“Don was eaten up with self-hatred,” I whispered. “As he died, he told me I should have hated him, too. But I thought he was talking about his alcoholism and shiftlessness, the way he’d failed Sunny and the kids.”
“Did you ever have hints that something might be seriously wrong with Denis himself?”
I thought about it. “Maybe. For one thing, I was always afraid to let Denis into my mind. I love him so much, but it always terrified me to put myself in his power. After a couple of experiences, I wouldn’t permit it at all and he was unable to force his way in.”
Anne nodded. “It’s a thing operant parents and their children seem to agree on unconsciously: The child is almost always incapable of coercing the parent.” She reached across the table and took my hand, a glint of excitement in her eyes. “And you stand in loco parentis to Denis … That’s the reason why I came to you, Uncle Rogi, rather than to any of the other older members of the family. Fury can never forcibly read your mind or coerce you.”
“I think Denis did coerce me a few times,” I said.
“There may have been an unconscious element of permissiveness on your part, then. But now, when your opposition is firm, it would probably be impossible.”
I mulled over my recollections of our early relationship. “In hindsight, I can see other things about Denis that troubled me. He blamed himself when Vic killed Don. He also knew that Vic deliberately suppressed the operant mindpowers of their younger brothers and sisters, but Denis never did anything about it—not even when Vic murdered three of the girls who defied him. And their mother, poor Sunny … when Denis finally did get her out of Vic’s clutches it was too late. She’d gone out of her mind with grief and she died not long afterward.”
I broke up again, knuckling my eyes. When I pulled myself together I added, “The strangest thing of all was Denis’s insisting on keeping Vic alive when he was mind-zapped to a vegetative state. The bastard hung on for twenty-six years. Denis said he kept him on the machines so he’d have time to repent his sins. Fat fucking chance! But not even Lucille was able to talk Denis out of his foutue idée fixe. Every year on Good Friday, the Dynasty had to join Denis in metaconcert and pray for Vic. That last year, in 2040, Denis even tried to rope me into the mind-prayer. Thank God I was able to wiggle out.”
“Can you tell me any other details about Fury’s birth? It’s highly significant that the thing managed to take overt control of Denis just as Victor died. This might suggest that Denis’s shadow persona unconsciously approved of Victor’s crimes, or even abetted them. I think it’s also important that Fury was forced to manifest itself only after Victor was gone forever.”
I said, “Fury was all set to make me its slave when it was born, there at Vic’s deathbed. I heard it say so. But another entity—a good one—showed up suddenly and saved me.”
Anne’s eyes widened. “Who could it have been? Denis’s core persona?”
I beat around the bush, deciding this wasn’t an auspicious time to introduce her to the Family Ghost, then said, “I guess Fury took the five fetuses instead of me and turned them into Hydra.”
“Their seduction and manipulation is more complex than that, but I suspect you’ve got it in a nutshell.” Anne got up and put the apricot pastries into the microwave. “Have you been conscious of Fury attempting to invade you at other times?”
“Not really. I’ve felt it lurking and I’ve dreamt about it—but the dreams always seemed to be real nightmares, if you get what I mean, and not coercion-inspired. The one other time I was strongly aware of Fury’s presence was at Ti-Jean’s birth in 2052. The baby was having a hard time of it and the monster tried to take advantage of the situation and get to him. Somehow … I was able to help. Fury went away and Baby Jack was all right.”
“But you recognized the entity positively?”
“Damn straight.” I winced at the recollection.
“This may be very important.” Anne studied me with uncomfortable intensity and I felt the tentacles of her grandmasterly coercive faculty fingering my good old bombproof mental shield. “You’re an untrained head, Uncle Rogi, but I’ve always suspected there were depths to you that the rest of the family might not have appreciated.”
I gave her a cool look. “Denis always said my suboperant creative faculty might have a few surprises. But I wouldn’t let him measure it—and I’m damned if I’ll let you fossick around in my skull either, ma petite.”
