Elder Laricham, still dripping in ritual mourning, let dismay sharpen into indignation. "One atomic bombing was dire enough. But to devastate two cities —! And with peace feelers already sent forth by the wretched Islanders!"
"Barbaric beyond belief, " agreed Chirish Ala Malissotam; but she held her green, as did her spouse Adalasstam. "But it was just about what one might expect of humanity, given the escalation of atrocities among all participants in this war. "
"By using this appalling weapon, " Adalasstam said, "the Westerners prove they are no less savage and immoral than the Island warmongers. "
"I do not agree, " Doka'eloo said ponderously. He paused, and the others knew they were in for a lecture; but the Krondaku was their superior officer as well as a magnate of the Concilium, so they steeled themselves. "While it is true that the Islanders at this time have expressed a certain inclination to sue for peace, prompted by the first display of atomic weaponry, their gesture was by no means wholehearted. The Island military leaders remain determined to continue hostilities — as our Krondak analysis of their high-level signals has confirmed. The Westerners are partially aware of this intelligence. Even without it, however, given the Islanders' record of perfidy in past dealings, plus the warrior-ethic forbidding honorable surrender, one might hold the West justified in thinking that the Islander High Command required a second stimulus" — he nodded at the fire-storm on the screen — "to bring the truth of their situation home to them beyond the shadow of a doubt. "
"Bring home indeed!" exclaimed the scandalized Chirish Ala. "Oh, I agree that this second atomic bombing will end the stupid war, Doka'eloo Eebak. But by taking this course the planet Earth has signed its metapsychic death-warrant. No world utilizing atomic weaponry prior to its cooperative advent into space has ever escaped destruction of its primary civilized population component. The coadunation of the global Mind has been set back at least six thousand years. They'll revert to hunter-gatherer!"
"We might as well pack up the mission and go home right now, " old Laricham said. The other two Simbiari murmured agreement.
"Precedent tends to support your pessimism, " said the imperturbable Krondaku. "Nevertheless, we will await the decision of the Concilium. Debate has been lively since the atomic bombing of the first Island city. This second incident, which I farspoke to Orb promptly, should elicit a vote of confidence concerning our Earth involvement. "
"The Concilium's vote is a foregone conclusion, " Adalasstam said. "The Earthlings are bound to blast themselves to a postatomic Paleolithic within the next fifty orbits or so, given their abysmal state of sociopolitical immaturity. "
"Perhaps not!" the male Poltroyan, Rimi, piped up. He and his mate had been watching the mushroom cloud hand in hand, with tears in their ruby eyes and their minds locked in mutual commiseration. But now they showed signs of cheering up.
Pilti, the female Poltroyan, said, "Earthlings have been atypical in their accelerated scientific progress as well as in their aggressive tendencies. Certain segments responded to this war with a great upsurge of solidarity, setting aside petty differences for the first time in human history as they worked together to oppose a clearly immoral antagonist. "
"By Galactic standards, they're ethical primitives, " Rimi said. "But they have amazing metapsychic potential. Isn't that right, Doka'eloo Eebak?"
"You speak truly, " the monstrous being assented.
Now the fallen Gi began to stir. It opened its enormous eyes while keeping its mind well screened from distressing resonances. "I do hope we won't have to write Earth off, " NupNup Nunl fluted. "It has such gorgeous cloud formations and oceanic shadings — and its inventory of presapient life is rich beyond measure and quite resplendent. The birds and butterflies! The oceanic microflora and the glorious sea-slugs!"
"Pity the sea-slugs aren't candidates for induction into the Milieu, " snorted Adalasstam.
NupNup Nunl climbed to its feet, assisted by kindly Rimi. The Gi settled its plumage and untangled its testicular peduncles. "Human beings are quarrelsome and vindictive, " it conceded. "They persecute intellectual innovators and mess up the ecology. But who can deny that their music is the most marvelous in the known universe? Gregorian chant! Bach counterpoint! Strauss waltzes! Indian ragas! Cole Porter!"
