Diamond Mask (Galactic Milieu Trilogy) (37 page)

Marc only shrugged.

She unbuttoned the wrist slits of her long black kidskin gloves and slipped her hands out, then fluffed up the extravagant corkscrew curls of her gorgone hairstyle. “I’m not a Rebel myself, but there are a good many people on my planet who are. They should be able to speak their minds freely. Calling an honest difference of opinion treasonous—trying to outlaw open debate—is an outrage. We might as well be back under the Simbiari Proctorship. The First Magnate made a serious mistake cosponsoring that bill.”

She was dressed in an Empire gown of white silk gauze, high-waisted, with short puffed sleeves and floating panels embroidered in silver and red. A black ribbon centered with a tiny silvery Medusa encircled her pale throat.

Together they went to the fire. Before Marc could pull up another chair Lynelle Rogers sank down gracefully onto the hearthrug, pulled off her red dancing slippers, and arranged them so that the snow-dampened soles would dry. “You should keep your walk shoveled,” she chided him, “or turn on the melting grid. Does summer ever come in Alpenland Enclave?”

“Sorry. For that, you have to go to Edelweiss on the other side of our fake Swiss mountains. Would you like something hot to warm the cockles?”

“I’d love it. Alcoholic, please. It’s cold out there.” She drew off the gloves and set them aside.

He got two clean mugs and added sweet butter, cinnamon sticks, and Jamaica rum, then swung the crane away from the flames and tipped the spout of a steaming cast-iron teakettle with his bare fingers.

She gave a cry of warning. “Look out! You’ll burn yourself!”

“No, I won’t.” He added boiling water, stirred with his PK, and handed the cup to her.

“Oh …” Her laughter was apologetic. “How silly of me. Of course a little thing like a red-hot iron teakettle wouldn’t faze a Paramount Grand Master Creator. I suppose you could pick up the flaming logs in the fireplace if you felt like it.”

“You must forgive my momentary breach of decorum. The potholder was accidentally burnt up when my little brother was messing around here last week and I forgot to order another. I try to conform to civilized operant behavior most of the time.”

“What a shame,” she murmured slyly. He was wearing a flannel
shirt, jeans, and a pair of beaded moccasins over bare feet. When he had finished making his own drink she patted the rug beside her. “Sit down here with me and tell me what you’ll be doing now that the Concilium session is over. Someone said you were thinking of leaving academia and taking your E15 project into the private sector.”

He settled himself so he could look into the fire and sipped the aromatic drink. “I may as well tell you. It won’t be a secret for long. I’m resigning my professorship at Dartmouth College. The trustees and faculty have always regarded me as a maverick who doesn’t play by the rules—and that’s almost a hanging offense at an Ivy League Earth college. They’ve been scared to death by the political implications of high creativity enhancement. The fact that creativity is the most fundamental of the metapsychic powers, able to influence all of the others and embracing an enormous spectrum of faculties, shivers their livers. They’re afraid my E15 might be misused by some galaxy-class nutcase bent on causing a new Ice Age or a modification of continental drift or some such thing.”

Her eyes widened. “Does the equipment have that potential?”

“Hardly. Not even an augmented paramount mind could do those things—if it was mad enough to want to. It’s true that the E15 might be abused, but so might any number of other sophisticated devices or processes.”

“You’d find a very different attitude toward your project on my world,” Lynelle Rogers said softly. “Dirigent Patricia Castellane was fascinated when she learned about it. Okanagon is one of those planets with anomalous crustal plates—like Caledonia and Eskval-Herria and Satsuma. As I understand it, high-creative CE might eventually provide a way of stabilizing the planetary lithosphere and preventing seismic disasters—if enough grandmaster operators learn to use the equipment properly and focus shaped energies in metaconcert.”

Marc eyed her with surprise. “You’re right—but I don’t recall anything published in the literature that mentions
metaconcerted
CE. My own paper on the subject is still going the rounds of the journal editors and being viewed with jaundiced eyes.”

“We aren’t hicks on Okanagon. We have an outstanding science establishment and we keep a close watch on research topics that are likely to be of critical interest to our survival. Including yours.”

“I had no idea your spies were on to me,” he teased.

But Lynelle was deadly serious. “Metaconcerted creativity is
obviously the next step once the limits of individual enhancement of the faculty are reached. One presumes that you don’t intend to limit the E15 to Paramount Grand Masters.”

