visualization of your development is still clear. To mold such characters as yours
sufficiently, and yet not too much, is a delicate task indeed; but one which must and
shall be done. Christopher, come to me at once, in person. Karen, I would suggest that
you go to Lyrane and do there whatever you find necessary to do.”
“I won’t—I’ve still got this job here to do!” Karen defied even the ancient Arisian
sage.
“That, daughter, can and should wait. I tell you solemnly, as a fact, that if you do
not go to Lyrane you will never get the faintest clue to that which you now seek.”
CHAPTER 12: KALONIA BECOMES OF INTEREST
Christopher Kinnison drove toward Arisia, seething.
Why couldn’t those damned sisters of his have sense to match their brains—or
why couldn’t he have had some brothers? Especially—right now—Kay. If she had the
sense of a Zabriskan fontema she’d know that this job was important and would snap
into it, instead of wild-goose-chasing all over space. If he were Mentor he’d straighten
her out. He had decided to straighten her out once himself, and he grinned wryly to
himself at the memory of what had happened. What Mentor had done to him, before he
even got started, was really rugged. What he would like to do, next time he got within
reach of her, was to shake her until her teeth rattled.
Or would he? Uh-uh. By no stretch of the imagination could he picture himself
hurting any one of them. They were swell kids—in fact, the finest people he had ever
known. He had rough-housed and wrestled with them plenty of times, of course—he
liked it, and so did they. He could handle any one of them—he surveyed without his
usual complacence his two-hundred-plus pounds of meat, bone, and gristle—he ought
to be able to, since he outweighed them by fifty or sixty pounds; but it wasn’t easy.
Worse than Valerians —just like taking on a combination of boa constrictor and
cateagle—and when Kat and Con ganged up on him that time they mauled him to a
pulp in nothing flat.
But jet back! Weight wasn’t it, except maybe among themselves. He had never
met a Valerian yet whose shoulders he couldn’t pin flat to the mat in a hundred seconds,
and the smallest of them outweighed him two to one. Conversely, although he had
never thought of it before, what his sisters had taken from him, without even a bruise,
would have broken any ordinary women up into masses of compound fractures. They
were—they must be—made of different stuff. His thoughts took a new tack. The kids
were special in another way, too, he had noticed lately, without paying it any particular
attention. It might tie in. They didn’t feel like other girls. After dancing with one of them,
other girls felt like robots made out of putty. Their flesh was different. It was firmer, finer,
infinitely more responsive. Each individual cell seemed to be endowed with a flashing,
sparkling life; a life which, interlinking with that of one of his own cells, made their
bodies as intimately one as were their perfectly synchronized minds.
But what did all this have to do with their lack of sense? QX, they were nice
people. QX, he couldn’t beat their brains out, either physically or mentally. But damn it
all, there ought to be some way of driving some ordinary common sense through their
fine-grained, thick, hard, tough skulls!
Thus it was that Kit approached Arisia in a decidedly mixed frame of mind. He
shot through the barrier without slowing down and without notification. Inciting his ship,
he fought her into an orbit around the planet. The shape of the orbit was immaterial, as
long as its every inch was inside Arisia’s innermost screen. For young Kinnison knew
precisely what those screens were and exactly what they were for. He knew that
distance of itself meant nothing—Mentor could give anyone either basic or advanced
treatments just as well from a distance of a thousand million parsecs as at hand to
hand. The reason for the screens and for the personal visits was the existence of the
Eddorians, who had minds probably as capable as the Arisians’ own. And throughout all
the infinite reaches of the macro-cosmic Universe, only within these highly special
screens was there certainty of privacy from the spying senses of the ultimate foe.
“The time has come, Christopher, for the last treatment I am able to give you,”
Mentor announced without preamble, as soon as Kit had checked his orbit.
“Oh—so soon? I thought you were pulling me in to pin my ears back for fighting
with Kay—the dim-wit!”
“That, while a minor matter, is worthy of passing mention, since it is illustrative of
the difficulties inherent in the project of developing, without over-controlling, such minds
as yours. En route here, you made a masterly summation of the situation, with one
outstanding omission.”
“Huh? What omission? I covered it like a blanket!”
“You assumed throughout, and still assume, as you always do in dealing with
your sisters, that you are unassailably right; that your conclusion is the only tenable one;
that they are always wrong.”
“But damn it, they are! That’s why you sent Kay to Lyrane!”
“In these conflicts with your sisters, you have been right in approximately half of
the cases,” Mentor informed him.
“But how about their fights with each other?”
“Do you know of any such?”
“Why . . . uh . . . can’t say that I do.” Kit’s surprise was plain. “But since they fight
with me so much, they must. . .”
“That does not follow, and for a very good reason. We may as well discuss that
reason now, as it is a necessary part of the education which you are about to receive.
You already know that your sisters are very different, each from the other. Know now,
youth, that each was specifically developed to be so completely different that there is no
possible ” point which could be made an issue between any two of them.”
“Ungh . . . um . . .” It took some time for Kit to digest that news. “Then where do I
come in that they all fight with me at the drop of a hat?”
“That, too, while regrettable, is inevitable. Each of your sisters, as you may have
suspected, is to play a tremendous part in that which is to come. The Lensmen, we of
Arisia, all will contribute, but upon you Children of the Lens— especially upon the
girls—will fall the greater share of the load. Your individual task will be that of
coordinating the whole; a duty which no Arisian is or ever can be qualified to perform.
You will have to direct the efforts of your sisters; re-enforcing every heavily-attacked
point with your own incomparable force and drive; keeping them smoothly in mesh and
in place. As a side issue, you will also Lave to coordinate the feebler efforts of us of
Arisia, the Lensmen, the Patrol, and whatever other minor forces we may be able to
employ.”
“Holy—Klono’s—claws!” Kit was gasping like a fish. “Just where, Mentor, do, you
figure I’m going to pick up the jets to swing that load? And as to coordinating the kids—
that’s out. I’d make just one suggestion to any one of them and she’d forget all about the
battle and tear into me—no, I’ll take that back. The stickier the going, the closer they
rally ’round.”
“Right. It will always be so. Now, youth, that you have these facts, explain these
matters to me, as a sort of preliminary exercise.”
“I think I see.” Kit thought intensely. “The kids don’t fight with each other because
they don’t overlap. They fight with me because my central field overlaps them all. They
have no occasion to fight with anybody else, nor have I, because with anybody else our
viewpoint is always right and the other fellow knows it—except for Palainians and such,
who think along different lines than we do. Thus, Kay never fights with Nadreck. When
he goes off the beam, she simply ignores him and goes on about her business. But with
them and me . . . we’ll have to learn to arbitrate, or something, I suppose . . .” his
thought trailed off.
“Manifestations of adolescence; with adulthood, now coming fast, they will pass.
Let us get on with the work.”
“But wait a minute!” Kit protested. “About this coordinator thing. I can’t do it. I’m
too much of a kid—I won’t be ready for a job like that for a thousand years!”
“You must be ready,” Mentor’s thought was inexorable. “And, when the time
comes, you shall be. Now, youth, come fully into my mind.”
There is no use repeating in detail the progress of an Arisian super-education,
especially since the most accurate possible description of the most important of those
details would be intrinsically meaningless. When, finally, Kit was ready to leave Arisia,