And he signed off abruptly.
It was my first inkling of the kind of reaction young Jack would provoke among other human operants. Especially a certain type of operant.
Shrugging, I got on with my job, and an unbelievably messy one it was. Of course, I had no way of hoisting the carcass, and it was only through the kindness of the Family Ghost that I had downed it near the creek, where there was a small area of open water I could use for washing the meat. Thanks to Denis’s instructions, I knew enough to open the creature’s neck blood vessels before beginning; and I also knew the great trick for skinning—which involves slicing the hide very carefully over the belly to avoid puncturing the innards, and cutting a circle around the anus and then tying it closed with string, so that shit doesn’t come pouring out all over everything when you remove the entrails.
The skinning and gutting of the massive animal took me over three hours, and the cutting of the meat another two. I ended up soaked with blood, and when the last rump roast and the last bag of flaky body-cavity fat was either hanging high in the trees near the creek or ready to be packed, I looked like a slaughtered, half-frozen thing myself.
I built a roaring fire, rinsed my gory mitts and my parka exterior in the icy water, and let them steam more or less dry while I broiled exquisite cubes of moose liver à la mode sauvage and stuffed myself to the eyeballs. Then I packed the rest of the now frozen raw liver in a plass bag to take back to the mother-to-be. I was also taking the well-rinsed heart and kidneys, the tongue, and of course the pendulous nose—or muffle—which I knew from my youth was a notable delicacy when boiled. To this load I added about fifteen kilos of loin and chuck meat, together with plenty of the fine white fat, which is a nutritional necessity. I had decided against making a sled. Time enough for that on the next trip. I needed to return to the cabin as quickly as possible, and that meant toting everything on my back.
With about two and a half hours of daylight left, I started off for Ape Lake and Teresa and Jack, carrying enough food to keep us going for at least two weeks.
Denis bespoke me again as I lay me down to sleep in the canyon on that frigid, starry night. This time, since I was not distracted, I could see as well as hear him. With his blond hair flopping boyishly over his unlined brow, and his rueful altar-boy smile, he looked to be in his early thirties rather than his actual age of eighty-four. You might have guessed that he was a computer technician, or the manager of a supermarket, or a graduate student, or even your friendly neighborhood egg-bus driver—just as long as he didn’t look you squarely in the eye. Denis was usually careful not to do that; there was a code of etiquette among the grandmasterly coercers to the effect that Thou Shalt Not Absentmindedly Sandbag Innocent Bystanders. In the vision, he was staring at me directly; but I was far beyond his compulsive range, and so those devastating blue eyes appeared to reflect only loving concern. Which may have been all that was in Denis’s mind at the time.
Once again he reassured me that he would not give us away to the authorities. I asked him why, and he said:
I’m not quite sure myself, Uncle Rogi. Perhaps I don’t view Milieu ethics in quite the same light as more dedicated humans do. I’m afraid that I’ve come to believe that the welfare of my family—and the human family, in the larger sense—is more important than any Galactic civilization. It’s reprehensible of me, but there it is.
“I’m reprehensible, too,” I admitted. Just my nose stuck out of the sleeping bag. I was completely exhausted, I ached all over from wrestling and chopping up the moose, and my stomach was beginning to feel collywobbly from all that liver. “Is that why you declined to serve as a Magnate of the Concilium?”
That, and other reasons.
“I think even Lucille was shocked when you turned it down.”
Denis laughed, then said: She had been looking forward to the social aspects of magnateship. Giving parties on that level would have been a considerable leg up from our little faculty shindigs here at the college.
“Poor Lucille. Well, at least you get to attend the inauguration.”
Yes. You should see the incredible dress she got for the ceremony. All black and green and silver beads. She’s left Earth already, along with Paul and most of the others and their families. They’re scheduled to arrive in Concilium Orb on second December Earth date. Only Adrien and I are still here, winding up some work. We’ll be taking off in about two weeks, and we’ll get to Orb in time to join the family for Christmas.
