“I wonder why the exotic races never developed cerebroenergetic enhancement.”
“God knows. Lack of imagination, perhaps. I’ll tell you another of my disreputable opinions: I think the Milieu is rather stodgy, and the Lylmik who run it are a senile race of mystics on a downhill slide. Maybe their motive for dragging humanity into their confederation was to give it a well-needed shot of élan vital.”
She nodded slowly. “It’s plausible. They’ve said often enough that they need us. But I wonder if we really need them? So much of the Galactic Milieu smacks of well-intentioned tyranny. The Rebel faction believes that humanity is actually being retarded in its psychosocial evolution by exotic restrictions. It’s true that the exotics probably saved us from self-destruction fifty years ago and gave us a great scientific leg up. But by now our science and technology have passed theirs in almost every area, our social problems are nearly solved, and our larger colonial planets are completely self-sufficient. Is the Milieu still good for us now? I don’t know the answer.”
Marc did not offer an opinion. They were both silent for several minutes, savoring the fragrant rum. Finally she said: “Here’s just one example of Milieu bungling: Our world Okanagon is really a great place—provided that you don’t look too deep underground. It never should have been granted cosmop status and made a main focus of colonization because it has an unstable crust. The Krondaku team that checked it out four thousand years ago were incompetents. A whole group of other worlds in the same stellar region—Satsuma, Yakutia, Eskval-Herria, Caledonia—were also improperly surveyed and suffer the same kind of instability. Of course we humans never doubted the Milieu evaluation when they told us to colonize those planets. Serious anomalies on Okanagon weren’t discovered until 2058, when a comprehensive geological survey was done with new equipment developed on Earth. By then our population had mushroomed to over a billion. Okanagon is a Sector Base and the home of the Twelfth Fleet and one of the most highly developed human colonies. It would be economically disastrous to abandon the planet and start all over. Nobody seriously suggests that we should … yet. Most exotic Milieu geophysicists think that the likelihood of a truly catastrophic incident is small. Our late Dirigent, Rebecca Perlmutter, accepted that judgment and was inclined to minimize the danger. But a significant minority of planetologists—all human, of course—believe there’s room for real concern. Dirigent Castellane takes their opinion extremely seriously. I’m certain that your research would receive unlimited funding if you’d relocate to our planet.”
“Castellane told you to sound me out.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Yes. Even though we knew nothing of your problems with Dartmouth College.” Lynelle set her cup down. She examined one of her drying shoes, then moved both of them further from the heat. “You’ll be receiving an official invitation once we return home. As a senior member of the Dirigent’s staff and an acquaintance of yours, I was asked to introduce the idea to you before you left Orb.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t accept. I’ve made other plans.”
“Please reconsider! We’d appreciate your genius on Okanagon, Marc. There’d be no irksome academic or political restrictions. You’d have an unlimited budget, carte blanche in facilities and personnel—”
“You probably know that I come from an affluent family. I have abundant funds of my own in trust that are available, and the Remillard Foundation is one of the wealthiest on Earth. I intend to ask the Foundation to help fund the new independent research institute that I’ll head.” He hesitated, then added, “When the time comes to test the E15 equipment on geophysical applications, I promise to give Okanagon top priority.”
“Oh, thank you! Thank you so very, very much …” She flung her arms around him and kissed his lips. He was momentarily taken aback, but then laughed and gently extricated himself from the embrace. But she insisted on nestling close beside him and somehow he could not find it in himself to object. For a time they discussed technicalities of the crust-modification process, but then they sat quietly together staring into the flames. Her head with the mass of gleaming ebony curls rested against his shoulder. The firelight had turned her filmy gown and pale skin to gold.
“Dearest Marc,” she said finally. “I knew you’d be willing to help us. The people of my planet will express their gratitude later. But I—I wish you’d let me show my own appreciation now.”
Her hand began to move along his thigh. It was caught by his psychokinesis and held immobile. She gave a soft moan of frustration.
