Diamond Mask (Galactic Milieu Trilogy) (51 page)

“You’re a dream of beauty, Masa,” Hiroshi Kodama reassured her. “That peach-colored kimono is quite the loveliest one I have ever seen. How fortuitous it is that the Seattle area has so many citizens of Japanese ancestry. These costumes Shigeru Morita borrowed for us are marvels of authenticity.” The voice of the Satsuma Dirigent was muffled by his mempo, a demonic iron mask that was part of the magnificent reproduction bushi armor he wore. The fierce Samurai walked his gloved fingers up the exquisite lady’s silken back and tickled her neck beneath the elaborate black wig.

“Stop it, Hiro! It took me half an hour to anchor that thing properly.” She applied more powder to her nose.

The warrior chuckled wickedly, abandoning the Standard English of the Human Polity to speak in Japanese. “You forget, Masako-chan, that I am now your lord and master! Your very life belongs to me to dispose of as I wish.” The hands crept beneath her arms, onto her breasts.

“If you attempt an assault on my ivory citadel wearing that armor,” she said, speaking the ancient language with considerably more precision, “you will destroy my borrowed costume and possibly do your own precious jade stem an irreparable injury.” Wriggling out of his grasp, she tucked a small dagger called a
kaiken into her obi along with her fan, turned to him, and reverted to English. “I’m ready. Let’s have a look at you.”

Docile now, the Dirigent of Satsuma let his wife retie the cords of his kabuto helmet in a more symmetrical bow, after which she kissed his iron nose. “You’ll be roasting inside that mask before long,” she said, “but I must say that you look madly sexy. Let’s buy some costumes like these and take them back to Satsuma with us for our private amusement. We’ve endured frontier hardships long enough. Now that the quake danger is defused, I’d like some attention paid to my own seismic stresses.”

He bowed formally to her. “As you command, Lady.”

Hiroshi Kodama and Masako Kawai had come to Earth for business reasons, together with several other Satsuma officials, on the same starship as Marc and Jack Remillard. Later in the week there would be meetings in Seattle at CEREM, the new corporate affiliate of Marc’s research establishment that was headed by Pete Dalembert and Shigeru Morita. The Japanese planet was prepared to open negotiations for an important sale of cerebroenergetic equipment. Meanwhile, Hiroshi and Masako were houseguests in Marc’s huge, many-leveled home.

They left the bedroom and made their way down the long, windowed upper hall. The house was constructed in Pacific Northwestern style from cedar, stone, and glass and seemed to grow out of the western flank of Orcas Island’s Turtleback Mountain. Almost every room commanded a view of the moonlit President Channel, other islands of the San Juan group, and even Vancouver Island far to the west. Flurries of moving lights in the air and among the tall Douglas firs down along the seashore signaled the arrival of guests by rhocraft or by groundcar from the submarine tunnel interchange at West Beach a few kilometers away.

Nearly two hundred metas had been invited to help celebrate the triumph of the Remillard brothers on Satsuma. Marc had arranged for the chef of the famous old Rosario resort on Orcas to cater a sumptuous buffet, and an amateur combo of operant musicians, all friends or associates of his, was tuning up on the awninged terrace. Hiroshi and Masako went down two flights of stairs to the ground floor and found themselves swept up in a colorful mob.

“To be a correct ancient Samurai woman,” Hiroshi whispered to his wife, “you should trail behind me by several respectful steps.”

“Jodan desho!” she retorted, snapping open her fan and taking his arm. “There
are
limits.”

Some masqueraders made no attempt to conceal their identities, while others had gone to extremes of mystification. Impromptu guessing games, accompanied by a good deal of raucous laughter and shouting, were de rigueur. With no nonoperants present who might be scandalized, the metapsychic partygoers were clearly ready for unrestrained tomfoolery. Historic ethnic dress seemed particularly popular, but there were plenty of traditional North American Halloween costumes as well—witches, wizards, Frankenstein monsters, ballerinas, cartoon animals, comic-book superheroes, pirates, nuns, and clowns. A rotund Falstaff escorted a bangled belly dancer, a top-hatted Marlene Dietrich clone fluttered false eyelashes seductively at a matador, Marie Antoinette simpered through a mask-on-a-stick at a vizarded Sherlock Holmes, a Lakota chief in war paint offered a drink to a demure Wonder Woman, the Mad Hatter cackled at a joke told by a Chinese dragon with a two-meter tail supported by psychokinesis, Achilles and Patroclus strolled together arm in arm, clad in golden Greek armor, and the band—with beaming Shig Morita conducting from the piano—launched into “Stray Cat Strut.”

