The L’vrai suggested a way that people could be tested for bridge potential without being turned into vegetables if they were unsuitable.
First, Lefavre was subjected to an exhaustive battery of psychological tests, that reduced his psyche to a computer full of numbers. People who roughly matched his profile were given the same battery of tests. The ones who came closest to “being” Lefavre were given a final test: sent to a remote corner of Groombridge, where the L’vrai waited. Isolated from the psychic pollution that random human sensibilities caused, the L’vrai didn’t have to touch a candidate to tell whether he or she were suitable.
Candidate after candidate was rejected. Perhaps Jacque was unique. If so, humanity would be in a sorry state when he died-at the mercy of a creature whose nature was still a mystery, with whom communication was impossible. The L’vrai refused to read, write, or speak, claiming that expressing truth was impossible through the muddy filter of human language.
Jacque was 105, still hale, when his successor was found. Then two more, over the next few years.
A century later, there were several hundred who could communicate with the L’vrai; in a thousand years, every human could.
The L’vrai said it had not influenced human evolution directly; indeed, humans hadn’t really changed in any basic way. They had only begun to see in their own nature the literal embodiment of e pluribus unum that described the L’vrai.
It withdrew its fleet from Sirius and allowed humankind the stars.
52 – Autobiography 2149
(From Peacemaker: The Diaries of Jacque Lefavre, copyright © St. Martin’s TFX 2151:)
EDITOR’S NOTE: Jacque Lefavre never made another entry in his diary after his beloved Carol died in 2112. But he continued service to humanity as emissary/translator to the L’vrai for another thirty years, until failing health forced him to retire.
The “ecstasy death” associated with primary contact in the Groombridge Effect had long been well-established. Lefavre desired it, and the AED was honored to comply.
They brought an untouched bridge to his bedside in upstate New York and, for his secondary contact, jumped in his great-granddaughter Tania Celarion. Of the twenty-eight great-grandchildren descended from the two children he and Carol had had, Tania was the one with the greatest Rhine potential, 458.
No meaningful number could be ascribed to Lefavre’s potential, of course. Eighty years of association with the L’vrai had made him by far more sensitive than any other human being. He knew, therefore, that he wouldn’t live long after he had touched the bridge.
In fact he lasted less than twenty seconds. But his great-granddaughter revealed in great detail, under contact hypnosis, what went through his mind in that short time.
Although this transcript has been reprinted often, it does seem a fitting way to end this collection.
I came in and sat down by his bed. He looked so old, I’d never seen anybody looked so old. I thought he was asleep but he wasn’t. He just had trouble opening his eyes all the way. He smiled at me and said “Tania, you make me wish I was a century younger,” but the nurses told me he says that to any woman not in a wheelchair. And maybe he means it. He seems so good and pure, it’s the Power he got from the Creepies, the L’vrai. It made him a little like a Creepy himself. He asked me how my mother was and all that relative drik, but I could see he couldn’t keep his eyes off my box. The box I had the Groombridge Creepy in. Finally he asked me if we otta go ahead and do it, and I had to ask him did he really know he was going to die if he did? He said, “Child, I died thirty-seven years ago, and some months. Once I could tell you to the day, she was that much.” Well, the nurses had warned me about that, too; all he ever talks about is my great-grandmother. Talked. Anyhow, he warned me not to touch the thing first, just open the box and let him touch it, and then get right in there with him because he didn’t know how long it’d last.