by Julian May
Paul, on the other hand, was quietly furious. A stubborn five-year-old could not be allowed to impede the investigations of the Galactic Magistratum—especially in a matter touching so closely upon the Family Remillard itself. Nevertheless, little Dorothée had the First Magnate cold when she pointed out:
“You can’t probe my mind unless I say you can. That’s the law.”
It was indeed—and the only way to circumvent it was to obtain the permission of the girl’s legal guardian. Professor Masha MacGregor-Gawrys would have readily agreed, but she was not Dorothée’s next of kin under Milieu law.
Ian Macdonald was.
Paul had a subspace communicator flown to the little Bowmore police station from the Scottish mainland, for the island boasted no such amenity. The following day, with Throma’eloo Lek, the professor, and Dorothée herself present, he put in a call to the planet Caledonia. As the visage of Ian Macdonald flashed onto the screen, the little girl gave a soft cry. It was the same man who appeared in the cherished old photo her brother had found, looking older and more careworn but still handsome and very strong. Her Daddy …
When Paul Remillard broke the news of Viola Strachan’s murder Ian turned away briefly, cursing, his eyes filled with sudden tears. Then he cried out: “Who did it? What bastard killed Vi? … And what the bloody hell is the First Magnate of the Human Polity doing telling me about it?”
“I can’t discuss that with you at this time, Citizen.” Paul’s voice was steely. “But you may be able to help us track down the assailants. Your daughter Dorothea had an EE experience at the time of the murder and her unconscious may have retained important clues. I’m officially requesting from you, her legal guardian, permission to interrogate her with coercive-redactive techniques.”
“Daddy, don’t let them!” the little girl shrieked. She pushed past Paul before her grandmother could stop her and appealed to the image on the monitor. “Don’t let them dig into my mind! It’ll hurt! I’m afraid! I already told them everything I know!”
Ian Macdonald looked stunned, then blackly furious. “What the fuck are you trying to pull, Remillard? You want to mind-ream my little Dorrie? God damn it, she’s not even operant! You’ve got a fine friggin’ nerve asking my permission to torture her.”
“Not at all. With the latest medications—”
“Daddy—no!” the girl wailed, and broke into wild sobs. Masha took hold of her granddaughter and pulled her out of range of the communicator’s scanner, but the child continued her terrified weeping.
“We’ve got to have Dorothea’s evidence.” Paul was urgent. “Her memories may contain data vital to the investigation. The people responsible for your ex-wife’s murder are serial killers who have taken the lives of scores of other persons. They may threaten the security of the Galactic Milieu itself. You’ve got to give us permission to probe the girl.”
“I’ve got to give you bugger-all, Remillard. I know my rights and I know the kid’s. I forbid you to ream Dorrie! Is that clear, you mealymouthed mindfucker?”
“Quite clear,” said Paul dryly.
Abruptly, the little girl broke free and dashed back within range of the communicator scanner. Relief transfigured her tear-drenched face. “Oh, Daddy, thank you! … Can Kenny and I come live with you now that Mummie’s dead? We want to so very much.”
Ian Macdonald was struck speechless. Rage melted into astonishment and he hesitated for a long moment. Then he glared out of the screen at Paul, his lips drawn back from his teeth in a smile of fierce triumph.
“Come to Caledonia, Dorrie,” he said. “As soon as you can. I’ll order your ticket and Ken’s right now.”
And with that his image vanished.
Forensic anthropologists comparing Dorothée’s depictions of the four Hydra units with early Tri-Ds of Madeleine, Quentin, Celine, and Parnell Remillard confirmed that the girl had described the assailants accurately, but there seemed little likelihood that the fugitives would be foolish enough to go about undisguised while they were on the lam. All four might be expected to alter their features drastically—at least during the early hue and cry. Plastic surgery or regen-tank alteration of their appearance were distinct possibilities; but the easiest method of disguise was metacreative masking—the technique used by Throma’eloo and others of his race when they assumed a human aspect. This involves the spinning of an illusion, pure and simple, and any reasonably competent operant child with a modicum of creativity can pull it off … for a short time. Long-term illusion-projection, however, is an energy-draining exercise that no meta can be expected to continue indefinitely. Mug shots, DNA samples, and copies of the original mental signatures of the four Hydra-units circulated Milieu-wide against the day that the Hydra might shed its camouflage or make some criminal mistake that allowed official scrutiny; but no one had high hopes for an early apprehension.