"You Gi!" Elder Laricham exclaimed. "So hopelessly sentimental. What matter if the human race is an aesthetic wonder — when it so obstinately resists the evolution of its Mind?" Laricham turned to the two Poltroyans. "And your optimistic assessment, Rimi and Pilti, is supported by nothing more than a naive view of the synchronicity lattices. The Arch-College of Simb has recognized Earth's unsuitability from the very start of this futile surveillance. "
"How fortunate for humanity, " Rimi remarked suavely, "that our federation of worlds outranks yours in the Concilium. "
Chirish Ala could not resist saying, "Poltroyans empathize with Earthlings merely because both races are so revoltingly fecund. "
"So speed the great day of Earth's Coadunate Number, " Pilti said, lowering her eyes in piety. And then she grinned at the female Simb. "By the way, my dear, did I tell you I was pregnant again?"
"Is this a time for vulgar levity?" cried Adalasstam, gesturing at the wall-screen.
"No, " Pilti said. "But not a time for despair, either. "
Rimi said, "The Amalgam of Poltroy has confidence that the human race will pull back from the brink of Mind destruction. In friendship, let me point out to our esteemed Simbiari Uniates that we of Poltroy belong to a very old race. We have studied many more emerging worlds than you have. There has been at least one exception to the correlation between atomic weaponry and racial suicide. Us. "
The three green-skinned entities assumed a long-suffering mental linkage. Elder Laricham acknowledged the point with cool formality.
"Oh, that's so true!" burbled the Gi. It wore a sunny smile, and its pseudomammary areolae, which had been bleached and shrunken by its horrific experience, began to re-engorge and assume their normal electric pink color. "I'd forgotten what bloodthirsty brutes you Poltroyans were in your primitive years. No wonder you feel a psychic affinity to the Earthlings. "
"And no wonder we don't, " Elder Laricham growled. He crinkled his features to stem the flow of green. "Earth is a lost cause, I tell you. " He pointed melodramatically to the screen. "The principals in the current conflict, Islanders and Westerners, are certain to remain deadly antagonists for the next three generations at the very least. There will be fresh wars of vengeance and retaliation between these two nations so highly charged with ethnic dynamism, then global annihilation. The Galactic Milieu's overly subtle educative effort has been in vain. We will surely have to abandon Earth — at least until its next cycle of high civilization. "
"It's the Concilium's decision, not yours, " Rimi said flatly. "Any word yet, Doka'eloo Eebak?"
The fearsome-looking officer sat motionless except for a single tentacle that flicked emerald mucus blobs toward the floor scuppers in nonjudgmental but relentless tidiness. Doka'eloo opened his stupendous farsensing faculty to the others so that they might envision the Concilium Orb, a hollow planetoid more than four thousand light-years away in the Orion Arm of the Milky Way. In the central sanctum of the Orb, the governing body of the Coadunate Galactic Milieu had finally completed its deliberation upon the fate of Earth's Mind. The data had been analyzed and a poll of magnates was taken. The result flashed to the receptor ultrasense of Doka'eloo with the speed of thought.
He said, "The Poltroyan Amalgam voted in favor of maintaining the Milieu's involvement with Earth. The Krondak, Gi, and Simbiari magnates voted to discontinue our guidance — giving a majority in favor of disengagement. ''
"There!" exclaimed Adalasstam. "What did I tell you?"
"We can't let their music die, " NupNup Nunl grieved. "Not Sibelius! Not Schoenberg and Duke Ellington!"
But the Krondaku was not finished. "This negative verdict of the Concilium magnates was summarily veto
ed by the Lylmik Supervisory Body. "
"Sacred Truth and Beauty!" whispered Elder Laricham. "The Lylmik intervened in such a trivial affair? Astounding!"
"But wonderful, " cried the two little Poltroyans, embracing.
The Gi shook its fluffy head. Its ovarian externalia trembled on the verge of cerise. "A Lylmik veto! I can't think when such a thing ever happened before. "
"Long before your race attained coadunation, " Doka'eloo told the hermaphrodite. "Before the Poltroyans and Simbiari learned to use stone tools and fire. That is to say, three hundred forty-two thousand, nine hundred and sixty-two standard years ago. "
In the awestruck mental silence that followed, the Krondaku signaled Adalasstam to change the image on the wall-screen. The picture of the devastated Island city melted into a longer view of Earth as seen from the Milieu observation vessel. The sun shone full on it and it was blue and white, suspended like a brilliant agate against the foaming silver breaker of the galactic plane.
