Jack the Bodiless (Galactic Milieu Trilogy)

by Julian May

  “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.

  “The poor thing is only a baby,” I pointed out. “All very well for you to urge him to pray and be strong—but what if he can’t manage? This ‘High Self/Low Self’ talk of his reminds me of something I read about Native American initiation ordeals. If you panic, the demons can get you! I suppose Jack’s demons would only be subconscious ones—”

  “I told him that we would guard him, Rogi.” Teresa was quite serious. “That we would stay alert and keep his mind safe from outside threats if he should become vulnerable.” She eyed me in that oddly trusting way of hers. “I have no idea what he perceives this threat to be. It must be some monster of the id. Surely no hostile external metapsychic influence could touch him here … could it?”

  “I don’t see how. Coercion can’t operate at long range. Neither can the harmful types of redaction or creativity. The most that could happen is that one of the family could watch the birth: you know—through EE.”

  “I’m sure Jack’s fears are irrational—as you said, he is only a baby!—but we must respect them. If Denis or even Paul should farspeak you, don’t give any hint that I’m about to give birth. No one except you and I should witness my baby’s first experience with pain.”

  Obscurely troubled, I agreed.

  The weather had turned clear, and so hideously cold that when night came we heard trees exploding in the forest around us as freezing sap burst the wood fibers. Several of the roof timbers exploded as well, startling us out of our wits. When we awoke the next morning, the front door was covered with thick hoarfrost from top to bottom. Previously, it had never frosted more than halfway up. A long time later, I questioned Bill Parmentier as to the possible temperature on that day, based upon my environmental observations, and he had shrugged. “Mighta been thirty, forty below, maybe. Not really all that cold for these parts. Just a bit brisk.”

  Naturally, that was the day young Ti-Jean, my great-grandnephew Jon Remillard, had to be born.

  “Do you realize that today is the Twelfth Day of Christmas?” Teresa said, after she announced that her labor had begun. “Epiphany. A very auspicious time for Jack’s manifestation! But the Bigfeet will have to stand in for the Magi.” She laughed. “Be sure to farspeak them the big news after Jack arrives.”

  The baby’s response to the beginning of labor was to virtually suspend communication with his mother, telling her that he needed to marshal all his mental resources to prevent, if possible, the separation of his two mystical selves. Teresa did not seem particularly worried about his withdrawal. Her mental state was one of great exhilaration—almost euphoria—because her most difficult pregnancy was over at last. She told me she had an overwhelming desire now to see her son, to hold him in her arms and kiss him and nurse him, to experience the body as well as the mind of this child whose gestation had been so perilous.

  Both of us had been able to visualize the fetus with our ultrasenses, and we knew he was normally formed, in spite of what the dire genetic assay had predicted. But we wanted to see him, to be sure.

  During the morning and afternoon hours, when the contractions were still far apart, Teresa continued with her cooking and cleaning and other household chores, stopping only to close her eyes and breathe in a completely relaxed manner when the pangs came. She explained to both me and Jack that this first stage of labor involved the dilation of the cervix, the birth canal.

  After I’d performed my usual hewing of wood and drawing of water, she put a childbirth fleck into the plaque-reader and demanded that I absorb every awful detail, so I’d know what to expect. She reminded both of us that she had already borne four babies using the techniques of natural childbirth, without any recourse to chemical or mental anesthetics or any unusual medical intervention. (But she said nothing about the stillbirths or the abortions, nor did she mention Marc’s twin, Matthieu, who had died in utero under very peculiar circumstances.)

  According to Teresa, there was no need for us to worry overmuch about the “unsterile” conditions in our log cabin. Newborns were usually quite tough, and she herself was perfectly healthy. Only ordinary precautions of cleanliness were called for. She took lengths of flannelette and wool that she had prepared and baked them in batches in the Coleman oven, and she boiled a knife and some string and wrapped them in a clean cloth. A pailful of boiled water was covered with a foil lid and left ready near the stove for washing mother and baby after the birth. She had me bring in a large quantity of sawdust from the woodcutting area. Chopped-up lumps of this were laid to thaw on the floor beneath the lower half of the bed. (Teresa discreetly left me in ignorance of the sawdust’s function. So did the damned maternity fleck.)

  When she began to approach the later stages of labor, she had me stoke up the fire until the stove was aglow and the log cabin’s inside temperature approached that of a normal civilized room. Then we got her bed ready. She was going to lie with her head where her feet ordinarily were, in order to give me, the amateur accoucheur, more room to maneuver in. We arranged the folded air mattress and the pillows, first covered with plass and then with the wool duffel cloth, to form a slanted backrest. She would give birth in a half-sitting position, which was the most comfortable. On the half of the bed where the rope springs were exposed, she placed a pair of long wool pads she had made. They fitted into the bedframe rather like two small mattresses, with a slight gap between them down the middle of the bed. A large piece of sterile flannelette was laid atop the pads, making the bed’s lower end look more normal.