Police teams continued to comb Islay for weeks, searching for the bodies of the missing suboperants with the aid of the most advanced equipment. Later, archaeologists would sing the Hallelujah Chorus over the thousands of bones and other human remains—Neolithic to Modern—that the searchers turned up and meticulously left in situ after determining that they were immaterial to the case at hand.
But no other Hydra victims were positively identified. The investigators were morally certain that Fury’s creature had killed the missing suboperants of Islay, leaving only charred husks that could easily be disposed of in the sea or in some deep and secret cave impervious to any technique of geophysical detection or farscanning.
However, there was never any proof of that hypothesis until years later, when the adult Dorothée had her encounter with Madeleine, Parnell, and Celine Remillard after coming for the second time to the island of her forebears.
CONCORD, HUMAN POLITY CAPITAL, EARTH, 4 JUNE 2062
THE EVENING WAS EXCEPTIONALLY WARM FOR EARLY JUNE IN NEW Hampshire, and Paul Remillard suggested that his brothers and sisters bring their drinks outdoors while they awaited the arrival of their father, Denis. The flowers in the large informal rose garden behind the new residence of the First Magnate were already in full bloom, perfuming the still air, and there was also a smell of freshly cut grass.
“I hate designer-gene turf that never grows higher than three centimeters,” Paul said, when his oldest brother Philip commented on the unusual lawn. “Oh, the modern grass is easier to maintain and the landscapers just love it. But to me it looks like green bath-toweling and it feels so stiff and crunchy when you walk on it. I had this good old stuff seeded in while I was away at the last Concilium session and it’s looking quite decent by now. It’s even guaranteed to have a dandelion or two.”
“But how do you keep it clipped?” Catherine asked. “Surely it’s too short for the laser-reapers that farmers use.”
“Fitch’s nephew cuts it with a modified antique tractor mower—when I don’t beat him to it. It’s a very soothing thing, cutting grass. Just driving up and down while rotating blades do the work, breathing in the scent of new-mown hay.”
Philip shook his head in mock disbelief. “This man can’t be the hard-charging workaholic First Magnate we all know and love.”
“I’ve turned house-proud in my middle age,” Paul said. “Now that Human Polity administration is finally out of the learner-permit stage, I intend to take life a lot easier. I’ve even learned to cook.”
“Good God,” said Philip.
“I don’t believe a word of it,” said Catherine.
The other members of the Remillard Dynasty laughed warily. None of them had seen Paul for months, and they knew he had not summoned them tonight so that they could admire his grass and flowers and indulge in polite chitchat. Something was wrong, and beneath his bantering façade the First Magnate frankly exposed a stratum of grave concern.
Paul was forty-eight and the climacteric of his individual self-rejuvenating gene complex had come when he was in his mid-thirties. Except for the quirky silvering of his black hair and neatly trimmed be
ard, he had apparently aged no further. He wore dark slacks and a white, open-necked pirate shirt with balloon sleeves.
For a time they strolled along in silence. Only two of the guests, Severin and Adrien, had the remotest idea what this family council might be about. Unlike the First Magnate, they were keeping their mental aspects closely shrouded.