She laughed rather uneasily, got the pastries, and set them before us. We ate and drank while she regrouped, and her next remarks were almost clinically objective. “All bullshit aside, Rogi—if you were able to furnish details of Fury’s metapsychic complexus, it might help immeasurably in the treatment of Denis. Success would depend upon fine-tuning a coercive-redactive course that would safely integrate the antisocial shadow persona with Denis’s benign core—his true self.”
I gave her the fish-eye. “But you’d have to mind-ream me to find this data you need?”
“Essentially, yes. It might not be there. But there’s a chance that Fury’s birth made an exceptionally powerful engrammatic impression on you. Without any volition on your part, you could have stored the profile of the metafaculties Fury attempted to exert upon you. Especially the coercion.”
“The way young Dorothée stored the Hydra’s mental profile?”
“Exactly. Any therapy for Denis would have to break through Fury’s coercion before redactive healing could begin. You can see why your input could be extremely important.”
“I’ll consider it,” I said ungraciously. But behind my screen, I was thinking: What if she’s wrong about Denis? What if Anne herself is Fury? By letting my guard down, I could be making her a present of my metawhoozical ass! I’m no genius and no Paramount Grand Master—but this old Canuck isn’t a fucking idiot either.
Anne said, “Denis’s core persona is completely innocent of the crimes committed by Fury. But he can never control or integrate Fury to harmlessness unassisted. I’ll concede that your psychic reaming will probably be painful. But we members of the Dynasty will have to gamble our lives and sanity attempting to treat Denis in metaconcert. There’s no certainty that the seven of us will be able to succeed—especially with our own father.”
“You mean, the parent-kid thing would get in the way?”
“I’m afraid so. And there’s something else. Remember the grandstand play that Fury wreaked on the database computer at Concilium Orb when it helped Hydra escape from Scotland? That piece of work demonstrates that the entity almost certainly has paramount metacreativity. This gives it a formidable weapon against any minds who dare threaten it.”
“You mean, it could zap the lot of you to cinders with a mental laser if it thought you were out to kill it.” A question popped into my mind. “I wonder why it’s held back using its mind as a weapon? It’s always worked through Hydra, except for setting Jack’s fire.”
“I have no idea. Perhaps it has something to do with the structure of Papa’s disorder. Fury’s metapsychic complexus may be distorted, limited in any number of ways. On the other hand, the forbearance may simply be strategic.”
I pushed my dessert plate away. In spite of my shock and dismay, I’d somehow managed to eat every morsel. I got up from the table and started a pot of coffee.
“You know, Denis has never had a really comprehensive metapsychic assay,” I observed. “Just half-assed tests in the early days. He evaluated the bejesus out of his associates and subjects—except me—but he claimed he wasn’t interested in the calibration of his own mindpowers, just in their theoretical aspects. So he was never assayed using Milieu technology—and who’d ever give the Grand Old Man of Metapsychology a hard time about it? Another thing: By continuing to turn down being appointed a Magnate of the Concilium, he neatly sidestepped the obligatory Lylmik mind-sifting. For all we know, Denis could be paramount in every damned one of his faculties.”
“I considered the possibility.” Anne leaned forward, turni
ng the coercion on to me again. “This is why your own mental data on the Fury monster could be crucial, Uncle Rogi.”
“How about you and Dorothée? Wouldn’t memories of your Fury dreams provide better dope?”
“We’ll try to obtain those data, too, of course. But—forgive my frankness—the Dirigent and I have minds that are enormously more complex than yours. Once you open up that bloody invulnerable mindscreen, your repressed memories should be rather easy to get at. The stuff Dorothea and I have stored may not be.” She paused and delivered the zinger. “If you really love Denis, I don’t see how you can refuse.”
I gave the sly Jesuit female a twisted smile, but said nothing.
