Diamond Mask (Galactic Milieu Trilogy) (50 page)

“Suppose,” she said softly, “that this overly modest High Five who can tune his aura at will is an infiltrator, all right—but not for the Lylmik. Suppose he’s one of Fury’s Hydra-units, manipulating the Okanagon Dirigent and the Rebels on her planet for Fury’s purposes. Up to a point, the Rebels
are
Fury’s allies, you know. Both want humanity out of the Milieu.”

I had to agree. “But how the devil could you prove your spy is a Hydra?”

“By going to Okanagon and checking out this character’s mind myself,” she replied, cool as you please.

“A Hydra on Okanagon—and you want to
check him out?
Ne dis pas de conneries!”

“Don’t worry, it won’t be dangerous. This person will never know I’ve touched his mind. No more than you or the other Remillards did. I can even do an MP assay without a trace. I’m a top-gun redactor, Uncle Rogi.”

I lifted my eyes to heaven at this piece of offhanded conceit, but the cherubim with the fiery swords were out to lunch.

“There are a few little problems connected with the Okanagon trip,” the little idiot admitted. “I can easily get away for a couple of weeks without my grandparents or the Institute preceptors knowing it, but I’m still a minor and I have no legitimate excuse to leave Earth. I need an adult traveling companion to stave off
suspicion during the starship voyage and the port formalities at takeoff and landing—to say nothing of help getting into Dirigent House once we’re on the planet. My father, the only other person I trust absolutely, can’t go with me. It’s harvesttime on Caledonia, and after that’s over he’ll have to attend Assembly sessions. He’s an IA now.”

I gave a horrified squawk, finally seeing where all of this was leading. “Absolutely not! I refuse categorically—”

She sailed on. “Dad will be happy to pay for the starship tickets, though. He’s as determined as I am to apprehend my mother’s murderers. You and I can travel to Okanagon on a Poltroyan ship with a very high df and be there and back inside of six days. I can redact any pain you might suffer during the tight-leash hops.”

“Why don’t you just go to the goddam planet invisible? Or fuzz your identity psychocreatively!”

“Neither would work. Sensors on the ship would detect my mass. And I wouldn’t be able to conduct the probe and mentally conceal myself at the same time. I’ll have to get reasonably close to the guy wearing an ordinary wig-and-makeup disguise. You could stay at a safe distance, of course.”

“When were you intending to make this trip?” I cleverly conveyed seesaw vibes, hinting that I might be starting to cave in.

“Just as soon as I finish my dissertation on hierarchical lattices in tau-field coupling. Say, two weeks from now. The first week in November.”

I uttered a sigh of spurious near-capitulation. “Did it slip your mind that there are three more Hydras hiding somewhere in the woodpile? They’re probably
all
High Fives! In metaconcert, the quartet would certainly be able to zap you to scrapple—even if you are a bush-league paramount. And Hydra would cook my poor old goose for damn sure if you roused its suspicions—no matter how I tried to hide.”

My cowardice provoked a pitying smile. “If I can probe members of the Remillard Dynasty without their knowing it, I can do the same to a Hydra.”

“You’ve got to promise,” I muttered, “that you won’t try anything with this suspect unless we can get close to him in some public place.”

Quick as lightning, she flung her arms around me and planted a kiss on my cheek. “I promise! You won’t be sorry you helped me, Uncle Rogi.”

“I hope to hell not …” The woodpecker was at work again,
and I got out my image recorder and started fiddling with it, careful to keep my mental screen at max.

“There’s no assurance this man is a Hydra-unit, of course,” Dorothée said in an odd tone of voice. “He could be perfectly innocent or even an agent of the Lylmik like Gran thought. But if he does turn out to be one of Fury’s henchmen, I’ll be well on the way to nabbing the rest of them as well.”

“How? The others could be on any human world in the Milieu.”

