Intervention by Julian May
Kieran said: Scan the entire house and grounds Arnold. I can still hear the voice and now there's some damn music carrying over.
Yes sir.
Cassidy said, "The '96 presidential race is going to be even tougher for us than the '92 campaign. A two-term incumbent, one of the most popular presidents in history, will be able to pick his own nominee — and we know that nominee will be Senator Piccolomini. "
Another self-righteous Guinea prick, thought the General.
"We could, of course, stick with our Republican candidate of last fall. "
If you want to lose again, the General thought. The goddam quarterback really knows how to lose with style!
"However, " the Chairman went on, "Piccolomini will be a hard nut to crack because of the success of his antinarcotics program, because of his close ties with the incumbent, and because of his undeniable personal magnetism. "
So, thought the General, you can't run your bought-and-paid-for Minority Leader, Senator Scrope. He's smart but he's a nerd, and putting him up against Piccolomini would be peeing into the wind.
"We've studied a number of prospects, only to conclude that most of them do not project a suitable image. The Party will be developing a new platform for '96 in response to what we see as gathering threats to our national economy and security. The candidate we seek must exemplify that platform. He must be a man of authority, of proven courage, in tune with conservative patriotic values. A man who will confront the disasters that our experts foresee with a forthrightness unclouded by pseudoliberal globalism. "
General Baumgartner straightened and frowned at the Republican Chairman. "Disasters? What kind of disasters, Jase?"
He was answered by Kieran O'Connor. "By the end of this year our Middle Eastern oil supplies will be entirely cut off by escalating Islamic wars in the Persian Gulf and Arabia. Our re-elected Democratic President and the Democrat-controlled Congress will not dare send in American military forces. They have boasted that theirs is the Party of Peace. An American military action in support of the oil industry would be unthinkable. " Arnold. Listen!
Sea creatures... holothurian and crustaceans sad and glad... singing and dancing in bloody water... a funeral dance and a birth dance...
Pakkala said: I detect no intruder anywhere within the perimeter of the estate. There is an aurora borealis tonight and you have been hypersensitive lately. Perhaps there is some metapsychic phenomenon operating analogous to the skip of AM radio waves —
Kieran said: No. Never mind Arnold.
"Our analysts, " Cassidy said, "believe that the world is on the brink of another serious energy shortage. Thermonuclear power is still two decades away. Without that Persian Gulf oil, a major depression will affect all industrialized nations. The Third World will be pushed to the brink of anarchy. Africa is certain to blow up and Pakistan is on the verge of an armed confrontation with India. "
Are they right? Baumgartner asked himself. If they are, America is heading for the biggest mess since World War II — and whoever the president is, he'll find himself in the same shoes Harry Truman wore when he had to decide whether to invade Japan or drop the bomb... Christ! No magical mystery metawhoozis finagling can keep America safe from this crock of shit! Only strong leadership by a real man — somebody people could be sure wasn't trading the country off for some pie-in-the-sky Utopia scheme hatched by Commies and loopy Scotch professors and fortunetelling freaks.
A dance... a water dance with embryos... I've been gestating it for more than six weeks now ever since we knew Nonno was dying...
Kieran said: Oh Christ!
The ballet is a tribute to his memory... so much more tasteful than the usual gangland obsequies... I want you to share it... If you like it I may finish my performance alive Daddy...
"The turn of the century, " Cassidy said solemnly, "may turn out to be the most dangerous period in American history. "
And one, thought the General, in which certain industries stand to make an unconscionable amount of money — especially if they own the White House. As if they could control me the way they do that sleazy little douche bag Scrope! O'Connor and Cassidy and the rest of their cabal think I'd play along... be manipulated like poor old Ike. Just let me get into that Oval Office!