"There is more, " Doka'eloo said. "The Lylmik order us observers to commence a thirty-year phase of intensified overt manifestation. The people of Earth are to be familiarized with the concept of interstellar society — as a preliminary to possible Intervention. "
The three affronted Simbiari fell to choking on green phlegm. The Poltroyan couple clapped their hands and trilled.
NupNup Nunl controlled itself heroically, quieting its reproductive organs to the magenta state, and uttered a luxurious sigh. "I'm so glad. It's really a fascinating world, and there is a statistically significant chance that the people will shape up. Very long odds, but by no means hopeless... "
It extended a six-jointed digit and activated the ambient audio system, which was patched to Vienna radio. The climaxing strains of "Verklarte Nacht" filled the oversight chamber of the exotic space vessel.
Invisible, it continued the Milieu's surveillance of over sixty thousand years.
3
FROM THE MEMOIRS OF ROGATIEN REMILLARD
I WAS BORN in 1945, in the northern New Hampshire mill town of Berlin. My twin brother Donatien and I took our first breaths on 12 August, two days after Japan opened the peace negotiations that would end World War II. Our mother, Adele, was stricken with labor pains at early Sunday Mass, but with the stubbornness so characteristic of our clan gave no indication of it until the last notes of the recessional hymn had been sung. Then her brother-in-law Louis and his wife drove her to St. Luke's, where she was delivered of us and died. Our father Joseph had perished six months earlier at the Battle of Iwo Jima.
On the day of our birth, clouds of radioactivity from the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were still being carried around the world by the jet-stream winds. But they had nothing to do with our mutations. The genes for metapsychic operancy lay dormant in many other families besides ours. The immortality gene, however, was apparently unique. Neither trait would be recognized for what it was until many years had gone by.
Don and I, husky orphans, had a legacy from our mother of a GI insurance policy and an antique mantelpiece clock. We were taken in by Onc' Louie and Tante Lorraine. It meant two more mouths to feed in a family that already included six children; but Louis Remillard was a foreman at the big Berlin paper mill that also employed other males of our clan (and would employ Don and me, in good time). He was a stocky, powerful man with one leg slightly shorter than the other, and he earned good wages and owned a two-storey frame apartment on Second Street that was old but well maintained. We lived on the ground floor, and Oncle Alain and Tante Grace and their even larger brood lived upstairs. Life was cheerful, if extremely noisy. My brother and I seemed to be quite ordinary children. Like most Franco-Americans of the region, we grew up speaking French to our kinsfolk, but used English quite readily in our dealings with non-Francophone neighbors and playmates, who were in the majority.
The Family Ghost, when I first met it, also spoke French.
It happened on an unforgettable day when I was five. A gang of us cousins piled into the back of an old pickup truck owned by Gerard, the eldest. We had a collection of pots and pans and pails, and were off on a raspberry-picking expedition into the National Forest west of town, a cut-over wilderness beyond the York Pond fish hatchery. The berries were sparse that year and we scattered widely, working a maze of overgrown logging tracks. Don and I had been warned to stick close to our cousin Cecile, who was fourteen and very responsible; but she was a slow and methodical picker while we two skipped from patch to patch, skimming the easily reached fruit and not bothering with berries that were harder to get.
Then we got lost. We were separated not only from Cecile and the other cousins but from each other. It was one of the first times I can remember being really apart from my twin brother, and it was very frightening. I wandered around whimpering for more than an hour. I was afraid that if I gave in to panic and bawled, I would be punished by having no whipped cream on my raspberry slump at supper.
It began to get dark. I called feebly but there was no response. Then I came into an area that was a dense tangle of brambles, all laden with luscious berries. And there, not ten meters away, stood a big black bear, chomping and slurping.
"Donnie! Donnie!" I screamed, dropping my little berry pail. I took to my heels. The bear did not follow.
I stumbled over decaying slash and undergrowth, dodged around rotted stumps, and came to a place where sapling paper birches had sprung up. Their crowded trunks were like white broom-handles. I could scarcely push my way through. Perhaps I would be safe there from the bear.
"Donnie, where are you?" I yelled, still terror-stricken.
I seemed to hear him say: Over here.