“I have something Fury wants very much.
Me!
And if it can’t have me, if I break off the games I’ve been playing with it and tell it to go to hell …” She turned away, but not before I had seen a new look on her face, as grim as that of a mountaineer who must conquer a lengthy, mortally dangerous pitch if the climb is not to end in failure.

Suddenly I knew what Dorothée’s long-range scheme was. My appalled expression gave away what my screened mind concealed.

“That’s right, Uncle Rogi. If I deliberately reject Fury, it will send Hydra to kill me. But if I know the true mental signature of even one of the units, I’ll be ready for them.”

“Jésus! You’re hardly more than a child, Dorothée! The Hydras are—”

“I know what they are,” she said bleakly. “I met two of them face to face and I … perceived … all four of them just after they’d committed the murders in Scotland. Fury can change the superficial mental signatures of the Hydras, which is why they’ve been able to remain at large. But it can’t change their true metapsychic complexus—the total assay of higher faculties in each mind. The MPC is unique in every mature operant. Even more individual than a DNA scan. Ordinarily, only an expert in coercive-redactive probing can fully analyze an adult mind, and Milieu law requires the consent of the probee before the procedure can be carried out. But of course, I don’t face those limitations.”

“Ça n’a pas de nom!” I wagged my head at the gall of her.

She flashed me a sudden smile, supremely self-confident. But an instant later her mask was back in place and when she spoke, her voice was low and intense. “I’ll never forget what my ultrasenses showed me that day in the Islay death-cave. At the time, I couldn’t understand what was happening. I was like a baby hearing some horrible off-key chord of music played by a symphony orchestra. I had no idea what kind of instruments
were making the sound, much less the harmonic pattern of the metaconcert—which is analogous to the intricate vibrations of the air molecules that actually produce musical sounds.”

“But you did remember the whole? The—the song of the Hydra?”

“I remember.”

“Could you transfer the data to another operant mind?”

She shook her head. “I won’t.”

“I see.” But something still puzzled me. “Why do you need to go to Okanagon, then? Why risk probing this guy when you could flush the Hydra out at any time simply by telling Fury to take a flying fibrillation?”

“It would be a safety precaution. If I probe this individual and discover that he’s a Hydra-unit, my knowing his true mental signature will enable me to track him with my farsight. In time, I’d learn the identity of the other units through him—”

I brightened. “Then you could blow the whistle on them without baiting a trap with yourself!”

She shook her head. “I’d still have to let Hydra come after me. My evidence would have been obtained illegally. My private convictions are insufficient grounds for making a citizen’s arrest—or even reporting the suspects to the Magistratum as possible perps of the Islay murders.”

The pileated woodpecker hammered again, drilling after some hapless grub that thought itself safe deep within a mass of solid wood.

“For the final confrontation,” I said, with forlorn hope, “I presume you’d find some way to bring in the authorities.”

Dorothée brushed lunch debris from her jeans. She opened her daypack, took out her own camera, and peered through it, adjusting the settings using me as the subject. Her face was concealed behind the device as she said, “I haven’t decided yet. I won’t let Hydra escape, if that’s what’s worrying you.”

That was hardly my principal concern, but I had no intention of letting her know that. Secure within my mental ramparts, I tried frantically to think of the best way to stop the child from committing this piece of suicidal folly. And of course there was my own precious ass to consider, too. All very well for her to say I could keep out of the way while she did her mental assault; but Hydra
knew
me. If Mister High Five caught Dorothée in the act, it would be child’s play for him to discover who’d brought her to Okanagon. Then good night, nurse!

Two weeks.

I had a little over two weeks to come up with some way to forestall the trip to Okanagon. I couldn’t stop her all by myself. I needed help—and from a magnum cranium that couldn’t possibly be Fury.

Only one person filled the bill. If I called him today, he’d either come to the rescue in his private express starship or think of some other way to checkrein Dorothée. Meanwhile, I’d have to hide out so the crazy kid couldn’t catch me with my screen down and uncover my ploy.