“About Paul … Denis, Teresa is convinced that having this superior baby will patch up the troubles between them.”
I’m afraid she’s indulging in wishful thinking. You know that the marriage has been on shaky ground for years now. Teresa’s criminal pregnancy and her collusion with Marc in his scheme to fake her death were the last straws for Paul. He’ll never divorce her, and he’ll go along with the family in seeking a pardon for her. But that’s about it.
“Merde … But what’s done is done. Would he farspeak her from Orb, do you think? Reassure her on the baby’s behalf, at least?”
I can ask, but I doubt he’d want to speak to her. Look at things from Paul’s point of view: She deliberately set in motion a chain of events that will eventually do great damage to his prestige and that of the family. What’s more, her disappearance also helped influence the exotics to impose a thousand-day probation on the Human Polity’s full admission to the Concilium.
“What the hell does that mean?”
It means that, given cause, within that period they can summarily rescind our full voting membership in the Galactic Milieu and reinstate the Proctorship for an indefinite period … or even abandon us.
“Abandon—! You mean cancel the Great Intervention?”
They probably wouldn’t bring all the human colonists back to Earth. The planetary resources could never accommodate them. But the Milieu could fix up Mars or some of the asteroids for the overflow population and cut us off completely from any intercourse with their confederation.
“Oh.” I thought about that for a bit. “But they could hardly take back the scientific goodies they’ve already given us—the superluminal drive and the new energy technology, especially. We already have a whole generation of human scientists who know as much about that stuff as any exotic does. And the metapsychic advances can’t be canceled, either.”
Denis said: No.
“We’ve been told again and again that the Milieu doesn’t wage war. That their Unity—whatever it is—precludes any hostility between rational entities. But operant human metas are getting more numerous and more powerful every year, and we’re supposed to have minds that will eventually surpass those of the exotic races. When we really get geared up, could the Milieu prevent us from retaking our colonial planets without fighting us?”
I don’t know … I don’t know.
“Maybe,” said I, “getting out of the Milieu wouldn’t be a bad thing at all! Sure—we’d have some problems after we cut loose, but eventually we’d be better off than before. It’s a big goddam Galaxy.”
For a long time, Denis was silent. I could see him in the study of his gentleman’s farmhouse, sitting before the fire with one hand over his eyes.
Then: Why did you do it, Rogi? Go along with Marc’s crazy plan?
“It wasn’t so crazy. Both Marc and Teresa were convinced that the baby was a supermind—”
But you weren’t, were you! You’re too sensible to fall for an unsubstantiated notion like that. Why did you endanger your life, helping them?
I no longer gave a damn. I was beginning to feel very sick. That damned moose was getting postmortem revenge. Subliminally, I said to Denis: Just go away and let me alone. I’m feeling rummy in the tummy!
But he refused to take the hint. I muttered, “Denis—you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
Try me.
I sighed. My guts churned. “Do you remember the night of the Great Intervention?”
?? Of course. But what’s that—
/>
“Just before Vic’s men started attacking the chalet on Mount Washington, I mind-hollered a message to you. I said I had been told to tell you and your metapsychic colleagues to renounce violence, to unite in a metaconcert of goodwill. And if you did, I said, then beings from the stars would let our poor little planet out of its Galactic Coventry and come to help us. Do you remember that?”
I … thought you were hysterical. Even so, your idea was a good one, and it crystallized notions that I had held for some time.
“I wasn’t hysterical. A Lylmik has been talking to me for years.”
Rogi—
“Shut up. You asked to hear it, and you’re going to, by damn! This Lylmik told me that the exotics needed my help. Our family was pivotal, they said. Pivotal in the goddam destiny of the goddam world. From time to time this Lylmik gave me orders. Like telling me to take a hand in your mental education when you were a baby. Some kind of exotic in disguise saved me when Vic came after me, ready to turn me into a zombie like poor Yvonne and Louis and Leon. Exotics meddled with my life at other times, too, forcing me to do things. And the Lylmik who talked to me—I’ve always called him the Family Ghost—farspoke me on the day last summer that Marc came back to Earth convinced he had to save his mother and her unborn child. The Lylmik quite flatly ordered me to help them.”