"Where?" I was weeping and nearly blind. "I'm lost! Where are you?" He said: Right here. I can hear you even though it's quiet. Isn't that funny?
I howled. I shrieked. It was not funny. "A bear is after me!"
He said: I think I see you. But I don't see the bear. I can only see you when I close my eyes, though. That's funny, too. Can you see me, Rogi?
"No, no, " I wept. Not only did I not see him, but I began to realize that I didn't really hear him, either — except in some strange way that had nothing to do with my ears. Again and again I screamed my brother's name. I wandered out of the birch grove into more rocky, open land and started to run.
I heard Don say: Here's Cecile and Joe and Gerard. Let's find out if they can see you, too.
The voice in my mind was drowned out by my own sobbing. It was twilight — entre chien et loup, as we used to say. I was crying my heart out, not looking where I was going, running between two great rock outcroppings...
"Arrête!" commanded a loud voice. At the same time something grabbed me by the back of my overall straps, yanking me off my feet. I gave a shattering screech, flailed my arms, and twisted my neck to look over my shoulder, expecting to see black fur and tusks.
There was nothing there.
I hung in air for an instant, too stupefied to utter a sound. Then I was lowered gently to earth and the same adult voice said, "Bon courage, ti-frère. Maintenant c'est tr'bien. "
The invisible thing was telling me not to be afraid, that everything was now all right. What a hope! I burst into hysterical whoops and wet my underpants.
The voice soothed me in familiar Canuckois, sounding rather like my younger uncle Alain. An unseen hand smoothed my touseled black curls. I screwed my eyes shut. A ghost! It was a ghost that had snatched me up! It would feed me to the bear!
"No, no, " the voice insisted. "I won't harm you, little one. I want to help you. Look here, beyond the two large rocks. A very steep ravine. You would have fallen and hurt yourself badly. You might have been killed. And yet I know nothing of the sort happened... so I saved you myself. Ainsi le début du paradoxe!"
"A ghost!" I wailed. "You're a ghost!"
I can hear the thing's mind-voice laughing even now as it said:
Exactement! Mais un fantôme familier...
Thus I was i
ntroduced to the being who would help me, advise me — and bedevil me — at many critical points in my life. The Family Ghost took my hand and drew me along a shadowy, twisted game trail, making me run so fast I was left nearly breathless and forgot to cry. It reassured me but warned me not to mention our meeting to anyone, since I would not be believed. All too probably brother and cousins would laugh at me, call me a baby. It would be much better to tell them how bravely I had faced the bear.
As the first stars began to show, I emerged from the forest onto the road near the fish hatchery where the pickup truck stood. My cousins and the fish men were there and welcomed me with relieved shouts. I told them I had flung my berry bucket in a bear's face, cleverly gaining time to make my escape. None of them noticed that I stank slightly of pipi. My brother Don did look at me strangely, and I was aware of a question hovering just behind his lips. But then he scowled and was silent.
I got double whipped cream on my raspberry slump that night.
I told nobody about the Family Ghost.
To understand the mind of our family, you should know something of our heritage.
The Remillards are members of that New England ethnic group, descended from French-Canadians, who are variously called Franco-American, Canado-Américaine, or more simply Canuck. The family name is a fairly common one, now pronounced REM-ih-lard in a straightforward Yankee way. As far as I have been able to discover, no other branches of the family harbored so precocious a set of supravital genetic traits for high metafunction and self-rejuvenation. (The "bodiless" mutagene came from poor Teresa, as I shall relate in due time. )
Our ancestors settled in Quebec in the middle 1600s and worked the land as French peasants have done from time immemorial. Like their neighbors they were an industrious, rather bloody-minded folk who looked with scorn upon such novelties as crop rotation and fertilization of the soil. At the same time they were fervent Roman Catholics who regarded it as their sacred duty to have large families. The predictable result, in the harsh climate of the St. Lawrence River Valley, was economic disaster. By the mid-nineteenth century the worn-out, much-subdivided land provided no more than a bare subsistence, no matter how hard the farmers worked. In addition to the struggle required to earn a living, there was also political oppression from the English-speaking government of Canada. An insurrection among the habitants in 1837 was mercilessly crushed by the Canadian army.