"Events may accelerate, " Cassidy went on, "so as to give us a good shot at winning even in 1996 if we present a candidate with a powerful, take-charge image. A man who knows his own mind. "
General Baumgartner said, "You know those mentalist freaks —those metapsychics in the Psi-Eye program — could be real trouble if they got into the political arena. "
"We do know that, " Kieran O'Connor said. "Party strategists have been examining the metapsychic movement very carefully. Those people represent a menace to American liberty, General. We'd expect our presidential candidate to come down hard on any suggestion that metapsychics participate directly in government. "
"Fuckin' A!" the General affirmed. The others chuckled.
Daddy it's for you... it's for Nonno... I won't go to his funeral tomorrow but I will mourn him in the dance... and you... and me...
Kieran said: Shannon!
Arnold Pakkala said: Sir—your daughter?
Kieran said: The goddam voice. It's her she's here screening herself threatening I think she may know —
Pakkala said: Where is she? I'll take care of it.
Kieran said: NO. I must. We'll have to finish this — Jase! Wind up the pitch and then get him out of here! Neville you and Len take him to your place. Jase and Arnie will help you wrap him up...
"Our pollsters and analysts are eighty-six percent certain that there will be a Republican president in the White House by the year 2000, " Cassidy said. "The odds are longer for '96, but worth the push. The National Committee has designated a unanimous choice for the perfect candidate. That man is you, General Baumgartner. "
"Gentlemen, " said the General, "I'm — I'm really overwhelmed. "
Escaping from his guests in the library, Kieran hurried to the nearby butler's pantry, where there was a master monitor-intercom unit. He tapped 16 and the screen lit, giving a long overhead view of the indoor swimming pool located on the mansion's lower level. The chamber was dark except for what appeared to be underwater illumination of a concentrated cobalt blue. A shape suspended within the light gyrated rhythmically. From the small loudspeaker of the intercom came the nervous, deformed sound of Erik Satie's Embryons Desséchés being played on a synthesizer. Kieran tapped the code that would turn on the main room lights and the underwater lamps of the natatorium. Nothing happened.
"Shannon?"
Kieran spoke calmly into the mike. At the same time he manipulated the zoom control of the monitoring camera to magnify the image of the swimmer. She was eighteen but looked more like a twelve-year-old. Her legs were long and beautifully shaped but the rest of the body was angular, the breasts small and flat, the hips boyishly narrow. She was wearing a chaste white maillot. Her long hair swirled in an inky cloud, its normal bright Titian red masked by the Cerenkov blue of her visible psychic aura. From her extended wrists curled other diaphanous filaments that her hands seemed to caress and weave as she undulated in the submarine ballet she had dedicated to her dead grandfather.
Her wrists were cut, trailing streamers of blood.
"Shannon, I'm watching. Do you hear me?"
I hear, Daddy! Holothurian larvae clinging to their purring, grotesque parent... break away break away, babies!... go free if you can and celebrate spineless triumph... be sure to hide from the light!
"Shannon, come out of the water. " Come out. COME OUT.
He exerted his full coercion while the zany electronic music tinkled and trilled. Sweat had broken out on his brow and he found that he was holding his breath, commanding her to hold hers. But the range was too great for his compulsion to take hold of her. He felt, to his horror, a reciprocal mind-clutch and a gentle warning:
No... I must finish this dance... come down and
"Damn you!" Lashing out violently, he broke her mental shackle and erected a defensive barrier. She only laughed. The blue light was fading with the end of the first embryonic song. A ruddy glow introduced the second.
This is the dance of the edriophthalma, a crustacean with sessile eyes... of a mournful disposition, it lives in retirement from the world in a hole drilled in a cliff... Nonno! Dear Grandpa Al do you want me with you shall I retire behind my film of red water with my mind's eye turned inward?
"Shannon — for God's sake!"
The music was a lugubrious parody of a funeral march. The swimmer's limbs folded tight against her body and she became a fetal ball, pinkly throbbing, floating some six feet below the surface of the water. A measured stream of silver bubbles, flattened like coins, tumbled upward from her emptying lungs.
