Diamond Mask (Galactic Milieu Trilogy) (23 page)

When Dee got tired of listening she shut off the strands of farspeech one by one until her mind was quiet again. Then, awed and fascinated (but not yet frightened) by this new ultrasense, she brought the thoughts all back in a great snarl and practiced focusing on them individually. It was fun, and she quickly became adept.

Did operant people hear things like this all the time? And why had the new power come upon her so suddenly, without her wanting it?

Unfortunately, the angel remained silent as ever, although she did have the feeling that he was smiling triumphantly at her as she finally fell asleep.

The next day, before she and Gran and Ken went to the Bowmore police station to be formally questioned, Dee crept into the little hotel snuggery and called up a reference on farsensory latency from the data unit. The plaque she obtained from the dispenser turned out to be an article written for grownups, but she understood enough of it to realize that the shock and fear she had suffered had probably caused the telepathy box in her mind to open all by itself. Neither the therapists nor Gran Masha had ever hinted to her that this sort of thing might happen.

From the article she also learned that there were different kinds of mental speech with differing degrees of “loudness” or perceptibility. Blatant subvocal speech, farspoken shouts in the imperative mode, and casual declamatory mode conversation were so intense that even nonoperants might sometimes perceive them. The hardest to pick up were private narrow-beam thoughts precisely directed along another operant person’s intimate mental pathway. She had obviously been hearing the loudest kind of telepathy.

Then she had read the words that made her heart sink:
Farsensing is the major indicator of metapsychic operancy.

She knew what that meant. She was no longer a deadhead, no longer a normal, even though most of her powers were still safely imprisoned in their boxes. If Gran or any other operant
adult ever found out that she was telepathic, she would surely be sent back to the therapists. And even worse—

Ken might be allowed to go live with Daddy on Caledonia; but unless she kept this new power of hers a secret,
she
would be forced to stay on Earth.

By acting dazed with grief (which wasn’t really very hard to do), Dee managed to fool everyone at the police station. She hid behind her blue mind-screen almost all of the time and only came “out” to answer direct questions. Not even the handsome, grandly dressed First Magnate or the Krondak Magistratum official realized that she could read their minds when they made casual declamatory telepathic comments to each other about the case.

Dee found out that the terrible black dream-monster she’d called the Kilnave Fiend was really a thing named Hydra, somehow made of the put-together minds of four wicked adults—including John Quentin and Magdala MacKendal. The Hydra had lived in the spooky big farmhouse at Sanaigmore, just as she had suspected. Dee learned the names of the other two people who made up the Hydra, and she discovered that it had killed many other people, not just Mummie and Aunt Rowan and Uncle Robbie.

All the while that she eavesdropped on the others’ thoughts, she kept perfect control of her features and her actions so no one would realize that she was listening. It had been hardest of all for her to keep a straight face when the Krondaku told the First Magnate that the Hydra had escaped and was no longer on Earth.

Now she didn’t have to worry about it getting her!

When the questioning was finally over, Dee and Ken and Gran had been allowed to go back home to Edinburgh. Two days later, they all dressed up and went to church, even though it wasn’t Sunday. The place was full of people from the University, and up front, on a stand in the sanctuary, were three small boxes that Gran said held the ashes of Mummie, Uncle Robbie, and Aunt Rowan.

After the Requiem Mass they got into groundcars and went to the cemetery, where the boxes were put into little holes in the ground, surrounded by bouquets of flowers. The priest said in his last prayer that the chemical elements that Mummie and Uncle Robbie and Aunt Rowan had borrowed for a while to use in their bodies now had to be returned to the Earth to be used again
by other living things. He reminded everybody that those same elements had been made billions of years ago, long before there was even a solar system, when an ancient star exploded in a supernova and scattered its ashes into space. All living things, the priest said, had bodies made from the recycled dust of dead stars; but the minds that bloomed spontaneously into the vital-mental lattices when elements from the matter-energy lattices combined in space-time to make a living thing were completely unique and immortal.

Dee found the notion of being made from Stardust very interesting. While the people standing around the graves were saying goodbye to each other, she whispered to Ken that she thought it was too bad that Mummie’s elements would only become soil for cemetery flowers and trees to grow in.

“When
I
die,” she confided, “I want my elements to help make a new star!”

