INTERVENTION (63 page)

He came out of the john carrying my pajamas and a pouch of toiletries. "What I want is a simple matter, Uncle Rogi. Maman has been very upset for quite some time. She has... suffered from disturbing fantasies. About me." He went to the closet and pulled out my seat bag and two-suiter and began to stuff my clothing into them. "Her problems have affected my younger brothers and sisters. Interfered with my plans for their future. It didn't matter so much when they were just kids, but now that they are approaching an age when they can be useful to me, I can no longer permit Maman to indulge herself by undermining my influence over them. I was very disappointed at having to write off the girls."

Slowly, I sat up. He had his back to me as he emptied a drawer of some
Operator #5
magazines I had intended to sell.

He said, "I urged Maman to go to Hanover, to put herself under Denis's care in long-term resident therapy. It would have been the ideal solution. As you know, she refused to leave the younger ones in my charge. She suspects, you see—as she came to suspect in the case of Papa."

"So you
were
responsible for Don's death."

Victor zipped up the cases with great efficiency, got my parka from the closet, and tossed it to me. "Papa killed himself, as we all know. He was a pathetic, self-destructive sot. So are you, Uncle Rogi, but you are much more intelligent and I think your death wish is probably as spineless as the rest of your character." He opened the outer door. "Let's go."

I had no choice. His coercion scooped me off the bed like a back-hoe. I teetered along after him with terrible speculations oozing out of my mind. As we waited for the elevator I asked him:

Why did you kill the girls?

He shrugged. "Ces garces, elles étaient chaudes lapines." Their rebellion took the form of promiscuity. It was disgusting. I had hoped for alliances with some of my associates. It is an excellent way of cementing loyalties you see but these sistersluts balked. They took my gifts made promises then did as they pleased. Coercion as you know has its limits. Perhaps I was too domineering during their early adolescence and fear made them reckless. At any rate it was not working and they were behaving scandalously bringing the family into disrepute. I will not have that.

"Mon zob!" I sneered—then nearly screamed out loud as he fetched my mind a blinding wallop.

Watch yourself Uncle Rogi ... So you find my yearnings after bourgeois respectability amusing do you? You weren't impressed by the progress of Remco Pulp and Chemicals? Perhaps you don't realize how far along I've come in the business world. Small wonder when we hardly ever see one another except at funerals. That will change.

The elevator arrived and we got in. I was so tightly controlled that I couldn't blink without the young bastard's permission. But he couldn't keep me coerced forever...

He said: No. And that's the problem overall. With Maman and the family and even with my notorious older brother! Unlike you Uncle Rogi I have ambitions. And they will require the close cooperation of others whose loyalty I can count upon. Yvonne is eighteen and compliant. She is not nearly so good-looking as her late older sisters but she has youth and my associate Robert Fortier will find her acceptable. Pauline unfortunately is still too young but she will mature.

Good God you're scheming up a fucking dynasty—

Tu l'as dit bouffi!

The elevator reached the lobby and disgorged us. Victor handed the two bags to me, deposited the card-key in the box at the desk, and thriftily had a clerk validate his parking ticket. Then we headed for the lower-level elevators. For the first time I began to realize what a desperate situation I was in. I still didn't entirely understand why he wanted me, but want me he did. He could coerce me into doing any number of things and lock me up incommunicado in the interim without Denis suspecting anything. Denis was, after all, distracted by matters of global importance; erratic behavior by his black-sheep uncle was only to be expected.

We descended into the bowels of the great hotel. The lowest parking level, where Victor had had to park his Porsche because of the convention crowd, was quiet, very cold, and virtually deserted. He drew me along in his wake as he strode to the sports car.

We'll take the interstates up to Hanover. Tomorrow we can begin making arrangements for your move. By the time Denis gets wind of it you'll be settled in Berlin and they'll be reading the banns at Saint Anne's.

The banns? ...

Of course. Don't you understand Uncle Rogi? You're going to marry Maman and relieve Denis's anxieties about her and help make certain that my surviving brothers and sisters remain under my control. And I'll find other uses for you too as time goes on.

