The Intervention Part 34

"We are eager to experience your metaphor. "

"Very well, " said Unifex. "We five will contemplate it together, but as individuals and without any metapsychic penetration of the human partic.i.p.ants in the drama. We will empathize with the Earthlings to the fullest, and view the spectacle as much on their simple level as is possible for us. Please accompany me mentally now to j.a.pan, where a baseball game is about to be played... "

It was the final contest of an exhibition series: the first East-West Championship ever organized, and one of numerous goodwill enterprises that had been undertaken in various parts of the world in the joyous aftermath of the Edinburgh Demonstration. For a few brief months, the planet had given itself over to a carnival of hope, reacting to decades of nuclear anxiety. There had been festivals of music and dance and drama and poetry, and there were seminars of knowledge sharing, and there were games. Seven countries had partic.i.p.ated in the baseball series, and now it had all come down to a last championship game between the mighty New York Mets and the formidable Hiroshima Carp. The teams were tied at three games apiece in the seven-game series.

The players, clad in colorful close-fitting suits, enacted the deceptively simple contest before an audience of more than 150,000 fans, who had packed the vast Hiroshima Yakyujo to the topmost tier. Those who viewed the game on television numbered nearly a billion - some twenty percent of the global population - and included many who, like the fascinated Lylmik, were more interested in the symbolic than the sporting aspect of this particular match-up.

It was a multilayered event: physical, psychological, mathematical. There was even an elusive musical element in its alternation of violent action with intervals of pregnant ennui. Atoning Unifex imparted to Its fellow ent.i.ties an instantaneous knowledge of the rules, the attributes and eccentricities of the players, and the strategic theories employed by the team managers during the previous games of the series.

"There are actually a number of metaphors being manifested here, " Unifex said. "As we watch, let us also synthesize and strive to apply the essential wisdom to the larger reality. "

Then the game began, and for more than two hours the exotic beings were caught up in the symbolic conflict. The game was closely fought until the seventh inning, when the Mets leaped ahead, 4-2. They kept their lead through the bottom of the ninth, and the Carp came to bat for the last time facing a make-or-break situation.

The Mets pitcher, the celebrated Zeke O'Toole, was no longer in the flush of youth and obviously tiring, but it was out of the question that he should be replaced. Instead, he adopted an excessively cautious technique designed to frustrate and anger the opposition. He posed, ruminated, and eyeballed the Carp players on deck and the waiting batter in an insolent and intimidating manner. The tactic resulted in two strikeouts, and wails of dismay arose from the Carp partisans in the stadium. Their desolation was transformed into fresh hope, however, when the next batter hit a single, and the one after him doubled.

"Now the climax of the drama approaches, " Atoning Unifex said. "The next scheduled batter is the Carp pitcher, an untalented ball-walloper who will undoubtedly be replaced by a pinch hitter. Yes. Here comes Kenji 'Shoeless Ken' Katsuyama, a redoubtable but somewhat erratic man in the clutch situation. The Carp manager takes a monumental gamble sending him in. If this ma.s.sively muscled young slugger can connect with the ball, he may very well hit it into the hyperspatial matrix! He would score himself on a home run, and bring in the men on second and third, winning the game for the Carp. To avoid this outcome, one might expect the wily veteran pitcher, O'Toole, to give this dangerous rival a walk to first base. This might set up a double play if the men on base attempt to steal, wiping the Carp out and winning it for the Mets. Or, even if a single Carp should score on the walk, it seems virtually certain that the unagile Katsuyama would be tagged for the third out on a subsequent play, also giving victory to the Mets. Another possibility, more perilous for the Mets, is that with Ken taking first on a walk and the bases loaded, the next batter up might put the Carp into an advantageous scoring position. O'Toole and Katsuyama are both in what humans call the hot seat. "

"The j.a.panese fans certainly do not concede defeat, " Noetic Concordance remarked.

