Dark Genesis: The Birth of the Psi Corps (3 page)

The screen began splitting, then recording what it couldn’t show. The reports increased, ten, thirty-in less than an hour it was over a hundred.

“Oh, my God,” Tom whispered.

“Yep. Now people have a whole new thing to blame their problems on, something real, something tangible.”

“But you-“

“Me? Listen to the ‘casts. It’s Koya that’s gettin’ the credit for this. This is going to get worse, and he’s gonna be the guy who started it. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy, the little two-faced sumovabitch. One of Tokash’s toadies.” He smiled. “So Koya gets credit for starting the killings, and the worse stuff that’ll come later. Me-people will remember I was cautious, tried to talk sense. They’ll see me as the one to pick up the pieces, and the guy who’ll protect them from the big bad telepaths, all at the same time.”

“But Lee, those people are dying.”

“Tom, this was going to break, and they were going to die. That’s life. Hell, this is nothin’. These are the lunatics, the ones who were already closest to the edge. Most of these murders and what have you would have happened anyway, but under a variety of justifications. The real mess is coming if the results are replicated and even the skeptics give the whole thing the nod. When the sane people believe it, the implications will really sink in. It’s our job to handle the damage, and we’ve got a jump on it. We can make it better. Now, are you gonna mope, or are we gonna get to work?”

Tom nodded, though his face was still troubled.

“Work,” he said.

CHAPTER I

Earth & Moon Today, 3 October 2115

A team at Johns Hopkins University Medical School today joined the ranks of those who confirm the findings of the Philen-Duffy study. Dr. Richard Stepp, chair of the Experimental Psychology Department, announced the conclusions today at a press conference.

“I was as skeptical as anyone,” Dr. Stepp told the audience, “but I really don’t see any room for doubt now. Extrasensory perception is no longer a fantasy or a possibility-it is a fact.”

The Miami Herald, English edition, 5 December 2115 Pope Pius XV disclosed today that a number of as-yet-unnamed priests have voluntarily come forward to be tested as telepaths.

“It should be clear to us all,” the Pope said at his address in Caracas, “that the sudden appearance of these people among us constitutes a miracle-the scientific community has no explanation for them. God has given us men and women who can see into our souls, and this is a blessing we must embrace . They are God’s gifts to us, a reminder of His love, a way to true confession and salvation.” His Holiness went on to decry the violence and suspicion surrounding the discovery of telepaths, and called for the world to join in “peacefully embracing our new brethren.”

The snow wasn’t pretty anymore, it was just cold. His pants were frozen and they chafed hard against his legs.

“It hurts, Mama. I want to stop.”

She squeezed his hand tighter.

Not yet, she said, in their secret voice. We have to finish our game.

I don’t want to finish it. I want to go home.

Things tumbled out of Mama, then, a whole lot of things he didn’t understand. Some were shiny and made him want to cry, others just scared him. Gripping her hand, he felt tall and sick, an itchy wetness in his side, sharp pain when he took a breath. It started snowing harder, so hard he could barely see the red cliffs all around them. And he heard something else. Little voices that talked only of hunger and need, bigger ones that were angry and hard. Too far away to hear words, but he didn’t like them.

Don’t like what? his mother asked.

The men and the dogs. He sulked. I don’t like this game.

A feeling from Mama, like when he woke up dreaming of falling. Her heart was beating hard, like someone was pounding on her chest. She stopped and hugged him to her. Her clothes were cold and stiff like his, but her cheek turned warm after only a second. Then she led him over to one of the cliffs.

“Let’s climb up here,” she said aloud.

The rock was smooth and hard to climb, even though it wasn’t very steep. In the steeper parts, Mama pushed him from behind and showed him the handholds. Someone made those handholds a very long time ago, she told him. Your great-great-many-greats-grandfather, maybe.

Did you know that? Why? Were they playing hide-and-seek, too?

He thought she laughed inside, the laugh that didn’t really mean she was happy or that she thought something was funny.

Yes, she said.

Did they win?

No.

The last part was the steepest, but then they were inside the cave. It was pretty big, but not too high. Mama could only stand up in a few places. There was some kind of old house in the cave, made out of lots of flat rocks. Mama took him behind one of the walls and sat down there.

