INTERVENTION

A   ROOT   TALE   TO   THE
GALACTIC MILIEU

and a
VINCULUM
between it and
THE SAGA OF
PLIOCENE EXILE

JULIAN MAY
1987
HOUGHTON   MIFFLIN   COMPANY   •   BOSTON

 INTERVENTION

Evolutionary creativity always renders invalid the "law 
of large numbers" and acts in an elitist way.

—Erich Jantsch
The Self-Organizing Universe

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.

—T. S. Eliot
"Burnt Norton"

PROLOGUE
HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE, EARTH
17 FEBRUARY 2113

      THE PROVERBIAL FEBRUARY thaw did not materialize for the 203rd annual Dartmouth Winter Carnival, and the temperature was around -10° Celsius when Uncle Rogi Remillard emerged from the sanctuary of the Peter Christian Tavern into a blustery, festive night. Cheered by a late supper of turkey-apple soup and a Vermont cheddar omelette, not to mention a liberal intake of spirits, he was damned if he would let the Family Ghost keep him from the fireworks display. The thing couldn't possibly do anything blatant in the midst of such a mob.
      The northeast wind blew leftover snow about thronged Main Street and down the tavern's stairwell. Rogi had to push past revelers who tried to crowd down the steps as he climbed up. When the full blast caught him, he gave his long red-wool muffler an extra twist to wrap it partially about his head. Thick grizzled hair stuck out of the scarf folds like a scraggly fright wig. Uncle Rogi was tall, skinny, and slightly stooped. His youthful face was disfigured by great bags under the eyes and a slightly mashed nose, which dripped when forced to inhale the arctic air of unmodified New Hampshire winters. More fastidious Remillards had long since given up pleading with Rogi to fix himself up. The family image? Ça ne chie pas!
      He stood in the partial shelter of the tavern building and looked warily around. The melting grids for both the streets and sidewalks of downtown Hanover had been turned off to preserve a properly old-fashioned atmosphere for the celebration. A six-horse team pulling a snow-roller had tamped down the worst ruts; and now sleighs, farm wagons full of hay and carousing students, and chuffing antique autos equipped with antique tire chains drove toward the College Green in anticipation of the pyrotechnics display. No modern vehicles were in sight. One could imagine it was the 1990s again... except that among the human pedestrians in their reproduction winter gear from L. L. Bean and Eddie Bauer were slower-moving groups of exotic tourists from the nonhuman worlds of the Galactic Milieu. All but the hardy little Poltroyans were snugly sealed inside environmental suits with visors closed against the harsh Earth weather. The Poltroyans romped and chortled in the stinging cold, and wore fish-fur mukluks and oversized Dartmouth souvenir sweat shirts over their traditional robes.
      Rogi searched the night, using his watering eyes rather than his farscan ultrasense. The damn Ghost was too clever a screener to be spotted with the mind's eye — or at least his mind's eye. Perhaps the thing had given up and gone away. God, he hoped so! After leaving him in peace for thirty years it had given him a nasty shock, accosting him there in the bookshop just as he was getting ready to close up. He had fled out into the street and it had followed, importuning him, all the way to the eter Christian Tavern.
      "Are you still here, mon fantôme?" Rogi muttered into his scarf. "Or did it get too cold for you, waiting outside? Silly thing. Who'd notice a ghost in a crowded bar with mulled cider and hot buttered rum flowing like Ammonoosuc Falls? Who'd notice a dozen ghosts?"
      Something insubstantial stirred in the tiny plaza fronting the Nugget Cinema just south of the tavern. Whirling powder snow seemed for a moment to slide over and around a certain volume of empty air.
      Bon sang! It had waited for him, all right. Rogi farspoke it:
      Hello again. Beats me, Ghost, why you don't simply put on a psychocreative body and sit down to supper with me like a civilized being. Other Lylmik do it.
      The Ghost said: There are too many alumni operants in the Peter Christian tonight. Even a Grand Master or two. In their cups, the older ones might be unpredictably insightful.
      "And that would never do, eh? Some really big operator might see through you in the worst way!" Rogi's whisper was scathing and his mental façade, fortified with Dutch courage, no longer betrayed a hint of unease. "Well, I'm going over to watch the fireworks. How about you?"
      The mysterious presence drifted closer, exuding restrained coercion. Oh, yes — it could force its will on him anytime it liked; the fact that it didn't had ominous implications. It needed wholehearted cooperation in some scheme again, the sneaky bastard, and very likely over some considerable span of time. Fat chance!
      The Ghost's mind-voice was insistent: We must talk.
      "Talk between skyrockets, " Rogi told it rudely. "Nobody invited you here tonight. I've been waiting for this all winter. Why should I give up my fun?"
      He turned his back and set off into the crowd. Nothing restrained him physically or mentally, but he was aware of the thing following. Bells in the Baker Library tower struck ten. A brass band was playing "Eleazar Wheelock" over in front of the brilliantly lit Hanover Inn. The leafless branches of the ancient elms, maples, and locust trees around the snowy quadrangle were trimmed in twinkling starlights. Streetlamps had been dimmed so the pseudoflames of the energy torches set up around the campus were the major source of illumination. They cast a mellow glow over the cheerful waiting throng and the ranks of huge snow sculptures in front of the college residence halls. In this centennial year of the Great Intervention, whimsical takeoffs on Milieu themes predominated. There was a flying saucer with its Simbiari crew marching down the gangplank, each exotic carrying a bucket of frozen green Jell-O. A hideous effigy of a Krondaku held out a tentacle to take a candy cane from a smiling human snow-child. Gi engaged in their favorite pursuit were posed in a Kama Sutra ensemble. Sigma Kappa had produced Snow White and the Seven Poltroyans. Out in the middle of the College Green was the festival's monumental theme sculpture: a bizarre armored humanoid like a fairy-tale knight, astride a rampant charger that was almost — but not quite — a horse. This statue was almost eight meters high.
      The Ghost observed: A fair likeness of Kuhal, but the chaliko's a bit off the mark.
      "The Outing Club tried to get him to be grand marshal of the crosscountry ski parade, " Rogi said, "but Cloud put her foot down. Spoilsport. And you can't fool me, Ghost. I know why you showed up tonight instead of some other time. You wanted to see the Winter Carnival yourself. " He groped inside his disreputable old blanket-coat and found a leather-bound flask of Wild Turkey.
      There was a choong from a cleared area over beyond Wentworth Street. The first rocket went up and burst in an umbrella of pink, silver, and blue tinsel extending from horizon to horizon. The crowd yelled and applauded. Rogi moved into the lee of a giant elm trunk to escape the wind. He held out the flask. "Une larme de booze?"
      Nobody noticed when the container left his gloved hand, tilted in the air, and then returned to its owner.
      Good stuff, said the Family Ghost.
      "As if a damned alien Lylmik would know, " Rogi retorted. "Gotcha!" He took three hefty swallows.
      Still seeking solace in the bottle instead of the Unity, I see.
      "What's it to you?" Rogi drank again.
      I love you. I wish you joy and peace.
      "So you always said... just before you gave me a new load of shit to shovel. " He took another snort, capped the flask, and put it away. The expression on his face as he watched scarlet fire-flowers bloom above black branches was both cunning and reckless. "Level with me. What are you, really? A living person or just a manifestation of my own superego?"
      The Ghost sighed and said: We're not going to start that all over again, are we?
      "You're the one who started it — by coming back to bug me. "
      Don't be afraid of me, Rogi. I know there were difficult times in the past —
      "Damn right! Least you can do is satisfy my curiosity, settle my mind before you start in all over again with the botheration. Put on an astral body like your damn Lylmik compères. Show yourself!"
      No.
      Rogi gave a derisive sniff. He took a bandanna handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his nose. "It figures. You're not a real Lylmik anymore than you're a real ghost. " Wind-chill tears blurred the purple and orange comets that chased each other overhead like she-elves with their hair on fire.
      The Ghost said: I am a Lylmik. I am the entity charged with the guidance of the Family Remillard through your agency, just as I've always claimed to be. And now I come to you with one last task —
      "Shit — I knew it!" Rogi howled in mortal anguish. Three stunning detonations from aerial bombs announced a flock of golden pinwheels. They zoomed heavenward in a tight formation, fissioned into hundreds of small replicas of themselves, then rained down toward the skeletal treetops, whirling and whistling like demented birds. There were vocal and telepathic cheers from the crowd. The brass band in front of the inn played louder. Metapsychic operants among the students were mind-shouting the final verse of the old college song with drunken exuberance:

Eleazar and the Big Chief harangued and gesticulated.
And they founded Dartmouth College, and the Big Chief matriculated.
Eleazar was the fa-cul-tee, and the whole curriculum
Was five hundred gallons of New England rum!

      "All my life, " Rogi moaned, "haunted by a damn exotic busybody masquerading as the Family Ghost. Why me? Just a quiet man, not very clever, hardly any metabilities worth mentioning. No world-shaker, just a harmless bookseller. Most insignificant member of the high and mighty Remillard Dynasty. Why me? Persecuted! Pushed around without any common consideration. Forced into one dangerous situation after another just to carry out your damn Lylmik schemes and forward the manifest destiny of humanity... unless it all hatched in my own unconscious. "
      Like starry dandelion puffs, colossal pompoms of Dartmouth green and white exploded high over the Old Row. The wind strengthened, stirring more and more snow into the air.
      Patiently, the Ghost said: You and your family were the key that opened the Galactic Milieu to the human race. The work required an exotic mentor because of the psychosocial immaturity of Earth's people and the pivotal role of you Remillards. And while I admit that you were called upon to endure mental and physical hardship —
      "You should be ashamed, using me that way. Playing goddam God. " Rogi gave a maudlin snuffle. He had the flask out again and emptied it with a single pull. "Nobody ever knew I was the one — your catspaw. Always another pot you wanted stirred, another piece of manipulation, meddling with this Remillard or that one. Uncle Rogi, galactic agent provocateur! And you used every dirty trick in the book to keep me in line, tu bâton merdeux."
      The Ghost said: Your family would have been aware if we had tried to coerce them, and they never would have accepted direct counsel from nonhumans — especially in the pre-Intervention years. We had to work through you. You were the perfect solution. And you survived.
      A cascade of white fire poured from the sky behind the library, silhouetting its lovely Georgian Revival tower. Psychokinetic adepts among the spectators took hold of the falling sparks and formed them into Greek letters and other emblems of college fellowship. The crystal dust of the blown snow began to mix with heavier flakes running ahead of the predicted storm.
      Rogi's eyes glittered with fresh moisture. "Yes, I survived it all. A hundred and sixty-eight winters and still going strong. But good old Denis had to die before he ever reached Unity, and Paul and his poor Teresa... and Jack! My Ti-Jean, the one you exotics call a saint — for what good it does him. You could have prevented all their deaths, and the billions of deaths in the Rebellion! You could have had me warn Marc, shown me some way to stop him. You could have used me properly, you cold-hearted monster, and nipped the conspiracy in the bud before it ever came to war!"
      The Ghost said: It had to happen as it happened. And in your own heart, Rogatien Remillard, you know that the tragedies brought about a greater good.
      "Not for Marc! Not for poor Marc the damned one. Why did he have to end that way? My little boy! I think he loved me more than his own father — nearly as much as he loved Ti-Jean. He almost grew up in my bookstore. My God, he teethed on a mint copy of Otto Willi Gail's By Rocket to the Moon!"
      The Ghost said: So he did... I remember watching him.
      "And yet you stood by and let him become the greatest mass murderer in human history — that brilliant misguided man who could have done so much good, if only you'd guided him instead of using an impotent old fart like me as your puppet. "
      The fireworks were reaching a crescendo. Great jets of vermilion fire rose from the four points of the compass behind the trees and nearly converged overhead. In the dark at the zenith, in the midst of the glare, there appeared a dazzling white star. It vibrated and split in two and the paired lights began to orbit a common center, drawing intricate figures like laser projections. The stars split again and again; each set drew more detailed designs about the central focus until the sky was covered with a blazing mandala, a magical pattern of spinning wheels within ornate wheels, white tracery in ever-changing motion.
      Then it froze. It was fire-lace for a moment, then broke into fine shards of silver that still held the wondrous pattern. The night was webbed in a giant constellation of impossible intricacy. Down on the campus the crowd released a pent-up breath. The tiny diamond-points faded to darkness. The show was over.
      Uncle Rogi shivered and pulled his muffler tighter. People were hurrying away in all directions now, fleeing the cold. The band finished playing "The Winter Song" and withdrew into the shelter of the Hanover Inn, there to drink the health of Eleazar Wheelock and many another Dartmouth worthy. Sleigh bells jingled, the wind roared in the white pines, and fresh falling snow curtained off the tall sculpture of the Tanu knight on the Dartmouth College Green.
      "Whatever you want, " Rogi told the Ghost, "I won't do it. "
      He darted off across rutted Wheelock Street, dodging a Model A Ford, a wasp-colored Ski-Doo, and a replica post-coach of 1820 vintage carrying a party of riotous Poltroyans.
      The unseen presence dogged Rogi's heels. It said: This is the centennial year of the Intervention, 2113, and a year significant in other ways as well.
      "Et alors?" sneered Rogi loftily. He headed back on Main Street alongside the hotel.
      The Ghost was cajoling: You must undertake this last assignment, and then I promise you that these visitations will end... if at the end you wish it so.
      "The devil you say!" The bookseller came to a sudden stop on the brightly lit sidewalk. There were roisterers all around, shouting to one another and filling the aether with farspoken nonsense. The celebrating students and visitors ignored Rogi and he in turn shut out all perception of them as he strained his mental vision to get a clear view of his tormentor. As always, he failed. Frustration brought new tears to his eyes. He addressed the Ghost on its intimate mode:
      Thirty goddam years! Yes, thirty years now you've let me alone, only to come back and say you want to start all over again. I suppose it's to do with Hagen and Cloud. Well, I won't help you manipulate those poor young folks — not even if you bring a whole planetful of Lylmiks to lay siege to my bookshop. You exotics don't know how stubborn an Earthling can be till you try to cross an old Canuck! To hell with you and your last assignment — et va te faire foutre!
      The Ghost laughed. And the laugh was so different from its characteristic dispassionate expressions of amusement, so warm, so nearly human, that Rogi felt his fear and antagonism waver. He was overcome by a peculiar sense of déjà vu.
      Then he was startled to discover that they had already reached South Street and were just across from The Eloquent Page, his bookshop. In this part of town, away from the college buildings and drinking establishments, the sidewalks were nearly deserted. The historic Gates House, with his shop on the first-floor corner and the white clapboard of the upper storeys blending into the thickening storm, had only a single lighted window in the north dormer: the sitting room of his third-floor apartment. He hustled up the steps into the entry on Main Street, pulled off a glove, and thumbed the warm glowing key-pad of the lock. The outer door swung open. He looked over his shoulder into the swirling snow. The laughter of the Ghost still rang in his mind.
      "Are you still there, damn you?"
      From inside the hallway, the Ghost said: Yes. You will not refuse me, Rogi.
      The bookseller cursed under his breath, stepped inside, and slammed the door. Stamping his feet, he shook himself like an old hound and untwined the red muffler. "Go ahead — coerce me! But sooner or later I'll break away, and then I'll sic the Magistratum on your self-righteous, scheming ass! I'm a Milieu citizen and I've got my rights. Not even the Lylmik can violate the Statutes of Freedom and get away with it. "
      The Ghost said: You're half drunk and wholly ridiculous. You've worked yourself into a frenzy without even knowing what my request is.
      Rogi rushed up the stairs, past the doors of darkened offices on the second floor, until he came to his own aerie. He fumbled in his pocket for the famous key ring with its gleaming red fob.
      "You've set your sights on Hagen and Cloud— or on their kids!" he said wildly. He flung the door open and nearly tripped over Marcel, his great shaggy Maine Coon cat.
      The Ghost said: My request does concern them, but only indirectly.
      Outside, the snow hissed against the double-glazed windows. The old wooden building responded to the storm's pressure with dozens of secret little noises. Rogi slouched into his sitting room. He dropped his coat and scarf over a battered trestle bench, sat down in the cretonne-covered armchair in front of the standing stove, and began to take off his boots. Marcel circled the bench purposefully, bushy tail waving. He broadcast remarks at his master in the feline telepathic mode.
      "In the right coat pocket, probably frozen stiff, " Rogi told the cat. Marcel rose on his great hind legs, rummaged with a forepaw that would have done credit to a Canada lynx, and hooked a doggie-bag of French fries left over from Rogi's supper. Uttering a faint miaow, incongruous for such a large animal, he transferred the booty to his jaws and streaked out of the room.
      The Ghost said: Can it be the same Marcel, food-thief extraordinaire?
      "The ninth of his line, " Rogi replied. What do you want?
      Once again the strangely evocative laughter invaded Rogi's mind, along with reassurance:
      You have nothing to be afraid of this time. Believe me. What we want you to do is something you yourself have contemplated doing from time to time over the past twenty years. But since you're such a hopeless old flemmard, you've put it off. I've come to make sure you do your duty. You will write your memoirs.
      The bookseller gaped. "My... my memoirs?"
      Exactly. The full history of your remarkable family. The chronicle of the Remillards as you have known them.
      Rogi began to giggle helplessly.
      The Ghost went on: You'll hold nothing back, gloss over no faults, tell the entire truth, show your own hidden role in the drama clearly. Now is the appropriate time for you to do this. You may no longer procrastinate. The entire Milieu will be indebted to you for your intimate view of the rise of galactic humanity — to say nothing of Hagen and Cloud and their children. There are important reasons why you must undertake the task immediately.
      Rogi was shaking his head slowly, staring at dancing pseudoflames behind the glass door of the stove. Marcel strolled back into the room, licking his chops, and rubbed against his master's stockinged ankles.
      "My memoirs. You mean, that's all?"
      It will be quite enough. They should be detailed.
      Again the old man shook his head. He was silent for several minutes, stroking the cat. He did not bother to attempt a thought-screen. If the
      Ghost was real, it could penetrate his barrier with ease; if it was not real, what difference did it make? "You're no fool, Ghost. You know why I never got around to doing the job before. "
      The Ghost's mental tone was compassionate: I know.
      "Then let Lucille do it. Or Philip, or Marie. Or write the damned thing yourself. You were there spying on us from the beginning. "
      You are the only suitable author. And this is the suitable time for the story to be told.
      Rogi let out a groan and dropped his head into his hands. "God— to rake up all that ancient history! You'd think the painful parts would have faded by now, wouldn't you? But those are the most vivid. It's the better times that I seem to have the most trouble recalling. And the overall picture — I still can't make complete sense of it. I never was much good at psychosynthesis. Maybe that's why I get so little consolation from the Unity. Just a natural operant, an old-style bootstrap head, not one of your preceptor-trained adepts with perfect memorecall. "
      Who knows you better than I? That's why I'm here myself to make this request. To give help when it's needed —
      "No!" Rogi cried out. The big gray cay leapt back and crouched with flattened ears. Rogi stared pointedly at the spot where the Ghost seemed to be. "You mean that? You intend to stay around here prompting me and filling in the gaps?"
      I'll try to be unobtrusive. With my help, you'll find your own view of the family history clarifying. At the end, you should understand.
      "I'll do it, " Rogi said abruptly, "if you show yourself to me. Face to face. "
      Your request is impossible.
      "Of course it is... because you don't exist! You're nothing but a fuckin' figment, a high-order hallucination. Denis thought so, and he was right about the other loonies in the family, about Don and Victor and Maddy. You tell me to write my memoirs because some part of my mind wants to justify the things I did. Ease my conscience. "
      Would that be so terrible?
      Rogi gave a bitter laugh. The cat Marcel crept back on enormous furry feet and bumped his forehead affectionately against his master's leg. One of Rogi's hands automatically dropped to scratch the animal's neck beneath its ruff. "If you're a delusion, Ghost, then it means that the triumph of Unified Humanity was nothing but the result of an old fool's schizophrenia. A cosmic joke. "
      I am what I say I am — a Lylmik.
      "Then show yourself! You owe it to me, damn you. "
      Rogi... nobody sees the Lylmik as they really are, unless that person is also a Lylmik. We are fully perceptible only to minds functioning on the third level of consciousness — the next great step in mental evolution, which you younger races of the Milieu have yet to attain. I tell you this — which is known to no other human — to prove my commitment to you. My love. I could show you any one of a number of simulacrum bodies, but the demonstration would be meaningless. You must believe me when I say that if you saw me truly, with either the mind's eye or that of the body, your sanity would be forfeit.
      "Horse-puckey. You don't show yourself, I don't write the memoirs. " A tight little smile of satisfaction thinned Rogi's lips. He patted his lap and Marcel leapt up, purring. The old man watched the dancing artificial flames. He whispered, "I've had my suspicions about you for years, Ghost. You just knew too much. No probability analysis, no proleptic metafunction can account for what you knew. "
      The Seth Thomas tambour clock that had belonged to Rogi's mother struck twelve with familiar soft chimes. Outside, the storm winds assaulted the north wall of the building with mounting vigor, making the aged timbers groan and the clapboards snap. Marcel snuggled against Rogi's stomach, closed his wildcat eyes, and slept.
      "I'm bound and determined to know the truth about you, Ghost. Read my mind! I'm wide open. You can see I mean what I say. I'll work with you and write the memoirs only if you come out in the open at last — whatever the consequences. "
      Rogi, you're incorrigible.
      "Take it or leave it. " The old man relaxed in the armchair, fingering a silken cat's ear and toasting his feet at the stove.
      Let me propose a sublethal compromise. I'll let you see me the way I was.
      "You got a deal!"
      Rogi realized that the thing was invading his mind, flooding him with the artificial calm of redactive impulses, taking advantage of the liquor's depressant effect, triggering endorphins and God knew what-all to bolster him in anticipation.
      And then Rogi saw. He said, "Ha. " Then he laughed a little and added, "Goddam. "
      Are you satisfied?
      Rogi held out a trembling hand. "Are you going to tell me the way you worked it?"
      Not until you complete your own story.
      "But —"
      We have a deal. And now, good night. We'll begin the family history tomorrow, after lunch.

PART I
THE SURVEILLANCE

1
FROM THE MEMOIRS OF ROGATIEN REMILLARD

      I WENT DOWN to walk along the icebound Connecticut River very early today before beginning this chronicle. My wits were more than usually muddled from overindulgence, and I had received an emotional shock as well — call it a waking dream! — that now seemed quite impossible out here in the fresh air and the revitalizing aetheric resonances of the rising sun. As I went west along Maple Street the pavements were still patchy wet and steaming; the melting network had been turned back on precisely at 0200 hours. In the business district and throughout most of the college precincts the -25° chill would be gentled by area heaters, but in this residential part of Hanover it was still fast winter. The night's brief storm had given us an additional ten or fifteen cents of snow, piling small drifts in the lee of fences and shrubs. Out here only a few wealthy eccentrics had force-field bubbles over their houses to screen out the elements. It was early enough so that the gravo-magnetic ground-cars and flying eggs were still locked away in their garages.
      Down in the sheltered strip of woodland alongside frozen Mink Brook the scene was even more reminiscent of the New England I knew when I was a kid in the 1940s. The snow under the tall hemlocks and birches was almost knee-deep and level as a marble floor. I'd brought decamole showshoes in my coat pocket and it took only a moment to inflate them, slip them on, and go slogging down to the shore path that paralleled the silent Connecticut.
      The great deep river was locked under a thick ice mantle, reminding me that winters are colder now than in my youth — if not always so picturesque. Thanks to the storm, the snow-cover of the Connecticut was again without blemish, swept clean of the tracks of skis and power toboggans and the footprints of foolish rabbits seeking a better climate on the other bank, over in Vermont. I 'shoed north for nearly two and a half kloms, passing under the Wheelock Street Bridge and skirting the Ledyard Canoe Club. Finally I reached that awesome patch of forest preserve where white pines tower eighty meters high and little siskins and nuthatches whisper mysteriously in the brush thickets. The scent of conifer resin was intense. As so often happens, the odor triggered memory more strongly than any effort of will ever could.
      This snow-girt woods I had not visited for three decades was the place where the boys used to come.
      The Gilman Biomedical Center of the college was only a few blocks away — and the Metapsychic Institute, and the hospital. Young Marc, an undergraduate already showing the promise that would someday make him a Paramount Grand Master, used to coerce the nursing staff in the intensive care unit and take Jack away. The beloved baby brother, slowly dying of intractable cancers that would devour his body and leave only his great brain untouched, rode in an ingeniously modified backpack. Marc and Jack would spend a morning or an afternoon talking, laughing, arguing. Stolen, pitiable hours of pine and pain and the contention of those brother-minds! It was then the rivalry was born that would bring thousands of inhabited planets to the brink of ruin, and threaten not only the evolution of the Human Mind but also that of the five exotic races who had welcomed us into their peaceful Galactic Milieu...
      Close to the shore where the snow lies drifted, it is not easy to tell where granite ends and the frozen river begins. The juncture is veiled. Molecules of water have slowed to the solidity of stone, apparently immutable. My deep-sight easily sees through the snow to tell the difference, just as it pierces the icy lid of the Connecticut to perceive black water flowing beneath. But I am not strong-minded enough to see the subtler flux of the ice molecules themselves, or the vibration of the crystals within the granite boulders, or the subatomic dance of the bits of matter and energy among the nodes of the dynamic-field lattices that weave the reality of ice and gray rock in the cosmic All. My vision of the winter river in its bed remains limited, in spite of the abstract knowledge science lends me.
      And how much more difficult it is to apprehend the greater pattern! We know we are free, even though constraints hedge us. We cannot see the unus mundus, the entirety that we know must exist, but are forced to live each event rushing through space and time. Our efforts seem to us as random as the Brownian movement of molecules in a single drop of ultramagnified water.
      Nevertheless the water droplets come together to make a stream, and then a river that flows to the sea where the individual drops — to say nothing of the molecules! —are apparently lost in a vast and random pooling. The sea not only has a life and identity of its own, but it engenders other, higher lives, a role denied to water molecules alone. Later, after the sun draws them up, the molecules condense into new water drops or snowflakes and fall, and sustain life on the land before draining away to the sea again in the cycle that has prevailed since the biogenesis. No molecule evades its destiny, its role in the great pattern. Neither do we, although we may deny that a pattern exists, since it is so difficult to envision. But sometimes, usually at a far remove of time, we may be granted the insight that our actions, our lives, were not pointless after all. Those (and I am one) who have never experienced cosmic consciousness may find consolation in simple instinct. I know in my heart — as Einstein did, and he was justified in the long view if not in the short — that the universe is not a game of chance but a design, and beautiful.
      The great white cold takes hold of the amorphous water droplet and turns it into an ice crystal of elegant form. Can I organize my memories into an orderly ensemble and give coherence to the tangled story of the Family Remillard? I have been assured that I can... but you, the entity reading this, may decide otherwise.
      C'est bien ça.
      The chronicle will begin in New Hampshire and conclude in interstellar space. Its time-span, willy-nilly, will be that of my own life; but I will tell the story from a number of different viewpoints — not all of them human. My personal role in the drama has not always been prominent, and certain Milieu historians have forgotten that I existed, except for grudging footnotes! But I was Don's fraternal twin and close to his wife and children, I was with Denis and Lucille at the Intervention, and I know what drove Victor and the Sons of Earth to their infamy. I was privy to the secrets of the "Remillard Dynasty" and to those of the Founding Human Magnates. I watched Paul "sell" New Hampshire as the human capital of the Milieu. I stood by Teresa throughout her tragedy. I know what kind of demons possessed Madeleine. I can tell the story of Diamond Mask, since her life was inextricably entwined with that of my family. Marc's tormented presence and his Metapsychic Rebellion will pervade these memoirs and climax them.
      Above all, however, this will have to be the story of Jon Remillard, whom I called Ti-Jean and the Milieu named Jack the Bodiless. Even though he was born after the Intervention, his life is prefigured in the struggles and triumphs of the people I will write about in this book: the first human beings to have full use of their higher mind-powers. But Jack would be their culmination. He would show us the awful and wonderful course our human evolution must take. He was the first Mental Man. Terrified, we saw in him what we will eventually become.
      Saint Jean le Désincarné, priez pour nous! But please — let us not have to follow your example for at least another million years.

2
OBSERVATION VESSEL CHASSTI [Simb 16-10110]
9 AUGUST  1945

      "LOOK THERE, " CRIED Adalasstam Sich. "They've done it again!"
      The urban survey monitoring system had zeroed in on the terrible event at the moment of the bomb's detonation, and at once Adalasstam stabbed the key that would transfer the enhanced image from his console to the large wall-screen. The other two Simbiari on duty saw the fungoid growth of the death-cloud. A blast wave spread away from it, obliterating the beautiful harbor.
      "O calamity! O day of despond! O hope-wreck!" intoned Elder Laricham Ashassi. Thin green mucus poured from the scrobiculi of his fissured countenance and outstretched palms. Being the senior member of his race present, it was his duty to express the sorrow and vexation of all Simbiari at the catastrophic sight — and its implications. The telepathic overtones of his keening brought the observers of the other Milieu races on watch hurrying into the oversight chamber.
      The two little humanoid Poltroyan mates, Rimi and Pilti, who had been at work in EM Modulation Records next door, were followed closely by the monstrous bulk of Doka'eloo, the Krondak Scrutator of Psychosocial Trends and a magnate of the Concilium. The horror unfolding on the wall-screen was so riveting that none of the entities thought to prevent the entry of the ship Gi, NupNup Nunl, until it was too late. The creature's great yellow eyes rolled back into its skull as the mass death-shout from the holocaust filled the chamber. NupNup Nunl uttered a wail in a piercing progression of minor sixths, lost consciousness from shock, and proceeded to collapse. Doka'eloo caught it with his psychokinesis and lowered it gently to the deck, where it lay in a disheveled heap of silky filoplumage, gangling limbs, and pallid genitalia. Aware that their supersensitive colleague's mind had withdrawn safely into the consolation of the Unity, the others paid no more attention to it.
      Elder Laricham, still dripping in ritual mourning, let dismay sharpen into indignation. "One atomic bombing was dire enough. But to devastate two cities —! And with peace feelers already sent forth by the wretched Islanders!"
      "Barbaric beyond belief, " agreed Chirish Ala Malissotam; but she held her green, as did her spouse Adalasstam. "But it was just about what one might expect of humanity, given the escalation of atrocities among all participants in this war. "
      "By using this appalling weapon, " Adalasstam said, "the Westerners prove they are no less savage and immoral than the Island warmongers. "
      "I do not agree, " Doka'eloo said ponderously. He paused, and the others knew they were in for a lecture; but the Krondaku was their superior officer as well as a magnate of the Concilium, so they steeled themselves. "While it is true that the Islanders at this time have expressed a certain inclination to sue for peace, prompted by the first display of atomic weaponry, their gesture was by no means wholehearted. The Island military leaders remain determined to continue hostilities — as our Krondak analysis of their high-level signals has confirmed. The Westerners are partially aware of this intelligence. Even without it, however, given the Islanders' record of perfidy in past dealings, plus the warrior-ethic forbidding honorable surrender, one might hold the West justified in thinking that the Islander High Command required a second stimulus" — he nodded at the fire-storm on the screen — "to bring the truth of their situation home to them beyond the shadow of a doubt. "
      "Bring home indeed!" exclaimed the scandalized Chirish Ala. "Oh, I agree that this second atomic bombing will end the stupid war, Doka'eloo Eebak. But by taking this course the planet Earth has signed its metapsychic death-warrant. No world utilizing atomic weaponry prior to its cooperative advent into space has ever escaped destruction of its primary civilized population component. The coadunation of the global Mind has been set back at least six thousand years. They'll revert to hunter-gatherer!"
      "We might as well pack up the mission and go home right now, " old Laricham said. The other two Simbiari murmured agreement.
      "Precedent tends to support your pessimism, " said the imperturbable Krondaku. "Nevertheless, we will await the decision of the Concilium. Debate has been lively since the atomic bombing of the first Island city. This second incident, which I farspoke to Orb promptly, should elicit a vote of confidence concerning our Earth involvement. "
      "The Concilium's vote is a foregone conclusion, " Adalasstam said. "The Earthlings are bound to blast themselves to a postatomic Paleolithic within the next fifty orbits or so, given their abysmal state of sociopolitical immaturity. "
      "Perhaps not!" the male Poltroyan, Rimi, piped up. He and his mate had been watching the mushroom cloud hand in hand, with tears in their ruby eyes and their minds locked in mutual commiseration. But now they showed signs of cheering up.
      Pilti, the female Poltroyan, said, "Earthlings have been atypical in their accelerated scientific progress as well as in their aggressive tendencies. Certain segments responded to this war with a great upsurge of solidarity, setting aside petty differences for the first time in human history as they worked together to oppose a clearly immoral antagonist. "
      "By Galactic standards, they're ethical primitives, " Rimi said. "But they have amazing metapsychic potential. Isn't that right, Doka'eloo Eebak?"
      "You speak truly, " the monstrous being assented.
      Now the fallen Gi began to stir. It opened its enormous eyes while keeping its mind well screened from distressing resonances. "I do hope we won't have to write Earth off, " NupNup Nunl fluted. "It has such gorgeous cloud formations and oceanic shadings — and its inventory of presapient life is rich beyond measure and quite resplendent. The birds and butterflies! The oceanic microflora and the glorious sea-slugs!"
      "Pity the sea-slugs aren't candidates for induction into the Milieu, " snorted Adalasstam.
      NupNup Nunl climbed to its feet, assisted by kindly Rimi. The Gi settled its plumage and untangled its testicular peduncles. "Human beings are quarrelsome and vindictive, " it conceded. "They persecute intellectual innovators and mess up the ecology. But who can deny that their music is the most marvelous in the known universe? Gregorian chant! Bach counterpoint! Strauss waltzes! Indian ragas! Cole Porter!"
      "You Gi!" Elder Laricham exclaimed. "So hopelessly sentimental. What matter if the human race is an aesthetic wonder — when it so obstinately resists the evolution of its Mind?" Laricham turned to the two Poltroyans. "And your optimistic assessment, Rimi and Pilti, is supported by nothing more than a naive view of the synchronicity lattices. The Arch-College of Simb has recognized Earth's unsuitability from the very start of this futile surveillance. "
      "How fortunate for humanity, " Rimi remarked suavely, "that our federation of worlds outranks yours in the Concilium. "
      Chirish Ala could not resist saying, "Poltroyans empathize with Earthlings merely because both races are so revoltingly fecund. "
      "So speed the great day of Earth's Coadunate Number, " Pilti said, lowering her eyes in piety. And then she grinned at the female Simb. "By the way, my dear, did I tell you I was pregnant again?"
      "Is this a time for vulgar levity?" cried Adalasstam, gesturing at the wall-screen.
      "No, " Pilti said. "But not a time for despair, either. "
      Rimi said, "The Amalgam of Poltroy has confidence that the human race will pull back from the brink of Mind destruction. In friendship, let me point out to our esteemed Simbiari Uniates that we of Poltroy belong to a very old race. We have studied many more emerging worlds than you have. There has been at least one exception to the correlation between atomic weaponry and racial suicide. Us. "
      The three green-skinned entities assumed a long-suffering mental linkage. Elder Laricham acknowledged the point with cool formality.
      "Oh, that's so true!" burbled the Gi. It wore a sunny smile, and its pseudomammary areolae, which had been bleached and shrunken by its horrific experience, began to re-engorge and assume their normal electric pink color. "I'd forgotten what bloodthirsty brutes you Poltroyans were in your primitive years. No wonder you feel a psychic affinity to the Earthlings. "
      "And no wonder we don't, " Elder Laricham growled. He crinkled his features to stem the flow of green. "Earth is a lost cause, I tell you. " He pointed melodramatically to the screen. "The principals in the current conflict, Islanders and Westerners, are certain to remain deadly antagonists for the next three generations at the very least. There will be fresh wars of vengeance and retaliation between these two nations so highly charged with ethnic dynamism, then global annihilation. The Galactic Milieu's overly subtle educative effort has been in vain. We will surely have to abandon Earth — at least until its next cycle of high civilization. "
      "It's the Concilium's decision, not yours, " Rimi said flatly. "Any word yet, Doka'eloo Eebak?"
      The fearsome-looking officer sat motionless except for a single tentacle that flicked emerald mucus blobs toward the floor scuppers in nonjudgmental but relentless tidiness. Doka'eloo opened his stupendous farsensing faculty to the others so that they might envision the Concilium Orb, a hollow planetoid more than four thousand light-years away in the Orion Arm of the Milky Way. In the central sanctum of the Orb, the governing body of the Coadunate Galactic Milieu had finally completed its deliberation upon the fate of Earth's Mind. The data had been analyzed and a poll of magnates was taken. The result flashed to the receptor ultrasense of Doka'eloo with the speed of thought.
      He said, "The Poltroyan Amalgam voted in favor of maintaining the Milieu's involvement with Earth. The Krondak, Gi, and Simbiari magnates voted to discontinue our guidance — giving a majority in favor of disengagement. ''
      "There!" exclaimed Adalasstam. "What did I tell you?"
      "We can't let their music die, " NupNup Nunl grieved. "Not Sibelius! Not Schoenberg and Duke Ellington!"
      But the Krondaku was not finished. "This negative verdict of the Concilium magnates was summarily vetoed by the Lylmik Supervisory Body. "
      "Sacred Truth and Beauty!" whispered Elder Laricham. "The Lylmik intervened in such a trivial affair? Astounding!"
      "But wonderful, " cried the two little Poltroyans, embracing.
      The Gi shook its fluffy head. Its ovarian externalia trembled on the verge of cerise. "A Lylmik veto! I can't think when such a thing ever happened before. "
      "Long before your race attained coadunation, " Doka'eloo told the hermaphrodite. "Before the Poltroyans and Simbiari learned to use stone tools and fire. That is to say, three hundred forty-two thousand, nine hundred and sixty-two standard years ago. "
      In the awestruck mental silence that followed, the Krondaku signaled Adalasstam to change the image on the wall-screen. The picture of the devastated Island city melted into a longer view of Earth as seen from the Milieu observation vessel. The sun shone full on it and it was blue and white, suspended like a brilliant agate against the foaming silver breaker of the galactic plane.
      "There is more, " Doka'eloo said. "The Lylmik order us observers to commence a thirty-year phase of intensified overt manifestation. The people of Earth are to be familiarized with the concept of interstellar society — as a preliminary to possible Intervention. "
      The three affronted Simbiari fell to choking on green phlegm. The Poltroyan couple clapped their hands and trilled.
      NupNup Nunl controlled itself heroically, quieting its reproductive organs to the magenta state, and uttered a luxurious sigh. "I'm so glad. It's really a fascinating world, and there is a statistically significant chance that the people will shape up. Very long odds, but by no means hopeless... "
      It extended a six-jointed digit and activated the ambient audio system, which was patched to Vienna radio. The climaxing strains of "Verklarte Nacht" filled the oversight chamber of the exotic space vessel.
      Invisible, it continued the Milieu's surveillance of over sixty thousand years.

