Jack the Bodiless

by Julian May

  “But what about my real work?” Marc had protested. “I’m not finished with the research correlating GPPs of the cosmop worlds with their crime rates.”

  “Junko can finish it.”

  “But I’m supposed to be acting as a legislative page, doing important work for you and the other family magnates—not wet-nursing gangs of gawking juvenile relatives!”

  Anne was adamant. “Young man, until your father or someone else requests your inestimable services, you are still my page, and you will do as I say. After two days of rest, your cousins are all recovered from limbo lag and spoiling for something to do, especially the young ones. There’s no reason why they should waste time sailboarding and lying on the beach in Paliuli when they could be furthering their education.”

  “Why me? There are regular tours for the families and friends of the new human magnates—”

  “I know you’ve been spending every spare minute prowling this exotic beehive. Make some good use of what you’ve learned. Your uncles and aunts and your father and I are going to be much too busy with the inauguration preliminaries and other Concilium affairs to spend much time with the children, and your cousins will learn much more from you than they would from a canned tour.”

  Most of the Remillards had arrived on the CSS Kungsholm, which had docked two days earlier, and all of the families except Paul’s had settled in at tropical Paliuli. Only Denis and Adrien remained behind on Earth to take care of last-minute business. They would be joining the others just before Christmas. Lucille had insisted upon taking charge of Marc’s motherless younger siblings during the space voyage and was still supervising them in Paul’s big apartment in Golden Gate, bossing the nanny and the housekeeper about. She had also appointed herself Paul’s official hostess, to his well-concealed chagrin, and had arranged for herself and Denis to take an apartment right next to Paul’s.

  “Show your cousins around in small groups,” Anne said, as she and Marc descended the escalator into the tube station. “Not more than six or seven kids at a crack. Five days with each bunch ought to give them a useful overview of the human and exotic enclaves, especially the latter. Do an especially good job showing them how our nonhuman compères behave in simulated natural settings. And don’t forget to take the youngsters to the visitors’ gallery in the Concilium chambers so that they can experience legislative procedures.”

  Marc groaned. “I’ll be running fifty-pence tours from now until New Year’s!”

  “The Galactic year is a thousand days long. And we are now”—Anne allowed herself a small smile as she paused to consult her wrist-com—“only on Day 566. You’ll be back home on Earth long before then.”

  Marc looked at her with a startled expression, his annoyance wiped away by a sudden new thought. “Back home … Aunt Anne, do you know what Papa and the others are planning to do?”

  “About what?” Anne inquired blandly. She had turned aside into a refreshment bar once they reached the lower level. “Buy you a ginger ale?” She fed her credit card into the small machine on the bar and punched up an Anchor Steam beer for herself.

  Marc nodded to the drink invitation but otherwise kept his mind well guarded. He did not reply out loud but projected to her on her intimate mode twin portraits of his mother and Uncle Rogi.

  “We’ve not yet held a family memorial service or a requiem,” Anne said, pressing her right thumb on one corner of the tab display and then scanning it swiftly with her wallet for a receipt. “You can have masses said for them yourself if you want to do something special.”

  “You know very well that’s not what I mean.” The two cold beverages popped out of a hatch in front of them. Marc picked his up and began to drink in apparent unconcern. The bar was crowded with humans and exotics, and Marc and Anne were squeezed in between a tall Gi daintily sipping a cocktail of frangipani nectar and a stout little Poltroyan chugalugging a stein of crème de menthe.

  Anne said to Marc on intimate: If you have questions about Teresa and Rogi ask your father if you dare but do it very ADROITLY because this entire Orb is supposedly bugged by Lylmik surveillance machinery.

  I can’t ask Papa. I haven’t been able to get him alone since he arrived. All he’s interested in is scrounging for votes and fooling around with Laura Tremblay the damned HYPOCRITE he’s supposed to be such a high-and-mighty great leader and statesman and he’s going to be First Magnate for Christ’s sake and he doesn’t even care about his wife and unborn child—

  SHUT UP.

  You know I’m right! You hate that part of him too.

  You’re mistaken.

