Jack the Bodiless (Galactic Milieu Trilogy)

by Julian May

  And my eyes, suitably cast down, spotted the gigantic naked footprint, twice the length of a man’s, freshly impressed in the white mud along the creekbank.

  15

  HANOVER MUNICIPALITY, NEW HAMPSHIRE, EARTH, 4 SEPTEMBER 2051

  PROFESSOR DENIS REMILLARD SAT ON A STOOL AT THE GREEN house bench, preparing the last orchid plant.

  A violent storm was sluicing the vicinity of Hanover, filling the air with thunder and lightning and ebullient ions, so of course this had to be the night that the several-times-postponed Remillard family conference was finally scheduled to take place—here, at his farm, in just a half hour or so.

  When the more spectacular varieties in Denis’s orchid collection came into bloom, he was accustomed to bring them into the house for Lucille to admire, or to use as decorations when she gave one of her famous dinner parties or other academic entertainments. Tonight’s somber family gathering had nothing festive about it; but that was all the more reason, she had said, for some distracting flowers.

  Lucille had wanted to select the orchids herself. Just as she and Denis were about to go out to the little semidetached greenhouse, she had a sudden brilliant idea—coinciding with the arrival of a massive cloudburst—and dashed heedlessly into the rain to her car. Her motivations and goal were artfully hidden, but she did fling belated mental reassurance at Denis as she roared away into the storm. She had just remembered something, she told him, something that might be an important clue in the disappearance of Teresa and Rogi. She would be back soon, and Denis was not to let the family conference start without her.

  After fifty-six years of married life with Lucille Cartier, Denis had learned to be philosophical about his wife’s volatile mood swings and abrupt flashes of creativity. He knew it would be futile to attempt to stop her or to demand an explanation, so he simply went about the business of fetching the orchids, and now and then thought to pray peace for the whole troubled Remillard family.

  As the hour drew near for the seven children’s arrival, Denis had already prepared and carried in two beautiful plants. One was a long spray of Phalaenopsis for the mantelpiece, delicate as pale yellow moths perched on a bough. The other was a huge specimen for the Chinese porcelain pot by the front window, an Oncidium ornithorhynchum bearing a cloud of dancing rosy-lilac blossoms of quaint birdlike form. There remained only one last plant to groom: the pride of his collection, a Fujiwara Azurine “Atmosphere” with a cluster of three splendid sky-blue flowers, each nearly 18 centimeters wide. It had just reached perfection, and it might help to raise the spirits of poor Cat, who had always admired it extravagantly.

  Ironic that it was Uncle Rogi’s favorite orchid, too.

  Using a sterile knife, Denis cut away a few damaged roots, then swabbed the wound with fungicide. He inspected the plant carefully for pests, watered it, and set it into a decorative basket. Then he tidied everything up, washed his hands at the sink, turned out the lights, and stood quietly for a moment in the humid, fragrant dark.

  Rain continued to batter the glass roof, but at least the thunder had stopped. Now and then a distant, silent lightning stroke illuminated the tossing maple trees outside. It had been one storm after another all throughout that dreary Labor Day weekend—not that the inclement weather had particularly discommoded the family. The recent tragedies had forced the cancellation of the traditional monster beach bash at Adrien and Cheri’s house; and in its place, Paul had called again for the family conference that had already been put off twice—the first time because of the disappearance of Teresa and Rogi, and then once more when it seemed that the Magistratum might demand that Paul and his siblings be barred from the Concilium. No spouses and no members of the younger generation were invited to the meeting. It was only for the seven grandmasterclass children of Denis and Lucille. They would discuss Catherine’s future, and what measures the family should take concerning the disappearance of Teresa and Uncle Rogi, and whether they should attempt to intervene actively in the apparently stymied investigation into Brett McAllister’s ghastly death.

  Denis brooded over the latter, as he had done all weekend, ever since a certain shocking notion had presented itself.