3
FROM THE MEMOIRS OF ROGATIEN REMILLARD

      I WAS BORN in 1945, in the northern New Hampshire mill town of Berlin. My twin brother Donatien and I took our first breaths on 12 August, two days after Japan opened the peace negotiations that would end World War II. Our mother, Adele, was stricken with labor pains at early Sunday Mass, but with the stubbornness so characteristic of our clan gave no indication of it until the last notes of the recessional hymn had been sung. Then her brother-in-law Louis and his wife drove her to St. Luke's, where she was delivered of us and died. Our father Joseph had perished six months earlier at the Battle of Iwo Jima.
      On the day of our birth, clouds of radioactivity from the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were still being carried around the world by the jet-stream winds. But they had nothing to do with our mutations. The genes for metapsychic operancy lay dormant in many other families besides ours. The immortality gene, however, was apparently unique. Neither trait would be recognized for what it was until many years had gone by.
      Don and I, husky orphans, had a legacy from our mother of a GI insurance policy and an antique mantelpiece clock. We were taken in by Onc' Louie and Tante Lorraine. It meant two more mouths to feed in a family that already included six children; but Louis Remillard was a foreman at the big Berlin paper mill that also employed other males of our clan (and would employ Don and me, in good time). He was a stocky, powerful man with one leg slightly shorter than the other, and he earned good wages and owned a two-storey frame apartment on Second Street that was old but well maintained. We lived on the ground floor, and Oncle Alain and Tante Grace and their even larger brood lived upstairs. Life was cheerful, if extremely noisy. My brother and I seemed to be quite ordinary children. Like most Franco-Americans of the region, we grew up speaking French to our kinsfolk, but used English quite readily in our dealings with non-Francophone neighbors and playmates, who were in the majority.
      The Family Ghost, when I first met it, also spoke French.
      It happened on an unforgettable day when I was five. A gang of us cousins piled into the back of an old pickup truck owned by Gerard, the eldest. We had a collection of pots and pans and pails, and were off on a raspberry-picking expedition into the National Forest west of town, a cut-over wilderness beyond the York Pond fish hatchery. The berries were sparse that year and we scattered widely, working a maze of overgrown logging tracks. Don and I had been warned to stick close to our cousin Cecile, who was fourteen and very responsible; but she was a slow and methodical picker while we two skipped from patch to patch, skimming the easily reached fruit and not bothering with berries that were harder to get.
      Then we got lost. We were separated not only from Cecile and the other cousins but from each other. It was one of the first times I can remember being really apart from my twin brother, and it was very frightening. I wandered around whimpering for more than an hour. I was afraid that if I gave in to panic and bawled, I would be punished by having no whipped cream on my raspberry slump at supper.
      It began to get dark. I called feebly but there was no response. Then I came into an area that was a dense tangle of brambles, all laden with luscious berries. And there, not ten meters away, stood a big black bear, chomping and slurping.
      "Donnie! Donnie!" I screamed, dropping my little berry pail. I took to my heels. The bear did not follow.
      I stumbled over decaying slash and undergrowth, dodged around rotted stumps, and came to a place where sapling paper birches had sprung up. Their crowded trunks were like white broom-handles. I could scarcely push my way through. Perhaps I would be safe there from the bear.
      "Donnie, where are you?" I yelled, still terror-stricken.
      I seemed to hear him say: Over here.
      "Where?" I was weeping and nearly blind. "I'm lost! Where are you?" He said: Right here. I can hear you even though it's quiet. Isn't that funny?
      I howled. I shrieked. It was not funny. "A bear is after me!"
      He said: I think I see you. But I don't see the bear. I can only see you when I close my eyes, though. That's funny, too. Can you see me, Rogi?
      "No, no, " I wept. Not only did I not see him, but I began to realize that I didn't really hear him, either — except in some strange way that had nothing to do with my ears. Again and again I screamed my brother's name. I wandered out of the birch grove into more rocky, open land and started to run.
      I heard Don say: Here's Cecile and Joe and Gerard. Let's find out if they can see you, too.
      The voice in my mind was drowned out by my own sobbing. It was twilight — entre chien et loup, as we used to say. I was crying my heart out, not looking where I was going, running between two great rock outcroppings...
      "Arrête!" commanded a loud voice. At the same time something grabbed me by the back of my overall straps, yanking me off my feet. I gave a shattering screech, flailed my arms, and twisted my neck to look over my shoulder, expecting to see black fur and tusks.
      There was nothing there.
      I hung in air for an instant, too stupefied to utter a sound. Then I was lowered gently to earth and the same adult voice said, "Bon courage, ti-frère. Maintenant c'est tr'bien. "
      The invisible thing was telling me not to be afraid, that everything was now all right. What a hope! I burst into hysterical whoops and wet my underpants.
      The voice soothed me in familiar Canuckois, sounding rather like my younger uncle Alain. An unseen hand smoothed my touseled black curls. I screwed my eyes shut. A ghost! It was a ghost that had snatched me up! It would feed me to the bear!
      "No, no, " the voice insisted. "I won't harm you, little one. I want to help you. Look here, beyond the two large rocks. A very steep ravine. You would have fallen and hurt yourself badly. You might have been killed. And yet I know nothing of the sort happened... so I saved you myself. Ainsi le début du paradoxe!"
      "A ghost!" I wailed. "You're a ghost!"
      I can hear the thing's mind-voice laughing even now as it said:
      Exactement! Mais un fantôme familier...
      Thus I was introduced to the being who would help me, advise me — and bedevil me — at many critical points in my life. The Family Ghost took my hand and drew me along a shadowy, twisted game trail, making me run so fast I was left nearly breathless and forgot to cry. It reassured me but warned me not to mention our meeting to anyone, since I would not be believed. All too probably brother and cousins would laugh at me, call me a baby. It would be much better to tell them how bravely I had faced the bear.
      As the first stars began to show, I emerged from the forest onto the road near the fish hatchery where the pickup truck stood. My cousins and the fish men were there and welcomed me with relieved shouts. I told them I had flung my berry bucket in a bear's face, cleverly gaining time to make my escape. None of them noticed that I stank slightly of pipi. My brother Don did look at me strangely, and I was aware of a question hovering just behind his lips. But then he scowled and was silent.
      I got double whipped cream on my raspberry slump that night.
      I told nobody about the Family Ghost.
      
      To understand the mind of our family, you should know something of our heritage.
      The Remillards are members of that New England ethnic group, descended from French-Canadians, who are variously called Franco-American, Canado-Américaine, or more simply Canuck. The family name is a fairly common one, now pronounced REM-ih-lard in a straightforward Yankee way. As far as I have been able to discover, no other branches of the family harbored so precocious a set of supravital genetic traits for high metafunction and self-rejuvenation. (The "bodiless" mutagene came from poor Teresa, as I shall relate in due time. )
      Our ancestors settled in Quebec in the middle 1600s and worked the land as French peasants have done from time immemorial. Like their neighbors they were an industrious, rather bloody-minded folk who looked with scorn upon such novelties as crop rotation and fertilization of the soil. At the same time they were fervent Roman Catholics who regarded it as their sacred duty to have large families. The predictable result, in the harsh climate of the St. Lawrence River Valley, was economic disaster. By the mid-nineteenth century the worn-out, much-subdivided land provided no more than a bare subsistence, no matter how hard the farmers worked. In addition to the struggle required to earn a living, there was also political oppression from the English-speaking government of Canada. An insurrection among the habitants in 1837 was mercilessly crushed by the Canadian army.
      But one must not think of these hardy, troublesome people as miserable or downtrodden. Au contraire! They remained indomitable, lusty, and intensely individualistic, cherishing their large families and their stern parish priests. Their devotion to home and religion was more than strong — it was fierce, leading to that solidarity (a species of the coercive metafaculty) that Milieu anthropologists call ethnic dynamism. The Quebec habitants not only survived persecution and a grim environment, they even managed to increase and multiply in it.
      At the same time that the French-Canadian population was outstripping the resources of the North, the Industrial Revolution came to the United States. New England rivers were harnessed to provide power for the booming textile mills and there was a great demand for laborers who would work long hours for low salaries. Some of these jobs were taken by the immigrant Irish, themselves refugees from political oppression and economic woe, who were also formidably dynamic. But French-Canadians also responded to the lure of the factories and flocked southward by the tens of thousands to seek their fortunes. The migratory trend continued well into the 1900s.
      "Little Canadas" sprang up in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, and Rhode Island. The newcomers clung to their French language and to much of their traditional culture, and most especially to their Catholic faith. They were thrifty and diligent and their numerous offspring followed the parents into the family occupation. They became American citizens and worked not only as mill-hands but also as carpenters, mechanics, lumberjacks, and keepers of small shops. Most often, only those children who became priests or nuns received higher education. Gradually the French-Canadians began to blend into the American mainstream as other ethnic groups had done. They might have been quite rapidly assimilated — if it hadn't been for the Irish.
      Ah, how we Franco-Americans hated the Irish! (You citizens of the Milieu who read this, knowing what you do of the principal human bloodlines for metapsychic operancy, will appreciate the irony. ) Both the Irish and the French minorities in New England were Celts, of a passionate and contentious temperament. Both were, in the latter nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, rivals for the same types of low-status employment. Both had endured persecution in their homelands and social and religious discrimination in America because of their Catholic faith. But the Irish were much more numerous, and they had the tremendous social advantage of speaking the English language — with a rare flair, at that! The Irish parlayed their genius for politicking and self-aggrandizement into domination of the New England Catholic hierarchy, and even took over entire city governments. We Francos were more aloof, politically naive, lacking in what Yankees called "team spirit" because with us it was the family that came first. With our stubbornly held traditions and French language, we became an embarrassment and a political liability to our more ambitious coreligionists. It was an era fraught with anti-Catholic sentiment, in which all Catholics were suspected of being "un-American. " So the shrewd Irish-American bishops decreed that stiff-necked Canucks must be forcibly submerged in the great melting-pot. They tried to abolish those parishes and parochial schools where the French language was given first place. They said that we must become like other Americans, let ourselves be assimilated as the other ethnic groups were doing.
      Assimilate — intermarry — and the genes for metapsychic operancy would be diluted all unawares! But the great pattern was not to be denied.
      We Francos fought the proposed changes with the same obstinacy that had made us the despair of the British Canadians. The actions of those arrogant Irish bishops during the nineteenth century made us more determined than ever to cling to our heritage. And we did. Eventually, the bishops saved face with what were termed "compromises. " But we kept our French churches, our schools, and our language. For the most part we continued to marry our own, increasing our homozygosity — concentrating those remarkable genes that would put us in the vanguard of humanity's next great evolutionary leap.
      It was not until World War II smashed the old American social structures and prejudices that the Canucks of New England were truly assimilated. Our ethnocentricity melted away almost painlessly in those postwar years of my early childhood. But it had prevailed long enough to produce Don and me... and the others whose existence we never suspected until long after we reached adulthood.

4
SOUTH BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, EARTH 
2 AUGUST  1953

      HE WAS ON his way home from the ten-o'clock at Our Lady, toting Sunday papers and some groceries Pa had remembered they were out of, when he got the familiar awful feeling and said to himself: No! I'm outside, away from her. It can't be!
      But it was. Sour spit came up in his throat and his knees went wobbly and the shared pain started glowing blue inside his head, the pain of somebody dying who would take him along if he wasn't careful.
      But he was outside, in the sunshine. More than six blocks from home, far beyond her reach. It couldn't be her hurting and demanding. Not out here. It never happened out here...
      It happened in a dark room, cluttered and musty, where a candle in a blue-glass cup burned in front of one Sorrowful Mother (the one with seven swords through her naked pink heart), and the other one lay on her bed with the beads tangled in her bony fingers and her mind entreating him: Pray a miracle Kier it's a test you see he always lets those he loves best suffer pray hard you must you must if you don't there'll be no miracle he won't listen...
      The full force of the transmitted agony took hold of him as he turned the corner onto D Street. Traffic was fairly heavy even at this early hour, when most of Southie drowsed or marked time until the last Mass let out and the sandlot ballgames got underway and the taverns opened; but there wasn't another person in sight on the dirty sidewalks —nobody who could be hurting demanding calling —
      Not a person. An animal dying.
      He saw it halfway down the block, in the gutter in front of McNulty's Dry Cleaning &. Alterations. A dog, hit by a car most likely. And Jeez he'd have to go right by it unless he went way around by the playground, and the groceries were so heavy, and it was so rotten hot, and the pleading was irresistible, and he did want to see.
      It was a mutt without a collar, a white terrier mix with its coat all smeared red and brown with blood and sticky stuff from its insides.
      Intelligent trustful eyes looked up at him, letting pain flood out. A few yards away in the street was a dark splotch where it had been hit. It had dragged itself to the curb, hindquarters hopelessly crushed.
      Kieran O'Connor, nine years old and dressed in his shabby Sunday best, gulped hard to keep from vomiting. The dog was dying. It had to be, the way it was squashed. (Her dying was inside her, not nearly so messy. )
      "Hey, fella. Hey, boy. Poor old boy. "
      The dog's mind projected hurtful love, begging help. He asked it: "You want a miracle?" But it couldn't understand that, of course.
      The dog said to him: Flies.
      They were all over the wounded parts, feeding on the clotted blood and shit, and Kieran grunted in revulsion. He could do something about them, at least.
      "No miracle, " he muttered. He set the bag of groceries and the paper down carefully on the sidewalk and hunkered over the dog, concentrating. As he focused, the iridescent swarm panicked and took wing, and he let them have it in midair. The small green-backed bodies fell onto the hot pavement, lifeless, and Kieran O'Connor smiled through his tears and repeated: "No miracle. "
      The dog was grateful. Its mind said: Thirst.
      "Say— I got milk!" Kieran pulled the quart bottle out of the grocery bag, tore off the crimped foil cap, and lifted the paper lid, which he licked clean and stowed in his shirt pocket for later. Crouching over the ruined body in the sunshine, holding his breath and letting the pain lose itself inside his own head, he dripped cool milk into the dog's mouth.
      "Get well. Stop hurting. Don't die. "
      The animal made a groaning sound. It was unable to swallow and a white puddle spread under its open jaws. From the brain came a medley of apology and agony, and it clung to him. "Don't, " he whispered, afraid. "Please don't. I'm trying —"
      A shadow fell over the boy and the dog. Kieran looked up, wild-eyed with terror. But it was only Mr. Dugan, a middle-aged bald man in a sweat-rumpled brown suit.
      "Oh, " said Dugan shortly. "So it's you. " He scowled.
      "I didn't do it, Mr. Dugan. A car hit it!"
      "Well, can't I see that with my own two eyes? And what are you doing messing with it? It's a goner, as any fool can see, and if you don't watch out, it'll bite. "
      "It won't —"
      "Don't sass me, boy! And stop wasting good milk on it. I'll phone the Humane Society when I get home and they'll come and put it out of its misery. "
      Kieran began to recap the bottle of milk. Tears ran down his flushed face. "How?" he asked.
      Dugan threw up his hands impatiently. "Give it something. Put it down, for God's sake. Now get away from it, or I'll be telling your Pa. "
      No! Kieran said. You go away! Right now!
      Dugan straightened up, turned, and walked away, leaving Kieran kneeling in the filthy gutter, shielding the dog from the sun.
      "Put you out of your misery, " Kieran whispered, amazed that it could be so simple. (Why did Mom try to make it complicated?) He'd never thought of it that way before. Bugs, yes; he didn't care a hoot about them. The rats, either. But a dog or even a person...
      "You wouldn't take me along, would you?" Kieran asked it warily. The pain-filled eyes widened. "Stop loving me and I'll do it. Let go. Lay off. " But the dog persisted in its hold, so finally he reached out and rested his fingertips on its head, between its ears, and did it. Oddly, all of the hairs on the dog's body stiffened for an instant, then went flat. The animal coughed and lay still, and all pain ceased.
      Kieran wondered if he should say a prayer. But he felt really rotten, so in the end he just covered the body with the want-ad section of the newspaper. His Pa never bothered with that part.

5
FROM THE MEMOIRS OF ROGATIEN REMILLARD

      I WAS NOT to experience another manifestation of the Family Ghost for nearly sixteen years. That first encounter in the twilit woods took on a dreamlike aspect. It might have been forgotten, I suppose, had not the memory been rekindled every time I smelled raspberries or the distinctive pungency of bear scats. But I did not brood on it. Truth to tell, I had more important matters to occupy me: my own developing metafunctions and those of my brother. I have already mentioned that Don and I were fraternal twins, no more closely related than any singleton brothers. Many years later, Denis told me that if we had both hatched from a single egg, our brains might have been consonant enough to have attained harmonious mental intercourse, instead of the clouded and antagonistic relationship that ultimately prevailed between us. As it was, we were of very different temperaments. Don was always more outgoing and aggressive, while I was introspective. In adulthood we both were tormented by the psychological chasm separating us from normal humanity. I learned to live with it, but Don could not. In this we were like many other natural operants who came after us, our successes and tragedies blending into the ongoing evolutionary trend of the planetary Mind studied so dispassionately by the scientists of the Galactic Milieu.
      In our early childhood, following that initial stress-provoked incident of farspeech and farsight out in the woods, we experienced other near-involuntary telepathic interchanges. Once Don scalded himself with hot soup and I, in the next room, jumped up screaming. I would have a furious argument with a cousin and Don would come running up, knowing exactly what the fight was about. We sometimes dreamed the same dreams and shared unspoken jokes. Eventually, we attained crude telepathic communication as well as a kind of shared farsight and mutual sensitivity. We experimented, "calling" to each other over greater and greater distances, and exercised our farsight with variations on games such as hide-and-seek and hide-the-thimble. Our cousins were blasé about our talents, ascribing them to the acknowledged freakishness of twins. They learned early not to play card games with us, and casually utilized our farsensing abilities to track down lost items and anticipate impending adult interference in illicit activities. We were a little weird, but we were useful. No big thing.
      On one of our first days at school I was cornered by a bully and commanded to hand over my milk money, or suffer a beating. I broadcast a mental cry for help. Don came racing into the schoolyard alcove where I had been trapped, radiating coercive fury and saying not a single word. The bully, nearly twice Don's size, fled. My brother and I stood close together until the bell rang, bonded in fraternal love. This would happen often while we were young, when each of us was the other's best friend. It became rarer as we approached adolescence and ended altogether after we reached puberty.
      By the time we were nine (the age, Denis later explained to me, when the brain attains its adult size and the metafunctions tend to "solidify, " resisting further expansion unless painful educational techniques stimulate them artificially), Don and I had become fairly adept in what is now called farspeech on the intimate mode. We could communicate across distances of two or three kilometers, sharing a wide range of nuance and emotional content. Our farscanning ability was weaker, requiring intense concentration in the transmission of any but the simplest images. By mutual agreement, we never told anyone explicit details of our telepathic talent, and we became increasingly wary of demonstrating metapsychic tricks to our cousins. Like all children, we wanted to be thought "normal. " Nevertheless there was a good deal of fun to be had using the powers, and we couldn't resist playing with them surreptitiously in spite of vague notions that such mind-games might be dangerous.
      In the lower grades of grammar school we drove the good sisters crazy as we traded farspoken wisecracks and then snickered enigmatically out loud. We sometimes recited in eerie unison or antiphonally. We traded answers to test questions until we were placed in separate classrooms, and even then we still managed to cooperate in uncanny disruptive pranks. We were tagged fairly early as troublemakers and were easily bored and inattentive. To our contemporaries we were the Crazy Twins, ready to do the outrageous to attract attention — just as in our baby years we had vied to attract the notice of hard-working, hard-drinking Onc' Louie and kind but distracted Tante Lorraine. (But our foster parents had three additional children of their own after our arrival, for a total of nine, and we were lost in the crowd of cousins. )
      As we grew older we developed a small repertoire of other metafaculties. I was the first to learn how to raise a mental wall to keep my inmost thoughts private from Don, and I was always better at weaving mind-screens than he. It provoked his anger when I retreated into my private shell, and he would exercise his coercive power in almost frantic attempts to break me down. His mental assaults on me were at first without malice; it was rather as if he were afraid to be left "alone. " When I finally learned to block him out completely he sulked, then revealed that he was genuinely hurt. I had to promise that I would let him back into my mind "if he really needed me. " When I promised, he seemed to forget the whole matter.
      Don amused himself by attempting to coerce others, a game I instinctively abhored and rarely attempted. He had some small success, especially with persons who were distracted. Poor Tante Lorraine was an easy mark for gifts of kitchen goodies while she was cooking, for example; but it was next to impossible to coerce the redoubtable nuns who were our teachers. Both of us experimented in trying to read the minds of others. Don had little luck, except in the perception of generalized emotions. I was more skilled in probing and occasionally picked up skeins of subliminal thought, those "talking to oneself" mumblings that form the superficial layer of consciousness; but I was never able to read the deeper thoughts of any person but my twin brother, a limitation I eventually learned to thank God for.
      We developed a modest self-redaction that enabled us to speed the healing of our smaller wounds, bruises, and blisters. Curing germ-based illness, however, even the common cold, was beyond us. We also practiced psychokinesis and learned to move small objects by mind-power alone. I remember how we looted coin telephones throughout two glorious summer weeks, squandering the money on ice cream, pop, and bootleg cigarettes. Then, because we were still good Catholic Franco-American boys at heart, we had qualms of conscience. In confession Father Racine gave us the dismal news that stealing from New England Bell (we didn't reveal our modus operandi) was just as much of a sin as stealing from real human beings. Any notions we might have had of becoming metapsychic master-thieves died aborning. Perhaps because of our upbringing, perhaps because of our lack of criminal imagination, we were never tempted along these lines again. Our fatal flaws lay in other directions.
      The first indications of them came when we were ten years old.
      It was late on a dreary winter day. School was over, and Don and I were fooling around in what we thought was an empty school gym, making a basketball perform impossible tricks. An older boy named O'Shaughnessy, newly come to the school from a tough neighborhood in Boston, happened to come along and spot us working our psychokinetic magic. He didn't know what he was seeing — but he decided it must be something big and sauntered out to confront us.
      "You two, " he said in a harsh, wheedling voice, "have got a secret gimmick — and I want in on it!"
      "Comment? Comment? Qu'est-ce que c'est?" we babbled, backing away. I had the basketball.
      "Don't gimme that Frog talk — I know you speak English!" He grabbed Don by the jersey. "I been watching and I seen you gimmick the ball, make it stop in midair and dribble all over your bodies and go into the hoop in crazy ways. Whatcha got — radio control?"
      "No! Hey, leggo!" Don struggled in the big kid's grip and O'Shaughnessy struck him a savage, sharp-knuckled blow in the face that made my own nerves cringe. Both of us yelled.
      "Shaddup!" hissed O'Shaughnessy. His right hand still clenched Don's shirt. The left, grubby and broken-nailed, seized Don's nose in some terrible street-fighter grip with two fingers thrust up the nostrils and the thumbnail dug into the bridge. Don sucked in a ragged agonized breath through his mouth, but before he could utter another sound the brute said:
      "Not a squeak, cocksucker — and your brother better hold off if he knows what's good for the botha you!" The fingers jammed deeper into Don's nose. I experienced a hideous burst of sympathetic pain. "I push just a little harder, see, I could pop out his eyeballs. Hey, punk! You wanna see your brother's eyeballs rollin' on the gym floor? Where I could step on 'em?"
      Queasily, I shook my head.
      "Right. " O'Shaughnessy relaxed a little. "Now you just calm down and do a repeat of that cute trick I saw you doing when I came in. The in-and-outer long bomb. "
      My mind cried out to my brother: "DonnieDonniewhatgonnaDO?
      TricktrickDOit! DOitGodsake —
      Thenhe'llKNOW —
      O'Shaughnessy growled, "You stalling?" He dug in. I felt pain and nausea and the peripheral area of the gym had become a dark-red fog.
      "Don't hurt him! I'll do it!"
      Trembling, I held the ball between my hands and faced the basket at the opposite end of the court. It was fully sixty feet away, more than eighteen meters. I made a gentle toss. The ball soared in a great arc as though it were jet-propelled and dropped into the distant basket. When it hit the floor it bounced mightily, came up through the hoop from beneath, and neatly returned to my waiting hands.
      "Jeez!" said O'Shaughnessy. "Radio control! I knew it. Thing's a gold mine!" Raw greed glared out of his eyes. "Awright, punk, hand over the ball and the gimmick. "
      "Gimmick?" I repeated stupidly.
      "The thing!" he raged. "The thing that controls the ball! Dumb little fart-face frog! Don't you know a ball-control gimmick like that's gotta be worth a fortune? Get me outa this backwoods hole and back to Beantown and my Uncle Dan and — never mind! Hand it over. "
      "Let my brother go first, " I pleaded.
      The big kid laughed. He crooked one leg around Don's ankle and simultaneously pushed. My brother sprawled helplessly on the floor, gagging and groaning. O'Shaughnessy advanced on me with hands outstretched. Two of his fingers were bloody.
      "The ball and the gimmick, " he demanded, "or it's your turn, punk. "
      "The only gimmick's inside my head, " I said. "But you can have the ball. "
      I drove the rubber sphere at him with all my psychokinetic strength, hitting him full in his grinning face. His nose shattered with the impact and the ball burst its bladder. I heard a gargling scream from O'Shaughnessy and a throaty noise like a Malamute snarl from somebody else.
      Help me get him Donnie!
      The torn and flattened ball like some writhing marine organism clamping itself across a horror-stricken face. Savage sounds and big hands clawing and punching at me. The brother mind poured out its own PK spontaneously to meld with mine, strength magnified manyfold, cemented with mutual loathing, fear, and creative solidarity. Somebody shrieking as the three of us struggled beneath the basket. Then a grotesque figure like a scarecrow, its head a red-smeared dented globe. Go for it Donnie man HEY togethernow togethernow allezallez SLAM-DUNK THE BASTARD...
      They found O'Shaughnessy bloody-nosed and half out of his mind with terror, stuffed headfirst into the basket so that the hoop imprisoned his upper arms. The broken basketball encased his head and muffled his cries a little, but he was never in any real danger of suffocating. We had been caught, literally red-handed, trying to sneak out of the gymnasium. O'Shaughnessy blamed us, of course, and told the story pretty much as it had happened — leaving out his own extortion attempt and assault with intent to maim. He also accused us of owning a mysterious electronic device "that the FBI'd be real interested in hearing about. "
      His tale was too outlandish to be credited, even against us, the Crazy Twins. We maintained that we had found him in his weird predicament and attempted to help. Since we were obviously both too small to have boosted a hulking lout three meters above floor-level, it was evident that O'Shaughnessy had lied. His reputation was even more dubious than ours: he was a bad hat who had been shipped off to relatives in the New Hampshire boondocks in the vain hope of keeping him out of a Boston reformatory. Following the incident with us he was retransported with alacrity and never heard from again.
      We, on the other hand, were clearly not telling all we knew.
      Many questions were asked. Odd bits of circumstantial evidence were noted and pondered. In the midst of the uproar we remained tight as quahog clams. Our cousins who knew (or could deduce) a thing or two rallied round loyally. The family came first — especially against the Irish saloperie! After some weeks the incident was forgotten.
      But Don and I didn't forget. We hashed over and over the glorious experience of metaconcert, the two-minds-working-as-one that had produced an action greater than the sum of its parts, giving us transcendent power over a hated enemy. We tried to figure out how we had done it. We knew that if we could reproduce the effect at will we would never have to be afraid of anyone again.
      We thought about nothing else and our schoolwork was totally neglected; but we were never able to mesh our minds that way again, no matter how hard we tried. Some of the fault lay in our imperfect metapsychic development, but the greater failure was grounded in a mutual lack of trust. Our peril at O'Shaughnessy's hands had been sufficient to cancel our jealous individuality; but once the danger was lifted, we reverted to our deeper mind-sets — Don the driven, domineering coercer and I the one who thought too much, whose imagination even at that young age whispered where the abuse of power might lead.
      Each of us blamed the other for the metaconcert failure. We ended up locking each other out in a fury of disappointment, thwarted ambition, and fear — and we barely missed flunking the fifth grade.
      Onc' Louie called us to him on a certain spring evening and displayed the fatal report cards. Our cousins were all outside playing in the warm dusk. We heard their laughter and shrieks as they played Red Rover in a vacant lot while we stood sulkily before our uncle and faced the time of reckoning.
      "Haven't I done my best to rear you properly? Aren't you as dear to me as any of my own children?" He brandished the cards and his beer-tinged breath washed over us. "A few failing grades, one could understand. But this! The sisters say that you must make up these failed subjects or repeat a year. All summer long, you must go to the public school in the morning. What a disgrace! Such a thing has never happened before in this family. You shame the Remillards!"
      We mumbled something about being sorry.
      "Oh, my boys, " he said sorrowfully. "What would your poor parents say? Think of them, watching from heaven, so disappointed. It's not as though you were blockheads who could do no better. You have good brains, both of you! To waste them is an insult to the good God who made you. "
      We began to sniffle.
      "You will do better?"
      "Yes, Onc' Louie. "
      "Bon." He heaved a great sigh, turned away from us, and went to the sideboard where he kept the whiskey. "Now go out and play for a while before bedtime. "
      As we fled onto the front porch we heard the clink of glassware.
      "Now he can get stinko in peace, " Don hissed bitterly. "Rotten old drunk. Never expect him to understand. He talks about us being a disgrace —"
      We sat together on the bottom step, putting aside our enmity. It was quite dark. The other kids were dodging around under the streetlights. We had no wish to join them.
      I said, "Plenty of people flunk. He didn't have to drag Papa and Maman into it... or God. "
      "God!" Don made the word a curse. "When you come right down to it, the whole darn mess is his fault. "
      Horrified at the sacrilege, I could only gape at him.
      He was whispering, but his mental voice seemed to shout inside my skull. "God made us, didn't he? Okay — our parents made our bodies, but didn't he make our souls? Isn't that what the nuns say? And what's a soul anyhow, Rogi? A mind!"
      "Yes, but —"
      "God made these weird minds of ours, so it's his fault we have all this trouble. How can we help it?"
      "Gee, I don't know, " I began doubtfully.
      He grabbed me by the shoulders. The voices of the kids mingled with crickets and traffic noises and the sound of a television program that Onc' Louie had turned on inside.
      "Didn't you ever stop to think about it, dummy?" Don asked me. "Why are we like this? Why aren't there any other people in the world like us? When God made us, what in hell did he think he was doing?"
      "What kind of a dumb question is that? That's the dumbest thing you ever said! It's probably some kind of sin, even. You better shut your stupid trap, Donnie!"
      He started to laugh, then, a smothered squeaky sound loaded with an awful triumph, and he mind-screamed at me:
      He did it it's not our fault we didn't ask for this he can't blame us nobody can hell with all of them hell! hell! hell!...
      I closed my mind to him, slamming the barrier into place as though I were locking the door of a cellar that threatened to spew out black nightmares; and then he began to snivel and beg me to open up to him again, but I got up from the steps and went back into the house, into the kitchen where Tante Lorraine was baking something and the lights were bright, and I sat at the table and pretended to do my homework.