"See how they plead for a home run, " said Eupathic Impulse, "exerting all their collective coercion! What a pity the metafaculty has such a large suboperative component. "

h.o.m.ologous Trend displayed statistics on the powerful young batter's past performance. "This Shoeless One does not seem to know the meaning of the term 'strike zone. ' One notes that he has been known to flail away at bean b.a.l.l.s. This may influence O'Toole's style of play. "

"The batter is impatient with the dilatory tactics of the elderly pitcher, " Asymptotic Essence said. "The men on second and third base hold back, wary of the American's reputation as a butcher of base-stealers. "

Zeke O'Toole was dawdling conspicuously on the mound, but he was given the benefit of the doubt by the j.a.panese plate umpire. Meanwhile, Katsuyama glowered, pawed the earth, and gripped his Mizuno bat in a strangle hold.

Atoning Unifex said, "Play ball, you draga.s.s Irish grandstander!"

Now the catcher was sidling to the right, obviously expecting a waste pitch thrown wide. O'Toole shook his head minimally. A split second later he hurled a sizzling knuckleball high and inside, barely crossing a corner of the plate.

Strike one.

There were more delays. O'Toole sketched a series of cryptic signals, then finally threw one very wide for ball one. Katsuyama stomped about, twirling his bat and grimacing. He took his stance and waited. And waited. When the pitch came, curving and slow, he swung heroically. He missed.

Strike two.

The Lylmik were aware of Shoeless Ken's mounting fury. He stood in a kind of sumo crouch while a fastball came zinging in, deliberately wide, for ball two.

O'Toole chewed his cud of spruce gum, nonchalantly cupped the return behind his back, swiveled his head to spear the men on base with his pale and ornery eye, then seemed to bow his head in prayer. The fans hooted and screamed but the complaisant umpire merely waited. At last the pitcher wound up and delivered wide and junky for ball three.

"This is called a full count, " Unifex said. "One notes that the veteran O'Toole remains cool while Katsuyama is livid. "

The men on base were ranging out desperately. O'Toole wasted no time but wound up with barely legal celerity and threw a wide pitchout to the waiting catcher. It was intended to be a fourth ball, walking Katsuyama and nailing the man creeping along the base line toward home plate, but it barely sc.r.a.ped the edge of the strike zone and...

Kwoing!

Crowding the plate, uttering a martial shout, Shoeless Ken swung his bat in a flattened arc at that hopelessly wide pitch. The connection came perilously close to the bat's tip; but so heroic was the swing that the ball took off like a blurry white meteor into the remotest coign of left field, topping the fence. A tsunami of ecstatic sound engulfed Katsuyama as he ceremonially encircled the bases. He bowed to the crowd. Then he bowed to Zeke O'Toole, who still stood on the pitcher's mound with folded arms.

The huge electronic display posted the final score:

HIROSHIMA CARP 5.

NEW YORK METS 4.

HIROSHIMA CARP WIN PLANET SERIES.

4 GAMES TO 3.

In the Lylmik cruiser invisibly orbiting Earth, the supervising ent.i.ties studied the baseball game in its totality, frozen in the spatiotemporal lattices like a fixed specimen on a slide, viewed under a microscope at extreme magnification.

"One observes the obvious historical parallel, " said h.o.m.ologous Trend. "The old antagonism ritualized. "

Asymptotic Essence said, "One notes that, in sharing this sublimation with their fellow humans, the two powerful nations speed coadunation of the World Mind. "

Eupathic Impulse said, "One perceives that you, Unifex, knew the outcome and educational potential of this obscure contest before it began. This reinforces my own hypothesis of a great Proleptic Peculiarity in the planet's s.e.xternion - nodally determined by yourself!"

The poet, Noetic Concordance, was silent for some time. Its contribution, when it finally came, was almost tentative. "One observes that the American sports fans in the stadium cheered the Carp victory even more fervently than did the j.a.panese... "

Atoning Unifex let Its mind-smile embrace the four. "Well done. Hold the collection of metaphors deep in your hearts. Return to it from time to time to a.s.sist your contemplation of Earth. And tomorrow when the atomic bombs destroy Tel Aviv and Dimona, mourn with humanity. But remember that the probability lattices are not certainties. They can be moved by fervent acts of will. Both love and evolution act in an elitist way. And now, farewell. "

THE END OF PART TWO.

