Magnificat

by Julian May

  “Aye, well, there’ll be plenty of Remillards about who could do the honors at the altar,” he muttered. “That Uncle Rogi you’re so fond of. Your Grandad Kyle, for a’ that, if you’re bound to have a kiltie relation stirrin’ up a ruckus.”

  “It wouldn’t be the same and you know it. Kyle can no more play the pipes than Rogi can.” The Dirigent lifted a specially prepared container of puréed food, deftly inserted its tube into a hidden orifice behind the chinpiece of her diamond mask, and ate. Her pseudovoice continued to speak as clearly as ever. “I know you’re still sulking because Jack and I are getting married on Earth instead of here on Callie. But it wouldn’t have been practical having the ceremony here. Not with things still all in a flaughter from the diatreme. Saint Andy’s cathedral is a pile of rubble.”

  “Beinn Bhiorach wasn’t touched, as you know very well. We could have had the wedding at Saint Maggie’s in Grampian Town, where you were christened, and—”

  “—and put up forty or fifty Remillards at the farm? And heaven knows how many Magnates of the Concilium and other distinguished human and exotic guests that Jack will have invited, to say nothing of the odd Macdonald who may have a notion to attend, and a few friends and associates of my own!” She shook her head and her eyes flashed. “Be realistic, Dad. Grampian Town has one fleabag hotel and two pubs with tatty rooms on top.”

  Ian Macdonald banged his fork down. His massive brow was like thunder. “And perish the thought that the high mucky-muck Remillard Dynasty and their swank friends should have to demean themselves stayin’ in low Caledonian dives! Never mind what’s right and proper for a father to do for his own lassie’s marriage. We’ll let the stinkin’ rich Remillards pay all the bills and do exactly as they please because they’re the First Family of Metapsychology and darlings of the media and fawnin’ lapdogs of the fewkin’ Lylmik!”

  There were murmurs and snickers from people at the tables nearby. The Intendant Assembly dining room was packed with legislators, senior staff members, and lobbyists, and a lot of them undoubtedly shared the Rebellious inclinations of Ian Macdonald.

  The Dirigent suppressed her mortification and broadcast vibes of fond tolerance to let the operant diners, at least, know that she was unfazed by her father’s tirade. Why did normals love to make scenes? If Ian had been operant, the two of them could have quarreled decently, mind to mind on the intimate telepathic mode …

  When his daughter ignored his explosion, Ian Macdonald took a long pull from his glass of McEwan’s ale and continued in a much lower tone. “That’s not the whole of the matter, either. What about yourself, Dorrie? It’s as though the diatreme blew away your good sense, for I swear I don’t understand what’s come over you since then. A Dirigent of Caledonia dressin’ like a carnival queen! Graeme Hamilton must be spinnin’ in his grave. And your poor face … Don’t tell me you couldn’t have it fixed if you wanted to. By God, your own paramount redaction would do the job without any regen-tank if you bade it! It breaks my heart to see you looking like that, eating invalid’s slop, without even a tongue to speak with or lips to kiss—”

  “Dad, we had this out before. If you really can’t bear the sight of me as I am, I’ll let you see me otherwise.”

  He gasped, for suddenly the diamond mask blurred and seemed to vanish. Her face was as it had been before—heart-shaped and solemn within the gem-studded blue lamé hood, with plain features and a mouth with a secretive little smile.

  “Anytime you wish, Dad, it’ll be my old face you see when you look at me. I’ve made it so in your mind.”

  The muscles of Ian’s strong jaw worked and he was dismayed to feel his eyes growing moist. “But not your real face.”

  “No,” she said, and he saw the glittering covering rematerialize.

  “Why, Dorrie?” His rasping whisper was heartbroken. “In God’s name, why? Is it because of him somehow?”

  She was serene. “You’ve no right to ask me that, Dad. Nor to ask the other question trembling on the tip of your tongue. I love Jack. That’s all you need to know. And he loves me.”

  “Does he love you the way you are behind the mask?” Ian hissed.

  “A face is also a mask,” she said, “and no more the real Dorothea Macdonald than the prosthesis is. Let me prove it.”

