We are known to each other by first names only, and we may divulge such details of our background as we choose or don’t choose. As you may imagine, this leaves a wide margin for parlor psychoanalysis, with the ex-Meta Lady as head gamesmistress. She had me taped as a Questing Lover after the first day, and I’m afraid that she anticipates a melancholy end to my masculine Evangeline-fixe, since she keeps trying to distract me with speculations on idle playing among the auberge clientele, the political implications of Exile, and other anthropological amusements.
Do you think I’m doomed, too, Varya? I don’t, you know.
Late this afternoon I got a call from London, and it was Kaplan and Djibutunji and Hildebrand and Catherwood, bless their bones, telling me goodbye. Aunt Helen sent a note, but she is really nearly gaga now, since declining rejuv.
Your dear letter was in this morning’s post. I don’t have to tell you how much I appreciate your agreeing to carry on with the liaison committee. It’s the one work I really hated to leave unfinished. There is still the ultimate correlation of the pre-Rebellion mazeway material, but I feel that Alicia and Adalberto have that pretty well in hand.
And so I come at last to the farewell, Varya, and I wish I could be eloquent and memorable instead of just my stodgy self. The gaudiness of the act will have to speak for me. Whatever you do, don’t mourn. My only hope of happiness lies on the other side of the Exile gate and I must risk going after it. Remember the years we shared as lovers and colleagues and friends and know that I’m glad they happened. Joy and light to you, my Very Dear.
Forever,
BRY
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
When the Last Supper, with its crazy smorgasbord of requested dishes, was finally over, the eight members of Group Green took their drinks out onto the terrace, where they instinctively gathered apart from the other guests. Even though itwas only half after twenty, the sky over Lyon had turned black as the scheduled weekly storm built up in the north. Pink flashes silhouetted approaching thunderheads.
“Feel the static buildup!” Elizabeth exclaimed. “Even with my metafunctions out, the ionization before a really big storm always gets to me. Every sense sharpens. I begin to feel so clever I can barely contain myself! Capacitor Earth is charging and so am I, and in just a minute or two I’ll be able to zap mountains!”
She faced into the strengthening wind, long hair streaming and red denim jumpsuit clinging to her body. The first sub-sonics of distant thunder curdled the air.
Felice affected a languid tone. “Were you able to move mountains before?”
“Not really. The larger psychokinetic powers are really very rare among metas, almost as rare as genuine creativity. My PK ability was only good for a few parlor tricks. What I specialized in was farspeaking, the glorified telepathy function. It should really be called farsensing because it includes a species of sight as well as hearing. I was also operant in redaction, which is the therapeutic and analytical power that most lay persons call mind-alteration. My husband had similar faculties. We worked as a team training the minds of very young children in the first difficult steps toward metapsychic Unity.”
“They wanted me to go to a redactor,” Felice said, her voice thrilling with loathing. “I told them I’d rather die. I don’t know how you meta people can stand rummaging around in others’ brains. Or always having some other meta able to read you own secret thoughts. It would be horrible never to be alone. Never to be able to hide. I’d go mad.”
Elizabeth said gently, “It wasn’t like that at all. As far as metas reading each other… there are many different levels to the mind. Modes, we call them. You can farspeak to many people on the declamatory mode, or speak at short range to a group on the conversational mode. Then there’s the intimate mode, that only one person can receive from you. And beneath that are many other conscious and unconscious layers that can be screened off by means of mental techniques that all metapsychics learn when they’re very young. We have our private thoughts, just as you do. Most of our telepathic communication is nothing more than a kind of voiceless speech and image projection. You can compare it to electronic audio-visuals, without the electromagnetic radiation.”
Felice said, “Deep redactors can get into a person’s innermost thoughts.”
“True. But with them, there is almost always a doctor-patient relationship appertaining. The patient gives conscious permission for the scrutiny. Even then, a dysfunction may be so strongly programmed that the therapist is powerless to get behind it, no matter how much the patient may be willing to cooperate.”
“Yeah,” said Stein. He tilted his great mug of beer, holding it before his face.
Felice persisted. “I know that metas can read secret thoughts. Sometimes the coach of our team would bring in redactors to work on guys in slumps. Metas could always spot the ones who’d lost their nerve. You can’t tell me those poor bastards would deliberately let the shrinks find out something that’d get them fired!”
Elizabeth said, “An untrained person, a non-meta, gives away information in subverbal ways without being aware of it. Think of it as mental mumbling. Haven’t you ever stood next to a person who was talking to himself, muttering under his breath? When a person is frightened or angry or trying very hard to work out a problem or even sexually aroused, the thoughts become… loud. Even non-metas can sometimes pick up the vibes, the mind-pictures or subvocal speech or emotional surges. The better the redactor, the better he is at making sense out of the crazy mishmash that human brains broadcast.”
Bryan asked, “Is there any way an ordinary person can shut out a mind reader?”
“Of course. It’s possible to stymie superficial snooping rather easily. Just keep a firm grip on your mental broadcasting. If you think someone is really digging, think of some neutral image like a big black square. Or do some simple exercise when you’re not speaking out loud. Count one-two-three-four, over and over. Or sing some dumb song. That’ll block out all but the best redactor.”
“I’m glad you can’t read my mind now, lovie,” Aiken Drum put in. “You’d fall into a quagmire of sheer funk. I’m so scared about going through this time-gate that my red corpuscles have gone puce! I tried to back out. I even told the counselors I’d reform if they’d let me stay here! But nobody believe me.”
“I can’t think why,” Bryan said.
A reddish bolt of lightning reached from cloud to cloud above the hills; but the sound, when it came, was muffled and unsatisfying, a beat from a dead tympanum.
Aiken asked Elizabeth, “How did the ballooning work out, sweets?”
“I crammed the theory of building one from native materials, tanning fishskins for the envelope and weaving a basket and plaiting cordage from bark fibers. But I did my practicing in one of these.” She took a package the size of two large bricks from her shoulder bag. “It blows up five storeys tan, double-walled and semidirigible. Bright red, like my suit. I have a power source to inject hot air. Of course, the power won’t last for more than a few flight-weeks, so eventually I’ll have to shift to charcoal. Making that’s a mess. But it’s the only ancient fuel that’s suitable, unless I can find some coal.”
“No sweat, doll-eyes,” Aiken said. “Stick with me and my mineral maps.”
Stein laughed contemptuously. “And how you gonna mine the stuff? Draft Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs? The nearest coal’s gotta be a hundred kloms north, around Le Cresuot or Montceau, and way to hell and gone underground. Even if you reach the stuff without blasting, how you gonna tote it around to where it’ll do you some good?”