PART III.

THE INTERVENTION.

1.

FROM THE MEMOIRS OF ROGATIEN REMILLARD.

PAUL REMILLARD, MY grandnephew, made an observation during his first address to the Galactic Concilium in 2052, when Earth's long proctoring by the Simbiari finally ended and human magnates were admitted at last to the Milieu's governing body: "There are two prices that must inevitably be paid by the operant mind. The first is a reluctant but certain alienation from the latent members of one's race - and its consequent is pain. The second price is less obvious, an obligation of the higher mind to love and serve those minds who stand a step beneath on evolution's ladder. Only when this second price is freely and selflessly paid is there alleviation from the pain of the first... "

By the time Paul bespoke those words, he was merely uttering a truism that operant human beings had recognized (and debated) for more than sixty years. It was foreshadowed in Tamara Sakhvadze's keynote speech before the First Congress on Metapsychology in Alma-Ata in September 1992, where vigorous exception was taken to it by certain factions. It was formally codified after the Intervention in the ethical formulae imparted to all student operants by their Milieu-trained teachers, but not fully subscribed to by the Human Polity until our recalcitrant race instigated the Metapsychic Rebellion in 2083, learning its lesson at last as it nearly destroyed the Milieu that had prematurely welcomed Earth into its benevolent confederation.

You reading this who are immersed in the Unity take the principle for granted. It is as old as n.o.blesse oblige or Luke 12:48. As for the operant minds who denied or tried to evade their duty to serve, they are all dead or reformed except me. For a long time I thought I was tolerated as a harmless cautionary example - the last Rebel, the sole surviving metapsychic maverick, neither a "normal" human mind nor an operant integrated into the Milieu's Unity. I believed, like other Remillards, that I had been allowed to persist in my unregeneracy because of my famous family and because I was no menace, my refusal having been grounded in b.l.o.o.d.y-minded stubbornness rather than malice or arrogance.

But now, as I approach the climax of this first volume of my memoirs, I am inclined to revise my modest evaluation of myself. Perhaps there is a deeper purpose in my relegation to the sidelines in la grande danse. I do bring, after all, a unique perspective to these memoirs. This may be the reason why I have been compelled - by something - to write them.

The rain seemed interminable during the summer of 1992, not only in my own section of New England but also in much of the rest of the Northern Hemisphere, as if the sky itself were obliged to share in the universal sorrow following the Armageddon strike. There was the human tragedy, the half million dead and more than two million others rendered homeless, and the suffering of the injured that would extend over so many years. But there was also the symbolic loss: The land holy to Jews, Christians, and Muslims was debarred to us for uncountable years beneath its pall of radioactivity.

The devices exploded in Tel Aviv and Dimona by the Islamic Holy War terrorist group had been crude, with a yield of about ten kilotons apiece. The fallout was intensified by the incineration of the Israeli nuclear weapons stockpile in the Dimona blast; and it was debris from this that spread northward in a wide swath, heavily contaminating both Jerusalem and Amman and rendering some forty thousand square kilometers of Israel and Jordan uninhabitable for the foreseeable future.

In the early days of that summer of lamentation, when the rain was poisoned and the whole world was shocked into incredulity, the magnitude of the disaster almost lifted it out of the political realm. Human beings of all races and all religious faiths mourned. A ma.s.sive multinational relief effort mobilized while church bells tolled, mosques overflowed with bereaved Muslims, and Jews around the world sang Kaddish - not only for the dead and for lost Jerusalem, but for the dashed dream of peace.