  Teresa showered in our little bath cubicle, using warm water with a bit of chlorine bleach in it, and then put on her long Snegurochka undergown, warm from the oven. Facetiously commanding me to avert my eyes, she got into bed with the back of the gown hoicked up and made herself comfortable. The upper part of her body rested against the folded mattress and pillows, but from the rump down she lay on the pads, with the front of her gown drawn modestly over her knees, and her feet, with clean socks on, braced against the foot of the bedframe. She faced the north window and the large table, where the lamps were turned on at low intensity and all of the birthing supplies had been laid neatly out.

  “Now cover me up,” she said, after pausing to endure a contraction. “First, the big flannelette sheet.”

  I laid it over her reverently.

  “Now my down comforter, with the excess rolled up against the wall. For God’s sake don’t let it drag on the floor in that damp sawdust.”

  “Yes, ma’am. But the sawdust is really pretty clean.”

  “It is now.” She gave a great contented sigh. “Oh, that’s better. Now all I have to do is wait. And when the time comes, all you have to do is help me the way I tell you.”

  And avoid giving way to panic!

  I grinned, putting on my best air of confidence. “Are you sure it isn’t drafty—uh—underneath?”

  “Trust me. Everything is just fine.”

  I pointed wordlessly to the swell beneath the covers and lifted my eyebrows.

  “He’s … quiet,” she said. “I can sense his distress at the contract
ions. It’s his head, after all, that’s dilating the cervix. Poor little baby! It will be much harder on him than on me. But there’s no helping it. An ordinary baby would feel very little discomfort, and he’d forget it immediately. But the birth process just doesn’t take rational fetuses into account.”

  Late in the evening, Denis farspoke me the details of the Conciliar Inauguration, including Paul’s election as First Magnate. Mercifully, he didn’t mention the warm cordiality so evident between Paul, presumed by all except the family cognoscenti to be a widower, and the lovely Laura Tremblay; nor did he discuss with me the murder of Margaret Strayhorn. (I was not to learn anything about the exploits of the being called Hydra until after my return to civilization.)

  Denis wanted to know whether the birth was imminent and asked whether Teresa would farspeak with him or Paul after Jack was born. I lied brazenly, saying that there was no sign of labor as yet. I told Denis that Teresa was asleep, and that she still was afraid that farspeaking would betray her to her enemies, and so she probably would prefer not to attempt it. I said I would continue to be the conduit of maternity news. This seemed to satisfy Denis. Concilium Orb was so far from Earth that he would be unlikely to attempt casual EE. Even for a Grand Master, using the ultrasenses across a distance of 4000 lightyears was no trivial operation, and I didn’t think Denis would add to his exertions by trying to view us, as well as speak telepathically, unless he had a good reason to do so.

  When Denis had finished with me, I reassured Teresa, who had been hiding anxiously behind the strongest mental screen she was able to conjure up. But her refusal to farspeak her kindly and solicitous father-in-law, who would probably play an important role in her upcoming reappearance and legal battles, worried me. And then there was Paul. He was just as expert as Denis—perhaps even more so—in fine-beaming his thoughts so that no Magistratum monitor would pick them up. If Teresa really loved him and hoped for a reconciliation, she would have to respond to his telepathic call. When she continued to demur, I told her I was afraid that she had an entirely different reason for avoiding Paul.

  But she only laughed at my clumsy attempts to bring her marital estrangement out into the open. “I’m not bitter about Paul’s behavior over the pregnancy at all, Rogi. I understand that his first loyalty had to be to the Milieu and not to me. I did commit a serious crime. But now that it’s turning out so well, I feel it’s best that we wait to discuss it. Farspeaking would accomplish nothing. What we must say to each other, we should say face-to-face. I want to show Paul his perfect little new son as a fait accompli. Put Jack into his arms. Then he can’t help but be as proud of us … as we are proud of him.”

  “He’ll be damned proud,” I asserted stoutly, “and now that he’s First Magnate, he’ll move heaven and earth to do whatever it takes to get you off the legal hook!”

  She turned her head away. “I know. Once Paul meets Jack, everything will be all right again.”

  I busied myself making Teresa a cup of tea and then sat beside her on the stool while I rubbed her back and told her some of the details of the inauguration that Denis had passed on to me.

  She asked, “Was the election for First Magnate close?”

  “Fifty-nine votes for Paul, forty-one for Davy MacGregor. Closer than the family had expected.”

  “How strange … I’d thought Paul was a shoo-in. Not that Davy isn’t a sweet person and a brilliant statesman. I’ve always liked him and his wife.”

  “There’s going to be an inaugural gala—a banquet and a ball with celebrity entertainment. Lucille is all ready to do her metapsychic grande dame routine, and her gown will probably be a smash. Marc’s going to wear his first white tie to the ball, and Denis is confident that he’ll be the designated dreamboat of the younger adolescent female set.”

  Teresa laughed with genuine pleasure, then caught her breath abruptly. Her eyes widened. “Rogi! The waters!”

  “You need water?” I leapt to my feet, alarmed. “Cold? Hot?”

  “No, dear,” she said gently, shifting about in the bed. “The amnion, the membranous bag full of fluid that Jack floats in. It’s broken.”

  Perspiration shone on her brow. She gasped, then uttered a peculiar guttural cry.

  I hovered at her side, terrified. “What should I do?”

