by Julian May
On 22 July 1995, Lucille and Denis were wed in Hanover's quaint fieldstone-Gothic Catholic church. The ceremony was attended in person by the families and colleagues of the couple, and viewed through excorporeal excursion by an undisclosed number of operants scattered throughout the globe. The bride wore a tailleur suit of pale blue linen and the groom a two-button lounge suit of navy summer worsted. They were attended by Dr. Glenn Dalembert and Dr. Ume Kimura. A wedding supper took place at the Hanover Inn, after which the bridal couple departed for a symposium on operant educational techniques being held in Brussels. The bride's diminutive bouquet of forget-me-nots and white mignonette was caught by Dr. Gerard Tremblay, the Metapsychology
Department's ingenious public-relations maven, and he married an operant colleague named Emilie Bouchard later that year.
When Denis and Lucille returned from their brief academic honeymoon, they lived for some months in the Dartmouth faculty apartments. Early in 1996, at my suggestion, they bought the big old house at 15 East South Street, near my bookshop. After furnishing it to their taste and organizing what they called a Preliminary Metapsychic Prenatal Curriculum, they began to make babies with the same competence that they brought to their experimental work. Philip was born in 1997 and Maurice in 1999. A stillbirth in 2001 was the occasion of great sorrow; but the couple assuaged their disappointment by doing a revision and update of the Prenatal Curriculum and the first outline for their joint opus, Developmental Metapsychology. The next child, Severin, was born in 2003; two years later came Anne, then another miscarriage, then Catherine in 2009 and Adrien in 2011 — at which point Denis and Lucille prematurely judged their reproductive duty to be completed. The six offspring were all metapsychic prodigies as well as healthy and scrappy Franco-American kids nurtured by parents who loved them dearly.
And loved each other.
Oh, yes. Denis had maintained all along that love could be learned if both parties were determined, and he was right. I never pried into their sex life — which one presumes they managed as efficiently as they did everything else — but I did spend many hours each month in their company and in that of their growing brood. They came to love each other devotedly as husband and wife, and each was the other's best friend — which is much rarer.
If I were asked to point out the principal factor leading to the success of their unorthodox union, I would say the politeness. From the beginning, they adhered to a self-imposed rule that they would always behave toward each other with care and consideration, as though one spouse were the honored guest of the other. All disagreements would be debated logically, with as much heat as necessary, but without personal reproaches or fits of sulking. There would be no casual rudeness, no flippancy, no baiting or other psychological game-playing at the other's expense, and absolutely no taking the other person for granted. In the early part of their marriage, when they were still adapting, their relationship seemed to me to have a "more charitable than thou" artificiality — even a comical Alphonse-and-Gaston aspect. After all, at this point in history one expected a certain breezy camaraderie between husband and wife. Yet here were these two highly idiosyncratic scientists — the one capable of freezing the ballocks of a brass baboon with his coercion, the other possessed of a temper that could literally set a house afire — conducting their domestic affairs in an atmosphere of courtly gentility that Queen Victoria might have thought a trifle extreme.
I called it weird; but then I had been brought up in the rough-and-tumble menage of Onc' Louie and Tante Lorraine. I was further amazed when Denis and Lucille carried their exquisite civility over into their relationship with their children. Later, I understood what a brilliant behavioral ploy the courtesy was. (And of course a highly structured family and social system has characterized the majority of human operants ever since the Intervention.) In a home where emotional nuances are almost continually broadcast by the minds of operant family members (shielding requiring effort and being an art only gradually learned by the young), there is a "crowded" ambiance that demands individual restraint and a reserved manner of action. Ume Kimura explained to me that in Japan, which in those days had an enormous population crammed into a very small area, similar extremes of politeness prevailed. Etiquette, some wag has said, is just an effective way to keep people from killing each other. Strong operants such as Denis and Lucille knew instinctively that they would have to live by more formal rules than normals, and so would their children.
