Jack the Bodiless

by Julian May

  “So you do concede that Margaret was killed! That she wasn’t a suicide!”

  The redactive energy exuded by the Lylmik suppressed his emotions without subtlety now, chilling his righteous anger, calming the fresh upsurge of pain. Davy was incapable of resisting. The crime would not be discussed. Not now.

  They danced.

  After a time, Asymptotic Essence said, “You have not even asked what your new job is to be.”

  “Whatever you Lylmik want,” Davy said, dully.

  “You are to be appointed Planetary Dirigent for Earth.”

  “Good God … I never dreamed …” No! I don’t want it!

  “The office is traditionally given to one who does not want it. One who will not be corrupted by it—or broken by it.”

  Davy began to laugh softly, bitterly. “You don’t know what you’re doing. I’m not right for it. I’m a MacGregor, Lord help me, and we’ve been a wild ilk from time immemorial, and I’m not diplomatic at all—”

  “You have been chosen.”

  “I even have doubts about humanity’s belonging to the Galactic Milieu! About the Unity thing. I don’t understand how my race can submerge itself in an Overmind and retain its integrity. And I’ve plenty of company there, you know! Not all human operants think like Paul Remillard, believing that a permanent mind-linkage to exotic races is the greatest idea since sliced bread!”

  Asymptotic Essence said, “Their conversion must follow your own.”

  “And how am I to be convinced that Unity is our destiny?”

  “You may start by studying the works of a French philosopher who investigated the foundations of the concept many years ago, during your mid-twentieth century. His name was Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. By profession he was a paleontologist.”

  “I’ve never heard of him,” said Davy MacGregor.

  “Paul Remillard has. Which is neither here nor there.”

  “Then why didn’t you Lylmik appoint Paul as Earth’s Dirigent? Or another of his bloody dynasty?”

  The Oriental woman shook her head. “Oh, no. Paul has his appropriate task, and you have yours.”

  “And God help us both,” muttered Davy.

  “We Lylmik will help you as best we can. You will have to coerce God yourself.”

  The two of them danced on without another word, and when the music ended, Davy bowed stiffly to Asymptotic Essence and stalked away.

  Laura Tremblay nearly fainted with the excitement of it all. A Lylmik Supervisor! One of the Galactic overlords! Dancing with her!

  Whatever would Paul say?

  And then she happened to look over the glistening shoulder of Eupathic Impulse and saw whom the Lylmik disguised as a statuesque black woman was dancing with …

  Paul.

  Suddenly the giddy thrill evaporated, and Laura knew what was about to happen, and she was filled with terror. The Lylmik were going to separate them! She was certain of it. Paul was First Magnate now, and these inhuman creatures had picked out some other woman—no doubt some worthy intellectual, with superior metapsychic powers—to be his new wife.

  But they wouldn’t get away with their rotten scheme! Paul would find a way to counter them. Once she had divorced Rory, they’d be free to—

  “It will do you no good,” Impulse said.

  She looked up at him, open-mouthed. Laura Tremblay was a lovely woman with transparent skin, dark-lashed blue eyes, and a proudly curved Celtic nose. Hair of frosty blonde was drawn severely back from her temples with a pair of golden combs. Her gown was black velvet, adorned with a single living orchid of pale yellow at the right shoulder. She said, coolly: “I don’t know what you mean.”

  The entity that was not a man only smiled. “You may think that your marriage to Rory Muldowney has broken down irretrievably, that not even your mutual love for your three young children can hold you together—”

  “It’s true!” she said fiercely, trying without success to work up the strength to pull away from him. But she could not. They danced on to the gentle Latin beat. “Rory knows that we’re finished. That I’m determined to go to Paul. He’s resigned to it.”

  “Paul will not marry you,” the Lylmik said gravely. “Our prolepsis reveals that he will never marry again.”

  “Prolepsis? What—what does that mean?”

  “We can see what you would call the future. Not all of it, and not always clearly. But the prolepsis regarding you and Paul is quite incontrovertible.”

  “I love him and he loves me! He’s told me that he does.”

  “Your first statement is undeniably true,” Impulse said. “The second is doubtful—if by ‘love’ you mean a devotion transcending the self. Paul finds you charming and sexually desirable, a consolation during this very difficult period in his life. But he will never pledge himself to you or to any other woman.”

  What do you know about human love you BASTARD? You THING?

  “One knows that love is mysterious. That it means different things to different human entities. That it can exalt and magnify, and also degrade and destroy. That it cannot be coerced. That it is sometimes spontaneous and sometimes learned. That it is born, lives, and sometimes dies. That it is an extension of the metacreative faculty, fulfilled only by bearing fruit. That it is akin to divinity but capable of malefaction. These things one knows. Wearing this human body, one continues to learn new and surprising things about love with almost every passing moment.”

  Laura Tremblay was calm again, resting easily against the Lylmik’s shoulder. The music was drawing to an end, its sweetness touched with melancholy, and the dancers swayed more languidly. “Do you know how love can hurt?” she asked him.

  “Not yet,” Eupathic Impulse admitted. “But given time, even that is possible.”