“Marc, I want you so very much! More than any man I’ve ever known. I’ve felt an attraction from the first moment we met. We’d be so good together! You know we would.”
“You’re a lovely woman, Lynelle, and very appealing. But I think not.”
She sighed, withdrawing her hand reluctantly as his mind released it. “Are you gay, then, like your brother Luc?”
“No. But I’m different from the other men you’ve known. With very different needs. Perhaps someday I’ll welcome the physical pleasures of sex, but not now. It would be a distraction, a diversion of vital energies needed elsewhere.”
She rounded on him sharply. “Paramount Grand Masters can’t be bothered with vulgar fucking! Is that the way it is? Or are you like Merlin—the greatest wizard of them all unless you succumb to a woman?”
Marc only tossed off the last of his rum and climbed to his feet. He did not offer to help her up. “Thanks for coming to say goodbye. And I appreciate your telling me about Okanagon’s support of my work. No hard feelings?”
Her voice was tremulous now as she looked up at him, forcing a smile. “No hard feelings. I’m sorry I barked at you. I hope we can say au revoir rather than goodbye. I—I’d like to show you Okanagon someday. As a friend.” Still seated on the rug, she began to put on her shoes. Suddenly she halted, as if struck by a thought, and gazed up at him in eager hopefulness. “Marc, there is one other thing you could do, if you would. A consolation prize.”
One winged eyebrow lifted quizzically.
“Show me your new E15 helmet,” she pleaded. “All Orb was buzzing about it after you did your demonstration before the magnates of the Science Directorate. Would you—could you—show me just a little of how it works?” Say you will do it!
Say you will do it!
SAY YOU WILL DO IT.
Marc’s deep-set gray eyes seemed to glaze for an instant. When he spoke, the words came haltingly. “It … might be … possible … if you’re really interested.”
She was standing now, charged with excitement. “It would be thrilling to see you demonstrate it. I could give my own confidential report to the Dirigent.”
“That might be … useful.”
He turned away and went to the other side of the little hut’s main-floor living area, rooting among a stack of luggage awaiting transfer to the Human Terminal. A moment later he returned carrying an impressive-looking transport pod with a prominent label:
CAUTION—INTERNAL SIGMA SHIELD
DO NOT ATTEMPT TO OPEN THIS POD WITHOUT CODE
OR CONTENTS WILL BE DESTROYED
He gently bit his lower lip to dislodge a few cells, then licked his finger and poked it into the code aperture. There was a ping and the container cracked open like a clamshell. A small puff of smoke confirmed that the decoder had sterilized itself and awaited the next DNA sample.
Lynelle said, “You protect your valuables well. But what if someone simply ran off with the entire pod? There are surely ways of breaking the code or deactivating a sigma that small, given time and resources.”
“Not in this setup. I designed it myself. It responds to my DNA, my fingerprint, and my mental signature. The sigma itself has fifteen backup levels—and five are programmed to micronuke at the least hint of tampering. Illegal to ship a pod like this on a civilian transport. It’ll go home to Earth on a diplomatic courier.”
“Oh, my,” she whispered.
Marc opened the pod fully. Inside th
e padded interior was the prototype CE helmet, a grotesque golden thing with portions of its operating systems mounted nakedly on the exterior for ease in experimentation. The container also held a small fusion power generator with cables, and a device resembling a handheld computer. Marc carried the equipment to his chair by the fire, plugged the helmet into its energy source, and fiddled with the handset. When he was satisfied he sat down and donned the helmet. It engulfed all of his head except the facial area below the eyes and was nearly as bulky as an old-fashioned hard-hat diving helmet.
“Damn prototype still weighs a ton. When it’s perfected it’ll be more comfortable.”
“What does the handset do?” She crept over and knelt beside him. A fine dew of perspiration had dampened the fine tendrils of raven hair in front of her ears and at her brow. Her lips, painted blood red, were tongue-dampened and the pupils of her eyes had become enormous.