The politesse, far from putting walls between my nephew and his wife, smoothed what might otherwise have been a stormy or even calamitous first year of marriage. In the beginning they had only professional respect for one another, a goal mutually agreed upon, and a listing of theoretically compatible character traits that Denis wryly dubbed "Sonnet from the Portuguese, Computer-Enhanced. " They were telepaths, bound to attain the deepest knowledge of each other's virtues and flaws, and so for them there was no glamour-tinged first phase of wedded life, no seeing the Beloved Other as a marvel of perfection; conversely, there was no posthoneymoon letdown. Since they were both mature and motivated, they worked hard to modify grating mannerisms and habits, made allowances for irreconcilable frailties, and strove continually to bolster the ego of the partner. From this initial effort soon came an easing of friction, and also, I have no doubt, the intense pleasure of sexual mutuality — the same as Ume and I enjoyed during our time together.
Later, when Lucille and Denis began to really know one another, there was fondness — and still later, love. They never experienced the consuming thunderbolt that struck me when I first saw Elaine; nor could their love compare in intensity to Marc's helpless physical passion for Cyndia Muldowney, or Jon's consummate metapsychic union with Dorothea Macdonald, the woman known to Milieu historians as Illusio Diamond Mask. Instead, Denis and Lucille seemed to grow slowly together. Their minds plaited, remaining individual but each supporting and enhancing the other with shared strength — almost like the mythical red brier and white brier that entwined and grew in a straight dual trunk toward the sun, blooming in arboreal splendor rather than in a tangled thorny sprawl upon the earth, as lesser roses did.
Lucille was always the braver; Denis was wiser. He was glacially efficient and just; she was fervently high-minded, with a greater creative insight. In later life he was retiring and scholarly; she became the grande dame of metapsychic society, as brilliant (and controversial) as their last child Paul, who was conceived after the Intervention and nurtured in utero on the exotic mental precepts of the Galactic Milieu.
Together, Denis and Lucille wrote six landmark studies of human metapsychology. They were personally instrumental in bringing about the Intervention itself. Denis died as a martyr to Unity without really having known Unity. Lucille lives on in this Centennial Intervention Year, an honored pioneer and formidable clan matriarch. Their legacy is enormous, but its undoubted culmination is in their descendants — justifying the great gamble they embarked upon back in 1995. Their children became the Seven Founding Magnates of the Human Polity. Among their grandchildren were Jon, who was called a saint by both exotic and human minds, and Marc, who was called the Angel of the Abyss.
And now there are two more generations — Marc's children, Hagen and Cloud, and their newborn offspring — all carrying the precious genes for superlative metafunction as well as self-rejuvenation — which Denis never dreamt of in his wildest fancies as he and Lucille exchanged their vows.
I dedicate this memoir to all Remillards, living and dead, and most especially to the one who is both.
9
NEW YORK CITY, EARTH
6 NOVEMBER 1996
KIERAN O'CONNOR WAS old enough to remember when presidential candidates made their victory or concession speeches on the day following the election. But here it was, only 11:45 P.M. at the General's campaign headquarters in San Francisco, and the race was decided already. The Republican candidate — Kieran O'Connor's candidate — had been defeated. B
ut Kieran was well content.
The four quadrants of the Sony split screen on the wall of Warren Griffith's Manhattan townhouse switched from varied depictions of network pundits commenting on the 292 electoral votes safely in Democrat hands to a single image of a handsome, silver-haired man. CBS, NBC, ABC, and SNN were opting to telecast Lloyd Baumgartner's concession speech live.
