Part 40 (2/2)
Marc nodded. ”I'm mes.h.i.+ng with an upsilon-field. No matter whether the thing is generated mechanically or metapsychically, it still hurts to go through it. D-jumping does away with the extended subs.p.a.ce vector-the subjective time-lag spent in the grey limbo. But the pain factor seems to have its usual component-geometric increase with the distance jumped. I was nearly at my limit with the hop to Poltroy, but teleporting about the Earth is no more uncomfortable than worrying a hangnail.”
Alexis Manion c.o.c.ked his head impishly and sang: If this is true, it's jolly for you; Your courage screw to bid us adieu!
And go and show both friend and foe How much you dare! (I'm quite aware It's your affair.) Yet I declare I'd take your share. But I don't much care.
I don't much care ... I don't much care.
Marc surveyed him without rancour. ”Let's get you out of that docilator and put you to work, Alex. I want a detailed study of this operation.”
He slid his powerful redactive faculty into the mind of the dynamic field specialist to prevent severe disorientation as the mind-altering headset was removed. Manion winced, blinked, then ma.s.saged his eyelids with his fingers. The underlying hatred was there still, but it was masked almost immediately by a peculiar elation.
He said, ”We have a little surprise for you, Marc! While the cat was away, the mad mouse played.”
Patricia hurried to forestall him, running her own high-speed reprise of the shambles. Manion glowed in perverse satisfaction while Kramer and Van Wyk stood mutely by, confirming that Helayne had indeed murdered fifteen people-including.
Kramer's wife, Audrey, and the former Concilium magnates Dierdre and Diarmid Keogh and Peter Dalembert-before she herself had been shot dead by Steinbrenner. A few others had been wounded by the madwoman, Arkady O'Malley seriously.
”Bon dieu de merde,” breathed Marc, his mind glaring bright.
”You could apply for that job on Poltroy,” Manion suggested archly, ”but the natives might prefer a less graphic job description.”
Marc stood motionless. His face had gone livid and his eyes were those of Abaddon. Alex Manion's body was lifted into the air and seized by a ma.s.sive convulsion. His eyes bulged and oozed blood from a dozen pinpoint haemorrhages. He uttered an animal scream at the same time that his brain flooded the aether with agony. Then he was sprawled on the planks, his limbs racked with clonic spasms, half drowned in vomit, soiled and stinking in his own voided excrement.
Marc looked down at him dispa.s.sionately. ”Tu es un emmerdeur, Alex. It's fortunate for you that I still have a sense of humour. You aren't seriously damaged. Do the field a.n.a.lysis tomorrow.”
The gabbling pain-ridden thing collapsed, unconscious.
Without another glance, Marc took Patricia by the elbow, steered her past the stricken Van Wyk and Kramer, and went out to the after companionway.
”Just say the word,” Patricia said as they climbed to his cabin in the stern deckhouse, ”And I'll deep-six that swine myself. It wouldn't surprise me to find that he was the one who gave the dope to Helayne, hoping that something like this would happen.
It was his poison that turned her against you in the first place-and corrupted the children as well! Now we've lost the Keoghs, our top redactors. And Peter-”
”Poor Keoghs,” Marc mused. ”Siegmund and Sieglinde. At least they went in style! But whoever would have thought that Peter Dalembert would die in his bed?” He opened the cabin door and held it courteously.
”When we found him, his eyes were open. And his face”-she projected the vision-”quite calm. A creator of his power should have been able to s.h.i.+eld himself from Helayne's knife. If he had wanted to.”
Marc went to the built-in cooking unit and activated it, then opened a clothes locker. ”I had counted on Peter's devotion to Barry and Fumiko and little Hope to counterbalance his rather blatant death wish.” His smile was distant as he tossed underwear, jeans, and a jersey onto the bed. ”Another of my miscalculations. Obviously, Peter thought that I'd be unable to stop the children without harming them.”
Patricia was silent.
”But you never did think much of the forebearance notion, did you, Pat?”
”I'd follow any plan of yours. Do whatever you say. Always.
You know that. I don't give a d.a.m.n about Mental Man any more, Marc. Only you.” You are my angel, too terrible to love, condescending to share your life with me, to give me fierce joy even when you have none. Why have you none? Your great scheme is still feasible. We don't need Cloud and Hagen and the other children as long as we have the genes and the brain.
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