  Dear God, he said to himself, it couldn’t possibly have been him that did it. He’s dead. You took him! Freed us … But the pattern of Brett’s burns was identical I can’t be wrong about that I’ll never forget that horrible sight her poor burned body as long as I live! But he couldn’t have killed Brett. He’s dead safely dead God he’s got to be but how else to explain it?

  And Uncle Rogi …! He certainly hasn’t drowned. I can’t be sure about Teresa but I’d know if that old rascal had turned up his toes. I love him too much not to know and I deepviewed the Connecticut River from hell to Hinsdale and found nothing nothing nothing … and even if the bodies got over the Bellows Falls dam they never could have made it past the Vernon so they aren’t there no matter what Marc says the little wretch !!he knows!! and—

  “God, you’ve got to let me know too!” he cried aloud.

  But the sexternions of the Divine Concursus remained obstinately mum.

  Standing there in the flickering, ion-charged night, fed to the teeth with mysteries, grief-bereft of his usual composure and self-command, Professor Denis Remillard did something very atypical. He lost his temper. Frustration channeled all his immense metapsychic power into a bellow of sheer rage directed along his uncle’s intimate mode:

  Rogi! Answer me! I know you’re not dead. Farspeak me damn you vieux connard and tell me the truth!

  And for the briefest instant—

  Denis seemed to detect a minuscule response coded with Rogi’s mental signature, a telepathic squeak, quite involuntary, from a mind unexpectedly pricked. It came from far to the northwest—

  Denis flung himself mentally in the direction indicated by that eyeblink-brief trace. He soared across North America out-of-body, scanning, scanning for Uncle Rogi’s familiar oddball aura, over the eastern mountains, the Great Lakes, the woodlands and high plains of Canada, the Rockies, the interior plateau of British Columbia, the coastal mountains, the fjords and rain-forested islands of the Pacific—

  And found nothing.

  Of course, nothing. Even if Rogi’s paltry metafaculty had heard, if the old man was hiding with Teresa he would hoist mental barricades and lie doggo, mistrustful even of the man he loved like a son. Denis’s tremendous seekersense, still imperfectly trained according to Milieu standards, could only flail about in helpless wrath, not knowing where along that attenuated, fuzzy-edged mental beacon-flash to look.

  I’m going to find you Uncle Rogi! Sooner or later! You’d better believe it!

  Denis returned. He commanded himself to be calm again.

  And at once a thought impinged on his still receptive mind. But this time the telepathic hail was from nearby, and it was his wife and not his quixotic uncle who bespoke him. Lucille was back, calling from the living room of their elaborately refurbished farmhouse:

  DenisDenis come inside I’ve found A CLUE!!

  … a clue?

  At the SouthStreethouse Paul’s place went there looked again found—Denis COME IN AT ONCE it’s Paul’s egg landing in the driveway and Philip and Maury together—

  Right. Coming.

  And here’s Anne. And Sevvy. And Adrien bringing Cat!

  Yesyes I’m on my way.

  He picked up the blue orchid plant carefully and used his PK to open the door to the passage leading to the main house. The powerful, precisely directed mindspeech of the seven Grand Master metapsychics who were his adult children called out affectionate greetings to Denis as he approached, and completely obliterated the dire aetheric reverberations of the storm.

  PAUL: Here’s Papa. Now, Mama, will you tell us what you’ve found out, or must we commit mental matricide? Are Teresa and Rogi alive?

  LUCILLE: I think I have proof of it.

  PAUL: Oh, Jesus …

  DENIS: Come—everyone sit down. For heaven’s sake, Lu
cille, take off your raincoat.

  PHILIP: I’ll hang it up, Mama.

  LUCILLE: Oh, damn the raincoat!… You know I’ve been going through your house, Paul, trying to discover if any significant items were gone—things Teresa might have taken away—

  PAUL: And you’ve had no luck because her rooms are a mare’s nest. Teresa has three closets stuffed with clothes and enough musical junk to stock a small conservatory. The housekeeper always followed madame’s instructions and never touched the personal things, so who could tell what items might be missing?

