INTERVENTION (24 page)

I looked. Our love had been sinful, and I must be punished.

She was calm as I lifted my barriers at last, showing her the incontrovertible fact of my own sterility, and the theft of her secret, and what made her betrayal impossible to forgive.

"If it had been anyone but him," I said. "Anyone. But, you see, I wouldn't be able to live with it."

She looked me full in the face. "Once. It happened once—that first time you took me to meet your family, at that silly Fourth of July barbecue. It was madness. I don't know what came over me. It happened before I realized—without my wanting it."

No secret place. Poor Elaine. You
had
wanted it.

I saw the entire episode etched in her memory and knew I'd see it forever. Don focusing the full force of his coercion, her fascination and willing surrender, Don laughing as he took her by the rockets' red glare, kindling in her a stupendous series of orgasms like chain lightning. And his child.

"I can't live with it," I told her.

"Once, Roger. Only once. And now I hate him."

No secrets at all ... Anyone but him. Damn the mind-powers. Damn him! But never her.

"Roger, I love you. I know how much this must hurt. I
feel
the hurt. But I honestly thought the child was yours ... that the thing with your brother was a piece of idiocy better left forgotten." She tried to smile, showed me a glowing mental image. "You love little Denis. He's Don's child."

"I couldn't help it. Denis is different. Sunny was different."

"I'm only fifteen weeks gone. I could—"

"No!"

She nodded. "Yes, I see. It wouldn't make any difference, would it? It would make matters worse."

I let the wretched contents of my mind seep out: The child
will
be brilliant. Don's mental faculties are far more impressive than mine, in spite of his flaws. As you know. Goodbye, Elaine.

"Roger, I love you. For the love of God, don't do this!"

I must. I love you I will always love you but I must.

I walked to the door and opened it. Aloud, I said, "I'm going to take your Porsche back to the White Mountain Hotel. In the morning, I'll send one of our drivers back here with it. There are a few things I must get from the house in Bretton Woods, but I should be out of it before noon. I'll leave my key."

"You
fool,
" she said.

"Yes."

I went out and softly closed the door after me.

***

Elaine married Stanton Latimer, a prominent Concord attorney, that November. He gave her child, Annarita, his name and they were a happy family until his death in
1992.
The distractions of motherhood—and the decline in flying-saucer sightings after 1975—led Elaine to abandon
Visitant.
She turned her leadership talents to environmental activism and campaigned against acid rain. In time she decided that she had imagined the more improbable facets of our liaison.

Annarita Latimer grew up to be an actress of vibrant and unforgettable presence who had a triumphant, tempestuous career. Like her mother, she was a powerful suboperant. Annarita's third husband was Bernard Kendall, the astrophysicist, who sired her only child, the fully operant Teresa—known to historians of the Galactic Milieu as the mother of Marc Remillard and Jack the Bodiless.

SUPERVISORY CRUISER NOUMENON [LYL 1-0000]

10
MAY
1975

T
HE SIMB SHUTTLE
saucer made its ingress into the immense Lylmik vessel in the manner of a lentil being swallowed by a whale, and the four senior members of the Earth Oversight Authority gathered in the shuttle's airlock to watch the curious docking maneuvers.

"I hate coming aboard Lylmik spacecraft. One is so likely to become overstimulated." The Gi representative, RipRip Muml, whiffled its plumage in a gesture of libido suppression and sealed off four of its eight sensory circuits. "Strange that the Supervisory Body should want to meet with us here in Earth orbit instead of simply transmitting its instructions mentally."

The Simb magnate, Lashi Ala Adassti, watched the scene outside the viewport with rapt fascination. In spite of her high position in the Oversight organization, she had never before been invited to visit a Lylmik cruiser. "I've given up trying to fathom the motives of the Supervisors, especially those relating to
this
perverse little planet ... Sacred Truth and Beauty! Will you look what's happening out there in the parking bay?"

"An interesting spectacle, but hardly unnerving," remarked the Krondaku, Rola'eroo.

"I've seen it a dozen or so times myself." The Poltroyan magnate shook his head. "But it still rattles me. It's as though we were being digested!"