6
OBSERVATION VESSEL SPON-SU-BREVON [Pol 41-11000]
10 NOVEMBER  1957

      THE POLTROYAN COMMANDER'S ruby eyes lost their twinkle and his urbane smile faded to a grimace of incredulity. "Surely you jest, Dispensator Ma'elfoo! Personnel from my ship?"
      The Krondaku's mind displayed a replay of the incident, complete with close-ups of the miscreant Simbiari scouts taken flagrante delicto. "As you see, Commander Vorpimin-Limopilakadafin. "
      "Call me Vorpi. Do you mind telling me what you were doing in the vicinity of the satellite anyhow?"
      "My spouse, Taka'edoo Rok, and I were doing an unscheduled survey in order to include details of its fascinatingly crude design in a report we have prepared. Our transport module was totally screened, as is the invariable custom of the Krondak Xenocultural Bureau when visiting pre-emergent solar systems. The scout craft with the Simbiari was also screened heavily, but this presented no particular obstacle to Grand Master farsensors such as Taka'edoo and myself. We considered replacing the stolen property. However, the scouts had meddled with the biomonitoring equipment, and there was a chance that the satellite might have transmitted some anomalous signal to the Earthside control station. And so we contented ourselves with taking the scouts in charge, together with their booty, and bringing them to you. "
      "Love's Oath, " groaned Commander Vorpi. "Our tour's nearly over, and we had an almost perfect disciplinary record — up to now. "
      "My condolences. " The Krondaku politely refrained from stating the obvious: When vessels of his own methodical race were in charge of planetary Mind observations, nothing ever went wrong.
      "I must request that you testify at the disciplinary hearing, " Vorpi said. "And perhaps you have suggestions for redress. "
      "Our time is limited, Commander Vorpi. We are due back on Dranra-Two in the Thirty-Second Sector for a conference on primitive orbital biohabitats, derelict and functional. We postponed presentation of our paper and sped here at maximum displacement factor when we learned that Sol-Three had just entered this phase of astronautic achievement. (Most of our investigations have involved the orbiters of extinct civilizations. ) However, it will not be convenient to prolong our stay... " "Oh, I'll call the silly buggers on the carpet right now. " Vorpi sent out a thought on the imperative mode: GupGup Zuzl! Have Enforcer Amichass bring in those two scouts on report. And don't forget the contraband. I'll need you to log the hearing. Snapsnapsnap!
      Dispensator Ma'elfoo glanced about the commander's directorium. "A handsomely appointed chamber, " he remarked politely. "The artifacts are from Earth?" One tentacle palpated the multicolored animal-fiber carpet while another lifted an Orrefors crystal vase from Vorpi's monitoring desk.
      "Souvenirs. " Vorpi waved a violet-tinted hand. "The drapery textiles from the serictery secretions of certain insect larvae; the rug painstakingly knotted by hand-laborers in a desert region; the paintings by Matisse and Kandinsky, rescued from a Parisian fence; the settee by Sears Roebuck; the liquor-dispensing cabinet by Harrods. May I offer you some refreshment, by the way?"
      "I would esteem some Bowmore Scotch, " the Krondaku said. "My deep-sight perceives a bottle hidden away. "
      Vorpi chuckled as he left his desk to do the honors. "Distinctive treatment of alcohol, the Scotches. I predict a wide market for them in the Milieu — provided the Intervention does take place. Mixer?"
      "Just a splash of liquid petrolatum. " The two entities toasted one another. After savoring his drink, Ma'elfoo exhaled gustily. "Yes, it is as I remembered. Ten orbits ago I visited Sol-Three to participate in a comparative study of aircraft evolution. We went on a survey to the British Isles and I acquired a taste for this beverage, among others. Earth technology has developed apace; but one can be grateful that the distilleries cling to tradition."
      The connoisseurs enjoyed a momentary mental rapport. "Have you ever sampled the genuine rareties?" Vorpi asked softly. "Bunnahabhain? Bruichladdich? Lagavulin? Caol Ila?"
      The fearsome Krondaku uttered a whimper of ecstasy. "You're not joshing me, you fire-eyed little pipsqueak? Caol Ila?"
      Vorpi lifted his shoulders, let a tiny smile crease his lips.
      The door of the directorium slid open. The Gi GupGup Zuzl, secretary of the mission, stalked in, followed by two very young Simbiari scouts and an enforcer of the same race. Vorpi went back to his desk and sat down. The Gi declaimed:
      "Commander, the prisoners taken by Grand Masters Ma'elfoo and
      Taka'edoo Rok herewith submit to disciplinary inquiry. Defendant names: Scout Misstiliss Abaram and Scout Bali Ala Chamirish. Charges: On this Galactic Day La-Prime 1-344-207, the defendants, on a routine inspection of the Second Earth Orbital Vehicle, did mischievously interfere with said orbiter in contravention of divers Milieu statutes and regulations, removing its subsapient passenger with intent to smuggle said creature on board the Spon-su-Brevon. "
      The male and the female scouts stood at attention with screened minds and dry, impassive faces. Bali Ala had a harder time of it than her comrade because the small animal in her arms was squirming wildly and resisting her attempts at coercion. The Simbiari enforcer scowled and added his coercive quotient, but the beast only struggled harder, gave a sharp yap, and jumped free. It made a dash for the still-open door and would have escaped if Ma'elfoo had not zapped its brainstem very gently, paralyzing it in its tracks.
      Enforcer Amichass, mortified and glistening with green sweat, retrieved the creature and set it like a stuffed toy beside the two crewmen on report. "I'm sorry about that, Commander. A recalcitrant species that resists —"
      "Never mind, " Vorpi sighed. "Get on with it. What do you two have to say for yourselves? Of all the sophomoric idiocies — pinching the damn Russian dog!"
      "Her name is Laika, " Misstiliss said.
      Bali Ala said, "The power-source of the vehicle's environmental system was almost exhausted. The animal was about to perish from oxygen lack. We — we shorted out the biomonitoring equipment and took Laika after making certain that Soviet ground control would have no indication of any anomaly. "
      Misstiliss added, "The orbit of the satellite is very eccentric and decaying rapidly. Sputnik II will burn up on re-entry, obliterating any trace of our interference. Laika has endured nearly a week in orbit, and we thought she might provide us with valuable research data —"
      "Half-masticated lumpukit!" swore the Poltroyan commander. "You wanted to take the thing back with you as a souvenir! As a pet!"
      A green droplet hung from Misstiliss's nose. He fixed his gaze on a point where the wall behind Commander Vorpi met the ceiling. "You are correct, of course, sir. We admit our guilt fully, repent of the infraction, and stand ready to accept discipline at the Commander's pleasure. "
      "So say I also, " Bali Ala murmured. "But we really didn't do any harm. "
      "Won't you youngsters ever learn?" Vorpi was out of his chair and pacing in front of the pair and the dog, waving his glass of Scotch by way of punctuation. "We realize that these long surveillance tours of exotic worlds can be tedious — especially to youths who, like yourselves, belong to a race imperfectly attuned to Unity. But think of the importance of our work! Think of the Milieu's noble scheme for planet Earth and our hope that its unique Mind may eventually enrich the Galaxy!"
      The Krondaku addressed Commander Vorpi on his intimate mode: At least that's what the Lylmik keep telling us.
      "Young people, " Vorpi went on, "remember your history. Think of the poor planet Yanalon, Friin-Six, that was hurled back to barbarism on the very threshold of coadunation merely because a careless botanist on a Milieu survey vessel contravened regulations and picked a single piece of fruit and spat out the pips... "
      She was a Poltroyan, as I recall, said Ma'elfoo.
      "The work we do, coaxing these primitive worlds toward metapsychic operancy and coadunation with our Milieu, is excruciatingly delicate. It can be jeopardized by a single thoughtless action, even one that seems harmless. This is why every infraction of the Guidance Statutes for Overt Intervention must be considered a most serious matter. One doesn't meddle frivolously with the destiny of a sapient race. "
      And tell that to the Lylmik as well! Ma'elfoo suggested.
      His peroration at an end, Vorpi resumed his seat and said, "Now you may respond. "
      "We would not deliberately contravene any scheme of the Concilium, " Bali Ala said stiffly, "even in the case of a patently unworthy world such as Earth, which has been showered with far more Milieu assistance than it deserves. But... the Earthlings will never know that we saved the little dog, and it has a very appealing personality. Far more appealing than that of the average human, when it comes to that! We farspoke Laika on all three of our inspection tours of the satellite, and I admit that we both became bonded to her. "
      The Gi smiled and whiffled its cryptomammaries. "It really is adorable. "
      Misstiliss said, "When we saw that the planetside controllers meant to let Laika die, we were outraged — and we acted. I'm sorry we violated the Guidance Statutes, but not sorry we saved the little dog. "
      Commander Vorpi tapped the side of the empty Scotch glass with the talon of his little finger. "A grave matter. Yet, as you said, it would seem no harm was done. "
      "I haven't yet logged the hearing, " GupGup Zuzl insinuated slyly. "And we have enjoyed a perfect duty tour up until now... "
      Vorpi fixed the Krondak scientist with a meaningful gaze. "However, the violation was witnessed and reported by two citizens of unimpeachable status. "
      Did you say Caol Ila, my dear Vorpi?
      I only have two bottles.
      One for me and one for Toka'edoo Rok.
      "What is your disposition of this case, Commander?" the Gi secretary inquired formally.
      "I don't find any infraction of Milieu statutes, " Vorpi replied, "but these crewmen are clearly derelict in not having filed a report on their last inspection of the satellite Sputnik II. Let a reprimand be entered in their files, and they are sentenced to six days each on waste-water-recycling system maintenance. The animal can keep them company. Dismissed. "
      The Krondaku canceled his coercive grip on the dog, which came to its senses as Misstiliss scooped it up. It lapped at the Simb's glistening green face.
      "Likes the way we taste, " the scout said sheepishly. He and Bali Ala saluted and hurried away, taking Laika with them.

7
FROM THE MEMOIRS OF ROGATIEN REMILLARD

      BELATEDLY, AT THE age of twelve, I discovered that I liked to read. It was early in 1958 and every American kid was passionately interested in the new "race for space. " Our older cousins bought science-fiction magazines and left them lying around, and I picked them up and immediately became addicted. They were much more exciting than comic books. But it was not the tales of space travel that fascinated me so much as the stories that dealt with extrasensory perception.
      ESP! For the first time I was able to put a name to the powers that made Don and me aliens in our own country. I got all worked up over the discovery and made Don read some of the stories, too; but his reaction was cynical. What did that stuff have to do with us? It was fiction. Somebody had made it up.
      I ventured beyond the magazines, to the Berlin Public Library. When I looked up ESP and related topics in the encyclopedias, my heart sank. One and all, the reference books acknowledged that "certain persons" believed in the existence of mental faculties such as telepathy, clairvoyance, and psychokinesis. One and all, the books declared that there was no valid scientific evidence whatsoever for such belief.
      I went through all the books in the juvenile department that dealt with the brain, then checked the adult shelves. None of the books even mentioned the mind-powers that Don and I had. The Berlin library was rather small and it had no serious volumes about parapsychology, only a few crank books listed under "Occult Phenomena" in the card catalog. Hesitantly, I went to the librarian and asked if she could help me find books about people who had extraordinary mind-powers. She thought very hard for a moment, then said, "I know the very book!"
      She gave me one of the old Viking Portable Novel collections and pointed out Olaf Stapledon's Odd John to me. Concealing my disappointment at the fiction format, I dutifully took it home, read it, and had the living hell scared out of me.
      The book's hero was a mutant of singular appearance and extremely high mental power. He was Homo superior, a genius as well as an operant metapsychic, trapped in a world full of drab, commonplace normals, most of whom did their fumbling best to understand him but failed. Odd John wasn't persecuted by ordinary humans; there were even those who loved him. And yet he was tormented by loneliness and the knowledge of his uniqueness. In one chilling passage, he described his attitude toward other people:
      
I was living in a world of phantoms, or animated masks. No one seemed really alive. I had a queer notion that if I pricked any of you, there would be no bleeding, but only a gush of wind. And I couldn't make out why you were like that, what it was that I missed in you. The trouble really was that I did not clearly know what it was in myself that made me different from you.
      
      John's alienation led him to set up his own self-centered moral code. He financed his ambitions by becoming a ten-year-old burglar; and when he was caught at it by the friendly neighborhood policeman, he had no compunction about murdering the man to escape detection.
      Later, when John was in his teens, he merely treated other people as pets or useful tools. He thought great thoughts, used his remarkable talents to make a lot of money, and traveled around the world in search of other mutant geniuses like himself. He found a fair number and proceeded to establish a secret colony on an island in the South Seas.
      (The inconvenient original inhabitants of the place were coerced into mass suicide; but the superfolk held a nice feast for them first. ) Once John and his mutant friends were secure on their island, they set out to organize a combination Garden of Eden (they were all very young) and technocratic wonderland. They were able to utilize atomic energy by "abolishing" certain nuclear forces through mental activity. They had all kinds of sophisticated equipment at their command, yet chose to live in rustic simplicity, often linked telepathically to an Asian guru of like mind who had remained at home in his lamasery in Xizang.
      The colony made plans for the reproduction of Homo superior. The young mutants "reviewed their position relative to the universe, " attained a transcendental quasi-Unity called astronomical consciousness, embraced the exotic mentalities inhabiting other star-systems — and discovered that they were doomed.
      A British survey vessel stumbled onto John's island in spite of the metapsychic camouflaging efforts of the colonists. Once the secret was out, the military powers of the world sent warships to investigate. Some nations saw the colony as a menace; others coveted its assets and schemed to use the young geniuses as political pawns. Attempts at negotiation between Homo sapiens and Homo superior broke down permanently when the Japanese delegate put his finger on the basic dilemma:
      
This lad [Odd John] and his companions have strange powers which Europe does not understand. But we understand. I have felt them. I have fought against them. I have not been tricked. I can see that these are not boys and girls; they are devils. If they are left, some day they will destroy us. The world will be for them, not for us.
      
      The negotiating party withdrew and the world powers agreed that assassins should be landed on the island, to pick off the supranormals with guerrilla tactics.
      Odd John and his companions had a weapon, a photon beam similar to an X-laser, that they might have used to fend off an invasion attempt; but they decided not to resist, since then "there would be no peace until we had conquered the world" and that would take a long time, as well as leaving them "distorted in spirit. " So the young mutants gathered together, focused their minds upon their atomic power station, and obliterated the entire island in a fireball...
      "You've got to read this story, Don, " I pleaded, with my mind leaking the more sinister plot overtones that had frightened me — the hero's icy immorality that contradicted everything I had ever been taught, his awful loneliness, his totally pessimistic view of ordinary mankind faced with the challenge of superior minds.
      Don refused. He said he didn't have time and that I shouldn't get worked up over a dumb, old-fashioned book. It had been written in 1935, and by an Englishman! I said it wasn't the story itself but what it said about people like us that was important. I bugged him about it and finally wore him down, and he waded through the novel over a period of two weeks, keeping his mind tight shut against me all that time. When he finished he said:
      "We're not like that. "
      "What d'you mean, we're not? Okay — so we aren't geniuses and we'll never be able to make a million bucks on the stock market before we're seventeen like John did, or invent all that stuff or found a colony on an island. But there are things we do that other people would think were dangerous. Not just the PK, but the coercion. You're a lot better at it than me, so you ought to know what I'm talking about. "
      "Big deal. So I fend off guys in hockey or nudge Onc' Louie to cough up a little money when he's half lit. " "And the girls, " I accused him.
      He only snickered, dropped the book into my hands, and turned to walk away.
      I said: DonnieDonnie when people findout they'll hate us just like they did Oddjohn!
      He said: Make sure they don't find out.
      
      Don and I were late bloomers physically, puny until we graduated from grammar school — after which we shot up like ragweed plants in July. He was much better looking and more muscular, with a flashing grin and dark eyes that went through you like snapshots from a .30-06. His use of the coercive metafunction that used to be called animal magnetism was instinctive and devastating. From the time he was fourteen girls were crazy for him. Don Remillard became the Casanova of Berlin High, as irresistible as he was heartless. I was his shadow, cast by a low-watt bulb. Don was husky and I was gangling. His hair was blue-black and curled over his forehead like that of some pop singer, while mine was lackluster and cowlicky. He had a clear olive skin, a dimpled chin, and a fine aquiline nose. I suffered acne and sinus trouble, and my nose, broken in a hockey game, healed rapidly but askew.
      As our bodies changed into those of men, our minds drifted further apart. Don was increasingly impatient with my spiritual agonizing, my manifest insecurity, and my bookish tendencies. In high school my grades were excellent in the humanities, adequate in math and science.
      Don's academic standing was low, but this did not affect his popularity since he excelled in football and hockey, augmenting genuine sports prowess with artful PK and coercion.
      Don tried to educate me in that great Franco-American sport, girl-chasing; but our double-dating was not a success. I was by nature modest and inhibited while Don was the opposite, afire with fresh masculine fervor. The urges awakened in me by the new flood of male hormones disturbed me almost as much as my repressed metafunctions. In Catholic school, we had been lectured about the wickedness of "impure actions. " I was tormented by guilt when I could no longer resist the temptation to relieve my sexual tensions manually and carried a burden of "mortal sin" until I had the courage to confess my transgression to Father Racine. This good man, far in advance of most Catholic clergy of that time, lifted the burden from my conscience in a straightforward and sensible way: "I know what the sisters have told you, that such actions bring damnation. But it cannot be, for every boy entering manhood has experiences such as this because all male bodies are made the same. And who is harmed by such actions? No one. The only person who could be harmed is you, and the only way such harm could come is if the actions become an obsession — as occasionally happens when a boy is very unhappy and shut away from other sources of pleasure. Keep that in mind, for we owe God the proper care of our bodies. But these actions that seem necessary from time to time are not sinful, and especially not mortally sinful, because they are not a serious matter. You recall your catechism definition of mortal sin: the matter must be serious. What you do is not serious, unless you let it hurt you. So be at peace, my child. You should be far more concerned with the sins of cheating on school exams and acting uncharitably toward your aunt and uncle than with these involuntary urgings of the flesh. Now make a good act of contrition... "
      When I was sixteen, in 1961, I emerged a bit from my broody shell and had occasional chaste dates with a quiet, pretty girl named Marie-Madeleine Fabre, whom I had met in the library. She shared my love of science fiction. We would walk along the banks of the beautiful Androscoggin River north of the pulp mills, ignoring the sulfurous stench and taking simple joy in the dark mirrored water, the flaming maples in autumn, and the low mountains that enclosed our New Hampshire valley. She taught me to bird-watch. I forgot my nightmares of Odd John and learned to react with forbearance when Don mocked my lack of sexual daring.
      There were still five of us living at home: Don and I and our younger cousins Albert, Jeanne, and Marguerite. That year we played host to a grand Remillard family reunion. Relatives came from all over New
      Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine — including the other six children of Onc' Louie and Tante Lorraine, who had married and moved away and had children of their own. The old house on Second Street was jammed. After Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve there was the traditional réveillon with wine, maple candy and barber-poles, croque-cignols and tourtières, and meat pies made of fat pork. Tiny children rushed about shrieking and waving toys, then fell asleep on the floor amid a litter of gifts and colored wrappings. As fast as the big old-fashioned Christmas tree lights burnt out, assiduous boy electricians replaced them. Girls passed trays of food. Adolescents and adults drank toast after toast. Even frail, white-haired Tante Lorraine got happily enivrée. Everyone agreed that nothing was so wonderful as having the whole family under one roof for the holidays.
      Seventeen days later, when the Christmas decorations had long been taken down, there was a belated present from little Cousin Tom of Auburn, Maine. We came down with the mumps.
      At first we considered it a joke, in spite of the discomfort. Don and I and Al and Jeanne and Margie looked like a woeful gang of chipmunks. It was an excuse to stay home from school during the worst part of the winter, when Berlin was wrapped in frigid fog from the pulp-mill stacks and the dirty snow was knee-deep. Marie-Madeleine brought my class assignments every day, slipping them through the mail slot in the front door while the younger cousins tittered. Don's covey of cheerleaders kept the phone tied up for hours. He did no homework. He was urged by the high school coach to rest and conserve his strength.
      Everybody got better inside of a week except me. I was prostrate and in agony from what Dr. LaPlante said was a rare complication of mumps. The virus had moved to my testicles and I had something called bilateral orchitis. The nuns had been right after all! I was being punished.
      I was treated to a useless course of antibiotics and lay moaning with an ice bag on my groin while Tante Lorraine hushed the solicitous inquiries of little Jeanne and Margie. Don slept at a friend's house, making some excuse, because I couldn't help communicating my pain and irrational guilt telepathically. Marie-Madeleine lit candles to St. Joseph and prayed for me to get well. Father Racine's common sense pooh-poohed my guilt and Dr. LaPlante assured me that I was going to be as good as new.
      In my heart, I knew better.

8
VERKHNYAYA BZYB, ABKHAZIYA ASSR, EARTH
28 SEPTEMBER  1963

      THE PHYSICIAN PYOTR Sergeyevich Sakhvadze and his five-year-old daughter Tamara drove south from Sochi on the Black Sea Highway into that unique part of the Soviet Union called Abkhaziya by the geographers. Local people have another name for it: Apsny, the Land of the Soul. Its mountain villages are famed for the advanced age attained by the inhabitants, some of whom are reliably estimated at being more than 120 years old. The unusual mental traits of the isolated Abkhazians are less publicized; and if questioned, the people themselves generally laugh and call the old stories outworn superstition.
      Dr. Pyotr Sakhvadze's wife Vera had done so until less than a week ago, on the day she died.
      Still numb with grief, Pyotr drove like an automaton, no longer even bothering to question the compulsion that had taken hold of him. It was very hot in the semitropical lowlands and Tamara slept for a time on the back seat of the brand-new Volga sedan. The highway led through tobacco fields and citrus groves and stands of palm and eucalyptus, trending farther inland south of Gagra, where the mountains receded from the coast in the delta of the great River Bzyb. The road map showed no Upper Bzyb village, but it had to lie somewhere in the valley. Pyotr turned off the highway onto the Lake Ritsa road and pulled in at a village store at the lower end of the gorge.
      "I'll buy us some bottles of fruit soda here, " Pyotr said, "and ask the way. We don't want to get lost in the mountains. "
      "We wouldn't, " Tamara assured him gravely.
      Pyotr's laugh was uneasy. "Just the same, I'll ask. "
      But the woman in the store shook her head at his inquiry. "Upper Bzyb village? Oh, there's nothing for tourists there, and the road is nothing but a goat-track, suitable only for farm trucks. Better to go to the lovely resort at Lake Ritsa. "
      When Pyotr persisted she gave vague directions, all the while maintaining that the place was very hard to find and not worth the trip, and the people odd and unfriendly to boot. Pyotr thanked her and returned to the car wearing a grim expression. He handed his daughter her soda. "I have been told that the road to Upper Bzyb is impossible. We simply can't risk it, Tamara. "
      "Papa, don't worry. They won't let anything happen to us. They're expecting us. "
      "Expecting —! But I never wrote or telephoned —"
      "Mamenka told them we'd come. And they told me. "
      "That's nonsense, " he said, his voice trembling. What was he thinking of, coming here? It was madness! Perhaps he was unhinged by sorrow! Aloud, he said, "We'll turn around at once and go home. "
      He started up the car, slammed it into reverse gear, and stamped on the accelerator so abruptly that the engine died. He cursed under his breath and tried again and again to start it. Damn the thing! What was wrong with it? With him? Was he losing his mind?
      "You've only forgotten your promise, " the little girl said.
      Aghast, Pyotr turned around. "Promise? What promise?"
      Tamara stared at him without speaking. His gaze slid away from hers and after a moment he covered his face with his handkerchief. Vera! If only you had confided in me. I would have tried to understand. I'm a man of science, but not narrow-minded. It's just that one doesn't dream that members of one's own family can be —
      "Papa, we must go, " Tamara said. "It's a long way, and we'll have to drive slowly. "
      "The car won't start, " he said dully.
      "Yes it will. Try. "
      He did, and the Volga purred into instant life. "Yes, I see! This was also their doing? The old ones waiting for us in Verkhnyaya Bzyb?"
      "No, you did it, Papa. But it's all right now. " The little girl settled back in her seat, drinking the soda, and Pyotr Sakhvadze guided the car back onto the gorge road that led deep into the front ranges of the Caucasus.

      The promise.
      In the motor wreck a week earlier, as Vera lay dying in her husband's arms, she had said: "It's happened, Petya, just as little Tamara said. She told us not to go on this trip! Poor baby... now what will become of her? I was such a fool! Why didn't I listen to them?... Why didn't I listen to her? Now I'll die, and she'll be alone and frightened... Ah! Of course, that's the answer!"
      "Hush, " the distraught Pyotr told her. "You will not die. The ambulance is on its way —"
       "I cannot see as far as Tamara, " his wife interrupted him, "but I do now that this is the end for me. Petya, listen. You must promise me something. "
      "Anything! You know I'd do anything for you. "
      "A solemn promise. Come close, Petya. If you love me, you must do as I ask. "
      He cradled her head. The bystanders at the accident scene drew back in respect and she spoke so low that only he could hear. "You must take Tamara to my people — to the old ones in my ancestral town of Upper Bzyb — and allow them to rear her for at least four years, until she is nine years old. Then her mind will be turned toward peace, her soul secure. You may visit Tamara there as often as you wish, but you must not take her away during that time. "
      "Send our little girl away?" The physician was astounded. "Away  from Sochi, where she has a beautiful home and every advantage?... And what relatives are you talking about? You told me that all of your people perished in the Great Patriotic War!"
      "I lied to you, Petya, as I lied to myself. " Vera's extraordinary dark eyes were growing dim; but as always they held Pyotr captive, bewitching him. He knew his wife's last request was outrageous. Send their delicate child prodigy to live with strangers, ignorant mountain peas-ants? Impossible!
      Vera's whisper was labored. She held his hand tightly. "I know what you think. But Tamara must go so that she will not be alone during the critical years of mental formation. I... I helped her as best I could. But I was consumed with guilt because I had turned my back on the heritage. You know... that both Tamara and I are strange. Fey. You have read Vasiliev's books and laughed... but he writes the truth, Petya. And there are those who will pervert the powers! Our great dream of a socialist paradise has been swallowed by ambitious and greedy men. I thought... you and I together, when Tamara was older ... I was a fool. The old ones were right when they counseled watchful patience... Take Tamara to them, to the village of Verkhnyaya Bzyb, deep in the Abkhazian mountains. They say they will care for her... "
      "Vera! Darling Vera, you must not excite yourself—"
      "Promise me! Promise you will take Tamara to them!" Her voice broke, and her breath came in harsh gasps. "Promise!"
      What could he do? "Of course. Yes, I promise. "
      She smiled with pallid lips and her eyes closed. Around them the gawkers murmured and the traffic roared, detouring around the accident on the busy Chernomorskoye Chaussee just south of Matsesta. In  the distance the ambulance from Sochi was hooting, too late to be of any use. Vera's hands relaxed and her breathing stopped, but Pyotr seemed to hear her say:
      The few years we have had together were good, Petya. And our daughter is a marvel. Some day she will be a hero of the people! Take care of her well when she returns from the village. Help her fulfill her great destiny.
      Pyotr bent and kissed Vera's lips. He was calm as he looked up at the medical attendants with their equipment, introduced himself, and gave instructions for the body to be taken to the medical center for the last formalities. With his wife's death, the enchantment was broken. Dr. Sakhvadze put aside the morbid fancy that had taken hold of poor Vera and himself and resumed rational thinking. The promise? Mere comfort for a dying woman. Little Tamara would stay home where she belonged with her father, the distinguished head of the Sochi Institute of Mental Health. Later, after the child had received appropriate therapy to assuage grief, they would scatter Vera's ashes together over the calm sea. But for the present, it would be best if Tamara was spared...
      When Pyotr came at last to his home that evening, the old housekeeper greeted him with eyes that were red from weeping and a frightened, apologetic manner. "She forced me to do it, Comrade Doctor! It wasn't my fault. I couldn't help it!"
      "What are you babbling about?" he barked. "You haven't broken the news to the child, have you? Not after I instructed you to leave it to me?"
      "I didn't! I swear I said nothing, but somehow... the little one knew! No sooner had I put the telephone down after your call, than she came into the room weeping. She said, 'I know what has happened, Mamushka. My mother is dead. I told her not to go on the trip. Now I will have to go away. '"
      "Idiot!" shouted the doctor. "She must have overheard something!"
      "I swear! I swear not! Her knowledge was uncanny. Terrible! After an hour or so she became very calm and remained so for the rest of the day. But before going to bed tonight she — she forced me to do it! You must believe me!" Burying her face in her apron, the housekeeper rushed away.
      Pyotr Sakhvadze went to his daughter's room, where he found her sleeping peacefully. At the foot of Tamara's bed were two large valises, packed and ready to go. Her plush bear, Misha, sat on top of them.

      The Lake Ritsa Road followed the Bzyb River gorge into the low range called the Bzybskiy Khrebet, a humid wilderness thick with hanging vines and ferns and misted by waterfalls. At one place, Tamara pointed off into the forest and said, "In there is a cave. People lived there and dreamed when the ice came. " Again, as they passed some ruins: "Here a prince of the old ones had his fortress. He guarded the way against soul-enemies more than a thousand years ago, but the small minds overcame him and the old ones were scattered far and wide. " And when they arrived at a small lake, glowing azure even under a suddenly cloudy sky: "The lake is that color because its bottom is made of a precious blue stone. Long ago the old ones dug up the stone from the hills around the lake and made jewelry from it. But now all that's left is underwater, where people can't get at it. "
      "How does she know this?" muttered Pyotr. "She is only five and she has never been in this region. God help me — it's enough to make one take Vasiliev's mentalist nonsense seriously!"
      Up beyond the power station the paved route continued directly to Lake Ritsa via the Gega River gorge; but the storekeeper had told Pyotr to be on the lookout for an obscure side road just beyond the big bridge, one that angled off eastward, following the main channel of the Bzyb. He slowed the car to a snail's pace and vainly scanned the dense woods. Finally he pulled off onto the exiguous verge and said to Tamara:
      "You see? There's nothing here at all. No road to your fairy-tale village. I was told that the turning was here, but there's no trace of it. We'll have to go back. "
      She sat holding Misha the plush bear, and she was smiling for the first time since Vera's death. "I love it here, Papa! They're telling us, 'Welcome!' They say to go on just a bit more. Please. "
      He didn't want to, but he did. And the featureless wall of green parted to reveal a double-rut track all clogged and overhung with ferns and sedges and ground-ivy. There was no signpost, no milestone, no indication that the way was anything more than a disused logging road.
      "That can't be it, " Pyotr exclaimed. "If we go in there, we'll rip the bottom right out of the car!"
      Tamara laughed. "No we won't. Not if we go slow. " She clambered into the front seat. "I want to be here with you where I can see everything—and so does Misha. Let's go!"
      "Fasten your seat belt, " the doctor sighed.
      Shifting into the lowest gear, Pyotr turned off. The wilderness engulfed them, and for the next two hours they bounced and crawled through a cloud-forest of dripping beeches and tall conifers, testing the suspension of the Volga sedan to the utmost. The track traversed mountain bogs on a narrow surface of rotting puncheons and spanned brawling streams on log bridges that rumbled ominously as the car inched across. Then they came to a section of the road that was hewn from living rock and snaked up the gorge at horrific gradients. Pyotr drove with sweat pouring down the back of his neck while Tamara, delighted with the spectacular view, peered out of her window at the foaming rapids of the Bzyb below. After they had gone more than thirty-five kilometers the canyon narrowed so greatly that Pyotr despaired. There could not possibly be human habitation in such a desolate place! Perhaps they had missed a turning somewhere back in the mist-blanketed woods.
      "Just five minutes more, " he warned his daughter. "If we don't find signs of life in another kilometer or so, we're giving up. "
      But suddenly they began to ascend a series of switchbacks leading out of the gorge. At the top the landscape opened miraculously to a verdant plateau girt with forested uplands that soared in the east to snowy Mount Pshysh, thirty-eight hundred meters high, source of the turbulent Bzyb. The track improved, winding through alpine meadows down into a deep valley guarded by stands of black Caucasian pine. Stone walls now marked the boundaries of small cultivated fields, and in the pastures were flocks of goats and sheep. The track dead-ended in a cluster of white-painted buildings sheltered by enormous old oak trees. Twenty or thirty adults stood waiting in a tight group as Pyotr drove the last half kilometer into Verkhnyaya Bzyb and braked to a stop in a cloud of dust.
      In this place the sun shone and the air had an invigorating sparkle. Weak with fatigue and tension, Pyotr sat unable to move. A tall stately figure detached itself from the gathering of villagers and approached the sedan. It was a very old man with a princely bearing, dressed in the festive regalia of the Abkhazian hills: black karakul hat, black Cossack-style coat, breeches, polished boots, a white neck-scarf, and a silver-trimmed belt with a long knife carried in an ornamented silver scabbard with blue stones. His smiling face was creased with countless wrinkles. He had a white mustache and black brows above deep-set, piercing eyes. Eyes like Vera's.
      "Welcome, " the elder said. "I am Seliac Eshba, the great-greatgrandfather of your late wife. She left us under sad circumstances. But her marriage to you was happy and fruitful, and I perceive that you, Pyotr Sergeyevich Sakhvadze, also share the blood and soul of the old ones — even though you are unaware of it. This gives us a double cause to rejoice in your coming. "
      Pyotr, craning out the car window at the old man, managed to mumble some response to the greeting. He unsnapped his seat belt and Tamara's and opened the car door. Seliac Eshba held it with courtesy, then started around to Tamara's side; but the little girl had already opened her door and bounded out, still keeping a tight grip on Misha the bear. At that same moment more than a dozen young children carrying bouquets of late-summer flowers dashed out from behind the crowd of adults calling Tamara's name.
      She ran to meet them, shouting gleefully. "Nadya! Zurab! Ksenia! It's me! I'm finally here! Hello, Akaky — what pretty flowers. I'm so hungry I could almost eat them! But first, take me to the little house before I burst!" Giggling and chattering, the children led Tamara away.
      Pyotr, white-faced, said to Seliac, "She knows their names! Holy Mother, she knows their names. "
      "Your daughter is very special, " Seliac said. "We will care for her like a precious jewel. Be of good heart, grandson. I'll tell you everything you must know about us in due time. But first let me take you to a place where you can refresh yourself after your long drive. Then we invite you to join us for the special meal that we have prepared in your honor — and Tamara's. "
      
      It was not until the middle of the afternoon that the last toast was raised by Great-Great-Grandfather Seliac, the tamadar.
      "To the soul — which now must pass from the old ones to the young!"
      "To the soul!" chorused the banqueting villagers, lifting their glasses. But then Dariya Abshili, who was Tamara's great-great-aunt and the chief organizer of the feast, exclaimed: "Hold! The children must also drink this time. "
      "Yes, yes, the children!" everybody shouted. The young ones, who had been segregated at their own table in the outdoor dining pavilion, where they bounced up and down and celebrated in their own fashion during the long meal, now left their seats and filed solemnly up to stand on either side of Seliac. Grand-Uncle Valeryan Abshili, a stalwart of seventy years, poured a small portion of rich Buket Abkhaziy wine into each child's glass, coming finally to Tamara, who had the place of honor closest to Seliac. The old man bent and kissed the girl's brow, then let his electric gaze sweep over the assembly.
      "Let us drink now to the soul... and to this little one, the daughter of our poor lost Vera, who is destined to announce our ancient secret to the world and open the door to peace. "
      This time the villagers responded without words. Pyotr, befuddled with a surfeit of wine and food, was surprised to find that he had no difficulty at all hearing them:
      To the soul. To Tamara. To the secret. To peace.
      They drank, and there was much cheering and clapping, and a few of the oldest women wiped their eyes. Then the indefatigable Dariya began to direct the clearing of the table. Younger men drifted off to attend to certain necessary chores before the next phase of the celebration, which would include dancing and singing. Old folks ambled out of the open-air shelter to take their ease, the men replenishing their pipes and the women gossiping softly, like pigeons. When Pyotr thought to look about in search of Tamara, he discovered that she had run off into the golden sunshine together with the other youngsters. A pang of loss touched his heart as he realized that she belonged to the village now. She was part of the soul.
      Seliac arose from the table and beckoned Pyotr to come for a stroll. "There are still some questions of yours that I must answer, grandson. And a few that I would ask you. "
      They followed a path among the houses that led into a grove of venerable walnut trees, their branches heavy with green-husked fruit. Pyotr said, "I will have to begin my return journey soon. The thought of negotiating that road in darkness freezes my balls. "
      "But you must stay the night! I offer you my own bed. "
      "You are very kind, " Pyotr said with distant formality. "But I must return to my duties in Sochi. There are patients at the Institute for Mental Health requiring my urgent attention. I bear heavy responsibilities and the — the loss of Vera will make my workload that much greater until adjustments can be made. "
      "She was your comrade as well as your wife. " The old man nodded slowly. "I understand. You were well suited to each other both in temperament and in the blood. Instinctively, Vera chose well even as she defied us. The ways of God are ingenious. "
      The two walked in silence for a few minutes. Somewhere a horse whinnied and children let out squeals of laughter. Then the old man asked, "Are you of Georgian heritage entirely, grandson? Your flame-colored hair and fair complexion suggest the Cherkess. "
      "I am descended from both races, " Pyotr said stiffly. His spectacular hair, now mercifully graying, had been somewhat of an embarrassment to him throughout his professional life. He had passed it on to Tamara, who gloried in it.
      "The Caucasian peoples are all rich in soul, " Seliac observed, "even though some of the tribes scanted its nurturing as modern ways overcame the ancient customs... And is it not true that one of your ancestors belonged to a group even more brilliantly ensouled than the folk of Apsny? I am speaking of the Rom. The Wanderers. "
      Pyotr looked startled. "There was an old scandal whispered about my maternal grandmother, that she had been impregnated by a gypsy lover before her marriage. But how you should know that —"
      "Oh, grandson, " laughed the 123-year-old patriarch of Verkhnyaya Bzyb. "Surely you have guessed by now why I know it, just as you know what kind of special human being your late wife was, and what your daughter is, and why you were commanded to bring her to us. "
      Pyotr stopped dead, turning away from the old man in a fury, willing himself to be sober again, free of the thrall of this bewitched village Vera had rebelled against so many years earlier, when she had run away to the Black Sea Coast and civilization...
      "Vera left us, " Seliac said, "because she did not love the man we chose to be her husband. And she took seriously the tenets of dialectical materialism presented in the schoolbooks, with their naive, romantic view of the perfectability of human nature through a mere socialist revolution. Vera came to believe that our ancient soul-way was superstition, reactionary and elitist, contravening the basic socialist philosophy. And so she denied her birthright and went to Sochi just before the Great Patriotic War. She threw herself into hospital work and studies, remained a valiant maiden, and seemed wed to Party loyalty and her profession of healing. She almost managed to forget what she had been, as others have done when distracted by the turmoil of modern times. Over the years we called out to her, but there was never an answer. We mourned her as lost. But all unknown to us, quite late in life she had found you, her ideal mate, and when she was forty-two your marvelous child was born."
      "Tamara..."
      Pyotr still refused to face the village elder. He stood on the stony bank of a brook at the edge of the walnut grove, looking over the countryside. The steep little fields and pastures were a green and golden patchwork on the slopes. Crowded against their low rock walls were hundreds of white-painted hives, piled high like miniature apartment complexes, the homes of mild-tempered Caucasian bees that flew about everywhere gathering late-season nectar for the aromatic honey that provided the village with its principal income. Thyme was still blooming, and hogweed and melilot and red clover, filling the crisp air with fragrance. Grasshoppers sang their last song of doom before the frost, which had already whitened the highest northern ridges below the spine of the Bokovoi Range. It was here in these mountains that Jason had sought the Golden Fleece; and here that Prometheus stole the divine fire; and here that defiant tribes guided by sturdy centenarians withstood wave after wave of conquering outlanders: Apsny, Land of the Soul, a place of legends, where human minds were said to accomplish wonders that conventional science deemed impossible! But not all scientists scoffed, Pyotr recalled. There were other believers besides the egregious Vasiliev. The great Nikolai Nikolayevich Semyonov, who had won the 1956 Nobel Prize for Chemistry, had spoken in favor of psychic research, and it was studied seriously in Britain and America. But even if such things as telepathy and psychokinesis did exist, did they have pragmatic value?
      Seliac Eshba bent and picked up a green walnut fruit from the ground. "Does this?" he inquired, his dark eyes twinkling. "It is a thing with a tough husk; and if you break into it, it stains the fingers badly, and then there is a second inner shell that must be cracked before the meat is reached. But the walnut is sweet and nourishing, and if a man is patient and long-sighted he may even plant it in the ground and someday reap a thousandfold. " Seliac scrutinized the green ball and frowned. "Ouff! A weevil has been at this one. " Cocking his arm, he flung the useless thing over the brook into the pasture. "Perhaps the goats will eat it... but for the finest trees, one must choose the best possible seed. "
      "As you have?" Pyotr's laugh was bitter. "You draw a striking analogy. But even if it's a valid one... Tamara is only one little girl. "
      "But a mental titan. And there are others — not many yet, but increasing in numbers — all over the world. "
      Pyotr whirled about to lock eyes with the village elder. "You can't possibly know that!"
      "We do know. "
      "I suppose you claim some kind of telepathy —"
      "Only a  little  of that, and not  over great  distances. The  real knowledge comes because of our close rapport with the earth, with her seasons and rhythms, those of the year and those of the aeon. This land round about you with its hidden fertile valleys and secret caves is the place where humanity first learned to dream. Yes! It happened here, in the Caucasus, as the great winter ebbed and flowed and primitive people honed their minds yearning for the glories of spring. The hardships they endured forced them toward the long fruition. Do you know that walnut trees will not bear fruit in the tropics? They need the winter. In the old days, they needed it twice! Once to stimulate the fruit to form, and again to rot the thick husks so that the inner nut would be set free to germinate. Our human cycle is much longer, but we, too, have passed through our first great winter and attained the power of self-reflection. Over the ages our minds have ripened slowly, giving us greater and greater mastery over the physical world, and over our lower nature. "
      "Oh, very good! And now I suppose the superior nuts are ready to fall! The winter of nuclear war that threatens — is this what will bring about your mental revolution? Are we to look forward to supermen levitating over glowing ashes, singing telepathic dirges?"
      "It might work out that way, " the old man admitted. "But think: One doesn't have to wait for the walnut husks to rot naturally, not if one is determined — and not afraid of stained hands. " Work with us, grandson. Help us prepare Tamara to meet her peers, to use her great gifts worthily. There will be a price you and I must pay, but we dare not wait passively for the terrible season to do our work for us...
      Seliac held out his brown-dyed hand to Pyotr, smiled, and waited.

