Diamond Mask (Galactic Milieu Trilogy) (22 page)

D
EE WAS VERY NERVOUS ABOUT THE STARSHIP VOYAGE … BUT NOT
for the reason her grandmother supposed.

As the children settled down in their stateroom before lift-off, the professor did her best to reassure them.

“Most of our journey to Caledonia will be no more uncomfortable than a trip on a rhocraft bus. We fly out beyond the Moon under subluminal power, just as though the starship were a gigantic egg, and then jump into the gray limbo for the first time. But you needn’t worry about feeling pain when we go through the superficies. There’s a new minidose for nonoperant children that completely eliminates the discomfort of passing from the real world into hyperspace. Isn’t that nice?”

“Great!” Ken was all enthusiasm, but Dee said nothing.

Gran Masha showed them a package of little green dosers, explaining that the medication would put them into a deep sleep during the few moments the ship took to cross over, then leave them pleasantly drowsy for a half hour or so afterward.

“Can I do it to myself?” Ken asked. “Please, Gran?”

The professor thought about it for a moment. “Very well, I’ll let you try administering the dose yourself the first time. If it works out you can continue … Now I must speak to the purser about something. I’ll only be gone a short time. You two stay here and watch our preparations for takeoff on the cabin monitor.” She went out of the stateroom and closed the door behind her.

Ken sat on the edge of his recliner-bunk, zapping from channel
to channel on the monitor. The big screen on the stateroom bulkhead provided views of the command bridge, the cargo loading bay, the passenger boarding area, and several other regions of the starship’s interior, as well as a long exterior view of the ship patched in from a remote groundside transmitter. In a few minutes, those aboard the Drumadoon Bay would be able to watch themselves take off. Now the remote showed the huge vessel held fast in its complicated cradledock, looking something like a shackled skyscraper lying on its side. Tiny tenders and inspection vehicles buzzed around it.

“I’ll bet Gran’s going to try another subspace shout to Dad,” Ken said. “He never did get back to her when she sent him the message saying she was going to bring us to Caledonia herself.”

“Kenny,” Dee ventured uneasily, “I’ve got something to tell you.”

But her brother swept on. “You know what? Gran’s worried. I think she’s afraid Dad’s place might not be—you know—safe for little kids to live in. His farm’s in a part of Caledonia that was opened up to settlers only ten years ago. It’s still a hairy wilderness.” He grinned. “Erupting volcanoes! Maybe man-eating exotic critters, too!”

“Kenny, I’m scared.”

“Aaah, I’m only bullshitting you, midgelet. Dad won’t let anything happen to us. He never would’ve told us to come to Caledonia if it was really dangerous.”

“That’s not what I’m scared about.”

“Well, what then? Gran told you that it won’t hurt when we pass into the limberlost—”

“The minidoser medicine. I don’t want to be knocked out! It—it turns off my mind-screen.”

“So what?”

“Gran will look inside my head. I know she will. She thinks I might have some clues about—about Mummie and Uncle Robbie and Aunt Rowan hidden in my mind. So did the First Magnate and the Krondak policeman. That’s why they wanted to probe me. If Gran pokes around, she’s sure to find out my secret mindpowers.”

“Don’t be a thickie. Self-redacting is just a dumb little power. It doesn’t mean you’re
operant.
Masses of normals have the healing thing.”

Dee was beginning to cry. “No—not that! I’ve got another new mindpower. I didn’t tell you. It came all of a sudden, when I didn’t even want it.”

“What, for chrissake?”

“I—I can farsense now. Hear people’s thoughts. It happened right after Mummie died.”

“Oh, shit,” whispered Ken. His breezy condescension gave way to real concern. “You’re sure?”

Dee nodded miserably. “And I think Gran suspects something. Maybe my aura’s different. A couple of times, she tried to ream me while I was asleep. Drilling really hard. She couldn’t get in, because a long time ago I learned to wake up whenever anyone poked at my screen while I was sleeping and not able to keep it strong. But if this minidoser medicine knocks me out, I won’t be
able
to wake up.”

Ken scowled, thinking hard. “Probably not … Damn! You know, if you really can farsense, even a little, then the law says you’re a head.”

“I know,” Dee wailed. “What am I going to do?”

Ken pondered the matter for a few moments more, and then a wily grin brightened his pale features. “You could try this,” he said, and told her his idea.

She was dubious. “What if Gran finds out that I tricked her?”

“Then you’ve given away one secret. But you said yourself that the other one was the most important.”

Dee sighed. “All right. I’ll try it. It
might
work …”

The new power had come upon Dee quite unexpectedly ten days earlier. Ever since then she had tried with all her strength to force it back into its mind-box—but she had failed.

Occasional flashes of this perilous metability had happened before, especially with Ken, but it had never lasted long. The permanent change had occurred on Islay, as she lay in bed in the hotel on the night after Mummie and the others were killed. By then, the awful events of the afternoon seemed more and more unreal, like a Tri-D horror show that was over and done with. She had cried a little when she said her prayers and was tucked in, since Gran had seemed to expect it. But lying there in the dark by herself, Dee didn’t feel terrified or ill anymore—only very tired and plagued with worrying thoughts.

Dead. Mummie was dead. She would never come back.

Dee had never known anyone to die before—not even a pet, since Mummie would never allow her to have one. Gran Masha had told the children that their mother’s mind had not simply vanished like a blown-out flame when her body died. Mummie’s mind was still alive. She had gone to join the great Mind of the
Universe, Gran said, together with all the creatures who had ever lived, in the special and very mysterious way that God had planned. Gran assured Dee that Mummie was very happy now.

The girl found that hard to understand, but she did not express her doubts to Gran Masha. Why was Mummie happy to have gone away from her and Kenny? Was it because they were not the sort of children she had really wanted? Had Mummie really not loved them at all, even though she said she did?

If Dee had not been so proud and stubborn, if she had done what the latency therapists had wanted—what her mother had wanted—would everything have happened differently?

“Would it, Mummie?” she whispered. Real tears scalded her eyes as she felt for the first time a pang of piercing loss. Was it somehow her own fault that the Kilnave Fiend had killed her mother and her uncle and aunt?

Dee listened with all her might, hoping for a reassuring answer.

And heard something.

The world inside her head was no longer silent.

At first there were only weird hisses and howling noises, seeming to become louder and louder, that did not sound human at all. Dee was terrified, thinking that it might be the Fiend itself. What if it had followed her and was lurking somewhere in the darkened hotel room? She lay frozen in her bed, too scared even to cry out. Then little by little the mental jumble softened and clarified into muttered words. Only words. Like many people talking all at once over a communicator.

Could it be Mummie after all, trying to speak to her from inside the crowded Mind of the Universe?

As the mental sounds became more distinct, Dee realized that someone was talking
about
Mummie … and about her … and about Ken … and about the police looking for the killer … and about being responsible for two motherless children while still doing her work at the University unless she let Dee and Ken live with Ian … and about Ian (who was Daddy) being hopelessly unsuitable …

Gran!

Dee was overhearing Gran’s thoughts as she lay sleepless in the next room.

It was farspeech—telepathy—and Dee hadn’t even opened any box!

She concentrated harder. The other peculiar noises became bits of thinking from other people in the hotel who were still
awake. Some thoughts were faint but exquisitely precise and clear, while others were blurry or twisted or rambling or an incomprehensible hodgepodge. Some of the hotel guests whose thoughts Dee could understand were worrying about things, like Gran was. Others were giving off wild and chaotic mental sounds and seemed to be very happy. A few were praying. One person was planning to sneak away without paying his bill.