Diamond Mask (Galactic Milieu Trilogy) (38 page)

“Damn prototype still weighs a ton. When it’s perfected it’ll be more comfortable.”

“What does the handset do?” She crept over and knelt beside him. A fine dew of perspiration had dampened the fine tendrils of raven hair in front of her ears and at her brow. Her lips, painted blood red, were tongue-dampened and the pupils of her eyes had become enormous.

“It’s a systems monitor that analyzes this and that and backs up the brainboard controls. It also has a deadman switch. If I drop it or if my hand pressure exceeds a preset level, the CE rig shuts down and a medic-alert squeal goes out.”

She reached out tentatively to touch the handset but he moved it out of reach. In spite of having his eyes covered, he was not at all blind inside the awesome golden casque. “Don’t be concerned about my safety. The thing works beautifully. Ready for a demo?”

“Oh, yes!”

“Here we go. Remember that what you see is no illusion, such as I might project with my ordinary gray cells, but an actual modification of matter and energy. I’ll need to concentrate. You sit still and just watch.”

She sank back onto her heels, her hands folded tightly over her breasts. The nipples were prominent and aching. She felt herself swelling and becoming moist as the anticipatory tension grew. Could he detect it? Probably not. His mind was completely rapt in his marvelous machine—

Oh my God.

Something was climbing out of the fire.

It was doll-sized, less than half a meter high, human in shape,
but apparently composed entirely of flames. She could see its tiny features, its fingers, even its miniature male sex. It glided over the fender, not touching the floor, and bowed with comical gravity toward the two human beings. Then it turned about and lifted both fiery arms like a dancer posing. A charred chunk of wood some ten centimeters square popped out of the grate and floated above the manikin’s hands. Rapidly, the charcoal shrank, glowing strangely blue as it hissed and smoked. When it resembled a black pea the fiery homunculus plucked it from mid-air and held it in both diminutive hands.

“Now for the difficult part,” Marc said.

The flame-being appeared to be compressing the ball of carbon, squeezing it and kneading it until it shrank further and was lost to sight within the little hands. Then the manikin bent down, placed something very small on the floor in front of the hearth, bowed again, and whisked back into the fireplace where it disappeared.

The log fire burned as usual. Marc took off the CE helmet, exhaled a deep breath, and ran his fingers through sweat-dampened curls. A line of bloody pinpricks was stitched across his forehead. On the floor, something crystalline sparkled.

“It’s quite cool now,” he said. “You can pick it up.”

In spite of herself, Lynell Rogers cried out, “It can’t be! You couldn’t possibly have done it.” She knelt and retrieved the glittering thing, a sharp-edged octahedron less than two millimeters long that flashed rainbow colors in the firelight. “Good Lord—it is!”

Marc shrugged, grinning. “It’s a diamond, all right. Very strange internal structure because I wanted it large enough for you to pick up easily. Take it and have it analyzed. Show it to your Dirigent. You might leave out the fiery sorcerer’s apprentice, though. I got a bit carried away.”

He set the helmet on the floor upside down, crouched beside her, and pointed out the crown-of-thorns electrodes inside the apparatus that had penetrated his brain. The wounds on his head were fast fading, healed by his redaction. At his suggestion, Lynelle opened her mind to his concise mental diagrams of the cerebroenergetic enhancer. Although Marc withheld critical technical details, the images were explicit in showing the CE rig’s mode of operation.

“It’s absolutely incredible,” she breathed. “What do you estimate is the maximum energy output you might generate at a macro level?”

“That kind of testing will have to wait until the prototype is completed. This hat is only a crudely built demonstration model. It wasn’t even operating at full capacity.”

Lynelle Rogers shook her head in wonderment, studying the little diamond in the palm of her hand. “Incredible,” she repeated in a whisper.

The Hydra struck with its coercion again:
Marc the fire is burning low. Put more wood on it. Now!

He arose, pulled an armful of logs from the caddy, tossed them into the grate, and bent down with the poker to restore a brisk blaze. When he was satisfied that the fresh fuel had caught fire, he turned back to Lynelle.

