Free INTERVENTION by Julian May, Ted Dikty Page A

exams and acting uncharitably toward your aunt and uncle than with these involuntary urgings of the flesh. Now make a good act of contrition..."
    When I was sixteen, in 1961,I emerged a bit from my broody shell and had occasional chaste dates with a quiet, pretty girl named Marie-Madeleine Fabre, whom I had met in the library. She shared my love of science fiction. We would walk along the banks of the beautiful Androscoggin River north of the pulp mills, ignoring the sulfurous stench and taking simple joy in the dark mirrored water, the flaming maples in autumn, and the low mountains that enclosed our New Hampshire valley. She taught me to bird-watch. I forgot my nightmares of Odd John and learned to react with forbearance when Don mocked my lack of sexual daring.
    There were still five of us living at home: Don and I and our younger cousins Albert, Jeanne, and Marguerite. That year we played host to a grand Remillard family reunion. Relatives came from all over New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine—including the other six children of One' Louie and Tante Lorraine, who had married and moved away and had children of their own. The old house on Second Street was jammed. After Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve there was the traditional réveillon with wine, maple candy and barber-poles, croque-cignols and tourtières, and meat pies made of fat pork. Tiny children rushed about shrieking and waving toys, then fell asleep on the floor amid a litter of gifts and colored wrappings. As fast as the big old-fashioned Christmas tree lights burnt out, assiduous boy electricians replaced them. Girls passed trays of food. Adolescents and adults drank toast after toast. Even frail, white-haired Tante Lorraine got happily enivrée. Everyone agreed that nothing was so wonderful as having the whole family under one roof for the holidays.
    Seventeen days later, when the Christmas decorations had long been taken down, there was a belated present from little Cousin Tom of Auburn, Maine. We came down with the mumps.
    At first we considered it a joke, in spite of the discomfort. Don and I and A1 and Jeanne and Margie looked like a woeful gang of chipmunks. It was an excuse to stay home from school during the worst part of the winter, when Berlin was wrapped in frigid fog from the pulp-mill stacks and the dirty snow was knee-deep. Marie-Madeleine brought my class assignments every day, slipping them through the mail slot in the front door while the younger cousins tittered. Don's covey of cheerleaders kept the phone tied up for hours. He did no homework. He was urged by the high school coach to rest and conserve his strength.
    Everybody got better inside of a week except me.
    I was prostrate and in agony from what Dr. LaPlante said was a rare complication of mumps. The virus had moved to my testicles and I had something called bilateral orchitis. The nuns had been right after all! I was being punished.
    I was treated to a useless course of antibiotics and lay moaning with an ice bag on my groin while Tante Lorraine hushed the solicitous inquiries of little Jeanne and Margie. Don slept at a friend's house, making some excuse, because I couldn't help communicating my pain and irrational guilt telepathically. Marie-Madeleine lit candles to St. Joseph and prayed for me to get well. Father Racine's common sense pooh-poohed my guilt and Dr. LaPlante assured me that I was going to be as good as new.
    In my heart, I knew better.

8
VERKHNYAYA BZYB, ABKHAZIYA ASSR, EARTH
28 SEPTEMBER 1963
     
    T HE PHYSICIAN PYOTR Sergeyevich Sakhvadze and his five-year-old daughter Tamara drove south from Sochi on the Black Sea Highway into that unique part of the Soviet Union called Abkhaziya by the geographers. Local people have another name for it: Apsny, the Land of the Soul. Its mountain villages are famed for the advanced age attained by the inhabitants, some of whom are reliably estimated at being more than 120 years old. The unusual mental traits of the isolated Abkhazians