“It’s a systems monitor that analyzes this and that and backs up the brainboard controls. It also has a deadman switch. If I drop it or if my hand pressure exceeds a preset level, the CE rig shuts down and a medic-alert squeal goes out.”
She reached out tentatively to touch the handset but he moved it out of reach. In spite of having his eyes covered, he was not at all blind inside the awesome golden casque. “Don’t be concerned about my safety. The thing works beautifully. Ready for a demo?”
“Oh, yes!”
“Here we go. Remember that what you see is no illusion, such as I might project with my ordinary gray cells, but an actual modification of matter and energy. I’ll need to concentrate. You sit still and just watch.”
She sank back onto her heels, her hands folded tightly over her breasts. The nipples were prominent and aching. She felt herself swelling and becoming moist as the anticipatory tension grew. Could he detect it? Probably not. His mind was completely rapt in his marvelous machine—
Oh my God.
Something was climbing out of the fire.
It was doll-sized, less than half a meter high, human in shape, but apparently composed entirely of flames. She could see its tiny features, its fingers, even its miniature male sex. It glided over the fender, not touching the floor, and bowed with comical gravity toward the two human beings. Then it turned about and lifted both fiery arms like a dancer posing. A charred chunk of wood some ten centimeters square popped out of the grate and floated above the manikin’s hands. Rapidly, the charcoal shrank, glowing strangely blue as it hissed and smoked. When it resembled a black pea the fiery homunculus plucked it from mid-air and held it in both diminutive hands.
“Now for the difficult part,” Marc said.
The flame-being appeared to be compressing the ball of carbon, squeezing it and kneading it until it shrank further and was lost to sight within the little hands. Then the manikin bent down, placed something very small on the floor in front of the hearth, bowed again, and whisked back into the fireplace where it disappeared.
The log fire burned as usual. Marc took off the CE helmet, exhaled a deep breath, and ran his fingers through sweat-dampened curls. A line of bloody pinpricks was stitched across his forehead. On the floor, something crystalline sparkled.
“It’s quite cool now,” he said. “You can pick it up.”
In spite of herself, Lynell Rogers cried out, “It can’t be! You couldn’t possibly have done it.” She knelt and retrieved the glittering thing, a sharp-edged octahedron less than two millimeters long that flashed rainbow colors in the firelight. “Good Lord—it is!”
Marc shrugged, grinning. “It’s a diamond, all right. Very strange internal structure because I wanted it large enough for you to pick up easily. Take it and have it analyzed. Show it to your Dirigent. You might leave out the fiery sorcerer’s apprentice, though. I got a bit carried away.”
He set the helmet on the floor upside down, crouched beside her, and pointed out the crown-of-thorns electrodes inside the apparatus that had penetrated his brain. The wounds on his head were fast fading, healed by his redaction. At his suggestion, Lynelle opened her mind to his concise mental diagrams of the cerebroenergetic enhancer. Although Marc withheld critical technical details, the images were explicit in showing the CE rig’s mode of operation.
“It’s absolutely incredible,” she breathed. “What do you estimate is the maximum energy output you might generate at a macro level?”
“That kind of testing will have to wait until the prototype is completed. This hat is only a crudely built demonstration model. It wasn’t even operating at full capacity.”
Lynelle Rogers shook her head in wonderment, studying the little diamond in the palm of her hand. “Incredible,” she repeated in a whisper.
The Hydra struck with its coercion again: Marc the fire is burning low. Put more wood on it. Now!
He arose, pulled an armful of logs from the caddy, tossed them into the grate, and bent down with the poker to restore a brisk blaze. When he was satisfied that the fresh fuel had caught fire, he turned back to Lynelle.
And found her wearing the helmet.
“Christ!” he exclaimed. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Her graceful, elegantly attired figure was incongruously crowned and blinded by the heavy metal headpiece. She held the controller in one hand and the diamond in the other. Her lips were slightly parted and her mind said:
Marc darling come to me this way.
