Galactic Milieu - Diamond Mask Part 40

The metaconcerted pas de deux resumed in a blare of triumphant mindsong. A brilliant aquamarine beam thrust down at the rising diapir, expanded into a cone, and created a new starry roof, denser and thicker than the first one.

The slowly moving golden crest of the diapir hit the barrier and expanded laterally. Singing in her agony, she widened the focus, keeping pace with the spreading magma. Finally, when the reservoir was only half its former depth, the pressures stabilized. The new lid held firm. Beneath it, the molten ma.s.s contracted slowly into an approximation of its original shape.

Good G.o.d almighty! said Jim MacKelvie. You saved it, Jack! It's holding, stronger than before.

But Jack wasn't listening. His own invulnerable brain had been unaffected by the flashover, but he knew what had happened to her. He spoke on her intimate telepathic mode.

Diamond-can you hear me?

Yes, she replied. I-I maintain focus now. Myredaction came online as-as flashover dissipated. Nomexsuit protected body but-but-Jack! Myface below CEhelmet burntdeep myentirerespiratorysystem damaged flightdeckenvironmental restored depleted atmosphere . .. but I can't breathe Jack somethingwrongnerves can't see either- I don't dare divert any energy from the metaconcert! Your PK-can you use it?

Perhaps ... a little. But I'll die soon and then- Be quiet. Listen. In the locker to the left of your chair, marked EMERGENCY IPPB, is a positive-pressure breathing apparatus. Get it.

Yes. Ahhh G.o.d it hurts! ... Yes. Oh Jack. Oxygen. Hurts somuch but I can breathe/see again. Jack? ...

Diamond. My dear, darling Diamond.

She breathed. Intermittent positive pressure from the oxygen mask inflated her ruined lungs, then let them exhale. Fingers shaking, she fastened the mask in place. A hallucination swept over her, and for a moment she was back in the c.o.c.kpit of the funny old yellow flitter, filled with joy as she flew high above her father's farm as free as a falcon. To fly again! She would fly again ...

Diamond! Come back!

Yes. Sorry Jack. But I didn't drop the concert, didn't stop the dance. I'm still with you.

Of course you are ...

But Jack knew that she wouldn't continue for long. Her metacreative output was slowly sinking. The oxygen was keeping her alive, but she was too badly injured to maintain her role in the metaconcert for more than another five minutes or so. They would have to abort less than halfway into the operation.

There was time enough for the other eight CE operators to escape, but he and Diamond would certainly be caught by the ascending diapir when the lid failed. They would ride the molten rock to the surface of the planet, accelerating faster and faster as the volatiles expanded. When the eruption broke through the surface, their armored, sigma-shielded deep-driller would be blasted high into the air. Perhaps they would survive.

Caledonia would not. There would still be enough ash in the ejecta to devastate the planetary atmosphere.

Jack? Jack? For G.o.d's sake, man, answer me!

Poor Jim MacKelvie was trying to find out what had happened. It was time to tell him.

Jim, the rest of you-listen. The Dirigent has been seriously injured in a flashover event. She won't be able to carry on much longer in our metaconcert. We 're going to have to abort the operation.

NO.

I know what a horrible disappointment this is, but we have no choice- I SAID NO, DAMMIT! DON'T ABORT!.

Jim, don't be a b.l.o.o.d.y fool! Kill your concert! Get out of here while you can!

NONONO! HOLD ON TWO MINUTES MORE!.

... Jack? Jim here. It's-it's not me talking. There's somebody else! Somebody using CE-enhanced farspeech right down here in the fewkin' asthenosphere!

IT TAKES ONLY TWO MINUTES TO PLUG IN A CREATIVITY BRAINBOARD.

Jack was laughing, nearly hysterical. He knew who it was.

He said he wouldn't have anything to do with this project. G.o.d only knows what he's doing here. But I'm going to plug him into this metaconcert of mine and he's going to work with us now whether he wants to or not!

STOP YAMMERING LIKE AN IDIOT AND OPEN UP. I'LL PHASE IN AS SOON AS YOU CUT HER LOOSE. SWITCHING TO CREATIVITY MODE ...

"Diamond, can you hear me?"

Yes. What- "It's over. The separation of the volatiles is complete. We're on our way to the surface. We don't know yet whether the operation was successful, but the probability is high."

I'm ... glad.

"How do you feel?"

It doesn't hurt so much anymore.

"I've been redacting you."

Featherlight kisses on her closed eyelids. She opened them, saw his face bending over her. She was lying on the deck of the control room, her body somehow cushioned and comfortable. She lifted her hand and he kissed the palm. Silken fabric slipped down her arm. She was no longer wearing the Nomex suit but was wrapped instead in some peculiar white material that was soft and warm.