"We could not watch everywhere, " the EE adepts said. "There are too few of us, and the Armageddon strike was completely unexpected. "

True; but there was still an irrational undercurrent feeling of betrayal. The miraculous "happy ending" of the metapsychic coming had proved a hollow mockery. Not only had the operants failed to prevent the calamity, but they were not even able to help locate the perpetrators. It was more than a year later that ordinary UN investigators cooperating with Interpol traced the members of the Iranian clique that had planted the bombs and brought them to trial. The psychotic Pakistani technician who had sold them the plutonium had long since blown his brains out.

After six weeks, the airborne radioactivity was almost entirely dissipated and the summer rains were clean again. Over most of the planet, the deadly isotopes were spread very thinly, and they sank with the rain into the soil or drifted to the bottom of the sea. Earth recovered, as it had from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But the Holy Land was ruined. With the farmlands contaminated by the heaviest fallout and livestock dead or scattered, the rural population that had escaped immediate injury fled in panic to the nearest unaffected cities, triggering food riots and the collapse of law and order. The Jordanian government disintegrated almost immediately. Israeli officials set up an emergency capital at Haifa and vowed that the nation would survive; but by August, expert consensus held that the economy of the Jewish homeland, always fragile, had this time suffered a mortal blow. Surviving middle-cla.s.s and professional Israelis began a growing exodus to the United States, Canada, and South Africa. Some Oriental Jews and Arab Christians resettled in Morocco. Upper-cla.s.s Muslims and others with foreign bank accounts readily found haven. But the bulk of the displaced Muslim population faced an uncertain fate. Armageddon had killed more Jews, but it had left far greater numbers of Muslims homeless because of the fallout pattern. Few Christian nations were inclined to offer them asylum because the refugees were a.s.sociated in the popular mind with the cause of the Islamic terrorists, and because a vengeful minority proclaimed their intention of escalating Armageddon into a full-scale jihad. Responding to popular opinion, the politicians of Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific Basin concluded that the refugees would be "una.s.similable, " a social and economic liability. Dar al-Islam countered proudly that it would take care of its own. However, when the speechmaking ended, it appeared that only Iran was eager to welcome large numbers of immigrants. Other Islamic countries were willing to open their doors to small numbers of homeless; but the oil glut and overpopulation had already strained their economies, and they feared the political consequences of an influx of indigents.

The displaced Muslims were notably reluctant to put themselves at the mercy of the fanatical Shiite regime in Iran. Most of them were Sunnis, of a more moderate religious persuasion than the Iranians, and they were appalled that the Ayatollah had proclaimed Armageddon to be justified under shari'ah, the traditional Islamic law. Furthermore, the refugees suspected (quite rightly) that they would be required to show loyalty to their new country by fighting in the long-standing war between Iran and Iraq. A few hundred fiery young men accepted the Ayatollah's invitation. The rest of the 1.5 million men, women, and children remained encamped in squalid "receiving centers" in Arabia and the Sinai, subsisting on charity, until China announced its remarkable proposal. When this was approved, the great airlift began early in September. By the end of the year the last of the displaced families were resettled in remote "Lands of Promise" in Xinjiang. Red Crescent and Red Cross inspectors reported that the refugees were made welcome by their coreligionists, the Uigurs, Kirghiz, Uzbeks, Tadjiks, and Kazakhs, who had lived in that part of China from time immemorial; they worked on collective farms in the oases and the irrigated deserts and adapted well - until Central Asia blew up in the course of the Soviet Civil War, and only the Intervention saved the Xinjiang population from becoming cannon fodder in the projected Chinese invasion of Kazakhstan.

The Intervention also restored Jerusalem to the human race as a city of pilgrimage. Milieu science decontaminated the Holy Land and thousands of the original inhabitants elected to return. However, since the Milieu statutes forbade any form of theocratic government, neither Israel nor Jordan were ever reborn. Palestine became the first territory governed solely by the Human Polity of the Milieu (successor to the United Nations) under mandate of the Simbiari Proctorship and the Galactic Concilium.

The rain was torrential on 21 September 1992, the last Monday of the summer, which turned out to be a very memorable day at my bookshop.