9
BERLIN, NEW HAMPSHIRE, EARTH 
21 OCTOBER  1966

      THE NOTION OF killing Don insinuated itself into his mind as he was clocking out of the paper mill that Friday afternoon, and the other office workers called out to him.
      The women: "Night, Rogi! Save a pew for us at the wedding. "
      The men: "See you at the Blue Ox tonight. We'll give that big stud a sendoff he'll never forget!"
      And the snide crack from Kelly the Purchasing Agent, Rogi's boss: "Hey — don't look so down in the mouth, fella. The best man always wins, even when he loses!"
      Rogi grinned lamely and muttered something, then plunged into the stream of exiting employees with long strides.
      After the bachelor party. He could do it then. Don would be so drunk that his mental defenses would be shaky and his offensive coercion and reflexes slowed. The two of them would have to cross the bridge over the Androscoggin on the way back to the rooming house.
      (Am I going crazy? My God, am I seriously considering killing my own brother?)
      My PK would be strong enough. It had been the last time, when the fishing boat tipped in Umbagog Lake. Only my will had been too weak.
      (An accident! Of course it had been an accident. And unthinkable not to haul Don up from the depths, swim with him to shore, and pump life back into him... )
      A car went by Rogi as he walked through the parking lot, windows down and radio playing. His throat constricted. The song was "Sunny,” and that had been his private, precious name for her. But she had willingly surrendered it to Don along with all the rest.
      Rogi went down to walk along the wide river. It was a fine evening, with the sun just gone behind Mount Forist and the trees touched with color from the first light frosts: the kind of evening they had loved to share, beginning with the days they had walked back from the library. There was a certain grove of trees down by the shore, on the other side of the CN tracks, and a large flat rock. The trees muffled the noise from the traffic along Main Street and gave an illusion of privacy.
      He found himself coming upon the place, and she was waiting for him.
      "Hello, Rogi. I hoped you'd come. I — I wished you would. "
      And my mind's ear heard you!
      He only nodded, keeping his eyes on the ground.
      "Please, " she begged him. "You've avoided me for so long and now there's no more time. You must understand. I want tomorrow to be a happy day. "
      "I wish you every happiness, Sunny... Marie-Madeleine. Always. "
      Mentally, he saw her hold out supplicating hands. "But it'll all be spoiled if you're miserable at the wedding, Rogi. If you blame Don. He couldn't help what happened any more than I could. Love is without rules. Quand le coup de foudre frappe... "
      He laughed sadly. "You're even willing to use French when you talk about him. But with me, you pretended you didn't understand. It made me bold. I said things to you that I'd never dare say in English. Very casually, so the tone wouldn't give me away. Sneaking les mots d'amour into ordinary conversation and thinking what a sly devil I was. "
      "You were very sweet. "
      "And of course you really did know how I felt. From the start. "
      "Of course. And I learned to love you. I mean — to love being with you. No! Oh, Rogi, try to understand! With Don it was so different. The way I feel about him —"
      He clenched his teeth, not trusting himself to speak. His eyes lifted and met hers, those innocent blue eyes lustrous with tears. His mind cried out to her:
      You were mine! It went without saying. All we had to do was wait until we were old enough. That was sensible, wasn't it? And he had so many others to choose from, so many other girls he could have taken. Did take. Why did he need you, too, Sunny?
      She said, "Rogi, I always want you to be my dearest friend. My brother. Please. "
      The temptation had been strong before but now it became overwhelming, a compulsion thundering in his brain that battered away the camouflage of abstraction he had erected to disguise it. Kill Don. Tonight. He said, "Don't worry about me, Sunny. It'll be all right. " She was weeping, clutching the strap of her shoulder bag in both hands and shrinking away from him. "Rogi, I'm so sorry. But I love him so much. "
      He wanted to take her in his arms and dry her tears. He wanted to shout: You only think you love him! You don't realize that he's bewitched you — coerced you. When he's dead you'll come to your senses and realize that the one you really love is me. You'll cry bitter tears for him, but in time you'll forget that you ever loved anyone but me.
      Aloud he said, "I understand. Believe me. "
      She smiled through the tears. "Be his best man tomorrow, Rogi, and dance with me at the wedding. We'll all drink champagne and be happy. Please tell me that you will. "
      He took her gently by the shoulders and kissed the top of her head. The smooth hair was as pale and shining as cornsilk. "I'll do whatever it takes to make you happy, Sunny. Goodbye. "
      
      Dave Valois nearly ruined the plan when he insisted on driving the two of them home after the bachelor bash at the Blue Ox. But Rogi pointed out that walking a mile in the fresh air was just what Don needed to sober up.
      "Gotta burn off some of that booze. Ol' Donnie's got such a skinful, he'll be in a coma tomorrow 'less he walks it off. Father Racine won't 'preciate a zombie groom. No, sir! You just leave ol' Don to me. "
      It was three in the morning, the Ox was closed tight, and the gang was dispersing in dribs and drabs, bidding farewell with honks and convivial hollering. Valois and some others protested a bit, but gave in when Rogi took his twin's arm and started slowly down Main Street with him. Don was all but unconscious. Only Rogi's coercion kept him upright and plodding along the sidewalk. Dave circled the block in his Ford and came back to yell, "You sure you don't want a ride?"
      "Damn sure, " said Rogi. "See you in church. "
      A few minutes later, he and Don were virtually alone, walking slowly toward the bridge. It was a chilly night with no wind. The Androscoggin was a wide pool of ink reflecting a flawless duplicate of upside-down streetlights and the omnipresent pillars of steam that rose from the pulp mills.
      Under his breath, Rogi chanted: "Pick 'em up and lay 'em down. Pick 'em up and lay 'em down. Attaboy, Donnie. Just keep slogging. "
      "Argh, " said Don. His mind was a merry-go-round of fractured images and emotions — hilarity, triumph, anticipation, and erotic scenarios featuring Sunny and himself. He didn't suspect a thing. Rogi had thrown off most of the effects of inebriation and was concentrating on maintaining his mental shield and keeping Don moving. The two of them made slow progress to the center of the bridge. A few cars drove along Main Street, but none made the turn to cross the river.
      Rogi came to a halt. "Hey — looky here, man! Look where we are. "
      Don uttered an interrogatory grunt.
      "On the bridge, kid, " Rogi caroled. "The good old bridge. Hey, remember what we used to do in high school? Walk the rail! Drive the other guys nuts. They didn't know we could use our PK to balance. "
      Don summoned concentration with a mighty effort. He giggled, exuding good-natured contempt. "Yeah, I 'member. You were chicken, though, till I showed you how. "
      "I'm not chicken now, Don, " Rogi said softly. "But I bet you are. "
      The railing was not exceptionally high. It was of metal, wide and pipelike, interrupted every nine meters or so by a lamp stanchion. The two young men stood by one of those stanchions now and Rogi wrapped Don's arm around it so he wouldn't fall down.
      "Watch this!" Grasping the lamppost in one hand, Rogi vaulted up. "I'm gonna do it now, Don. Watch!" He extended his arms, teetered a little, then began walking steadily along the pipe. The deep Androscoggin was a star-flecked black mirror nearly twenty meters below. Don could swim, but not strongly. It wouldn't take much mental strength to keep him under in his present condition. The tricky part was getting him off the bridge without laying a hand on him.
      "Wah-hoo! Boy, that's a kick!" Rogi skipped along the pipe, which was a hand's span in width. When he reached the next stanchion he hugged it and swung himself around and around, cackling madly. "Oh, that's great! C'mon, Donnie. Now it's your turn. "
      Rogi jumped to the pavement and faced his brother, tensing.
      Don blinked. His teeth gleamed in a crooked grin. "Don't wanna. "
      Rogi's guts lurched sickeningly. God! Had he leaked the hostility after all? Given himself away? "Aw. What'sa matter, Don? You too scared to walk the rail? Or maybe your li'l heart's throbbin' too hard, thinkin' about Sunny. "
      "Ain't my heart throbbin', " Don said, leering.
      Rogi kept a grip on himself. "Then you're chicken. "
      "Nope. Just drunk 's a skunk. "
      "Well, so'm I — but I walked the rail. I'm just as smashed as you and I walked the fucker. Thing is, I don't lose the power when I've got a snootful — and you do. "
      "Like hell!" Don balled a fist. "Famme ta guêle!"
      "I'll shut up when you walk, pansy!"
      Don gave a bellow, seized the stanchion in both hands, and hauled himself up. It was perfect. Even if someone saw them there could be no suspicion of foul play. Rogi was ten meters away and Don had taken his first step.
      "So long, Don, " Rogi said. "I'll take good care of Sunny. "
      He exerted both PK and coercion with all his strength.
      Don screamed and his feet flew out from under him. For a split second he hung unsupported except by his own panic. Then he fell, but he caught the railing and clung to it, kicking. His heavy boots clanged against the ironwork. Rogi concentrated on his brother's hands, lifting the fingers from the dew-slippery metal one by one.
      Don was crying his name and cursing. His fingernails broke and his hands slid down the uprights and scrabbled at the toe-plates and the rough concrete footing. Black blood from his lacerated skin splattered the front of his windbreaker. There was a long cut across his right cheek. Don's PK seemed to have deserted him but he still clung to the bridge with all his considerable physical strength, no longer wasting energy in kicking. Waves of rage and imperfectly aimed coercion spewed from his brain.
      "Let go, damn you!" Rogi cried. He felt his own powers beginning to weaken. His skull seemed about to burst. He would have to take a chance — get up close and stamp on Don's hands —
      He was blind. Deprived of both vision and farsight.
      A voice said: No, Rogi.
      Unable to perceive his target, Rogi found that his coercion and psychokinesis were useless. He let out a shout of despair and relief and dropped like a dead man to the pavement. The voice that addressed him was calm and remote:
      Once more it seems that I am fated to intervene. How interesting. One might conjecture that Don survived in some other fashion, and yet the proleptic foci show no asymmetry as a result of my obtrusion...
      Rogi lifted his head and groaned. "You! You again. "
      It said: Your brother must live, Rogi. He must wed Marie-Madeleine Fabré and beget children of her according to the great pattern. One of those children will become a man of high destiny. He will not only possess mental powers more extraordinary than his father's, but he will understand them — and help the whole human race to understand them. This child unborn will have to overcome great hardship. He will need consolation and guidance that his parents will be unable to supply, and the friendship of another operant metapsychic. You will be that child's friend and mentor, Rogi. Now get up.
      Nonono goaway let me kill him Imustonlyway must KILL —
      Rogi, get up.
      Better perhaps weboth die freaks damned unrealmen unrealhuman kill them kill them BOTH intowaterdowndowndissolve —
      Du calme, mon infant.
      Best. Would be best.
      You know nothing. Nothing! Get up, Rogi. You will remember everything I have said and you will act upon it at the appropriate time.
      "You're not my Ghost at all. " The realization filled him with irrational sorrow.
      The thing said: All of you are my responsibility and my expiation. Your entire family. Your entire race.
      With great difficulty, Rogi climbed to his feet. He was no longer blind and he could see Don standing under a lamp, swaying, one hand over his face. Poor old Donnie.
      The Ghost said: Your brother has forgotten your attack. His injuries are healed. Take him home, put him to bed, and get him to the church on time.
      Rogi began to laugh. He rocked and roared and stamped his feet and howled. He wouldn't have to do it after all, and he wouldn't be damned. Only poor Donnie, not him. The Ghost, that meddling shit, had turned "Thou shalt not" into "Thou canst not" and set him free! Oh, it was so funny. He couldn't stop laughing...
      The Ghost waited patiently.
      Rogi finally said to it, "So I let Don have his way. Then later on I become a kind of godfather to his child prodigy. "
      Yes.
      Fury took hold of him suddenly. "But you couldn't let me be the kid's father! You couldn't let me marry Sunny and beget the superbrat myself. Don's genes are Homo superior and mine are —"
      The Ghost said: You are sterile.
      Don was walking shakily toward him. A single car turned off Main Street onto the bridge, slowed as it passed them, then accelerated again when Don waved mockingly at it.
      "I'm sterile... "
      The Ghost said: The orchitis you suffered five years ago destroyed the semeniferous tubules. Your self-redactive faculty was inadequate to repair the damage. You function as a male but will sire no offspring.
      No little Odd Johns to dandle on his knee? Rogi was quite unconcerned. The responsibility for unleashing the freaks on the world would be Don's, not his! But pride made him say, "Heal me! You could. I know it. "
      It is not possible, nor is it appropriate. When the design is complete you'll understand. For now, let it be. But take heart, because you have a long life to live and important work ahead of you.
      It was drunken lunacy! A nightmare. And all at once Rogi was deathly tired. "I don't know what the hell you're talking about. Go away. For God's sake, leave me alone!"
      I'll go for now, but I'll be back... when I'm needed. Au 'voir, cher Rogi.
      Don came stumbling up, a bleary smile on his face. "Hey, Rogi, you look bad, man. Never could hold your liquor. Not like me. C'mon, man, let's go home. "
      "Right, " Rogi said. He draped an arm over his brother's shoulder. Supporting each other, the two of them went off into the night.

10
EXCERPTS FROM:

ADDRESS GIVEN BY DR. J. B. RHINE
AT THE ANNUAL CONVENTION OF THE AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION

WASHINGTON, DC, EARTH 

4 SEPTEMBER 1967

      SOME IMPRESSION OF the spread of psi research over the world in recent years can be had from facts connected with the McDougall Award. This annual event, like the Parapsychological Association, was initiated at Duke in 1957 and was later adopted by the Institute for Parapsychology when it took over the laboratory. The Award is granted each year by the Institute staff for the most outstanding contribution to parapsychology published during the preceding year by workers not on the staff of the Institute. During the ten years in which the awards have been made, two have been given for American contributions and two for British, with one divided between the two countries; one award each was made to Czechoslovakia, India, the Netherlands, South Africa, and Sweden.
      Another indication of the expansion of parapsychology may be had from the establishment of new research centers. A number of these have had the sponsorship of psychiatry, such as the one at Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn, one at the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia, and a third at the Neuropsychiatric Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles. Others with more physically and technologically oriented connections are located at the Newark College of Engineering in New Jersey, the Department of Biophysics at the University of Pittsburgh, and the Boeing Research Laboratories in Seattle.
      The center in Leningrad is in the department of physiology; that at Strasbourg, in psychophysiology; and the laboratory at St. Joseph's College in Philadelphia, in the department of biology. Psychology-centered psi research in the university is found mainly in foreign countries rather than in the U. S. City College in New York has what may rightly be called a center; and at Clemson University, as well as at branches of the University of California (Los Angeles, Berkeley, Davis), psychologists are allowed to do psi research. But something more like centers have long existed in Europe at Utrecht and Freiburg. More recently work has begun that seems firmly planted in psychology departments at the Japanese Defense Academy and the Universities of Edinburgh, Lund, and Andhra (India). Some recognized research, of course, is not connected with any institution whatever, as, for example, the work of Forwald in Sweden and that of Ryzl while still in Prague.
      One of the noteworthy changes taking place in the present period is the development of more teamwork with workers in other branches and the use of skills, knowledge, and equipment of many other research areas. Some of the psi workers today are working with physiological equipment or with computer analyses; others are depending on electronic apparatus in the measurement of psi performance or utilizing new devices in statistics. Numbers of them are using psychological tests or perhaps working in a laboratory of microphysics, or of animal behavior....
      Psi research is obviously of special concern to those who are interested in the full range of the unexplored nature of man, over and above the existing subdivisions of science. As has happened already in many of the smaller branches, parapsychology is certain to find itself grouped sooner or later with other fields in one or more of those composite sciences which are reshaping the modern structure of knowledge — groupings such as the space sciences, the earth sciences, the microbiological sciences, or such major disciplines as medicine, education, and the like. When we come eventually to the stage when the sciences of man take a pre-eminent position, we shall find that one of the places around the conference table will have to be reserved for parapsychology. If the findings are as important as they seem to workers in this field, we shall need no great concern over future recognition by the academic world, by the larger bodies of the sciences, and by other institutions that matter. Rather, the urgent needs today have to do with holding on to the firm beginning psi research has made. This research science needs to operate for the present mainly in the freer terrain of the independent institute or center, or with such semiautonomous attachments as may be found in hospitals, clinics, engineering schools, smaller colleges, and industrial research laboratories. In time its own roots will make the attachments that are right, and proper, and lasting. Such growth is slow, but it can be assisted by careful effort and understanding and by recognition of its significance.

11
FROM THE MEMOIRS OF ROGATIEN REMILLARD

      AFTER THE WEDDING of Don and Sunny I was miserable for months. I toyed with the notion of moving out of town and went so far as to peruse the "Help Wanted" column in the Manchester and Portland newspapers. But by Christmas the entire family knew that Sunny was pregnant, and I presume that my subconscious was in thrall to the Ghost and its great expectations for the unborn — and so I stayed.
      Since that night on the bridge, Don and I had erected virtually impregnable mental bulwarks against one another. Our social relationship was affable on the surface, but mind-to-mind communication was now nonexistent. I avoided Don and Sunny as much as I decently could. It wasn't difficult, since they had moved into a circle that included mostly young married couples like themselves. I saw them during holiday get-togethers and at the funeral of Tante Lorraine late in March. They seemed to be happy.
      I continued at my job in the purchasing department of the mill and Don worked in shipping, some distance away in another building. I feel certain that he was doing as I was during those days: trying to live as much like a "normal" as possible. I no longer used psychokinesis, and I confined my coercive manipulations to feather-light nudges of the office manager, a dour Yankee named Galusha Pratt, who looked upon me as hard-working, ingratiating, and deserving of advancement when the right spot came along.
      During my leisure hours I practiced cross-country skiing and went hiking in the mountains, and I continued to read whatever books I could find that dealt seriously with paranormal mental activity. My researches were still on the impoverished side, however, and would remain so until the 1970s, when the legitimate science establishment finally began to concede that "mind" might be more than an enigma best left to philosophers and theologians.
      
      The child was born on 17 May 1967, some seven and a half months after his parents' wedding. He was a small baby with an oversized head and the charitable consensus was that he was premature. My first sight of him was eleven days later, when I drove him to church for the baptism. He looked pink, adequately fleshed, and not at all unfinished. Sunny's sister Linda and I renounced Satan and all his works on behalf of the infant, and then Father Racine trickled cold water over the hairless, swollen little skull and baptized him Denis Rogatien.
      Little blue eyes with shocked, dilated pupils flew wide open. The baby sucked air and let it out in a wail.
      And his mind clutched at me.
      What I did was instinctive. I projected: [Comfort.]
      He protested: !!! [cold] + [wet] = [discomfort] CRY!
      I said: [Discomfort.] CRY. [Reassurance.]
      He was dubious: ? !! CRY!
      I amplified: Soon MOTHERyou soon youMOTHER. [Comfort.]
      He was figuring it out: [HeartbeatwarmsecuregraspmilksuckLOVE] = MOTHER? Cry...
      I said: [Affirmation.] MotherGOOD. CRY. [Comfort + reassurance.]
      He said: LoveYOU. [Acceptance trust peace.]
      Then he went back to sleep, leaving me reeling.
      
      It amazed me when the baby demonstrated telepathic ability at such an early age; but I didn't realize just what else was amazing until I thought the thing over lying in bed that night, and did a crude replay of the incident. There in the church, distracted by the ceremony and the relatives standing around, I had not been consciously aware of the feedback taking place between my mind and the infant's. But the replay made it clear — and explained why I still felt an uncanny closeness to that small mind asleep in its crib on the other side of town.
      I jumped out of bed, turned on the lights, and rooted through my boxes of books until I found several on developmental psychology. They confirmed my suspicion. Not only was my nephew a telepath, but he was also a precocious telepath. His mind had displayed a synthesizing ability, an intellectual grasp far above that of normal newborn infants. He was hardly out of the womb, and yet he was thinking, drawing conclusions in a logical manner.
      I knew what I was going to have to do. I spent the rest of the night thrashing and cursing the Family Ghost, and in the morning I called in sick at work. Then I walked to the little rented house on School Street to tell Sunny what kind of a brother-in-law she had, and what kind of a husband, and what kind of baby son.
      It was a glorious day. Spring flowers bloomed in the little front yards and even dingy Berlin looked picturesque instead of shabby. She came to the door with the baby in her arms, an eighteen-year-old Madonna with long fair hair and an unsuspecting smile of welcome. We sat in the kitchen — bright yellow and white enamel, cafe curtains, Formica counters, and the scent of chocolate cake in the oven — and I told her how Don and I discovered we were telepaths.
      I wanted to make the revelation as gentle as possible, so I did it in the form of a life history, starting with the incident of the bear in the raspberry patch. (I left out the Ghost. ) I explained how my brother and I only gradually came to understand our singularity, how we experimented with mindspeech and image projection and deep-sight even before we started school. I demonstrated how easy it is to cheat on exams when farsight enables you to read a paper lying open ten feet away — behind you. I told her about psychokinesis and revealed the secret of how young O'Shaughnessy got stuffed into the basketball hoop. I discreetly moved a kitchen chair around the floor to demonstrate the PK faculty. (She only smiled. ) I explained why Don and I had early decided to keep our abilities secret. I went into detail about Odd John and my fearful reaction to it. Some instinct warned me not to mention the coercive metafaculty to her — and of course I said nothing about my conviction that Don had used some mesmerizing power to win her away from me. Of the terrible events that took place on the eve of the wedding I spoke not at all.
      My long recital took most of the morning. She listened to it almost without speaking but I could feel the tides of conflicting emotion sweeping over her — affection for me and fear for my sanity, disbelief coupled with profound unease, fascination overlaid by a growing dismay. As I talked, she made us lunch and fed the baby. When I finally finished and sat back exhausted in my chair, she smiled in her sweet way, laid her hand over mine, and said:
      "Poor dear Rogi. You've been awfully troubled these past months, haven't you? And we hardly saw you, so we didn't know. But now we'll see — Don and I — that you get help. "
      Behind those dear blue eyes was a flat refusal to even consider the truth of what I had told her. Adamant denial. And worse than that was a new kind of fear. Of me.
      God... I'd bungled it. I projected meekness, nonthreat, pure love. Sunny, don't be afraid! Not of this thing. Not of me.
      Very quietly I said, "I can't blame you for being skeptical, Sunny. Lord knows it took years for Don and me to come to terms with our special mind-powers. It's no wonder that the notion seems outrageous to you. Crazy. Frightening, even. But... I'm the same old Rogi, and Don is still Don. The fact that we can talk without opening our mouths or move a thing around without touching it doesn't make us monsters. "
      As I said it, I knew I was lying.
      She frowned, wanting to be fair. Early-afternoon sun streamed into the small kitchen. On the table were cups with dregs of cold tea, and plates with cake crumbs, and a bowl of fragrant lilacs making a barrier between us. She said, "I read once about some studies that were made at a college. Extrasensory perception experiments with flash cards. "
      I seized the opening eagerly. "Dr. Rhine, at Duke University! You see? It's respectable science. I have books I can show you —"
      "But no one can read another person's mind! It's impossible!" Her panic stung me like a whip and there was outrage, too, at the possibility of mental violation. "I couldn't bear it if you knew my secret thoughts. If Don did!"
      I summoned all sincerity. "We can't, Sunny. It's not like that. You normals — I mean, people like you — are closed books to telepaths. We can feel your strongest emotions and sometimes we receive images when you think about something very intensely. But we can't read your secret thoughts at all. Even with Don, I can only receive the farspeech he wants to transmit. "
      Partial truth. It was very difficult to decipher the innermost thoughts of normals; but often enough they were vaguely readable, especially when highlighted by strong feelings. And then many persons "sub-vocalized" — mumbled silently to themselves — when they weren't talking out loud. We could pick up this kind of stuff rather easily.
      The problem was to sort it, to make sense of the conceptual-emotional hash that floated like pond-scum at the vestibule of an undisciplined mind, confusing and concealing the inner thoughts. Most of the time, you instinctively shut all that mental static out to keep from being driven crazy.
      I said, "You never have to worry that I'd spy on you and Don through his mind, either. We put up mind-screens automatically now to shut one another out. It's a trick we learned years ago. I'd never pry into your life with him, Sunny. Never... "
      She flushed, and I knew I'd seen through to at least one of her great fears. She was a conventional, modest young wife and I loved her for it.
      "These so-called superpowers, " I said, "aren't really any more unusual than being able to play the piano well, or paint beautiful pictures. They're just something we were born with, something we can't help. You've read about people who seem to predict the future. And — and water-dowsers! My God, that's an old New England thing that nobody around these parts thinks twice about, but it must seem like black magic to people who aren't used to it. I think there may be lots of other telepaths, too, and psychokinetics, but they're afraid to admit having the powers because of the way normals would react. "
      (But if there were others, why hadn't we been able to contact them? And why hadn't researchers like Rhine found them — instead of the unreliable and ambiguously talented "psychics" who participated in his experiments?)
      Sunny said, "I want to believe you, Rogi. "
      "There was a particular reason why I came here today. It wasn't just to unburden my own mind. I'd never have intruded on you for my own sake. Not even for Don's. But now there's Denis. "
      She sat there frozen with fresh disbelief. "Denis?"
      "Yesterday at the christening I felt a wonderful thing. The baby's mind communicated with me. No — don't look shocked. It was marvelous! He was startled by the water poured on him and I reached out telepathically without thinking, used the kind of mental soothing Don and I used to share when we were little kids. And Denis responded. He did more than that! There was — a kind of creative flash, something Very special. At first I only transmitted formless feelings to him, trying to calm him and make him stop crying. He grabbed at the comfort but it wasn't enough, so I let my mind say, 'Soon you're going to be back with your mother, and everything will be all right. ' Only I said it in the kind of mental shorthand that Don and I sometimes use, not projecting real words, just the concept of mother and baby together and happy. And do you know what Denis did? He made a connection in his mind between his own notion of mother and the image I projected! It's what psychologists call a mental synthesis, a putting together. But... a baby as young as Denis shouldn't have been able to do that yet. He's too young. In another month or two, yes. But not yet. "
      She said coldly, "My baby did nothing of the kind. "
      "But he did, Sunny. I'm certain of it. "
      "You're imagining things. It's ridiculous. "
      "Look, " I said reasonably. "You go get Denis and I'll try to show you. He's not even asleep in there. He's listening —"
      "No!" She radiated a fierce, protective maternal aura. "My baby's normal! There's nothing wrong with him!"
      "He's more than normal, Sunny. Don't you see? He's probably some kind of ESP genius! If you really want proof, you could probably have him tested at one of the colleges or hospitals that are doing —"
      "No, no, no! He's just an ordinary baby!" She jumped to her feet and the fear came pouring from her like a cataract of ice. "How can you say these things to me, Rogi? You're sick! Sick with jealousy because I married Don and had his child. Oh, go away! Leave us alone!"
      Exasperated, I began to shout at her. "You can't hide your head in the sand! You know I'm not crazy and you know that what I've told you is the truth! Your own mind gives you away!"
      "No!" she screamed.
      I gestured. The vase of lilacs on the table rose two feet in the air. I sent it soaring across the kitchen to the bowl of the sink and let it fall with a crash. In another room, the baby let out a terrible cry. Sunny came at me like a tigress with her hands clenched into fists and her eyes blazing.
      "You freak! You bastard! Get out of my house!"
      I had never in my life touched her with my coercion, but there was nothing else to do.
      Sit down.
      Her voice choked off and she turned into a statue, except for her widening eyes. Her face was a tragic mask, open-mouthed in silent screaming.
      Sit down.
      Somewhere the baby was howling like a wild thing, reacting to the emotion of his mother. Sunny's eyes implored me but I held her fast. Two tears rolled down her frozen cheeks. She let her eyelids close and volition evaporated. She sank slowly onto one of the chairs. Her head fell forward, veiled by the long blond hair, and she wept without making a sound.
      Don't be afraid. Stay right there.
      She wasn't hearing my precise telepathic words, of course, only their
      meaning filtered through the larger coercive impulse. I went and got Denis, wrapped him in a blanket, and handed him carefully to his mother. Then I freed her mind from the compulsion and projected reassurance at the baby.
      CRY. [Tranquillity.] "It's okay, Denis. Maman's fine now. "
      His wails ceased abruptly. He hiccupped and sniffed. I extended my hand to the child, pointing my index finger, and exerted the lightest invitation. The baby's eyes were still swimming but his tiny mouth curved in a smile. A bare doll-like arm came out from under the blanket, reached unerringly, and clasped the end of my finger in a firm grip. I said:
      ROGI [touch] DENIS. I/Rogi —you/Denis. Rogi [love] Denis.
      There was a sudden radiant concordance. Even Sunny must have sensed it for she gave a slight gasp. The baby cooed.
      "Your name is Denis, " I said.
      The baby made a small sound.
      "Denis, " I repeated.
      The little face shone. His mind said: DENIS! His voice uttered the same funny little noise.
      "He's trying to say his name, " I explained to Sunny, "but his vocal cords and tongue really aren't hooked up properly to his brain yet. But his mind knows that he's called Denis. "
      Sunny rocked the child without speaking. She was still weeping softly but the horror was gone, leaving only bewilderment and reproach. Oh, Sunny, I'm so sorry you were afraid, so sorry for my clumsiness...
      "But I had to do it, " I told her, no longer coercing but pleading for understanding. "I couldn't let you go on denying. It wouldn't be fair to Denis. You're going to have to be brave for his sake. He's a responsibility. He probably has all the special mental abilities that Don and I have — plus more. I think he has superior intelligence, too. If that giant brain of his has a chance to develop properly, he'll grow up to be a great man. "
      She was now entirely calm. The infant basked in self-satisfaction and yawned. She held him tightly against her breast. "What am I going to do, Rogi? Will — will they take him away from me?"
      "Of course not! For God's sake, Sunny — when I said you could have him tested by scientists, I only meant that you could do it if you felt you had to. To prove he was — what I said. But nobody can force you to give Denis up for experiments. No way! Not in this country. If he was my son —"
      She looked at me expectantly.
      I was standing so close to her and the child that their combined aura enveloped me. There was relief and dependency emanating from her, and from the baby a strengthening variant of the harmonious bond I had felt earlier.
      Denis [love] Rogi.
      Oh, Denis, you can't! You're not mine. She's not mine. It's Don you have to imprint on. Your real father. Not me...
      She asked quietly, "What would you do if Denis was your son?"
      I heard myself speaking dispassionately. "The people who run those ESP labs wouldn't have the faintest idea how to give this baby what he needs. They're only normals. They've only dealt with normals. Denis needs to be taught by others like himself. Only his father and I are able to mindspeak him, so Don will have to — will have to —"
      DENIS/ROGI!
      Mind to mind the bond was forging, whether I willed it or not. The child was catching me just as he had earlier caught his mother, as all babies form a linkage with their nearest and dearest.
      Denis, no! Not me! (Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. Attempted murder. Yes, we'd both been drinking. Yes, I was out of my mind for love of her. Yes, I'm sorry sorry sorry... thank you. No, Don never even knew. It was all in my mind? No, I don't think so, but perhaps— perhaps — I don't know. Two months' fast and abstinence and a good act of contrition and it's over and gone and I'll never forget never...)
      Sunny was saying, "Don help me teach the baby? Well, I suppose we could ask him. He loves Denis, of course, but he's terribly old-fashioned. I can't get him to change diapers or even give Denis his bottle. What would Don have to do?"
      My heart sank. I might have known. The Family Ghost knew all along, of course. If it was a ghost.
      "Well, Don would have to spend time with the baby. Talk to him, mind to mind. Show him mental pictures. Help him learn control of his faculties. "
      She made a dubious little moue. "I suppose I can try. "
      "This is important, Sunny! Listen. When Don and I were babies, Tante Lorraine hardly had time to give us the love and attention ordinary babies need — and God knows, she wasn't a telepath. So we grew up stunted. "
      Sunny opened her mouth to protest, but I held up my hand and rushed on.
      "Stunted in our use of the ESP powers, I mean. Look. Have you ever read about feral children, ones raised by animals or locked away from human contact by criminal parents? When they get out at last into the normal world they're hardly human at all because they were deprived of a certain kind of education they needed when their young minds were most impressionable. Don and I seem to be normal men — but we're really cripples, too. We should have had somebody to teach us how to use our special mind-powers when we were tiny babies. All my psychology books say that the first three years of life are critical for mental development. That must hold true for special powers even more than for ordinary ones. Don and I discovered our powers accidentally and developed them in a haphazard way. We've never been comfortable with them. Don doesn't really understand them at all and I'm — I know a bit more about them than he does, but not enough. "
      "You would have to explain to Don what had to be done. "
      "Yes, of course. I'll work out some kind of general outline. Denis would need to interact with both of you. There'd be a lot of things you could do alone, Sunny — reading aloud to him, just talking to him. I have a book by Piaget, a famous French child psychologist, that I'll let you read. It gives the step-by-step progress of a baby's learning. Really fascinating."
      She nodded, holding the child close. The little boy's eyes were fixed on me and there seemed to be an air of puzzlement about him. I realized then that I had erected a mental barrier against his persistent reaching out. He was rooting against the obstruction like a puppy trying to dig under a wall.
      No child no.
      ROGI!
      He forced himself on me. I tried to break eye contact with him and found that I could not. There was a strength and determination in him that was formidable, for all his immaturity, and I felt myself weakening. Babies! They have ways to insure their survival that even the normals are aware of. Mental ways. Why else do we think a helpless, noisy, smelly, demanding, inconvenient little travesty of a human being is almost irresistibly adorable?
      No!
      ROGImyROGI. [Love.]
      My mental armor was dissolving. And then Denis smiled at me, and the trap closed.
      Sunny said, "We mustn't let any outsiders know the truth about Denis for a long time. Not until he's old enough to protect himself from people who might exploit him. We'll teach him to be cautious — and to be good. " She cuddled his head against her cheek. "Strange little superbaby. How will I ever keep up with him? I wonder how Mama Einstein managed?"
      "Little Alfred was a disappointing child, " I told her. "He didn't even speak until he was four."
      I went to the sink and began to gather up the broken pieces of the lilac vase. It was quite a mess.
      
