Diamond Mask (Galactic Milieu Trilogy) (65 page)

* * *

The rain was over, watery morning sun shone through the high cirrus veil, and quasi-Mesozoic birds with pink plumage squawked in the exotic heather as they gathered bits of vegetation to pad their subterranean nests. It was spring on Windlestrow Muir and the Dirigent asked Rogi to go for a walk with her to calm her nerves before the return of the small deep-driller.

The old man was suitably impressed with the multicolored foliage of the rolling moorland—mostly baby-blue and peach, softened by generous amounts of dark green. Large flowers resembling buttercups bloomed among the rocks and were visited by insectile fliers with transparent wings. The ground beneath the gnarled bushes was coarse, yellowish in color, and nearly dried out in spite of last night’s downpour. In the gullies and other eroded areas were drifts of wine-colored sand and heaps of light green and garnet stones. Sixty kilometers to the northwest, the Lothian Range loomed on the skyline as a saw-toothed shadow.

Keeping a friendly silence, they followed a game trail along the broken perimeter of the cup-shaped depression that held Windlestrow Loch. After they had walked a couple of kilometers the Dirigent gave a little triumphant cry and stooped to pick up something from the side of the path.

“Look, Uncle Rogi—a diamond.”

“You’re kidding.”

She dropped the crystal into his open palm. It was a pea-sized dodecahedron with rounded edges, oddly greasy-looking and faintly blue in the diffused sunlight.

“If this operation is successfully concluded, I’ll have it cut and polished for you as a keepsake. We’ll call it the Star of Windlestrow.” She peered closely at it for a moment. “My deepsight shows it’s a VVS blue-white—with only tiny flaws. Diamonds are very common on Callie.” She indicated the surrounding area. “That little lake is right on top of a very ancient kimberlite pipe. You know—the material diamonds are found in. The old pipe goes clear through the Clyde craton right down to the magma. Millions of years ago, there was another, much smaller diatreme on this site.”

“Batège! It’s been a long time since anyone gave me a diamond.” Rogi fished in the pocket of his chino pants and came up with the key-ring fob known to three generations of Remillard youngsters as the Great Carbuncle. “When I first got hold of this, it was worth millions. I suppose you could buy another
for only a few thousand dollars nowadays. It’s been my lucky charm for God knows how many years.”

She examined it with interest. “But it’s gorgeous! That unusual clear red color—and polished into a perfect sphere. Where in the world did you ever get it?”

“From a Lylmik,” the old man said playfully. And when she eyed him askance, he said, “Oh, all right. I found it in a gutter in Hanover. Very mysterious. But I swear it’s saved my life a couple of times.” His face lit with sudden inspiration. He detached the fob from the key ring and pressed the glowing little silver-caged gem into her hand. “Let’s trade, Dorothée. You keep the Great Carbuncle for luck during this operation, and I’ll hang on to the Star of Windlestrow.”

She froze, and for a moment it seemed as though she had stopped looking out of her eyes and had turned instead to some somber inner vision. Then her face lost its haunted aspect and she smiled.

“I’d love to carry the Carbuncle, Uncle Rogi.” She pulled a gold chain out the neck of her sweater. A glittering little mask-charm hung on it. “There. Your good-luck piece can hang next to my own talisman.”

She tucked the chain back into its hiding place. Then her gaze met that of the tall old man and she threw her arms around him and buried her face in his chest, not making a sound.

Rogi felt his heart plummet. She was twenty years old and she might very well die within the next few days, consumed in a split second by the fires inside her world. Last night, after they had left the others, Jack had confessed to him and Dorothée that even using the double metaconcert, there was only a fifty-fifty chance of the new plan succeeding. The Dirigent had nodded calmly. She had not asked Jack why he was willing to sacrifice himself for the sake of a rather ordinary colonial planet.

Do
you know why, Dorothée? Rogi asked her. Would you like me to tell you?

But she pulled away from him, not answering, and stood staring down at the little lake.

“Look,” she said.

