bugs out of it.”
“I’ll bet you are! For starters, I presume that only one of the gametes in this fabulous scheme can be guaranteed to carry the genes for paramount metafunction: your own.”
“Correct. Studies of my family heritage show there is an excellent chance of supravital alleles in mental traits as well as in the self-rejuvenating complex. Unfortunately, there are sublethal alleles as well, but we should be able to screen them out rather easily.”
“May I ask who will contribute the eggs for these wunderkinder?”
“Dierdre Keogh, the most brilliant female Grand Master working at CEREM. She was delighted to donate one of her ovaries to the project. Every one of her six natural children is a GM—although the spectrum of operant metafaculties varies.”
Alex gave a skeptical grunt. “Her natural brood is also atypically homozygotic—brilliant like their parents, and maybe even a bit more emotionally unzipped.”
“Jeff thinks that the odds are high that we’ll engender useful numbers of operant paramounts using Dierdre’s ova. The preceptive training of the fetuses will begin in the fifth month of life, just as my brother Jack’s did. He was the first Homo summus—the first Mental Man.” Marc turned to catch Alex’s eye. “Fortunately for our Rebellion, I can guarantee that the new generation will have a different political orientation.”
“Holy God! You’re really serious about this, aren’t you?”
Marc didn’t bother to answer the question. “I’m not yet prepared to announce the initiation of the Mental Man project to the other members of the Council, and I certainly don’t want the Astrakhanians to know about it. So please keep this conversation of ours confidential. What I need from you at this meeting is your support when I insist that we hold off arming the new fleet of Russian-built starships. I don’t want those guns or bombs installed until a hostile confrontation between our forces and those of the Milieu appears imminent and we have no other choice.”
“You can’t tell the Russians to stuff it—”
“Certainly not. We’ll need the starships eventually, along with whatever vessels of the Twelfth Fleet that our Rebel officers can commandeer. But for the present, discreet modifications in framedesign are all that I’ll agree to in the Astrakhanian scheme. We can’t take a chance on having Milieu loyalists catch us with our pants down—let alone risk a literal loose-cannon situation involving firebrands like Muldowney … or even Ruslan Terekev himself. This Rebellion will start when I say so. And we won’t bluff. We’ll fight to win.”
“Poor old Rory,” Alex drawled. “All those lovely weapons—scorned in favor of a gaggle of deus-ex-machina paramount brats.”
“Muldowney’s a good man,” Marc said, “absolutely loyal to the Rebel cause. It’s just too bad he’s had such a difficult time accepting my leadership.”
“Perhaps he finds it hard to separate you from your father in his mind. An understandable psychological blivet, under the circumstances.”
Marc let that one go by. Every Magnate of the Concilium knew that the Hibernian Dirigent’s wife, Laura Tremblay, had committed suicide twenty years earlier when Paul Remillard told her that their love affair had ended. In spite of Laura’s unfaithfulness, Rory’s love for her had never faltered. Neither had his hatred for the First Magnate of the Human Polity.
Marc admired the big Irishman on both counts …
“ETA Inisfáil NAVCON five minutes,” the egg’s navigation unit announced with a lovely lilt. “If you’re expected, please enter the access code—and ten thousand welcomes to you! If you’re not expected, I’m sorry to tell you that a landing option on the island is not available. Please go away, because today this airspace is protected with truly fearsome security measures you’ll not be happy to encounter!”
Alex laughed. “I’m encouraged. At least the traffic-control computers on this planet have a more civilized attitude than the ones on Earth. Maybe it’s a favorable omen of things to come.”
“Right now, I’ll settle for an edible lunch.” Marc fed in the code and the egg began to descend.
She was still working on the balky gravoma
g generator of the big tractor when he called on the intimate farspeech mode:
Síondaire, a iníon ó!
Yes, Taoiseach.
Are you ready for the Grand Tour? This lot are nearly finished gabbing and I’ll want to be bringing them down in a half hour or so.
You caught me flat on my back and filthy under the Tadano T6. You might know the damned thing would break just because we want to make a good impression showing off the armlann … Well, how did it go?
Not as I’d hoped, Síondaire a leanbh. That bloody Marc Remillard looked the gift horse in the mouth and decided it had stinking breath!
