“That mini-transceiver we planted in your neck for the Gienah job,” Stetson said. “The medics replaced it at my request while they were putting you back together.”
“How nice of them.”
“It’s functioning,” Stetson said. “Anything happens around you, we hear it.”
“That’ll keep me loyal,” Orne said. As he spoke, he experienced the thought that if he just willed the transceiver to leave his flesh, the thing would pop out of his skin like a seed squeezed from ripe fruit. He shook his head. That was a crazy thought!
“That’s not why it’s there,” Stetson protested.
Frightened by the waywardness of his own thoughts, Orne touched the hidden stud at his neck, spoke sub-vocally. He knew a surf-hissing voice was being picked up by an I-A monitor somewhere within beam distance.
“Hey, eavesdropper! You pay attention while I’m making my play for this Diana Bullone, you hear? You may learn something about the way an expert works.”
Surprisingly, Stetson answered him: “Don’t get so interested in your work that you forget why you’re out there.”
So Stet was wearing one of these damn devices, too. Didn’t the I-A trust anyone anymore?
***
Chapter Twelve
In terms of human systems, feedback involves complicated unconscious processes, both individual and in a collective or social sense. That individuals can be influenced by such unconscious forces has long been recognized. The large-scale processes and their influence, however, are less well known. We tend to see them only latently in a statistical sense—by population curves, by historical evolution, by changes which stretch across the centuries. We often ascribe such processes to religious forces and have a tendency to avoid examining them analytically.
—Lectures of the ABBOD
(privately circulated)
Mrs. Bullone was a fat little mouse of a woman standing almost in the center of her home’s guest room, hands clasped across the paunch of a long dull-silver gown.
Orne thought: I must remember to call her Polly as she requested.
She possessed demure gray eyes, grandmotherly gray hair combed straight back in a jeweled net—and that shocking baritone husk of a voice issuing from a tiny mouth. Her figure sloped out from several chins to a matronly bosom, then dropped straight as a barrel. The top of her head came just above Orne’s dress epaulets.
She said: “We want you to feel perfectly at home with us, Lewis. You’re to consider yourself one of the family.”
Orne glanced around at the Bullone guest room: low-key furnishings with an old fashioned selectacol for change of color scheme. A polawindow looked out onto an oval swimming pool. The glass (he was sure it was glass and not a more technologically sophisticated substance) had been muted to dark blue. This imparted a moonlit appearance to the view outside. A contour bed stood against the wall at the right; several built-ins there. A door partly open on the left revealed a wedge of bathroom tiles. Everything about the place seemed traditional and comfortable. He did feel at home.
Orne said it: “I already feel at home here. You know, your house is very like our place in Chargon. Just as I remember it. I was really surprised when I saw it from the air as we were coming in. Except for the setting, it’s almost identical.”
“Your mother and I shared many ideas when we were in school together,” Polly said. “We were very close friends. Still are.”
“You must be to do all this for me,” Orne said, his own voice giving him an oddly alienated feeling. Such banality! Such hypocrisy! But the words flowed right on: “I don’t know how I’m ever going to repay you for …”
“Ah, here we are!” A deep masculine voice boomed from the open door behind Orne. He turned, saw Ipscott Bullone, High Commissioner of the League, suspected conspirator.
Bullone was tall with a face of harsh angles and deep lines. His dark eyes peered from beneath heavy brows and black hair trained in receding waves. He radiated a look of ungainly clumsiness which was probably a political affectation.
He just doesn’t strike me as the dictator or conspirator type, Orne thought.
Bullone advanced into the room, his voice filling it. “Glad you made it out all right, son. Hope everything’s to your taste. If it isn’t you just say the word.”
“It’s ... fine,” Orne said.
“Lewis was just telling me how our place is very much like his home on Chargon,” Polly said.
“Old-fashioned, but we like it that way,” Bullone said. “I don’t like the modern trend in architecture. Too mechanical. Give me an old-fashioned tetragon on a central pivot every time.”