I’d go to Kauai! To Malama Johnson, pretending it was just an innocent visit to an old friend. Dorothée might be able to track me there with her ultrasenses, but the powerful Hawaiian kahuna woman would keep me safe from kidnapping or premature bean-spilling.

Until Ti-Jean came to the rescue …

“Would you rather go home now, Uncle Rogi?” Dorothée had the grace to look slightly ashamed of herself for having bullied me.

“Not on your life!” I said cheerfully. “Let’s go snap that damned woodpecker. You get a farsight fix and I’ll work out the best way to sneak up on it without scaring it away. I’m pretty good at that sort of thing.”

Ti-Jean figured out a way to save both of us, but it was a close squeak.

He was on Satsuma with Marc, winding up an important CE geophysical project. When I called him via subspace from Kauai, got him to focus his ultrasense on me, and farspoke him the lunatic scheme of Dorothée, it took him a full half-minute to figure out how to salvage the situation.

His mind said to me: Our work here on the Japanese world has been a great success. We managed to avert a seismic catastrophe and we’re heroes. I don’t think there’s a piece of fireworks left unburnt on the entire planet. Now here’s my plan: Marc wants to celebrate the triumph with his research associates and friends as soon as we get back to Earth. He’s going to throw a big Halloween party at his place on Orcas Island. See that you and the girl come, and I’ll take care of the rest.

When I televiewed Dorothée and invited her to the party, she very nearly refused to attend. But I wheedled her insidiously, pointing out that she’d asked for my help—and here I was, offering her an unprecedented chance to catch the entire Remillard
Dynasty off guard and further refine her Fury probability researches.

“Nothing lowers inhibitions like a masquerade,” I asserted with a telling wink, “even when the participants are hotshot operants. They’ll all be drinking and dancing and carrying on and trying to fool their friends with mental disguises. You can slither around in the thick of the wingding, slipping in the mental shiv. I’ll introduce you as my girlfriend Surya. All you have to do is fake the aura of a barely operant person when you’re first introduced and then keep your own walls up.”

Dorothée finally agreed to go … if only because it presented her with a perfect opportunity to examine the otherwise inaccessible psyches of Marc and Jack. She also told me that on the day following the party—which was Halloween proper—she and I would be off like a couple of bats out of hell, en route to Okanagon.

“I’ll meet you at the masquerade on Orcas Island,” she said, crackling with authority. “Wear a decent costume. I guarantee I’ll have one that’ll knock your socks off.”

O TO
M
ARC’S PARTY MY DEAR LITTLE ONES.
T
HERE IS NO NEED
to bother about invitations. Many of those invited plan to use psychocreative disguises and you will not be conspicuous if you do too.>

May I/WE ask why we should go dearestFury?

worry.>

[Jealousy.] She’s not to be trusted. She should have been killed as soon as her paramount potential was identified. I/WE have told you this again and again. Why must you even consider recruiting another unit? We’ve become invincible! Any two of us can control the most powerful Grand Master in the Human Polity. Celine and Quint are progressing splendidly on Okanagon and Parni and I have the EuroRebel contingent eating out of our hands. It was laughably easy to eliminate the Sánchez woman before she reported the Cambridge mental laser experiment to the university authorities.

Thank you. It would be more … gratifying if I/WE had more of your personal attention.

she is slipping away from me. I may have no recourse other than to endure what must be endured until the day when I am free and One.>

I/WE can give you all the help you need! You never should have approached
her.
She’s dangerous and her full metapotential is still unclassified. She may even exceed the Great Enemy in certain faculties. If you let her live long enough for the Lylmik to initiate her and affirm her paramount status she may discover exactly what you’ve been doing. She may discover YOU.

Let me/US kill her! I/WE are afraid of her! She’s as dangerous as the Great Enemy. More dangerous!

observe.
Now farewell.>

“Just one minute more,” Masako Kawai said to her husband. She stood before a dressing table scattered with cosmetics, studying herself in the mirror. “This awful rice powder isn’t covering properly. My face should be whiter for an authentic Samurai-lady look.” She took up the powder puff again.