Intervention by Julian May

  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 asso­ciated 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 pussyfooting. "

  "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 passed 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 assay 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 Japan, I assure 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 tête-à-tête 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 damn 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 shit-scared when I zapped the window, if you call that stress. "

  Ume giggled.

  Lucille said: Tu vieux saolard! Ingrat! Calomniateur! Allez — déballe! 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!

  The insults flew like bats out of hell, but her outward cool never wavered. She said, "Roger, we'd like you to participate in a series of simple experiments. An hour a day over the next eight weeks would provide us with ample data to begin with. Now that you've concluded your therapy with Dr. Sampson, we can hope that your creative poten­tial has been somewhat restored. The energy-projecting faculty is ex­tremely rare. You'd be advancing our understanding of psychocreativity greatly by working with us. " WHAT HAVE YOU TOLD BILL ABOUT ME?

  "I'll think it over. " Nothing he didn't already suspect.

  Suspect? Suspect?

  She was still on the intimate mode, smiling on the outside and raging on the inside, with enough antagonism slopping over now into the general telepathic spectrum for Ume to catch. The Japanese woman blinked in astonishment.

  Lucille said suddenly, "And if you don't mind, we'd also like to take your zapped windowpane for analysis. "

  I have to hand it to her: She almost got me. I let out a guffaw at the incongruity of the request... and at that instant she shot a sharply honed and extremely powerful version of the coercive-redactive thrust right between my eyes. It was a zinger worthy of Denis himself (and I discovered later that he'd taught her the technique), and it rolled me back on my heels. If I hadn't been expecting her to try something, that probe might have turned my mind inside out like a shucked sock. But Lucille hadn't really had a close view of my mental machinery in more than a year, not since the time she'd played Good Sam after the 60 Minutes taping. If I'd cracked, she'd have gotten the whole story — Ghost and all. But I didn't crack.

  I said, "You see? I am feeling much better. Old Sampson's a topnotch shrink. I never really thanked you properly for introducing me to him, Lucille. I owe you. You want my zapped windowpane? You got it! But I think you'd better find another experimental subject for your creativ­ity project — for both our sakes, and maybe for Sampson's, too. "

  "That wouldn't help. It's too late!" And then she burst into tears, and turned around and rushed out of the bookshop, slamming the door so violently that the little bell came off its bracket and fell to the floor.

  "Bon dieu de merde, " I said.

  Ume and I looked at each other. How much did she know?

  "I know more than I should, perhaps, " she whispered, her huge dark eyes sad. "Lucille is my very dear friend, and she has told me that her relationship with Dr. Bill Sampson is faltering badly. She believes that you are somehow responsible. Are you, Mr. Remillard?"

  What Lucille's coercion had failed at, Ume's empathy accomplished. "Yes, " I admitted wretchedly.

  "Why?" Ume was calm.

  "I won't explain my motives to you, Dr. Kimura. It was for Lucille's own good. Sampson's, too. "

  "They are wrong for each other, " she said, averting her gaze. "It was very obvious to all of us. Nevertheless, we did not feel we had the right to meddle in the lives of the two lovers. Lucille knew of the general disapproval of the operant group. It seemed only to strengthen her feel­ing toward Bill. "

  "I know. " I went up the middle aisle to the front of the shop, bent and picked up the fallen door-chime, and hung it back in place. The rain was letting up a bit.

  "You felt that you did have the right to interfere?" Ume asked.

  I turned. "What I did was necessary. Lucille's badly hurt and I'm sorry. But I did have the right to interfere. "

  "Tell me only one thing. In your swaying of Bill's feelings — did you lie about Lucille?"

  "No. " I dropped my barriers just for an instant so she c
ould see that I had told the truth.

  Slowly, Ume nodded. "Now I understand why she put off so long approaching you about our project, even though Denis was very anxious for us to include you in it. Today she suddenly insisted that we come here. She has been upset about Bill for more than a week. He seems to have... spoken to her just after our return from Alma-Ata. "

  It figured. News about the extraordinary discussions there opened a lot of people's eyes to the seamier potentialities at large in the metapsychic wonderland. There was the hitherto underreported coer­cive function, for one thing, and the ominous implications of the men­tal testing program. I'd been doing my own special number on Sampson over a period of some eight months, and the success of my subversion had been signaled when he finally punched me in the nose. Fortunately, it happened outside of office hours. When I broke off my counseling sessions in mid-July Sampson had been fully primed to doubt and fear his operant young fiancée. Alma-Ata had sparked the blowup, and now it looked like my Ghostly mission was nearly accomplished. Shit...