“You sound just like my family,” Orne said.
“Good! Good! We usually keep the main salon turned toward the northeast. View of the capital, you know. But if you want the sun, the shade or a breeze in your room, feel free to turn the house on your own.”
“That’s very kind of you,” Orne said. “We have a sea breeze on Chargon that we usually keep the main salon centered on. We like the air.”
“So do we. So do we. You must tell me all about Chargon when we can sit down together, man to man. It’ll be good to get your views on things there.”
“I’m sure Lewis would like to be left alone for a while now,” Polly said. “This is his first day out of the hospital and we mustn’t tire him.”
She’s rushing him out, Orne thought. She hasn’t told him yet that I’ve been away from home since I was seventeen.
Polly crossed to the polawindow, adjusted it to neutral gray, turned the selectacol until the room’s dominant color shifted to green. “There, that’s more restful,” she said. “If there’s anything you need, just ring the bell there by your bed. The autobutle will know what to do or where to find us if it doesn’t.”
“We’ll see you at dinner, then,” Bullone said.
They left.
Orne crossed to the window, looked out at the pool. The young woman hadn’t returned yet. When the chauffeur-driven limousine flitter had dropped down to the house’s landing pad, Orne had seen a parasol and sun hat nodding to each other on the blue tiles beside the pool. The parasol had shielded Polly Bullone. The sun hat had been worn by a shapely young woman in swimming tights. She had rushed off into the house at first sight of the flitter.
Orne thought about the young woman. She had been no taller than Polly, but slender and with golden-red hair caught under the sun hat in a swimmer’s chignon. She wasn’t beautiful—face too narrow and with suggestions of the father’s cragginess. The eyes were overlarge. But her mouth was full-lipped, chin strong. There had been an air of exquisite assurance about her. The total effect had been one of striking elegance—extremely feminine.
So that was his target—Diana Bullone. Where’d she gone in such a hurry?
Orne lifted his gaze to the landscape beyond the pool: wooded hills and, dimly on the horizon, a broken line of mountains. The Bullones lived in costly isolation despite their love of traditional simplicity ... or perhaps because of it. Urban centers didn’t lend themselves to such old-time elegance. But here, centered in kilometers of wilderness and rugged, planned neglect of countryside, they could be what they wanted to be.
They could also be insulated from prying eyes.
Time to report in, Orne thought. He pressed the neck stud for his transceiver, got Stetson, brought him up to date.
“All right,” Stetson said. “Find the daughter. She fits the description of the woman you saw by the pool.”
“I know,” Orne said. He broke the connection, wondered at himself. He felt that he had become several people—one of them playing Stetson’s game, another off on personal interests, still another observing and disapproving. Through all of this, he felt that some essential core of himself had returned from death to become immersed in life—warm life teeming with beauty and movement. His body performed in one way, but an essential part of him filled with life and force, floated somewhere on a plane which interpreted death as only part o
f maturing.
It was a sensation of distortion and stretching. He fled from it, changing into light blue fatigues and letting himself out of the room into a curved yellow hallway. A touch to the timebeat repeater at his temple told him it was shortly before local noon. There was latitude for a bit of scouting before they called lunch. He knew from his brief tour of the house and its similarity to his childhood home that the hallway led into the main living salon. Public rooms and men’s quarters would be in this outside ring. Secluded family apartments and women’s quarters would occupy the inner circle.
Orne made his way to the salon. It was a long room built around two sections of the tetragon. Low divans occupied the space beneath the windows, some facing inward, some outward. Thick pile rugs formed a crazy patchwork of reds and browns throughout the room.
At the far end of the salon, a figure in blue fatigues much like his own stood bent over a metal stand. The figure straightened and a tinkle of music filled the room. Orne stood entranced at the familiar sound. It transported him in memory back to his childhood. The instrument was a kaithra. His own sisters had played it in a setting such as this one. He recognized the woman at the kaithra—the same red-gold hair, the same figure. It was the young woman he had seen beside the pool. She wielded two mallets in each hand to play the instrument which lay in a long dish of carved black wood on the metal stand, the strings stretched in six bands of five.