The excitement began when I unpacked a box of paperbacks I had purchased as part of a job lot at an estate sale in Woodstock the previous weekend. The spines visible at the top showed mostly science-fiction and mystery t.i.tles dating from the 1950s, and I'd bought three boxes for thirty dollars. I figured I would at least recoup my investment, since I had already spotted a moderately rare collectible, The Green Girl by Jack Williamson. As I sorted through the rest of that box I also uncovered a halfway decent first edition of The Chinese Parrot, a Charlie Chan mystery that I knew would fetch at least fifteen from a Dartmouth physics professor of the same name. I began to whistle cheerily, even though the storm was lashing the streets and the wind roared like a typhoon. There probably wouldn't be a customer all day - but who cared? I could catch up on my sorting.

Then I reached the very bottom of the box. I saw a soiled manila envelope marked SAVE THIS!!! in a pencil scrawl. There was a small book inside. I pried the corroded clasp open, let the envelope's contents slither out onto my worktable, and gasped. There lay Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, from the limited Ballentine 1953 edition of two hundred copies, signed by the author. The white asbestos binding was spotless.

With the utmost care, I edged the precious volume onto a sheet of clean wrapping paper and carried it to my office at the rear of the shop. Setting the treasure reverently aside, I sat down at my computer and summoned the current paperback collectors' price guide, my fingers shaking as I tapped the keys. The screen showed the going rate for my rarity. Even in VG condition, it would sell for no less than six thousand dollars. And my copy was mint.

I chortled and hit the keys again for the Worldwide PB Want List, and a moment later began to scrutinize the small group of well-heeled bibliophiles who presently coveted my nonincendiary little gem: a Texas fantasy foundation; a doctor in Bel Air; a Bradbury completist in Waukegan, Illinois; the Countess of Arundel, a keen collector of dystopias; the Library of the University of Taiwan; and (hottest prospect of all) a certain wealthy horror writer in Bangor, Maine, who had just recently begun to snap up rare Bradburiana. Did I dare to start the bidding at ten thou? Would it be worthwhile to invite the Maine Monstermeister to inspect the book, so that I could try reading his mind to see what the traffic might bear? And to think I'd acquired the thing for a piddling thirty dollars!

And you should be ashamed of yourself.

I looked up with a start. Coming toward me from the front of my shop was Lucille Cartier, followed by another woman. I erected my mental barrier with haste, stepped outside the office and closed the door, and gave the pair a professional smile.

"Well, h.e.l.lo, Lucille. It's been quite some time. "

"Five months. " You'd really take advantage of a poor unsuspecting widow who didn't realize how valuable that book was?

Don't be ridiculous. The rule is caveat vendor, and I'm as ethical as any other book dealer. "Have you been keeping busy with that new Ph. D. of yours?"

"Fairly busy. " But not nearly as busy as you espece de canardier!

"Is there some way I can help you?" And what's that crack supposed to mean?

For starters you can b.u.t.t OUT of my relationship with Bill Sampson! "I'd like to have you meet my coworker, Dr. Ume Kimura. She's a visiting fellow at Dartmouth from the University of Tokyo, here under the auspices of the j.a.panese Society for Parapsychology. "

"Enchante, Dr. Kimura. " I abruptly terminated my telepathic colloquy with Lucille, which was straying close to dangerous waters. It was very easy for me to concentrate all my attention on the Oriental newcomer, who really was enchanting. She was older than Lucille, and exquisitely soignee, with a complexion like translucent porcelain and delicately tinted lips. A black wool beret dotted with raindrops was pulled down at a saucy angle above her exceptionally large eyes, which had black feathery lashes and little of the epicanthic fold. She wore a trenchcoat of silvery leather with a wide belt that emphasized her tiny waist, and a high-necked black sweater. Her mind was densely screened in a manner that gave a new dimension to inscrutability.

