INTERVENTION (14 page)

In addition to the great distances involved, and the difficulties which they present to interstellar space travel, there is still another problem. If we assume that civilizations annihilate themselves in such a way that their effective intelligent life span is less than, say, one hundred thousand years, then such a short time span also works against the likelihood of successful interstellar communication. The different civilizations would probably reach the culmination of their development at different epochs in cosmic history....

In view of the foregoing, we consider that it is safe to assume that no ILE outside of our solar system has any possibility of visiting Earth in the next ten thousand years.

LENINGRAD, USSR, EARTH

5
MARCH
1969

"W
E HAVE SAVED
the best for the last, Comrade Admiral. Please be seated here at this table with the microphones ... You other comrades may take the chairs nearer the observation window. Dr. Valentina Lubezhny, our specialist in biocommunications phenomena, will bring the subject into the Faraday cage in just a moment. There is a small delay." Danilov offered an apologetic smirk. "The little girl was very nervous."

Kolinsky gave a curt nod and lowered his ample buttocks to the hard wooden chair. Scared children! And you are the most frightened of all, Comrade Doctor Asslicker, and rightly so, considering the flimsy quality of entertainment offered thus far in your extremely expensive laboratory. Dull demonstrations of the human bioenergetic field. A Chukchi shaman able to stop the heart of a rat (but not the heart of any creature weighing more than four hundred grams). A neurasthenic blind youth reading printed matter with his fingertips. A modern Rasputin (sanitized) laying hands on tortured rabbits and healing their wounds. A housewife doing psychokinetic tricks with cigarettes and water glasses. A gypsy who peers into a Polaroid camera lens and produces blurry "astral photos" of the Petropavlovskaya Fortress, the Bronze Horseman, and other local landmarks. (That one had looked promising—until Danilov admitted that the subject could only "envision" places where he had been. So much for psychic espionage!)

Sternly, Kolinsky said, "We have been most interested to see how far you have progressed in the area of pure research, Comrade Danilov. Still, it was not the
existence
of psychic powers that we hoped to prove. Unlike the skeptics of the West, we are quite willing to concede that the human brain is capable of such activities. However, we had hoped that after five years of work you might have uncovered a bioenergetic effect of more immediate military significance."

Danilov fiddled with the microphones, set out a pad of paper and marker-pens, saw that the naval aides Guslin and Ulyanov and the GRU attaché Artimovich were settled in. "In just a few minutes we will demonstrate the talents of our most remarkable subject. I don't think you'll be disappointed, Comrade Admiral. By no means!"

Down in the test chamber on the other side of the glass a door opened. A white-coated female scientist appeared with a redheaded girl wearing a school uniform. The child had an extraordinarily pretty face. She eyed the men in the observation booth with a certain apprehension.

Danilov hurriedly addressed the admiral and the other officers. "The girl is very sensitive to adverse mental attitudes—even more so than the other subjects you have seen today. For this experiment to succeed, we must have an atmosphere pervaded with kindness and goodwill. Please try to banish all doubts from your minds. Cultivate a positive attitude."

Commander Guslin coughed. Ulyanov lit a cigarette. Artimovich, the intelligence man, sat bolt upright with a fixed smile on his face.

Danilov picked up a microphone with blue tape wrapped around its stand. "I will introduce you, Comrade Admiral, and then perhaps you will speak a few words to the child and reassure her."

Kolinsky, who had seven grandchildren, sighed. "As you wish."

Danilov pressed the microphone stud. "All ready now, Tamara?"

The girl's voice came to them over a ceiling speaker. "Yes, Comrade Doctor."

"We have a special guest here today, Tamara. He is Admiral Ivan Kolinsky, a great hero of the Soviet Navy. He is eager to see how well you do your biocommunication exercise. The Admiral would also enjoy talking to you." The scientist made a formal gesture. "Admiral Kolinsky, may I present Tamara Sakhvadze."

Kolinsky took the microphone and winked at the little girl. "Now, you must not be nervous, devushka. We will leave the nervousness to Dr. Danilov." The child giggled. She had marvelous white teeth. "How old are you, Tamara?"

"Eleven, Comrade Admiral." Great dark eyes, rose-petal mouth.

"You have a Georgian name. Where is your home?"

