Diamond Mask (Galactic Milieu Trilogy) (68 page)

A towering figure in black jeans and a buffalo-plaid mackinaw exploded into the room. His gray eyes were blazing and psychic tension made his wet curly hair stand out around his head in a wiry corona. He froze as he caught sight of me lolling there with my tot of Scotch, and the anxiety on his face turned to fury. He came at me and plucked me from my chair like a rag doll. My shot glass went flying.

“What the bloody hell is going on, Uncle Rogi?” Marc said through his teeth.

“The—the CE job, o’ course! W-what’re
you
doing here?”

He didn’t answer immediately. A coercive-redactive probe raced through my drunken carcass like a galvanic shock, causing me to convulse and nearly lose control of my sphincters. I shrieked. My stupefied companions watched with sagging jaws.

Marc dropped me back into my seat and stood glowering with his big fists on his hips. “There’s nothing wrong with you except a skinful of booze. No emergency at all! What the fuck do you think you’re playing at?”

“I’m getting drunk,” I explained with sweet reasonableness.

“You broadcast a telepathic scream for help two days ago that nearly fractured my skull! You begged me to drop everything and come to Caledonia at top df to save your frigging life, then disappeared underground where I couldn’t farscan you. I had to commandeer a Krondak research ship to get here from Earth. Explain!”

I was tight as a tick and his mental shakedown had by no means rendered me sober. I shrugged and attempted a winning smile.

“Never farspoke you, mon fils. Nosiree. Can’t reach across five hunnerd lights t’save my sin-sodden soul. You know that’s well’s me.” I uttered a pixilated titter and laid my finger aside of my nose. “But I betcha I know who
did
make the shout!”

“Who?”

“The Family Ghost …”

“Tu foutu biberon, toi!” He came at me again and hauled me to my feet. “I was right in the middle of a crucial experiment
and your telepathic call scared the living shit out of me. I ought to punch you senseless!”

“Too late for that,” I pointed out. “But’s long’s you’re here, why don’t you take a li’l ride? Do something truly useful.”

I squirmed out of his grip and picked up the hand-control for the big monitoring screen. After a few false pokes at its pads, I got the remote to zoom in on the small drill-rig still sitting forlornly on the shore of the loch.

“Ti-Jean ‘n’ Dorothée ‘n’ the rest of ’em are down in the rock soup. You take one of the spare E18s, put a farsense brainboard in, and go keep an eye on ’em.” My eyes, overflowing now in spite of myself, locked onto Marc’s. “Drive that drill-rig there. You don’ have to do a thing if they’re noodlin’ okay down there. Jus’ watch.
Please.
”

Cursing, Marc went.

With him taking the place of Dorothea Macdonald in Jack’s metaconcert, the separation of volatile components from the subcratonic reservoir was successfully completed. As had been expected, the outgassed molten rock started to sink back into the deep mantle from whence it had come. The hot carbon dioxide and water vapor, together with a small amount of solid material, began moving toward the surface as soon as the metacreative lid was removed, creating a colossal subterranean commotion.

The flashover that had injured the Dirigent had done no significant damage to the control room of D-4. The drill-rig carrying Jack and Dorothée, together with the four other machines, withdrew to a safe distance from the ascending diatreme and then headed for the top.

For a long time we didn’t know whether the folks down there were safe or not, but we knew they’d done what they set out to do. The wild acceleration of the elongated bubble of gas had a seismic spoor much different from that of denser magma. Narendra Shah MacNabb was almost incoherent with happiness and relief when he verified the data and announced the good news about Caledonia’s reprieve.

The diatreme was scheduled to erupt within about six hours. I was all for getting out of the stuffy bunker and watching the event live, and so were Calum Sorley and the privileged media people who’d been invited to cover the operation. But MacNabb put his foot down on us fun-seekers with emphatic gusto. Nobody knew yet, he explained, whether the ascending mass was mostly water or mostly carbon dioxide. If it was the latter, any
observer downwind of the blowout stood a fair chance of getting suffocated. The chief surveyor also delivered many a discouraging word about the hellacious earthquake and shock waves that were going to accompany the blast.

My drinking buddies and I decided to stay in the bunker after all and watch the spectacle on the monitor. There was plenty of food and liquor left.

The big belch was going to surface right where MacNabb had predicted it would, right in the hollow containing the little lake. As the volatile mass rose it expanded, and as it expanded it cooled. When it reached the solid part of the lithosphere, the actual Clyde craton, which was about 35 kloms thick, it was still hot enough to melt the rock in its path and turn it into the stuff called kimberlite. Closer to the surface, its heat almost entirely dissipated, the rising diatreme just pulverized whatever got in its way.

