Dark Genesis: The Birth of the Psi Corps (4 page)

After ten or fifteen minutes they came up in the deep Alaskan woods, cautiously. In the distance, Blood heard the familiar tearing sound of automatic gunfire, something she hadn’t heard since they had been mercenaries in Kamchatka. She found she almost welcomed it. It was a somehow honest sound. Mercy was pale, though. She had not been one of them, back then, and probably had never heard gunfire. She took Mercy’s hand.

Don’t worry, she told her. We’ll be okay. But we have to run silent now. Mercy nodded, and took hold of Smoke’s hand. Blood raised her pistol, checked to make certain it was loaded. She knew the men were ahead, waiting for them, and when she could see them through the trees, she tasted them. The bloodletting sometimes made her like this, as if she were evaporating, thin but large, a mist hearing and feeling all within her. Spreading over them she felt their angry, stupid, piggy little minds. That one was mean because he had nothing else to be; that one wasn’t mean but did what he was told. She suddenly felt a cold, hard anger. Normals. She had watched the news reports, those smug bastards on the news shows, the yapping pundits. Look what they had done. People were dying all over the world because normals were stupid and afraid. She would give them something to be afraid of.

The anger gave her strength, so when she stepped into the clearing , they saw more than a slightly built woman. They were standing around a Cortez four-wheel drive, drinking beer. Three of them. As if they were hunting deer. Their faces changed as they saw her, Kali, Gabriel, the skull and the sickle, the wings of the stooping hawk. They fumbled at their rifles as she calmly shot each of them in the head, delighting in feeling their dirty little minds wink out, vanish down the rabbit hole. Only the last one managed to fire, but he missed and she spattered him against the truck. Then it all sucked back in, blew the fire out, and she was hollow , without even enough muscle or tendon in her legs to stand. But she felt the ground shake as she collapsed to it.

“Nice shootin’,” Monkey allowed.

“What was the explosion?” Mercy asked.

“That would be our temple,” Monkey said. “Sixty kilos of plastique.”

“Oh, my God,” Mercy said. “Our followers …” She started to cry, and for once she was strong, her tears washing over them all.

“Not anymore,” Monkey said, putting his arm under Blood’s and lifting her up. “That game’s over. It’s time to move on.”

CHAPTER 2

Lee cheered along with everyone else when the actinic glare of a small, new star appeared above the Lunar horizon. The probe had actually been launched half an hour before, of course, from the ugly snout of the mass driver he could barely see poking up from the Von Braun Shipyard a kilometer away. While cost-efficient, a mass-driver launch offered no sound and fury, no glare of rockets. By long tradition, it was the first flash of the engines that signaled a successful launch. Still clapping and grinning, he turned to face the reporters.

“I’d just like to say how gratified I am to be here,” he began, as the ruckus calmed to a general murmur. “I feel greatly privileged and enormously excited. There were those who said that this moment would never come that the curiosity that carried humanity from continent to continent and from world to world had begun to dwindle. Here is proof that they were wrong.”

Hands shot up everywhere as he paused.

“Well,” he said, “I had a longer speech planned, but you folks seem pretty eager.”

He selected Robert Tanaka, one of the front row of reporters.

“Bob? What can I do for you?”

“I’d just like to know how it feels, Senator, to be vindicated. And what do you think the aliens will be like?”

“Well, Bob, in keeping with the dignity being a senator of the Earth Alliance carries-ah, hell, it feels damn good.” He waited for the chuckles to float around. “But let’s keep this all in perspective. Our experience with tachyon emissions is mighty limited, and for all we know that signal the DeepProbe detected could have come from a natural source. But still, this is what I-and many others-have wanted for a long time. The DeepProbe network was put in place four years after tachyons were proven to exist. The Heimdal probe will upgrade the system at a bargain price, and I think one day-maybe sooner than you think-she’ll answer your second question.”

“Thank you, Senator.”

“Very welcome. What about you-Ms. Bochs, isn’t it?”

“Yes sir, with Izvestia International. I was wondering how you respond to Senator Tokash’s recent statement that you have mishandled the telepath problem.”

He felt the smile freeze on his face.