And found her wearing the helmet.

“Christ!” he exclaimed. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Her graceful, elegantly attired figure was incongruously crowned and blinded by the heavy metal headpiece. She held the controller in one hand and the diamond in the other. Her lips were slightly parted and her mind said:

Marc darling come to me this way.

MyGod
NO
you crazyfool you can’t—

Her natural creativity must have been enormous. Enhanced, it took possession of every extracerebral neuron in his body, paralyzing him, rendering him speechless. Momentarily, at least, he was unable to utter a farspoken cry or touch her with his psychokinesis. He might have broken the spell if he had called on the brute force of his coercion. Even creatively enhanced, her mind was no real match for his. But he held back. She offered no threat. What she wanted was glaringly clear, depicted in a dizzying series of erotic images that flooded his senses and ignited his imagination. What he had repressed, what he had denied now came alive with overpowering intensity. There was no anger or fear in his response, only tremendous excitement and need.

You see? she said, laughing. You are human after all. This will be very instructive very humbling and even though you are to forget the details of the catalysis the resultant will remain with you always!

Now come to me Marc.

Even at that point he might have withdrawn, sealing his mind behind a safe, impermeable barrier until he was able to regroup his faculties and regain self-control; something deep inside him was shouting a warning and urging him to do just that. But still he hesitated.

She lifted the tiny crystal.

The diamond, held before his eyes by two slender fingers tipped with gleaming scarlet lacquer. The diamond … seeming to expand until it filled the world with hot scintillation, the prismatic rays bathing him with exquisite pleasure.

He felt a delicious pain swell in the root of his being. Vital energies began surging up his spine in slow, ever-amplifying waves. His brain seemed to catch fire within a fierce, thundering rainbow. The crystalline lattice of the diamond was alive, piercing him, trapping him, becoming him. Crucified in light, his entire nervous system burned and screamed and sang, ultrasensitized to the point of torture. She was re-creating him and it hurt and it was marvelous and he wanted it more than anything in the world.

She was with him inside the diamond’s kaleidoscopic colors. They were twinned crystals, conjoined and vibrating to inhuman harmonies. The anguish and joy were consuming him, bringing him willingly to the edge of death.

Why are you doing this? he groaned. How do you know me so well to use me to torment me to make me
want
this?

I love you, she said. I hate you. And some day my dearest I’ll kill you in just this way.

Yes! he said. Oh, yes. Please.

Fool, she said from amidst the dreadful light, separating herself from him and abandoning him at the very brink. Someday, but not now. This is only to teach you who you are.

Alone, he fell willingly into the abyss.

The living diamond that was himself shattered. He came and all energy was spent and it was over.

Marc awoke. He was lying prone on the hearthrug in front of a grate full of dead ashes. The helmet and its accoutrements were on the floor next to him and the cabin was frigid and silent. He remembered nothing.

Pulling himself up, he muttered an obscenity. Every joint and muscle throbbed with pain. What the hell had happened? And what was the CE rig doing here, out of its pod?

He couldn’t possibly have used it to …

God.

But he must have. The signs were unmistakable.

Cursing himself and consumed with self-loathing, he limped off to the bathroom. Puzzling out this piece of idiocy could wait. All he wanted now was a long, hot shower.

T
HE WISH
L
UCILLE
C
ARTIER MADE AT
S
T.
B
RIGIT’S SPRING ON
S
T.
Patrick’s Day, 2063, came true. For five years the affairs of the Human Polity of the Galactic Milieu seemed to run peacefully, even though the Rebel faction continued to flourish and gained some distinguished new adherents. Human colonies grew apace, exotic-human relations continued to be cordial, and human philosophers and ethicists noodled away at the concept of Unity, making it more and more acceptable to the majority of operant Earthlings.