"No!" I yelled. And from some mental reservoir I called up the power to snap his coercive lead. I flung the two bags at his head. He ducked and they skidded across the polished white hood of the car. He struck back at me and it was as though twin ice picks had been driven into my ears. I shrieked and almost fell, then recovered with a heroic act of will and tried to run. A mental thunderbolt struck me between the shoulder blades and seemed to sever my spine. I sprawled headlong, still screaming, and in seconds he was on me.

"Ferme ça, vieux dindon! Arrête de déconner!" Victor knelt on my chest and grabbed me by the hair. His eyes were like paired heliarc torches and I knew he could fry my gray matter and turn me into a drooling idiot if he chose ... but he didn't want to go that far. He needed me and so he hesitated with his psychocreative lobotomy, and I saw my last chance. The knot of fire ignited behind my breastbone and stark terror and prayer accelerated it into an out-spiral: around and around and around. Victor's blazing eyes dimmed with surprise and then alarm. He let go of my head and flinched, so that the ball of energy I shot at him did not strike his face but glanced along the edge of his skull just above the hairline, cauterizing a shallow furrow in scalp and bone.

He howled and fell off me. In desperation I rolled under a nearby Winnebago camper with my nerves on fire from the psychozap and most of my muscles turned to Jell-O. I knew I was a goner. I could hear Victor scrambling on the pavement and reviling me in French and English.

And then he dropped like he'd been brained with a sledgehammer.

I lay there in semidarkness, smelling the Winnie's chassis lubrication and a burnt-pork stench. Victor was utterly still except for slow, stertorous breathing.

There were measured footsteps approaching:
klok ... klok ... klok
...the sound amplified by the dank concrete walls and pillars of the underground garage, that haunt of lurking urban menace. I felt my neck-hairs prickle and my guts go loose. I couldn't see the aura of the approaching operant because it was deliberately being suppressed; but I could feel it, like the horrid quavering of the nerves when you stand under high-voltage power lines.

My view of him was cut off by the rows of parked cars until he came up to where Victor lay. I saw sturdy Timberland high-tops with red wool socks and black chinos stuffed into them. Arms enclosed in down mackinaw sleeves reached down to grasp Victor, taking the back of his belt in one massive hand and the collar of his jacket in the other. My nephew's body ascended out of view. The booted feet plodded to the Porsche and I heard a heavy thud, as if some vandal had desecrated the expensive vehicle by plonking a duffel bag full of books onto the roof. The car door opened and there was a softer thud. The door slammed.

The feet approached the Winnie and my two travel bags were set down next to it. The aetheric tension had dissipated and I felt enveloped in blessed relief.

A telepathic voice said: Victor will think you did it. That was quite a commendable mental effort of yours. It provided a neat cover-up for my necessary obtrusion.

Is that
you!

Who else?...I don't think you'll have to worry about interference from Victor for a few years now. He'll give you up as a bad job and try to find other ways to cope with his family problems.

But Sunny—

You've probably saved her life. To say nothing of your own. Once the two of you were married, Victor would have felt free to activate his unconscious oedipal retribution fantasy, wiping out his mother's threat to his ambitions.

I don't understand.

Then I suggest you reread
Hamlet.
But not on a dark and stormy night ... Au 'voir, cher Rogi. Until the next time.

I began to squirm out from under the camper. The booted feet walked away, their sound dispersed by the serried ranks of parked vehicles. By the time I was able to stand up, the underground garage was silent again. I could see Victor, unconscious, slumped behind the wheel of the Porsche.

Eh bien, Rogi, you long streak of piss. Saved again! Or is your psychocreativity more inventive than you suspect?

I picked up my bags. My suit was filthy and I had no doubt that my face was, too; but front-desk personnel are inured to such things during science-fiction conventions. No explanation would be required. All I had to do was say that I had changed my mind about checking out.

I went to the elevator and pressed the Up button. The damned thing took forever to arrive.

CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE, EARTH

13
MAY
1995

JARED ELLSWORTH, S.J.:
Denis! Wonderful to see you again. Sit down! Sit down! What has it been—ten years?