  He gave a low cry of horror and gaped at the sight across the table, feeling his gorge rise. Once again the diamond mask beneath his daughter’s calm hazel eyes had faded away, but this time Ian saw hideously scarred flesh clinging to a noseless skull. The ghastly injury was visible only for a moment before sparkling blue and white gems hid it again.

  “Is that the true me?” her pseudovoice asked gently.

  Ian had covered his eyes with one hand. “No, lass. No.” His shoulders shook. “I’m sorry. I’m a pigheaded fool with no right to question your judgment. You must live your life as you see fit and marry your uncanny Jack if that’s your choice.”

  She reached across the table, touching his arm. “Will you come to Earth with Janet and Ellen, and give me away to him at the wedding?”

  He raised his head. “I will.”

  The Dirigent got up from her chair. Her father was such a brawny man and she so small that even with him seated, their eyes were nearly on a level when she stood at his side. “I’ll see you there, then,” she said. Her masked face came close to his and he felt the cool hardness of the diamonds brush his cheek. “Goodbye, Dad.”

  She walked away, nodding to acquaintances and colleagues and exchanging brief telepathic greetings with some of them. Then her shining blue figure passed through the dining-room door and was gone.

  Ian Macdonald tossed down the last of the ale, keyed the table-corn, and demanded that the waitron bring more drink. He swept the room with a defiant glare. Nobody looked at him. They were all suddenly busy with conversations of their own or attentive to their plates. Ian grunted, then bent to his meal and finished the salmon and potatoes and peas and bread. It would have been a sin to let the good food go to waste.

  7

  FROM THE MEMOIRS OF ROGATIEN REMILLARAD

  A WEEK BEFORE JACK AND DOROTHÉE WERE TO BE MARRIED, THE best man farspoke me and said he was egging in to New Hampshire from his place in the Pacific Northwest to do a little fishing before the festivities. Would I like to join him? His childhood friends Alex Manion, Boom-Boom Laroche, and Arkady Petrovich O’Malley might also show up.

  I was delighted by the notion of taking a few days off with Marc. The tabloid vampires were getting bolder as the date of the ceremony approached. Stonewalled by the wedding principals, they’d besieged my bookshop in Hanover, clogging the comlink and scaring paying customers away. It was enough to drive a man to drink—but I was maintaining an unwonted sobriety just then, as well as spending a lot of time looking over my mental shoulder.

  The attack on Anne by Hydra might have mystified the rest of the Remillard family, but I had a pretty fair notion what was behind it. Somehow, Fury had found out that Anne was hot on its trail. It had decided to eliminate the threat before she could set up Denis’s exorcism. I figured the monster must have told Madeleine ¡and Parnell, the surviving Hydra-units, to kill Anne. They’d made a damned good try, probably by performing some kind of mind-fuck on the pilot of her starship. Hell, the guy was even wearing a control-helmet! Marc had told me years ago that Hydra had almost killed him that way by coercing him to crash his CE-controlled motorcycle. It seems the brainboards of those infernal hats create a wide-open door to coercive mischief.

  So far, there’d been no attempts on my own life. If Anne was right about the parent-child mental constraints (and if Fury abided by them, which was by no means a sure thing), then the monster wouldn’t be able to hurt me through its own mindpower. I was still vulnerable to Hydra, though, and I knew I wouldn’t be safe until I told Jack and Dorothée everything that Anne had told me.

  Unfortunately, the young lovers had already taken off from Caledonia on a shallow-catenary voyage when I learned about Anne’s cr
ash. In those days, communication with a ship in hyperspace was a difficult and involved matter, undertaken only in the gravest emergencies, and had no guarantee of privacy. I couldn’t risk it. Jack and Dorothée weren’t scheduled to show up in New Hampshire until the last minute, the afternoon before the wedding. Then their time would be taken up by a whirl of clothes fittings, the rehearsal, and the rehearsal dinner. So it looked like I was going to have to find a way to break the bad news to the kids on the day of the ceremony itself, before they took off for their honeymoon on the Hawaiian island of Kauai.

  Dandy. What a great little wedding present that would be.

  It was definitely time to go flyfishing with Marc and forget.

