“Not quite. But almost. I’m actually bodiless except for my brain, but clothed in a quasi-solid molecular envelope of optional form.”
The Fire Chief said, “Merciful God, he’s alive.”
Marc turned to me. “I can’t pick him up with this sprained wrist of mine, Uncle Rogi.”
I bent down and took the small boy into my arms. Jack was warm, and the snowflakes melted as they struck him. “Can we all go to Uncle Rogi’s place?” Jack said. “I think that would be the best for now. And it’s been so long since I’ve seen Marcel.”
Both Marc and I burst out laughing. Marc got to his feet. The firefighters drew aside, murmuring, as I came out into the hall carrying Jack the Bodiless. Then we all trooped into the undamaged part of the hospital and began to look around for something dry to wrap the little boy up in.
43
ISLAY, INNER HEBRIDES, SCOTLAND, EARTH 16 FEBRUARY 2054
THE GALE WINDS OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC LASHED THE great blunt headland of Ton Mhor, and the tall seas leapt and creamed about its foot and marched roaring into the bay of Sanaigmore around its eastern flank. In the gray first light, with a storm slowly abating, that northwest shore of the island seemed a grim place, broken cliffs and rocky reefs facing the sea and only a few patches of twisted conifers and winter-sere peat bogs and moorlands stretching between the small inland lochs. Unmetaled tracks and narrow roads led from the scattered small farms and homesteadings, many of them deserted and in ruins, toward the main highway that skirted the deep south-coast indentation of Loch Indaal. Along the gentler lee shores, lighted villages were dotted along the sands and tide flats like sparkling beads widely placed on a string. The bustling little distilleries of the south and west were lit like Christmas trees, for they operated day and night to fill the demand for those fine single-malt whiskies that were Islay’s gift to the Galaxy. On the rest of the island there were sheep and berry farms, and some of Earth’s most beautiful golf links, and holiday hotels that catered to bird-watchers and walkers and antiquarians.
But not in the northwest. There most of the old crofts and farms were long abandoned, as lifeless as the prehistoric standing stones and the tumbledown chapels and ornate crosses raised by the Celtic monks, and the castle the Macdonalds held when they were Lords of the Isles in the Middle Ages. The people who had once struggled to earn a hard living on Islay were almost all gone away now to the lovely “Scottish” planet of Caledonia. Islay’s smaller modern population was prosperous and, thanks to the ubiquitous rhocraft, no longer isolated from the mainland. But there were parts of the island where locals and visitors seldom went, and one of them was isolated Sanaigmore Farm, once owned by relatives of the late metapsychic giant Jamie MacGregor.
The red egg landed there at dawn.
Following Fury’s instructions, the four surviving Hydra heads trundled the egg into the barn. It would have to stay there until the hue and cry died down, and it could be relicensed by fiddling the aircraft registration computer in Edinburgh.
The children found the house key where Fury said it would be and entered the dark farmhouse kitchen. It was clean and secure from the elements, and aside from a spider or two and a smell of mildew about the sink, reasonably inviting. Especially when one considered the alternatives.
Quint got the miniature fusion plant going to warm the place up and provide power for lights and cooking. Celine primed the well and flushed the antifreeze out of the plumbing. Parni checked out the food, found a more than adequate supply, as Fury had also said there would be, and solicited orders for breakfast. Maddy hunted out bed linen and ran it through the clothes dryer to freshen it. The pillows and mattresses were synthetic and not too musty. There were clothes and footgear in the closets.
Later, when they all sat around the kitchen table after eating, Celine dared to ask the burning question. “How long do you think we’re going to be stuck here?”
“Till the flap cools down,” Parni said gloomily. “And you can bet it’ll be one helluva flap.”
Maddy left the table and went to look out the kitchen window at the hills and bogs in the rain-soft dawn. “Why in the world do you suppose Fury sent us here?”
“He must have had a reason,” Quint said. “And he said he’d come and explain as soon as it was safe.”
“That could be a long time.” Maddy sighed. “Damn that Gordo. It was all his fault, egging us on to go after Marc.”