  I’m not! Whyareyoulying?Tellme!Whydoyouallstickupforhim—

  TO SURVIVE.

  Whatthehell’s that supposed to mean?

  You’ll find out soon enough—

  I want to know what the family is planning to do about Mama!

  “Well, we’d better be getting along,” said Anne, smiling sweetly at Marc as she finished the last of her beer. “I’m going to the theater tonight with Ilya and Katy, and you, my lad, are going to spend the evening preparing a tour schedule for my inspection first thing tomorrow. You can start the tours immediately.”

  Marc leaned toward her with apparent casualness, still sipping his drink. Then without warning his gray eyes locked onto hers, and Anne felt the initial grip of a near-indomitable coercion.

  Jesus! When had he mastered this maneuver?! Before the boy could insert the redactive component of the mind-ream and peel her open like a tangerine, she lashed back at him with a stunning mental riposte. It rocked him physically as well as cutting him loose from her.

  Marc was flung against the Poltroyan standing next to him and began to choke on his ginger ale.

  “Oh, dear,” Anne exclaimed, reaching out to her nephew with an air of anxious solicitude. “Did I jostle you? Did some of your drink go down the wrong pipe? Shall I slap you on the back?” Don’t you ever try to ream me again you arrogant young shit. “Here, take my handkerchief, dear. I’m so sorry!” Of course I know what you did with Teresa&Rogi we ALL do we know EVERYTHING except where you stashed them and we’re going to do our best to salvage the situation but YOU STAY OUT OF IT DO YOU UNDERSTAND?

  Marc apologized to the exotic he had bumped, then said to Anne, “That’s okay. I’m just fine now.” And what about the attack on Margaret Strayhorn? What’s the family going to do about that you know one of us had to be responsible—

  How did you find out about that?

  Grandmère was leaking like a sieve the day she arrived. It must have been preying on her mind during the trip out. Davy MacGregor’s wife had one of those weird psychocreative drain-burns exactly like the ones that killed Brett a Victor burn—

  YOU WILL DISCUSS THE MATTER WITH NO ONE YOU WILL UNDERTAKE NO INVESTIGATIONS WHATSOEVER I AM DEADLY SERIOUS MARC DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?

  …

  The adults in the family will deal with it. And it’s NOT certain that one of us was responsible.

  Don’t make me laugh! It could even be Papa! And Strayhorn and MacGregor are due to arrive in Orb day after tomorrow. What if the damned Victor-tainted mind goes for her again?

  If it does and if the Magistratum investigating team decides that a Remillard is behind both attacks then we might all find ourselves for the chop—at least as far as membership in the Concilium goes. We’re doing our best to cope with the matter—

  Hah.

  Damn you Marc! Do you want me to sling you onto the slowest bunny-hopping crate I can find? One that’ll get you back to Earth in time for Dartmouth summer break? If you don’t keep your nose out of this affair I’ll do it so help me God. We can’t have ham-handed adolescents messing around. This matter is too important and too dangerous. For all of us.

  … I’ll lay off. [Affirmation.]

  “Now, about the guided tours for your cousins.” Anne took Marc’s arm and steered him out of the bar and onto the tube platform. “Would you like to take the youngest children first? I won’t ask you to cop
e with anyone under the age of nine. We’ll let their parents decide what to show them, but you can have a free hand with the older kids. What do you think?”

  “Whatever you say, Aunt Anne.”

  A minute later, the inertialess capsule for Golden Gate arrived, and he got on without saying another word to her.

  He performed his duty with perfect efficiency. Tuesday he Papa-Goosed seven peewees around the human enclaves, enduring their puerile questions and their imperfectly screened dumb remarks about the way so many people native to one part of Earth always thought some other part was more desirable and wanted to live there. Today he was trying to keep his temper as the same group argued about which exotic enclave they wanted to see first. He should never have offered them a choice.

  The roster of juveniles included Uncle Phil’s third son Richard, who was ten; two of Uncle Maury’s brood—nine-year-old Roger and prim, eleven-year-old Celine; and four others who were also eleven: Uncle Sevvy’s youngest, Quentin; Aunt Cat’s blustery son Gordon; Parnell, the second-born of Uncle Adrien and Aunt Cheri; and Marc’s own younger sister Madeleine. (His frail little brother Luc, who still hadn’t recovered from the painful upsilon-field translations of the trip out, would be joining a later group.)