  LUCILLE: [tartly] Certainly not you. You spend most of your time at the apartment in Concord. But never mind … The reason I found nothing earlier is that I was checking out the wrong kind of things! I realized that this evening. What I should have been looking for were baby items.

  CATHERINE: Of course!

  ANNE: If Teresa did run away with Rogi, it was certainly in order to save the child.

  PAUL: The cedar chest. The one in that dressing room that we always converted to a nursery …

  LUCILLE: Yes. That’s where she kept the baby things—the christening gown that Tante Margie made for you, Philip, that’s been worn by all the children. And the shawl that Annushka Gawrys crocheted for Marc, and that silver dumbbell rattle that all your children teethed on … and the beautiful swansdown bunting that Colette Roy gave Teresa. The chest was all in a mess, and some minor items may have been gone—I couldn’t be sure. But one important thing was missing. The bunting! Its protective wrappings had been torn open and left there empty inside the cedar chest.

  VARIOUS: [Exclamations.]

  PAUL: [dully] Alive. I knew it. I knew it all along. God! How could she do this to me? To all of us?

  SEVERIN: That’s hardly the question. She has done it, and artfully at that.

  PAUL: Goddammit, Sevvy—!

  DENIS: Your mother has more to tell us.

  LUCILLE: She took the bunting, and that set my mind onto a fresh track. Teresa may seem rather blasé about her older children, but never where helpless babies are concerned. If she was planning to hide for the next four months in a place where winters are cold, she might very well have wanted certain specialized information about the environmental requirements of newborns. I realized that no one had thought to check the public database records—

  MAURICE: That’s right! The library! How stupid—

  LUCILLE:—so I went down to the computer to see what materials had been accessed from the house on August 24, the day of the disappearance. There were no books on infant health listed, but someone had downloaded these … [Image.]

  ADRIEN: Skills for Taming the Wilds. Camping and Woodcraft. How to Build Your Home in the Woods. The Camper’s Bible—

  PHILIP: Walden! Good grief.

  PAUL: The Collected Poems of Robert fucking Service?!

  MAURICE+SEVERIN+ADRIEN: “A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute Saloon …”

  ANNE: She’s gone to hide up in the Yukon? Preposterous!

  DENIS: Not necessarily the Yukon. But somewhere in that area. I have some brand-new proof of my own. [Recapitulation.]

  VARIOUS: [Exclamations and expletives.]

  DENIS: So Uncle Rogi is definitely alive, and Teresa is probably with him, and it seems a foregone conclusion that Marc conceived and executed the entire scheme.

  PAUL: [groaning] He had to. Uncle Rogi doesn’t have the expertise—or the balls—to engineer a stunt like this.

  ADRIEN: Given the fact that Marc was only missing for a period of fifteen hours or less, they must have flown out of here.

  PAUL: … If we turn this new information over to the Magistratum, I have no doubt that it would find Rogi and Teresa. Knowing Marc, we can be sure he created a fine mess among the Vee-route traffic records. But even if the flight can’t be tracked, Papa’s farspeech trace narrows the search area to a fairly reasonable size, one that can be marked off and combed methodically by Simbiari-Krondak teams working in metaconcert. It might take weeks for the enforcers to pinpoint my wife and Rogi. But eventually they’d nail them.

  LUCILLE: If we turn over the information. Marc must have known that there was a good chance that Denis would scan out Uncle Rogi. He set up the canoe accident to give the family an excuse not to pursue the matter further.

  ANNE: Our interrogation—and Marc’s—by the exotics produced no evidence that we conspired, or that we knew Teresa and Rogi were alive. The family is legally off the hook.

  SEVERIN: We’ll be on again—at least Paul will be—when Teresa shows up on the front doorstep with the fruits of her crime wrapped up in Colette’s bunting!

