INTERVENTION (40 page)

I paused in my inspection of the bay display window, polite incredulity on my face. "Interesting. I'm sure having a ghost in one's bookshop would be quite a novelty, especially since I plan to specialize in fantastic literature. But I'm afraid the place really is too small, and too far from the campus to attract much evening trade—"

And then I felt it. Without conscious volition, I had let my seekersense range out, the weak divination faculty I had been practicing under Denis's tutelage with a view toward guarding myself from intrusions by Victor or other undesirables. I had managed to learn how to detect the distinctive bioenergetic aura of fairly strong operants, such as Denis, Sally Doyle, or Glenn Dalembert—provided that they were within a radius of ten meters or so and not shielded by thick masonry or some other barrier.

And now, scanning this old frame building's empty corner premises, I farsensed the presence. I stood rooted to the spot, sweat starting out on my forehead.

Mrs. Mallory was chattering on: "...and if you're sure you'll need more space, we might talk to the owner, since the little coffee shop next door might not renew its lease and it might be possible to double the square footage available..."

I seemed to hear someone say: Tell her you'll take it.

Who's there? my mind cried. Whothehell
is
that?

"I beg your pardon?" said Mrs. Mallory.

I shook my head.
It was in the back room.

"I know!" she exclaimed brightly. "I'll just let you stay and look the place over at your leisure, both the store and the apartment, and you can drop in at my office later with the keys and let me know what you've decided."

"That will be fine," I said. The sound of my voice was distant, dimmed by my concentration on the detecting ultrasense.
It was coming out of the back room into the main part of the shop.
Mrs. Mallory said something else and then went out, closing the street door firmly behind her. Dust motes eddied in the brilliant sunbeams shining through the display window. As I began slowly to turn around for the confrontation, an idiotic extraneous thought flickered across my mind: In late afternoon, I would have to make some provision so that the strong sunlight would not fade the books.

There's an awning. All you have to do is lower it.

"Bordel de dieu!" I spun around, exerting my farsense to the utmost, and detected an all-too-familiar aura. It had no form, nor was there anyone visible in the shadowed rear of the shop.

The Family Ghost said: It's been a long time, Rogi. But I had to be certain that you took this place and not the other.

"Ah, la vache! I might have known..." I stood with one hand braced against the wall, laughing with relief. "So you've been haunting this shop, have you?"

The previous tenant was a trifle reluctant to vacate and I had to insure that the lease would be available. Sometimes it's perplexing, trying to determine precisely which occasions require my personal attention. My overview of the probability lattices is by no means omniscient, and after such a long time my other faculty is unreliable.

"So! You've made up my mind for me and I'm to be forced to rent this place even though it's too small. Is that it? My poor little Eloquent Page and I will go broke just to satisfy your ineffable whim."

Nonsense. You'll do well enough if you stock antiquarian books and forget about the cheap ephemera. The clientele will seek out your establishment and pay suitably high prices for collector's items, and you can also do mail-order business ... Be that as it may, it is not your destiny to achieve commercial prosperity.

"Well, thanks all to hell for the good news! As if my morale isn't low enough, changing careers at the age of forty-five and playing lab-rat for one nephew while another contemplates offing my ass."

Victor is otherwise occupied. You need not worry about him.

"Oh, yes? Well, you'd better keep him in line!"

I may not influence him or the other Remillards directly. It would violate the integrity of the lattices. You are my agent, Rogi, because you
have
been influenced. You must live and work here, in this place that is appropriate, only two blocks away from the house at 15 East South Street.

I was totally mystified. "Who lives there?"

At the present time, no one who need concern you.

I snarled, "Oh, no you don't!" and pointed a determined finger at the volume of air that seemed to radiate the aura of le Fantôme Familier. "I'm not standing still for any more of your mysterious directives from Mount Sinai! You cut the crap and give me a damn good reason why I should rent this shop instead of the other one—or find yourself another patsy."

There was a cryptic silence. Then:

Come with me.