DENIS REMILLARD
: Twelve. When I got my M.D.

ELLSWORTH
: And a lot of water's gone over the dam since then, hasn't it? Brebeuf Academy is very proud of you, Denis. I shouldn't admit this, but we haven't been exactly diffident about letting endowment prospects know that you were one of our early alumni.

REMILLARD
: Oh, that's perfectly all right, Jared. It makes me feel less guilty about not doing more for the Academy myself.

ELLSWORTH
: Nonsense. We've appreciated your generous contributions. You'll be glad to know that Brebeuf's gimmick has been copied in other parts of the world. Now there are a dozen or so other free schools for the gifted children of low-income families. But I haven't heard that any of them harbored a really wild talent like you! Merely normal geniuses. [Laughs.]

REMILLARD
: You might be interested to know that the operant population has about the same IQ spread as the normal. Just as many dummies among us as smartasses.

ELLSWORTH
: That could lead to problems.

REMILLARD
: It has. We don't talk about it very much publicly. A German team just completed a study, a metapsychic assay of prisoners and inmates of institutions for the criminally insane. A disproportionate percentage of the incarcerated con men and bunco artists show traits of suboperancy in the coercive and telepathic modes. The percentage of psychopaths with operant traits is also higher than expected.

ELLSWORTH
: [whistles] Any theories about that?

REMILLARD
: The psychos might have kept their sanity if their fragile minds hadn't been burdened with the additional load of operant function—with all the stress that entails. Mental evolution is bound to leave a lot of maladaptive souls fallen by the wayside. The operant crooks who kept their marbles adapted—but the wrong way. They used the mind-powers opportunistically. It's a big temptation, even among the high-minded. The less intelligent metacriminals got caught, probably not even realizing that they had the powers. They thought the mind reading was just keen insight and the coercion a gonzo personality. The more intelligent operant crooks would still be at large, of course. No doubt highly regarded by their beneficiaries and damned by their enemies as financial wizards...

ELLSWORTH
: It makes you wonder about the charismatic leaders of sleazy cults. And certain great and magnetic villains of history such as Hitler and Stalin.

REMILLARD
: Someday, when we know more about the genotypes for operancy, there'll be some fascinating research done. But today, we're more concerned about this—this lower stratum of operants for pragmatic reasons.

ELLSWORTH
: Mm'm. I can imagine. Bound to be baddies among you, of course, as in any other human population. But it's a thing not too many normals thought about prior to Dr. Weinstein's trial—not that he could be classed among your common or garden variety of delinquent. [Takes out a pipe and begins to pack it with tobacco.] The criminal operant will pose tricky legal problems. I suppose the really powerful ones would be able to coerce juries and witnesses as well as read the minds of the prosecuting attorneys.

REMILLARD
: Probably. But the real difficulty isn't in the courtroom antics. After all, the authorities can always do as the Scottish Lord of Justiciary did in the Weinstein case: bring in a watchdog operant as an amicus curiae to be on the lookout for mental hanky-panky. No ... the problem is going to be getting the goods on operant crooks in the first place. Superior metacriminals would be able to cover their tracks in any number of mind-bending ways. Posthypnotic suggestion, for instance. This has great limitations and probably wouldn't work at all in blatant cases like first-degree murder in front of witnesses, but it might very well succeed in less emotionally charged crimes. Frauds and conspiracies and other kinds of white-collar shenanigans. You're no doubt aware that the financial world is still in an uproar over its theoretical loss of transaction secrecy. Objectively, the financiers know that the chance of a crooked operant spying on them is close to zero.
Now.
But what about later, as operants become more numerous? The global economy is in a much shakier condition than most people realize due to the impact of operancy. Not many economic analysts have written about the matter. They're afraid of making the situation worse. It was bad enough when all they had to worry about was Psi-Eye investigations of KGB and CIA bank accounts in Switzerland. This new recognition of potential operant criminality has thrown them into a real swivet. And there's no remedy yet. We'll have to wait until more operants are trained for oversight work—and are willing to take it on. It's not going to be the most popular career choice among idealistic young heads.