“You’re daft,” Ken hissed angrily. His face was stained with tears. “Stark staring crackers.” He stooped, picked up something from among the tree roots, and thrust it into her hand. “This is what you’ll make when you die. Squirrel food!”

“Hush,” said Gran Masha. “Behave yourselves for just a little longer.”

Dee had looked at the acorn for a long time. Then she had put it carefully into her coat pocket.

The children were allowed to bring only a few things along with them on the starship journey to Caledonia. Dee had been content to let Gran pick out her clothes. The things she chose for herself included her goosedown bed pillow, a little plass boîte of flecks that held her favorite books, a china cat called Moggie that was her mascot, the acorn from the cemetery, which she intended to plant on Daddy’s farm, and her most prized possession—a lapel pin with a bent clasp that she had found glittering on an Edinburgh sidewalk one rainy day last fall. It had the shape of a domino mask and was entirely encrusted with rhinestones. Even though Ken had scoffed, Dee remained convinced that it was a piece of valuable lost treasure, and she was sure that the stones were real diamonds.

She also begged Ken to let her carry Daddy’s picture. Looking at it, she told him earnestly, would help her not to be scared on the trip. He made fun of that idea, too, but finally gave in when she promised to let him look at the old photo whenever he wanted to.

When everything was finally ready, Gran had taken Dee and Ken to Unst Starport in the Shetland Islands, where the three of them boarded the ship that would take them to Caledonia. It was going to take fourteen Earth days to travel the 533 lightyears in daily leaps of about 40 df.

Every single day they would go in and out of hyperspace. And Gran would make Dee take the medicine that would leave her mind and her secrets exposed … unless Ken’s idea worked.

When the captain’s image appeared on the Tri-D monitor in their stateroom about an hour after subluminal lift-off, warning that the first hop into hyperspace was imminent, Gran Masha got out the packet of minidosers. She let Ken hold one of the tiny green pillow-shaped things to his temple and press it with his thumb. A hair-thin needle sprang out of the doser’s underside, pricked him painlessly, and injected the drug. Ken fell at once into a deep sleep.

“Let me do it to myself, too,” Dee pleaded. “I’m not afraid.”

“Very well,” said Gran. “Be sure to put the side with the white circle next to your skin, and then press hard.”

But Dee only pretended to inject herself, letting the little green doser fall into the crevice between her recliner-couch’s seat and armrest just as she had planned, so Gran would not see that it was still full. She flopped back dramatically and closed her eyes with a slight sigh as Ken had, then she withdrew into her comforting rosy redactive pool and awaited the passage into the gray limbo. She heard faint noises as Gran sat down at the stateroom desk and rustled some durofilm printouts. The ship’s low displacement factor would hardly bother Gran at all. She had said she would try to get a little work done while the children had their nap.

There was a peculiar snapping sensation, a
zang
and then a
zung.
And then the ship’s captain announced that they were through the upsilon-field gateway and safe on their catenary, taking a shortcut through space-time faster than the speed of light.

Dee had felt no pain. None at all, although Gran had said that even the most powerful adult operants usually experienced a little twinge as they entered hyperspace—

“Oh, Dorothea. Why didn’t you tell me?”

Dee lifted her eyelids the least crack. Gran Masha was standing over her. “Don’t bother pretending. I know you’re not asleep. Why have you hidden this from me?”

Dee opened her eyes the rest of the way. “Hidden what?”

“Your self-redacting ability. That’s what it is, isn’t it?” Gran knelt beside the couch. “You silly, silly child! If you’d taken the medication, your aura would have changed—and it didn’t. And since you obviously felt no pain at the translation … How long have you been operant in the self-redacting metafaculty? Tell me the truth!”

“Since—since the ferryboat trip to Islay,” Dee admitted.

“How did it happen?”

Dee avoided her grandmother’s trenchant gaze. “I—well—I just wanted not to be seasick anymore. And I wasn’t.” She could feel Gran trying with all her strength to get inside her head, trying to find out the truth. Gran’s coercion was much more powerful than that of Mummie or the therapists, but the blue shield held fast. Because of the new power, Dee could also “hear” Masha’s blaring telepathic questions:

Can you perceive my mindspeech Dorothea can you hear me? Can you use the redactivepower on others as well as yourself? Do you have other new metafunctions? Are you breaking through into fulloperancy? Answerme Dorothea answerme!