It was a fine autumn evening, not too chilly. As Masako and Hiroshi came out of the house onto the terrace they encountered Lucille Cartier and Denis Remillard. Both wore doctoral academic gowns trimmed with the spruce-green and gold velvet of the School of Metapsychology.

“Komban wa!” said Denis, bowing cheerfully. He had recognized the pair from Satsuma at once. “You two look smashing. Lucille and I opted for just grabbing something out of the closet.”

“Shame on you for looking so comfortable,” said Hiroshi.

Masako, looking over Lucille’s shoulder, suddenly gave an unbelieving gasp. “Good heavens! Can that be Marc in the E16 helmet?” She indicated a bizarre tall figure in white-tie evening dress dancing with a Valkyrie. His head was almost entirely enclosed in a grotesque black CE headpiece with jack-o’-lantern features pasted on.

Lucille shrugged. “Who else? He says he’s a high-tech Brom Bones from
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
I suspect he’ll do tricks with the equipment at the shank of the evening.”

“And is young Jack also among the masquers?” Hiroshi inquired.

“We haven’t found him yet,” Denis admitted, “although he’s certainly here. That was a fantastic piece of work those two did on your world. As I understand it, Kagoshima Metro is now safe from major tremors for at least fifty Earth years.”

“So the Milieu scientists say. We’re all very relieved that the largest settlement on our world is finally out of danger.” Hiroshi shook his armored head. “I still find it incredible that two human minds could have modified the crust of a planet. Even twenty years ago, such a feat would have been called impossible. Naturally, we cannot expect the two Paramount Grand Masters to come to our rescue regularly, so we’re establishing a CE training facility that will emphasize the geophysical applications of metaconcerted creativity. The governments of other worlds suffering crustal instability are helping in its financing and staffing. Okanagon will contribute teaching personnel. Your metaconcert programs, Denis, will be a valued part of the curriculum.”

“Utilizing many minds in large-scale CE metaconcert projects will require tweaking the designs about considerably. Jack will be working closely with me for several months in order to make some very necessary modifications.” Denis’s youthful brow creased in a slight frown. “It’s hard to argue with success—but I’m still not altogether certain that artificial augmentation of human brainpower is a good idea, especially in metaconcert. Marc narrowly escaped serious injury in the untested new configuration he and Jack used on your world.”

Hiroshi drew in his breath sharply. “I had not realized! That’s appalling! Why was nothing said to me?”

“He didn’t want to rain on your parade,” sighed Lucille.

“Jack was leading the metaconcert and Marc was the focusing agent,” Denis said. “The focuser is almost always the one at greatest risk in such a situation because his role is essentially passive. Jack called for a certain change in configuration and Marc responded with an unexpected surge of power that temporarily overwhelmed the metaconcert design. The potentiality for dysergism is high enough in bare-brain metaconcert programs using two such extraordinary minds. When such brains are hyperenergized, the hazard becomes acute unless the program is given very fine tuning. Ordinary grandmasterclass minds would not be nearly so much at risk because they can be strictly calibrated and fitted into the design structure. But paramounts are still full of surprises, unfortunately.”

“I’m not familiar with the dysergism phenomenon,” Hiroshi
admitted. “Would it be the opposite of synergism, where the action of the whole is greater than that of the sum of the parts?”

“There’s more to it than that,” Denis said. “I’d be happy to explain it to you …”

“By all means!”

Lucille and Masako exchanged resigned glances.

A robot waitron came by with a tray of full champagne flutes and each of them took one. But while the others drank, the iron-masked Samurai regarded his inaccessible beverage with consternation. “I believe that ancient warriors accoutered in armor drank through broken arrow-shafts, which were hollow reeds. I refuse to make a fool of myself drinking champagne through a straw. Wife, kindly help me to remove this confounded mempo at once!”

Masako, Lucille, and Denis burst out laughing. After Hiroshi was freed, he and Denis went off into the garden for a professional discussion while the two women remained on the perimeter of the dance floor.

“I certainly didn’t take hours getting dressed in order to spend the evening talking shop,” Masako murmured crossly.

Lucille made a sympathetic noise as she finished her champagne and immediately snagged a refill from another robot. “Not when there are so many presentable young men to dance with! … But let’s play the guessing game for a little while first.”