Kieran stormed through the formal dining room into the main hall and ran to the elevator. As he punched G and the door whisked shut, he felt a hot pounding begin in his chest. There was an irresistible urge to inhale, pressure on his eardrums, a scarlet fog seeping into his peripheral vision, a deadly stirring in his loins. God damn the little bitch! He'd delayed the bonding too long —
The elevator door opened. Kieran staggered along a passage walled with thermopane windows that cast wan light on the snowy landscape outside. The great house had been built into the east side of a hill and even now, in the dead of a winter's night, the metropolis over forty miles distant lit the sky like false dawn.
This is the third and final song... the lively podophthalma have eyes on mobile stalks... they are skillful and tireless hunters but they must be cautious — their own flesh is good to eat!... Eat or be eaten, Nonno. You lived in such a world and so will I twice over... if I choose to...
Jolly galloping music and a vision of a slender form darting zigzag through black water, leaving twin trails of golden blood behind. Kieran ran sluggishly, as though he himself were under water. It was impossible for him to breathe, harder and harder to move. He passed the exercise room and the spa and finally came to the open door of the natatorium. It was dark inside and there was a strong smell of chlorine. The synthesizer music filled the tiled chamber with clanging echoes. His mind screamed.
Shannon!
Deep in the pool was an upright, spindle-shaped violet glow. It brightened abruptly, then shot up like a submarine missile, breaking the surface with a great splash and a dazzling burst of white light. A parody of a symphonic finale blasted from the overhead speakers. Erik Satie's jocose treatment of marine life was coming to an end, and so was the sinister water ballet of Kieran O'Connor's daughter.
He was finally able to haul in a gasping breath. His eyesight cleared and he stabbed at the control panel on the wall beside him. Normal incandescent light flooded the room and the only sound was the slap of wavelets against the sides of the Olympic-sized pool. Above the middle of the water a girl in a white tank suit floated on her back, eyes closed, hair fanned out like strands of algae, arms extended cruciform. She was smiling.
To Nonno. To my Grandfather on the day of his entombment. With love from Shannon.
"Come out, " Kieran told her.
Descending, she swam, using a vigorous backstroke. She climbed the ladder and stood looking up at him, pale and shivering, with tiny drops of water winking at the ends of her eyelashes. Her mind shone bright and it was impervious to either probing or coercion.
"I hope you liked my dance, Daddy. It was for you, too. "
He took hold of her hands and raised them, studying the wrists. The cuts were not deep and she had not severed the tendons, but there was a steady flow of blood that mixed with the water of her dripping body to make a pinkish puddle on the travertine floor. He released her, turned, and walked out the door. "We can fix you up in the gym. Let's go. "
She followed with complete docility. The trainer's cubicle in the elaborately equipped exercise room provided hydrogen peroxide, antibiotic ointment, and bandages. He sat her on the massage table and wrapped her in a voluminous towel before tending her wounds, closing the lips of the cuts deftly with butterfly tapes and finishing up with gauze and temporary cuffs of waterproof plastic wrap.
"Now you can take a hot shower without spoiling my first-aid job. " His voice was gentle.
"Thank you, Daddy. " She eyed him askance. "You won't make me go to the doctor for stitches, will you? I can heal myself easily enough. But I had to have... the effect. "
"You had to scare the living shit out of me, " he told her in a level tone, turning to rinse his hands of her blood.
"Have it your own way. "
"How did you get out here from Rosary at this time of night?"
"I took Tippie Bethune's car and just drove out, then hid the car in Goldman's orchard and walked up our driveway. You were all so busy with your low politicking that it was easy to fudge your minds and sneak inside. I sang only for you. Don't you know about the intimate mode of farspeech? You can aim it at only one person. "
So she knew about his plans for Baumgartner! "There'll be hell to pay when the college authorities find out you skipped. "
She shrugged. "I'll take my shower now. "
When she was gone, Kieran took several damp towels and went to clean up the gory traces she had left on the floor. The members of his domestic staff were well-paid psychics, bonded to him and utterly loyal; but he did not want them to know about this escapade. It was extreme — even for Shannon.