Rory Muldowney’s attack on Paul was a nine days’ wonder that was never publicized outside of Orb. A good many people took secret satisfaction in the dapper First Magnate’s comeuppance, and I admit to sniggering over it myself. It’s only human, after all, to enjoy the discombobulation of the high and mighty! But the Dirigent of Hibernia apologized handsomely once he sobered up, and no one believed Paul was actually responsible for Laura Tremblay’s death—even though nasty comparisons to the demise of Teresa Kendall were inevitable. Once the brief hullabaloo died down, Paul carried on his official duties effectively and efficiently.

However, he may have subsequently vetted the mental health of his mistresses with more care. No more ladies died for love of him.

The rest of the Remillards also dwelt in relative tranquillity during that half-decade, thanks largely to the fact that Marc had left New Hampshire and immured himself in his spiffy new CE laboratory in the Pacific Northwest, barring every family member except young Jack from the premises. Throughout this time
Marc was very closemouthed about his research progress. He did some kind of seismic tinkering on the planet Okanagon that allegedly staved off a large earthquake, but the event was publicized only in a paper he wrote for
Nature.

He socialized with the family only on special occasions and carried out his Concilium duties punctiliously but without distinction. Having turned Orb on its ear during his freshman outing, he now seemed content to rest on his oars. He apparently had nothing whatsoever to do with the Rebel faction.

The Dynasty was grateful but had no illusion that Marc’s quiescent phase would last for long. They had reluctantly agreed to let the Remillard Family Foundation finance the lion’s share of Marc’s mind-boosting research since the alternative—he had threatened to move the project lock, stock, and barrel to Okanagon—would have given them no control over him whatsoever. As it was, from time to time Marc’s associate Pete Dalembert, Jr., would unveil a formidable new piece of cerebroenergetic equipment to the admiring metapsychic establishment and license its manufacture by Remco Industries or some other commercial outfit.

The Concilium passed stiff laws regulating the use of creative CE. Certain viewers-with-alarm still voiced their opposition to the entire concept of artificial augmentation of creative mindpowers. But the equipment proved exceptionally useful in many different fields, and fatalities among its operators were within reasonable limits, so Marc was able to carry on his work virtually without interference. He fulfilled his promise to Dirigent Patricia Castellane by training numbers of Okanagon’s Grand Master Creators in CE techniques. Their crudely metaconcerted modification of an unstable chunk of crust on that planet in 2066 was hailed as a geophysical triumph of the first order.

Jack the Bodiless absorbed every single academic discipline that Dartmouth College had to offer within three years of matriculation, and then turned his voracious, polymathic young mind loose upon other top institutions of learning. He simultaneously did clinical work with his Aunt Catherine, wrote a book on colonial economics with his Uncle Maurice, and coauthored a monograph on novel aspects of metaconcert design in collaboration with Denis. Although Ti-Jean rarely spoke of it, he also worked closely with Marc for many years, until his older brother’s increasing obsession with the Mental Man concept caused a tragic rift between the two of them.

All throughout his life, Jack would continue to absorb knowledge as though it were an essential nutrient—and perhaps, to him, it was.

Ti-Jean was scrupulous in maintaining his simulacrum of physical normality in the presence of outsiders and grew up to be an attractive teenager, of medium height and build and pleasant but unexceptional appearance. His hair was usually black and his eyes vivid blue, and he ate and drank and peed and shat and breathed and perspired and slept and behaved just like a natural boy … some of the time.

We in the family did have to put up with episodes of adolescent experimentation, in which he concocted and wore every sort of body imaginable in order to “attain empathy with fellow beings,” going about incognito behind his totally impregnable mind-screen. Sometimes he became female; sometimes he disguised himself as an adult. He took on the decrepitude of extreme old age and also inhabited forms that were diseased or imperfect so that he could experience the limitations of the human condition. He tried out exotic bodies, too, and even experimented with animal shapes—confessing to me once that he greatly enjoyed being feline, prowling the back fences of Hanover with my Maine Coon cat, Marcel LaPlume.

His one great frustration was his failure to make mental contact with the girl Dorothea Macdonald. Jack’s stupendous farsight had been able to view her ever since he first learned of her existence by eavesdropping on his Lylmik examiners in 2063; but if she was aware of his persistent telepathic calls she never gave any sign.