Oh, Daidí. I’m so sorry.
The Council mostly sided with Marc and I couldn’t persuade them otherwise. I was shot down in flames and made to look a right prat. Shite, maybe I am one, thinking that I knew anything about starwar strategy.
No one will dare think that of you!… What was the objection?
Marc was afraid that Ed Chung, the Commander-in-Chief of the Fourteenth on Assawompsett, would somehow discover the clandestine armament on the new ships and come roaring after his arse. So all he’d agree to is having the shipframes modified, and putting in hidden hardware for the weapons system controls. No actual armament plug-in until some unspecified time later in the game—never mind that it might be too late by the time they get around to it! Ruslan Terekev tried to assure Marc that the weapons could be effectively camouflaged, but the bastard wouldn’t budge. He was too cagey to say flat out that he was afraid that the Russians might try to bypass Owen Blanchard at Okanagon and command the ships themselves when the Rebellion started, but that’s what he was thinking.
Hmm. How trustworthy is this Ruslan Terekev, anyway? It’s less than two years since he had his great change of heart, after all. I don’t mean to take the side of Remillard, Daidí, but the man does seem only to be showing prudence and commonsense.
Maybe so. But this starship scheme seemed so right. The Rebellion with its own fleet of dreadnoughts at last! The armlann at the ready and human freedom within our grasp—
You’ve waited for twenty years, Taoiseach Ruairí O Maoldhomhnaigh. You can be patient a while longer.
Yes. It seems I’ll have to be.
Be proud that you’ve gathered a true arsenal. It’s more than any of the other Rebel leaders have done—hole&corner plotters most of them, doing nothing but squirreling away stupid brainbuckets.
CE is not stupid, my lass. Especially Marc Remillard’s sort.
I have no confidence in mental weaponry. But then, I’m prejudiced.
And a damned good thing … Well, do us both proud when I bring them down for the tour, Síondaire. We’ll be coming along soon.
It was time for a break anyhow.
Cyndia Muldowney slid out from under the big disabled machine on a rolling board. She gathered up the mess of scattered tools and diagnostic instruments lying about and stowed them neatly in her mechanic-tote. A good stretch eased her cramped muscles, and a cup of sweet tea from a nearby wall dispenser took care of her thirst. She carried the plass cup to the railing of the circular metal balcony and stood, one fist on her hip, looking down into a monstrous shaft that plunged into tenebrous depths. It was 120 meters in diameter and lined with tier upon tier of alcoves as big as barns. Inside each cell of the cylindrical hive lurked one or more bulky spectral shapes.
“Equipment bay lights on,” she commanded. “Deopaque pods.”
The cells were suddenly illuminated from within and the white plass shrink-shrouds protecting the stored items became transparent. Like goods in Christmas shopwindows, the treasures of Cyndia Muldowney’s domain were put on display.
Moonslicers.
Orbit sweepers.
Comet burners.
Modified deep-space smelters.
Hundreds of different types of actinic-beamers, X-lasers, molecular debonders, and twiston projectors—ingeniously modified from their original benign industrial or astronautical function into engines of destruction.
She had not done the actual refitting herself. Others devoted to the cause had converted lawful machinery into war matériel, laboring patiently for two decades in clandestine shops scattered all over the Rebellious Irish planet. And in later years, when his world’s growing economy had permitted it, Dirigent Rory Muldowney had consorted with underworld suppliers, paying them to steal truly colossal zappers and twelve precious antimatter devices from the Krondaku. It was done without a trace, by methods that Cyndia preferred not to think about.
Innocent-looking marine vessels transported the modified pieces from secret Hibernian workshops to a sea-cave on the rugged north side of Inisfáil, where there was a hidden dock. Before Cyndia’s time, old Tomás Daltún had taken each cargo consignment in charge. Working mostly alone, but assisted by the finest robotic construction and maintenance equipment that Rory Muldowney could buy or misappropriate from the tyrannical Galactic Milieu, the old man kept the cache of precious matériel in perfect condition, stowing it away in growing numbers of environmentally controlled storage alcoves carved from the living rock beneath Inisfáil.