      Don came home from work that evening and found Sunny and me sitting with the baby on the front porch. While she made supper, he and I had our first telepathic interchange in more than a year. I told him what I had done, and why.
      At first he laughed, and then he was enraged when I told him it was his moral duty to undertake the special education of his son. We got into a shouting match in the living room and Sunny came running to put herself between us. Then she proceeded to beat down every objection Don could think of, all the while radiating such passionate devotion to him and to Denis that I was astounded. It was plain even to a fool like me that coercion was not the force that bound Don and Sunny — nor had it ever been.
      As she finished telling him of the plans she and I had worked out for the first course of instruction, Don lifted his powerful arms in a resigned shrug. "All right! You win! I think it's a mistake to treat the kid special — but what the hell. I'll mindspeak him the way you want. But don't expect me to turn into a goddam kindergarten teacher, okay?"
      Sunny flung herself against him joyously and kissed him long and hard. When he broke away from her he looked over her head and gave me a sardonic grin.
      "This business of working with the kid in the evenings. The flash cards and all that crap. I'd be lousy at it. Tell you what, Rogi. You help Sunny and me teach the kid. It's just the kind of thing you'd be good at — and the whole damn thing is your idea, after all. How about it?"
      "What a wonderful idea, " Sunny said warmly. "Say you will, Rogi. "
      From the bedroom came another plea: a formless mental one.
      It was hopeless. The Family Ghost had won. I said, "All right. "
      "Well, that's settled, " Don said. "What's for supper, sweetheart?"

12
EXCERPTS FROM:

FINAL REPORT OF THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECTS

CONDUCTED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO UNDER CONTRACT TO THE UNITED STATES AIR FORCE

9  JANUARY  1969

      THE IDEA THAT some UFOs may be spacecraft sent to Earth from another civilization, residing on another planet of the solar system, or on a planet associated with a more distant star than the Sun, is called the extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH). Some few persons profess to hold a stronger level of belief in the actuality of UFOs being visitors from outer space, controlled by intelligent beings, rather than merely of the possibility, not yet fully established as an observational fact. We shall call this level of belief ETA, for extraterrestrial actuality....
      Direct, convincing, and unequivocal evidence of the truth of ETA would be the greatest single scientific discovery in the history of mankind. Going beyond its interest for science, it would undoubtedly have consequences of surpassing significance for every phase of human life. Some persons who have written speculatively on this subject profess to believe that the supposed extraterrestrial visitors come with beneficent motives, to help humanity clean up the terrible mess that it has made. Others say they believe that the visitors are hostile. Whether their coming would be favorable or unfavorable to mankind, it is almost certain that they would make great changes in the conditions of human existence....
      The question of ETA would be settled in a few minutes if a flying saucer were to land on the lawn of a hotel where a convention of the
      American Physical Society was in progress, and its occupants were to emerge and present a special paper to the assembled physicists, revealing where they came from, and the technology of how their craft operated. Searching questions from the audience would follow.
      In saying that thus far no convincing evidence exists for the truth of ETA, no prediction is made about the future. If evidence appears soon after this report is published, that will not alter the truth of the statement that we do not now have such evidence. If new evidence appears later, this report can be appropriately revised in a second printing....
      Whether there is intelligent life elsewhere (ILE) in the Universe is a question that has received a great deal of serious speculative attention in recent years.... Thus far we have no observational evidence whatsoever on the question, so therefore it remains open.... The ILE question has some relation to the ETH or ETA for UFOs as discussed in the preceding section. Clearly, if ETH is true, then ILE must also be true because some UFOs have then to come from some unearthly civilization. Conversely, if we could know conclusively that ILE does not exist, then ETH could not be true. But even if ILE exists, it does not follow that the ETH is true.
      For it could be true that the ILE, though existent, might not have reached a stage of development in which the beings have the mechanical capacity or the desire to visit the Earth's surface.... We have no right to assume that in life-communities everywhere there is a steady evolution in the directions of both greater intelligence and greater technological competence. Human beings now know enough to destroy all life on Earth, and they may lack the intelligence to work out social controls to keep themselves from doing so. If other civilizations have the same limitation, then it might be that they develop to the point where they destroy themselves utterly before they have developed the technology needed to enable them to make long space voyages.
      Another possibility is that the growth of intelligence precedes the growth of technology in such a way that by the time a society would be technically capable of interstellar space travel, it would have reached a level of intelligence at which it had not the slightest interest in interstellar travel. We must not assume that we are capable of imagining now the scope and extent of future technological development of our own or any other civilization, and so we must guard against assuming that we have any capacity to imagine what a more advanced society would regard as intelligent conduct.
      In addition to the great distances involved, and the difficulties which they present to interstellar space travel, there is still another problem. If we assume that civilizations annihilate themselves in such a way that their effective intelligent life span is less than, say, one hundred thousand years, then such a short time span also works against the likelihood of successful interstellar communication. The different civilizations would probably reach the culmination of their development at different epochs in cosmic history....
      In view of the foregoing, we consider that it is safe to assume that no ILE outside of our solar system has any possibility of visiting Earth in the next ten thousand years.

13
LENINGRAD, USSR, EARTH
5 MARCH 1969

      "WE HAVE SAVED the best for the last, Comrade Admiral. Please be seated here at this table with the microphones... You other comrades may take the chairs nearer the observation window. Dr. Valentina Lubezhny, our specialist in biocommunications phenomena, will bring the subject into the Faraday cage in just a moment. There is a small delay. " Danilov offered an apologetic smirk. "The little girl was very nervous. "
      Kolinsky gave a curt nod and lowered his ample buttocks to the hard wooden chair. Scared children! And you are the most frightened of all, Comrade Doctor Asslicker, and rightly so, considering the flimsy quality of entertainment offered thus far in your extremely expensive laboratory. Dull demonstrations of the human bioenergetic field. A Chukchi shaman able to stop the heart of a rat (but not the heart of any creature weighing more than four hundred grams). A neurasthenic blind youth reading printed matter with his fingertips. A modern Rasputin (sanitized) laying hands on tortured rabbits and healing their wounds. A housewife doing psychokinetic tricks with cigarettes and water glasses. A gypsy who peers into a Polaroid camera lens and produces blurry "astral photos" of the Petropavlovskaya Fortress, the Bronze Horseman, and other local landmarks. (That one had looked promising — until
      Danilov admitted that the subject could only "envision" places where he had been. So much for psychic espionage!)
      Sternly, Kolinsky said, "We have been most interested to see how far you have progressed in the area of pure research, Comrade Danilov. Still, it was not the existence of psychic powers that we hoped to prove. Unlike the skeptics of the West, we are quite willing to concede that the human brain is capable of such activities. However, we had hoped that after five years of work you might have uncovered a bioenergetic effect of more immediate military significance. "
      Danilov fiddled with the microphones, set out a pad of paper and marker-pens, saw that the naval aides Guslin and Ulyanov and the GRU attache Artimovich were settled in. "In just a few minutes we will demonstrate the talents of our most remarkable subject. I don't think you'll be disappointed, Comrade Admiral. By no means!"
      Down in the test chamber on the other side of the glass a door opened. A white-coated female scientist appeared with a redheaded girl wearing a school uniform. The child had an extraordinarily pretty face. She eyed the men in the observation booth with a certain apprehension.
      Danilov hurriedly addressed the admiral and the other officers. "The girl is very sensitive to adverse mental attitudes — even more so than the other subjects you have seen today. For this experiment to succeed, we must have an atmosphere pervaded with kindness and goodwill. Please try to banish all doubts from your minds. Cultivate a positive attitude. "
      Commander Guslin coughed. Ulyanov lit a cigarette. Artimovich, the intelligence man, sat bolt upright with a fixed smile on his face.
      Danilov picked up a microphone with blue tape wrapped around its stand. "I will introduce you, Comrade Admiral, and then perhaps you will speak a few words to the child and reassure her. "
      Kolinsky, who had seven grandchildren, sighed. "As you wish. "
      Danilov pressed the microphone stud. "All ready now, Tamara?"
      The girl's voice came to them over a ceiling speaker. "Yes, Comrade Doctor. "
      "We have a special guest here today, Tamara. He is Admiral Ivan Kolinsky, a great hero of the Soviet Navy. He is eager to see how well you do your biocommunication exercise. The Admiral would also enjoy talking to you. " The scientist made a formal gesture. "Admiral Kolinsky, may I present Tamara Sakhvadze."
      Kolinsky took the microphone and winked at the little girl. "Now, you must not be nervous, devushka. We will leave the nervousness to Dr. Danilov. " The child giggled. She had marvelous white teeth. "How old are you, Tamara?"
      "Eleven, Comrade Admiral. " Great dark eyes, rose-petal mouth.
      "You have a Georgian name. Where is your home?"
      "I live in Sochi — I mean, I used to live there before they found me and brought me here to work and go to school. Sochi is on the Black Sea. "
      Ah, yes — a Celtic Caucasian girl, one of that ancient breed famed through history for their beauty and bewitching ways! "I know Sochi very well, Tamara. I have a vacation villa there, a very pretty place. It must be spring in Sochi now, with flowers blooming and birds singing in the palm trees. What a pity both of us are here in wintry Leningrad instead of in your pleasant hometown. "
      And if I were there, I could sail my little boat — or sit at a small table in Riviyera Park, sipping a cold mix of Georgian champagne and orange juice and baking my tired bones in the sunshine. Gorgeous young things (your older sisters or cousins, Tamara!) would stroll by, tall and barelegged and bold of eye, and I would admire and remember old pleasures. When that palled I would plot the destruction of Gorshkov, that prick on wheels, and the KGB schemer Andropov, whose hobbyhorse this whole bioenergetics farce is, and put an end to it, and get on with the Extremely Low Frequency Broadcaster, just as the Yankees have done. Psychic forces as weapons! What superstitious peasants we Russians remain, in spite of our thin veneer of science and culture. One might as well speak of enlisting the terrible Baba Yaga and her hut on fowl's legs...
      The girl laughed out loud. "You're so silly, Comrade Admiral!"
      The woman scientist standing beside Tamara stiffened. Danilov said hastily, "The child is overexcited. Please excuse her rudeness. Let us begin the experiment —"
      Kolinsky studied the girl narrowly. "Tamara and I have not yet finished our little talk. Tell me, devushka, what special talent do you have that interests the doctors at this Institute?"
      "I read thoughts. At a distance. Sometimes. "
      "Can you read mine?" the admiral asked softly.
      Tamara now looked frightened. "No!"
      Danilov implored him. "It is most important that the child be calm, comrade! If we could begin now... "
      "Very well. " Kolinsky put the blue-marked microphone down.
      Danilov signaled to his colleague. The woman took Tamara by the hand and led her to a large cubicle of copper screening that stood in the center of the test chamber. Inside it was a plain wooden chair.
      "The enclosure is called a Faraday cage, " Danilov explained. "It is proof against most forms of electromagnetic radiation. We have found that Tamara works best when shielded in this way. The emanations from her mind do not seem to be in any way connected to the energies of the electromagnetic spectrum, however. The 'bioenergetic halo effect' that we monitored for you earlier on your tour seems to be a side effect of the life-energies rather than part of their primary manifestation. "
      Kolinsky nodded, barely concealing his impatience. Within the test chamber, the girl Tamara was now completely enclosed in the copper-screen cage, sitting with her hands clasped in her lap. Dr. Lubezhny had withdrawn, and within a few minutes came into the observation booth.
      "All is in readiness, " she reported. "Tamara feels confident. "
      Danilov picked up a second microphone from the table. The tape marking it was bright scarlet. Activating it, he said, "Danilov here. Are you standing by?"
      Masculine accents overlaid by static responded: "This is the diving tender Peygalitsa awaiting your instructions. "
      "Please give us your approximate position, " Danilov requested.
      "We  are   standing  approximately  nine  kilometers   due  west   of Kronshtadt Base in the Gulf of Finland. "
      "The divers are ready?"
      "Sublieutenant Nazimov and the Polish youth are suspended at the required depth of ninety meters and awaiting your bioenergetic transmission. "
      "Okhuyevayushchiy!" exclaimed Commander Ulyanov.
      Danilov flapped a frantic hand. "Please! No extraneous remarks! All of you — think the most refined and peaceable thoughts. "
      Commander Guslin smothered a chuckle.
      "Stand by, Peygalitsa, we are prepared to transmit. " Danilov set the red-marked microphone down.
      The admiral murmured, "You are a man of surprises, Dr. Danilov. "
      "The experiment has worked before, " the scientist said in a strained voice, "and it will work again — given the proper conditions. " He glared at the two aides and the GRU man.
      Kolinsky wagged his right index finger at the trio. "Not a peep from you, minetchiki. "
      The scientist expelled a noisy breath. He explained rapidly, "The girl Tamara is what we call an inductor. A telepathic broadcaster, the most talented we had ever found. The percipient or receiver is a seventeen-year-old Polish lad named Jerzy Gawrys, another gifted sensitive. Gawrys wears cold-water diving dress. He is holding an underwater writing pad and a stylus, but he is not equipped with telephone apparatus, as is his companion, Sublieutenant Nazimov. The only way that the boy Gawrys may communicate is by writing on his pad. Nazimov will relay the pad's message to the tender. The tender's radio operator will relay the data to us. Our own receiver picks it up and broadcasts it through the room speaker. "
      "Understood, " said Kolinsky. "And what data are to be transmitted?"
      Danilov lifted his chin proudly. "The data of your choice. "
      The aides muttered fresh exclamations of amazement.
      Danilov said, "May I suggest that you start with a few simple shapes — stars, circles, squares — then pictures, then a few words. Use the pad of paper in front of you and the ink-marker. As you finish each sheet, hold it up so that Tamara can see it... and send the message."
      Kolinsky compressed his lips and bent to the pad. He drew a five-pointed star, raised the paper, and smiled at Tamara.
      The girl stared intently.
      "Star, " said the diving tender Peygalitsa.
      The admiral drew an arrow.
      "Arrow, " said the faraway relay operator.
      The admiral drew a clumsy cat in profile.
      "Cow, " the speaker reported.
      Everybody in the booth laughed. Kolinsky shrugged and drew a circle with pointed rays around it.
      "Sun. "
      The admiral waved jovially at Tamara. She smiled and waved back. He wrote the seven Cyrillic letters that spelled a familiar greeting in Russian and held it up. The girl concentrated on them for some time. The speaker cleared its throat, then said: "We receive from Sublieutenant Nazimov the letters zeh-deh-oh-er-oh-uncertain-oh. "
      Danilov picked up the red microphone. "Stand by, Peygalitsa. " He told Kolinsky, "You must remain mindful that our percipient is Polish. It may be difficult for him to receive complex messages written in our script. Please keep the words as simple as possible. " He alerted the boat to receive the next message.
      Kolinsky printed carefully, "Tamara sends greetings. " The words were returned, letter by letter, over the speaker.
      "May I congratulate you, Dr. Danilov, Dr. Lubezhny. " The admiral beamed on the scientists. "A splendid breakthrough!" And so Andropov had been right after all. A billion-to-one gamble seemed to have paid off and he, Kolinsky, would have to eat his ration of shit. If Tamara's talent could be taught to others, the Soviet Navy could scrub its own Extremely Low Frequency Broadcaster Project. Let the Americans use the long-wave radio system to send messages to deep-lying missile submarines — a system that worked, but was so slow that a three-letter word might take nearly a half hour to transmit. The Soviet Union would talk to its submarines via mental telepathy, in moments! As to the KGB's use of psychic powers, the less said...
      Danilov was babbling. "You are very kind, Comrade Admiral! I know that little Tamara and the boy Jerzy Gawrys, who have worked so hard, will also be gratified by your praise. Perhaps you would like to tell them so yourself. "
      Kolinsky said, "First we will test one other message. " He bent to the pad, then held it up to Tamara. The lovely little face glowed at him through the copper mesh, so pleased that everything had gone well, so eager to show her skill.
      She saw: FIRE MISSILES.
      Tamara sat still. Her dark eyes opened wider, like those of a cornered doe.
      Admiral Kolinsky tapped a finger firmly against the paper.
      They waited.
      Finally, Danilov addressed the red microphone: "Attention, Peygalitsa. Do you have a message to relay?"
      "No message, " said the loudspeaker.
      Kolinsky regarded the little girl without expression. So that's the way of it, little Tamara! Can one blame you? You have hardly lived at all, and the true purpose of your work did not occur to you. You are shocked and revolted. You shrink from adult wickedness. But one day, will you see such wickedness as duty? As patriotism?
      "No message, " said the loudspeaker.
      Danilov apologized. "Perhaps the girl is tiring. Perhaps Jerzy has temporarily suffered diminished sensitivity —"
      "No message, " said the loudspeaker.
      "I will go and speak to her, " Dr. Lubezhny suggested.
      "No, " Admiral Kolinsky said. "Don't be concerned. I've seen quite enough for today. Please be assured that I will urge full funding of your continuing efforts here at the Institute, and I will commend your work most highly to the Council for National Defense. " The admiral rose from his seat, tore the sheet of paper into small pieces, and let them sift from his hand onto the table. He beckoned to his aides and strode out the door after having given one last wave to the motionless little girl.
      Dr. Danilov's eyes met those of Dr. Lubezhny. The woman said, "If only she were younger. Then it would be a game. "
      "She will bend to larger considerations in time, " Danilov said. He picked up the red microphone and keyed it. "Attention, Peygalitsa. The experiment is ended. Thank you for your cooperation. "
      "Message coming through, " said the loudspeaker.
      Danilov almost dropped the microphone. "What's that?"
      The amplified voice was brisk. "We receive another set of letters. It spells... nyet. "
      "Nyet?" exclaimed Danilov and Lubezhny in unison.
      Down in the Faraday cage, Tamara Sakhvadze looked at them and slowly nodded her head.

14
FROM THE MEMOIRS OF ROGATIEN REMILLARD

      I CAME TO Don and Sunny's house every Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday evening for nearly three years. We would have supper, and Sunny would stack the dishes. Then she would bring little Denis into the living room for the educational sessions that we came to call "head-lessons. "
      At first Don tried to work along with me. But he had very little empathy with the infantile mind and his attempts at telepathic rapport were so crude as to be little more than mental puppy-training: Here it is, kid — learn or else! He couldn't resist teasing the baby, looking upon our work with him as an amusement rather than serious business, treating the child like some glorified pet or a sophisticated toy. The occasional mental quantum leaps made by the boy could be very exciting, and then Don was all praise and affection. But there were tedious times as well, the nuts and bolts of teaching that Don found to be a colossal bore. He would put pressure on Denis, and more often than not the session would end with the child crying, or else stubbornly withdrawn in the face of his father's mocking laughter.
      As I expected, Don got tired of the teaching game after only a few weeks. Not even Sunny's pleas would move him to continue serious participation. So he watched television while Sunny and I worked with the child, and looked in with a proprietary condescension during commercial breaks. This might have been a satisfactory solution — except that babies have no tact, and little Denis couldn't help showing how much he preferred my mental tutelage to that of his father. Don's pride was hurt and he began to broadcast bad vibes that the sensitive baby reacted to, setting up a kind of mind-screen that threatened to cut him off not only from his father but also from me. I had to tell Don what was happening, dreading his reaction. He surprised me, however, and said, "What the hell! Teaching kids is no job for a man like me. " And he began going out to the Blue Ox right after supper, leaving me alone with his wife and son.
      I found out some time later that a burly tavern habitué named Ted Kowalski dared to make a suggestive crack about this unorthodox domestic arrangement. Don decked him with a single uppercut. Then he made a little speech to the awed onlookers at the Ox:
      "My egghead brother Rogi is writing a book. It's about the way that little kids' minds work. Me and Sunny are letting him use our son Denis as a kind of guinea pig. Rogi runs tests on the kid using blocks and beads and pictures cut from magazines and other suchlike crap. Sunny helps. I used to help, too, but it was dull as dishwater. That's why I'm here, and why my brother and my wife and kid are at home. Now would anybody besides the late Kowalski care to comment?"
      Nobody did, then or ever.
      Don got so fond of the Blue Ox that he took to spending evenings there even when there were no head-lessons scheduled. Sunny was sorry about that but she never reproached him. She did cook especially fine meals for him on the nights that I visited, and kept urging him to stay with us and see what Denis had learned. When Don refused, as he almost invariably did, she kissed him lovingly goodbye. When he returned two hours later in a haze of alcohol, she kissed him lovingly hello. His drinking became heavier as the months went by and the baby made spectacular progress.
      At Remillard family gatherings, Don boasted to one and all that he was proud as hell of his son, the genius. Denis, carefully coached by me, let the relatives see him as a child who was plainly above average — yet not so advanced as to appear bizarre. We let him start speaking in public when he was thirteen months old, three months after he had actually mastered speech. He learned to walk when he was a year old; in this and in other purely physical developments he was very nearly normal. In his appearance he favored the Fabré side of his family, having Sunny's fair skin and intensely blue eyes but lacking her beauty. He was never sick, even though he had a deceptively frail look about him. His temperament was shy and withdrawn (which was a vast disappointment to Don), and I believe that he was by far the most intellectually gifted of all the Remillards, not even excluding such metapsychic giants as Jack and Marc. There are some Milieu historians, I know, who mistook his gentleness for weakness and his innate caution for vacillation, and who say that without the psychic impetus furnished by his wife, Lucille Cartier, Denis's great work might have remained unaccomplished. To counter these critics I can only present this picture of the young Denis as I knew him, surmounting the emotional trials of his youth with quiet courage — and almost always facing those problems alone, since I was only able to aid him during his earliest years, and circumstances conspired to separate us during his latter childhood and adolescence.
      I must not minimize the role that Sunny played. Denis learned to read before he was two, and she saved her housekeeping money in order to buy him an encyclopedia. Since the child had a never-ending thirst for novel sensations and experiences, she wheeled him all over Berlin in a stroller during the warm months and toted him on a sled in the winter. Later, she drove him about the countryside in the family car, until the rising cost of gasoline and Don's precarious financial situation put an end to her expeditions, and their growing family left her less and less time to spare.
      The metapsychic training of Denis was left almost entirely to me. I worked hard, if inexpertly, in the development of his farsenses and wasn't surprised when his abilities quickly surpassed my own. He learned the art of long-sight amplification all by himself — and tried in vain to pass the skill on to me. His mental screening function very early became so formidable that neither Don nor I could penetrate it; aside from that, Denis seemed untalented in coercion. Psychokinesis didn't interest him much either, except as an adjunct to manipulation when his little fingers were inadequate for handling some tool, or for supporting books too heavy to be held comfortably. It was an eerie thing to come upon the child, not yet three years old, still sucking his thumb as he perused a levitated volume of the World Book Encyclopedia; or perhaps sitting in unconsidered wet diapers, studying a disassembled transistor radio while a cloud of electronic components and a hot soldering iron floated in thin air within easy reach.
      But I had even more disquieting experiences in store for me.
      One February night in 1970 Don returned from the tavern a bit early. He was no drunker than usual, and unaccustomedly cheerful. He said he had a surprise for me, and admonished me and Sunny to stay right where we were with Denis. He went into the kitchen and closed the door.
      Denis was deeply engrossed in a new book on the calculus that I had just bought, thinking we might learn it together. Sunny was knitting. Outside the little house on School Street a frigid wind from Canada howled down the Androscoggin Valley and solidified the old snowdrifts into masses like dirty white styrofoam. I hated to think of walking home.
      Don came back into the living room sans outdoor wear, carrying a cup of steaming hot cocoa. Grinning, he held it out to me. "Just what you need, Rogi mon vieux, to warm you up on a truly rotten night. "
      My brother making a cup of cocoa was an event about as unprecedented as me doing a tap dance on the bar at the Blue Ox. I probed his mind, but the usual barriers were in place. What was he up to?
      Little Denis looked up from his differentiation formulas. His eyes went first to his father, then to his mother. His expression was puzzled.
      Sunny gasped.
      Don held out the cup to me.
      "No!" Sunny cried. She sprang from her chair and slapped the cup from Don's hand. It made an ugly brown splash on the wall. I was flabbergasted.
      Denis asked me gravely, "Uncle Rogi, will you tell me why lysergic acid diethylamide makes cocoa taste better?"
      Don started to giggle. Sunny regarded him with a terrible expression of outrage. His mind-screen, shaken by her unexpected action, wavered just enough to let me see what kind of joke he had intended to play on me. Little Denis had had no trouble penetrating Don's psychic barricade when it was still firm, and he had perceived the name of the drug emblazoned on his father's short-term memory trace as on a lighted theatre marquee.
      But how had Sunny known?
      Don's laugh was louder, more unsteady. "Hey, it was only a gag! This hippie came into the Ox lookin' to deal, and we were ready to throw him out on his ass when I remembered ol' Rogi jabbering about altered states of consciousness. And I thought —hey! Whole lotta talk about the wild side of the mind, but never any action. That's you, Rog. "
      I said, "You were going to slip the LSD into me and supervise my trip. "
      His grin became a grimace of pure hate. "You been experimenting. I figured it was my turn. "
      Sunny grabbed his arm. "You're drunk and you don't know what you're saying!"
      He shook Sunny off as though she were some importunate kitten and took one step toward me, big hands opening and closing. Denis whimpered, abandoned his book, and scuttled aside.
      "I know exactly what I'm saying, " Don blustered. "You and your fuckin' mind-games! You turned my own kid against me! And my wife — my wife — " He faltered, looked at Sunny in a dazed fashion. His mind-walls were down and I could see the wheels turning as he made the connection about the cup of cocoa and Sunny's frustration of his plan.
      "You knew, " he accused her. His tone was confused, the anger momentarily sidetracked. "But how?"
      She straightened. "Denis asked me about the LSD before he asked Rogi. Our son has been teaching me telepathy. It was to be a surprise for you and Rogi. "
      I was stunned. None of my books on parapsychology had prepared me for a mind capable of exercising psychoredaction,. the "mental editing" faculty that is so taken for granted in Milieu pedagogy and psychiatry. I cried:
      Sunny — is it true?
      She didn't respond.
      Denis said: Mommy can only mindspeak me. She can't hear you or Papa. You aren't strong enough.
      Don looked down incredulously at the little toddler in corduroy overalls and a miniature lumberjack shirt. Denis was on his hands and knees. His lower lip trembled.
      "I'm not strong enough?" Don roared. He stooped to seize the child, ready to shake him, to slap him —
      Sunny sensed what was coming and I saw it clearly in Don's mind. We both started to intercept him. But it wasn't necessary.
      "Papa won't hurt me, " Denis said. He climbed to his feet and stood in front of his father. His head was about on a level with Don's knees. "You won't ever hurt me, will you Papa. " It wasn't a question. The boy's magnetic blue eyes were rock-steady as he looked up.
      "No, " said Don. "No. "
      Sunny and I let out suppressed breath. She bent down and lifted Denis in her arms.
      Don turned to me. He moved like a man in a dream, or one in an extremity of pain. His mental walls were back in place. I had no idea what message Denis had transmitted, what coercive interdict the child had used. I knew that Denis would never be harmed by his father — but the protective aegis did not extend to me.
      Don said, "You won't have to bother coming over in the evening anymore, Rogi. "
      "I suppose not, " I said.
      The child reached out to comfort and reassure me. In those days I knew nothing of the intimate mode of farspeech, that which tunes directly to the personal mind-signature of the recipient; nevertheless, I was aware that Denis spoke to my mind alone when he said:
      We will find a way to continue.
      "Denis has had enough coddling, " Don said, "and Sunny's going to be too busy to play games with you two. Did she tell you she's expecting again?"
      She held Denis close, her eyes brimming with tears. She hadn't. And I'd never noticed the knitting. "Congratulations, " I said in a level voice.
      Don was at the front closet getting my coat and things. He held them out to me, a defiant smile twisting up one side of his mouth, his thoughts unreadable.
      He said, "I plan to take care of the next kid's training myself. "

15
EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, EARTH 
28 JANUARY  1972

      HE CLIMBED, AS he often did when the tensions became too great, clutching at slippery rocks and gnarled heather stems with frostbitten hands gone numb.
      HALLOO!
      Reveling in the height, the separation from the world of ordinary mortals, he scrabbled for precarious footholds. His mud-clotted, soggy waffle-stompers abraded the fresh blisters on his heels, adding to the welcome ensemble of pain.
      HALLOO OUT THERE!
      His heart was banging in his throat fit to brast. The wintry gusts blowing into the steep defile called the Guttit Haddie froze his hurdies and his ears and his chin and his nose.
      HALLOO! OI! IS THERE A BODY CAN HEAR ME?
      He climbed like a man pursued by demons invisible, never looking down. The spreading sea of city lights seemed to undulate dizzily below — glittering currents of traffic, dirty backwaters of tenements and shops, the up-thrust reefs of church steeples and castle ramparts and the perilous shoals of the University.
      HALLOO!
      Down there ran the Pleasance and on it stood the building with the laboratory. It had a grand name: the Parapsychology Unit of the Department of Psychology of the University of Edinburgh; but it was only a big dreary room up under the eaves, partitioned into cramped wee offices and carrels for the endless testing. It was presided over by the eminent
      Dr. Graham Finlay Dunlap, whose staff — alas! — consisted only of two graduate assistants, William Erskine and Nigel Weinstein, and him: James Somerled MacGregor, a silly gowk of twenty, by virtue of his fey talents awarded a bursary at one of the finest universities in Britain — and for all that bored and wretched and wanting only to go home to Islay in the Hebrides.
      HALLOO! WHAT'S NEW? DAFT JAMIE SAYS: SOD YOU!
      Climb up laughing at the uselessness of it. Climb above the winterfast reeky city toward a louring sky still scarlet in the west. Climb up the steepest, most dangerous way in shifty twilight, hurting all the while. Scramble up rocks. Creep along the igneous ridge all frosty and windblasted. Climb finally to the top of that ancient crag, that sentinel of Dun Eadain beloved of tourists and sentimentalists and trysting lovers. Climb up to Arthur's Seat!
      HALLOO! HURRAW! EXCELSIOR!...
      The near-gale blowing up the Forth from the North Sea now smote him squarely. To escape he sprawled bellyflaught, face cradled in his arms, and let rattling gasps from his parched throat soften while his heart tripped over itself and slowed. He licked cracked lips and tasted salt from wind-tears and wool from his sweater. The sheepy taste and the ocean taste and the smell of wet cold stone and moorland! The thrill of climbing in the high air, the pain of it, the happiness... and see — the humor was coming on him again, just as it used to so easily in the early days when he was still excited with the novelty of demonstrating his uncanny powers to the psychologists. He felt it coming. He knew that he was going to be able to do it again.
      The thing he thought he'd lost. What they'd been coaxing him vainly to do again down in the damned laboratory for nigh on a year.
      The out-of-body thing.
      I'M AWAY!
      Oh, aye, it was grand! To soar up and see himself left prone below, a husk without a soul. He sped into the sunset, across West Lothian's black fells and crouching Glasgow and the Firth of Clyde, over Arran and Kintyre and tiny Gigha, beyond the sea to home. To Islay, to his private place. Like a sea bird he hovered, seeing the surf crash against the shoulder of Ton Mhor. A few sheep skirted the bog on their way downhill. Somewhere one of the dogs was barking. The ruins of the old croft near the bay sheltered a shaggy red longhorn stot. In his own snug home the lights were on and a thread of smoke rose from the chimney. Suppertime on a winter's Friday night, and Granny portioning out the sweet while Mum dished up savory haddock and fried potatoes. Dad and Colin and old Iain came trampling in tired and famished and red-cheeked.
      He watched them, full of joy and with all pain abolished. Then he concentrated on the well-known dear aura. He said:
      It's me! I'm here!
      Granny looked up from the trifle she'd made that day for a special treat: Jamie my dear laddie. It's been so long. And how are you then?
      Ah Gran I'm that miserable here at university I could die I think! Such blether.
      No no they're all fools and Dr. Dunlap the biggest of all with his testing testing testing as if he didn't know my powers exist but had to prove it over and over endlessly with his damned statistics and I get so tired and impatient and I feel the hostility from the other undergrads because I'm a privileged character and allowed my special academic track here in the Psychology Department and Gran dear Gran this queer mind of mine sometimes does its tricks and sometimes not but what's the use it's not as though I could use the Sight or the Speech or the Out-of-Body Thing to earn a good living as a bookie or a blackmailer or a spy Lord knows the powers are too unreliable and me too conscience-tender for that but Gran I'm beginning to think I don't want to be a psychologist either not even to study the powers if it means this endless dull dull testing not only of me but of common folk and Dunlap and his two assistants nattering on about "extrachance performance" and the "psi-missing effect" (which means can you believe it test results so rotten that the psi experts have decided they must be significant!) and they keep trying to find a theory in physics to fit the powers and nothing works and still they write their papers and look wise and pretend it all means something when we know it doesn't have to and what I'd really like to do is chuck the whole thing and go off and be a stage magician or a mind reader on the telly and make a packet like Uri Geller or the Amazing Kreskin...
      Jamie Jamie ungrateful gorlin the time's come to stop playing with the powers selfishly as I've told ye for now they must be put to use for all mankind. And if the good Professor can't solve the problem of making the powers fit into real science then maybe the job's meant for YOU Daft Jamie MacGregor!
      Ah Gran. Dunlap's department doesn't have the money to do the job proper. Ah you should see what a threadbare wee place this Parapsychology Unit is. If we were in America now it might be different for there all the colleges are rich but here in Edinburgh the two doctoral candidates working under Dunlap must live on cheese sandwiches and beer I'm all right of course eating in the Pollock dining room but —
      It's time for us to eat here as well so stop your whinging. You must fulfill your part of the bargain so bear with Professor Dunlap and his perjinkities and study hard and be a credit to us. Then later if you can't abide parapsychology you can shrink silly neurotics and get rich.
      Ah Gran.
      Ah Jamie. Go back now. Your poor body's freezing in the haar and one of your good friends has come searching for you...
      He opened his eyes. He was back in Holyrood Park on the pinnacle of Arthur's Seat and stiff as an iced halibut. He stood upright, tottering in the east wind, tucked his bare hands into his warm crutch, and stamped his feet. The pins-and-needles effect was exhilarating.
      It was too dark now to climb down the way he'd come, for the western side of the small mountain was steep and trackless down the Haddie. And besides, the lights of Edinburgh were turning yellow and fuzzy. It was the haar, as Granny had warned him, sneaking in from the Firth to swaddle the city in freezing mizzle. He'd have to go back the long way, down the easy east path to Dunsapie Loch, and then along the Queen's Drive to the Dalkeith entrance to the park where he'd come in. A dreary mile and a half, but there was no helping it.
       He came down the east side of the knoll into thickening fog. The temperature was dropping and he moved as rapidly as he could along the footpath, comforting himself with the thought that antibiotics easily cured pneumonia these days —
      "Jamie!"
      He heard the thin shout from below. Gran had said a friend was looking for him, hadn't she? But nobody knew where he'd gone! He cantered down a precipitous stretch of track and saw an amber light bobbing about: someone with a torch coming up to meet him.
      "Oi!" he shouted. "I'm here!"
      And there was a familiar stocky figure pouring out vibes of relief only slightly tainted by peevish mutterings.
      "Nigel!" Jamie exclaimed delightedly. "Did you track me with psi? The hill's strongly magnetic, you know. I would've thought that —"
      "Oh, put a sock in it, you young idiot, and let's get down to the car before we both freeze. " Nigel Weinstein unwound a long striped muffler from his own neck, flung it at Jamie, and glowered. "You and your magnetism! Dunlap was pissed to the wide when Wee Wully Erskine told him you'd aborted the afternoon magnetometer session and run off. You bloody ass! We had a devil of a time getting that test set up with the physics boys — and now, thanks to your silly-buggery, we can go back to square one. "
      "I'm sorry, Nigel. " The two of them came to the road. Dunsapie Loch was lost in the murk. They turned right and hurried toward the car-park at the south end. "Were you really worried about me?"
      "You might have broken your neck, " the graduate assistant snapped.
      "Where would we find another test subject with your talent? You know we're all chewing nails worrying about the new research grant. "
      The underlying fear leaked through his gruff words: And who knows what kind of stupid thing a morose young Celt might get up to on a slippery crag in the dead of winter?
      "I'm not that depressed, " Jamie told him. But thanks for caring. "As for the tests, they'd have been no good anyway. The morning runs wore me down and I just didn't have the heart to keep on. I keep telling Erskine that it's no good endlessly repeating really tough mind maneuvers. I lose motivation and get to swithering and then the powers wonk out. I'm not a bloody computer, you know. And Wee Wully's attitude is no help — Mr. Objectivity, plug me into the circuit and work me like a damn dray-horse!"
      Weinstein heaved a sigh. "Dr. Dunlap would say you're suffering from a psi decline. Me — I'd label you a prima donna. "
      "So'd my Granny, " Jamie admitted, grinning.
      They found Weinstein's battered Hillman at last and climbed in. There was no traffic at all on the one-way Queen's Drive that encircled Holyrood Park and the fog was getting so thick that the car's headlamps were worse than useless. Nigel muttered a curse, switched them off, and navigated with the ambers. He drove little faster than a walking pace. Outside was a world of dull-glowing golden cotton wool.
      Jamie said, "Tests like those we were doing today are a waste of time. So I try to move drinking straws with psychokinesis and the instrument measures the perturbation of the magnetic field around my head. Super! A needle wiggles, the field gets slightly bent, and it's all recorded for posterity... which won't give a tinker's dam. "
      "The research adds to the body of parapsychological evidence. "
      Jamie rolled his eyes. "How much evidence do you need, man? It isn't as though the magnetic measurements told you anything useful. You still haven't a clue about the nature of mental energy — what forces operate during PK, how telepathic messages are carried, what mechanism enables me to travel without my body. There's no scientific theory for any of it. "
      "We're still assembling data. Eventually we'll fit psi phenomena and the whole notion of mind into the reality framework. "
      Jamie huddled closer to the warm air beginning to come from the car heater. "Weird powers have been around since caveman days. How come Australian bushmen and Eskimos and African witch doctors and fire-walking Hindus can use the powers and not worry about it — but scientists can't? Science flies to the moon, but it diddles and daddies and wrings its hands when the mind performs its psychic tricks, and needs to be convinced over and over again that it's not all a sham. As far as useful theory goes, we're not much wiser today in 1972 than we were  in 1572 — when people blamed it all on the devil and burnt blokes like me at the stake... For God's sake, why can't we simply buckle down and use the powers without the endless havering?"
      Weinstein laughed. "Science likes things it can measure. Psi powers are too slippery for comfort. So we must try to analyze them, try to formulate theories and test them. And if psychic research had the kind of financial backing that astronautics has, we'd get results. "
      "I used to think so, " Jamie said slowly, "but I've chewed over the matter a lot lately. And I've about concluded that there may be a basic flaw in the entire concept of psi research — one that makes our kind of research futile. "
      "Bosh!"
      "No — listen to me, Nigel. All over the world scientists have been doing serious studies of psi effects. The Russians are keen on it because they think it might make a weapon. Give them credit for a pragmatic attitude, anyhow! The Yanks are a touch leery just because the Russkies believe in it — but they have quite a few dedicated research groups, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science did finally admit the Parapsychological Association to membership. Our British teams are going full throttle. There's good work being done by the Dutch and the Indians and the Finns and the Japs and the Germans. Nobody who matters laughs at us anymore or calls us crackpots. The consensus in scientific circles is that psi effects are real. But... the net practical result of nearly twenty years of activity has been just about nil! You still get untrained people finding water with forked sticks, and fakirs treading hot coals, and faith healers laying on hands and curing the sick, and all the rest of the disorganized clamjamphrie of PK and telepathy and precognition and all the rest — unreliable and unexplainable — while trained researchers still have no coherent results from their experiments. "
      "That's no reason to label our work futile —"
      "What if the human race had the eyesight of a mole? Could we develop a science of astronomy? Of course not! The appropriate sense organs would be too weak even to notice the stars, much less organize scientific data concerning them. I think that's the way it is with psi and normal humanity right now. Most human beings have some kind of parapsychological capability, but it's so weak and undependable that it might as well not exist. The few people like me who have stronger powers are still too ill-equipped to demonstrate much that's useful. I think that science won't get off the ground analyzing higher mind-powers until really efficient psychic operators are born. "
      "You're saying that our data will remain essentially incomplete until ... mental giants come along. Until the brain evolves further. "
      "Exactly. When people have full control of their paranormal faculties — whether they're born with it, or develop control through training — then we'll be able to do valid testing. Nigel, I know I'm right! I'm one of the flawed ones myself — not totally eyeless, but still only seeing the stars as off-again, on-again blurs... Just look at the fog outside this car of yours. Would you know there was a great city all around Arthur's Seat if you spent your entire life in a car, cruising around and around this misty drive, only catching a rare glimpse of the lights outside? And with Edinburgh only a half-seen mystery, would you even dream that other cities existed?"
      They glided through mustard-colored murk, searching for the exit road. And then a gust of wind blew the swirling vapors aside for a moment and they saw the junction ahead, and both of them gave exclamations of relief, and Nigel said, "You see? Breakthroughs do happen. Take a lesson, Jamie. " He turned the regular headlamps back on and made the turn.
      "You want us to keep traveling our research road, no matter how foggy, until we find a way into the hidden city — and maybe a body with radar eyes. "
      "A muddled metaphor, but thine own. "
      Jamie grinned at the older man. "You poor buggers working under Dunlap are luckier than most. At least you've got me. Not quite as blind as a mole. More in the hedgehog class, maybe. "
      Weinstein sighed. "And to think I'm basing my doctoral thesis on you! I'd do better to creep back to the family tog-shop on Duke Street. " Jamie said, "I'll quit mucking up, Nigel. Just promise me... when you do get your degree, stay on at the university. Work with me on useful experiments, not this codswallop that Dunlap insists on. You came out to get me tonight knowing exactly where I was. We know what that has to mean. Let's train my clairvoyance and yours, too, instead of stifling it with trivia. Let's show the world that psychic powers are serious business. "
      "Conceited little twit. All you want is my life, eh? All right — you're on!" Weinstein peered through the windscreen at indistinct blobs of light marking Dalkeith Road. "Now suppose you use your clairvoyance, or your out-of-body faculty, or some damn thing to find us a nice pub."