  Ume put a gloved hand on the sleeve of my old tweed jacket. "Please. There is still the project. You will not wish to work with Lucille, but would you consider working with me? The creativity studies are most important. I myself have manifested a modest projection of actinic ra­diation, as have certain others working in the Soviet Union. But no one has ever channeled psychoenergies in a coherent beam of great strength, as you seem to have done. Let me show you the theoretical correlation between physical and psychic energies presently being postulated by workers at Cambridge and at MIT. " Would you open your mind a bit please? Thank you —

  Voilà! The limpid thought-construct flashed to me inside of a split second. It was abstract as all hell and fiendishly complex — but I un­derstood! Her transmission was to ordinary telepathic speech as a Turbo Nissan XX3TT ground-car is to a bicycle. Not that I would be able to explain the concept verbally to anyone else; but I would be able to remember it and project its symbolic content.

  "I'll be damned, " I said appreciatively. "Is that one of your new ed­ucative techniques? The ones you use in operant training?"

  "Oh, yes. It is called bilateral transfer. One coordinates the output of the brain hemispheres. I would be happy to teach you this and any of the other preceptive techniques that interested you, if you would only agree to the experiments. "

  "I'm tempted. " Oh, was I. And working with her in the lab wasn't even the half of it...

  The winsome academic turned up her charm rheostat. I was aware that it was merely another aspect of coercion, her will acting to master mine, but what a difference from Lucille's effort! Ume said, "We would respect your desire for noninvolvement with the operant community, Mr. Remillard. There would be no pressure. "

  "Call me Roger. "

  "And Lucille will present no problem for you. I shall have a discreet word with Denis. He can assign her to other creativity studies. "

  "All right, Dr. Kimura, under those conditions, I agree. "

  "Please call me Ume. " Her expression was very earnest. "I think we will be able to work together very compatibly, Roger. And now, shall we talk about things further while we share a nice Dutch lunch?"

  "I hope I won't disappoint you, " I whispered. "Once I was rather good at this, but it's been a very long time. "

  "I can sense the latent power. It only needs to be reawakened. Sadness and repressed violence have clogged the flow of ambrosial energies. "

  "Violence? Ume, I'm the most harmless guy in the world. "

  "No, you are not. Your great reservoir of psychocreativity remains sealed up within you, and this puts you in peril, for if these energies are not used in creation, inevitably they destroy. The font of creativity lies within all human souls; in women, it is very often never channeled to the conscious level, but rather fruits instinctively in childbearing and maternal nurture. A very few men are also creative nurturers. But most — and certain women — must guide their creativity deliberately into the exterior reality by intellectual action. They must build —work. Unchanneled creativity is very dangerous and readily turns to destruc­tiveness. The creation process is painful. One may be strongly tempted to evade it, since its joy is largely postponed until the creation is complete — and then the satisfaction is intense and lasting. Destruc­tion brings pleasure, too, dark and addictive and nonintellectual. For the destroyer, however, process is all; he must continue, lest darkness catch up with him and he come at the end to the hell he has deliberately prepared for himself. "

  "Donnie... "

  "Hush, Roger. Do not think of your poor brother now. This is a time for you to think of yourself, and of me. "

  Ume and I saw each other perfectly in the dark. Her aura was a rich blue, warmer close to her body and scintillating gold at the halo's edge. I glowed a flickering and shadowed citron, with an outer aureole of dim violet. My root chakra had a faint, hopeful carmine radiance, signifying that the spirit was willing while the flesh was weak.

