The luibheannach were highly sensitive to abrupt pressure changes in the atmosphere around them that might signal the presence of predators. When airplants perceived danger, special organs generated additional gases that enabled them to zip about under jet propulsion. The largest and most commercially valuable plants were also the speediest and most apt to drift around in a solitary fashion at lower altitudes. Dee had managed to capture respectable numbers of them this morning in spite of The Cheese’s clumsiness.
Now that her flitter had reached the upper section of the harvesting space, blue and brick-red fairy-critters began sailing into view, feeding on the abundant smaller plants. The aerial grazing animals looked something like elongated little jellyfish with complex bodies and dangling branched tentacles, with which they gathered their food. Dee knew she was supposed to blast every fairy she encountered with her thread-laser, not only because they fed on the valuable airplants, but also because their tough trailing arms could clog the pump mechanism of a harvester, making it necessary for the pilot to clear the intake orifice by hand. This meant climbing out of the cockpit, up the pylon, and out onto the exterior framework of the superstructure, secured by a lifeline. Dee had practiced the maneuver often. It was not especially dangerous, only a tedious waste of time.
No fairies had turned up during her first hours of work. Dee had been glad, because the creatures were strangely beautiful and she felt squeamish about killing them. Now, instead of firing the laser, she urged the little animals to get out of her way.
“Shoo! Truis! Mach as m’fhianuis! Get lost!” GO SOMEPLACE ELSE!
As she formulated the final coercive thought, every one of the fragile grazers whisked away, leaving behind tiny puffs of vaporous “exhaust.”
Well done! said her angel.
Dee gave a cry of dismay. What had she done? “No,” she whispered into her mask. “I didn’t!” But she did not dare to look inside her head to see if she had opened another of the dreadful boxes.
You did! the invisible angel crowed. And about time, too! Your coercive metafaculty was ready to break out spontaneously, and that might have been embarrassing, or even dangerous.
“I won’t use the power again,” she declared obstinately. “You can’t make me. I’ll hide it like I did the others and go on being normal forever!”
Don’t be silly. You’d better tell your brother about this. His own coercion became operant over four years ago. It’s not as strong as yours—but he’s been using it very effectively to keep Gavin Boyd from hassling him.
“Oh!” Dee felt oddly betrayed. Why hadn’t Kenny stopped the nonborn boy from being mean to her?
The angel said: He did this morning, so that Gavin wouldn’t spoil your first day of harvesting. Don’t you remember? Before that Ken was afraid to. Don’t be hard on him. Not everybody can be brave … Now go ahead and farspeak him. He’s going to need your help in a few minutes.
“Oh, all right! Now go away and let me alone! You’re not fooling me at all. I know what you’re really up to. You and that Jack.”
The angel said nothing.
The ascending Big Cheese finally emerged from the last billow of airplants into a clear region nearly ten kilometers above the Caledonian surface. The cirrus veil was very thin and the sky overhead was nearly blue. Below, little cumulus clouds seemed to float like miniature marshmallows in a crazy mix of vapor that looked like melted pistachio and strawberry ice cream. There was no sign of any of the other aerostats.
Feeling rather glum, she unwrapped her peanut-butter sandwich, unhooked her mask, and took a bite. Oh, yuck! Janet had put bacon in it again, even though Daddy had said it was all right for Dee not to eat meat. Well, perhaps Janet just forgot …
Dee nibbled around the edges and discarded the rest in the cockpit’s little fairy-incinerator. Then she summoned the position of Ken’s aircraft on the console monitor. The labeled blip showed that GT-10 had already departed the harvest area and was heading back southeast over the Goblins at an altitude of 5.5 kloms.
Kenny?
Uh? Oh it’s you is it.
Yes. Did you get a good load?
Jammed to busting … Don’t you think it would be smarter if we switched to RF com?
No. Listen Kenny … my coercing faculty came online.
Troch ort!
I know you’ve got it too.