The waters were suddenly roiled and bubbling. At the same moment Rogi felt a faint tremor underfoot. In the survey camp on the other side of the depression, people were running out of the buildings and down the steep embankment to the shore, where they waited expectantly. A few minutes later a vast eructation of steam broke the water’s surface. A bullet-shaped black
machine the size of a bus thrust up vertically in the middle of it like a broaching leviathan, then fell back with a resounding splash that echoed over the heath. A pair of frightened pink birds burst out of the shrubs and took wing, squawking. The humans down on the lakeshore jumped up and down and their faint cheers reached Rogi and Dorothée on the ridge.

Still steaming gently, the driller floated sedately toward land, deployed its treads, and crawled ashore. It halted next to the four larger machines parked there, and in a few minutes its ventral hatch opened and three people emerged.

The Dirigent watched them with narrowed eyes. “They have the analysis. It’s time for me to go back and learn how to boost my brain. Pray for me, Uncle Rogi!” She turned and ran off along the path.

“I’ll damn well do more than that,” the old man growled to himself. He waited until the Dirigent was far away, then looked around furtively and addressed the open sky. “Ghost! You hear me? … Do something! You can’t let those two young people die. Help them!”

He stood with his head cocked, listening. The pearly sky glowed, the spring wind blew softly over the moor, and the archaic pink birds uttered relieved clucks and returned to their nursery hole.

“Don’t play coy! I know you’re watching, mon fantôme.”

The breeze seemed to sigh in resignation.

The old man smiled then and set off for the survey camp, fingering the slippery little diamond in his jacket pocket and muttering to himself in French.

T
HE TEN OF THEM ASSEMBLED AT DAWN, DRESSED IN SILVERY
N
OMEX
suits as a partial precaution against creative flashback and carrying the matte black CE helmets under their arms. The drill-rigs had been equipped with every piece of safety equipment the CE operators could think of.

It was raining again, and rather than waste mindpower erecting an umbrella they stood together beneath the belly of one of the huge machines listening to Jack’s final instructions.

“If everything goes according to plan, the job should be completed in approximately fifty hours, including the fourteen needed for ascent and descent. This is well within the safety margin for our four full-sized drill-rigs. Keep in mind, however, that the only possible way we can abort is for the Dirigent and I to hold the lid in place until the volatile components return to solution in the magma. I must warn you that the reabsorption process might take over twice as much time as the separation did, and she and I might find ourselves unable to contain the pressure. So we’d damn well better
not
abort.”

“We understand, Jack,” said Jim MacKelvie. “We do the job right the first time or risk complete disaster.”

The others murmured in acknowledgment. Unspoken was the fact that every settlement on Clyde was now on full seismic-alert status, ready to deal as best they could with the catastrophic results of failure.

“Let’s get on with it, then,” Jack said. As they all went off to the different vehicles, his mind reached out to his great-granduncle,
who had withdrawn with the other survey personnel to a safety bunker 20 kilometers away.

Goodbye Uncle Rogi.

Bonne chance Ti-Jean et Dorothée et dieu vous bénisse.

“After you, Madame Dirigent,” Jack said, gesturing to the ladder of the drill-rig he would share with Dorothea Macdonald. Tight-lipped, she climbed into the machine without a word and went immediately to the control room, where she halted in sudden consternation.

Before the command-console was a single chair. Beside it stood a pedestal bearing what looked like an open-topped spherical fishbowl.

“Sorry,” said Jack, coming up behind her. “I forgot to warn you that I’ll have to do this job bodiless to conserve my mental energy. I don’t usually say too much about this aspect of my life to people I work with. It distracts them.”

“I … see.” She sank into the chair and watched, blank-faced, as he set his CE helmet aside, slipped off his boots, and began to remove the rest of his clothing. The deep-driller, which like the other three was temporarily under the command of Jim MacKelvie for the descent below the planetary crust, suddenly came to life.

“Attention,” it said in a Scots-accented voice. “This vehicle, designated D-4, is now being activated via remote control from D-l. Checklisting of operating and environmental systems will proceed silently unless a verbal override is given.”

Jack said nothing as he unzipped the fireproof coverall, stepped out of it, and tossed it aside. His PK folded the suit in mid-air before it hit the deck, and stowed it tidily in an open locker. He stripped off his boots, socks, and air-conditioned underwear and disposed of them in the same way. The Dirigent waited in some apprehension for him to remove the last white formfitting garment.