  "Don't worry. We are going to take a long time, " Ume said. Her lips brushed my forehead, cheeks, and mouth as she spoke. "This is a very old way in my part of the world. In the West, it has been called carezza. It is unappreciated because of the impatience of occidental lovers, who seek explosive release rather than immersion in a pool of enduring light. " Her lips had taken on the golden glow now, and so had her eyes. The outermost precincts of both our minds had opened so that we could synchronize the pleasure; but in spite of what she revealed to me of her life, the real identity of Ume stayed that night and forever apart from me... as I remained hidden from her. She had brought me to the small rented house on the Ruddsboro Road where she lived alone. It was sparsely furnished, almost ascetic, with many oddly shaped ceramic vases holding arrangements of leafless branches and dried grasses and bare, gnarled roots. The rain still fell. A brook outside the bedroom window rushed over its bed of granite boulders, filling the place with pervasive thunder. Ume had been straightforward about the sexual at­traction, and I in turn was honest about my abaissement du niveau psychique. Sampson's psychoanalysis really hadn't helped me all that much spiritually, aside from bolstering my courage and putting me more or less on the track toward sobriety. I'd confessed to Ume that I was very dubious about coming up with anything useful in the creativ­ity experiments. She had countered with suggestions for a rather differ­ent style of therapy. I had doubts about that, too, but she only smiled wisely.

  "We will begin very slowly and proceed very slowly, " she said, kiss­ing my shoulders, stroking my inert arms in the lightest possible man­ner with the tips of her fingernails. "You must not speak. Try not even to think. Simply rest in me. Resist arousal. My mind will speak to you and my body will share its creativity. You will discover things about me and I will familiarize myself with you. There will be feedback and a very slow increase of energetic potential. Very slow. Now sit here among the cushions and take me to you gently... "

  This is Ume:

  ... A frail, strange child. The oldest of three daughters. Her home is in the city of Sapporo on Hokkaido, the rugged northernmost island of Japan. Her mother, once a schoolteacher, now cares for the family. Her father is a photographer whose business never seems to prosper. Both parents are descended from the Ainu, the aboriginal inhabitants of the island. The heritage shames the husband and wife and they never speak of it. The oldest daughter, with her betraying fair skin and exotic eyes and the slight waviness of her silken hair, is a reproach. She is not the favored child.

  ... A little girl of six. Her father takes close-up photographs of her face for an advertising assignment. The child is obedient but impatient with sitting still. She wishes ardently to run out of the stuffy room to play with the little girl next door. This other child's face, distorted but recognizable, appears on three successive negatives of a film roll, in place of Ume's own.

  ... The father is astounded. He experiments and the miracle happens again. He begins to realize what must be happening. "Ume!" he cries. "Dear gir
l! You must do this again!"

  ... The child is eager to please him, to feel his love and admiration. She cooperates in her father's experiments for weeks. It is learned that she can imprint film not only while it is in the camera, but also when it is outside it — provided the film is not exposed to normal light. In the beginning her "thoughtographic" images vary greatly in clarity, depend­ing upon whether she is summoning them from her imagination or "reading" them directly from her surroundings or from a book. Her best pictures are made with Polaroid film. All she has to do is stare into the lens and think about a subject while her father clicks the shutter. He makes many photos of Ume's thoughts. He praises her lavishly and dreams of the millions of yen the family will make when little Ume enters show business.

  ... The father's father learns of the marvel. He comes from the Ainu settlement to the city and studies the little girl. "She is possessed of an ancient demon, " he says. "She will bring bad luck. " The father is scorn­ful. He has found a book. It tells how thought photos were produced by a psychic researcher named Tomokichi Fukurai in a remarkable series of experiments between 1910 and 1913. Another book, translated from English, tells how the American physician Jule Eisenbud obtained psy­chic photos from a hotel worker named Ted Serios. Serios also stared into a Polaroid camera. Most of his images were fuzzy and eventually his rare talent faded away. But the talent of little Ume does not. The more she practices, the better her results. Her pictures are now superbly sharp. She can do both color and black-and-white.

  ... The great opportunity comes at last. The girl will appear on a television show featuring local amateur performers. She and her father have prepared for a whole year. But when she comes on stage before a live audience, she is devastated by sudden shyness. Her performance is a fiasco. A week later her father is killed by falling in front of a subway train in the main Ohdori station of Sapporo.