Uncle Rogi, the Lylmik don’t work that way! They’re aloof, almost cosmically disinterested entities, who concern themselves with only the most long-range aspects of Milieu policy. They almost never participate in ordinary Galactic affairs—much less try to manipulate a mere human individual.
“Try to manipulate …? Hell’s bells, the goddam Family Ghost nearly drove me nuts before the Intervention, pulling my strings! Then it lay doggo until now, except for making me introduce Mary Gawrys and Kyle Macdonald. You might want to think about what plans it has for them!”
Do you have any proof of all this? Why haven’t you ever said anything before?
“Ah … I knew what you’d say. I was given permission to tell you about their Intervention scheme, but I wasn’t going to be laughed at. As for proof, they gave me a cute little magical talisman. The Great Carbuncle. You remember it.”
Your key-ring fob?
“Don’t knock it. It’s a genuine twenty-five-carat red diamond, polished spherical. It’s something else, too, but I’m not sure what.”
This is incredible. Do you have the thing with you?
“Damn right. Never go anywhere without my lucky charm. And the Family Ghost is hanging around, too. Who do you think delivered the fucking moose?… Not that I’m complaining. It was a beauty. That liver was the tastiest thing I’ve had in years. But I think I might have overeaten just a little.”
Et maintenant t’as la chiasse, non?
“Maybe. Why didn’t you warn me when I was stuffing myself? Now I’m going to have to get up and go, and it’s damned cold out there!”
Uncle Rogi, has this alleged Lylmik given you specific information about Teresa’s unborn child? About its future role in the Galactic Milieu?
“Ohhh … Denis, go away. Leave me alone. Withdraw your EE. I’m sick. And I’m going to get sicker. If you’ve any sense of decency—”
Yes, of course. I’m sorry. But I’ll be back, Uncle Rogi. I want to hear more about your Family Ghost.
“Go!” I croaked, and started struggling frantically into my half-frozen outer clothes.
I made it outside in time, but just barely.
The rest of the night was an intestinal nightmare, and I remember very little of the next day’s journey up the steep ledges. I suspect the Ghost helped me along, for my poor body retaliated against the sudden influx of rich food with an even more sudden outflux. I couldn’t even retain the oatmeal cakes. I didn’t dare make camp at dusk. If I stopped hiking, I’d knew I’d never start again.
Viewed partially through my ultrasense, the snow seemed to glow once night fell, and I was able to see well enough. It was impossible to get lost. All I had to do was keep crawling up Ape Canyon, and eventually I would make it home. My guts finally calmed down, although I was still unable to even think of eating any food. The cold was diabolical, and after a while I couldn’t feel my feet. I slogged on mindlessly, grasping saplings to pull myself up the steep incline, sometimes even having to use a rope, trying not to trip over my snowshoes or fall down too many times beneath my back-breaking load.
And then, when I was starting to hallucinate, seeing Teresa, dressed in her Queen of the Night opera costume, come toward me with a steaming chalice of hot tea with brandy and honey in it, I finally reached Ape Lake. Up there on the flat ice, the Arctic wind blasted straight into my face with full-gale force. I groaned aloud. Less than a kilometer to go—but I couldn’t possibly make it. I fell to my knees on the windswept ice, tried to get up, and failed.
Lying there, with my face turned away from the howling wind of the rapidly approaching storm and the terrible weight of the pack off my shoulders, I was too far gone even to think of appealing to the Ghost. I felt that I was beginning to warm up at last. I would sleep for a little, then continue on. Teresa wouldn’t mind waiting a while longer. Just a little while …
I saw her face. So very, very beautiful.