Celine huddled more deeply inside the big old sweater she’d found. “We’re lucky Fury didn’t just feed us to the wolves … Parni, turn up the thermostat. I’m still freezing.”
“Fury needs us,” Parni said. “At least old Gordo was right about that. Whatever the great scheme is, Fury can’t do it by himself.” After adjusting the environmental control on the kitchen wall, he went to the counter and got another mug of coffee from the brew machine. “I wonder who Fury really is?”
The other three Hydras shrugged.
“What are we going to do here?” Celine asked fretfully.
Quint leered. “At least now there’s no odd man out.”
“Oh, really?” Celine was arch. “On beyond nervebomb—is that your idea of few and simple pleasures on this tight little island? And is it going to be ladies’ choice or love pile? Or were you thinking about stable monogamous relationships until we’re all bored stiff?”
At the window, Maddy gave a low cry. She turned slowly to the others, a beatific smile spreading across her face. “We won’t be bored here. It’s a wonderful island. Fury knew what he was doing when he picked this place.”
“How so?” Parni asked, still dubious.
“Natural suboperants,” Maddy whispered. “Islay is chock-full of them. The best kind—untrained in the aggressive metafaculties and brimming over with lifeforce. I’ve been scanning with my seekersense, and the whole south coast of the island is alive with delicious bright auras.”
Parni snapped his fingers delightedly. “Sure! Celtic genes! I forgot that this part of the world was one of the prime irruptive metapsychic foci.”
“Fury didn’t.” Quint was grinning.
“This time,” Maddy said firmly, “we’re going to be extremely careful. No more flying off half cocked and giving the game away.”
“No,” the others agreed solemnly.
“Who knows how long we’ll have to stay holed up here?” she added. “It might even be as long as a year. And we wouldn’t want to deplete the natural resources.”
44
FROM THE MEMOIRS OF ROGATIEN REMILLARD
MARC AND I TOOK JACK TO MY APARTMENT, AS HE HAD requested. The hospital personnel were aghast when we tried to carry the child out of there, and told us that Jack had to be kept for observation—at least until Colette Roy got there and pronounced him fit to be discharged. But Jack said very reasonably that he knew he was perfectly all right, and reminded everyone that the Lylmik had given him the right to pull the plug on himself if he chose. And he had chosen.
So we left, with the Fire Chief trailing after, declaring that it had been a goddam miracle the kid had survived, and this was a night he’d tell his grandchildren about. Like almost all of the general public, the Chief was familiar with Jack’s case from the earlier media hooraw. But the bootleg tapes that the nurse had sold were made when Jack’s head still had a normal appearance and his nearly decomposed lower body was hidden by the machines, and so the Chief had no notion of the real nature of the “miracle” that he and his fellow firefighters had witnessed. As far as the official reports of the fire went, Jack had saved himself by retiring inside a psychocreative bubble. It was a self-defensive ploy not unknown among powerful adult operants, and Jack was acknowledged to be an extraordinary child.
When the three of us got to my place, we put through the subspace call to Davy MacGregor. An all-points bulletin went out for the four children suspected of participation in the Hydra metaconcert. It was quickly determined that Anne Remillard’s red rhocraft was missing. But she, like all the other members
of the Dynasty, had been at Denis and Lucille’s farmhouse, having supper and commiserating with Paul and Catherine, all throughout that evening. Anne’s egg had apparently been stolen from its parking space in the farm’s backyard. Colette Roy, Professor Tukwila Barnes, and Lucille’s housekeeper, who were also at the supper, vouched for the fact that none of the seven Remillard magnates had been out of the house at the time arson experts determined that the fire had been set.
There was no record of the stolen egg having entered any Vee-route on the planet Earth. Wherever it had gone, it had traveled ex-vector and beneath the ubiquitous radar net of Air Traffic Control—almost certainly skimming along the surface of the Atlantic and coming ashore God knew where. Three satellites with equipment that might have recorded the path of the errant egg beneath widespread cloud cover suffered mysterious malfunctions that night. Fury had done a better job of covering the tracks of his protégés than Marc had done for Teresa and me. The red egg was never traced or recovered.