  “And will you Lylmik be wearing human form on other occasions?” Paul asked Noetic Concordance.

  “You will not see us so accoutred again until the human race attains Unity. If it does.”

  “Ah,” said Paul. “What a pity. You’re the most exquisite dancer I’ve ever partnered.”

  “You flatter me. My grasp of this art form is entirely theoretical. I have never danced before. The experience is pleasurable, however.”

  “I’m very glad to hear it. There are any number of simple pleasures available to the incarnate. As you may already have discovered.”

  The African beauty laughed richly. “I think, First Magnate, that you hover on the brink of impertinence.”

  “With such an august entity as a Lylmik Supervisor? I wouldn’t dare!”

  “I think you would dare a good deal, and not always wisely … But I am not here to chide you but to offer our congratulations. You gave a very inspiring speech to the Concilium following your election. Your remarks concerning the solemn obligations of operants toward nonoperants were particularly memorable.”

  “Thank you. I meant every word of it.”

  “I wonder if the majority of your fellow human magnates share your idealism and devotion to the Galactic Milieu?”

  He flashed his famous smile. “We’re an uncoadunate race, but I think most of us are trying our damnedest. The Proctorship years were rough. There’s a residue of resentment among all humans—operant and non—because of the price we had to pay for Galactic citizenship. But most of us realize that we were hopelessly unfit to join your confederation as equals when the Intervention took place. We were socially and morally immature. We still are, for that matter—but we’re looking a hell of a lot better than we did in 2013.”

  Concordance laughed with him, then said more soberly: “You won’t have an easy time of it during the thousand days of the probation. The other Polities—especially the Krondak and the Simb—have expressed grave reservations about the assimilability of the Human Mind into our Unity.”

  “And what do you Lylmik think?” Paul asked.

  “The Supervisory Body concurs in finding humanity unique. Your mental potential is so great that it justified bringing you into the Milieu
in advance of your sociopolitical maturation. But the Intervention was a calculated risk. It is also possible that you might destroy us.”

  “That’s ridiculous! We’re metapsychic infants compared to the other races, and your scientific achievements are so far beyond ours that it’s—”

  “With every passing year, the overall human metaquotient rises and more operant children are born to nonoperant parents. And your science advances at an even faster rate. By the time your population achieves the coadunate number, you will have surpassed the other Polities in virtually all aspects of technology.”

  “We won’t surpass you.”

  “No … but the Lylmik are different. We are ancient, static, sterile. Our minds are only minimally enmeshed with matter. We oversee and guide, but we cannot grow. The Galactic Milieu was our creation, but we will not survive to know its consummation. That falls to others.”

  “Are you implying that we humans have been chosen to be your successors?” Paul was incredulous.

  “That is not a certainty. The exercise of the proleptic faculty is more an art than a science, and its manifestation is chaotic. The entity named Atoning Unifex decreed the Intervention and maintains that your ultimate Unification is … probable. But we are certain of this: there is no future for humanity outside the Milieu. Now that you are part of us, you can never secede and go your own way. If you leave us, it will be because you have been expelled, and the consequences will be more disastrous than you can possibly imagine.”

  They danced, keeping their thoughts scrupulously private, as they had from the start. Finally the music ended, and Paul said abruptly: “Tell me one thing, if you can, before we say goodbye. Did a Lylmik ever act as a kind of guardian angel to my Granduncle Rogi?”

  Noetic Concordance shrugged delicately. “What makes you ask?”

  “It was something my father mentioned in passing.”

  “I have no information to give you on the subject. But it does seem very unlikely, doesn’t it?”

  “Quite,” said Paul. “Thank you very much for the dance.”

  “It was my pleasure,” said Noetic Concordance. “Farewell.”

  Fury watched from above. Matters were progressing very satisfactorily, in spite of the fact that the silly Lylmik had made Davy MacGregor Planetary Dirigent. The Great Enemy! Empowered!

  That would have to be rectified in time.

  Unifex said: You aren’t going to win.

 

  That’s true.

 

  Don’t play games. I’m not God, and you’re no devil. We’re minds in opposition … and you don’t even know who you really are.

 

  You won’t win. Your creature is flawed, and by yourself you’re no more able to coerce Reality than I am.

 

  And other fishers besides thee and me, Fury. Keep that in mind as you do what you must do. Au revoir.

  26

  FROM THE MEMOIRS OF ROGATIEN REMILLARD

  ON 5 JANUARY THE BABY “LIGHTENED,” SLIPPED DOWNWARD in Teresa’s abdomen in a preliminary move toward birth. Jack became frightened at this first sign that his tenure in the womb was about to end; and to reassure him, his mother spoke to him aloud and telepathically for hour after hour in one of the most amazing dialogues I have ever heard. Saint Jack the Bodiless was canonized not by the Catholic Church but by the acclamation of the Galactic Concilium. But if the Church had done an official investigation of his life and personal philosophy, and if I had agreed to have my chaotic memories tapped by Church experts, and if the experts were able to retrieve from me Jack’s final prenatal conversation with his mother, it would have been a significant part of his dossier.