MyGod NO you crazyfool you can’t—
Her natural creativity must have been enormous. Enhanced, it took possession of every extracerebral neuron in his body, paralyzing him, rendering him speechless. Momentarily, at least, he was unable to utter a farspoken cry or touch her with his psychokinesis. He might have broken the spell if he had called on the brute force of his coercion. Even creatively enhanced, her mind was no real match for his. But he held back. She offered no threat. What she wanted was glaringly clear, depicted in a dizzying series of erotic images that flooded his senses and ignited his imagination. What he had repressed, what he had denied now came alive with overpowering intensity. There was no anger or fear in his response, only tremendous excitement and need.
You see? she said, laughing. You are human after all. This will be very instructive very humbling and even though you are to forget the details of the catalysis the resultant will remain with you always!
Now come to me Marc.
Even at that point he might have withdrawn, sealing his mind behind a safe, impermeable barrier until he was able to regroup his faculties and regain self-control; something deep inside him was shouting a warning and urging him to do just that. But still he hesitated.
She lifted the tiny crystal.
The diamond, held before his eyes by two slender fingers tipped with gleaming scarlet lacquer. The diamond … seeming to expand until it filled the world with hot scintillation, the prismatic rays bathing him with exquisite pleasure.
He felt a delicious pain swell in the root of his being. Vital energies began surging up his spine in slow, ever-amplifying waves. His brain seemed to catch fire within a fierce, thundering rainbow. The crystalline lattice of the diamond was alive, piercing him, trapping him, becoming him. Crucified in light, his entire nervous system burned and screamed and sang, ultrasensitized to the point of torture. She was re-creating him and it hurt and it was marvelous and he wanted it more than anything in the world.
She was with him inside the diamond’s kaleidoscopic colors. They were twinned crystals, conjoined and vibrating to inhuman harmonies. The anguish and joy were consuming him, bringing him willingly to the edge of death.
Why are you doing this? he groaned. How do you know me so well to use me to torment me to make me want this?
I love you, she said. I hate you. And some day my dearest I’ll kill you in just this way.
Yes! he said. Oh, yes. Please.
Fool, she said from amidst the dreadful light, separating herself from him and abandoning him at the very brink. Someday, but not now. This is only to teach you who
you are.
Alone, he fell willingly into the abyss.
The living diamond that was himself shattered. He came and all energy was spent and it was over.
Marc awoke. He was lying prone on the hearthrug in front of a grate full of dead ashes. The helmet and its accoutrements were on the floor next to him and the cabin was frigid and silent. He remembered nothing.
Pulling himself up, he muttered an obscenity. Every joint and muscle throbbed with pain. What the hell had happened? And what was the CE rig doing here, out of its pod?
He couldn’t possibly have used it to …
God.
But he must have. The signs were unmistakable.
Cursing himself and consumed with self-loathing, he limped off to the bathroom. Puzzling out this piece of idiocy could wait. All he wanted now was a long, hot shower.
13
FROM THE MEMOIRS OF ROGATIEN REMILLARD
THE WISH LUCILLE CARTIER MADE AT ST. BRIGIT’S SPRING ON ST. Patrick’s Day, 2063, came true. For five years the affairs of the Human Polity of the Galactic Milieu seemed to run peacefully, even though the Rebel faction continued to flourish and gained some distinguished new adherents. Human colonies grew apace, exotic-human relations continued to be cordial, and human philosophers and ethicists noodled away at the concept of Unity, making it more and more acceptable to the majority of operant Earthlings.
Rory Muldowney’s attack on Paul was a nine days’ wonder that was never publicized outside of Orb. A good many people took secret satisfaction in the dapper First Magnate’s comeuppance, and I admit to sniggering over it myself. It’s only human, after all, to enjoy the discombobulation of the high and mighty! But the Dirigent of Hibernia apologized handsomely once he sobered up, and no one believed Paul was actually responsible for Laura Tremblay’s death—even though nasty comparisons to the demise of Teresa Kendall were inevitable. Once the brief hullabaloo died down, Paul carried on his official duties effectively and efficiently.