  At that time I didn’t own an egg, so I threw my tackle in my old non-gravomagnetic Volvo wagon and headed up to Pittsburg Township at the far northern end of the state. There, deep in the restored “primeval” woodlands west of Indian Stream, was the big lakeside cabin that Victor Remillard had built before the Great Intervention. The family had taken over White Moose Lodge after Vic was decommissioned, and the place was so pretty and the fishing and snowmobiling so good that it had no lingering evil associations. Live-in caretakers kept the lodge open all year round, and the Remillard clan felt free to drop in with their friends and recreate anytime they felt like it.

  It was early evening on June 11 when I arrived. To my mind, the North Woods in mid-June are about as idyllic as New England gets. The no-see-um gnats are about finished, the mosquitoes aren’t yet up to strength, and the more benign hatches of insect life that brook trout fancy are on the wing. I pulled up in the lodge’s parking area next to a couple of modest vehicles that I presumed belonged to the staff. Over on the dirt landing pad stood a jet-black performance egg with the CEREM corporate logo on its door. Marc had arrived, but his boyhood pals Boom-Boom, Alex, and Arky apparently had not.

  Guy Laroche worked for the Human Division of the Galactic Magistratum down in Concord and had his sights set on the top-cop position. Alexis Manion had become the premier authority on the relationship of mental lattices to dynamic-fields, and his work at Cambridge University had already begun to attract the attention of the Nobel Committee. Arkady Petrovich O’Malley was Exotic Liaison Chief of the Twelfth Fleet, based on Okanagon. In spite of their high-powered heads and exalted positions, all three men were ideal fishing buddies, unpretentious and ready to laugh at an old man’s raunchy jokes. They were also sympathetic to my Rebel leanings and concerned about the way the exotic races continued to limit human freedom.

  I shut down my Volvo’s whiny old turbine, climbed out, and stretched the kinks out of my bones. It wasn’t dark yet. Night takes its own sweet time falling in New Hampshire as the summer solstice approaches. The pines and hemlocks were silhouetted against a greeny-blue sky and a loon warbled its spooky love song out on the lake. The still air smelt of conifer resin and fried pork sausage and the wild roses that had been planted near the rambling log house. A chipmunk chipped and song sparrows sang farewell to the day. The only evidence of the famous albino moose herd for which the place had been named was a fresh pile of olive-sized droppings that I almost stepped in as I unloaded the car.

  A quick look through the lodge’s kitchen wall revealed Norm and Suzanne Isbrandt, the current caretaker couple, eating the aforementioned sausages for supper. Out on the lake the resident brook trout were already rising in anticipation of the evening hatch. The mayflies weren’t out yet, but there were a few caddises winging around. In the distance I perceived a fancy float-tube, gliding with suspicious speed toward Porcupine Cove nearly a klom away on the lake’s northern side. Naughty, naughty! The operant fisherman was using PK—not his swim fins—to get into casting position. He had suppressed his aura, as the most powerful metas do routinely, but even my myopic farsight had no trouble identifying him. The husky shoulders and hatless head of black curly hair belonged to Marc Remillard.

  He said: Bonsoir One’ Rogi!

  I said: Hi Marc. How’s the lake looking?

  Fair, he said, in the typical deprecating understatement that has characterized flyfishermen for two hundred years. No matter what kind of luck you’re having, it’s gauche to be emphatic about it. Fishing is never fantastic and it never sucks; it’s “middling” or “a mite slow.” If the trout are hitting on the backcast or otherwise virtually leaping into your net, the sport may be characterized as “halfway decent.”

  I watched as my great-grandnephew guided his U-shaped float into position, cocked his arm, and made a perfect 30-meter cast. Show-off! He was using an ancient, perfectly preserved No. 4 split-cane rod from Partridge of Redditch, together with the newest top-of-the-line model Donner AG reel. No sooner had his elk-hair caddis dry fly fluttered to the water than a big brookie hammered it. Marc played the creature for a few minutes, then brought it to his net and carefully set it free. The trout had been what I, wedded to obsolete systems of weights and measures, would have called a helluva scrappy two-pounder.

  Languidly, I said: Nice fish.

  Marc said: Quit jabbering and get out here on the water.

  Dusk is the best time of day for lake angling, especially if you are an operant and can see in the dark. (We heads don’t talk much about these little blessings to shortbrained folks.) I had no intention of joining Marc over in the cove. Flyfishing is something you do in solitude, even if you go out with a buddy. There’d be time enough afterward in the lodge for us to gossip and tell lies about who caught and released the biggest and feistiest trout. (When the actual fishing is over, one is finally permitted to pull out all the stops.)

