Part 83 (1/2)
She started, then laughed. ”Yes. You have, haven't you? You Tanu live so long. How long do you live, Kuhal?”
”It's been said that we seldom see three millennia out, the perils of the battle-company being what they are, and the shortage of Skin pract.i.tioners. I was most fortunate to have you as my redactor.”
”You began to love me even then,” she accused him. ”That's what made your healing so effective. Boduragol said so.”
”It was mutual.”
”It wasn't! We simply have mental affinity. We're very close, but that's not the same as love.”
”It's a beginning,” he suggested.
”You'll always be my dearest friend. But-”
”You don't wish me to follow you through the time-gate? My presence would be an embarra.s.sment to you? .. Very well. I will stay here.”
”No!” she cried. For the first time she let her barriers down.
”I don't really love you-but what would I do without you?”
His mind responded with a formless outcry, human in its joy born of desolation. He held both her hands and she felt the electric warmth of his life-force flow through their clasped fingers and set every nerve ending in her body ablaze. Joined in a single aura, the stately robed figure and the small white-clad one filled the dark corner of the garden with rosy gold light. It lasted only an instant. Then they walked hand in hand through the gate.
”But it solves everything, darling-don't you see?” Diane Manion was desperately eager. ”This way, there'd be no worry about the Milieu treating us as criminals, no fear of being punished or possibly ostracized because of who we are ... You say Marc lied to you. But only about inconsequential things! The really important matter-that all of us children should share in the creation of a grand new race of ultrametapsychics-was true! It's what Marc has said all along. What we learned from Falemoana and Dr. Curtis and Trudi when we were little children. But now your father's dream isn't far off in the future, or dependent upon some altruistic race coming to fetch us off this G.o.dforsaken planet. It's now!
We can leave here and begin the work! You and I can have an army of super-Cubs of our own, Hagen! I wouldn't mind the other. I mean, it would be all test tubes and artificial nurture, just like the nonborns in the Milieu colonies, so I couldn't possibly be jealous. I'd be proud!
Darlingyou are the key to this whole glorious idea-not Cloud! If what you say is true, then your sister has only a single ovary. Perhaps one hundred thousand gametes if they all proved viable, which they wouldn't. But you-”
”Lucky me.” Hagen laughed softly. ”I'm a male, and I could sire millions and millions. With banked sperm and a little tissue culture, Mental Man could propagate for aeons even if I should die. Accidentally.”
He was standing at the sh.o.r.e of the garden pond, not looking at her. The night-blooming water lilies gave off a pineapple fragrance. Diane had been almost totally unaware of his mood, so thick had been his mental screening. He had simply confirmed the report that Aiken had given Diane about the meeting with Marc, then asked her for her reaction. Now he had it.
”It's not as though we wouldn't have children of our own,” she protested.
”And how will you feel when it comes time to take the babies' bodies away?”
”Bodies ... away?”
Hagen whirled about, seizing her by the arms, crus.h.i.+ng them through the light fabric of her Tanu gown. ”That's pan of it, you little fool! Not just for the artificially engendered children-for all of them! They're to be bodiless, like my sainted Uncle Jack, to force them to utilize their full mental potential.
Naked brains that conjure up psychocreative disguises to hide their inhumanity! But better than Jack-oh, I'll hand Marc that!
They'll be immortal, and able to hook themselves into cerebroenergetic enhancers whenever they please, without being inconvenienced by primitive appendages such as arms or legs or hearts or guts. Brains without faces! Without lips to kiss or hands to touch each other. Neat, efficient brains with needle-electrodes in them, glowing white-hot with great thoughts! What will they think about, Diane? Will they dream? Will they find things to laugh at? Will they love each other? Will they love us and thank us for making them that way? Will they, Diane?”
His mind opened, showing a black thing roughly humanoid in shape, self-contained, armoured against the world, divorced from its unnecessary body, its ultrasenses prowling the galaxy on a never-ending search for other minds like itself-and finding none, resolving to make such minds.
Don't cry, Hagen. Don't be afraid. It's only Papa ...
Hagen said, ”He's got a second suit of armour there in Kyllikki, ready for me.”
Diane screamed.