They quickly found the First Magnate heaping a plate of hors d’oeuvres at the buffet table, costumed as Zorro and surrounded by a bevy of operant beauties. Adrien Remillard and his wife Cheri Losier-Drake danced by, dressed as Robin Hood and Maid Marian. Anne Remillard, tall and awesome in the scarlet robes of a medieval Catholic cardinal, boogied expertly with Alex Manion, who was got up as the captain of H.M.S. Pinafore. Boom-Boom Laroche, a hulking executioner with a black hood and a hangman’s noose tucked into his belt, partnered Vampira—alias Marie Remillard. And then Lucille recognized Uncle Rogi.

“He makes a rather decent Abraham Lincoln,” she decided. “But who in the world is he dancing with?”

“Her costume is … very unusual,” Masako said.

That was a gross understatement. Rogi’s petite companion was clad in an impressive silvery outfit that might have been a genuine high-altitude flight suit—except that it was extravagantly decorated with glittering rhinestones. Even the visored
helmet and the mask that covered the lower part of the woman’s face shone with faux diamonds.

The “Stray Cat Strut” ended and the dancers applauded.

“There’s something rather odd about her aura,” Lucille said thoughtfully. “Let’s go make nuisances of ourselves and inspect her at close range.”

But before the two of them could make a move the music started up again, this time with “Jalousie,” and Honest Abe and his scintillating lady tangoed off at a smart pace.

“Drat,” muttered Lucille. Then she saw a red-nosed clown cut in on Rogi and take his partner away. The bookseller watched the pair for a few minutes and then retreated in the direction of the bar. At the same moment a strapping Cossack and King Henry VIII asked Masako and Lucille to dance, and they forgot all about Rogi’s mysterious companion.

Rogi spotted Kyle Macdonald, inevitably wearing Highland dress, glumly nursing a tumbler of amber liquid on a cedar bench off in the midst of some potted azaleas.

“Well, well! Who let the deadhead in?” Honest Abe chortled. “Don’t you know this bash is for Homo superior only, my good man?” He took a seat beside the fantasy writer, doffed his stovepipe hat, and sampled his own drink.

Kyle grimaced. “Argh. Don’t remind me, ye decrepit Canuck rumdum! Ever since we moved back to Earth, Masha’s worked me over with the newest tortures of latency therapy. Me! The great champion of normalcy! Would ye believe I’m now classed as a minimally operant farsensor? It was either that or get chucked out by Her Nibs all over again … The woman’s damn near irresistible in dominatrix mode.”

“Serves you right falling for a coercer,” Rogi said. “I warned you.”

“Just look at the shameless bint!” Kyle pointed out the voluptuous figure of Professor MacGregor-Gawrys, bent over backwards nearly to the floor in a tango dip by a masked Lawrence of Arabia. She wore a black-and-white Erté ball gown of the 1920s, dripping with strings of crystal and jet. Her auburn hair had been frizzed and bound about with a magpie-silk bandeau.

“Devastating beyond belief,” Rogi agreed. “Who’s the Sheik of Araby?”

“Goddam fewkin’ Severin Remillard. Who pinched
your
popsy?”

“You got me. One of the clowns. Identity-fuzzed.”

“Weird outfit your bird had on,” Kyle commented. “Reminded me of something, but I couldn’t put my half-spifflicated finger on it. Who the hell is she?”

“You don’t want to know.” Rogi downed a swig of bourbon.

“Och, there she goes now: Lucy in the Sky with Rhinestones. Queen of the glitz-bikers.” Kyle screwed up his craggy face as he attempted to bolster his exiguous, liquor-befuddled farsight. “God damn, I
thought
that outfit looked familiar! It’s a tarted-up Caledonian airfarmer’s flying kit, and that means the girl must be my own—”

Using what coercion he could conjure, Rogi socked it to his friend. “Shut up, Kyle!”

The Scotsman nearly fell off the bench. His drink went flying into an adjacent azalea tub. “Hey! Wot th’ flamin’ hell d’ye think—”

Rogi whipped his hand over Kyle’s mouth, stifling him. “I’ll tell you what’s going on if you swear to keep your big haggis-trap shut forever.”

“I shwear,” Kyle said through Rogi’s fingers.

The band played “If the Devil Danced in Empty Pockets, He’d Have a Ball in Mine.” Numbers of the partygoers joined Marc Remillard’s lead and formed into bouncy, finger-snapping country lines.

“This kind of choreography isn’t quite my style,” said the clown. “Shall we sit this one out, Diamond Mask?”