Orne, moody and caught in memories, moved up behind her, his footsteps muffled by the thick carpeting. The music possessed a curious rhythm. It suggested figures dancing wildly around firelight, rising, falling, stamping. She struck a final chord, muted the strings.
“That makes me homesick,” Orne said.
“Oh!” She whirled, gasped. “You startled me. I thought I was alone.”
“Sorry. I was just enjoying the music.”
She smiled. “I am Diana Bullone. You’re Lewis Orne.”
“Lew to all of your family, I hope,” he said. He enjoyed the warmth of her smile.
“Of course ... Lew.” She put the mallets atop the kaithra’s strings. “This is a very old instrument. Most people find its music ... well, rather strange. The ability to play it has been handed down for generations in mother’s family.”
“The kaithra,” Orne said. “My sisters play it. Been a long time since I’ve heard one.”
“Of course,” she said. “Your mother’s …” She stopped, appeared confused. “I have to get used to the fact that you’re ... I mean, that we have a strange man around the house who isn’t exactly strange.”
Orne found himself grinning and aware of self-loathing from the inner observer part of his being.
In spite of the severely cut I-A fatigues and hair pulled back into a tight beretknot, Diana was a handsome woman. She possessed an electric presence. Orne reminded himself that this was Stetson’s prime suspect in the Nathian plot. Diana and Maddie? It was too odd a situation to accept casually. He could not afford to like this woman, but he did. She was the daughter of a family which had been kind to him, which was taking him into its own household as an honored guest. And how was such hospitality being repaid? By spying and prying.
He reminded himself that his first loyalty belonged to the I-A and the peace it represented. Another part of him, though, chimed in mockingly—peace such as that now prevailing on Hamal and Sheleb.
Rather lamely, he said: “I hope you get over the feeling that I’m a stranger.”
“I’m already over it,” she said. She stepped forward, linked arms with him, said: “If you feel up to it, I’ll give you the deluxe guided tour. This is a really weird house, but I love it.”
***
Chapter Thirteen
Music represents an essential part of many Psi experiences which are labeled religion. Through the ecstatic force of rhythmic sounds, we perceive a call directed at powers outside of time and lacking the usual breadth and length compressed into the forms of matter by our corner of the endless dimensions.
—NOAH ARKWRIGHT,
The Forms of Psi
By nightfall, Orne had been reduced to a state of confusion. He found Diana exciting and fascinating, yet the most comfortable female companion he had ever met. She liked swimming, the bloodless hunting of paloika, the taste of ditar apples. She betrayed a disdainful attitude toward the older generation and I-A officialdom which she said she’d never before revealed to anyone.
They had laughed like fools over utter nonsense.
Orne returned to his room to change for dinner, stopped at the polawindow, which he tuned to clear transmission. The quick darkness of these latitudes had pulled an ebony blanket over the landscape. Distant cityglow painted a short yellow horizon off to the left. An orange halo remained on the peaks where Marak’s three moons would rise.
Am I falling in love with this woman? Orne asked himself.
Again, he sensed the fragmentation of his being—and this time felt the pull of his childhood training added to all of the other forces at war within him. The ritual training of Chargon came back to him with all of its mystery.
He thought: I am that. I am the consciousness of self which senses the Absolute and knows the Supreme Wisdom. I am the all-one impersonal I which is God.
It came straight out of the ancient rites which transferred kingly powers into religious terms, but he felt that the old concepts had taken on new meanings.
“I am God,” he whispered and he sensed forces writhing within him. Even as he spoke, he realized the words made no reference to his ego-identity-self. The I of this awareness was outside usual human concerns.
Without understanding its significance, Orne realized he had experienced a religious event.