Kieran reached for the remote control. It lay between his stockinged feet on the littered cabriole cocktail table. When Kieran canceled the mute, the measured accents of General Baumgartner filled the room. He delivered his brief announcement in perfect extempore style, his eyes unwavering as he looked directly into the cameras, his manner tranquil in defeat. He thanked the voters who had given him a majority of the popular vote and nearly carried him to an upset victory. He thanked the party that had chosen him as its standard-bearer, thanked his devoted campaign staff, and thanked his gentle-faced wife Nell, who stood at his right shoulder, smiling with tears in her eyes. Baumgartner did not say that he would be back in the running again for the fateful presidential race in the year 2000, but his partisans and political opponents alike took that fact for granted. His rival, Stephen Piccolomini, had won the presidency riding on the coattails of the retiring incumbent, but he had not rolled up the expected landslide; his margin was a precarious twelve electoral votes, and his party retained only a two-seat majority in the Senate.
"Next time, " muttered Warren Griffith. "Next time you're in, General. And so are we. "
The speech ended to applause and the split screen showed pan shots as the network cameras swept over Baumgartner's campaign workers, who packed the ballroom of the famous old St. Francis Hotel. Some of the people were weeping, but others stomped and cheered as if for a victory, and dozens of hand-lettered signs waved on high, proclaiming:
THE BEST IS YET TO COME!
When the vice-presidential candidate approached the lectern for his turn at the microphone, Kieran flicked the remote's instant-replay pad, programmed it for five minutes, and watched Baumgartner once again declare himself defeated. Then Kieran turned off the Sony and the wall-screen went back to being an excellent counterfeit of Fuseli's The Nightmare, 1781 version. Griffith, who was the chairman of Roggenfeld Acquisitions and one of Kieran's principal strategists, liked that LCD projection so much that he'd had it on for nearly six months. There had been jokes about it when Kieran and Viola Northcutt arrived early in the evening for the election-night vigil.
Now Griffith got up from his chair and said, "We still deserve to celebrate!" He padded off into the kitchen and returned with a bottle of Pol Roger and three glasses. The two guests pretended to be surprised, just as socially proper telepaths all over the world did under similar circumstances. Griffith said, "Our candidate did not lose. He merely didn't win emphatically enough. " Untwisting the wire, he eased out the cork and restrained the overflow with psychokinetic expertise. Then he made a respectful mental gesture to Kieran, calling for a toast.
Kieran O'Connor nodded and his severe features softened as he watched the bubbles rise. Catching an unvoiced hint, Warren Griffith flopped back into the wingback chair he had occupied throughout most of the evening. Viola Northcutt was curled up in the corner of the leather sofa opposite Kieran, unshod feet neatly tucked under her camel's-hair skirt. Somewhere in the townhouse an antique clock chimed three in quavery deadened tones.
I liked the placards that Baumgartner's people made, said Kieran. Let's drink to that: "The best is yet to come. "
The others repeated his spoken words. Kieran sipped his champagne, but Griff and Viola tossed theirs down and went for refills.
"I'll hand it to the General, " Viola said. "He was strong. A lot better than we ever dared hope. "
"That viewing-with-alarm speech fingering the Meta Brain Trust's influence on the Democrats struck just the right note," Griff said. "Shot our boy up a good sixteen percent in the polls. It was a gamble, but we really proved that America's love affair with the operant clique is just about kaput. Before this campaign, I doubt that one voter in a hundred knew what metacoercion was — or redactive probing either."
"Neither did the General, " Northcutt put in with a cynical grin. She was a heavyset blond woman in her late forties, one of Kieran's earliest recruits, who had become his best operant head-hunter. Viola had vetted all the presidential campaign personnel, both operant and normal, to make certain that only loyalists would be able to exert influence on Baumgartner. Even so, the General had proved less psychologically malleable than they had hoped.
"Before we lock Baumgartner in as our millennial candidate, " Kieran said, "we're going to have to make certain that he has no suspicion that his mind was manipulated during this campaign. We may have pressed too hard when he balked at the anti-Soviet speech in October. "
Viola shrugged. "Len and Neville felt it was important that the General express doubt about the Kremlin's commitment to peace. We had the posthypnotic suggestion done prudently. Doc Presteigne handled it when the General had gas for some root-canal work. "
"But it didn't work, " Kieran said. "You forgot that Baumgartner was a warm chum of the cosmonauts back in the pre-Mars days. He sincerely believes that the Russians have abandoned their expansionist philosophy. You can't depend upon a posthyp to overcome a strong conviction any more than you can coerce over the long term. "
"How will we convince him, then?" Viola asked.