  Gordo had sneered when Marc suggested that they begin the exotic itinerary with a Simbiari enclave. “Who cares about how the Green Leaky Freakies live? They’ve been treating us like dogshit for forty years!”

  “Watch your mouth, Gordo,” Celine said. “They could be listening.”

  “Ooo, mercy! I’m scared poopless!”

  “C’mon, Marc,” pleaded Cousin Parni. “We’d rather see those crazy lagoon islands where the Gi sexify!”

  “Better yet, the big tankfuls of gunk where the Krondak monsters do it,” Quint added, his eyes glittering.

  “Do what?” inquired innocent little Roger.

  His big sister Celine said, succinctly, “Copulate.”

  “That sounds nifty,” said ten-year-old Dicky. “I bet it’d beat those elephant seals we saw mating one time in Argentina. Krondaku must weigh twice as much. And they have tentacles!”

  “Boys.” Maddy sighed, rolling her eyes heavenward. “I want to see a Poltroyan Wintergrove, with the cute little houses nestled among the giant tree roots, half buried in snow. I want to go inside a Poltroyan home and see if they really have jewels all over everything. Their houses are supposed to be the most gorgeous things in the universe. Let’s go there first, Marco.”

  The three older boys jeered.

  Gordo said, “Sure we’ll go there first, Maddy. Anything for Marco’s darling little baby sister.”

  “We’ve all seen Poltroyan stuff a million times on the Tri-D,” Parni put in scornfully. “But they hardly ever show anything about the way the Krondaku live. Probably don’t want to scare us poor Earthworms to death.”

  “I vote for the Krondaku, too,” said Quint. “I’ve heard that sometimes even real people screw in their aphrodisiac goo-pools, right alongside the exotic Bloboids.”

  Gordo’s eyes bugged out. “You’re kidding!” He turned to Marc. “Humans would be poisoned wallowing in that stuff, wouldn’t they?”

  “No,” said Marc austerely. “The liquid in the Krondak connubial vats is mostly glycerin, with a small amount of imidazolidinyl urea and traces of isoyohimbine, tetrahydroharmine, nicotine, and other psychoactive alkaloids.”

  “Son of a bitch,” breathed Gordo.

  “How many of you guys want to start with the Krondak octopussies’ enclave?” Parni demanded.

  All of the boys raised their hands, while the two girls scowled.

  Marc sighed. “You won’t like it much. Krondak domicilia are great big clinkery black things made out of lava, like a dark coral reef, with holes in the rock for the family dwelling units. The Krondak gravity preferendum is half ours, so you keep bouncing around, scraping your head on the rough passageway ceilings. And they like their atmosphere cold and damp and so high in oxygen partial-pressure it makes you giddy.”

  “We want to see a Krondak enclave first anyway!” the boys chorused.

  “Especially the woo-vat,” Gordo said.

  “All right,” said Marc. “But you runts better be polite and tactful. We’re not visiting a zoo, you know. The Krondaku are the most influential race in the Milieu, aside from the Lylmik. They’re not just big ugly brutes. They’re smarter than we are, and they’ll be forming judgments about humanity from observing the behavior of you filthy-minded little puny-prongs.”

  “We never asked,” Madeleine said sweetly, “to be dragged into their precious Galactic Milieu. If they don’t like us, it’s just too bad for them. Shall we get started, Big Brother?”

  When they stepped out of the transport capsule into the Krondak enclave of Lurakal, the youngsters gasped and instinctively huddled together. The place was crowded with huge many-armed creatures of nightmarish form, and Marc and his charges were the only non-Krondaku there. The tube station had pocked and pitted black walls that seemed roughly carved from a substance resembling coal or obsidian. All of the surfaces gleamed with beads of moisture, and there was a peculiar tangy odor resembling that of machine oil in the chilly, vapor-laden air. The reddish tinge to the ambient illumination made the children think of evening light filtered through storm clouds.