“Well, I was hoping we could chat a bit more about the hope and future of humanity before we retreated back to the Neanderthal cave of politics. But if we have to go there, let’s carry at least some of what we’ve seen today with us-some hope and faith in ourselves as a race. Senator Tokash has his own point of view, to be sure. He and I have differed about many things-the Heundal project itself, for instance, which many of you may remember he opposed not long ago. As for the telepath `problem’-we’re dealing with the issue as sensitively as we can.”

“Some charge that you would make telepaths second-class citizens.”

“Yes, on the one hand-and on the other I’m criticized for not rounding them all up and throwing them into death camps. It’s easy to make sweeping and extreme statements. It’s harder to deal with complex reality. The truth is that we have to regulate telepaths, and at the same time we must respect their rights as citizens . I wish we could have avoided the regrettable incidents of the past few months, and I pray we’ve seen the end of them.”

“Senator, regarding your proposal for a specific committee on telepaths-“

“Yes. The Privacy and Technology Committee was a good stopgap, but telepathy is not technology. This is a special problem that needs special attention. I’ve proposed a Committee on Metasensory Regulation.”

“Can you respond to the rumors that Senator Tokash has been appointed head of that committee instead of you?”

Lee was proud of himself-he kept his smile in place.

“I’m sure that the president will appoint whoever she feels will do the best job. If that’s Tokash, then I trust her judgment.”

None
*

Alone, he wasn’t so cool, as the shards of an empty decanter settled to the floor of his room with the patience of snowflakes. Breaking things on the Moon lacked a certain satisfaction, but the moment of rupture, when even the smallest fragments ballooned outward like a dust cloud, made up for the lack of calamity. He had to retreat into the small washroom until the air filters took care of the danger the fragments posed to his lungs. It had been too long since he had been off planet, way too long. His instincts were betraying him like those of a rookie. When he reemerged and finished cleaning up the room, he felt calmer. He checked his messages and found among them a discouraging note from Tom Nguyen. Tokash would almost certainly get the committee. That wasn’t right-it was his hearings that had begun it all, his voice the world had clung to. Now Tokash wanted to take that away from him. But what could he do? Nothing, not on the Moon, and he was stuck here for several more days, at least. By the time he returned to Earth, the decision would be made. He put on his weights and began calisthenics, working his muscles savagely. Whether people knew it or not, they responded better to a man who looked capable than one who did not. Sweat was just beginning to collect in improbably large droplets when the room link warbled.

“Sound only,” he told it. “Yes? Senator Lee Crawford here.”

There was a small pause, and then, “Senator Crawford? This is Alice Kimbrell. Dr. Kimbrell, how nice to hear from you. To what do I owe the pleasure?” “I’d like to talk to you, as soon as is convenient.”

That raised his brows. No three-second delay-Alice Kimbrell was on the Moon.

“What does this regard?”

“Something very important.”

“Very well. How about the Ix Chet, in one hour?”

“I would prefer somewhere less public.”

“Indulge me, if you don’t mind. It’s almost lunchtime anyway.”

The Ix Chel was, like everything on the Moon, small, but made up for that in elegance. Dug into a hillside, it featured a thick dome that filtered gentle blue Earthlight into the room. The light was picked up by the water rushing from behind one curved wall. Water on the Moon was a precious thing, mined from brittle, powdery seas—the corpses of long-dead comets. The colony had tons of it, but to see more than a cupful at a time was rare. To be all but surrounded by it was a miracle, and he silently toasted the owner’s enterprise in having the restaurant butted up against one of the nodes of the colony’s cooling/water-processing torus. The place was packed to capacity when Alice Kimbrell walked in, but she had no trouble spotting him when he stood. He admired her as she approached. He liked something about her eyes, and the crisp wear of her modest grey suit, almost like a uniform.

“Dr. Kimbrell,” he said, extending his hand.

She took it, stiffly.

“Senator.”

“Please, have a seat.” Once she had done so, he flashed her a smile. “Quite a coincidence, both of us bein’ on the Moon right now. Did you come to see Heimdal launched? I could’ve gotten you front-row seats.”

“I came to see you.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“I’m flattered. That’s an expensive jaunt for a private citizen.”