[Hastily squelched obscenity.] Well for chrissake keep a lid on it dumbunny or both our asses will be Earthbound&down … not that the idea seems so tumturning to me anymore. This place is the pits. More weird viruses than I can ever learn to redact away. If I lived somewhere with decent medics maybe I wouldn’t be such a rotten sickie bréochaid. And it’s stone boring here in wintertime. I miss AuldReekie something chronic never a dull mo in Edinburgh. Didja ever think that it might be fun bringing our powers up to snuff and having other operant kids for friends?
No! Don’t even think about it!
[Envy.] Why not? I’m not *** {Daddy’s Little Princess} *** like you.
Kenny please don’t be horrid. I can’t help it if—
AAAACK! OshitOJesusOmyGod … Dee!
[Fear.] Whatwhatwhat? Kennyanswerme! Answer me!
Thingstherearethings pokingholesBIGHOLES God THINGS inside my storagecells insideALLthe cells tearingthewalls letting the plants out—
Dee used all her coercion: Kenny call Daddy now.
Yesyesallright. “Mayday mayday GT Leader GT-10 has torachan!”
“Torachan!” said Sorcha MacAlpin’s voice. “Mother of God!”
An anonymous voice cursed and abruptly cut out.
“Kenny,” said Ian Macdonald, “be calm. How many storage-cells have ruptured?”
“The—the readout says twenty-seven. That’s all except three!”
“I’m on my way, laddie. Go into hover mode. D’you hear me? Hover!”
“Dad, something’s really wrong. The flitter is spinning around all crazy and—and I’m losing H-2 pressure besides venting cargo!”
“Roger, I’m coming,” said Ian. “Sit tight.”
Dee sat frozen in reaction to her brother’s disaster. The torachan were uncommon and insidious floating organisms, resembling medium-sized airplants except for their distinctive grayish color. They had developed a unique defense against the predatory fairy-critters. If they were seized they extruded long augerlike spines that impaled their aerial attackers. Torachan that were accidentally sucked into a harvester might remain dormant; but if the storage compartment was tightly packed with weeds, sooner or later the torachan would be irritated enough to explode into frenzied activity, puncturing and slashing the tough plasticized fabric like little high-speed drill bits going through gauze.
Having even a single tora trapped in a storage-cell meant losing all of its cargo. Large numbers of them were sometimes able to cut through the reinforced inner wall of the gas envelope itself, releasing the hydrogen that provided lift to the aircraft.
Ken’s bin-flitter had evidently taken on a cargo contaminated with hundreds of the things. One of the pilots had been criminally careless.
Dee said: Kenny I’m coming to help too Daddy’s ship is faster but I’m a lot closer to you than he is!
She put The Big Cheese into a power descent. Once she was below the airplant stratum she went full-bore toward her foundering brother, continuing her telepathic reassurance.
Ken’s voice rang out piteously over the intercom. The torachan were cutting all of his cargo-cells to pieces. He was blinded, engulfed in a billowing cloud of escaping airplants. Jets of hydrogen gas venting from holes in one side of the envelope caused his flitter to spin and wallow as it sank.
“What’s your altitude and rate of descent, Ken?” Ian’s voice was grim. “All that mess around you is futzing your ponder.”
“Four kay high,” the boy wailed. “ROD nearly two hundred meters a minute. Daddy—I’ll crash into the sea!”
“Blow the pylon bolts. Do you understand? Cut the fuselage free.”
 
; “Yes … all right … Dad! It doesn’t work. I pulled off the cap thing and punched the button, but nothing happened. And I’m going down faster! Three kay—”
“Sweet Christ,” said Ian. “Use the backup. Far right side, under the console. You’ll have to pry loose two safety clips to get the switch open.”
Dee’s mind’s eye could see the sinking bin-flitter, its gas-bag nearly collapsed. There was a sudden bright flash, followed a moment later by a stuttering detonation. He’d done it! The fuselage separated and tumbled end over end, falling free of the cloud of weeds while what was left of the envelope drifted off. Ken screamed over the intercom. He was less than 500 meters above the surface of the sea.