  Marc’s young cousins had seen members of this awesome exotic race in person before; but always in a human setting, where the impact of the horrifying, supremely intelligent entities could be mollified by the presence of friendly adults of the children’s own species. Back on Earth, a young human mind could easily dismiss the Krondaku as a frightful aberration that would soon be gone; but here in their own enclave, the monsters lived and moved and went about their business in a world where only they could be at home, where human beings were the exotic interlopers, yearning desperately to be somewhere else.

  The group bounded along awkwardly after Marc in the low gravity, ascending the station ramp, shivering from the abrupt drop in temperature, and too overawed even to speak. They emerged upon what appeared to be a raw volcanic shore, where an artificial lake of some thick transparent liquid rippled sluggishly. The landforms round about it featured sharp promontories, looming rock pinnacles, and scattered inshore stacks and jagged islets of some dark mineral like basalt. The Krondak enclave had a twilit crimson “sky” full of swift-moving black clouds. The odor of volatile hydrocarbons was pronounced, and a biting wind blew, raising sullen wavelets on the lake, whose boundaries were lost in mist. Tendrils of vapor streamed and roiled from each small island’s summit and from the eminences on shore. The rough rocky flanks had myriad openings that glowed green, blue, or vermilion within. Only gradually did the young Earthlings become aware that what appeared to be barren volcanic formations were actually amorphous apartment structures inhabited by the Krondaku.

  The cousins gaped as they watched the commuting exotics. Some surged out of the lake and descended into the tube station, while others flowed up from the tunnel to vanish sedately into the waters, evidently swimming to the island of their choice. Except for the wind whistling softly among the crags and the lapping of the waves, it was very quiet. The Krondaku were capable of vocal speech, but long aeons ago they had chosen to communicate mostly by telepathy. None of the great invertebrates acknowledged the presence of the visitors by so much as the twitch of an accessory eyeball. The aetheric charge of the enclave was entirely benevolent; but every one of Marc’s young companions still felt vaguely threatened.

  After about five minutes, a Krondak individual of exceptionally large size came gliding up to them, swiveling bright blue primary optics from one young face to another. The being transmitted a grave farspoken speech of welcome, introducing herself as their hostess, Loga’etoo Tilk’ai. She carried a satchel, which she opened after concluding her telepathic remarks. Plucking forth Abercrombie & Fitch hooded jackets with this tentacle and that, she distributed them among the chilled Earthlings.

  “I have
summoned a surface vessel,” Loga’etoo Tilk’ai said aloud in a peculiar voice reminiscent of a talking kettledrum, “which will convey us to my personal domicilium, located less than a kilometer offshore. There for the next three hours you will receive a superficial but rewarding introduction to Krondak domestic life.”

  “It will be our pleasure,” said Marc. The younger boys were trying valiantly to conceal their despair, while the girls wore superior smiles.

  “My own three beloved larvae have done careful research on human dietary needs and will prepare luncheon for you as an educational exercise,” Loga’etoo continued, expanding her befanged buccal orifice in the Krondak equivalent of a smile. “I know you will be forbearing if their efforts show occasional amateurish lapses in culinary technique. I will make quite sure that none of the food served to you is poisonous or completely unfit for human consumption.”

  “I’m quite certain it will be delicious,” Marc said, administering coercive prods to the petrified cousins.

  “Delicious!” they parroted.

  Loga’etoo indicated her approval. “After the meal, I will conduct you to the Lurakal Exhibition Hall of Krondak Science and Natural History, which you may already have discerned a few hundred meters further along this attractive esplanade. There you may improve yourselves amongst full-sensory experiential analogs of Krondak anatomical evolution, planetary morphology and ecology, and overviews of our technological progress covering the past two hundred and fifty thousand Earth orbits.”

  “Can—can we see a connubial vat?” little Roger asked timidly.

  “Certainly. There is one just adjacent to this tube station. Would you care to visit it before we embark for my domicilium?”

  “Yes, please!” the other cousins chorused, their faces brightening. None of their minds showed any trace of the earlier prurient fatuity, however. Even Parni, Gordo, and Quint were subdued.