16
RIVER FOREST, ILLINOIS, EARTH
9 JUNE  1973

      ALDO "BIG AL" Camastra stepped out of his air-conditioned study into the muggy, music-filled evening and closed the French doors behind him. He was smiling, for the business with the union reps and the party bagmen from Chicago had gone very well indeed. Now he was free to circulate among the guests like a proper host, just as Betty Carolyn had begged him to do. Family business came first, of course; but he wanted to keep her happy on their Twenty-Fifth Anniversary, and besides, there were some people around that he should glad-hand.
      Nick and Carlo were patiently waiting on patio chairs, ever alert. Big Al nodded to them. "Party going good?"
      "Really swinging, Al, " Carlo said. "Joe Porks even brought this broad who sang on the Johnny Carson show. Terrific! Sort of a Cher, but with boobs. "
      Big Al laughed, adjusted his silk cummerbund, and shot his cuffs so the big gold links just peeked out from the sleeves of his dinner jacket. "Did Rosemary get here?"
      "Frankie drove her in from O'Hare about an hour ago, " Nick said. "Her plane was delayed. She went to change. "
      They went down the flagstone steps with Carlo leading and Nick bringing up the rear. The big garden behind the Camastra mansion was lit with skeins of Japanese lanterns in addition to the bronze lamps illuminating the rose beds. A marquee for refreshments had been set up near the west wing and there were throngs of guests moving about inside of it. Another considerable crowd had gathered around the portable dance floor where tables and chairs made an outdoor cabaret flanked by flower beds. The big band was playing "Leaving the Straight Life Behind. " Some forty couples gyrated to the music without ever engaging in body contact.
      Big Al grimaced contemptuously at the sight of them. "They call that dancing? Everybody doing their own thing, bumping and grinding like a buncha Clark Street hookers?"
      The two soldiers guarding the patio steps greeted the Chicago Boss respectfully and stepped aside so he and his bodyguard could enter the crush of the party. The bolder guests began to converge immediately — businessmen and politicians and lobbyists and fellow mobsters and their expensive women. The relatives and smaller fry hung around in the background, clutching drinks and waving.
      "Happy Silver Anniversary, Al!"
      "Mazel tov, Al baby!"
      "Wonderful party, Mr. Camastra. Quite a showplace you have here!" "Lemme get a glassa spumante for you, Al. "
      "Mr. Camastra, I think we met in Springfield at the last session —"
      Shaking hands, smiling, and returning compliments, he wove expertly through the crowd. Nick and Carlo were always a few steps behind. He accepted the best wishes of a Chicago alderman, kissed his wife's sister, gave a polite brush-off to a hollow-eyed banking executive, told a dapper monsignor that he'd be delighted to contribute to the parish carillon fund, and congratulated a visiting New York consigliere of the Montedoro Family for having beaten a federal conspiracy rap.
      Then he was at the edge of the dance floor, and all the well-wishers and importuners were swept away as if by magic. He kissed his wife Betty Carolyn, who looked terrific in clinging white Bob Mackie evening pajamas with silver fringe, topped off with a coiffure like sculptured meringue. And there was his grown daughter Rosemary, laughing as he swept her up in a bear hug.
      "Hey, Rosie, my little princess! You look great. How's the art-gallery business in the Big Apple? We were afraid you'd miss the party with your plane delayed —"
      "Al, the most exciting thing!" Betty Carolyn squealed. "Rosemary didn't say anything when she called from the airport so's we wouldn't worry, and anyhow by the time the plane landed it was all over, and her wonderful hero of a boyfriend even cooled off the U. S. Marshals so she and him don't even have to make a statement until tomorrow when the skyjacker is arraigned. "
      "What?" The word was like a soft explosion. Big Al held his smiling daughter at arm's length. "Your plane was skyjacked? Jesus Christ!"
      "Poppa, I'm all right. No one was hurt and the skyjacker was captured — thanks to Kieran. Kieran O'Connor, a very dear friend of mine. "
      Carlo and Nick were still fending off guests, and the band was working itself into incipient apoplexy as it approached the climax of "Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog. " Rosemary drew forward a slender dark-haired man who had been standing behind her. He was about thirty years old, clean-cut and with conservatively styled hair. He wore designer jeans and an open shirt with a gold neck-chain, the usual summer formal wear of his generation. His smile was diffident and his eyes cast down as Rosemary said:
      "Kieran subdued the skyjacker single-handed, Poppa. He took away the man's gun and — and somehow knocked him unconscious with a single blow! Karate or something. "
      Big Al seized the hand of Kieran O'Connor. "My God! How can I thank you? You gotta tell me everything. My own daughter skyjacked! What's this damn country coming to? Your name's O'Connor? You a frienda Rosie's from New York? Let's find a place to sit down and —"
      The band, having brought "Jeremiah" to a rousing conclusion, now blared out a fanfare. People started tinkling their glasses with spoons.
      "Ooh, " cried Betty Carolyn. "I told the band leader that when you came in, he should quick finish up whatever they were playing and then announce our special dance. Al, you know everybody's been waiting for you to come down. And then we cut the cake —"
      "Lay-deez and gentlemen!" The amplified voice of the band leader boomed through the festive summer night. "And now, by special request, in honor of the Silver Wedding Anniversary of Mr. and Mrs. Aldo Camastra... "
      The opening strains of Big Al's favorite tune, "The Godfather Waltz, " throbbed from a single violin. The guests broke into applause and cheers and Betty Carolyn tugged at her husband's left hand. The right one was still in the grip of Kieran O'Connor.
      "Al, we gotta dance. Come on!"
      But Big Al stood unmoving, his mouth open in an expression of incredulity and his eyes locked upon those of the young man standing before him. Kieran O'Connor's lips were moving, but the noise from the crowd and the now fully instrumented waltz music made his voice inaudible to Betty Carolyn and Rosemary.
      Big Al heard every word.
      I have wanted to meet you — or someone like you — for a long time, Mr. Camastra. The skyjack was a charade. An introduction and a demonstration. I brought the gun aboard the aircraft myself, and I selected the poor devil who would play the skyjacker role and made certain that he played it. Wouldn't you like to know how I did that, Mr. Camastra? I have a number of other useful talents at my command. If we can come to an amicable arrangement, I am willing to put them at your disposal.
      "Malocchio, " whispered Big Al. Sweat had broken out on his forehead. "The Evil Eye!" He tried to cry out to Carlo and Nick. The young Irishman's hypnotic voice reproached him.
      You don't have to be afraid, Mr. Camastra. My offer is entirely legitimate. I need you, and you stand to profit considerably through use of my special services. "Al, come on!" said Betty Carolyn.
      The voice in his mind was genial. The paralysis that had fettered his body eased, but still that entrancing gaze held him. Malocchio!
      I'll let you dance with your lovely wife in just a moment, Mr. Camastra. I just want to assure you that there is no possible way for you to harm me. We are going to be friends. Your daughter and I are already very good friends.
      Big Al felt himself being pulled onto the dance floor. Betty Carolyn's body pressed against his and they began to waltz to the sad, lilting melody. Rosemary stood arm in arm with a pleasant, very ordinary looking young man — who still exerted his mental wizardry from more than twenty feet away.
      Ever since I finished law school at Harvard I've been researching the economics of the nationwide organization operated by you and your Sicilian colleagues. I found it fascinating. I know every significant detail of the Five Families' operations back in New York, including a maneuver currently being orchestrated to your disadvantage by a certain Mr. "Joe Porks" Porcaro of the Falcone Family. We'll talk about it later. Enjoy your dance, Mr. Camastra. It's really a great party.

17
FROM THE MEMOIRS OF ROGATIEN REMILLARD

      I CONTINUED TO ACT as the surreptitious confidant of Denis Remillard throughout his early childhood in spite of my brother Don's antagonism. The boy's long-distance farspeaking ability improved with each passing year; and my own telepathic faculty, through our constant interaction and mental symbiosis, also advanced far beyond the level I had previously achieved with Don.
      Little Denis soaked up knowledge like a human computer and my role as simple tutor soon became obsolete. Nevertheless I still had an important job to do educating Denis in human relationships. At times he seemed almost like some naive little visitor from an extraterrestrial civilization, overflowing with data about Earth, its science, its culture, and its people — yet unable to fully comprehend how the human race worked. I could not help but recall Odd John, who was similarly bewildered. Not that Denis had any of the fictional character's inhuman alienation — far from it. But the murkier ins and outs of human psychology — especially the irrational elements playing a part in human decision making — tended to perplex and bemuse him. Brilliant though he was, he was handicapped by overly logical attitudes, social inexperience, and the inevitably self-centered mind-set of a very young child. It would have been futile to try to form Denis's conscience, for instance, by referring him to treatises on ethics or moral theology; he needed to develop a sense of values by observing the actions of others, analyzing them, and judging their good or evil in a context that was not only social but personal. Practically speaking, it amounted to talking things over with me.
      Looking back on our relationship from my present perspective, 140 years later, I can only be grateful that at the time I did not fully appreciate the crucial importance of what I was doing. If I had, I doubt that I would have had the courage to undertake the job — Ghost or no Ghost.
      With the birth of Don and Sunny's second son Victor in 1970, Denis was relieved of a good deal of paternal constriction. Don became obsessed with the new child, who was strapping and handsome and the very image of his father, and lifted his earlier prohibition of contact between Denis and me. With Sunny's cooperation I was able to spend many hours each week with the boy. Our meeting place was the old apartment on Second Street, where aging Onc' Louie still lived with my unmarried cousins Al and Margie.
      It was in 1973, when the time came for Denis to enter school, that the next crisis took place. After careful negotiation (and a bit of coercion!) I had managed to wangle a partial scholarship for Denis at Northfield Hall, a prestigious private boarding school in Vermont that specialized in gifted children; but when the time came to finalize the arrangements, Don balked. He was in a precarious financial position. His alcoholism affected his job performance and he had been passed over for promotion. Furthermore, Sunny was pregnant again, and Dr. Laplante predicted twins. Don's share of the tuition at Northfield would entail considerable sacrifice on his part — and he also professed an objection to the philosophical orientation of the school, which was ultraliberal and permissive and not at all congenial to the old-fashioned Catholicism of our family. Don dragged the entire Remillard family into the row. We split into those who wanted the best for Denis (me, Sunny, Al, and Margie), and those who maintained that no educational opportunity was worth "endangering the child's faith at some godless, left-wing school for spoiled rich kids" (Don, Onc' Louie, and about twenty-five other cousins, uncles, aunts, and in-laws).
      In vain, I argued that Denis's religious instruction could be assured by special arrangement with a church near Northfield. Don declared that the Berlin parochial school had been good enough for him, and it should be good enough for his older son — genius or no genius. When I volunteered to share the tuition expenses Don stubbornly refused. A last-ditch attempt on my part to garner a full scholarship for Denis was shattered when Don made a truculent phone call to the school's headmaster. Northfield washed its hands of us volatile Canucks.
      Of course nobody had asked Denis what he wanted.
      Frustrated and disgusted by the debacle, I decided to go on a weekend backpack in the Mahoosucs to cool off. I could usually restore my spirit by climbing in the mountains, and I have since known many other metas who felt the same way. Perhaps it is merely instinctive for the psychosensitive to ascend as high as possible above the walls and confining rock formations that tend to block the free ranging of our minds; perhaps it is more — a yearning to be where the light is brightest, where the trees merge and the extent and shape of the forest can be known, where mean and mundane concerns are blotted out in flatland haze. I suppose I am moderately devout, but I don't feel impelled to pray in the high places. (I'm more likely to cry out of the depths!) Instead, I climb upward to bask. Skyey energies seem to pour through me when I stand on a peak like a human lightning rod; they renew me, and in some mystical fashion revitalize the Earth I stand upon.
      On that day in mid-August I climbed Goose Eye Mountain, a 1170-meter pinnacle some fifteen crow-flight kilometers from Berlin, just across the border in Maine. When I reached the top I farspoke Denis and shared the summit experience with him. For two years now he had begged to accompany me on my wilderness rambles, but Sunny felt he was still too young and frail for strenuous hiking and I reluctantly had to agree. I took Denis along with me mentally instead, and he told me it was almost as good.
      After I'd let him borrow my senses, I asked: What are you doing?
      Baking CAKE allbymyself (OK Mom supervises) Papa goneout so he won't laugh   took Victor they lookingfor birthdaypresentPapa outboardmotor tomorrow Papabirthday I make cake Mom&me privatejoke not tell Papa cake goingtobe magnificent.
      OmyGod forgot completely tomorrow August 12. My birthday too 28yearsold just like yourPapa.
      ! [Dismay.] BUT YOU HAVE NO CAKE.
      Laughter. Waitwait in backpack gooeycreamfilled Feuilleté! Tomorrow put littletwigs in light sing HappyBirthdaytoMe.
      [Mindshout broken off.] Cake done! Goodbye UncleRogi...
      I'll try to speak you tomorrow MountSuccess. Goodbye Denis.
      And he was gone, caught up in his great confectionery adventure. Of course it would have to be kept secret from Don, who would ridicule his little son for doing "women's work. " It was typical of my brother that he should take three-year-old Victor, his pet, with him while he shopped for his own expensive birthday present. Small chance he would have saved the money for Denis's education.
      I cursed quietly. If only the tuition at Northfield Hall weren't so exorbitantly high. If only the great state of New Hampshire hadn't let the gifted-child program go down the drain in a budget cut. If only the local Catholic school weren't so stodgy and inflexible. Sister Superior was willing to "see what could be done" about assigning Denis some special courses of advanced study, but she was adamant about having him start in first grade just like all the other six-year-olds. It was necessary that he "gain the requisite social skills and learn good work habits. "
      Denis now probably knew more than I did. And how would I like to spend a year twiddling my thumbs in first grade? Doux Jésus!
      I slithered down from Goose Eye and picked up the Appalachian Trail. I had intended to spend Saturday and Sunday browsing about this region of the Mahoosucs, a rather modest weekend ramble; but now renewed fury at Don's selfishness and my own inability to help Denis kindled a perverse need to push myself to the limit. I checked my watch. It wasn't quite noon. Sunset would not be until around eight o'clock. My AMC map showed a more challenging itinerary, a fourteen-kilometer hike to Gentian Pond Shelter. That section of the trail was quite rugged, involving the negotiation of steep ridge and valley terrain and several scrambles over areas with great blocks of granite. I was a strong hiker, however, and my legs are long. I figured that by pushing myself I could cover the distance and arrive at Gentian well before dark — dead tired and no doubt chock-full of self-justification.
      So I set off.
      It was a fine day in spite of the heat. A tricky descent along the southwestern flank of Goose Eye commanded my attention. Then I flushed a few languid spruce grouse down in a hollow, and was further distracted by a harsh call that sounded like a raven, a species formerly rare in New England but now making a comeback. My bird-watcher's instinct perked up and I tramped along more cheerfully. In time I reached Mount Carlo and made my way up its rough northern shoulder. The eminence was as somber as a chunk of Labrador tundra, but there was a good view back to Goose Eye and ahead to Mount Success. I tried to hail Denis telepathically but there was no answer. No doubt Don had returned home and the child had been obliged to take refuge in the mental sanctuary he customarily erected against his father's barbs and disparagements.
      Damn Don! He couldn't hurt Denis physically, but he could certainly do enormous emotional damage. The boarding school had seemed the perfect solution, taking the boy out of Don's orbit for nearly nine months of the year and providing him with an environment where he could continue his self-education, while at the same time learning to get along with other bright youngsters and sympathetic adults. With that escape vetoed, there seemed to be only one other solution to Denis's dilemma.
      I would have to reveal his metapsychic gifts.
      Every instinct in me warned against it. The child would be exploited, pressured, treated as a freak if not as a menace. Once the truth came out, the psi laboratories at the various institutions would squabble over him. And I had read recently about a psi research facility at the U. S. Army's Aberdeen Center...
      No. There had to be another way.
      I hiked on, agonizing, entertaining one preposterous idea after another. I would steal Denis away. I would poison Don's liquor just enough to put him in bed, under my coercive thumb. I would confide Denis's secret to the nuns at school and enlist their help. (But the truth would leak out. The unsophisticated sisters could never deal with it. ) I would write to Dr. Rhine himself! To our bishop. To the Governor of New Hampshire. To President Nixon. To The New York Times!
      Occupied with these thoughts, I crossed the steep notch of Carlo Col and slogged into New Hampshire again, beginning the long climb to Mount Success, that ironically named central point of the little Mahoosuc Range. Success wasn't very difficult to master. It wasn't high, only interminably broad. Up around the summit were treacherous patches of thinly crusted bog where a false step put you boot-top-deep in black muck. I finally snapped out of my distraction when I missed my footing and fell headlong into a pocket of the stuff. It was only by the skin of my teeth that I missed tumbling over a kind of rock-slab retaining wall into a lethally steep ravine.
      I had managed to wrench my knee, I was half soaked, and clinging black glop slathered me from stem to gudgeon.
      I crawled out swearing at my own stupidity — and at the whimsical topography of my native state, where bogs appeared at the tops of otherwise arid mountains. They were a consequent of the local weather pattern, formed when moist air driven by strong winds collided with the small peaks. In summer there might be thick mist or drizzle or even sleet at the higher elevations while the lower slopes remained warm and dry. The same terrain and weather factors made for extremely violent thunderstorms.
      I recalled this as I sat on top of Mount Success changing my wet pants and socks in a rising wind while towering cumulus clouds billowed up behind the two Bald Caps in the west. Now I knew why I had met so few hikers during the last three hours — and those hiking in the opposite direction. Anybody with any brains was already holed up in a shelter; but I was caught halfway between the Carlo Col hut and Gentian Pond. It was almost five in the afternoon, my knee hurt like hell, I had no tent in my pack, and shelter was four hours away in either direction... for an able-bodied hiker.
      I limped off in the direction of Gentian, moving as fast as the knee permitted. As the clouds humped higher and darker, I looked for a likely bivouac. I found nothing but windswept open ledges, knee-high tangles of scrub spruce and balsam (but no wood large enough to cut into a walking stick), and tumbled rocky slopes that had to be traversed with the utmost caution. Clouds hid the sun and wind whipped the miniature evergreens viciously in a prelude to the arrival of the storm front. Off in the southwest, the sky was purplish black.
      As I slid downhill into a brushy washout my knee buckled. I went over sideways, but managed to land on my pack. The pain was intense. I lay there with my eyes shut listening to the tinkle of a tiny rivulet a few meters away. Then came a faint grumble of thunder, raindrops splattered my face, and I said, "Oh, shit. "
      Now what? I was going to have to get out of that ravine, for starters, since it would probably become a torrent once the storm began in earnest. Shedding my pack, I hobbled around gathering sticks to splint the knee. When the joint was immobilized I rested for a few minutes, trying to concentrate my metapsychic healing ability on the injury. But it was no good. I was too distracted and anxious to focus my mind properly. I put on my Gore-Tex jacket, the only rainwear I had, shouldered my backpack again, and began a long and awkward climb.
      The rain came on fast and so did the fireworks. There was a real danger of being zapped by lightning if one remained in an exposed position during one of these big storms, and an outside chance of getting killed on the slippery granite rocks. I was still a good hour and a half away from Gentian Pond Shelter and I didn't have a hope of making it before nightfall. I'd have to hole up somewhere; but as I rummaged frantically in my memory trying to recall this section of the trail from my last-year's hike, it seemed that there was no real refuge to be had, not along the trail proper. And if I went sidetracking in the dusk I would certainly get lost.
      I stood still in the driving downpour and tried to exert my farsight, seeking some cranny or marmot hole where I could gain at least minimal shelter. My ultrasense refused to function. Perhaps it was the lightning that blazed all around me; perhaps it was the pain of my sprained knee, or sheer funk. Whatever — I farsaw nothing. I remember crying out mentally to little Denis in my desperation, having some notion that his superior brain might be able to locate a hiding place where mine had failed. But Denis didn't respond. I suppose my telepathic howl was too feeble and too circumscribed by the dense granite rock that surrounded me. I was stuck.
      Alors — j'y suis, j'y reste! Unless...
      What happened next seems, in retrospect, to be almost a prefiguring — if not a parody — of the great event that would take place forty years later. Trapped on that damned mountain in a thundering deluge, I lifted my head to the sky and yelled:
      "Ghost! Get me out of this!"
      Between lightning blasts, the landscape was now nearly pitch black. I cried out to the fantôme Familier a second time. The wind roared and my knee gave me hell. I was drenched all over again in spite of the Gore-Tex, since the rain was somehow blowing uphill. I unfastened my pack and sat on the streaming rocks, my splinted leg jutting awkwardly.
      "Ghost, you son of a bitch! Where are you when I need you?"
      And it said: Here.
      I gave a violent start. Hallucination? But the wind had fallen off abruptly and the rain spigot was turned off. I was aware of a hazy glow surrounding me. The lightning's glare was almost lost in it, only visible now as slightly brighter pulses of light in an overarching luminescence.
      I whispered, "Ghost?"
      A vos ordres.
      "Is it really you?"
      Poor Rogi! When you have legitimate need of me, you have only to call. Someone will hear and summon me. I thought you understood this.
      I cursed the mysterious presence roundly in French and English, then demanded that it do something about my knee. Voilà! The injury healed instantly. Giddy with triumph, I told it, "Now dry me off — if you can. "
      Nothing easier.
      Pouf! Clouds of vapor poured out of the sleeves and from under the lower edge of my rain jacket. I pulled the thing off and watched my pants and sweater steam dry in a couple of minutes. Even my socks dried.
      "Hot damn!" I chortled. "Now let's have a nice cup of tea with plenty of brandy in it. "
      The Ghost's mind-voice was slightly caustic: I believe you've used up the customary three wishes. You have your Bluet stove and the makings in your pack.
      Laughing like a loon, I pulled out the things and got cooking. The Ghost had charitably dried off a few rocks in the immediate vicinity so I just sat where I was, waiting for the pot to boil and munching a Granola bar. The glow from what I now know was a psychocreative bubble cast a friendly light over the dripping skunk-currant bushes.
      After I had managed to calm down a little I said, "It's a good thing you did show up. A man could die in this kind of a mess. Poor little Denis has had enough hard luck without losing his favorite uncle, too. "
      The Ghost seemed surprised: Hard luck?
      "The boarding-school thing I arranged for him fell through. Don and most of the family are dead-set against it. I should think you'd know. "
      I have been... elsewhere. Do you mean to tell me that Don objects to Denis being taught by the Jesuits?
      "Jesuits! Hell, no. He objects to the kid going to that school for budding geniuses in Vermont — Northfield Hall."
      The Ghost seemed to be ruminating: So! It seems that further direct intervention is called for, with the probability loci focused by this minor contretemps of yours. An interesting manifestation of synchronicity! Of course Denis never spoke of this failed arrangement, so how was one to know?
      The thing's jabbering made no sense so I brewed tea and tossed in a hefty slug of Christian Brothers. Half joking, I held out the small plastic flask. "I don't suppose you'd care for a nip?"
      It said: Merci beau.
      The flask floated away, tipped briefly, and returned. I hastily swilled my tea and had a fit of coughing. If the Ghost was a delusion, as I was beginning to suspect, my unconscious mind had a rare imaginative flair. I said: "What's this about the Jebbies?"
      It said: Two priests named Jared Ellsworth and Frank Dubois are opening an experimental school intended to serve gifted children from low-income families. It is called Brebeuf Academy and it is located just outside Concord, on the grounds of a small Jesuit college. You will find that the fathers will readily accept Denis, under full scholarship. You yourself will take care of the boy's incidental expenses. Don will give his consent.
      A euphoric warmth, not from the brandy, began to suffuse me. "Didn't I read something about Ellsworth in Newsweek a while back?"
      But it ignored me and continued: After Denis has attended Brebeuf
      Academy for one year, you will tell Father Ellsworth the full truth about the boy's supranormal mental faculties. He will know what steps must be taken to protect Denis during his minority. You may then safely leave the boy's guidance in this priest's hands.
      My brain spun. For over six years I'd devoted almost every moment of my spare time to the education and encouragement of my nephew. The rest of the time I'd merely worried myself sick over him. Was the Ghost telling me my job was done?
      It said: Not done. Denis will always need your friendship. But you have fulfilled very well the first charge I placed on you, Rogi, and for a while you'll have time for yourself.
      For a while!
      Peace! Ne vous tracassez pas. There are years yet.
      I shouted, "How can I believe you? What are you?" You may as well know. It won't hurt. I am a being from another world, from another star. I am your friend and Denis's friend — the special guardian of the entire Remillard family, for reasons that will eventually be made clear to you. Now I will see to your safety before I go. The storm will last far into the night.
      All I could think of were the flying-saucer flaps going on all over the world for the past several years. And my Ghost was some kind of extraterrestrial?
      I blurted out, "What did happen to Betty and Barney Hill on the old Franconia Highway?"
      The Ghost uttered its dry little laugh: Perhaps we can discuss it another time! I must go now. Adieu, cher Rogi...
      Glowing mist closed in about me. I was captive for a few moments inside a pearly sphere and then there was a dazzling lightning bolt and a clap of thunder. Rain sprayed me as though I'd stepped beneath a waterfall and the terrain was completely different. I was standing about three meters away from a log cabin with lighted windows that was perched on a rock shelf above a wind-whipped little body of water. People moved around inside. A sound of singing and concertina music drifted through the night.
      I was still holding my teacup, which was now half full of rainwater. My backpack lay at my feet. I dumped the cup and retrieved the pack, then strode up to the Gentian Pond Shelter and pounded on the door.

18
OBSERVATION VESSEL
KRAK NA'AM [Kron 96-101010]
24 JUNE  1974

      RA'EDROO SLITHERED INTO the surveillance chamber, saluted her Krondak superior on the intimate racial mode, and bid the other three entities on duty a courteous vocal "High thoughts, colleagues. " An unspoken query was prominent in her mind's vestibulum: Why have you summoned me, Umk'ai? The Russian Salyut space laboratory is not scheduled to be launched for at least another five hours. Thula'ekoo said aloud, "That is true, Ra'edroo. But another event is about to take place below, one that happens every year... in New Hampshire."
      The Simb and the Gi who were working at the think tank laughed at some private joke.
      Thula'ekoo reproved the pair with the slightest mental tap on their itch-receptors. He addressed Ra'edroo and a young Poltroyan who had a puzzled smile on his grayish-purple, humanoid face. "I know that both you and Trosimo-Finabindin are keen amateur xenopsychologists. Since you two are new to the Earth tour, you'll be interested in this rather typical example of the current North American mind-set with respect to exotic encounters. "
      "Perhaps not wholly typical, " sniffed the Simb, who was a statistician and inclined to be overpunctilious. "Our current sampling among Status Seven Earth indigenes shows that 49. 22 percent believe that UFOs do exist, and that they originated on other inhabited planets. Some 9.91 percent think they have personally seen one. "
      A brief wave of amusement passed over the Gi, DriDri Vuvl. "We're getting to be positively old hat. I suppose it was inevitable. "
      "I should think, " Ra'edroo said, "that those figures demonstrate that the thirty-year familiarization scheme has been a resounding success. "
      "You've got a lot to learn about Earthlings, colleague, " said the Simb.
      DriDri Vuvl added, "These Americans, for instance. Their capacity for ennui in the face of the marvelous is mind-boggling. Why, they've very nearly lost interest in their space program! Major funding was cut off in order to finance some idiotic war. And now all their leaders seem concerned about is a tacky political scandal and threats by Status Three nations to cut off the petroleum supply. Petroleum! I ask you. "
      The Simb passed judgment. "Excretory orifices, the lot of them. How can they be expected to coadunate their world Mind?"
      Thula'ekoo was busy at the monitor and chose to ignore the crude chaffing. When the image was well centered, fully dimensioned, and computer-enhanced for all eight Krondak senses (a pity young Trosi would miss out on the pla'akst, which enriched this type of observation so; but that was life), he transferred the scene to the large wall-screen.
      Twenty-three humans, fourteen men and nine women, sat in a circle on the weathered rocks near the summit of Mount Adams in New Hampshire's Presidential Range. It was 5° Celsius with a cutting westerly wind, overcast skies, and visibility of about twenty kilometers. The people were dressed in nondescript outdoor gear obviously chosen for warmth. Most of them were talking quietly, with three or four engaged in solitary meditation. One woman offered plastic cups of hot cocoa from a thermos and had a few takers.
      "Down from last year's gathering, " the Simb noted with wry satisfaction. "Way down."
      The Gi rolled its saucer eyes. "The faithful are defecting to macrobiotics, pacifism, and whale watching."
      "Silence!" said Thula'ekoo. "They are about to begin."
      Ra'edroo and the Poltroyan, Trosi, were completely absorbed in the scene. The human leader, a female of commanding aspect, had directed members of the circle to join hands. She said:
      "Fellow Aetherians, the time has come. Empty your minds of all earthly thought. Prepare to divorce yourselves from your fleshy bodies and take on the astromental configuration. Banish all physical discomfort. Close your eyes. Shut out all sounds except that of my voice. Feel nothing but the Presence of the Universe. Join with me as I call to it. Let our thoughts arise with a single voice. Call out! The Universe sees us and loves us. It is alive with powerful and friendly spirits who are watching us even at this moment. If we only have faith and strength of will, these extraterrestrial beings will answer when we call. They will come and save our world from the death that threatens us. Call out! Bid the otherworld creatures come! Let them know they are welcome. Together, now, with me... "
      Come.
      "Why, she's a borderline suboperant!" Ra'edroo exclaimed. "The others are hopelessly latent, but what meager faculties they can project are actually in a loose mind-meld with the leader. How extremely interesting!"
      Come.
      Trosi was radiant. "The dear things — what a splendid effort. " His voice broke with compassion. "What a pity that the subsidiary humans are so inferior in mind to the leader. "
      Thula'ekoo said, "All humans possess latent metafaculties to a greater or lesser degree. In this case, only the leader has the projective farspeech capacity to penetrate the ionosphere. At this distance, none but the Krondaku and the Poltroyans can detect the metapsychic emanations of the subordinates in the meld. "
      "Thanks be to Sacred Truth and Beauty, " muttered the Simb.
      "I agree with Trosi, " offered Ra'edroo, "that the effort of this little group is most affecting, a foreshadowing of the metaconcerted request that must take place before Intervention. "
      COME.
      "Hah!" scoffed the Simb. "A futile mockery of such an effort, rather. ... One might as well compare a chorus of chirping insects to a symphonic ensemble. These poor things are one of a handful of cranks who periodically attempt to make mental contact with exotic beings — what they so quaintly call extraterrestrials. They are only unique in having a meagerly talented latent as their leader, which is about what one might expect in New Hampshire. "
      COME!
      "Again I detect overtones of satire in your remark, colleague, " Ra'edroo said.
      "Oh, the place is crawling with latents. Even imperfect operants. It's one of the irruptive metapsychic nuclei of the planet. This world's Mind isn't evolving overall, but breaking out in spots. Quite grotesque. Makes it devilish hard for the immatures. It's a wonder any of them reach adulthood sane. "
      COME!
      The sentimental Gi clapped a hand over its central heart. Its intromittent organ glowed crimson in empathetic passion. "Oh, feel the goodwill in the female entity's cry, citizens. The yearning! One longs so to console her. "
      Come come come.
      "Hold your honey, colleague, " the Simb jeered, "until you've traveled down below the planet's ionic shell as we Simbiari have, and experienced the full unsavoriness of its puny knots of consciousness — the selfishness, the irrational suspicion separating one nation from another, the perverted male sex-dynamic that keeps them endlessly at war. "
      "What you say may be true, Salishiss, " little Trosi said, "but the fact remains that these people have the greatest metapsychic potential in the galaxy, according to the Lylmik. "
      "The Lylmik tell us a lot of things they never bother to prove, " grumped the Simb. "I'm no magnate of the Concilium, only a lowly number-cruncher. But my trade gives me a certain insight into social dynamics. Left to itself, this world Mind would inevitably destroy itself. "
      Come. Please come.
      "So far humans have refrained from using atomic weapons in battle, " DriDri Vuvl noted, "even though they've had them for thirty years. They keep making more and bigger weapons, but they don't use them. It seems to be a sort of threat-display mechanism. "
      "Oh, yes?" Salishiss gesticulated at the view-screen. "What do you think that group on the mountain is so worked up about? They're convinced that only a galactic civilization can rescue their world from atomic suicide. That's why they call out to us in this pathetic fashion. Of course, they have no conception of what Intervention would really mean, with the vast majority of Earth's population still metapsychically latent and socially infantile. Why, we'd have to occupy the planet and play nanny to it for more than a hundred orbits until its Mind matured — and the humans would oppose our proctorship almost every step of the way. The very thought of it makes me cringe. "
      The Krondak officer, Thula'ekoo, said, "The picture is by no means as bleak as you paint it, Salishiss. Large numbers of Earthlings already experience feelings of universal fellowship, the precursor to true coadunation. And the Lylmik profess to be gratified by the accelerating mental evolution. "
      "And who would dare question the ineffable judgment of the oldest and wisest race in the galaxy?" the Simb inquired archly. "Those architects of the Milieu, those masters of absent-minded subtlety? Hard luck for the rest of us that Lylmik reasoning is sometimes just as ethereal as their bodies... "
      Come!
      "The human leader is weakening, " said Ra'edroo. "It must be very stressful on that cold mountaintop for such high-metabolism creatures. "
      "So few in the little group now." DriDri Vuvl shook its ruff of filoplumage sadly. "They may not show up at all next Midsummer Day. "
      Come oh come.
      Trosi the Poltroyan leaked compassion from every neuron. "If only we could encourage them — let them know that we're out here, and we really do care. "
      Great Thula'ekoo responded with implacable authority. "Even if every human being now living on Earth called out to us, we could not answer. It would violate the scheme of the Concilium. "
      "Just some tiny gesture, " Trosi begged. "Something that wouldn't warp the probability lattices. Love's Oath — we do enough manipulation of them, what with the mental analyses and the technical experiments and the flybys. How about a simple gesture of friendliness for a change?"
      "Statute Blue-4-001, " Ra'edroo said respectfully to her superior, "gives the officer of the watch certain discretionary powers. Thou and I, Umk'ai, have the expertise to direct a most delicate farspeech beam in metaconcert. "
      The circle of humans still held hands and had their faces raised to the clouded sky. Their attempt at mental synergy was crumbling. The leader urged them to one last effort.
      Come!
      Opaque membranes flicked over the accessory eyeballs of Thula'ekoo. His primary optics glowed an intense blue and seemed to suck in the willing psyches of his fellow Krondaku, the eager Poltroyan, and the Gi. After a nanosecond's hesitation, the Simb Salishiss blended into the fivefold brain, and it broadcast a mental chord that blended tranquillity with patience — and the merest hint of Unity:
      Persevere.
      For just an instant, the uplifted human faces were transfigured. Then the spell was broken and the twenty-three startled people turned to each other with whispers. The female leader buried her head in her arms. Several others crowded around her anxiously, touching her. She finally looked up, not seeing her companions, lifted an arm to the sky, and smiled.
      Then she started off down the Star Lake Trail to the Madison Huts. The others came straggling after.