The sky was deep purple with the first stars beginning to come out. At the garden’s perimeter was a woodland of mutant elms, butternuts, and sugar maples that did not quite conceal the softly lighted, soaring stratotowers of the administration buildings situated a couple of kloms to the north. The capital city of the Human Polity of the Galactic Milieu spread over the Merrimack River valley adjacent to Old Concord, the venerable capital of the state of New Hampshire. In the nearly half-century since the Great Intervention, the seat of human government had expanded as the population on Earth and in the colonial planets approached nine billion. Concord had long since overflowed its original site; but the necessary growth had been handled gracefully, with most of the new offices hidden in an enormous underground complex, called the Ants’ Nest by the irreverent, carved out of the native rock. Lower-echelon government officials and workers lived in the quaint old villages of New Hampshire, Vermont, and even Maine, commuting via a maze of high-speed subways. Only bureaucrats at the very highest level had homes in the parklands of Concord proper. These lately included the First Magnate.
In 2054, when the Human Polity was freed at last from the hated Simbiari Proctorship and finally admitted to full citizenship in the Galactic Milieu, Paul Remillard abandoned the pretense that his official Earth domicile was the old family home on South Street in Hanover, New Hampshire, the college town where he and his children had grown up … and where his troubled wife Teresa Kendall had taken her own life. In the peculiar egalitarian oligarchy of the Concilium, there was at that time no such thing as an official mansion for the Human First Magnate, and so a simple apartment in Concord served as Paul’s literal pied-à-terre during the brief periods he was on Earth. A similarly modest place in the Golden Gate enclave sufficed as his residence in Concilium Orb.
Unlike the historical chief executives of Earth nations, the First Magnate of the Human Polity was unburdened with time-wasting ceremonial duties. His statutory obligations were considered formidable enough. The first five years of human enfranchisement had been wildly hectic for Paul. He arranged for his four children to be supervised by operant housekeepers and governesses when they were not away at school and saw them only rarely. Paul’s parents, Denis Remillard and Lucille Cartier, both semiretired from the faculty of Dartmouth College, became increasingly concerned about the motherless brood of their brilliant youngest son. Eventually the two of them rented out their elegant farmhouse and moved back into the old place on South Street that had been their original home in order to act as surrogate parents to their grandchildren.
Paul did meet frequently with his six siblings during the thirty-three-day plenary sessions of the Galactic Concilium that took place about once each Earth year. All of his brothers and sisters were magnates who had come to occupy high positions in the Milieu’s primary governing body. But Paul’s attendance at purely social family gatherings had for a long time been infrequent. What snatches of leisure he did enjoy were almost invariably spent in the company of his lover, Laura Tremblay, the wife of a complaisant Hibernian magnate named Rory Muldowney.
In 2059 Laura died suddenly, under curious circumstances. Along about the same time Human Polity administration finally attained a fairly satisfactory condition of homeostasis, chugging along without the need for urgent executive action or reaction at every other turn. The First Magnate discovered that his crushing burden of work was easing. It was no longer necessary for him to spend interminable months in Orb overseeing the extraparliamentary affairs of the Human Concilium and its fledgling Directorates. Less and less was he required to rush from one colonial world to another staving off brushfire crises, or forced to undertake visits of appeasement to exotic planets in order to smooth over some atrocious solecism committed by members of his race.
As the Golden Anniversary of the Great Intervention approached, it seemed that human magnates—except for the contentious Rebel faction—had finally learned to conduct their legislative business with reasonable facility and diplomatic aplomb. In the colonies, the system of Milieu-appointed Diligents, combined with multilevel elected representational government, had shaken down to the point where special Concilium action—and Paul’s personal attention—was only rarely required.
The Human Polity’s relationship with the exotic races was largely cordial. The Simbiari now cooperated with humans in a wide variety of scientific works and at the same time resigned themselves to being forever unappreciated by their ungrateful ex-wards. The bonhomous little Poltroyans had become humanity’s most enthusiastic trading partners and closest allies. The Gi love affair with human arts and entertainment persisted, while Earthlings had learned to tolerate that strange race’s flamboyant and outrageous behavior. The Krondaku were as ever ponderously benevolent, and as ever skeptical of long-term human potential. As for the wise and evanescent Lylmik, they remained enigmatic and were hardly ever at home to callers.