“Come here,” she said, in sound words, very softly. Her lips had little spots of red on them. He came up under her arm. “Now we have to be very quiet,” she said. “And when they come, you have to play your very best. You have to think about this cave being very empty-think about you and me just being rocks. Can you do that? Like when you play this with the other kids?”

Yes.

“Use sound words,” she gasped. “And remember, only use your quiet words with me. No one else. Ever. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Mama.”

“Good.” They sat that way for a long time, and Mama fell asleep. Outside , he knew the men and dogs were getting closer. He felt them looking hard at the cave, but he did as he was told, and pretended that he and Mama were just rocks, just part of the old house. After a while, they went on. He noticed Mama’s voice was getting smaller. He held both her hands-that usually helped-but it just kept getting smaller. He shouted at her, in the quiet way, but nothing she said made much sense, and so he listened as hard as he could, harder, straining. Goodbye. I love you, he finally heard. And then something else, something like rushing water, not just a sound but something sucking all around him. Someone singing, and maybe a drum beating, like at the Shalako dances. And then it was like a hole under his feet, and he was falling, falling through a thunderstorm, lightning and black clouds all around him, down and down, and something seemed to tear out of his chest, and he heard his mother’s voice, but not saying anything he understood, and then nothing, nothing. Except he was still falling, and he saw himself from inside out, like a sock turned inside out, except it was everything he thought and felt and knew, and there was a Shalako there, shining brighter than the Sun, telling him something. And Mama was with the Shalako , and they were all going down, down into the dance hall of the dead, and he was getting cold, and he didn’t care anymore.

Then Mama gave him something. The Shalako gave him something . And it hurt. He screarried and he pushed, like he was swimming, and he swam and beat and pulled at something. Or maybe he found handholds like his mother had shown him, but not rock, and he climbed, and then he was out of the cloud, out of the water, the thunder and lighting getting smaller behind him, and a different kind of darkness came, one that wasn’t as scary.

He woke up in his mother’s arms. She was holding him tight, and he couldn’t make her let go. He finally had to wriggle away, and she kept her arms there, like he was still in them. He wanted to cry, but there was nothing to cry. He had left his tears back in the storm, with his mother.

Slowly Marvin raised his head and spit out a tooth. Liang-that giant son of a bitch-reached down for another piece of him. The most horrible thing was, he could feel nothing from Liang-not anger, not fear, nothing. Liang was stone cold. Not so the others. Even from across the room he could sense their disgust.

“Liang, man, what’d I do?”

Liang shrugged.

“The boss knows, man. He knows what you are. He’s been watchin’ you at the poker tables.”

“So I’m good at poker. What’s the beef?”

Liang smiled indulgently, picked him up, and hit him again.

“Yer one a them mind readers, ain’tcha?”

“What the hell are you=’ This time he felt ribs crack.

“Ain’tcha?” Liang repeated, pulling a pistol.

“Okay, okay, yeah. Maybe a little bit.”

“Good enough to cheat at poker. Good enough to cheat the boss.”

“Yeah.”

“And what happens to them that cheats the boss?”

“Oh, God, Liang, come on-“

Liang pumped a round into the chamber and placed the cold muzzle of the weapon under Marvin’s chin.

“C’mon, man-” He waited Liang tousled his hair.

“Here’s the deal, Marvin. The boss is a good Catholic, so yer gonna live, if that’s what you want. But you’re his bitch from now on, deng? We’re gonna fit you out with a ‘sponder, and yer gonna work for him.”

“Yeah, yeah, I can do that. Help him out. Find feds-anything. Just don’t kill me, man.”

Liang smiled toothily.

“Well, I’ll tell the boss we have an agreement , then. But Marvin-“

“Yeah?”

“I ain’t a good Catholic. You shine the boss, and you’ll wish I’d shot you.”

They threw her in a pit, and she landed on a bed of corpses. She couldn’t even see the ground. Others fell all around her. Up above, she heard the trilling of birds, the chug of a bulldozer. It began to rain.

“Marta?”