“Certainly not. A grandmasterclass creator would be able to use it safely even now. The only serious hazard would be to an operator who lacked focusing ability or badly misjudged his creative talent. But it will be years before metaconcert programs can be designed for CE equipment. Even bare-brain operants are still fumbling around, trying to get the hang of choral thinking. In theory, a genuinely efficient combination of minds would produce a synergistic effect: a whole greater than the sum of the individual parts.”

Lynelle was staring at the leaping flames. “Yes. I understand that.”

“But even without multiple operators, CE creativity shows great promise for minor geophysical applications. Seismic forces are delicate and subtle. No conventional energy-beam or explosive that we have is fine enough or immediately variable enough to exert the tuned and shaped pressures needed to avert dangerous earthquakes or change the devastating nature of volcanic or diatrematic eruptions. But an enhanced mind, working like an intelligent, large-scale laser scalpel, just might do the job. Of course that’s only one possible application of creative CE. Uses for the equipment are virtually unlimited.”

“I wonder why the exotic races never developed cerebroenergetic enhancement.”

“God knows. Lack of imagination, perhaps. I’ll tell you another of my disreputable opinions: I think the Milieu is rather stodgy, and the Lylmik who run it are a senile race of mystics on a downhill slide. Maybe their motive for dragging humanity into their confederation was to give it a well-needed shot of élan vital.”

She nodded slowly. “It’s plausible. They’ve said often enough that they need us. But I wonder if we really need them? So much of the Galactic Milieu smacks of well-intentioned tyranny. The Rebel faction believes that humanity is actually being retarded in its psychosocial evolution by exotic restrictions. It’s true that the exotics probably saved us from self-destruction fifty years ago and gave us a great scientific leg up. But by now our science and technology have passed theirs in almost every area, our social problems are nearly solved, and our larger colonial planets are completely self-sufficient. Is the Milieu still good for us
now?
I don’t know the answer.”

Marc did not offer an opinion. They were both silent for several minutes, savoring the fragrant rum. Finally she said: “Here’s just one example of Milieu bungling: Our world Okanagon is really a great place—provided that you don’t look too deep underground. It never should have been granted cosmop status and made a main focus of colonization because it has an unstable crust. The Krondaku team that checked it out four thousand years ago were incompetents. A whole group of other worlds in the same stellar region—Satsuma, Yakutia, Eskval-Herria, Caledonia—were also improperly surveyed and suffer the same kind of instability. Of course we humans never doubted the Milieu evaluation when they told us to colonize those planets. Serious anomalies on Okanagon weren’t discovered until 2058, when a comprehensive geological survey was done with new equipment developed on Earth. By then our population had mushroomed to over a billion. Okanagon is a Sector Base and the home of the Twelfth Fleet and one of the most highly developed human colonies. It would be economically disastrous to abandon the planet and start all over. Nobody seriously suggests that we should … yet. Most exotic Milieu geophysicists think that the likelihood of a truly catastrophic incident is small. Our late Dirigent, Rebecca Perlmutter, accepted that judgment and was inclined to minimize the danger. But a significant minority of planetologists—all human, of course—believe there’s room for real concern. Dirigent Castellane takes their opinion extremely seriously. I’m certain that your research would receive unlimited funding if you’d relocate to our planet.”

“Castellane told you to sound me out.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Yes. Even though we knew nothing of your problems with Dartmouth College.” Lynelle set her cup down. She examined one of her drying shoes, then moved both of them further from the heat. “You’ll be receiving an official invitation once we return home. As a senior member of the Dirigent’s staff and an acquaintance of yours, I was asked to introduce the idea to you before you left Orb.”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t accept. I’ve made other plans.”

“Please reconsider! We’d appreciate your genius on Okanagon, Marc. There’d be no irksome academic or political restrictions. You’d have an unlimited budget, carte blanche in facilities and personnel—”

“You probably know that I come from an affluent family. I have abundant funds of my own in trust that are available, and
the Remillard Foundation is one of the wealthiest on Earth. I intend to ask the Foundation to help fund the new independent research institute that I’ll head.” He hesitated, then added, “When the time comes to test the E15 equipment on geophysical applications, I promise to give Okanagon top priority.”