When the coffee was ready I suggested we take it to the living room. Outside the windows was a weird luminous glow, New Hampshire’s winter answer to the gray limbo of hyperspace. The blowing snow was so thick that you couldn’t eyeball a thing aside from fuzzy streetlamps and the creeping twin blobs of light indicating cautious groundcars navigating on full auto.
We settled down, me in my old armchair and Anne on the couch with Marcel, who was now purring from a surfeit of cat food and table scraps. I had turned on the fire, programmed a John Coltrane album, and found some Rémy Martin to liven up the coffee. For quite a while we just sat. “There’s something I might as well confess to you, Rogi,” she said eventually. “I’m no metaconcert designer, but my best calculations show that my brothers and sister and I probably won’t be able to crank the watts to overcome a paramount Fury through coercive redaction—even if we do manage to work out the proper program.”
“There’s Ti-Jean,” I pointed out, “and Dorothée, of course. Surely they’d be willing to join in the concert. Two paramount minds would give you the edge you need.”
“I don’t think we have the right to ask them to risk their lives. They’re both so young.”
“Balls! They’d jump at the chance. And what about Marc?”
“I don’t trust him. He’s too self-centered. Too—” She shook her head. “He’s such an arrogant, calculating bastard. I guess I’m half afraid he’d side with Fury …”
“Now that’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard!”
“I’m not joking, Rogi. I know Marc very well. Better than any other member of the Dynasty does. Even better than Paul, his father. Marc’s a monumental egotist with a deficient affect, and unless I miss my guess, one of these days he’s going to cause the Galactic Milieu a shitload of trouble. There’s no way I’d let him participate in the treatment of Denis.”
“Well, you may have a point,” I conceded. “But you don’t really have to use Marc in the metaconcert. Just get him to lend you some of his E18 CE brain-buckets. Solve your mind-wattage problem in one swell foop.”
Anne frowned, but understanding was gleaming in her eyes. “Are you suggesting that we use cerebroenergetic enhancement equipment in Papa’s healing metaconcert?”
“Why the hell not? Jack and the rest of them used those gonzo hats in creativity mode to chill the diatreme on Callie. Curing Denis couldn’t be any more humongous than that little caper.”
“Dorothea nearly died from a dysergistic flashover during the Caledonia operation,” Anne noted grimly, “and none of the Dynasty are experienced in the use of CE. I’ve always had my doubts about the safety of mechanical brain-boosting and so have Paul and Philip and Maurie. To say nothing of the majority of the exotic Magnates of the Concilium.”
“Tout ça c’est des foutaises! The Dynasty can muzzle its precious principles until poor old Denis is back on line and Fury-free. You could learn to use the CE hats. Other grandmasterly operants have.”
I could tell Anne was weakening. “I don’t think Marc has ever considered augmenting coercion or redaction through his CE designs. There’s been no practical application.”
“Until now,” I said. “It could be your answer. With metaconcerted CE and help from Ti-Jean and Dorothée the Dynasty could either cure Denis, or—” I broke off, appalled at the direction in which my thoughts were heading.
“Or we could execute him, as a last resort, using the flip side of the healing metafaculty, and be rid of Fury that way. The creature has already been summarily condemned to death by Paul, just as the Hydras were.”
“But the good part of Denis’s mind is innocent!” I protested. “You can’t kill him!”
“If there’s no other course open to us, we can.” She toyed with her coffee cup, rotating it in the saucer with one finger pushing the handle. Her face was devoid of expression. “Both moral theology and the laws of the Milieu would give us the right to execute Denis if the First Magnate deputized us. But with God’s help—and yours, Uncle Rogi!—it will never come to that. We’ll cure Denis at the same time that we exterminate Fury.”
I didn’t say anything for a long time. Anne was bound and determined to go ahead with the redactive exorcism, and I was going to have to cooperate. But I was damned if I’d give her free rein to rummage in my brain—even to save Denis. Then a notion occurred to me, a perfect way to do my bit without laying myself open to her. I took a deep breath.