19
BRETTON WOODS, NEW HAMPSHIRE, EARTH
25 JUNE  1974

      "WAKE UP, DENIS. We're here. "
      The Volkswagen Beetle slowed for the left turn and swung into the hotel entrance road. The seven-year-old boy was immediately alert, straining against his seat belt to see over the dashboard of the car. Ahead of them to the east was a majestic panorama, several hundred acres of rolling lawn fronting a wooded rise that hid a tantalizing glimpse of white and red. Beyond this, a vast slope that stretched almost from horizon to horizon culminated in a mountain rampart, dark with timber in the middle reaches and a gleaming pewter along bare summit peaks that reflected the early-morning sun. This was the Presidential Range of the White Mountains. Even though it had been ground down by ice-age glaciers, it was still the highest part of northeastern North America.
      The child cried: Wherehotel? Wherecograilway? Look thatmountain SNOW top in June!
      That's Mount Washington. The one we're riding to top of today.
      Studied   allmountain   names   let's   see: JeffersonClayWashington-MonroeFranklinEisenhowerClinton north/south. (Notall  presidents!) Why Eisenhower so dinky UncleRogi?
      He got his mountain last and beggars can't be chosers. State changed name MountPleasant to Eisenhower. Once tried change name MountClinton to MountPierce honor only president born NewHampshire. Try never amounted to much. Neither did PresidentPierce. People still call mountain Clinton.
      Laughter. Why thesemountains look bigger from here than from Berlin? What that funnystreak MountWashington? When we see yourHOTEL?
      Rogi laughed out loud. "Take it easy. You've got three whole days to ask questions. Batège! I'd nearly forgotten what a frantic little quiz-kid you are. "
      "You haven't forgotten at all. " The child was complacent. "I see inside your mind how much you missed me. And I missed you, too. "
      The car slowed beside a guard kiosk painted a spotless white, decorated with window boxes of scarlet petunias. The old watchman stuck his head out. "Morning, Roger. Got your nevvy here all safe and sound, I see. Plenty time yet for breakfast. "
      "Morning, Norm. Yup — give him a treat before we go up the cog. Say hi to Mr. Redmond, Denis. "
      "Hello, Mr. Redmond. " Why hecallyou ROGER UncleRogi?
      "See you, Norm. " Because that myname here: Roger Remillard. Bettername man works bighotel easier people remember&pronounce than Rogatien. (And Rogi sounds naughty.)
      Appreciative mirth.
      The car swung around a long curve and the famous old White Mountain Resort Hotel came into view. At first it looked as though it must be a toy castle, or a chateau made from white spun sugar with the glistening roofs of the towers and wings colored like cherry jam. The hotel had more tiny windows than you could count, and little flags flying, and a candy-spill of flower gardens amidst miniature trees in front. The actual size of the place only gradually became evident as the driveway seemed to stretch on and on, with the hotel growing steadily larger until it blotted out the mountain vista entirely. The five-storey building was made of white stuccoed wood. It had a two-tiered colonnaded verandah curving from the central porte-cochère all around the entire south wing.
      "It's a palace, " exclaimed the overawed boy. "Are you really the boss?"
      Rogi shook his head, laughing. "Hardly. I'm only the assistant convention manager. " [Explanatory image.] "But I get to live here where I work, and I like this job much better than the one I had at the paper mill. It pays better, too. "
      They drove past the grand main entrance, which was crowded with autos and tour buses and guests and bellmen scurrying to load and unload people's luggage, and pulled into the employees' parking lot behind a screen of tall shrubs. Denis insisted on carrying his small suitcase himself. They entered an annex building that housed resident staff members. A man dressed in a white jacket and bow tie hurried past them, greeting Rogi and mussing Denis's mousy brown hair.
      Rogi said, "That was Ron, one of the waiter captains. Just wait until you see the dining room here. There are two of them, but we'll eat in the biggest one where Ron works this morning." They climbed carpeted stairs.
      "You like it here a lot, don't you, Uncle Rogi. " There was a tinge of dejection in the boy, imperfectly screened.
      "Yes. But I can come visit you in Berlin while you're home for the summer. It isn't even an hour's drive. "
      "I know. Only... " UncleRogi I miss you. Miss mindspeech. Miss friendadult questionanswers fearcalming. Teachers at Brebeuf nice kids notbad but not same YOU.
      Comfort. Denis you know grownups must work sometimes goaway oldhome.
      Understand. But can't speak you through mountains down Concord school can't speak you from Berlin whileyou here either.
      There's your Maman & littlebrotherVictor to bespeak.
      Denis stopped at the top of the stairs. He averted his eyes, clumsily trying to conceal a dark emotional coloration. "Mom's changed since last fall. When I came home from school last week she could hardly mindspeak me at all anymore. She was like that when I went home at Easter, too, but I thought it was just because of the new babies. Now she — she just doesn't want to share her thoughts with me the way she used to. She kisses me and says she's busy and tells me to go play. "
      "Your mother has a lot to do taking care of Jeanette and Laurette. Twin babies are a terrible handful unless you have older children as ready-made baby-sitters, the way Tante Lorraine had with your Papa and me... Have you been able to mindspeak with your Papa?"
      "Not very much. I thought he'd be pleased at the way things worked out at the academy. My good grades, and the way I was auditing classes with the college kids, and how Father Ellsworth has been getting me parapsychology books and publications from the library at Brown University, and how I'm learning archery, and how to play the piano. But he wasn't much interested. He doesn't like me, you know. Not like he does Victor. "
      The hallway was deserted and quiet. Rogi knelt down to face the boy. "Your father does love you, Denis. The thing is — Victor's only a little boy and he needs more attention right now. "
      But Victordumberthanme! Weakfarspeech/farsight/farhearing/PK. (Strong coercion though. ) And he fights and swipes things and mindpinches new babysisters awful when thinks nobody looking. Tried mindpinch me HA! myshield reflected pinch back him.
      "Victor is probably jealous of his new sisters. Maybe even jealous of you now that you're going to school. Four-year-olds are still pretty uncivilized. It takes time for them to learn right from wrong. "
      "He already knows, " Denis said darkly. "I can tell. He hurts the little twins anyway whenever their minds make telepathic noises that bug him. You know how little babies are. "
      Rogi made a comical grimace. "I remember. "
      "Jeanette and Laurette can't help being pests sometimes. But Victor doesn't seem to be any good at putting up a protective mental shield, so the baby-thoughts drive him crazy. I told Mom how he was tormenting the twins and she told him to stop — but there's really not much she can do about it. "
      "I see. " (Poor Sunny, retreating into fatalism and saying her beads and watching soap operas on television! Inside of a year she would be enceinte once again. )
      "I tried to explain to Papa why Victor shouldn't harass the babies. I told him it would discourage them from developing their own ultrafaculties — maybe even make them normal. He laughed. "
      Rogi stood up, keeping a tight lid over his own thoughts. "I'll talk things over with your father when I take you back. Don't worry. "
      Denis smiled at him. "I knew you'd help. "
      "My room's right down here. Let's hurry. We want time for breakfast, and the shuttle bus to the cog is at ten. " (And what can I say to Don to show him how he's poisoning his younger son and endangering his daughters and breaking the older boy's heart? The only time he opens to me is when he's drunk. His precious Victor can do no wrong. )
      They went into the small suite that was Rogi's apartment and left Denis's suitcase on the rollaway bed that had been brought in for his visit. The child inspected the premises gravely and admired the sweeping vista from the windows.
      "That's a view that costs the hotel guests at least two hundred dollars a day, " Rogi told his nephew, "but I get it for free. Of course this place of mine is pretty small, and I have to walk up a lot of stairs. But I have a nice office over in the main part of the hotel with room for my books, and when I sit up here and watch the storms play around the mountains I have a show that beats anything on television. "
      They went downstairs, crossed a courtyard, and entered the hotel's north wing through a side door. Denis's eyes popped at the sight of apparently endless corridors with pillars and chandeliers, ornate Edwardian furniture, potted palms, gilt-framed mirrors, and fireplaces — large enough for a boy to stand in — that now had bouquets of red and yellow peonies in the grates instead of flaming logs. They looked into a great ballroom with green velvet drapes and standing silver candlesticks as big as hat-trees. Two men ran polishing machines across a floor that looked shiny enough to ice-skate on. Rogi told Denis there would be a Midsummer Night Ball there that evening. Another salon, lush with ferns and tropical flowers, overlooked a golf course and the approach to Mount Washington.
      When they came at last to the dining room, Denis was struck dumb. It was fancier than any restaurant he had ever seen in his life. Ron, the captain who seated them, treated Denis like a grown man and called him Sir when he gave him a menu. There were weird things for breakfast like kippers and steak, and eight different ways of having eggs, and twelve varieties of fresh fruit including New Zealand gooseberries. The table was set with crystal and shining silver and monogrammed damask napery. There was a vase with a single mauve rose, so perfect in form and so outre in color that Denis had to touch it to be certain it was real. The sugar came in hard lumps wrapped in embossed gold paper. (Denis stole two. ) Milk was served in a faceted goblet, sitting on its own small plate with a paper doily underneath. They ate eggs Benedict and had mini-croissants and strawberries Wilhelmine, and were served funny little cups of espresso, which Denis drank politely but didn't much care for.
      When they had finished, Denis sighed and said, "I expect you'll stay here forever. "
      Rogi laughed and touched his lips with his napkin. "I'll tell you a secret. What I'd really like to do is save my money until I have enough to buy a little bookstore in a nice quiet college town. I could stay in a place like that forever. "
      The check came. Rogi signed it and he and Denis stood to go. The boy said, "That doesn't sound very exciting — a bookstore. "
      "I'm afraid I'm not a very exciting man, Denis. Most people aren't, you know. Movies and television shows and books are full of heroes, but they aren't too common in real life anymore. "
      The boy thought about this as they walked through the lobby. It was crowded with guests on their way to the day's activities, most of them middle-aged or elderly, but with a sprinkling of young couples and well-dressed parents with children. There were people in tennis togs and riding breeches and hiking boots, and a group of little old ladies in polyester pantsuits carrying shawls and heavy sweaters, and old men in loud sports jackets hung about with camera bags and binoculars. A pretty tour guide was calling for their attention, please.
      "I used to think it would be neat to be a hero when I was just a little kid, " Denis said. "An astronaut or a jungle explorer or a hockey star like Bobby Clarke or Gil Perreault. But I guess I'm not a very exciting person either. Father Dubois kids me about it sometimes. He says I should quit sitting around like a stuffed owl, contemplating the infinite. " The boy chuckled. "But the infinite's interesting. "
      They went out the front door of the hotel to the shuttle bus. Rogi said, "Don't take his teasing seriously. Be what you are. You've got a brain — maybe one like nobody else in the whole world. Explore that. "
      The mob of old folks and the tour guide followed Rogi and Denis into the bus. The guide counted her charges, then signaled the driver. The bus drove off.
      Denis said, "There are doctors who study the brain — take it apart and poke needles and things into it to find out how it works. But I don't want to do just that. What I want to learn about isn't how the brain works but why. Why do those electrical impulses and chemical ex-changes result in thinking? No electroencephalograph shows the thoughts in a person's mind. And how do brains control bodies? It's not my brain that commands my fingers to grab this bus seat, it's me. A brain is nothing but a lump of meat. "
      "With a mind in it. "
      "That's right, " the boy agreed. "Mind! That's what I want to learn about. A mind isn't the same as a brain. "
      "Some scientists would argue the point — but I don't think the two are identical. "
      Denis said: People like you&me would give scientists fits! How mybrain speak yourbrain? No radiowaves other energy pass between us!
      Through    whatmedium    propagates    coercion/PK/farspeech?    How farsight/hearing/smell/taste/touch  impulses   transmitted?   Received? What energysource powers PK? Why can't farsense through granite? Why easier farsense at night? How mymind influence another in coercion? How mymind heal mybody?... I know mymind controls mymind. This means: mymind controls chemistry&electricity in brain. The nonmatterenergything dominates the matterenergything! HOW?
      Rogi said: Denisdearchild find out! Explore your mind and mine and Don's and Victor's. Explore other minds as well minds of normals find way bridge gap separating them/us. What an adventure... more exciting than mountaineering deepdiving oceantraveling flyingouterspace!
      [Good-humored juvenile skepticism.] But not anything like as dangerous.
      Rogi squeezed the thin little shoulder. Aloud, he said, "Of course not. "
      The bus bounced over the frost-heaved macadam road that twisted through a forest of maples and hemlocks. Around Rogi and Denis, the little old ladies twittered like wrens.
      
      The cog railway that ascends the western slope of Mount Washington is unique in North America, one of those mad Yankee notions that never should have worked but somehow did, for more than a hundred years. Denis took one look at the chunky coal-fired locomotive, oddly lopsided on level track since its boiler was designed to be horizontal when the train climbed the steep grade, and cried: "It's the Little Engine That Could!"
      The old folks simpered fondly.
      There were many other tourists of all ages waiting at the base station to board the train. The engine pushed a single car, painted bright yellow.
      Traction came from a rack-and-pinion mechanism beneath. Between the regular narrow-gauge rails was a central track that resembled an endless ladder of thumb-thick iron rods four inches long. This rack was gripped by twin cog gears on the engine's drive mechanism, which powered the train up the mountain with an earsplitting clatter while the engine chugged and hissed and belched an air-polluting cloud of ebony smoke such as Denis had never seen before in his life.
      As they crept upward through scrubby trees the entire Bretton Woods area was visible behind them. "This is neat!" Denis yelled over the racket. "Look down there — it's your hotel!"
      Rogi said: I watch little trains go up&down mountain from my window. Sometimes when cloud clamps down on summit trains look like they're heading into sky never to return... Man who invented train went to state legislature in 1858 asked it to grant charter so he could build railroad. Lawmaker proposed amendment permitting inventor to build railroad to Moon after he finish one up MountWashington.
      Laughter. Getting really cold. Glad brought jacket. Glad we can mindspeak can hardly hear WOW whatanoise!
      You know about mountainweather? It can change in flash: bright sunshine to freezing cold even now in June. Snow any month. Wind blows hurricanefast on summit 1/3 days year.
      Yes I read book school worldclass record MountWashington wind 231 mph! Know also Indians thought mountain home GreatSpirit afraid to climb no wonder.
      You hear story ChiefPassaconaway?
      ?
      Lived NewHampshire early colonial times. Great wise leader also famed wonderworking magic allkinds wizard tricks. When Chief Passaconaway died legend says wolves pulled body on sled to top MountWashington. There fiery coach carried him away into sky.
      Like flyingsaucer? Awww...
      Lots of other stories. You ever hear Great Carbuncle?
      ?
      Supposed tobe huge shining red jewel hidden mountain worth zillions. Glowing ruby light lures greedy people come search for it. They follow light get trapped terrible storms never able get hold carbuncle. Die. NathanielHawthorne used legend in story.
      I'll get book BerlinLibrary this summer... UncleRogi you don't believe flyingsaucers do you?
      Never saw one. But ElmerPeabody man drives tractormower at hotel says he did. Sensible man Elmer. Lots of reputable people say they see UFOs. Funny. NewHampshire seems have awfullot those things confounded UFO plague!
      I  read  two  books  kindof  scary. Onebook man&woman driving FranconiaNotch just west here say they abducted by saucermen. Doctor got story years later by hypnotizing people! Saucerman told lady came faraway star meant noharm. Anotherbook guy saw big saucer with redlights over Exeter nearcoast. Went to police. Police saw it too! Also wholebunch other people. What think?
      I think... it may be possible.
      Ahh. Littlegreenmen visit Earth but not make official contact? Why they want do such crazything! Why keep secret instead reveal selves rightout to world?
      Dearchild why do we?
      
      The little train crawled slowly to the region above timberline, leaving behind gnarled and crouching dwarf trees and passing into a place where carpets of subarctic flowers, pink and white and pale yellow, bloomed in the midst of sedge meadows and a desolation of gray crags. There was still snow in shadowed hollows and the western side of the rocks was encrusted with thick hoarfrost. The summit buildings came into view. They passed a cluster of water tanks and saw a simple painted board:
      
      LIZZIE   BOURNE
      PERISHED   1855
      
      "She was twenty-three, " Rogi said. "Nearly seventy other people have died on this mountain — more than on any other peak in North America. Some died from accidents, some from exposure. The mountain is deceptive, you see. People come up on a beautiful day like this, without a cloud in the sky, and decide to take a little hike. Suddenly clouds of icy fog come racing in and you can't see two feet in front of you. There might be snow or hail or freezing rain with a wind-chill factor way below zero. The worst weather on Earth short of the polar regions happens right here in our own state, on a mountain only sixty-two hundred feet high. I've been up here lots of times — on the cog, driving up the eastern side on the Carriage Road, even hiking up from the hotel. But I never feel quite comfortable. The top of Mount Washington is an eerie place. "
      The train drew to a halt in front of a drab, barnlike wooden building that the trainman proudly identified as the famous Summit House Hotel. He warned the passengers that they would have only forty-five minutes to explore. The return trip, like the journey up the mountain, would take more than an hour.
      A strong, cold wind was blowing and Rogi told Denis to watch his step on the slippery gravel. There was very little snow on the ground, but the windward side of every structure, rock, railing, and guy-cable was thick with dazzling white rime. The giant frost crystals looked like otherworldly marine growth, a crust of twisted tabs and plates and knobs and opaque lenses of ice.
      The Summit House Hotel held no interest for Denis. He wanted to climb the cone-shaped rock mass that marked the absolute high point of the mountain. Then he raced off to see if the weather observatory or the TV and radio transmitter buildings were open to the public. They weren't. As he squinted up at the ice-wrapped antenna tower, the boy projected to Rogi dramatic imaginary pictures of the way this place might look in a howling blizzard with the wind blowing two hundred miles an hour. His mind was charged with exhilaration as they walked to a rocky spur and looked south, down a leg of the great Appalachian Trail, and saw a group of tiny lakes and a hikers' hut more than a thousand feet below.
      "Those are the Lakes of the Clouds, " Rogi said. "Maybe on one of your later visits we can hike up to them from the Hotel, on the Ammonoosuc Ravine Trail. "
      "Wow! That'd be great. " Denis squinted, studying the area immediately below the spur. "What are those piles of rock with yellow paint on top?"
      "Cairns marking the trails. You have to watch very carefully for them in some places to keep from getting lost. The trails on this mountain don't look like the woodland paths you're used to — at least not in the high parts. They mostly go over bare rock. That's one of the reasons why Mount Washington can be treacherous. "
      They went back to the northern area of the summit to see if they could see Berlin. Sure enough, the steam plumes from the paper mills were little tan feathers rising from the Androscoggin Valley. The air was so clear that they could see Umbagog Lake and Bigelow Mountain over in Maine, and the Green Mountains of Vermont to the west, and beyond the White Mountain Resort Hotel was a pimple on the horizon that was really Mount Marcy, 150 miles away in the Adirondacks of New York.
      "I see hikers, " Denis said, pointing to a line of people toiling up alongside the cog railway line. He instinctively magnified the tiny figures with his farsight and projected the picture into Rogi's mind.
      "... eighteen, nineteen, twenty... twenty-three of them. "
      "It's a popular place to hike. Over there is the main trail leading to Clay and Jefferson and Adams. There are overnight huts between Mount Adams and Mount Madison, too. "
      Denis shaded his eyes. He was shivering in the unrelenting wind. The vision of the climbers faded from Rogi's ultrasense. And then the child uttered a gasp of disbelief, and there came a surge of fear from him that made Rogi cry out in concern.
      "Denis! What's wrong?"
      A trembling, bluish finger pointed at the line of people. They disappeared behind the shoulder of the mountain for a moment as the trail dipped, then came into view again. The mental picture was huge.
      "Uncle Rogi, the lady in front. I hear her. "
      "What?"
      The boy burst into tears. "I hear her mind. She's like us! Another person like us! Her mind projection is very faint and it doesn't make much sense... "
      He dashed the moisture from his eyes and hugged himself as he tried to stop shuddering. Swiftly, Rogi unzipped his down-filled jacket and wrapped Denis in it. He knelt beside the child on sharp stones, feeling no cold, only a gut-churning hope. "Concentrate! Try to share the farspeech with me, Denis. Help me hear what you hear. " He put his arms around the boy and closed his eyes.
      Oh my God.
      She was singing a wordless melody, some classical fragment that Rogi was unable to recognize. A joyful song. Now and then a subvocalization floated above the music like gossamer spider-threads against sunlit air:
      Answered... they answered... out there... surely... the others may doubt but... answered...
      The clairaudient emanations and her farseen image cut off as the woman followed the trail into another hollow, but his memory would never relinquish that first picture, and whenever he thought of her after she was lost to him, this vision of windblown vitality would always come to mind: a strong-featured face, striking but not conventionally pretty, slightly sunburned across the bridge of the nose; eyes of a blue so pale that they were almost silver; an exultant smile — my God, that smile! — that was the external sign of her mind's rejoicing; strawberry-blond hair escaping from a green woolen watch cap; a body tall, slender, and strong.
      Denis was trying to squirm out of his paralyzed arms. "Uncle Rogi — your jacket! You'll freeze!"
      He came to himself. The hikers were still out of sight and Denis was looking up at him, face tear-stained and twisted with emotion. Rogi spoke urgently. "That woman. You're certain that the music and farspeech came from her mind?"
      "Absolutely certain. She really is another one like us. No — wait! She's not as controlled as we are. Not aware. I don't think she knows what she's doing when she mindspeaks. Perhaps she's never had any other telepaths to speak to. But she is like us! Uncle Rogi, we're not all alone... "
      "And that she should be the one, " Rogi whispered. "C'est un miracle. Un vrai miracle. " Sunny's voice came to him, an echo of a long-ago apology: Quand le coup de foudre frappe —
      The train whistle blew. Once, twice, three times.
      "Oh, no!" cried the boy. "We can't just go and leave her!"
      Rogi lifted Denis in his arms. "The hikers are coming this way, probably heading for Summit House. They should be here in half an hour. We'll wait for them. "
      "But the train — "
      "Another train will come. "
      Rogi stumbled over the frosty rocks, drunk with happiness, for the first time realizing what Sunny had been trying to tell him about her love for Don. When the thunderbolt strikes... there is no logic, no resisting. And thus the marvel of the woman hiker's telepathic ability was lost in a greater wonder. He scarcely heard Denis say:
      "If there's one mind like hers, there must be lots more! All we have to do is figure a way to find them. "
      Wind sang in the antenna guy-wires and the humped little engine in front of the hotel renewed its hooting. Tourists called to each other and Denis shivered, radiating a fearful exultation that was almost as intense as Rogi's own. Rogi carried the boy up the stairs into the heavily insulated entry of the small hotel. A bearded man in climbing gear held the door open, concern on his face.
      "Little fellow's not hurt, is he?"
      Rogi set Denis back on his feet, unwrapped him, and said, "All we both need is a bit of warming up. "
      "Try the dining room, " the man suggested. "Nice fire, fantastic view. You can watch the train go down the mountain while you stoke up with hot food and drink. Best thing. "
      Thanking the man, Rogi led Denis into the Summit House lobby. The boy was recovering fast and he eyed the souvenir counter with interest. "Can I buy a guidebook and some maps? And maybe we better get some Kleenex. My nose is running and so is yours. " The small, wan face looked up with a critical frown. "You should comb your hair before she gets here, too. "
      Rogi burst out laughing. "Mais naturellement! It wouldn't do to look scruffy. "
      "I — I just want her to like us, " Denis protested.
      "If she doesn't, we'll try coercion. "
      "Be serious, Uncle Rogi! What are we going to say to her?"
      "We'll have to think about that, won't we? But first, let's clean up and then find something to eat. "
      Hand in hand, they went looking for the men's room.

20
FROM THE MEMOIRS OF ROGATIEN REMILLARD

      HER NAME WAS Elaine Donovan Harrington.
      She was thirty-one years old and separated from her husband, and she lived in a "little country place" just outside the state capital of Concord, where she edited and published a journal for UFO buffs called Visitant. I found out later that she had inherited her strawberry-blond hair — and probably her metapsychic traits — from her late father Cole Donovan, a dynamic real-estate entrepreneur. From her late mother, who was of Boston Brahmin stock, she had a legacy of natural elegance and sufficient old money to support a lifestyle far above any that Remillards of that day and age could even imagine.
      Scraping an acquaintance with her was the easiest thing in the world, thanks to Denis.
      We waited in ambush at a table in the rustic dining room of Summit House; and when Elaine and her party of trail-weary Aetherians arrived, the boy picked her brains. In retrospect, I am appalled at his redactive expertise, for I realize now that he must have been able to monitor every thought that passed between Elaine and me. But at that time I had nothing but admiration for the child as he trotted up to Elaine all primed with pilfered data from her memory bank and claimed to be a reader of her magazine who had recognized her from her masthead photograph. She was charmed by the precocious, well-spoken lad, and engaged him in conversation on sundry flying-saucerish topics while her friends settled down to order a meal.
      At an opportune moment I came up to retrieve my young relative. Denis introduced me, explaining, "My Uncle Rogi — Roger — works at the White Mountain Resort Hotel. Do you know it, Mrs. Harrington? That big old place like a palace down at the western foot of Mount Washington. "
      "I'm staying there, " she said. The corners of her mouth lifted in a little smile. "It's rather a family tradition, the White Mountain Hotel. How do you do, Mr. Remillard?"
      I had barricaded my unruly emotions behind the sturdiest mind-screen I could muster; but when that silvery gaze focused on me I might as well have tried to hide behind a shield of cellophane. The rapport was instantaneous and I was unable to utter a word. God only knows what thoughts I projected.
      She laughed and enclosed my warm hand between her two chilly ones. "Do you mind? My fingers are still like icicles and you seem to be powered by some sort of atomic furnace. "
      "I — of course I don't mind, " I mumbled idiotically. I had the sense to bring up my other hand to complete the electrifying clasp. Denis was grinning at us like a young chimpanzee and several of Elaine's companions threw quizzical looks in our direction.
      When our hands finally fell apart, she asked casually, "What do you do at the hotel?" I told her, and she seemed almost relieved. Being a part of management — even very junior management — gave me at least a minimal cachet. She asked: "Are you interested in cosmic visitations, like your nephew?" I assured her that I was a fervid aficionado of all matters UFOlogical, even though I had unfortunately never come across her magazine. She nodded at that. "We've had such trouble getting general newsstand distribution for Visitant. Perhaps I could give you a copy of the latest issue when I get back to the hotel. We'd be so glad to rustle up a new subscriber. "
      "That would be wonderful! I mean — I'd like that. "
      The quirky little smile deepened and her eyes had a knowing glint. "It will have to be late... Shall we say tonight about ten-thirty, in the Grotto Lounge on the lower level of the hotel?"
      Denis piped up, all solemn and regretful. "I'm afraid I'll be in bed by then, Mrs. Harrington. "
      She gave him an amused look. "Well, I'm sure your Uncle Roger will share the magazine with you tomorrow. And now I must go and eat. I'm dying for some real food after two days of freeze-dried trail rations. So nice to have met you both. "
      She wafted off, the very embodiment of aetheriality in spite of her heavy climbing boots and insulated jacket, leaving my mind full of voiceless music and my heart hopelessly lost.
      