Reading her thoughts, Jack shrugged. And she knew then with sickening certainty that he was already naked.

Except for his normal-looking hands, head, and neck, his body was smooth, hairless, and completely without wrinkle, crease, or blemish. He had no genitals, umbilical scar, or toes. His appearance was that of a man-sized doll made of plass, with human parts inexplicably grafted on. Involuntarily, she gave a low cry of pity.

“It’s all right,” he said with casual reassurance. “I don’t usually bother with body-construction details if it’s not absolutely
necessary. But all the usual humanoid equipment is optionally available. And then some!”

She gasped. For the merest instant his body had grown an astonishing coat of light brown fur, curled ivory horns, and membranous wings that stretched between his wrists and ankles. The fantastic embellishments disappeared almost as soon as they were created, and Jack’s pale pseudoflesh began to dissolve, flowing to the deck like heavy smoke and gathering in a grayish-pink puddle. The fluid contracted into a gelatinous lump the size of a large melon, then bounced into the locker where the clothes were. The door slammed behind it.

Hovering in mid-air was a glistening silvery brain.

The driller said: “Checklist completed. Prepare for inertialess descent.”

As the Dirigent continued to watch, stunned and disbelieving, the thing that was Jack floated to the crystal fishbowl and fitted itself neatly inside. Outside the forward viewport, the rainy landscape seemed to be in motion as the driller entered Windlestrow Loch.

“But … your physical form isn’t disgusting at all!” she blurted at last.

There was a disembodied laugh. “I hope not. But aesthetic standards vary quite a lot, don’t they? When I was very young and just getting the hang of living with the mutation, I made my share of social errors cooking up weird bodies to nauseate my elders. Marc and Uncle Rogi made me—er—shape up rather quickly.”

She could not take her fascinated eyes off the brain. “Does—does it hurt when you come all apart?”

“Certainly not. Physical sensors are lacking in the bodies I create unless I have some special need to install them, which I rarely do. Ultrasenses deliver a full spectrum of external stimuli to my brain, and my metacreativity and PK modulate the output.”

“And the sound of your voice is only—”

“My PK vibrating the atmosphere molecules. I do usually create vocal cords, lungs, and all the rest of it when I incarnate. It gives a more natural vocal timbre. And I do a partial gastrointestinal tract to accommodate social eating, and a set of male plumbing when I’m put into a situation that requires social peeing. You know how men are. The camaraderie of the porcelain.”

She had to laugh in spite of herself, and then looked away. Turgid gray water now covered the viewport, and light from the
surface was rapidly fading. The rig was descending into the lake at an angle of nearly sixty degrees, but there was no sensation of tilting or falling in a vehicle with inertialess propulsion.

“Activating penetration beam and level-one sigma-field in preparation for entry into lithospheric overburden of the maar,” the driller announced importantly.

“Just shut up and drive,” Jack told it. “You can let us know when we arrive at our destination, but don’t bother us with details en route unless there’s an emergency. Understand?”

“Affirmative.” The mechanical voice had a slight overlay of wounded pride.

The Dirigent regarded the brain with a little smile of approval. “That’s telling it.”

“Life’s too short to waste time chitchatting with machines for no good reason,” Jack said.

“I agree … but I thought all members of the Remillard family were essentially immortal.”

“All except me. My mutation made a mess of the self-rejuvenating gene complex. The brain will age. Its hardware will deteriorate more or less in the normal human fashion as redactive processes fail, and I’ll die after reaching the biblical three score and ten years. Or thereabouts.”

Her face was unreadable and her voice calm. “The regeneration-tank can’t help you?”

“It operates at normal human parameters, and I’m not normal. Don’t feel sorry for me, Diamond. I plan to accomplish a thing or two before I go to glory. Provided that we survive this little adventure, of course.”

She nodded, and pretended to study the console’s instrument readouts. After a few minutes, there was nothing but darkness outside the viewport. The drill-rig was capable of illuminating the ancient kimberlite pipe as they descended, but the formation was uninteresting except to a specialist, and neither Jack nor Dorothea cared to be reminded that they were plunging deeper and deeper into solid rock.