  Her eyes were closed, and she gripped the edges of the bedframe with whitened knuckles. Again she made that peculiar grunting noise.

  She whispered, “Put on a fresh shirt. Scrub your hands to the elbows. Rinse them in water that has a little bleach added.”

  “Yes!” I cried, stumbling about the cabin. “Yes! Just take it easy. It won’t take me two minutes!” Hold on, Jack! Not so damned fast, for God’s sake—

  IT HURTS! IT HURTS!

  “Oh, Jesus,” I wailed.

  It wasn’t Teresa in pain; she was pushing and straining, her mind closed in upon itself in utter concentration. The one hurting was Jack.

  —the amniotic fluid that had cradled and protected him for nine months was now draining away with the rupture of the enveloping membrane.

  —his delicate little body was squeezed by the fierce contractions of the powerful uterine muscles, now coming at two-minute intervals.

  —and he was being propelled forward, centimeter by centimeter, headfirst through the crushingly narrow birth canal, the plates of his tiny skull and the marvelous brain within compressed, deformed.

  —and with his mother distracted and withdrawn, he appealed to me.

  IT HURTS … Uncle Rogi it hurts so much I can’t do the thing Mama wanted help me pleaseplease helphelphelp—

  “I will, I will!” I cried, kneeling beside the bed, putting one hand on Teresa’s covered belly. She still lay beneath the comforter. I let my mind merge with that of the fetus and felt his agony, his terror. I seemed to see a bright fragile globular thing that pulsated with pain, threatening to shatter. And there in the scarlet dimness lurked something else, which would pounce if the bright globe broke and would devour the precious being that had been inside. The monster was there, but it had only limited faculties. I was a match for it! In some way I took hold of Jack’s shining hurting mind, enclosed him and steadied him. I dredged up strength for both of us from God knew where. Somehow I shared my own experiences with suffering. Somehow I helped.

  And abruptly, Jack withdrew from me, safe and in control again.

  I was back in the dimly lit cabin with the Arctic night wind moaning outside. Teresa was still grunting at regular intervals and bearing down valiantly with each contraction; but the fetus was no longer crying out. He was exerting his metapsychic faculties in a new way, incomprehensible to me. He was growing.

  I got up from my knees and stripped off my grubby wool shirt. A newly washed one hung on the line above the stove. I scrubbed my hands and lower arms and put the fresh shirt on, then checked over the birth supplies on the table: the folded clean cloths, the sponges made from wool duffel, a larger piece of material that Teresa had designated as the birthcloth, the sterile knife and string.

  Teresa said calmly, “Rogi, I’ve soiled the bed. It’s normal. I want you to take away the comforter now. Fold the sheet up over my stomach and lift my nightgown, and bring me a cloth dampened with clean water so I can wipe myself. Then slide the shitty cloth out from beneath my legs. Hold it by the edges when you gather it up, and burn it in the stove. Then bring another clean cloth and put it down.”

  I gaped at her.

  “Hurry, dear.” Teresa smiled encouragingly at me, but there were tears in her eyes for poor Jack’s pain. “Do as I say, Rogi! The head is on the perineum.” She gave another heroic grunt. Her face was deeply flushed and she was drenched in sweat.

  I did it. There was a mess of fluid and a few feces on the cloth. I took care of things briskly.

  “No, don’t cover me up again,” she gasped. “Can … you see him?”

  I crouched down. Her feet were braced hard against the bedframe and her knees were spread wide. With no embarrassmen
t, I checked the vulvar opening. Something was there. With each fresh contraction it advanced—then retreated a bit when the thrust ceased. But it came forward a little farther each time she bore down. Finally the entire top of the head was visible, like a cork in a wine bottle. It was slightly bloodstained and coated with a pasty white substance.

  “I see him! He’s coming. But there’s blood and stuff all over him—”

  “Okay,” she gasped. “Okay … now!”

  She gave a loud, orgasmic shout. I seemed to hear another cry ring in my mind, equally joyous, and at that moment the baby’s entire head came free. His eyes were closed. His skull was pathetically misshapen—

  She was looking down at him, her hands cradling the poor little head. “He’s all right,” she managed to say. “The distortion … normal. Get … birthcloth. Lay it … between my legs. No, further away … get ready to catch him … slippery … aaaah!”

  With her second ecstatic cry the baby’s head turned to one side. Tiny shoulders emerged, together with a great gush of clear fluid that soaked the flannelette and the pads and dripped into the sawdust under the bed. I took hold of Jack under his wee arms as the rest of his body slithered out quickly, together with more liquid, stained pink with blood. He was very slippery. His body was bluish beneath the cheesy white coating. The umbilical cord was a bright sky-blue color, and throbbing. The baby did not seem to be breathing.

  Without thinking I lifted him by the ankles and smacked him on the bottom. He opened his mouth and spat out fluid. His little chest heaved. He turned pink almost immediately.

  And began to squall and wriggle.

  “Look! Here he is!” I babbled. “It’s Jack! And he’s breathing!”

  I would have done it on my own!

  “Put him down, dear,” Teresa whispered. She was smiling now. “On the birthcloth. Get the knife and the string. Do you remember what to do?”