The front door opened and I was firmly impelled out onto the pavement. I heard the locks click. A couple of coeds sitting at a sidewalk table in front of the little restaurant next door eyed me curiously. I let the Ghost shepherd me around the corner. It said:

Walk east on South Street.

All right all right! I said rebelliously. For Godsake don't make a public spectacle out of me!

I—or perhaps I should say we—walked along the quiet side street. It was only two blocks long, and near Main Street were a few commercial structures and widely separated old homes converted into offices and apartments. There was very little traffic and only sporadic bits of sidewalk, so I strolled along the edge of the street, past landscaped parking lots and mellow frame residences, and crossed Currier Place. There stood the Hanover public library, a modernistic pile of red brick, concrete, and glass-wall framed in enough greenery to allow it to blend unobtrusively with the more classic buildings around it. Immediately east of the library was a large white clapboard house with dark green shutters, a modest portico, and third-floor dormers, set well forward on a thickly wooded lot that sloped toward a deep ravine in the rear. On a weedy and unkempt lawn lay an abandoned tricycle. A football and a yellow Tonka Toy bulldozer decorated the porch, along with a sleeping Maine Coon cat that resembled a rummage-sale fur piece. Two hydrangea bushes flanking the steps still carried pink papery blooms. No people were in evidence.

I stood under a scraggly diseased elm and stared at the house that would one day be famed throughout the galaxy as the Old Remillard Home. The Ghost said: You will note its convenient proximity to the bookshop.

I didn't say anything.

The Ghost went on: Six years from now, Denis will buy this house for his family. Many years later it will be Paul's home—

"Paul?" I said out loud. "Who the devil is Paul?"

Denis and Lucille's youngest son. Marc and Jon's father. The Man Who Sold New Hampshire. The first human to serve on the Galactic Concilium.

Starlings were yammering up in the elm and the golden autumn sun heated the asphalt pavement and gave a faint pungency to the air. The pleasant old house—as solid and homely a piece of New Hampshire architecture as one could imagine—seemed to be drowsing in the late-afternoon calm of this little college town. I looked at it stupidly while my mind took hold of what the Ghost had said and tried to digest its import. The "galactic" bit was too bizarre to penetrate at first, so I seized on a more down-to-earth improbability.

"Lucille? Marry Denis? You've got to be kidding."

It will happen.

"Admitted, she's one of his most talented psychic subjects. But the two of them are hopelessly incompatible—fire and ice. Besides, I happen to know that she's in love with Bill Sampson, a clinical psychiatrist at Hitchcock. It's an open secret that they'll marry as soon as her analysis is complete and there's no ethical conflict."

The Ghost said: Lucille and Denis must marry and produce offspring. Both of them carry supravital alleles for high metafunction.

"Tu paries d'une idée à la con! They don't even
like
each other. And what about poor old Sampson?"

An unavoidable casualty of Earth's mental evolution. His wounded heart will recover. The deflation of the Cartier-Sampson liaison will be one of your most critical tasks in the months ahead. When Lucille is free, she will naturally gravitate to Denis, her metapsychic peer, and the genetic advantage of their union will become self-evident to her. If it is not, you can discreetly press the point.

"Me?
Mel
" I was sandbagged by the casual arrogance of the Ghost. "You think this girl's some kind of computer I can reprogram?"

You'll find a way to work things out. You
must.
Sampson is hopelessly latent, an unsuitable mate for this young woman who is so highly endowed with the creative metafunction. It is unfortunately true that she and Denis have clashing temperaments, but this is not an insuperable barrier to a fruitful marriage. Lucille will be an ideal professional partner for Denis as well. Her drive and indomitable common sense will counter his tendency to brood and vacillate. There will be continuing tension between them, especially in the later years. It is then that your own supportive role—and your fortuitous proximity—will be most advantageous.

"I'm your mole, you mean! Put into position for continuous meddling with people who aren't even born yet—isn't that it?" I pulled myself together. Although the street seemed to be deserted, it would hardly do for local residents to look out of their windows and discover a middle-aged loufoque haranguing an elm tree. I walked on to the east, where the street curved into Sanborn Road and the wooded precincts of the Catholic church.