The saucer rested on a kind of animated turf, pearly tendrils that rippled in peristaltic waves as they propelled the small spacecraft slowly along. A few meters away, on either side of the shuttle's path, plantlike excrescences apparently made of luminous jelly were sprouting up with graceful regularity; they unfurled pallid leafy ribbons and undulated in a questing fashion in the direction of the passing ship. Some of the larger plants "fruited," producing crystalline structures that opened to discharge glittering powder that swirled around the shuttle viewports like saffron smoke. Behind these pseudo-organisms were rising much taller ones that resembled glassy tree-fems and opalescent feather-palms. These soon formed an impenetrable jungle alongside the saucer, a bright corridor with purple obscurity lying ahead. The smaller ribbon-bearers became more and more numerous and their appendages reached out to caress the moving vessel's sides. It was like sailing underwater through a twisting tunnel alive with glowing albino kelp.

"By their spacecraft ye shall know them," the poetical Gi murmured. "Ours are preposterous and ramshackle, and their operation is so circumscribed by the reproductive habits of our crews that no other entities dare ride in them. Krondak ships are bleakly functional and those of the Poltroyans cozy and baroque, while Simbiari craft like this one we are riding in are paragons of high technology. But how can one classify the Lylmik ships?"

"Peculiar," suggested Rola'eroo, "like the race that produced them."

The others laughed uneasily.

The Poltroyan, a dapper little humanoid wearing heavily bejeweled robes, shared his meditation. "We never really see the Lylmik, even though they must inhabit forms that are manifestations of the matter-energy lattices. They are not pure mind, as some have speculated—and yet they enjoy a mentality unfathomably above our own. They will tell us very little of their history—nothing of their nature. They are infallibly kind. Their zeal in furthering the evolution of the Galactic Mind is formidable, but they often seem capricious. Their logic is not our logic. As RipRip Muml has noted, this ship of theirs is an embodiment of the Lylmik enigma: it is lush, extravagant, playful. Certain of our xenologists have speculated that the enormous cruisers are themselves aspects of Lylmik life, symbionts of the minds they transport. We know that these beings are the Galaxy's most ancient coadunate race, but their actual age and their origin remain a mystery. Our Poltroyan folklore says that the Lylmik home-star Nodyt was once a dying red giant, which the population rejuvenated into a G3 by a metapsychic infusion of fresh hydrogen sixty million years ago. But such a feat is beyond Milieu science, contradicting the Universal Field Theory."

"Our legends," the Krondak monster said, "are even more absurd. They suggest that the Lylmik are survivors of the Big Bang—that they date from the previous universe. A totally ridiculous notion."

"No sillier than ours," said RipRip Muml. "The more simple-minded Gi believe that the Lylmik are angels—pseudocorporeal messengers of the Cosmic All. An unlikely hypothesis, but not inappropriate for mentors of our Galactic Mind."

An impatient frown had been deepening on Lashi Ala's emerald features. "We Simbiari don't tell fairy-tales about the Lylmik. We accept their guidance at the same time as we resent their arrogant condescension. Look how determined they are to give these Earthlings favored treatment. The planet is a Lylmik pet! And yet the Supervisory Body seems blithely ignorant about just how unready for Intervention Earth is. How many times during the Thirty-Year Surveillance have we Simbiari been obliged to save the barbarians from
accidentally
touching off an atomic war? How many more times will we have to rescue the planetary ass during the upcoming pre-Intervention phase? All of us know that there is no way this world's Mind can achieve full coadunation prior to Intervention. Earth will be admitted to the Milieu in advance of its psychosocial maturation! Sheer lunacy!"

The Krondaku remained stolid. "Should the Earth Mind deliberately opt for nuclear warfare during the next forty years, you know that the Intervention will be cancelled. Furthermore, Intervention is contingent upon a certain minimal metaconcerted action by human operants. If they cannot rise above egocentrism to the lowest rung of mental solidarity, not even the Lylmik can force the Milieu to accept them."

Lashi gave a disillusioned grunt. "No other potentially emergent planet ever got such special treatment."

"The Lylmik always have reasons for their actions," the Poltroyan said, "incomprehensible though they may be to us lesser minds. If the Earthlings are destined to be great metapsychic prodigies, as the Lylmik maintain, then the risk of early intervention will be justified."