“Oh, thank you! Thank you so very, very much …” She flung her arms around him and kissed his lips. He was momentarily taken aback, but then laughed and gently extricated himself from the embrace. But she insisted on nestling close beside him and somehow he could not find it in himself to object. For a time they discussed technicalities of the crust-modification process, but then they sat quietly together staring into the flames. Her head with the mass of gleaming ebony curls rested against his shoulder. The firelight had turned her filmy gown and pale skin to gold.

“Dearest Marc,” she said finally. “I knew you’d be willing to help us. The people of my planet will express their gratitude later. But I—I wish you’d let me show my own appreciation now.”

Her hand began to move along his thigh. It was caught by his psychokinesis and held immobile. She gave a soft moan of frustration.

“Marc, I want you so very much! More than any man I’ve ever known. I’ve felt an attraction from the first moment we met. We’d be so good together! You know we would.”

“You’re a lovely woman, Lynelle, and very appealing. But I think not.”

She sighed, withdrawing her hand reluctantly as his mind released it. “Are you gay, then, like your brother Luc?”

“No. But I’m different from the other men you’ve known. With very different needs. Perhaps someday I’ll welcome the physical pleasures of sex, but not now. It would be a distraction, a diversion of vital energies needed elsewhere.”

She rounded on him sharply. “Paramount Grand Masters can’t be bothered with vulgar fucking! Is that the way it is? Or are you like Merlin—the greatest wizard of them all unless you succumb to a woman?”

Marc only tossed off the last of his rum and climbed to his feet. He did not offer to help her up. “Thanks for coming to say goodbye. And I appreciate your telling me about Okanagon’s support of my work. No hard feelings?”

Her voice was tremulous now as she looked up at him, forcing a smile. “No hard feelings. I’m sorry I barked at you. I
hope we can say au revoir rather than goodbye. I—I’d like to show you Okanagon someday. As a friend.” Still seated on the rug, she began to put on her shoes. Suddenly she halted, as if struck by a thought, and gazed up at him in eager hopefulness. “Marc, there is one other thing you could do, if you would. A consolation prize.”

One winged eyebrow lifted quizzically.

“Show me your new E15 helmet,” she pleaded. “All Orb was buzzing about it after you did your demonstration before the magnates of the Science Directorate. Would you—could you—show me just a little of how it works?” Say you will do it!

Say you will do it!

SAY YOU WILL DO IT.

Marc’s deep-set gray eyes seemed to glaze for an instant. When he spoke, the words came haltingly. “It … might be … possible … if you’re really interested.”

She was standing now, charged with excitement. “It would be thrilling to see you demonstrate it. I could give my own confidential report to the Dirigent.”

“That might be … useful.”

He turned away and went to the other side of the little hut’s main-floor living area, rooting among a stack of luggage awaiting transfer to the Human Terminal. A moment later he returned carrying an impressive-looking transport pod with a prominent label:

CAUTION—INTERNAL SIGMA SHIELD
DO NOT ATTEMPT TO OPEN THIS POD WITHOUT CODE
OR CONTENTS WILL BE DESTROYED

He gently bit his lower lip to dislodge a few cells, then licked his finger and poked it into the code aperture. There was a ping and the container cracked open like a clamshell. A small puff of smoke confirmed that the decoder had sterilized itself and awaited the next DNA sample.

Lynelle said, “You protect your valuables well. But what if someone simply ran off with the entire pod? There are surely ways of breaking the code or deactivating a sigma that small, given time and resources.”

“Not in this setup. I designed it myself. It responds to my DNA, my fingerprint, and my mental signature. The sigma itself has fifteen backup levels—and five are programmed to micronuke at the least hint of tampering. Illegal to ship a pod
like this on a civilian transport. It’ll go home to Earth on a diplomatic courier.”

“Oh, my,” she whispered.

Marc opened the pod fully. Inside the padded interior was the prototype CE helmet, a grotesque golden thing with portions of its operating systems mounted nakedly on the exterior for ease in experimentation. The container also held a small fusion power generator with cables, and a device resembling a handheld computer. Marc carried the equipment to his chair by the fire, plugged the helmet into its energy source, and fiddled with the handset. When he was satisfied he sat down and donned the helmet. It engulfed all of his head except the facial area below the eyes and was nearly as bulky as an old-fashioned hard-hat diving helmet.