"The suit was scorched and filthy from the flashover," he explained. "I made you a gown and robe. From the food rations. I've had a lot of practice transforming organic matter."

She tried to smile.

She couldn't.

Her fingers touched the mask that still covered her lower face and gently fed oxygen to her damaged lungs. She let her seekersense look beneath the smooth pla.s.s and found hideous charred muscle and bone.

Jack's redaction antic.i.p.ated her shock and horror, neutralizing it so that she only felt a mild sadness.

"I couldn't heal you completely. I'm sorry. Your injuries are too severe and I'm wrung out myself from our ordeal. I didn't want to make any mistakes. I dealt with the pain and certain internal problems and did some superficial tidying. The rest had better wait until we reach the surface and let medic redactors look you over."

All right.

"I just thank G.o.d you survived. There was nothing I could do to prevent the flashover from harming you. The E18s are too powerful."

Why ... did it happen? I know it was my fault.

"No. Blame the Lylmik who did your last MP a.s.say. You had reserves of creativity that were still uncalibrated, and when you fed them into the concert unexpectedly, dysergism resulted. It wasn't your fault. We paramounts are full of surprises, my darling."

Her eyes widened.

He bent closer. There were tears on his face. "My dearest Diamond! I love you so very much. Ever since we first met at Marc's party. I know it's impossible, though, so please don't give it another thought. I promise never to make a pest of myself ever again. But I had to tell you. I hope you'll forgive me."

Her own vision fogged. She tried to bespeak him but her thoughts were too chaotic. He loved her ... That was why he had come to Caledonia and risked his life. Uncle Rogi had tried to tell her, but she had refused to listen.

Knowing it already. Not wanting to know.

All she could say was: But I look so horrible!

"You're beautiful," he said, and showed her the mental image of her that he treasured.

That's ... not me.

He laughed softly. "It is, you know! But don't fuss about it What you need now is rest. It'll be hours before we reach the surface. Go to sleep, little Diamond."

But she continued to stare anxiously at his face instead-that smiling face with the ordinary features and the extraordinary blue eyes. That face that she now realized did not really exist, except in her imagination.

He projected no illusion, wore no creative disguise, and still she saw him, heard him, felt his kisses and his falling tears. How? Why?

"Don't worry about it now," said the hovering brain. "We'll sort it out later. When you're feeling better."

25.

FROM THE MEMOIRS OF ROGATIEN REMILLARD.

I was in the Windlestrow safety bunker, where i had spent the previous 48 hours together with a skeleton crew of geophysicists, several government observers, and three media reps, waiting on events below. We played poker and tizz and Monopoly, listened to music, ate nuked pizza, Scotch eggs, sausage rolls, and scones with jam. Some of us, including me, drank to excess.

There was no way we could contact the people in the drill-rigs down in the magma and no way we could tell what progress they were making. Continual microtremors from the subterranean activities made a hash of any attempt at fine monitoring. Only when the diatreme began its ascent would we know for certain whether or not the operation had been a success.

The fifty-fifty odds had first made us optimistic; but as the hours dragged on and the deep seismic disturbances grew more alarmingly intense, our spirits did a one-eighty flip and our once-hopeful vigil turned into a virtual deathwatch. It was futile, we all agreed, to think that ten human minds could forestall the awesome eruption that was going to devastate the Scottish planet.

The Celtic soul has a natural bent toward melancholy fatalism. My kiltie companions and I, by unspoken agreement, began to conduct a wake for Caledonia.

When he arrived I was well on my way to alcoholic oblivion, sitting in a dim corner of the bunker's main seismic monitoring room with Calum Sorley and a couple of sozzled Tri-D reporters. A big wall-mounted screen showed a view of rainswept Loch Windlestrow 20 kloms away, where the eruption was expected to surface.

I was pouring myself another shot of Glenfiddich and wishing somebody would turn off the d.a.m.ned bagpipe music on the intercom when there was a sudden rumpus at the entrance to the bunker-a great metallic clang, confused yelling, and a familiar voice bellowing for people to get out of his way or he'd zap them into piles of dogs.h.i.t.

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 gla.s.s went flying.

"What the b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l 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 carca.s.s 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 f.u.c.k 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 t.i.tter 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 s.h.i.t 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 sh.o.r.e of the loch.

"Ti-Jean 'n' Dorothee 'n' the rest of 'em are down in the rock soup. You take one of the spare E18s, put a fa.r.s.ense 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 outga.s.sed 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 Dorothee, 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. n.o.body knew yet, he explained, whether the ascending ma.s.s 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 h.e.l.lacious 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 ma.s.s 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 h.e.l.l 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 Dorothee 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.

Dorothee 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.