She acknowledged that with a curt nod.

“I heard you were here.”

“I’ll be in Geneva in six days. Or you could have called me.”

“It’s too important to wait-or to trust to the cornlinks.”

“Really.”

“Yes. And I still wish we had gone somewhere more-private.”

He broadened his smile.

“My papa used to say you ought not to bend to tie your shoe in the neighbor’s pumpkin patch.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, a pumpkin is a sort of big-“

“I know what a pumpkin is. 1 mean, what are you implying?” He idly tapped one of his chopsticks. “How many reporters do you see right now?”

She looked around.

“None.”

“There are two, at least. If I’m to meet with the woman who turned the world upside down, I want to do it where everyone can see. If you came to my room, they might wonder what secret we were exchangin’. Worse, they might think we were joining the Ex-sex club. You want to see that in the papers?” The waitress, a small, whine-haired woman with a heavy Austrian accent, chose that moment to arrive.

“Drink with dinner?”

“Scotch. Laphroig,” Alice said.

“Make mine an Evan Williams.”

Alice raised an eyebrow.

`They keep a bottle just for me. I am the hero of this colony, you know.

11 ‘lyes, but-conect me if I’m wrong-isn’t Evan Williams fairly cheap, awful stuff?”

“Cheap, yes, awful, yes. But it’s the oldest distillery in North America, which has to count for somethin’. More to the point-it reminds me of where I’m from and who I am. Now Laphraoig, that’s good, expensive stuff.”

“It reminds me of who I am,” Alice replied. The drinks arrived.

“Here’s to knowin’ where you’re from,” Lee said, and they clinked glasses, and both took a drink.

“Healthy stuff,” he observed. “It’ll grow moss on Lunar soil.” He cocked his head quizzically. “So what are we here to talk about, Doctor?”

“Can they hear us? The reporters?”

He shrugged.

“It’s against the law to eavesdrop. I ought to know, I’m on the Technology and Privacy Committee.” He leaned forward. “You must feel very pleased. The last of your critics have pretty much shut up, haven’t they? Now that so many studies have replicated the findings you published.”

She stared at him.

“Vindicated? How can I feel vindicated by the deaths of more than ten thousand people? The massacre Wednesday in Shanxi? The bombing in Utah? The rioting in Chicago-the spacings in Armstrong?”

“All right,” he soothed. “I get your point. Dr. Kimbrell, as you must know, every new discovery has its price. These findings would have been published, with or without you.”

“I realize that, Senator. But the very simple fact is that it was me.” Her sipping escalated to a moderate gulp. “And you were dragged through the heap for it. And now that that’s done, you’re draggin’ yourself through the heap.”

“No. Just taking responsibility.”

“Which brings you to me? Because I can’t imagine that you flew all the way to the Moon to take advantage of my credentials as a psychotherapist.”

That got a small smile from her.

“No. I came to see you because I want to be involved. Involved in the solution.”

“And you think I’m the solution? That’s very flattering, Doctor. But you didn’t think so when I initially invited you to advise me. What’s changed?”

“I’ve followed the hearings closely, as you might expect.”

“Get you another scotch?”

She hesitated a moment, staring blankly at her empty tumbler.

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry, you were saying?”

“I think you have conducted the hearings in as sane a manner as possible, but they’ve made things worse.”

He frowned.

“Surely you see that they’re necessary, Dr. Kimbrell ? It’s unfortunate, but telepathy is too powerful a tool-and a weapon-not to be regulated. What do you think the killings are all about? People are afraid, afraid that the person next to them might be reading their minds.”

“They’re jealous.”

“That, too. Human society is structured around secrets, around limited disclosure. Success has always meant being able to navigate in that world, guess the unspoken, erect a facade. And now we find that there are people who have the inborn ability to simply cut through all that. Would you like to play poker with a telepath? Or trade stocks against someone who could secure inside information simply by being in the room with the right person? It’s not so much a matter of specifically regulating telepaths as it is of making certain that existing laws regarding privacy and disclosure aren’t violated by them.”

“And yet you are specifically regulating telepaths-telepaths can’t be lawyers, or stockbrokers, or Olympic fencers-“