"You can talk, Falto," Lashi Ala shot back. "Your people haven't been saddled with the bulk of the planetary surveillance and manifestation as we Simbiari have. Why the Lylmik didn't appoint you smug little mauve pricks as prime contractors for Earth, I'll never know! You
like
humans."

Rola'eroo came as close to chuckling as his phlegmatic race was capable. "Perhaps that is the very reason why Poltroy was not given the proctorship. Despite certain imputations of favoritism, I am convinced that the Lylmik desire a fair and just evaluation of humanity. And this"—he offered a magisterial nod to Lashi Ala—"the citizens of the Simbiari Polity will conscientiously provide."

"Oh, well, of course," she muttered.

RipRip Muml gave a delicate shudder. "Thanks be to the Tranquil Infinite that
we
have been spared close contact with Earth. Its artistic productions are exquisite, but the reverberations of violence and suffering are a sore trial to truly sensitive minds."

"I've noticed," said Lashi sweetly, "that you Gi are too sensitive for any number of tedious but necessary assignments."

The great yellow eyes blinked in innocent reproach.

Falto the Poltroyan interposed diplomatically. "We all do the jobs we're best suited for, given the mind-set of the planet under evaluation."

"And with a race as bumptious as humanity, you Simbiari end up carrying the can!" RipRip gave its phallus a cheerful flourish.

Lashi responded with simple dignity. "We know very well that our people are still imperfectly Unified—and I did not mean to imply that we regretted our first assignment as prime contractor to an emerging Mind. On the contrary, we are honored by the Milieu's mandate." She hesitated, a troubled expression crossing her now glistening face. "But the Oversight Authority concedes that Earth is an anomaly. It seems counter to all logic, therefore, that the Concilium should assign its proctorship to us, the most junior Polity in the Milieu. Surely this difficult and barbaric world would fare better under the more sympathetic guidance of Poltroy—or, even better, under the stem direction that the Krondaku vouchsafed to Gi, Poltroyans, and Simbiari alike."

The Krondak magnate's mind-tone was detached and serene. "My race has proctored more than seventeen thousand planetary Minds since the Lylmik raised us to Unity. Only you three survived to coadunation and membership in the Milieu."

"
We've
never had a winner in seventy-two tries," the Poltroyan admitted, "and we're still smarting over the Yanalon fiasco. A tough-minded Simb primacy might have saved that world ... Don't sell your abilities short, Lashi Ala Adassti."

"You mustn't feel downhearted or put-upon," the hermaphrodite added kindly. "Think how the Unity will rejoice if you succeed! We Gi will never enjoy such a triumph. We're too frivolous and sex-obsessed ever to be appointed planetary proctors. No newborn coadunate Mind will ever call us its foster-parents—and we are the poorer thereby."

A harmonious chord of chimes sounded in the mental ears of the four magnates. Outside the viewports the iridescent glow intensified. The shuttle-craft was approaching the terminus of the overgrown tunnel, an iris gateway of yellow metal that opened slowly like the expanding pupil of a great golden eye.

Welcome. And high thoughts to you, most beloved colleagues. Please debark and join us in the hospitality chamber.

The shuttle had halted at the gateway. Rola'eroo extended a tentacle and activated the hatch mechanism, admitting a billow of warm, superoxygenated atmosphere to the airlock. The four entities toddled, strode, stalked, and slithered down the integral gangway, crossed a short expanse of anemonoid turf flanked by crystal foliage, and entered the Lylmik sanctum. The gate shut behind them.

It was rather dim inside, comfortably so after the brilliant part of the ship they had just traversed. The walls and flooring were gently corrugated, transparent, and seemed to be holding back an encompassing volume of bubbly liquid that swirled slowly in ever-changing eddies of blue and green. In the center of the room was a crescent-shaped table with three seats for the Gi, the Poltroyan, and the Simb—and a squatting spot for the ponderous Krondaku. Besides the furniture, which was austere in design and made of the warm yellow metal, the room contained only a low dais about three meters square, formed by slight exaggerations of the floor ribbing.

The Earth Oversight Authority took their places and waited. Lashi Ala betrayed her apprehension by smearing the table surface with dabs of ichor from her perspiring hands. She tucked them into the sleeves of her uniform, where there were blotting pads, and buffed away the smears with her elbows. The other three Overseers tactfully averted their eyes and veiled their brains.