Pliocene Exile - The Adversary Part 22

Brooding over the contingencies kept Hagen alert throughout most of the night. But around the dead hour, 0400, when human vital energies burn lowest with the depletion of blood sugar, even a metapsychic tended to falter. The mind's eye glazed and looked inward to a world of shadows, to memories and fearful imaginings concretized in nightmare ...

Trudi takes his hand and leads him along an unfamiliar path to a place where the soil is churned and raw and a new building thrusts up huge against the morning sky, sparkling and humming. He begins to whimper as they go inside and the terrible ineffabilities threaten (he is only three and his metapsychic receptors are untrained and clumsy), and the nurse says, "Hush. It's all right. We must say 'Welcome back' to Papa."

The walk on a strange slick floor into dim coolness, and grownups crowd tall about him, ignoring his weak telepathic queries, mind-whispering of matters incomprehensible: Sta.r.s.earch ... Lylmik? ... MADNESS! ... G.o.ddam he did it! 1700 lightyear scan first try!

And back with brains nonfriedCan't believe he got rig work b.l.o.o.d.y jungle.

NevergetMEusef.u.c.kingh.e.l.lrigMarcMad2yearsrecovernowstart (MoverGet that imbecile out of here.

But how long a sta.r.s.earch?

MADNESS! MADNESS!.

We've got nothing but time sweetheart.

6,000,000 friggerty years.

It'll work ... sta.r.s.earch ... rescue us!

... new beginning ... coadunation ... coerce them or appeal altruismethic ...

MADNESS!.

Mental Man ... we still may know Him!

The kid you b.o.o.by.

Oh ...

Let Hagen upfront to see.

Let him see!

Let him see!

MADNESS! LET THE CHILD SEE THE MADNESS THAT BROUGHT US TO THIS EXILE! LET HIM SEE HIS OWN FUTURE ...

It was only a dream. A dream of an enormous captive thing, a brain shucked from its body. Glad to be! Energized artificially, scorning true Unity, glorying in loneness.

In the dream, Trudi lifted him to see the thing, and said, "It's your Papa." The three-year-old-boy screamed and tried to run away.

Only a dream. That was why he didn't try to run now as he saw the thing again, outside the c.o.c.kpit windscreen of the modular combine. It seemed to be resting on the impeller access hatch, between the twin housings of the sonic disruptors. A hulking form, dully gleaming, having the rough shape of a man. Powercables and armoured hoses sprouted from its blind head and melted into the greying sky.

In his dream, Hagen arose from his seat at the navigation console, opened the c.o.c.kpit door, and stepped outside. He seemed to float toward the phantom CE rig on the foredeck, and as he approached, it became transparent, and the operator in his pressure-envelope coverall extended his arms, bending down, and smiled at the frightened three-year-old.

"It's only me. It's only Papa."

But he held back, knowing he could not risk the embrace, even in the dream aware that the real body of a man wearing that armour would be refrigerated to a point near absolute zero, almost completely divorced from the transcendent brain.

"I think I finally understand," Hagen said. "Jack was your model. It wasn't possible for you to permanently modify yourself. You were too old for a successful adaptation. But you were determined to be more than Mental Man's brother."

"I would have been his father," Marc said. "And I would have lived content, seeing you and the others command the stars I gave you."

"No longer human."

"You would never have remembered."

"Go away!" the three-year-old cried. "Don't touch me. Don't look at me!" The nurse held him and stopped him from running away, but he buried his face in her long skirt and wept, refusing to look again at his father. The others mind-whispered, and then the walls closed gently about him, and he was lifted and carried away ...

He woke standing on the empty foredeck in the dawn breeze, and went to look at the hatch where the illusion had stood.

There were two great circular indentations in the pla.s.s, as if it had supported a tremendous weight.

Yosh wedged his face more firmly into the hooded viewer of the infrared spotterscope and said, "Now we're finally cooking." Servo motors whined and the machine and its operator spun slowly in a 360-degree scan. "Terrific. Perfect emplacement, up here in the beacon tower. Must have a coa.r.s.e range of seventy, eighty kloms, Calamosk being on a hill. Nearly halfway to Afaliah clearview-wise before we smack into those hills the other side of the Opaar. Oh, this baby was made for steppes."

"How she do on the fine-tune, chief?" inquired Sunny Jim.

He and Vilkas were sitting in the shade and drinking beer after having spent a sweaty two hours deploying the solar-collection panels of the power supply.

"Working," Yosh muttered. Yes, here we go, sauntering down the Great South Road at ... four-one-three-one-two-pipsix-one, a herd of hippies, taking to the freeway, the lazy scuts.

Good thing this Pliocene doesn't run to high-speed surface transit. You'd need HIPPARION CROSSING warning signs every fifty metres."

Vilkas set down his big covered stein, wiped his moustache with the back of his hand, and sighed in a martyred fas.h.i.+on.

"Will we have to hook up the remote right away, or can it wait until after chow?"

"What do you think?" Yosh grinned at his two as.h.i.+garu briefly, then vanished again into the viewer. Vilkas groaned. In a m.u.f.fled voice, Yosh went on, "What's more, we're going to have to string cables instead of slave-transmit, and cobble up something to match the brain-directed board with this red eyeball and the weapons batteries. Sorry, men. This piece of junk must be forty years old if it's a day, and the zappers are even older. You'd think some turkey would have smuggled in more up-to-date stuff by now."

"Could be they did." Vilkas peered gloomily into his empty stein. "But who's to know? The Tanu lords who had contraband dumps kept mum about their collections. No swap meets or comparing goodies. King Thagdal would have had their heads on a pike if he found out they were holding out on him. All important Milieu gadgetry coming through the time-gate was supposed to be the property of the Crown. And things like guns were supposed to be destroyed." He gave a bark of ironic laughter.

"Lucky for us they wasn't!" Jim nodded at the newly installed cl.u.s.ter of medium-sized laser weapons. "We'ns wouldn' have a hope 'n h.e.l.l 'gainst this North 'merican gang if all we fielded was gla.s.s blades 'n' brainpower. Those zappers-shoo! Never saw nothin' like this yere in the swamp!"

"They're junk," said Yosh flatly. "So antiquated, it's pitiful.

Supposed to have a range of ten kloms and they go plasmatic at seven! G.o.d, what I wouldn't give for some modern fieldjacketed beam blasters-or even an old-time X-ray job."

Jim regarded him open-mouthed. "Shoo, boss-what a place that 'ere Galactic Mil-yew must be!"

Yosh and Vilkas eyed each other. The robotics engineer asked. "Were your parents time-travellers, Jim?"

"Gran'parents," said the young man. "We lived two whole gen'rations free there in Stilt Town, after the Firvulag abandoned Nionel. Not even Howlers wanted the Paree Basin." He giggled. "Which was fine by us!"

Vilkas was staring at his boots. "Would you go back to the swamp if you had the chance, kid? Go home?"

"An' eat smews 'n' bulrush roots and hog-deer?" Jim snorted.

"Not this chile. You can keep ol' Paree." He snapped two fingers against his grey torc, making the metal ring.