“Boselee!” They found each other and clung together, as if the familiar touch and smell of each other could take them away somewhere else, somewhere safe. Don’t look, don’t look, he told her, told her in words that sank through her skin and bones, soaked in like the monsoon rain. But some were shouting angrily, now, and she did look. Joe, the old man, fixed each soldier with his gaze.

“Your heart will rot in you!” he shouted. “We will live on, but you will rot. Repent of this. These people have done nothing.”

A man with reddish hair and a lieutenant’s uniform peered into the pit and frowned. He pulled an evil-looking pistol and shot Joe in the head. The old man gurgled and pitched back.

“You are all cursed by the devil,” the lieutenant replied. “I merely send you home to hell.”

He motioned to the soldiers, and the rain changed to hail.

The Night, the Wind, the Sorcerer, our Lord. Blood’s thoughts drifted m the halls of the temple and brought them all running. She had brief fragments of herself from each of them-her hair was black in each, her eyes almond. But her height varied-Smoke looked down on her, Mercy was almost level. Herself in a kaleidoscope, refracted by love, jealousy, lust, fear.

“They’re here.” She spoke aloud for Mercy’s benefit. Mercy wasn’t strong enough to follow their conversations unless their hands were touching.

“How far?” Teal asked, fingering his milk-white beard.

“On the bridge, six miles up where we put the alarm. Looks like a couple of truckloads. Heavily armed.”

Images of men with guns, of men with comically thick limbs dragging the ground That last had to be from Monkey.

“Monkey, can you try to be serious?” Blood sighed. “At best, these men are coming to kill us. At worst-“

“They’ll have to cut through our loving followers, first,” Monkey said, grinning his narrow grin, tossing his long copper hair nonchalantly over his shoulder. Blood returned a crooked smile.

“How could this happen?” Teal murmured. “Why do they want to kill us?”

Monkey hooted at that, sounding not unlike his chosen namesake .

“They’ve wanted to kill us ever since we got here. You don’t plop a bunch of mindless zombies and a Mayan temple out in the middle of bumpkinland without creatin’ a few hard feelings.”

“We shouldn’t have used our powers so freely,” Teal complained . “We shouldn’t-“

“Come on. How could we have known science was going to all of a sudden discover us? Hell, we thought we were the only ones. We ran across one another in the space of two years, and then nothing, no matter how we looked. Up until now, the believers thought we got our powers from the ancestors and everybody else assumed we were frauds. Fair enough, and it got us some good times. Now the rules have changed, and our kind are takin’ it in the butt. The sooner we learn to live with that, the better.”

Smoke, who had been customarily silent, unknotted his massive jaw long enough to say,

“We go.”

“Yeah, big fellah, we go. Do you think the followers need to be pumped up a little bit more, Blood?”

She nodded.

“Sound the drums. It’s show time.”

Her pain spattered out into the congregation like her blood onto the paper, as the others picked it up and threw it out as far as they could. She pulled the string of thorns through her tongue, grateful that it was the last time. It was fine being the dark goddess, waited on hand and foot, sucking the last dime out of the fools in their congregation, watching their herd of normals grow, but maybe it wasn’t worth this. Of course, it was moot now. She felt a little dizzy as Monkey lit the paper and started his speech. She looked out over the glazed eyes of two hundred people and wanted to laugh at them.

Pitiful sheep.

“The time has come, the Katun-ending draws nigh, the cycle begins again,” he intoned. ‘The maggots of the world are coming to eat its meat. As they came to the prairies to slay the buffalo, as they came to the Amazon to strip our mother bare, now they come here. But though the wheel of time turns, it is yet never the same. It can be changed. The buffalo can come back. The redwoods can return. The Amazon can be green as once it was. The ancestors are watching, who fought and died for you. You can see their eyes, in the night sky. Will you shame them, when the enemy comes? Will you do less for them?”

The sound of the crowd was inarticulate, but all of their minds screamed No.

“We go inside to gird ourselves. We will emerge at the last, when you have proven yourselves.”

You okay, Blood? Dizzy. I’m okay.

It was Monkey, naturally, who had insisted on the escape tunnel . Once again he was proved right.

Well, you got your wish, Monkey told her, as they moved down the tunnel. For a while, anyway. The Man Who Would Be King was always your favorite book. Uh-huh. Fm just remembering how that ended. Not this time, Monkey promised.