He knew the Psi definitions taught in the I-A, but this experience shook him. He wanted to call Stetson, not to report but to talk out his own confusions about his role in this household. This thought made him acutely aware that Stetson or an aide had eavesdropped on his afternoon with Diana.
The autobutle called dinner, distracting Orne from a sensation that he had fallen from grace. He changed hurriedly into a fresh lounge uniform, found his way to the small salon across the house. The Bullones already were seated around an old-fashioned bubbleshot table set with real candles (they smelled of incense) and golden shardi service. Two of Marak’s three moons could be seen out the window climbing swiftly over the peaks.
“Welcome to you and may you find health in our house,” Bullone said, rising until Orne had seated himself.
“You’ve turned the house,” Orne said.
“We like the moonrise,” Polly said. “It’s romantic, don’t you think?” She glanced at Diana.
Diana looked down at her plate. She wore a low-cut gown of firemesh that set off her red hair. A single strand of Reinach pearls gleamed at her throat.
Orne, who had taken the seat opposite her, thought: Lord, what a handsome woman she is.
Polly, on Orne’s right, appeared younger and softer in a green stola gown that hazed her barrel contours. Bullone, on the left, wore black lounging shorts and knee-length kubi jacket of golden pearl cloth. Everything about the people and the setting reeked of wealth and power.
For a moment, Orne saw a confirmation of Stetson’s suspicions. Bullone might go to any length to maintain this luxury.
Orne’s entrance had interrupted an argument between Polly and her husband. As soon as Orne was comfortably seated, they went right on with the argument. Rather than embarrassing him, this lack of inhibition made Orne feel more at home, more accepted.
Diana caught Orne’s eye, glanced left and right at her parents, grinned.
“But I’m not running for office this time,” Bullone was saying, his voice heavy with strained patience. “Why do we have to clutter up the evening with all of those people just to …”
“Our election night parties are traditional,” Polly said.
“I’d just like to relax at home for once,” Bullone said. “I’d like to take it easy with my
family and not have to …”
“It’s not as though it was a big party,” Polly said. “I’ve kept the list down to fifty.”
Bullone groaned.
Diana said: “Daddy, this is an important election. How could you possibly relax? There’re seventy-three seats at issue, the whole balance. If things go wrong in just the Aikes sector ... why ... you could be sent back to the floor. You’d lose your job as ... I mean someone else would take over and …”
“Welcome to the damn job,” Bullone said. “It’s one giant headache.” He smiled at Orne. “Sorry to burden you with this perennial squabble, m’boy, but the women of this family run me ragged if I let them. From what I hear, you’ve had a pretty busy day, too. Hope we’re not tiring you.” He smiled paternally at Diana. “Your first day out of the hospital and all.”
“Diana sets quite a pace, but I’ve enjoyed it,” Orne said.
“We’re taking the on a tour of the wilderness area tomorrow,” Diana said. “I’ll do the driving and Lew can relax.”
“Be sure you’re back in plenty of time for the party,” Polly said.
Bullone turned to Orne. “You see?"
“Now, Scottie,” Polly said, “you can’t have …” She broke off at the sound of a low bell from an alcove behind, her. “That’ll be for me. Excuse me, please. No, don’t get up.”
Diana bent toward Orne, said: “If you want, we can have a special meal prepared for you. I asked the hospital and they said you were under no dietary restrictions.” She nodded toward Orne’s untouched dinner which had emerged from the bubbleslot beside his table setting.
“Oh, this is quite all right,” Orne said. He could not hear Polly in the alcove. She had a security cone for certain. He bent to his dinner: meat in an exotic sauce which he couldn’t place, Sirik champagne, ataloka au semil ... luxury piled upon luxury.
Presently, Polly resumed her seat.
“Anything important?” Bullone asked.
“Only a cancellation for tomorrow night. Professor Wingard is ill.”
“I’d just as soon they canceled it down to the four of us,” Bullone said. “I want some time to chat with Lewis.”