But was it really Teresa? Or was it another woman, a woman from long ago with strawberry-blonde hair and eyes of a blue so pale that they were almost silver, a woman who had once awakened me to love, whom I had also awakened, whom I had pledged myself to and then stupidly rejected, love poisoned by my wounded pride.
Was it Teresa, or was it—
Teresa Kendall’s grandmother, Elaine Donovan.
Is that you, Elaine?
It’s me, Rogi.
What are you doing here?
I’ve come for you.
That’s thoughtful of you. But I can’t get up, you know.
Yes, you can. Come.
All right. All right, Elaine.
Come with me. That’s the way. Come. It’s not far to go.
Elaine! I didn’t dare speak to you at Paul and Teresa’s wedding. I hoped you didn’t see me, there on the stage of the Met, in the mob. But I saw you and knew that I had never stopped loving you. Oh, Elaine.
Come. Come with me.
You looked so young. They said you had been one of the first to try the rejuvenation technology.
I’m glad that I never saw you old. Elaine, Elaine! Now you need never grow old. And here you are, with me.
Come. It’s only a little way now, Rogi. Dear
Rogi.
Elaine, do you love me, too?
Come. Come.
But do you love me?
Come!
Elaine—are you dead? Are we both dead? Where are you taking me?
Come …
I opened my eyes and saw the beams and close-set poles of the cabin ceiling. It was night and the lamps were on. I was on my bunk, warm at last, my body inside a down sleeping bag, my head wrapped in soft white fur. My face was painful. So were my feet. The stove roared softly. I could smell coffee and freshly baked sourdough bread—
And roasting meat.
None of it made any sense. I closed my eyes again and seemed to open them almost instantly as the cabin door swung wide, admitting a blast of icy air and swirling snowflakes, then slammed shut.
“Elaine?” I mumbled.
There was a multiple thud as heavy things hit the floor. A bucket of snow and an armload of wood. She came running to me, making little mewing sounds of concern when she realized she was exuding cold. She stepped back and peeled off her snowy outer garments, dropping them in front of the stove.
Not Elaine. Teresa.
“You’re awake! Oh, thank God. You’ve slept for nearly twenty hours! I thought you’d gone into some kind of coma. How do you feel? I brought back all the meat you were carrying before the storm hit us. It’s wonderful! Can you smell it roasting? And I have your pack and the rifle and all your equipment safe, too. It took me three trips down the lake to bring i
t all, and then the blizzard started, and it’s been continuing ever since. Oh, Rogi—we were so worried!”
“How did I get back here?”
She came to kneel beside the bed. Her hair, escaping frowsily from its ponytail after being crushed beneath her parka hood, was dark and not strawberry blonde. The eyes, watering slightly from the intense cold outside, and perhaps from some other emotion as well, were hazel green and not silvery blue.
“I heard you out on the lake. Your mind was calling very loudly, and I knew you were in dreadful trouble. So I dressed and took a flashlight and went after you. Once I got down the slope and onto the ice, it wasn’t too hard going. The wind had blown away most of the deep snow. I found you near the Ape Creek outflow, nearly covered with drifted snow, and took off your pack and your snowshoes. You were conscious, but you seemed to be delirious. You called me by my grandmother’s name.”
“I remember.”
“You—you were too weak to get up. I knew you’d freeze to death if you stayed there, so I began to drag you along the ice. But I was able to go only a little way before I had to stop. You were too heavy and I didn’t know what else to do … so I asked Jack to coerce you.”
“Coerce me!”
She nodded. “And he did, and you walked the rest of the way and fell onto the bed.” She smiled and shrugged. “I undressed you and warmed you up, then went out for the meat and equipment before the blizzard began. And that’s all there was to it.”
I lifted my arms to her and she hugged me tightly, and I whispered, “Thank you. Both of you.”
She took one of my hands and guided it solemnly to her distended belly. “I’ve explained to him very carefully all that you’ve done for us. How good and unselfish you are. He won’t hide from you anymore. If you want to, he’ll speak to you. He’d like to learn to love you.”