  MAURICE: Four months from now … By then we’ll all be safely magnified—

  ADRIEN: We could call in all our political markers, pass a retroactive legitimizing bill for the child and pardons for the lot of us once the Human Polity has legislative autonomy. Human sentiment will be overwhelmingly on our side. The Repro Statutes are probably the most bitterly resented aspect of the Simbiari Proctorship, and the laws are bound to be modified.

  PHILIP: May I point out that our future credibility—our personal integrity as officials of the Galactic Concilium—will be compromised if we conspire after the fact of a felony—

  ADRIEN: Fuck it! I say, good for young Marc!

  PHILIP: On the other hand, from a Milieu legal standpoint, the Reproductive Statutes violation falls under the jus civile category rather than the jus naturale, and it may be argued that from time immemorial humanity has held reproduction to be one of the sovereign rights of the individual—

  SEVERIN: [groaning] Save it for the courtroom, Phil.

  PAUL: This damned affair has me crawling the wall! Cat, you haven’t made any comment yet. What would you do?

  CATHERINE: I’m a human, a woman, and a mother. Need you ask?

  ANNE: Poppycock! I’m human and a woman and a legal scholar, and I think Phil raises a perfectly valid objection. The Human Polity is going to be on probation within the Concilium for a thousand days, and during that time the five exotic races of the Milieu will be judging our race by its leadership. And we all know that’s going to be us! Is this family willing to march into the Galactic Age papered with pardons like some gang of operant Nixons?

  ADRIEN: [shrugging] It would be the Earthling thing to do! I don’t think the Simbiari would be disillusioned, poor green bastards. Not after pushing broom behind the human circus parade for thirty-eight orbits.

  MAURICE: I rather doubt that the Gi would be scandalized, either, given their racial penchant for reproductive enthusiasm. And the Poltroyans are inclined to clap their little purple paws and give three cheers whenever we put one up the Leaky Freakies.

  DENIS: Paul, you’re going to be First Magnate unless Davy MacGregor manages a major upset. Teresa is your wife, and the child is yours. So is the decision.

  PAUL: … Let it be.

  LUCILLE: [Sighs.]

  CATHERINE: [embracing Paul] Bless you. All the problems will be worked out in time.

  SEVERIN: Marc thinks he fooled the exotic interrogators, but you can bet your boots the Magistratum still has him under surveillance. We’ll have to warn him to watch his step.

  PAUL: We will not involve that boy any further in this family conspiracy!

  ADRIEN: Seems to me he’s already in above the eyebrows.

  SEVERIN: If we don’t tell the kid that we know what he’s done, we’re putting ourselves at risk. I for one wouldn’t put it past him to make visits to his mother’s hideaway between now and the time of the baby’s birth. He could be followed by agents of the Magistratum, and we’d all be back to square one.

  ADRIEN: Marc would put any trackers off the scent the same way that he deceived the forensic redactors who tried to mind-ream him.

  PAUL: Not necessarily. If the Magistratum used a mechanical surveillance device rather than a living farsensor, Marc might not even condescend to notice it! That son of mine is lousy with raw power, but he still has a few things to lea
rn about high-tech machinery. Sevvy’s right about Marc being a danger. But taking him into our confidence … we’d end up actively aiding and abetting him! Aggravating the original crimes rather than passively acquiescing.

  PHILIP: [dourly] A nice point.

  ANNE: Positively Jesuitical.

  VARIOUS: [Uneasy laughter.]

  LUCILLE: I have a suggestion, Paul. In two weeks you’ll be sending your new staff to Concilium Orb to deal with the preinauguration details and set up your office there. Send Marc with them! Get him off Earth entirely. Make him a junior member of your staff. Other Magnate-Designates are doing it. I know that Annushka Gawrys is bringing her nephew, Vasiliy. The child is even getting university credit for time spent as a Concilium page. We could arrange the same thing for Marc with the Dartmouth Department of Political Science.

  ANNE: We’d have to keep a sharp eye on the young devil in the meantime. The safest thing would be to ship him off-world immediately. Tomorrow!

  SEVERIN: Damn straight. And you’re the perfect one to nanny him!