Tomás Daltun was dead now, Lord rest him. But he’d lived to see the little girl who’d pestered and adored him during her summer visits to the island take over his job. Cyndia Muldowney was twenty-four years old. Her engineering education had only been completed two years earlier, whereupon her father had appointed her custodian of the armlann.
She finished her tea, tossed the cup into the recycler hopper, and went back to the Tadano T6 tractor. In operation, the huge machine moved freely up and down and around the shaft on a grid of rails, hauling the stored weaponry in or out of the cells. With luck, she might complete the repair before her father and the others came down. It would be rather impressive to pluck out one of the podded comet burners or moonslicers with tractor beams, haul it up to the main holding area beyond the balcony, and let the members of the Rebel Council and the two Astrakhanians inspect the thing up close. Only Patricia Castellane and Owen Blanchard had ever visited the arsenal before, and that was years ago during Tomás Daltún’s time, when the collection was still a fairly modest one.
No one would call the armlann modest now. Not even him.
Cyndia Muldowney smiled as she retrieved the tools she’d need to finish the present job. She lowered herself down onto the wheeled trolley, turned on its worklights, replaced her goggles, and used her PK to slide on her back beneath the ponderous machine. An odd thought struck her, and she wondered if the paramount maistín himself was watching her right this minute, farsensing through the solid rock and the guardian sigma-fields.
What was he really like, she asked herself, this man who led the Metapsychic Rebellion on his own terms? He seemed to terrify and infuriate her stouthearted father while still earning his unwilling respect. Marc Remillard was as handsome as the devil himself and as charming, and he apparently thought nothing of freezing his body to ice while injecting his paramount brain with lightning.
Was he a man at all, if what they said about him was true? And why did she care?…
She found herself staring blankly up at the partially disassembled guts of the tractor’s third-stage power unit, her own heart pounding, breathless with anticipation.
“Never you mind about that one, Síondaire Ni Maoldhomhnaigh,” she told herself sharply. “Get back to work!”
Throughout the long luncheon, Marc’s mind had been divided. Almost all of his attention was devoted to the intricate telepathic discussion of Ruslan Terekev’s cogently presented proposal. But one small part of him stood aloof, watching Lyudmila Arsanova as she performed exquisite, undetectable mind-probes of all the Rebel participants … except himself. Her inspection only reached the intermediate thought-levels of the other eight members of the Executive Council, but it was sufficient to expose reasoning processes and prejudices, as well as providing a useful psychological profile of each individual.
Arsanova’s eventual scrutiny of him was something altogether dif
ferent.
She had held off until the debate ended and the others at the table—replete with the magnificent meal of watercress soup, sea-spider mayonnaise in tomato aspic, grilled bluetrout with spinach-butter sauce, soda bread, and gooseberry fool with shortbread—were finishing their cups of coffee or tea. The conversation had turned vocal and desultory, confined to small talk now that it was inevitable what the decision on the starships was going to be. The disappointment of Intendant General Ruslan Terekev was palpable (only slightly mollified by his unanimous election to the Executive Council of the Rebel Party), which made it all the more peculiar that his female Chief of Staff seemed preoccupied with a completely different agenda.
At first Marc thought she might simply be coming on to him.
It was a tiresome phenomenon that had become more common since his entry into public life. As the charismatic new spokesman for the Rebel Party he was fair game for operant hero-worshippers of both sexes—most of whom had the good sense to back off when their subliminal overtures were rejected. But Lyudmila Arsanova apparently had more than mere dalliance on her mind. Her redactive touch on his invulnerable mindscreen was more fleeting than the caress of a butterfly wing, yet it carried an unusual urgency. Her own mental shield seemed to have diminished in spots, revealing intriguing glimpses of personality that struck him with an odd sense of déjà vu. He had never set eyes on the woman before, and yet he knew her: He had known her again and again, under disturbing—even humiliating—circumstances.
But how? And where?
She seemed to remain passive. Aside from expressing a few pleasantries when they were first introduced she had said nothing to him, never once meeting his gaze. But now her mental barrier was like a perfectly balanced garden gate ready to swing open and welcome him at the slightest encouragement. The compulsion for him to enter was becoming more and more powerful. Christ! Was the woman actually able to coerce him?
She was. But the impulse had no exterior source. It was coming from the depths of his own unconscious mind …