  I cannot quote it verbatim in these Memoirs, any more than I can quote the later, even more portentous colloquies between Marc and Jack (and the Entity assisting me with my writing has declined to augment my own faculties of remembrance). But essentially, it was at this time that Jack first came to grips with the concepts of pain and prayer, and their potential usefulness in the nurturing of higher levels of consciousness. As he was born in pain, Jack first learned to pray.

  Teresa knew instinctively that the birth process was going to hurt the baby, both physically and mentally. Human evolution had not yet progressed to a point where a fully rational and operant fetus could be delivered naturally without trauma. None of her other babies had been as mentally advanced as Jack at the time of birth; but even so, they had suffered considerably. After they were born, a natural amnesia had set in, and this, together with instinctive positive redaction from their mother, had seemed to heal them.

  But Teresa was by no means certain that Jack would forget. He was obviously very different from her other children, and for this reason she decided to cope with his upcoming ordeal in a special way.

  Jack had had very little experience as yet with pain. But he knew discomfort now that the “lightening” process had begun, and he didn’t like it. The idea that the unpleasantness would become progressively worse understandably frightened him. Before, he had felt in control of his intrauterine world; but now the uterus had taken control. It was not only going to eject him from paradise, but it would also hurt him in the process.

  Teresa told him exactly what lay ahead of him. She also explained how the pangs of birth were known to help even ordinary babies, in a purely physical way. The squeezing forced fluid from new lungs, so that they would be better prepared for the first breath of air. The shock of bright light, the sudden chilling, and the unaccustomed handling he would experience were stresses that actually had been proved to benefit healthy newborns. As they raged against the deprivation of uterine comfort, there was a feedback to the brain that enabled the babies to better adapt to life in the outer world.

  Jack, because he was already rational, would suffer mentally as well as physically during his birth. But Teresa told him she was certain that if he prayed with complete trust, the pain would bring him strength. If he exerted positive coercion upon both himself and God—which was what “prayer” meant—then the birth ordeal would be in the end a triumphant experience for him, just as similar ordeals had been for mature humans all throughout history. Enduring the pain in the proper frame of mind could enhance his life in some mysterious way.

  Birth, she explained to Jack, was a great transition—the first of many he would eventually pass through. He was about to lose forever the sheltered dimness, the suspended comfort and total security of the womb. He would come out into a world of light where there were opportunities for great joy and satisfaction, for individual types of accomplishment impossible for fetuses dependent upon their mothers. In this new world, suffering was commonplace—not because the Creator had maliciously planned it so, but because of the limitations of the physical universe and the imperfections of living things. Teresa warned her son that he would not only suffer at birth but also know pain of many different sorts during the independent life that lay ahead of him. It was part of being human.

  But pain, she said, was a peculiar thing. Only higher living things had evolved the ability to suffer, and the higher the creature, the more intense its hurts might be—and so pain must have survival value. She explained to Jack some of its more elementary useful aspects, then went on to discuss the more difficult side of it. Intense pain could be, and perhaps most often was, degrading to the spirit of rational beings. However it might also be transformed by directed willpower—prayer—into a thing of great value, something that might enhance a person’s own self-worth if he suffered for love of himself, or something that might magnify the worth of the
great Mind of the universe if the person was able to suffer for love of others.

  Jack had already begun to assimilate, with her help, the abstract concept of an incarnate God. Now she attempted to amplify the divine absurdity to include the notion of God freely choosing to suffer and die in order to achieve a higher goal.

  Teresa was no theologian, but she was (in spite of her protestations to the contrary) an educated woman and also a very talented artist who had endured much to enhance that art. Her own ability to love both her husband and her children was seriously flawed by the demands and distractions of her singing; but the roles she had played had taught her well the extreme lengths to which love could drive the lover: to murder, to suicide, to madness, and even to greathearted sacrifice of one’s own life and happiness.

  Teresa told Jack that suffering for the love of others was a concept he would have to learn about more fully later, when he was more mature. Now it could only be an abstraction to him, except perhaps for his imperfect understanding of what his mother and his Uncle Rogi had endured for his sake.

  Suffering for love of himself, on the other hand, was an opportunity no other unborn child—with the exception of an incarnate God—had ever experienced. This kind of suffering could teach him things about his own soul. It could strengthen him and expand his conscious mentality in an extraordinary way.

  “Bearing children and giving birth to them is a great ordeal for the mother,” she told the child in her womb. “But if she does it in the natural way, fully prepared and unafraid, then it’s not a horror at all but an exaltation. At the instant the child’s head is born, the discomforts of pregnancy and the difficult labor are completely forgotten, and the mother’s nervous system responds with a flood of ecstasy … And I hope it may be the same for you, my dear little son.”

  Jack said only: I will think about this.

  When he was asleep (fetuses do sleep, even precocious ones), she confided to me that Jack was particularly fearful that birth trauma might interfere with his intellectual and metapsychic functioning, which he called his High Self. (His Low Self was the animal part of his mentality.) He was afraid that if he was “badly disturbed” and lost control during the ordeal, his Low Self and High Self would be somehow disconnected, leaving him dangerously exposed to … something.