Sternly, I addressed the Ghost in mental speech: I see very well the role you intend for me. I am to be your agent provocateur, interfering with upcoming generations of Remillards like some evil genius in a goddam Russian novel!

Nonsense. Your influence will be entirely beneficial. You will be needed. Your qualms are understandable, but they will fade as the importance of your mental nurturing manifests itself.

If I refuse the commission—?

I cannot coerce you. If your compensatory influence is to be effective, it must be freely given. The unborn Remillards needing your help are not ordinary human beings, however, and your sacrifices on their behalf will have far-ranging consequences.

How ... far?

Rogi, vieux pote, I have already said it—but you refused to accept the implication. And so I will be explicit, so that you will know exactly what is at stake. You are a member of a remarkable family: one that will one day be the most important on Earth. Denis and Lucille's children and grandchildren are destined to become magnates—leaders, that is—of the Human Polity of the Concilium of the Galactic Milieu.

"C'est du tonnerre!" I cried, aghast, and my mind asked the halting question: Are you telling me that we ... the planet Earth ... will become part of a galactic organization
within my lifetime?.

There was a furious honking and a sarcastic voice that called, "Howsabout it, Charley? You gonna stand in the street till you grow roots?"

I snapped out of my daze to see a laundry van two feet away from me in the middle of Sanborn Road. There must have been something in my face that turned the young driver's impatience to concern. "Hey—you feeling all right?"

I lifted one hand and hastened onto the sidewalk. "I'm okay. Sorry about that."

The driver eyed me uncertainly, then shrugged and drove on.

The Ghost said: My dear blockhead.

You, the entity who reads this, will doubtless think the same of me. Had not the Ghost told me long ago that it was a being from another star, that its intentions were benevolent and our family was of crucial importance? A man possessed of the least modicum of imagination might have deduced
some
design behind these uncanny maneuverings—always supposing that the spectral puppet-master was real and not the perverted manifestation of my own unconscious.

I made an attempt to gather my scattered wits. "When will this ... invasion of extraterrestrials happen?"

Never! Rogi, you are a prize idiot! Le roi des cons! Why should we invade your silly little world? The starry universe is our domain and our cherished responsibility, and we come to a world only when we are called.

"Elaine and her people called you," I muttered bitterly. I reverted to mental speech when I noticed a workman cutting the lawn of the church across the street: Why didn't you respond to Elaine's appeal, mon fantôme? All her people asked was that you bring us the blessings of your galactic civilization before we're destroyed in a nuclear holocaust. Wasn't that a good enough reason for you to bestow your cosmic CARE packages on Earth?

The Milieu does not dare to contact a developing world until the planetary Mind attains a certain maturity. Premature intervention would be hazardous.

To
whom.

To the planet... and to the Milieu.

Well, don't cut it too fine! Détente's on a fast track to hell again and every other tin-pot nation in the Third World seems to have an atomic bomb ready to defend its honor. You wait too long and your flying saucers might land in a radioactive slag heap!

The likelihood of a small nation detonating a nuclear weapon is unfortunately high. But the prospect of full-scale nuclear war between the great powers is infinitesimal at the present time. The danger seems destined to escalate with the passage of time, but ifty prolepsis indicates that the Great Intervention will almost certainly take place before your civilization destroys itself.

Well—when
do
you land, for chrissake?

When there is worldwide recognition of the higher faculties of the mind, and when those faculties are used harmoniously by a certain minimal number of humans.

Are you talking about the kind of thing Denis is working on?

Denis and many others. Metapsychic operancy is the key to lasting peace and goodwill among disparate entities—human and nonhuman. To know the mind of another intimately is to understand, to respect, and ultimately to love.

Then all of the citizens of your Galactic Milieu have the higher mental powers—telepathy and psychokinesis and all that?

The spectrum varies from race to race and from individual to individual. But all Milieu minds share telepathic communication and our leadership enjoys formidable insight. In matters of gravity there can be no duplicity among us, no misunderstanding, no irrational fear or suspicion.