“Okay. Let’s get started as soon as possible. I’m willing to let Dorothée—no one else—probe my mind for repressed Fury memories anytime you like.”
“I should have thought of that myself,” Anne said approvingly. “She’s the most talented redactor in the Human Polity. Even better than Jack … Very well. This will all take some organizing, Uncle Rogi, and we’re going to have to be very careful not to tip our hand to Fury. We know the thing’s farsensory faculties are extraordinary.”
I shrugged and quoted an old metapsychic cliché. “ ‘The whole operant world could be spying on us this very minute—but it probably isn’t.’ ”
That was true for as far as it went. Unfortunately, it didn’t go far enough …
We drank our cognac and coffee and listened to the music. Anne may have been checking the aether for metapsychic snooping, but there wasn’t a hope in hell she’d detect anything if the eavesdropper was a paramount.
I finally said, “How in blazes do you plan to get Denis to submit to your therapy? I can’t see Fury lying meekly doggo while a squad of CE-equipped Remillards politely asks for permission to unbutton its host’s mind.”
“I’ll talk the matter over with Jack and Dorothea, but I suspect we’ve got no choice but to take Denis by surprise.”
I mulled that over. “If Marc builds coercive-redactive brainboards for your therapy session at the CEREM facility, word of it will almost certainly leak out. There are too many Rebels in his corporation who’d really prick up their ears about something as outré as CE redaction. Before you knew it they’d spread the news all over the Orion Arm.”
“I think you’re exaggerating—”
“Listen to me: The one person who could build the hats in secret is Ti-Jean. The crafty little bugger’s got unlimited resources.”
“Jack!” Anne exclaimed. “What a great idea. And he could do the metaconcert design, too. You’re brilliant, Uncle Rogi.”
I flapped one hand modestly.
“My greatest fear,” Anne went on in a low voice, “is that an alerted Fury might find some way to subjugate Denis’s core persona before we’re ready to attempt the therapy. If Fury took over Denis’s body and then went into hiding, we’d never be able to track him down—any more than we’ve been able to trace the two surviving Hydra-units.”
I was aghast. “Do you really think Fury might snatch Denis’s body permanently if it gets the windup?”
“I think it’s distinctly possible. That’s why I’m going to stay away from Earth until we’re ready to roll. I’ll work out of my office in Concilium Orb so Fury has no chance to probe me. It can’t do it at a distance. Fortunately, Denis hates star-hopping.”
“But you’ll miss the wedding!” I exclaimed.
“It will break my heart not to be able to marry Jack and Dorothea, but I’ll survive. I’ll brief the newly weds on the entire situation
when they attend the next Concilium session in Orb. That’ll be late July, Earth time. We’ll get things started then. In the meantime, I don’t intend to mention a word of this to the other members of the Dynasty—and you won’t either. No one in the family must know about the plan until Jack gets the modified CE equipment and the metaconcert program ready and we’re set to begin practice.”
“You won’t even tell the First Magnate?”
“Especially not Paul. Heaven only knows what tangent he’d fly off on if he discovered the truth and had months to brood about it. He might decide that the lot of us had an obligation to turn ourselves and Denis in to the Galactic Magistratum or Davy MacGregor—just to make a grand gesture. He’d certainly insist on resigning the First Magnateship, and that would jeopardize our pro-Unity agenda.”
I kept my subversive opinions about that to myself. “How long before you’d be ready to act?”
“That will depend entirely upon Jack and Dorothea. Don’t worry, Rogi. You’ll be safe enough from Fury-probes if you don’t get smashed and start shooting your mouth off.”
I cringed, remembering my indiscretion with Kyle Macdonald. It looked like I might have to forgo overindulgence in bottled delights for the duration. Bon sang, c’est emmerdant, ça!
We sat there for another hour or so, killing the rest of the cognac and listening to moody selections from my music-fleck collection. Then I lent her spare pajamas and fixed up a bed for her in my little study, which doubled as a guest room, and we both retired, intending to sleep in until the foul weather was over.