"I live in Sochi—I mean, I used to live there before they found me and brought me here to work and go to school. Sochi is on the Black Sea."

Ah, yes—a Celtic Caucasian girl, one of that ancient breed famed through history for their beauty and bewitching ways! "I know Sochi very well, Tamara. I have a vacation villa there, a very pretty place. It must be spring in Sochi now, with flowers blooming and birds singing in the palm trees. What a pity both of us are here in wintry Leningrad instead of in your pleasant hometown."

And if I were there, I could sail my little boat—or sit at a small table in Riviyera Park, sipping a cold mix of Georgian champagne and orange juice and baking my tired bones in the sunshine. Gorgeous young things (your older sisters or cousins, Tamara!) would stroll by, tall and barelegged and bold of eye, and I would admire and remember old pleasures. When that palled I would plot the destruction of Gorshkov, that prick on wheels, and the KGB schemer Andropov, whose hobbyhorse this whole bioenergetics farce is, and put an end to it, and get on with the Extremely Low Frequency Broadcaster, just as the Yankees have done. Psychic forces as weapons! What superstitious peasants we Russians remain, in spite of our thin veneer of science and culture. One might as well speak of enlisting the terrible Baba Yaga and her hut on fowl's legs ...

The girl laughed out loud. "You're so silly, Comrade Admiral!"

The woman scientist standing beside Tamara stiffened. Danilov said hastily, "The child is overexcited. Please excuse her rudeness. Let us begin the experiment—"

Kolinsky studied the girl narrowly. "Tamara and I have not yet finished our little talk. Tell me, devushka, what special talent do you have that interests the doctors at this Institute?"

"I read thoughts. At a distance. Sometimes."

"Can you read mine?" the admiral asked softly.

Tamara now looked frightened. "No!"

Danilov implored him. "It is most important that the child be calm, comrade! If we could begin now..."

"Very well." Kolinsky put the blue-marked microphone down.

Danilov signaled to his colleague. The woman took Tamara by the hand and led her to a large cubicle of copper screening that stood in the center of the test chamber. Inside it was a plain wooden chair.

"The enclosure is called a Faraday cage," Danilov explained. "It is proof against most forms of electromagnetic radiation. We have found that Tamara works best when shielded in this way. The emanations from her mind do not seem to be in any way connected to the energies of the electromagnetic spectrum, however. The 'bioenergetic halo effect' that we monitored for you earlier on your tour seems to be a side effect of the life-energies rather than part of their primary manifestation."

Kolinsky nodded, barely concealing his impatience. Within the test chamber, the girl Tamara was now completely enclosed in the copper-screen cage, sitting with her hands clasped in her lap. Dr. Lubezhny had withdrawn, and within a few minutes came into the observation booth.

"All is in readiness," she reported. "Tamara feels confident."

Danilov picked up a second microphone from the table. The tape marking it was bright scarlet. Activating it, he said, "Danilov here. Are you standing by?"

Masculine accents overlaid by static responded: "This is the diving tender Peygalitsa awaiting your instructions."

"Please give us your approximate position," Danilov requested.

"We are standing approximately nine kilometers due west of Kronshtadt Base in the Gulf of Finland."

"The divers are ready?"

"Sublieutenant Nazimov and the Polish youth are suspended at the required depth of ninety meters and awaiting your bioenergetic transmission."

"Okhuyevayushchiy!" exclaimed Commander Ulyanov.

Danilov flapped a frantic hand. "Please! No extraneous remarks! All of you—think the most refined and peaceable thoughts."

Commander Guslin smothered a chuckle.

"Stand by, Peygalitsa, we are prepared to transmit." Danilov set the red-marked microphone down.

The admiral murmured, "You are a man of surprises, Dr. Danilov."

"The experiment has worked before," the scientist said in a strained voice, "and it will work again—given the proper conditions." He glared at the two aides and the GRU man.

Kolinsky wagged his right index finger at the trio. "Not a peep from you, minetchiki."