  I put on my chest-high secoprene waders and cussed when I discovered I’d left the belt at home. But what the hell. My belly-boat had three support bladders, and the chances of all of them deflating at once were nil. A wader-belt was a necessity when you fished fast rivers, where even a good swimmer could drown if he fell into the drink and his waders filled with water and dragged him down. But a little bitty dead-calm lake like this was safe as houses.

  Right?

  Well, I’m still here to tell the tale, but it was a mighty close shave …

  Since Marc was fishing his precious bamboo, I decided to use my Orvis Zipster with a miniature Hardy Flyweight reel and a threadlike No. 1 line. The streams of New Hampshire being mostly quite small, lively little brookies 20 cents or so in length are the usual thing you catch. If you use ultralight tackle these nanoids are fine sport, fighting as fiercely as a Montana rainbow. Our larger fish mostly live in lakes, and unless you are—as I was!—a snot out to prove something, you use heavier tackle when you try for heavier fish.

  The zero-weight outfit is so light that any kind of breeze makes casting almost impossible unless you cheat and use your PK faculty. Tonight, however, conditions on the quiet lake were perfect. Contrary to what you might think, it’s quite possible for a skilled angler to land a monster with a well-made Zipster rig such as my Orvis. If I managed to bring in any kind of decent fish I’d ace Marc on piscatorial points no matter how big a hawg he pulled in with the heavier Partridge.

  Chortling in anticipation, I put on my vest and my brown Tilley hat with the flies stuck in it, gathered the rest of my stuff, and set off along the path that paralleled the southern lakeshore. Marc would watch me with his paramount farsenses; but I’d stay as far away from him as possible so I wouldn’t have to see that maddening one-sided smile of his when I had my inevitable break-offs. Fishing with ultralight tackle means that you lose more fish than you net; but therein lies the challenge and the fun.

  When I reached a suitable put-in spot I pinched the inflators on the float-tube, put on my flippers, and—voila! I was ready to go. Lots of anglers—Marc included—prefer open-fronted floats because they’re convenient to get into. I like my classic donut belly-boat with the high backrest because it’s easier to maneuver in the water. It’s a medium bitch to get yourself settled into, though. The cloth sling you sit in takes up most of the central opening and it’s a tight and awkwar
d fit to step into the thing with fins on. If you’re a beanpole like me, you just put the tube on over your head, push it down until the sling hits your rump, then fasten the ’tween-legs strap. With your rod clamped ever so gently in your teeth, you grip the tube’s side handles like a duchess lifting her skirt to curtsy to the queen and wade into the water backwards in the approved frogman fashion.

  Then you sit down … and enjoy bliss! The float-tube is somehow more aesthetically satisfying than a regular boat, which your dedicated flyfisher tries to avoid using. You ride waist-deep in the water, finning silently, close to fish who don’t seem to realize that you aren’t one of the gang. All of your tackle is near at hand, organized in zipper pouches. Your rain jacket and snacks are in the backrest.

  I knew a little bay with an outflow stream and an interesting drop-off to a springhole where sizable fish often lurked. I headed for it at a brisk rate of knots—moving backwards, of course. As it got darker the lake turned to a sheet of polished onyx with the sinking moon and the lights of the lodge reflected in it. The loons gibbered, a duck splashed in the weeds, and the little outflow stream chuckled merrily over its rocks. Tiny wisps were beginning to rise to the water’s surface, floating like elfin sailboats. They were newly hatched mayfly duns drying off their first wings. I gently scooped one up, studied it, and then found a dry fly that resembled it and began to tie it onto the leader.

  An incisive telepathic thought zinged my brain:

  How’s it looking over there?

  I said to Marc: The hatch is on. I’m using a Number 12 yellow paradrake on a 7X tippet and the nought-weight rod. Eat your heart out flogger.

  Big fly for toy tackle. Smile. Crazy old salopard … Did you come alone?

  Damn right.

  Then it’s just you and me and the fishies tonight. Alex and Arky said they probably wouldn’t be able to make it until tomorrow, and Boom is trapped in Concord indefinitely. Talk to you later.