Lucille said briskly, "Ume and I are colleagues in a new project that will investigate the psychoenergetic manifestations of creativity -"

"Working with Denis?" I cut in, raising my eyebrows in exaggerated surprise.

"Of course working with Denis, " Lucille snapped. "We've been a.s.sociated with the Metapsychic Lab since the beginning of the summer term. "

"I haven't seen him much lately, " I said. "He seems to be spending most of his time in Washington since Alma-Ata. Were you and Dr. Kimura able to attend the big congress?"

"Oh, yes!" exclaimed the delectable Ume, her eyes sparkling and her mind all aglow with a spill of happy reminiscence. "It was a most profound experience - more than three thousand metapsychic researchers, and over a third of them operant in greater or lesser degree! So many interesting papers and discussions! So much warmth and rapport!"

"So much talking and cautious telepathic chitchat, " Lucille said. "So much political p.u.s.s.yfooting. "

"It was a good beginning, " Ume insisted. "Next year, in Palo Alto, the Metapsychic Congress will meet for the second time with a much expanded agenda - especially in the matter of education, the training of new operants. That must be our most urgent goal. "

I frowned, remembering the media furor that had greeted the final resolution at Alma-Ata, proposed by Denis and seconded by Tamara and pa.s.sed by a large majority of the Congress. Both Lucille and Ume picked up on my skepticism.

"Denis was absolutely right to push through the resolution calling for metapsychic testing of all people, " Lucille said. "I can't understand the objections! We have very reliable mental a.s.say techniques now. You'd think that after Armageddon, the necessity of finding and training all potential operants would be obvious. "

"A pity, " I said, "that Denis's resolution didn't specify voluntary testing. "

"Oh, for heaven's sake, " Lucille said. "We have to test everyone. That stands to reason."

I shrugged. "For an intelligent woman, you're really very naive. "

Ume looked at me with perplexity. "You really believe that this will be a problem in the United States, Mr. Remillard? Such a universal testing program is quite acceptable in j.a.pan, I a.s.sure you. "

"It'll be a problem, " I said. "A big one. I'd be glad to explain the ins and outs of the independent Yankee psyche to you over lunch, Dr. Kimura. " My mind was still well guarded, but Ume's mental veil thinned then for just an instant, giving me an unexpected glimpse of something very encouraging indeed.

Her lashes lowered demurely. "That would be delightful. Lucille and I thank you very much. "

So much for my tete-a-tete hopes! I gritted my teeth in frustration - and then had to jack up the strength of my mental shield against the renewed and insidious coercion of Lucille, who was now grinning heartlessly at my discomfiture.

She said, "You're so closely attuned to the social and political implications of operancy, aren't you, Roger? I can't wait to hear your opinions on the subject. But before we go to lunch, let me tell you why we came here today. I mentioned that Ume and I have a creativity project. We're studying persons who seem to be able to exert a metapsychic influence on energy - or even generate energy mentally. Denis said that you apparently experienced such a psychocreative manifestation right after the Edinburgh Demonstration. As I understand it, you inadvertently conjured up some form of radiant energy and melted a small hole in a window. "

"A Kundalini zap, " I said.

"Denis recommended very strongly that we check with you on your experience. I was told that it took place when you were under unusual conditions of stress. " All the time she was speaking, the d.a.m.n girl was skittering slyly all over my mind, giving little prods with some incisive faculty quite different from coercion. I found out later it was an aspect of the redactive function, a primitive mind-ream. As she crept and poked, her telepathy hectored me on my intimate mode: What have you been saying to Bill? WHAT you sneaky undermining ratfink sale mouchard? What did you tell him cafardeur?

I said, "I was s.h.i.t-scared when I zapped the window, if you call that stress. "

Ume giggled.

Lucille said: Tu vieux saolard! Ingrat! Calomniateur! Allez - deballe! Foutu alcoolique!

I said: Nice to know you haven't completely abandoned your French heritage kiddo but I'm not really an alcoholic you know only an alcohol abuser as an experimental psychologist you should watch those fine distinctions!