The scientist expelled a noisy breath. He explained rapidly, "The girl Tamara is what we call an inductor. A telepathic broadcaster, the most talented we had ever found. The percipient or receiver is a seventeen-year-old Polish lad named Jerzy Gawrys, another gifted sensitive. Gawrys wears cold-water diving dress. He is holding an underwater writing pad and a stylus, but he is
not
equipped with telephone apparatus, as is his companion, Sublieutenant Nazimov. The only way that the boy Gawrys may communicate is by writing on his pad. Nazimov will relay the pad's message to the tender. The tender's radio operator will relay the data to us. Our own receiver picks it up and broadcasts it through the room speaker."

"Understood," said Kolinsky. "And what data are to be transmitted?"

Danilov lifted his chin proudly. "The data of your choice."

The aides muttered fresh exclamations of amazement.

Danilov said, "May I suggest that you start with a few simple shapes—stars, circles, squares—then pictures, then a few words. Use the pad of paper in front of you and the ink-marker. As you finish each sheet, hold it up so that Tamara can see it ... and send the message."

Kolinsky compressed his lips and bent to the pad. He drew a five-pointed star, raised the paper, and smiled at Tamara.

The girl stared intently.

"Star," said the diving tender Peygalitsa.

The admiral drew an arrow.

"Arrow," said the faraway relay operator.

The admiral drew a clumsy cat in profile.

"Cow," the speaker reported.

Everybody in the booth laughed. Kolinsky shrugged and drew a circle with pointed rays around it.

"Sun."

The admiral waved jovially at Tamara. She smiled and waved back. He wrote the seven Cyrillic letters that spelled a familiar greeting in Russian and held it up. The girl concentrated on them for some time.

The speaker cleared its throat, then said: "We receive from Sublieutenant Nazimov the letters zeh-deh-oh-er-oh-uncertain-oh."

Danilov picked up the red microphone. "Stand by, Peygalitsa." He told Kolinsky, "You must remain mindful that our percipient is Polish. It may be difficult for him to receive complex messages written in our script. Please keep the words as simple as possible." He alerted the boat to receive the next message.

Kolinsky printed carefully, "Tamara sends greetings." The words were returned, letter by letter, over the speaker.

"May I congratulate you, Dr. Danilov, Dr. Lubezhny." The admiral beamed on the scientists. "A splendid breakthrough!" And so Andropov had been right after all. A billion-to-one gamble seemed to have paid off and he, Kolinsky, would have to eat his ration of shit. If Tamara's talent could be taught to others, the Soviet Navy could scrub its own Extremely Low Frequency Broadcaster Project. Let the Americans use the long-wave radio system to send messages to deep-lying missile submarines—a system that worked, but was so slow that a three-letter word might take nearly a half hour to transmit. The Soviet Union would talk to its submarines via mental telepathy, in moments! As to the KGB's use of psychic powers, the less said...

Danilov was babbling. "You are very kind, Comrade Admiral! I know that little Tamara and the boy Jerzy Gawrys, who have worked so hard, will also be gratified by your praise. Perhaps you would like to tell them so yourself."

Kolinsky said, "First we will test one other message." He bent to the pad, then held it up to Tamara. The lovely little face glowed at him through the copper mesh, so pleased that everything had gone well, so eager to show her skill.

She saw: FIRE MISSILES.

Tamara sat still. Her dark eyes opened wider, like those of a cornered doe.

Admiral Kolinsky tapped a finger firmly against the paper.

They waited.

Finally, Danilov addressed the red microphone: "Attention, Peygalitsa. Do you have a message to relay?"

"No message," said the loudspeaker.

Kolinsky regarded the little girl without expression. So that's the way of it, little Tamara! Can one blame you? You have hardly lived at all, and the true purpose of your work did not occur to you. You are shocked and revolted. You shrink from adult wickedness. But one day, will you see such wickedness as duty? As patriotism?

"No message," said the loudspeaker.

Danilov apologized. "Perhaps the girl is tiring. Perhaps Jerzy has temporarily suffered diminished sensitivity—"

"No message," said the loudspeaker.

"I will go and speak to her," Dr. Lubezhny suggested.

"No," Admiral Kolinsky said. "Don't be concerned. I've seen quite enough for today. Please be assured that I will urge full funding of your continuing efforts here at the Institute, and I will commend your work most highly to the Council for National Defense." The admiral rose from his seat, tore the sheet of paper into small pieces, and let them sift from his hand onto the table. He beckoned to his aides and strode out the door after having given one last wave to the motionless little girl.