Kieran extracted his feet from among the mess of coffee cups, empty beer and seltzer bottles, and snack food that crowded the cocktail table. "When the hard-liners on the Politburo take charge, Baumgartner won't need convincing. "
"Hard-liners?" exclaimed Griff. "Take over when?"
Kieran poked through a platter of ravaged deli noshes until he found a whole-meal cracker with a hard-boiled egg slice and a shaving of lox. He dabbed it artistically with mustard. "When the present General Secretary dies... and civil war breaks out in Uzbekistan. "
Viola and Griff stared at him. He showed them a mental schematic with a number of key elements blanked out.
"Jesus God, " whispered Griffith.
"It's nothing you two have to concern yourselves about for a while yet, " Kieran said. He popped the tidbit into his mouth and chewed it up, then downed the remainder of the champagne. "What you will have to deal with is Baumgartner's immediate future. Griff, I want you to find him a sinecure position on one of our foundations — say the Irons-Conrad. I want him completely divorced from the military-industrial complex and big business in the public mind. Our lad is a political philosopher now, asking questions and providing answers. "
"Speaking of which, " Viola interposed, "we still have that matter of Baumgartner possibly suspecting that he's being manipulated. It's going to be tricky doing a deep-scan without his cooperation, you know. We've never tried it on a person who wasn't being — actively recruited to the inner circle. "
"We've got to know, " Kieran insisted. "Whatever it takes. It's imperative that Baumgartner have no inkling of our own operancy. He'll only carry conviction in the next phases of our political campaigning if he firmly believes that operants are dangerous — a threat to normal humanity. "
Viola was frowning as she thought. "For a proper ream-job, the subject has to be rendered unconscious for something like thirty-six hours. No way to handle that without hospitalizing him. We'll have to come up with something that will satisfy him and the PR people. Nothing psychiatric. We don't want to risk an Eagleton fuck-up. "
"Eyes, " said Griffith. "I had an uncle, had some kind of eye thing. Terrible headaches, then lost the sight of one eye. The docs fixed him, he was good as new. "
"Sounds usable, " Viola said. "Presteigne would know what the ailment is and how to simulate the symptoms. Very likely both the headaches and the blindness can be voodooed — by Greta, maybe. Baumgartner won't suspect a thing when we bring in our own eye specialist... "
Kieran nodded. "Work it out as soon as you can. I want to keep him news
worthy. I can see him doing lecture tours and hosting fund-raisers for the by-elections in '98. There are at least four Senate seats that could go Republican in the Bible Belt if we play our cards right and pick up on the antioperant sentiment building there. "
"It'll build a lot faster, " Viola muttered, "once we get good old Senor Arana on line!"
Griffith said: ?
Viola looked guiltily at Kieran, but he lifted a dismissive hand. "I was going to tell Griff about it anyhow. "
"A step-up in the antioperant crusade?" Griffith asked.
"Exactly, " said Kieran. "You know that my overriding concern is to insure that operants not loyal to us are barred from government service or political office. Even more important is to stir up grassroots sentiment against the metapsychic clique. I suppose you noticed the article in the Times this weekend about the Swiss banking group's plans to hire telepathic investigators. "
"No! God — if they do it, the Japanese'll be next. And next thing you know, the Justice Department or the Treasury'll want their own Metasnooper Corps, and our organization will be up the well-known excremental watercourse!"
"Not if I can help it, " said Kieran O'Connor. "Fortunately, we still have a Republican-packed Supreme Court. Next year my people in Chicago will engineer a test case to get a ruling that any form of operant screening of employees by private corporations is an invasion of privacy and unconstitutional. That will lay the groundwork for further action ... such as the efforts of Arana. Why don't you tell Griff why we happen to be in New York, Viola?"