Ian Macdonald’s black aerostat came into Dee’s view, flying in from the west. She herself was now less than half a kilometer away from Ken. She could hear her father’s shouts of encouragement. The parafoil would deploy and bring the falling fuselage down safely—
Something colored red and white burst out from behind Ken’s canopy. Instead of opening into a supporting mattress shape it streamed flat and fouled, its cords hopelessly twisted. The fuselage continued its fatal fall.
Help him, said the angel to Dee. You can. Reach out and take hold of the fuselage with your psychokinesis. Steady it and slow it. Use your enormous creativity to thicken the air.
Time stopped.
Dee saw a shrouded figure and two huge, glowing boxes. One was the golden color of a halide lamp and the other shone like an incandescent emerald. She seemed to be standing in a dark room in her silver flight suit with her hands at her sides, breathing the cool oxygen. There was silence. Nothing moved. Nothing in the world would move until she made her choice: her brother or herself.
It wasn’t a real choice at all.
Kenny.
Two masses of colored light erupted in a dazzling flare and faded, giving way to an eerie seascape. The fuselage with Ken inside was close by Dee’s flitter, utterly motionless. Scattered drifts of airplants halted in the gelid air and the waves of the sea less than a hundred meters below seemed frozen. Only Dee’s mind was able to move.
With her PK she untangled the parafoil’s lines, and then spread its fabric so the giant kite could fill properly. Time resumed and the world came to life once more. The waves leapt, the airplants swirled, and rushing atmospheric molecules filled the huge candy-striped parafoil. Dee held it and its suspended fuselage quite still until she was certain that the discarded superstructure frame with its rags of fabric had crashed into the sea. Then she made the wind blow. The parafoil carried Ken toward a flat little islet covered with grass.
The fuselage landed softly, rolling at an awkward angle because its landing struts were still folded inside their compartments. Dee reached out with her mind, collapsed the kite, and unlatched the canopy. The figure strapped inside lifted its visored head and stared up at The Big Cheese, which was slowly descending. Ian Macdonald’s aerostat was a few hundred meters offshore, hovering just above the waves. He had seen everything.
Ken’s unsteady voice in her helmet said, “Sis?”
You’re fine. Just relax. It’s all right.
“You did it, didn’t you! You used your powers …”
She didn’t reply. Moments later her own aircraft landed. She extended the boarding ladder. Two white sea mews that had flown off in alarm circled above, calling. Waves crashed on the rocks surrounding the little island. There were yellow flowers growing in the grass.
Dee pulled off her gloves and unfastened her mask. She climbed out of her aircraft and went slowly down the ladder, her muscles aching with stress. Ken was scrambling out of his fuselage, waving, as the black flitter approached the island and landed on the grass. Other aerostats were converging from the north.
There would be no way to hide what had happened. The flight recorder in Ken’s cockpit would have logged every word, every maneuver performed by the disabled flitter.
Even its uncanny halt in the middle of the air.
For the first time she thought to ask herself how the miracle had happened. How in the world had she actually done that?
Her mental feats had been virtually instinctive, performed in a desperate response to her brother’s peril. Could she do it again if she simply willed it?
She turned to The Big Cheese, stared at it intently, and ordered it with all her might to rise a short distance into the air.
Rise! she told the flitter. RISE!
It remained where it had landed, not budging a millimeter.
She tried again, this time focusing her volition on a rock near her feet. It was slightly larger than a potato. As she continued to stare at it and strain, it stirred slightly in its bed of soil, then fell back inert.
Dee sighed. She obviously had a lot to learn about metapsychic operancy. But she’d catch on eventually.
She sat down on the bottom rung of the aircraft ladder and waited for her father.
15
SECTOR 12: STAR 12-337-010 [GRIAN] PLANET 4 [CALEDONIA]
35 MIOS MEADHONACH A’ GHEAMHRAIDH [28 AUGUST] 2068
NEW GLASGOW, THE ROWDYDOWDY CAPITAL OF CALEDONIA, HAD no robot taxis, and all of the manned groundcabs lined up in front of the modest hotel where Professor Masha MacGregor-Gawrys was staying looked deplorably clapped out and dingy. She considered calling for a chauffeured egg; but that would be costly, and on a cold, rainy night like this it would probably take forever to arrive, and she was already half an hour late for her meeting. It had been stupid of her not to insist on being picked up at the hotel.