Two sessions ago, the plenary Concilium had adjudged that the Human Polity was in such good shape that it was time to think about redefining the office of Human First Magnate, pruning it of autocratic and troubleshooting accretions that had been necessary during the formative years and making it more of a true presidency. Paul Remillard enthusiastically supported the decision and was reelected by a huge majority. He then decided it was time for him to settle permanently again on Earth. He was tired of apartments and felt he had worked hard enough to deserve a real home and some sort of normal social life.
But where would he live?
The old family place on South Street in Hanover was out of the question. Two of Paul’s adult children, Marie and Luc, still lived there together with Denis and Lucille. So had young Jack, until he entered Dartmouth College as a ten-year-old prodigy and took up residence in the freshman dorm. Marc, Paul’s oldest child, having earned a string of advanced degrees and immersed himself in CE research financed by the family foundation, had dipped into his all-but-untouched investment fund and bought a tiny, isolated house in the hills east of Hanover. Paul’s brothers and sisters also had permanent residences in and about the lovely old town and they now urged him to build his new home in the vicinity and rejoin the close-knit family circle.
Unspoken was the Dynasty’s hope that the First Magnate would marry again and have done with the series of well-publicized sexual liaisons he had pursued since the death of Laura Tremblay. But Paul was not about to let the family cramp his style. He chose to live in Concord, a safe 90 kilometers away.
When Paul was not presiding over his metapsychic peers at Concilium sessions or otherwise engaged in Polity affairs, he was supposedly a private citizen just as the other magnates were, free to enjoy any lifestyle and engage in whatever personal or professional business he chose. Practically speaking, however, it would have been unseemly for the First Magnate to resume his career in the North American Intendancy as just another IA. Even under the new order, there were still semiofficial calls on Paul’s time when he was away from Orb, notwithstanding the fact that the turmoil of the shakedown years had subsided.
Paul suggested that he set up an unofficial headquarters for the First Magnate, separate from the bureaucracy of the Concilium and having no ties to the Office of the Dirigent for Earth. He would hold himself available for extraordinary consultation and use his free time to study Milieu law and human-exotic relations. His proposal was accepted, and the Human Polity voted to provide him, gratis, whatever kind of dwelling he fancied.
The First Magnate might have chosen to live in splendor. A replica of the Château de Versailles or even Mad King Ludwig’s sumptuous Neuschwanstein Castle could have been his for the asking. His family and colleagues assumed he would at t
he very least erect some stately home appropriate to his exalted position.
But instead Paul Remillard indulged his notorious whimsy.
When Lucille Cartier, renowned in the Dartmouth academic community as an arbiter of good taste, first clapped unbelieving eyes on her son’s new home in Concord, she pronounced it to be a bastard cross between a Swiss chalet and a wedding cake.
“It’s nothing of the kind.” Paul had been polite but firm in the face of his mother’s disapproval. “It’s an authentic reproduction of a carpenter-gothic New England cottage, in the style of the mid-nineteenth-century American architect Andrew Jackson Downing. The original version of this little beauty is still standing downstate in Peterborough.”
His mother said, “It’s preposterous!”
“But it suits me,” the First Magnate had gently replied, “and I paid for it myself just so that I can take it with me when the Concilium lets me retire.”
The white-painted wooden “cottage” had ten rooms—not including the west wing with its little ballroom, informal executive offices, and domestic apartments. Beneath the 20 hectares of landscaped grounds was a sophisticated subterranean complex that included everything from garages and a private subway terminal to a subspace communicator station. The quaint main house sported pointed-arch windows with pointed black shutters, handsome square columns on the porches and rear veranda, and scrollwork bargeboards dripping from the edges of the roof like ornate wooden lace. The overall exterior effect was conceded even by hostile architectural critics to be warmly human.
The dayrooms featured polished oak floors, stone fireplaces, sprigged wallpaper, and a cosy, eclectic mix of colonial and Victorian furniture. Paul’s private bedroom was in the simple Shaker style; but the four spacious guest chambers were decorated in frontier rustic, baroque Federalist, nineteenth-century Chicago cathouse, and 1930s Hollywood Art Deco. Robots in the woodwork and a small staff of nonoperant employees did the housework.