The five-year-old girl’s face was a picture of childish sincerity. Her desperate fear was masked by the impregnable mind-screen. “The redact power isn’t really special, Gran. I just found out I could wish away bad feelings. Like when something hurts or makes me feel yucky.”

Dorothea can you hear me?

Dee sat up and carefully put the minidoser she had concealed onto the table beside her couch. “Can I go to the observation lounge? The captain said we could look at the gray limbo there. Will Kenny wake up soon? I know he’d like to see the limberlost, too.”

ANSWER ME CHILD CAN YOU HEAR MY MINDSPEECH?

Yes, she could. And she was so terror-stricken that she could hardly speak—but she was careful to give no outward sign of it.

“Please, can I go to the observation lounge?” she repeated in a tremulous whisper, edging toward the stateroom door. “I—I really want to see the gray limbo.”

Gran caught her by the hand, her green-crystal eyes bright with a compulsive power that Dee had never before experienced. Telepathic questions amplified by coercion thundered in Dee’s mind, smashing against her blue barrier like storm waves battering a cliff.

ANSWERANSWERANSWER!
“Dorothea, listen to me!”
YOU MUSTANSWER!
“If there is a chance that you are becoming
spontaneously operant to a significant degree, then it’s important that we continue your therapy. On Earth. We won’t go to the doctors in Edinburgh anymore, the ones you don’t like. We’ll go to Catherine Remillard in America. She’s a kind, wonderful woman. You’ll like her. Please, dear! You must let me know if you can perceive farspeech. You must.”
TELLME TELLME TELLME!

No! I won’t! Angel, make me stronger! Help me …

TELL ME THE TRUTH!
Gran’s full coercive strength demanded.
ANSWER ANSWER ANSWER!

Dee’s mind-screen held in spite of her mortal terror. The angel helped her prop it up.

Dee managed to smile at her grandmother. Her face was open and innocent. “I really want to live with Daddy, not on Earth. I’m mostly normal, Gran. Just like him … Can I go to the lounge now?”

Gran let go of Dee’s hand. “Yes,” she said in a dull, defeated tone. The formidable coercer had retreated. “You may go. But there’s nothing much to see. Limbo is really a very frustrating state. Neither being nor nonbeing.”

She turned away to take care of Ken, who was tossing and mumbling as he began to regain consciousness.

Giddy with relief, Dee hurried off along the narrow, silent corridors, stopping from time to time to look at illuminated diagrams with blinking
YOU ARE HERE
dots. She only met one other person, a member of the crew who grinned and gave her a playful salute before entering one of the cargo holds. Before the door closed behind him, Dee caught a glimpse of yellow rhocraft with checkered belts standing in rows like gigantic Easter eggs: new flying taxis bound for Caledonia. Gran Masha had told the children that the ship carried vital necessities such as road-building equipment, embryonic livestock, medicines, and also things that simply made life more pleasant on a frontier world—Monopoly games, Italian shoes, Swiss wrist-coms, and special foods like oranges and pineapple and chocolate that would not grow on the Scottish planet. Perhaps the strangest cargo was a shipment of empty sherry barrels from Spain. They were needed for one of Caledonia’s most important industries—whisky-making!

The CSS Drumadoon Bay was gigantic, like most commercial starships, over 400 meters long. It was also very old, being one of the first colonial merchantmen built by humanity after the advanced science of the Galactic Milieu revolutionized Earth astronautics
overnight. A freighter with limited and spartan passenger accommodations, it had offered the cheapest fare to Caledonia. Masha had been quietly furious when she discovered that Daddy had sent a pair of economy-class tickets for Dee and Ken, relegating them to the open cabin. Fortunately, the professor was able to upgrade and get the three of them a small stateroom. The first-class accommodations had mostly been snapped up by miners, xenobiologists, civil engineers, salvage archaeologists, medical specialists, and other professionals who had contracted for limited tours of duty on the rugged ethnic planet. There were also sixty new settlers among the passengers, but most of them traveled in economy class, sleeping in cubbyholes hardly larger than teleview booths when they were not amusing themselves in the recreation rooms or eating in the common mess.