He said to her: You ought to examine your unconscious motivation for this piece of adolescent idiocy. The guilt you feel because of who/what you/we are is irrational. Seeking punishment to atone for my/your/Al's imaginary wickedness is also irrational. Attempting to dissociate yourself from me/Family/yourmentalheritage is not only irrational but futile. There is no rebirth for us. We are.
He put back the first-aid supplies, then lay down on the Panasonic Shiatsu lounger and turned it on. Timed waves of vibration soothed away some of the stress. It was nearly one in the morning. Big Al's funeral was today. She'd loved the old bandit deeply. She didn't think it a bit hypocritical that he had confessed a lifetime of sins on his deathbed and expired with the Viaticum on his parched tongue.
Damn her! She would have followed Al tonight if he hadn't given in to her and begged... The suicide attempt was his own fault. It was the culmination of a lot of things — mainly his own neglect of her developing mind-powers. She'd grown up pathologically shy, introverted. There'd been suicidal hints that he had tried to laugh off. The Edinburgh telecast had been traumatic, intensifying her brooding. And now Big Al's death, and her growing realization of her father's extraordinary ambition. She would have to be bonded. The alternative was probably a descent into madness or self-destruction.
But to bond his own daughter...
She was mind-humming a reprise of the crustacean dirge as she took her shower. The musical parody was superimposed incongruously upon an image of Queen of Heaven Mausoleum, a fulsome monument to Italian-American piety that would, come daylight, receive the mortal remains of Aldo Camastra.
Kieran said: Shannon? Do you know why so many of your Grandfather's people prefer tombs in a place like Queen of Heaven rather than ordinary burial in the ground?
I never thought about it, Daddy.
Back in the Old Country, cemeteries may be more than a thousand years old. Space in the earth is at a premium. When a new grave is dug they may find old bones. The bones are taken up and put into a kind of storage place called an ossuary, all mixed up higgledy-piggledy with the bones of other skeletons.
How awful!
The only bodies sure to be left undisturbed are those interred in aboveground tombs or in mausoleums. That ancient fear of not being left to lie in peace lingers in tradition even here in America. Tradition can be a powerful motivator. Many kinds of tradition.
... Oh, I know the twisted justification that Al and the others in the Outfit subscribed to, Daddy — the old story about the simple peasants resisting tyranny in Sicily, then later on using the Thing as a steppingstone to power and wealth in this country. But it's different for you! You're no persecuted immigrant. You have mental powers that you could use to help all humanity, just as the organized metapsychics around the world are doing. But you won't join them, will you, Daddy! You'd rather get rich and then take over the country with your Mental Mafia.
Is that how you see it?
"That's how it is!"
Shannon came out of the spa wearing a white velour sweat suit, with her hair bound up in a towel. Revulsion and frustrated love radiated from her but her voice remained measured. "You're worse than Big Al ever was, Daddy, because you came deliberately into the Outfit. He and the others had their Family tradition, but you joined them because you'd analyzed the possibilities in cold blood. And you've done very well, transferring the Mob assets into legitimate business and covering your tracks. You're Big Al's son-in-law but nobody holds it against you — especially after your mind exerts its special charm. "
Kieran laughed.
"Will bossing President Baumgartner be power enough for you, Daddy? Or are you bucking for Boss of the World?"
"You could be my little Crown Princess, " he said.
She folded her bandaged arms and looked down on him lying in the chair. "No, " she replied with cool dignity. "The embryo dance helped me decide. I'm leaving here, getting out of Rosary College and transferring to Dartmouth. I'll ask that Professor Remillard to accept me in his psychic Peace Corps thing. I won't do anything to hurt you, but I won't stay with you anymore. I've been very silly and naive, thinking it was natural for us to — to be above normal people. The Edinburgh Demonstration was like some kind of miracle, opening my eyes. That wonderful Russian woman and her vision! And then Denis Remillard explaining his educational plan for all people with metapsychic talents —"