Read Online INTERVENTION by Julian May, Ted Dikty - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Julian May, Ted Dikty
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his attitude toward other people:
I was living in a world of phantoms, or animated masks. No one seemed really alive. I had a queer notion that if I pricked any of you, there would be no bleeding, but only a gush of wind. And I couldn't make out
why
you were like that, what it was that I missed in you. The trouble really was that I did not clearly know what it was in
myself
that made me different from you.
John's alienation led him to set up his own self-centered moral code. He financed his ambitions by becoming a ten-year-old burglar; and when he was caught at it by the friendly neighborhood policeman, he had no compunction about murdering the man to escape detection.
Later, when John was in his teens, he merely treated other people as pets or useful tools. He thought great thoughts, used his remarkable talents to make a lot of money, and traveled around the world in search of other mutant geniuses like himself. He found a fair number and proceeded to establish a secret colony on an island in the South Seas. (The inconvenient original inhabitants of the place were coerced into mass suicide; but the superfolk held a nice feast for them first.) Once John and his mutant friends were secure on their island, they set out to organize a combination Garden of Eden (they were all very young) and technocratic wonderland. They were able to utilize atomic energy by "abolishing" certain nuclear forces through mental activity. They had all kinds of sophisticated equipment at their command, yet chose to live in rustic simplicity, often linked telepathically to an Asian guru of like mind who had remained at home in his lamasery in Xizang.
The colony made plans for the reproduction of Homo superior. The young mutants "reviewed their position relative to the universe," attained a transcendental quasi-Unity called astronomical consciousness, embraced the exotic mentalities inhabiting other star-systems—and discovered that they were doomed.
A British survey vessel stumbled onto John's island in spite of the metapsychic camouflaging efforts of the colonists. Once the secret was out, the military powers of the world sent warships to investigate. Some nations saw the colony as a menace; others coveted its assets and schemed to use the young geniuses as political pawns. Attempts at negotiation between Homo sapiens and Homo superior broke down permanently when the Japanese delegate put his finger on the basic dilemma:
This lad [Odd John] and his companions have strange powers which Europe does not understand. But we understand. I have felt them. I have fought against them. I have not been tricked. I can see that these are not boys and girls; they are devils. If they are left, some day they will destroy us. The world will be for them, not for us.
The negotiating party withdrew and the world powers agreed that assassins should be landed on the island, to pick off the supranormals with guerrilla tactics.
Odd John and his companions had a weapon, a photon beam similar to an X-laser, that they might have used to fend off an invasion attempt; but they decided not to resist, since then "there would be no peace until we had conquered the world" and that would take a long time, as well as leaving them "distorted in spirit." So the young mutants gathered together, focused their minds upon their atomic power station, and obliterated the entire island in a fireball...
"You've got to read this story, Don," I pleaded, with my mind leaking the more sinister plot overtones that had frightened me—the hero's icy immorality that contradicted everything I had ever been taught, his awful loneliness, his totally pessimistic view of ordinary mankind faced with the challenge of superior minds.
Don refused. He said he didn't have time and that I shouldn't get worked up over a dumb, old-fashioned book. It had been written in 1935, and by an Englishman! I said it wasn't the story itself but what it said about
people like us
that was important. I
I was living in a world of phantoms, or animated masks. No one seemed really alive. I had a queer notion that if I pricked any of you, there would be no bleeding, but only a gush of wind. And I couldn't make out
why
you were like that, what it was that I missed in you. The trouble really was that I did not clearly know what it was in
myself
that made me different from you.
John's alienation led him to set up his own self-centered moral code. He financed his ambitions by becoming a ten-year-old burglar; and when he was caught at it by the friendly neighborhood policeman, he had no compunction about murdering the man to escape detection.
Later, when John was in his teens, he merely treated other people as pets or useful tools. He thought great thoughts, used his remarkable talents to make a lot of money, and traveled around the world in search of other mutant geniuses like himself. He found a fair number and proceeded to establish a secret colony on an island in the South Seas. (The inconvenient original inhabitants of the place were coerced into mass suicide; but the superfolk held a nice feast for them first.) Once John and his mutant friends were secure on their island, they set out to organize a combination Garden of Eden (they were all very young) and technocratic wonderland. They were able to utilize atomic energy by "abolishing" certain nuclear forces through mental activity. They had all kinds of sophisticated equipment at their command, yet chose to live in rustic simplicity, often linked telepathically to an Asian guru of like mind who had remained at home in his lamasery in Xizang.
The colony made plans for the reproduction of Homo superior. The young mutants "reviewed their position relative to the universe," attained a transcendental quasi-Unity called astronomical consciousness, embraced the exotic mentalities inhabiting other star-systems—and discovered that they were doomed.
A British survey vessel stumbled onto John's island in spite of the metapsychic camouflaging efforts of the colonists. Once the secret was out, the military powers of the world sent warships to investigate. Some nations saw the colony as a menace; others coveted its assets and schemed to use the young geniuses as political pawns. Attempts at negotiation between Homo sapiens and Homo superior broke down permanently when the Japanese delegate put his finger on the basic dilemma:
This lad [Odd John] and his companions have strange powers which Europe does not understand. But we understand. I have felt them. I have fought against them. I have not been tricked. I can see that these are not boys and girls; they are devils. If they are left, some day they will destroy us. The world will be for them, not for us.
The negotiating party withdrew and the world powers agreed that assassins should be landed on the island, to pick off the supranormals with guerrilla tactics.
Odd John and his companions had a weapon, a photon beam similar to an X-laser, that they might have used to fend off an invasion attempt; but they decided not to resist, since then "there would be no peace until we had conquered the world" and that would take a long time, as well as leaving them "distorted in spirit." So the young mutants gathered together, focused their minds upon their atomic power station, and obliterated the entire island in a fireball...
"You've got to read this story, Don," I pleaded, with my mind leaking the more sinister plot overtones that had frightened me—the hero's icy immorality that contradicted everything I had ever been taught, his awful loneliness, his totally pessimistic view of ordinary mankind faced with the challenge of superior minds.
Don refused. He said he didn't have time and that I shouldn't get worked up over a dumb, old-fashioned book. It had been written in 1935, and by an Englishman! I said it wasn't the story itself but what it said about
people like us
that was important. I
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