It exploded out of the ground in a vent over two kilometers in diameter, the largest eruption of its kind ever to occur on Caledonia. The whole planet vibrated like a gong and the quakes, especially on Clyde, were formidable. Most of the stuff tossed into the air by the eruption was ice, some of it “dry”—solid carbon dioxide—but the bulk was just plain old water ice, like hail, in fairly small bits and pieces. The blast wave scattered it from hell to breakfast all over the area surrounding the vanished lake. We even got 25 cents of icefall at the bunker. When the eruption subsided, ice fragments filled the kimberlite pipe to a depth of nearly 300 meters. It settled and solidified into a plug that didn’t melt for years.

The diatreme also spit out some rocks. And pretty near a metric ton of diamonds.

Calum Sorley farspoke the good news to the government people in New Glasgow, and a fleet of eggs was soon on its way, carrying support personnel, eager geologists, and lots more reporters. Meanwhile, a monstrous, diatreme-induced rainstorm pounded the eruption area and helped to melt the drifts of ice pellets. We all sat tight in the bunker, riding out the aftershocks and praying that the heroic CE ops were all right. Three hours after the blowout, the five deep-drillers broke through the ice-mantled surface of Windlestrow Muir and came trundling to the bunker.

Jack had redacted Dorothée all throughout the long trip to the surface, repairing a good deal of damaged lung tissue and relieving
most of her pain. She was fully conscious when he carried her out of the machine in his arms. The two of them came up the slope to the bunker flanked by the eight CE operators, still in their helmets, who now used their creativity only to keep off the rain and provide a nice dry surface to walk on. An oxygen tank floated along behind the triumphal procession, suspended by Jack’s PK.

Dorothée was wearing a garment that looked like a long dressing gown of white silk, and a veil of the same material covered the lower part of her face. Her eyes and hair were untouched by the mental fire. The two good-luck charms, my Great Carbuncle and her little diamond mask, lay side by side on her breast, hanging from their golden chain.

Dorothée’s serious injuries threatened to put a damper on the wild festivities that were already breaking out, but she would have none of it. Speaking to us with a PK-induced pseudovoice, she related the entire extraordinary story of the operation from beginning to end, telling of her own horrendous role matter-of-factly. When she finished, we all cheered ourselves hoarse. Then Jack and I put Dorothée in Scurra II and flew her to the University of New Glasgow Medical Center.

She declined recuperation in a regen-tank. The quakes had done considerable damage and she had important official duties to attend to. There would be plenty of time later, she said, to restore her face.

Meanwhile, the ingenious medics at the university hospital fitted her with a half-mask that not only facilitated her breathing but also made it possible for her to take liquid nutrients and water. In a fit of whimsy she had the thing decorated with diamonds—then completed the ensemble by donning her much-loved old flying outfit. Over the years, just for fun, she had replaced its erstwhile faux stones with the real thing.

She toured the quake-damaged regions of Clyde in this costume with Jack and me at her side, supervising relief efforts, and the dour Caledonians wept and laughed and adulated their Dirigent Lassie half to death. But there was a subtle new flavor to the popular esteem that secretly excited and gratified Dorothée. Whether it was because of her unprecedented accomplishment and her sacrifice, or simply because of her awesome outfit—she was now accorded not only affection but also the deepest respect.

She was very young and very human, and this change in her relationship with the Callie citizenry touched her profoundly. Before,
her great abilities had been obscured, as it were, by the image of a small, plain-featured woman wearing ordinary clothes. But in her diamond mask and sparkling suit she became almost an icon, a telling symbol of strength and authority. While she wore that garb, no one would ever forget what she really was. And neither would she.

That, I think, is why Dorothea Macdonald wore her dramatic costume, and others like it, until the very end of her life.

Marc had managed to disappear almost as soon as he climbed out of his drill-rig. He returned to Earth immediately and declined with thanks the Dirigent’s offer to make him an honorary Caledonian. He did agree to return to the Scottish planet during its next autumn, when the fishing would be at its best.

I stayed on Callie with Jack and Dorothée for nearly six weeks, until they bowled me over (along with most of the rest of the Milieu) by announcing that they would marry in the summer of 2078. Then I finally reclaimed the Great Carbuncle, which had done a damn fine job, went back to my home in New Hampshire, and tried to decide what kind of wedding present to give the improbable lovers.

I was feeling wonderful! Le bon dieu was in his heaven and all was right with the Galactic Milieu.

And then Anne Remillard spoiled it all by coming into my bookshop and telling me that Denis was Fury.

THE END

of

Diamond Mask

Book Two of the Galactic Milieu Trilogy

Book Three, entitled
Magnificat
,
tells the story of Jack and Dorothea’s life together,
of Marc, his wife Cyndia Muldowney, and Mental Man,
of the Metapsychic Rebellion,
and of the end of Hydra, Fury, and Rogi’s Family Ghost.