Clutching the hood of her raincoat, she entered the first taxi in the rank. Two scarlet furry dice and a miniature sporran hung from the rearview mirror, and the windscreen ionizer was barely functional in the downpour. The cab was suffocatingly hot. Both safety harnesses in the passenger compartment were broken, nameless grunge littered the floor, and a pervasive odor combining fried fish with the driver’s bodily effluvia assaulted her nostrils. Quad speakers that were unfortunately in excellent working order poured out a flood of raucous music.
The professor sighed. “Take me to the Granny Kempock Tavern. It’s somewhere in the university district.”
The scruffy old driver set aside the packet that held his fish and chips supper, chewed up and swallowed a handful of potatoes, and wiped his greasy mouth on his sleeve. “Ye’re sure ye wanna go to Granny’s, luvvie? It’s a wee bit raunchy for a fine lady like yerself.”
“Carry on,” said Masha crisply, and let him have a brief sting of coercion. She had no difficulty compelling him to shut off the blaring stereo, but nothing could be done about the heater. Its control was broken. And that smell! Her nanocreativity was inadequate to obliterate stink-molecules, and she knew she would never be able to manage self-redaction of her olfactory glomeruli, a hopelessly delicate piece of work, because she was still space-lagged from her trip. And if she opened a window to air the cab out, she’d be drenched. Oh, well. She rummaged in her bag, thinking that it might help a little to suck a menthol lozenge.
Then she remembered she had left them in her room.
Miserably, she settled back on the taxi’s rumpsprung seat to brood. She was not looking forward to this meeting. The principles of human liberty were one thing, revolutionary conspiracy quite another. I am a mild-mannered academic, Masha told herself, not an apprentice gunrunner!
If only she hadn’t let herself be talked into this side excursion … But Tamara Sakhvadze had looked upon her granddaughter’s trip to Caledonia on family business as a God-given opportunity to pass along the latest intelligence from Rebel headquarters on Earth to the stalwarts in the hinterworlds. Masha could not turn down the request of the desperately ill old woman, so she had agreed.
Worst of all, she was being forced to meet Kyle along with the others.
Heaven only knew what sort of a dive this tavern was. Probably one of Kyle’s haunts, where he and his drunken normal buddies did their half-baked scheming and he cooked up plots for his scandalous anti-M
ilieu novels. New Glasgow teemed with low-echelon Rebels, notorious characters who proclaimed their beliefs stridently; but the more exalted members of the cabal, the operants holding high positions in the government, kept a lower profile for reasons of political expediency. They were wary of being seen together in places frequented by other operants and by loyalist normals. When Masha passed on Tamara’s request to Kyle, asking him to arrange a special meeting with the Rebel honchos of Caledonia, Okanagon, and Satsuma, he’d said it was Granny Kempock’s or nothing.
The taxi rumbled and bounced and splashed over potholed pavement, eventually entering a run-down quarter between the University and the waterfront along the Firth of Clyde, where the narrow and twisting streets had a quaint, Dickensian squalor. Masha felt herself relaxing in spite of her discomfort, her mind turning to thoughts of her rakish estranged husband.
Kyle Macdonald had been stunned when she called him on the subspace communicator and told him she was coming to Caledonia in four Earth months for the children. Evidently Ian had said nothing to his father about having discovered that both Dorothea and Kenneth were operant. As was required by law, Ian had reluctantly reported the fact to the authorities and then to his mother, the professor.
But that news was nothing compared to the second surprise Masha had sprung on Kyle. When she announced that her mother Annushka and grandmother Tamara had finally converted her to the Rebel point of view, Kyle was astonished to the point of incoherence. If only she could have seen the old reprobate’s face as he gawped and spluttered! It would almost have been worth the hefty extra charge for SS com video.
The rain was starting to turn to sleet when the taxi finally pulled up in front of the Granny Kempock Tavern. Masha peered out of the taxi window, her heart sinking. “This is it?”