      She was only a few minutes late for our rendezvous, and as she entered the crowded rathskeller-style bar, breathtaking in a clinging white floor-length gown with a single bare shoulder, I thanked God for the craftiness of my nephew, who had insisted that I wear black tie rather than the casual jacket and slacks I had thoughtlessly laid out.
      "She'll want you to take her to the dance, " Denis had said. I didn't bother to ask how he knew. He had nodded his approval when I finished dressing and said, "It's a good thing you're so tall. She likes tall men. And you look so nice in those clothes that it doesn't matter that you're not handsome. " I had told him: "Ferme ta boîte, ti-vaurien!" and left him giggling. But he had been right...
      Elaine and I drank cognac, and I studied the copy of Visitant she gave me while she expatiated on the authenticity of UFO visitations and the pigheadedness of the U. S. Air Force, which persisted in denying the "incontrovertible evidence" in favor of extraterrestrial encounters. Her organization, the Aetherians, was about what you would expect: a collection of quasi-mystical fanatics whose zeal outpaced critical judgment. My darling Elaine was as willing to accept the crackpottery of a Von Daniken as she was the serious studies of researchers such as Dr. J. Allen Hynek and Dr. Dennis Hauck. She and her friends were convinced that Earth was under intense surveillance by otherworldly intelligences, entirely benignant, who would reveal themselves to humanity if we  would  only  "have faith"  and  embrace  a  pacifistic "astromental" way of life.
      She leaned over the small table toward me, enveloped in the intoxicating fragrance of Bal à Versailles, and spoke with surprising coolness. "And you, Roger... What do you think of all this? Am I a credulous fool, as my ex-husband and my family have always said? Am I hopelessly romantic and visionary and deluded by swamp gas and moon-shine?"
      My mind cried out: You are romantic and utterly captivating, and in a crazy backhanded way you're right!
      But that would never do. Not yet. A false note, and she'd be off. I found myself studying the situation with the detached cunning of a master seducer, my normal awkwardness with women having been somehow miraculously electrocauterized by the thunderbolt. I rolled up the UFO magazine and tapped it meditatively against my balloon glass. What would be the most judicious way of snaring her? Perhaps — the truth?
      "Elaine, what I'm about to confess to you I've never dared to tell another person. I was afraid to, afraid of ridicule. There have been so many jokes about spaceships and little green men... "
      Her face shone. "Roger! Not — an encounter? You've had one?"
      I let my eyes fall and made a deprecating gesture.
      "You have!" she whispered. "Oh, tell me. "
      I let it out with becoming hesitancy, well edited. "It was last summer. I was in the mountains, hiking, and a violent storm came up. I had hurt my leg. It was rather a serious situation. Night was coming on and I had no shelter. Suddenly there was a strange kind of light and the rain stopped in an unnatural way. And this voice — this inhuman voice —"
      "Did you see their spaceship? Did it land?"
      The crowded bar all around us had faded to an unfocused blur. Our faces were nearly touching. Her misty red hair was caught back in a smooth chignon and the only jewelry she wore was a pearl and diamond ring on her right little finger. Her deeply tanned skin with its touch of sunburn made a sensuous contrast to the white silk of her simple gown. In the fashion of the times, her breasts were free. The nipples had come alive with the intensity of her emotion.
      My composure threatened to disintegrate completely. I took a hasty gulp of cognac and resumed my tale.
      "I didn't see any ship. I didn't even see the — the being who spoke to me. Perhaps I was blinded by the light. But he healed my leg instantly. And he told me without equivocation that he came from another star. "
      And there it is. Dear Elaine, you want so much to believe in marvels. But I could show you marvels that would make flying saucers insignificant, marvels inside your own mind and mine, and within our bodies...
      "Don't stop — go on!" she pleaded. "What happened next?"
      I lifted my shoulders. "I seemed to fall asleep. Perhaps I lost consciousness. It was very confusing. But when I awoke I was standing just outside a trail shelter, although I swear I'd been more than two miles away from it when I had my — my encounter. That's really all there is to it. A very improbable story. I probably dreamed the whole thing. "
      "Oh, no! It's quite plausible, even the part about your losing consciousness. The aliens may have taken you aboard their craft and examined you. "
      I managed to look startled. "I don't remember any such thing. "
      "You wouldn't!" She was intense. "Try to put yourself in the aliens' place, Roger. To them, we're a primitive people — easily frightened, scientifically unsophisticated, possibly even dangerous. They'd want to study us but their activities would have to be discreet. They wouldn't want to disrupt our culture... Have you ever heard of the Cargo Cults in the South Pacific?"
      "Those deluded tribes in New Guinea who thought the military transport planes of World War Two were flown by gods?"
      "Exactly. Not only in New Guinea, but in the islands all around it; and the Cult started in the nineteenth century, when the first European traders arrived. The local people saw wonderful cargoes coming off the ships, and later off the aircraft. They wanted things like that for themselves and began to believe that the gods would send miraculous cargoes if everyone prayed hard. Their ancient way of life was completely disrupted by the Cargo Cult. "
      "You think that extraterrestrials would want to be careful not to touch off a similar reaction among Earthlings?"
      "If they're intelligent and have our best interests at heart. "
      "But the aliens have already disrupted our culture to a certain extent with the flying-saucer flaps... "
      "Not really, Roger. They've shown their ships to us so that we'll get used to the idea of an interstellar civilization. To prepare us for the day they actually do land. "
      "Do you think it'll be soon?"
      She hesitated. "You may know that my group has been coming to these mountains for a number of years now, trying to make contact with the visitors. Mental contact. This year, for the first time, I think we may have been successful. "
      I did my best to hide my skepticism. Darling, if you want to believe it then let it be so! I made suitably encouraging comments while she described the experience, which struck me as a patent case of wishful thinking.
      "I intend to write it up for the magazine, of course, " she said in conclusion, "and I'd like to do an article on your encounter, too, Roger. " I registered bourgeois alarm. "I'd rather you didn't, Elaine. I've never told anyone about it — only you. And you're different from anyone I've ever met. "
      "So are you, Roger. " She smiled and extended her hand as she rose from her chair. God! Had the gambit failed after all? My coercive faculty seemed paralyzed. She said, "Of course I'll keep your story in confidence if you want me to. Do look over my little magazine, though. And if you change your mind —" "Must you go so soon?" I asked inanely.
      The silver eyes twinkled. "Well — we could go upstairs and dance if you like. The rest of the Aetherians were too tired after our mountain expedition, but I feel exhilarated. Would you like to take me dancing, Roger?"
      My mind gave a triumphant shout. I bowed over her hand, summoning suavity from God knows where. "Enchanté, chère Madame. "
      "You're French!" She was delighted.
      "Only a Franco-American, " I admitted. "Even Canadians make fun of our low accent, and our Yankee neighbors secretly envy our savior faire — while calling us frogs behind our backs. "
      "There are frogs who are princes in disguise. Are you one of those?"
      Elaine, my beloved, I am indeed! And if my courage doesn't fail me, you may see the fantasy's fulfillment this very night...
      So we laugh, and we mount the stairs, and we sweep arm in arm into the glittering ballroom while a hundred pairs of eyes watch. The orchestra of the famous old resort has instructions to intersperse contemporary music with a generous leavening of romantic oldies, so we hold each other close as we dance to "Fly Me to the Moon" and "Where or When. " With her in my arms I am no longer a lowly Assistant Convention Manager presuming above my station but a dark and debonair hero with a Mysterious Secret, squiring the most lovely woman in the room. The other dancers sense the psychomagnetism. We become the center of attention, the golden couple wrapped in uncanny glamour. Our human race still does not recognize the existence of the higher mental faculties — but it can't help feeling them.
      Elaine and I dance and smile and begin to open our minds to one another. Charily I lift the curtains hiding her emotions, using a gentle redactive probe, the type I instinctively developed when working with baby Denis. The floating thought-patterns are easily accessible. She has loved before and she has tasted ashes. The coolness is a symptom of unfulfillment and self-doubt. She is idealistic but retains a healthy sense of humor. She is really afraid that her pleasant and affluent world will end in a storm of radioactive fallout.
      The musical beat becomes more modern, more compelling, and frankly sexual. Our bodies move to the explicit, angular rhythms, no longer daring to touch. But our minds approach conjunction now and I cannot help communicating my heat to her. It is accepted.
      Finally, without a word, she leads me from the ballroom. We take the elevator to her luxurious suite overlooking the moonlit mountain range. We kiss at last and her mouth is velvety and cool, eager to receive my fire, pathetically hopeful of returning it. I hear my mindspeech shouting words of love and desire — and she gasps as her lips break away.
      "Roger... my dear, it's so strange, but —"
      I know. I know. Don't be afraid.
      Aloud, I whisper, "You heard a telepathic message from outer space and it didn't frighten you. Will you be frightened if I tell you why you were able to hear that alien message?"
      Subconsciously, she already knows.
      I hold her more tightly, kissing her brow, her cheeks, her upturned fragrant throat. My flooding passion is channeled into the ultraspeech and breaks through the barrier of her latency.
      Elaine! Don't be afraid. I love you and I'll help you. Your mind-powers have lain dormant all your life but they're coming alive now. And here's the funny thing, my darling — I've been dormant, too, in a different way, until you came.
      Roger?... Roger!
      See? It's all true. True and wonderful. Now I'll help you, and later you'll help me.
      She bespeaks me, tentatively at first, in clotted emotion-fuzzed utterances that gradually assume coherence. Then she becomes excited to the point of hysteria and I must constantly inject reassuring redactive impulses. When she calms I kiss her bare shoulder, her arms, the palms of her chilled hands. My PK finds the pins that hold her hair knotted. I release it and she cries out:
      Roger? ReallyTRUE? Really HAPPEN? GodGodGod! You&I minds communicate...
      Yes. Special minds. I love you.
      Slowly, I undress her. I close the blinds with my PK, leaving only a slender beam of moonlight to illuminate her body. The blood sings in me and I must restrain myself. I say to her:
      There are people who are born with extraordinary types of minds. I'm one. So are you. There are a few others that I know about. There must be many more. You've heard of extrasensory perception...
      She moans in mingled fear and ecstasy, holding out her arms to me. "Come, " she begs. "Don't tell me any more. I can't bear it. Just love me. "
      I am naked myself now, and — yes, a little afraid. I have had so many unfulfilled fantasies about the experience that lies ahead of us, so many dreams. I know what the perfection ought to be, and now I face the challenge of having to create it not only for myself, but also for her — because up until now, my poor Elaine has, like me, known only an empty release.
      But she must not be frightened. I say, "Please close your eyes, chérie. Trust me. "
      My brain and body burn, and I am ready. As in the familiar dream I feel myself hovering above her. I enfold her in my arms, lift her without effort, and enter. Her coolness is shocked by my fever and she cries out. Her eyes open but now we can see only each other. The motion is mutual and quite perfect, for we are suspended together in a bright rapture that endures and swells while our minds seem to fuse. I have ignited her at last. When fulfillment comes and my own brain seems to shatter I feel her faint for the joy of it. Turning in the air, I support her, then let myself descend. We rest together for a long time and I thank God for her. We will stay together forever like this, sharing mind and body, banishing all fear...
      She awoke with her head on my chest. I was stroking her hair.
      "I've never — never—" She was unable to continue.
      "Was it good?"
      "I wanted you very much, Roger. Now I know why. Does — does the extrasensory thing account for it?"
      "That, and my being something of a frog prince. "
      She laughed giddily and began moving her body in gentle rhythm, without urgency. "You amazing man. I actually felt as though we were floating— doing it in midair. "
      I was coming alive again slowly. "I had to wait so long. And then, when I finally found you, I wasn't sure I could... the way I had dreamed it. But it happened. At last. "
      She lifted her head and regarded me with astonished eyes. My mental sight caressed every plane of her face. Before she could ask the question I closed her lips with mine.
      "You couldn't be!" she whispered when she finally broke free.
      It was my turn to laugh. "I warned you I had been dormant, waiting patiently on my lily pad for a complaisant princess. A veritable virgin frog. "
      "I don't believe you. Is it some religious thing, then? No normal man —"
      My coercion silenced her. I opened my mind and showed her the truth. To my amazement, she began to weep.
      "My poor, darling Roger. Oh, my dear. And if we hadn't found each other—?"
      "I don't know. As you saw, my first experience with love ended rather badly. I was mistaken about the depth of her feeling because she was unable to open her mind to me. I couldn't risk that again. Do you understand?"
      "And you're sure about me. " It was a statement.
      "You went to the heart of the matter when you started to tell me that I wasn't normal. Of course I'm not. Luckily for me, neither are you. That's why you're going to marry me. " I was grinning at her in the moonlight and my fingers traced tickling pathways up and down the luscious curve of her spine.
      She said, "Oh, no!"
      "You won't marry me?"
      "Of course I will, fool. " She clung to me. "I meant — perhaps we shouldn't do it again quite so soon. You destroyed me. Do you realize that?"
      I gave a sinister chuckle. "The prince is not to be denied. He has princely prerogatives — et un boute-joie princier!"
      "But I don't know whether I can live through it a second time tonight!" Even as she made false protest, she was encouraging my renaissance. "If they find my poor little dead body in here tomorrow, you'll be the prime suspect. Think of your embarrassment when the prosecutor demands that you produce the weapon in court! Think of the vulgar sensationalism, the requests for autographs — aah!"
      Shush.
      Oh my darling oh Roger.
      Have no fear. If you're really concerned, this time we'll do it on the bed.
      
      Elaine rented a house in Bretton Woods and transferred the one-woman editorial office of her little magazine to its front bedroom. We made good use of the other one all throughout that enchanted summer and planned to marry in November, when her divorce action would be finalized. In those years the Catholic Church was ambivalent in its recognition of such marriages, and sexual liaisons such as ours were considered to be sinful; but I was ready to defy a regiment of archangels for Elaine's sake, and the guilt that must accompany the violation of one's principles was banished to the deepest part of my unconscious. Only those of you, reading this, who are yourselves operant metapsychics can understand the inevitability of our sexual merging, our excitement at the increasingly profound bonding that we experienced — the soul-mating that lovers have sought and celebrated throughout  all  the  ages. Even  though  Elaine  never  attained  full operancy in relation to other minds, she did become fully consonant with me. We spoke to each other without words, knew each other's moods and needs through telepathic interchange, shared sensations, even reinforced each other's ecstatic submersion. You lovers in the Unity would no doubt think our efforts pitifully naive and maladroit; but we thought ourselves in wonderland. Elaine's previous partners, most especially her insensitive husband, had failed to arouse her; her inhibitions had restrained her from any attempt at remedy. But when she was with me there was no need for any crass éclaircissement. I knew her from the very beginning. It was the most amazing part of our love, and it also precipitated the ending because I was not wise enough to know the hazards of entering another's most private place while utterly disarmed.
      The four short months with Elaine were the happiest time of my life. Without her I would become a hollow thing — a mere spectator when I was not a puppet. Looking back, I can see that our separation helped bring the great scheme to fruition; but whether the Lylmik engineered it deliberately or whether they simply took advantage of our little tragedy must remain an unanswered question. The Ghost surely knows, but it is silent, just as heaven was silent when I prayed for the strength of character that might have carried me beyond fury and pride to the forgiveness that would be so easy to give now, nearly 140 years too late...
      But let me tell the story quickly. First, the happy memories:
      Champagne picnics and love on an old Hudson's Bay blanket in the deep woods beside Devil's Elbow Brook.
      A moonlit tennis game played in the middle of the night on a court at the White Mountain Hotel — and all the staff knowing about Elaine and me, and not daring to say a word because she was Somebody.
      Pub-crawling with her in lowest Montreal on a Canadian holiday weekend, and defending her honor in a riot of psychokinetically smashed glassware when she was insulted by canaille even more drunk than we were.
      Going down to Boston together, staying at the Ritz-Carlton, sitting on the grass for open-air Pops concerts, messing around the market, and never but never eating baked beans.
      Taking jaunts to the Donovan family's summer home at Rye where she tried to teach me to sail, then browsing for antiques among the tourist-trappy little coast villages until it was time to finish the day with a clambake or lobster-broil and love on the beach.
      Sitting petrified beside her as she drove her red Porsche like a demon through the Maine woods, playing tag with highballing log trucks going eighty-six miles an hour.
      Lovemaking on a stormy afternoon in my ancient Volkswagen stalled in the middle of a Vermont covered bridge.
      Lovemaking in a meadow above her house at Concord, while monarch butterflies reeled around us, driven berserk by the aetheric vibes.
      Love in a misty forest cascade during an August heat wave.
      Love in my hotel office at noon behind locked doors.
      Love on a twilit picnic table, interrupted by voyeur bears.
      Mad psychokinetic love in thirty-three postural variations.
      Love after a quarrel.
      Hilarious love.
      Marathon love.
      Tired, comfortable love.
      And toward the end, a desperate love that did hold fear and doubt at bay for a little while...
      There are memories of another type altogether, which I must deal with more briskly:
      One of the most disquieting was my realization that she would never be able to overcome the mental blockages causing her latency. She could converse telepathically with me, and Denis could "hear" her as well as probe her memories; but she was never functionally operant with others except when she was experiencing extraordinary psychic stress. Elaine's mind thus seemed to belong to me almost by default, and I felt the first stirrings of real guilt: we were not one mind but two, and to pretend otherwise was to court disaster.
      She was able to keep very few things secret from me. This gave me numerous opportunities to learn how to mask from her my own reactions of shock or chagrin — as, for instance, when I found out just how wealthy she really was. She cheerfully made plans for my gainful employment in Donovan Enterprises "after you give up your tedious little job at the hotel. " She had all kinds of ideas on how I might capitalize on my metapsychic talents (and how Denis could go far if we only liberated him from the clutches of the Jesuits). She wanted to expand Visitant magazine into a rallying vehicle for as-yet-undiscovered superminds. When I balked at these and similar enthusiasms she was hurt, resentful, and unrepentently calculating.
      Elaine's loyalty was ardent. Nevertheless she was unable to disguise her disappointment when I was less than a success at a meeting with her brother the eminent Congressman, her other brother the wheeler-dealer land developer, and her sister the Back Bay socialite do-gooder. Elaine plainly regretted my lower-class origins, my lack of appreciation for the cosmological bullshit espoused by her Aetherian clique, and my persistently old-fashioned religious faith — which wasn't at all like the trendy version of Catholicism made socially acceptable by the Kennedy clan.
      I introduced Elaine to the Remillards at a disastrous Fourth of July barbecue in Berlin thrown by Cousin Gerard. Poor Elaine! Her clothes were too chic, her manners too high-bred, and the covered dish she contributed to the rustic buffet too haute cuisine. She compounded the debacle by speaking elegant Parisian French to old Onc' Louie and the other Canuck elders, and by admitting that her family were Irish Protestants. The only Remillards who weren't scandalized were little Denis and my brother Don. Don was, if anything, too damned friendly toward her. She assured me that there was no telepathic communication between the two of them; but I recalled his coercive exploits of yesteryear and couldn't help feeling doubt at the same time that I cursed myself for being a jealous fool.
      Later that summer, when we would briefly visit Don and Sunny to pick up or drop off Denis, whom we often took on outings, Elaine was distant or even covertly antagonistic toward my brother. At the same time she claimed to pity him and pressed me to "see that he got help" in combating his alcoholism. I knew that any effort on my part would be worse than useless and refused to interfere — which provoked one of our few serious quarrels. Another took place in early September, when I took Denis back to Brebeuf Academy and revealed his metapsychic abilities to Father Jared Ellsworth, as the Ghost had instructed me to do. Elaine was irrationally convinced that the Jesuits would "exploit" Denis in some nameless way. I assured her that Ellsworth had reacted with sympathy and equanimity to the revelation (he had even deduced some of the boy's mental talents already); but Elaine persisted in her fretting over Denis, and her attitude toward him was so oddly colored and tortuous that I was unable to make sense of it until long after the end. The end. God, how I remember it.
      It was late in October on a day when the New Hampshire hills were purple and scarlet with the autumn climacteric. We had gone on a season-end pilgrimage to the Great Stone Face, just she and I, and finished up at a secluded country inn near Franconia. It was one of those terminally quaint establishments that still draw Galactic tourists to New England, featuring squeaky floors, crooked walls, and a pleasant clutter of colonial American artifacts, many of which were for sale at ridiculous prices. The food and drink were splendid and the proprietors discreet. After our meal we retired to a gabled bedroom suite and nestled side by side on a sofa with lumpy cushions, watching sparks from a birchwood fire fly up the chimney while rain tapped gently on the roof.
      We had been talking about our wedding plans and sipping a rare Aszu Tokay that the host reserved for well-heeled cognoscenti. It was to be a simple civil ceremony down in Concord, with one of her distinguished Donovan uncles officiating. Later we would have a small supper "for the wedding party only, " which effectively meant no Remillards except me. I listened to her with only half an ear, drowsy from the wine. And then Elaine told me she was pregnant.
      I recall a thunderous sound. It may have come from the storm outside the inn, or it may have been purely mental, my psychic screens crashing into place. I remember a fixed-frame vision of my hand, frozen in the act of reaching for the decanter. I can still hear Elaine's voice prattling on about how she was so glad it had happened, how she had always wanted children while her ex-husband had not, how our child was certain to be a paragon of "astromental" achievement, perhaps even more brilliant than Denis.
      Incapable of speech or even a rational thought, I sat gripped by a grand refusal. It could not be. She had not said it. I think I prayed like a child, entreating God to cancel this thing, to save my love and my life. I would repeat the same futile supplications later through the bleak winter months as I tried in vain to conquer myself and return to her; but always love would be obliterated as it was at that hellish moment, wiped out by a blast of volcanic rage and fatally wounded pride.
      Of course I knew who the father was.
      I finally turned my face to her, and I know I was without expression, my howling despair inaudible beyond the closet of my skull. Elaine cowered back against the cushions, shrinking from the exhalation of pain and menace.
      "Roger, what is it?"
      Her mind was, as always, completely open to me. And now that her thoughts concentrated on the certainty of the life growing within her, I could perceive a complex skein of memories woven about the embryonic node. The confirmation would be there.
      I knew I should leave those memories of hers untouched. It was the only forlorn hope left to me. I must not look into the secret place but seal it forever, pretend that the child's father was someone else. Anyone else.
      The secret places. All rational beings have them and guard them — not only for their own sakes but for those of others. Who but God would love us if all the secret places of our minds lay exposed? I knew how to conceal my own heart of darkness; it is one of the first things an operant metapsychic learns, whether he is bootstrap or preceptor-trained. Only a few poor souls remain vulnerable always, trapped in the shadow-country between latency and conscious control of their high mental powers. Elaine was one. Open. Without secrets.
      "Roger, " she pleaded. "Answer me. For God's sake, darling, what's the matter?"
      Don't look. She loves you, not him. To look would be a sin — against her and against yourself. You aren't a truth-seeker, you're a fool. Don't look. Don't look.
      I looked. Our love had been sinful, and I must be punished.
      She was calm as I lifted my barriers at last, showing her the incontrovertible fact of my own sterility, and the theft of her secret, and what made her betrayal impossible to forgive.
      "If it had been anyone but him, " I said. "Anyone. But, you see, I wouldn't be able to live with it. "
      She looked me full in the face. "Once. It happened once — that first time you took me to meet your family, at that silly Fourth of July barbecue. It was madness. I don't know what came over me. It happened before I realized — without my wanting it. "
      No secret place. Poor Elaine. You had wanted it.
      I saw the entire episode etched in her memory and knew I'd see it forever. Don focusing the full force of his coercion, her fascination and willing surrender, Don laughing as he took her by the rockets' red glare, kindling in her a stupendous series of orgasms like chain lightning. And his child.
      "I can't live with it, " I told her.
      "Once, Roger. Only once. And now I hate him. "
      No secrets at all... Anyone but him. Damn the mind-powers. Damn him! But never her.
      "Roger, I love you. I know how much this must hurt. I feel the hurt.
      But I honestly thought the child was yours... that the thing with your brother was a piece of idiocy better left forgotten. " She tried to smile, showed me a glowing mental image. "You love little Denis. He's Don's child. "
      "I couldn't help it. Denis is different. Sunny was different. "
      "I'm only fifteen weeks gone. I could —"
      "No!"
      She nodded. "Yes, I see. It wouldn't make any difference, would it? It would make matters worse. "
      I let the wretched contents of my mind seep out: The child will be brilliant. Don's mental faculties are far more impressive than mine, in spite of his flaws. As you know. Goodbye, Elaine.
      "Roger, I love you. For the love of God, don't do this!"
      I must. I love you I will always love you but I must.
      I walked to the door and opened it. Aloud, I said, "I'm going to take your Porsche back to the White Mountain Hotel. In the morning, I'll send one of our drivers back here with it. There are a few things I must get from the house in Bretton Woods, but I should be out of it before noon. I'll leave my key. "
      "You fool," she said.
      "Yes. "
      I went out and softly closed the door after me.
      
      Elaine married Stanton Latimer, a prominent Concord attorney, that November. He gave her child, Annarita, his name and they were a happy family until his death in 1992. The distractions of motherhood — and the decline in flying-saucer sightings after 1975—led Elaine to abandon Visitant. She turned her leadership talents to environmental activism and campaigned against acid rain. In time she decided that she had imagined the more improbable facets of our liaison.
      Annarita Latimer grew up to be an actress of vibrant and unforgettable presence who had a triumphant, tempestuous career. Like her mother, she was a powerful suboperant. Annarita's third husband was Bernard Kendall, the astrophysicist, who sired her only child, the fully operant Teresa — known to historians of the Galactic Milieu as the mother of Marc Remillard and Jack the Bodiless.

21
SUPERVISORY CRUISER NOUMENON [Lyl 1-0000] 
10 MAY  1975

      THE SIMB SHUTTLE saucer made its ingress into the immense Lylmik vessel in the manner of a lentil being swallowed by a whale, and the four senior members of the Earth Oversight Authority gathered in the shuttle's airlock to watch the curious docking maneuvers.
      "I hate coming aboard Lylmik spacecraft. One is so likely to become overstimulated. " The Gi representative, RipRip Muml, whiffled its plumage in a gesture of libido suppression and sealed off four of its eight sensory circuits. "Strange that the Supervisory Body should want to meet with us here in Earth orbit instead of simply transmitting its instructions mentally. "
      The Simb magnate, Lashi Ala Adassti, watched the scene outside the viewport with rapt fascination. In spite of her high position in the Oversight organization, she had never before been invited to visit a Lylmik cruiser. "I've given up trying to fathom the motives of the Supervisors, especially those relating to this perverse little planet... Sacred Truth and Beauty! Will you look what's happening out there in the parking bay?"
      "An interesting spectacle, but hardly unnerving, " remarked the
      Krondaku, Rola'eroo.
      "I've seen it a dozen or so times myself. " The Poltroyan magnate shook his head. "But it still rattles me. It's as though we were being digested!"
      The saucer rested on a kind of animated turf, pearly tendrils that rippled in peristaltic waves as they propelled the small spacecraft slowly along. A few meters away, on either side of the shuttle's path, plantlike excrescences apparently made of luminous jelly were sprouting up with graceful regularity; they unfurled pallid leafy ribbons and undulated in a questing fashion in the direction of the passing ship. Some of the larger plants "fruited, " producing crystalline structures that opened to discharge glittering powder that swirled around the shuttle viewports like saffron smoke. Behind these pseudo-organisms were rising much taller ones that resembled glassy tree-ferns and opalescent feather-palms. These soon formed an impenetrable jungle alongside the saucer, a bright corridor with purple obscurity lying ahead. The smaller ribbon-bearers became more and more numerous and their appendages reached out to caress the moving vessel's sides. It was like sailing underwater through a twisting tunnel alive with glowing albino kelp.
      "By their spacecraft ye shall know them, " the poetical Gi murmured. "Ours are preposterous and ramshackle, and their operation is so circumscribed by the reproductive habits of our crews that no other entities dare ride in them. Krondak ships are bleakly functional and those of the Poltroyans cozy and baroque, while Simbiari craft like this one we are riding in are paragons of high technology. But how can one classify the Lylmik ships?"
      "Peculiar, " suggested Rola'eroo, "like the race that produced them. " The others laughed uneasily.
      The Poltroyan, a dapper little humanoid wearing heavily bejeweled robes, shared his meditation. "We never really see the Lylmik, even though they must inhabit forms that are manifestations of the matter-energy lattices. They are not pure mind, as some have speculated — and yet they enjoy a mentality unfathomably above our own. They will tell us very little of their history — nothing of their nature. They are infallibly kind. Their zeal in furthering the evolution of the Galactic Mind is formidable, but they often seem capricious. Their logic is not our logic. As RipRip Muml has noted, this ship of theirs is an embodiment of the Lylmik enigma: it is lush, extravagant, playful. Certain of our xenologists have speculated that the enormous cruisers are themselves aspects of Lylmik life, symbionts of the minds they transport. We know that these beings are the Galaxy's most ancient coadunate race, but their actual age and their origin remain a mystery. Our Poltroyan folklore says that the Lylmik home-star Nodyt was once a dying red giant, which the population rejuvenated into a G3 by a metapsychic infusion of fresh hydrogen sixty million years ago. But such a feat is beyond Milieu science, contradicting the Universal Field Theory. "
      "Our legends, " the Krondak monster said, "are even more absurd. They suggest that the Lylmik are survivors of the Big Bang — that they date from the previous universe. A totally ridiculous notion. "
      "No sillier than ours, " said RipRip Muml. "The more simple-minded Gi believe that the Lylmik are angels — pseudocorporeal messengers of the Cosmic All. An unlikely hypothesis, but not inappropriate for mentors of our Galactic Mind. "
      An impatient frown had been deepening on Lashi Ala's emerald features. "We Simbiari don't tell fairy-tales about the Lylmik. We accept their guidance at the same time as we resent their arrogant condescension. Look how determined they are to give these Earthlings favored treatment. The planet is a Lylmik pet! And yet the Supervisory Body seems blithely ignorant about just how unready for Intervention Earth is. How many times during the Thirty-Year Surveillance have we Simbiari been obliged to save the barbarians from accidentally touching off an atomic war? How many more times will we have to rescue the planetary ass during the upcoming pre-Intervention phase? All of us know that there is no way this world's Mind can achieve full coadunation prior to Intervention. Earth will be admitted to the Milieu in advance of its psychosocial maturation! Sheer lunacy!"
      The Krondaku remained stolid. "Should the Earth Mind deliberately opt for nuclear warfare during the next forty years, you know that the Intervention will be cancelled. Furthermore, Intervention is contingent upon a certain minimal metaconcerted action by human operants. If they cannot rise above egocentrism to the lowest rung of mental solidarity, not even the Lylmik can force the Milieu to accept them. "
      Lashi gave a disillusioned grunt. "No other potentially emergent planet ever got such special treatment. "
      "The Lylmik always have reasons for their actions, " the Poltroyan said, "incomprehensible though they may be to us lesser minds. If the Earthlings are destined to be great metapsychic prodigies, as the Lylmik maintain, then the risk of early intervention will be justified. "
      "You can talk, Falto, " Lashi Ala shot back. "Your people haven't been saddled with the bulk of the planetary surveillance and manifestation as we Simbiari have. Why the Lylmik didn't appoint you smug little mauve pricks as prime contractors for Earth, I'll never know! You like humans. "
      Rola'eroo came as close to chuckling as his phlegmatic race was capable. "Perhaps that is the very reason why Poltroy was not given the proctorship. Despite certain imputations of favoritism, I am convinced that the Lylmik desire a fair and just evaluation of humanity. And this" — he offered a magisterial nod to Lashi Ala — "the citizens of the Simbiari Polity will conscientiously provide. "
      "Oh, well, of course, " she muttered.
      RipRip Muml gave a delicate shudder. "Thanks be to the Tranquil Infinite that we have been spared close contact with Earth. Its artistic productions are exquisite, but the reverberations of violence and suffering are a sore trial to truly sensitive minds. "
      "I've noticed, " said Lashi sweetly, "that you Gi are too sensitive for any number of tedious but necessary assignments. "
      The great yellow eyes blinked in innocent reproach.
      Falto the Poltroyan interposed diplomatically. "We all do the jobs we're best suited for, given the mind-set of the planet under evaluation. "
      "And with a race as bumptious as humanity, you Simbiari end up carrying the can!" RipRip gave its phallus a cheerful flourish.
      Lashi responded with simple dignity. "We know very well that our people are still imperfectly Unified — and I did not mean to imply that we regretted our first assignment as prime contractor to an emerging Mind. On the contrary, we are honored by the Milieu's mandate. " She hesitated, a troubled expression crossing her now glistening face. "But the Oversight Authority concedes that Earth is an anomaly. It seems counter to all logic, therefore, that the Concilium should assign its proctorship to us, the most junior Polity in the Milieu. Surely this difficult and barbaric world would fare better under the more sympathetic guidance of Poltroy — or, even better, under the stern direction that the Krondaku vouchsafed to Gi, Poltroyans, and Simbiari alike. "
      The Krondak magnate's mind-tone was detached and serene. "My race has proctored more than seventeen thousand planetary Minds since the Lylmik raised us to Unity. Only you three survived to coadunation and membership in the Milieu. "
      "We've never had a winner in seventy-two tries, " the Poltroyan admitted, "and we're still smarting over the Yanalon fiasco. A tough-minded Simb primacy might have saved that world... Don't sell your abilities short, Lashi Ala Adassti. "
      "You mustn't feel downhearted or put-upon, " the hermaphrodite added kindly. "Think how the Unity will rejoice if you succeed! We Gi will never enjoy such a triumph. We're too frivolous and sex-obsessed ever to be appointed planetary proctors. No newborn coadunate Mind will ever call us its foster-parents — and we are the poorer thereby. "
      A harmonious chord of chimes sounded in the mental ears of the four magnates. Outside the viewports the iridescent glow intensified. The shuttle-craft was approaching the terminus of the overgrown tunnel, an iris gateway of yellow metal that opened slowly like the expanding pupil of a great golden eye.
      Welcome. And high thoughts to you, most beloved colleagues. Please debark and join us in the hospitality chamber.
      The shuttle had halted at the gateway. Rola'eroo extended a tentacle and activated the hatch mechanism, admitting a billow of warm, superoxygenated atmosphere to the airlock. The four entities toddled, strode, stalked, and slithered down the integral gangway, crossed a short expanse of anemonoid turf flanked by crystal foliage, and entered the Lylmik sanctum. The gate shut behind them.
      It was rather dim inside, comfortably so after the brilliant part of the ship they had just traversed. The walls and flooring were gently corrugated, transparent, and seemed to be holding back an encompassing volume of bubbly liquid that swirled slowly in ever-changing eddies of blue and green. In the center of the room was a crescent-shaped table with three seats for the Gi, the Poltroyan, and the Simb — and a squatting spot for the ponderous Krondaku. Besides the furniture, which was austere in design and made of the warm yellow metal, the room contained only a low dais about three meters square, formed by slight exaggerations of the floor ribbing.
      The Earth Oversight Authority took their places and waited. Lashi Ala betrayed her apprehension by smearing the table surface with dabs of ichor from her perspiring hands. She tucked them into the sleeves of her uniform, where there were blotting pads, and buffed away the smears with her elbows. The other three Overseers tactfully averted their eyes and veiled their brains.
      Above the dais there appeared a small atmospheric maelstrom.
      Our heartfelt felicitations to you, dear colleagues, upon the successful completion of Earth's first phase of intensified overt manifestation.
      In metaconcert, the Authority responded: We are gratified that the Supervisory Body approves, and herewith present a digest of data relevant to progress in coadunation of the World Mind. [Display.]
      The maelstrom was enlarging, spinning in a plane perpendicular to the dais, and five distinct whorls were condensing out of it.
      How interesting that the outbreaks of metapsychic operancy among the humans are so widely scattered. Even though the genes for high mental function are present in all racial groups, one notes that its phenotypic expression crops out with special vigor among certain Celtic and Oriental populations.
      This has been allowed for in ethnodynamic equations. The sorting factors have a fascinating Darwinian aspect, in that those groups subject to great environmental — as opposed to social — stress tend to manifest the metapsychic traits most strongly. Thus the Georgian, Alpine, Hebridean, and Eastern Canadian Celts tend to become operant more rapidly than their more numerous Irish and French congeners. The same is true of the Asian irruptive locus, with the North Siberian, Mongol, and Hokkaido groups most noteworthy, together with the isolate fractions flourishing in Tibet and Finland. Unfortunately, the Australian aboriginal locus has become nearly extinct, as have the Kalahari and Pigmy concentrations in Africa. The Nilotic group trembles on the brink due to severe social disruption. In any case, these southern populations are now almost too small to be viable reservoirs of operant genotypes.
      Tragic. But as we know, operancy must be combined with ethnic dynamism if coadunation of the Mind is to be achieved.
      And on Earth, dynamism is largely a Northern function, due to the complex interaction of stress factors.
      "Northern hyperfertility isn't to be sneezed at, either, " murmured the Poltroyan, ex-concert. "Which is why I put my money on the Canucks in the operancy sweepstakes. "
      The other three Overseers flinched at the effrontery of their small colleague, but the Lylmik seemed amused.
      You are most perceptive, Faltonin-Virminonin! It is indeed from that group, especially the northeastern Franco-Americans, that we expect the largest numbers of natural operants to be born during this critical pre-Intervention phase of proctorship.
      The five atmospheric vortices had now assumed a decidedly material aspect. The Gi and the Krondaku, being the most ultrasensitive members of the metaconcert, realized with some excitement that the Supervisors were about to do them the unusual honor of assuming astral bodies — or, at least, astral heads. The news ignited the entire Authority, especially Lashi Ala, who had never experienced a Lylmik vis-à-vis encounter.
      They asked: Is it your wish, then, that we devise plans for the special encouragement of these Franco-American operants?
      By no means. This is a task reserved for others.
      Others?... What others?
      But before the Oversight Authority could pursue this puzzle further, they were completely distracted by the apparition unfolding before them. Above the dais now floated five heads. Perhaps in consideration of the Poltroyan, Gi, and Simb representatives, who had largely humanoid features, the heads each developed two eyes and a single smiling mouth. Their psychocreative flesh was roseate with no trace of hair, feathering, scales, or other epidermal outgrowth. The eyes of the central head were gray; those of the four surrounding heads were a brilliant aquamarine green. The Lylmik had no necks, but from their occipital regions trailed multiple ectoplasmic filaments like pale gauzy scarves stirring in a light breeze. Strangely, each of the different Authority magnates thought that the heads were supremely beautiful. Even those who had seen this manifestation of the Lylmik before felt that they could look into those eyes forever without tiring; and poor Lashi Ala, meeting them for the first time, was reduced to bewitched helplessness.
      "I am Noetic Concordance, " said the uppermost head.
      "I am Eupathic Impulse, " said the lowest.
      "I am Homologous Trend, " said the right-hand head.
      "I am Asymptotic Essence, " said the one on the left.
      The central head, which radiated the most overwhelming power of all, had the softest voice. "And I am Atoning Unifex. We of the Supervisory Body embrace you and your organization. We thank you for what you have done, and charge you to carry on your assigned tasks in spite of discouragements, doubts, and difficulties. It is known to us that the small planet we are orbiting at this moment occupies a critical place in the probability lattices. From it may emerge a Mind that will exceed all others in metapsychic potential. It is known to us that this Mind will be capable of destroying our beloved Galactic Milieu. It is further known to us that this Mind will also be capable of magnifying the Milieu immensely, accelerating the Unification of all the inhabited star-systems. For this reason we have directed this extraordinary attempt at Intervention. It involves a great risk. But all evolutionary leaps are hazardous, and without risk-taking there can only be stagnation, the triumph of entropy, and eventual death. Do you understand this, colleagues?"
      We understand.
      "Mental potential is not actualization. The human race must reach an acceptable level of operancy largely through its own efforts. We can guide, but we cannot force evolution of the Mind. Thus there still exists the possibility that this rising operant population may founder — either through internal or external calamity. There exists another possibility, fortunately diminishing, that the entire world may perish in a suicidal conflict. So Intervention is not certain. But we shall work toward it... you in your way and we in ours, full of trust. "
      We understand.
      "Go now and initiate the next Oversight phase. From time to time we will lend special assistance. "
      We do not understand, but we acquiesce willingly.
      The central head nodded. The eyes of all five were ablaze with irresistible psychic energy. The heads began melting away to ectoplasmic vapor, but the eyes remained to focus Unifying power.
      Join with us, said the Supervisors, and the minds of the Overseers rushed into the joyous light.
      
      A long time later, when the four awoke in their shuttle-craft, they instinctively came together to gaze out of a viewport at the blue planet rolling below.
      "Incredible, " said the Krondaku.
      "What an experience!" Lashi Ala was still in a state of near-total bemusement. "I agree — it was quite incredible. "
      The Gi shook its head, gently corrective. "While Unity with the
      Lylmik is memorable, it is not the matter that Rola'eroo Mobak finds difficult to believe. "
      "Certainly not, " the monster growled. "It's what they said. "
      The Poltroyan pursed lavender lips and hoisted a single eyebrow in unspoken query.
      "The head in the middle. " RipRip Muml amplified its speech with a remembered vision. "It said that the Lylmik were going to assist us. That's even more unprecedented than their original veto of the Concilium pull-out vote!"
      Rola'eroo said, "You will also recall that the Lylmik Supervisors told us that we were not to attempt positive reinforcement of the Franco-American operant group... that the task would be undertaken by others. "
      Both Poltroyan eyebrows shot up and the ruby optics bulged. "Love's Oath! You can't mean it!"
      "I conclude that certain human operants are to be shepherded by the Lylmik themselves, " Rola'eroo asserted. "By these aloof beings who scarcely ever condescend to participate in the Concilium deliberations, who tantalize us and confuse us when they are not vexing us with their mystical vagary. "
      "There was nothing vague, " Lashi said, "about that crew we met today. That central head was downright blunt. "
      "Most uncharacteristic, " the Krondaku said. "We must ponder the implications strenuously. "
      The Gi had turned to the port and contemplated the blue planet with a certain foreboding. Its irrepressible genitalia were blanched and subdued. "Earthlings! Do you know — I'm beginning to be quite afraid of them. "
      "Nonsense!" said Lashi Ala stoutly. "We Simbiari know humanity better than any of you. They don't scare us. "
      The three other entities exchanged thoughts of sudden, shared comprehension.

THE END OF PART ONE