The Magistratum’s investigation and the search for Madeleine, Celine, Quentin, and Parnell were kept strictly confidential, under orders from the Dirigent. The media and the public learned nothing about the existence of the vampiric little clique haunting the First Family of Metapsychology. The Remillards cooperated fully in the inquiry—most especially those parents whose children were under suspicion—and later the entire Fury-Hydra affair was discussed in a special week-long closed-door Special Session of the Human Magnates of the Concilium held in Concord. Marc’s hypothesis of the origin of Hydra was debated and reluctantly given credence. Once again, the Dynasty was mind-reamed with the Cambridge machine and “proved” not to be Fury. No trace of the fugitive children was found.
Paul himself traveled to Orb and presented the findings of the Special Session to the full Concilium of exotic magnates. Among his recommendations were: that all the Remillards should resign their Concilium seats and be permanently incarcerated in a place of the Concilium’s choice; and that the probation period postponing full acceptance of humanity into the Galactic Milieu be extended for an indefinite period, until Fury and Hydra were captured, or identified and proved dead.
The Simbiari, Poltroyan, Gi, and Krondak magnates voted to accept those two draconian proposals. The five members of the Lylmik Supervisory Body exercised their special privilege and summarily vetoed the decision.
The case was left open, and a special task force of human and exotic investigators assigned to it. Their efforts to find the Hydra monsters were to prove fruitless—as were the efforts of Jack himself. The four remained at large, doing what they were told to do, until nearly twenty-three Earth years had passed and the Dirigent Dorothea Macdonald, who came to be known as Diamond Mask, finally neutralized their threat—with a little help from a bumbling friend. That story will be told in the second book of this trilogy, Diamond Mask.
Fury was another matter entirely. His fate, like that of Marc and Jack the Bodiless and so many more of the characters who people these Memoirs, is inextricably entangled in the Metapsychic Rebellion.
The principal Rebels themselves, led by Adrien Remillard, Anna Gawrys-Sakhvadze, and Owen Blanchard, pursued their cause with discretion and determination until the culminating year of 2083. They drew more and more influential operants into their conspiracy as the wider implications of mental Unity and membership in the Galactic confederation were freely debated by the Human Polity. In time Marc would join them, just as Adrien had predicted, and assume their leadership. He would broaden the Rebel agenda with radical ideas of his own that went far beyond the original ideal of Human autonomy, and eventually threaten the life of the Galactic Milieu itself.
In these Memoirs I will reveal, as the Family Ghost permits, aspects of the Metapsychic Rebellion that Milieu historians haven’t the least notion of, which I witnessed personally—and on more than one occasion even took an active part in. My own view of the cosmic conflict will be related in the third volume of the trilogy, entitled Magnificat.
I do not know whether the Ghost, in Its infinite wisdom, intends to release my chronicle to the Galaxy at large, or whether It intends simply to hide it away in some ineffable Lylmik archive. It refuses to reveal Its plans, just as It refuses to tell me whether I will long survive the telling of the tale.
Eh bien! Qu’est-ce que ça peut bien foutre? But it would be fun to watch the uproar.
Paul was back on Earth in time for Marc’s college commencement on 14 June 2054, when the boy received both his B.S. and an M.S. in metapsychology. His thesis dealt with “The Cerebroenergetic Interface as a Potential Bypass of Grandmasterclass Mental Shielding.” He had used himself as the guinea pig in his experiments.
Sitting between their father and me in the audience at the outdoor ceremony were Marc’s sister Marie and his two younger brothers, Luc and Jack. Family friends congratulated Paul on Jack’s wonderful recovery from cancer. Paul gave all the credit to Colette Roy and her medical colleagues. Unfortunately, Marc’s second sister, Madeleine, missed the commencement. She was, Paul said, beginning her own higher education on the remote Poltroyan planet Toropon-su-Makon under a special student exchange program. The family did not expect to see too much of her for the next few years, but she was not expected to be too lonely. Three of her Remillard cousins were taking the same course of study.
On 3 October 2054, the probationary period of one Galactic year, a thousand Earth days, was declared complete. The Human Polity took its place beside the other races of the Milieu for better or worse, a full member of the confederation at last, with all the privileges and duties attending thereto.
A compromise was reached on the matter of the additional ethnic planets for humans of color: twelve new worlds were set aside that had no operant quota in their founding population. The colonies were rather remote from the home world, but they were attractive and richly endowed, and the people who settled them increased and multiplied and, in time, took a political position that would, ironically, place them in the forefront of the Metapsychic Rebellion fomented in the name of Mental Man.
Shortly after the Earth-wide festivities accompanying the human enfranchisement, Malama Johnson farspoke Marc with a special message. He and I and Jack egged to Kauai, removed Teresa’s ashes from the kahuna’s cave, and scattered them over the green island on a day when the sky was filled with sparkling showers and myriad rainbows.
Paul had been invited to come with us, but he declined. He was busier than ever now that the probation had ended, and lived most of the time in Concord or Concilium Orb. Laura Tremblay and a number of other attractive operant women were linked romantically with him from time to time.
Young Jack the Bodiless looked and behaved—almost always—like a normal preschool child, seeming to be a little in advance of his age physically, and decidedly precocious in his social development. He resumed his daytrips about the Dartmouth campus, sometimes in the company of Marc and his graduate-student associates, sometimes alone by special dispensation of the college president, Tom Spotted Owl, who became one of the child’s dearest friends. Jack’s extraordinary mindpowers were widely known in academic circles but given no publicity. The child’s own grandmasterly coercivity ensured that he was never harassed by the media or by other busybodies, and the rest of his childhood seemed to pass peacefully without attracting the attention of the world outside Hanover, New Hampshire.
He wore his childish form when he lived at home or when he stayed with various friends or relatives in his extended family. There were also times when he chose to wear other bodies, both human and exotic, but he always did this with the utmost circumspection during his youth. Until he was nominated to the Concilium himself at the age of sixteen, only a handful of family members were aware of his true physical condition.
He visited me regularly in my bookshop and sought my opinion on some of the damnedest things, and it was easy for me to forget what Jack really was. Only on the coldest winter nights, when I sat by myself in the back of the shop, drinking
and feeling lonely and sorry for myself, remembering Sunny and Elaine and Umi and even Teresa—women I had loved and lost—did I tell myself that there was one in the world even less lucky than I. At least I had known love’s warmth. Three women had found me desirable and one had loved me like a father, and in Denis and Jack and even in Marc, the strange one, I had had foster sons.
But what woman would ever love poor Jack the Bodiless? And what kind of terrible, inhuman children could that laughing, brilliant little boy-brain ever hope to sire?
It was beyond imagining. Jack was happy now, growing in wisdom and grace, with his physical shells mimicking the human life processes in a manner that was nearly flawless. But his “bodies” were not the real thing, nor could they ever be. The fantastic biological complexity that houses the souls of each one of us is beyond the constructive abilities of even the most ingenious Grand Master of psychocreativity. Nor could Jack ever be reclothed in flesh through the technological miracle of the regeneration tank. His genes had programmed him to be as he was: a naked, self-sufficient brain. He was, if you like, a being midway on the ladder of evolution between Homo sapiens and the ethereal Lylmik.
He was unique. He was truly alone.
Sunk in my maudlin melancholy, I would drink a toast to poor Jack the Bodiless, who would never know human love, as the north wind moaned around the shopwindows, and the Great White Cold of the New Hampshire winter stalked abroad, and high in the sky the faraway star that was the sun of the planet Caledonia sparkled like the tiniest of diamonds.
How the Family Ghost must have laughed.
THE END
of
JACK THE BODILESS
Volume I of the Galactic Milieu Trilogy
Volume II, titled Diamond Mask, gives the history of the early life of Dorothea Macdonald, Dirigent of Caledonia, together with the further adventures of various members of the Family Remillard, their friends, associates, and enemies.