Jack the Bodiless (Galactic Milieu Trilogy) (18 page)

They all sprang to their feet. Ragnar said, “Tusen takk for maten, Bestemor! We will all remember this dinner for the rest of our lives!”

“Yes,” Inga Johansen said sadly. “I think you will.” And then she left them, and they all sat down again.

Oljanna broke the long, thoughtful silence. “Well, I suppose it’s only logical that she might sense something of what we’re up to.”

“She will not betray us?” Anna’s face had gone pale in the sunlight.

“Never!” Ragnar exclaimed.

“But she does not approve,” Anna said.

Hiroshi Kodama sipped from his mug of beer, then set it down and stared into the foam-streaked depths. “She is like so many of the elders—those who remember the political chaos and worldwide privation and fear of the pre-Intervention Earth. To her, the coming of the Galactic Milieu was a miracle that saved our world from its own foolish pride and greed—perhaps from nuclear holocaust … Anna, only you and Owen are old enough to remember those times: When operants were persecuted, when energy supplies were dwindling, when the air and the waters and the land were so polluted by the waste of humanity that it seemed they never would be made clean. Think back to that day in 2013 when thousands upon thousands of starships materialized over the great cities of the Earth and told us that the nightmare was over—that they had come to Intervene and welcome us into their Galactic civilization.”

“I remember,” Owen whispered. His head was bowed, and now so was Anna’s. Through the technology of the regeneration tank, both now looked fully as youthful as their fellow conspirators; but their mental overlay, with its indelible patina of memories and experience, would always mark them as elders.

“With the Intervention,” Hiroshi went on, “there was immediate peace, immediate solutions to our ecological and economic problems. You two were perhaps among the few to question the coming of the Golden Age in those early
years. The smallness of our group here attests that most human beings still feel as Fru Johansen does—that the way of the Galactic Milieu and its Unity are the only hope for us. If we—we rebels—attempt to point our race in another direction, we must think deeply about the opinions of our opponents. Could they be right? Could we possibly be wrong? Is our viewpoint that of a proud elite and theirs that of the great majority of humanity …?”

“I have never had any doubts,” Anna said, straightening in her chair and meeting Hiroshi’s eyes.

But Owen Blanchard looked away over the fjord, to where the small pleasure boats played on deep, mirrored waters. “I have.”

Ragnar Gathen said, “If we succeed, it will be because the majority agrees with us.”

Cordelia Warszawska gave a humorless laugh. “Thus speaks the bluff and sturdy spaceman! But social change isn’t quite as simple as that. Sometimes people don’t know what’s good for them. They have to be led, educated. Even compelled to do the right thing when the mutual good seems to conflict with their selfish interests.”

“We operants are the ones the exotics have chosen to be the leaders,” Gerrit Van Wyk declared. “It’s a consensus of
operants
that we have to win, not normals.”

“Only in the short run,” Oljanna said. “Operants are still only a tiny percentage of the human race, even though our ranks are increasing. And all of you know that the coadunate number—the number of minds needed for Unity to be imposed—includes normals as well as us. When we are Unified, whatever that means, rebellion will be impossible. We’ll somehow be—be engulfed in the exotic mind-set. At one with the Lylmik and the Krondaku and the Poltroyans and the Gi—”

“And the Simbiari,” Will added. “Those fewkin’ self-righteous green bastards.”

For some time they all sat without speaking. The air was cool, for all the brightness of the sun, and when dusk came they would be glad to light the stove.

Owen finally rose to his feet. “Humanity won’t be subjugated to the minds of exotic races! In the beginning, at the Intervention, we were overwhelmed by the benevolent aspects of the Milieu. It could hardly have been otherwise. But after forty years of the Proctorship, a few of us at least have
recognized that the price we paid was too high. And for us operants, it will eventually be higher still, unless we do something about it … Come on, let’s go find that coffee—and get down to serious business.”

T
HEY COULD HAVE TAKEN THE SUBWAY TRAM AND COVERED
the distance in less than five minutes, but Paul suggested that the two of them walk through the rain-freshened capital gardens. There were things that needed to be said now, not later, and neither one of them wanted to sit around Paul’s office until the time of the appointment, accepting commiserations from Tucker Barnes and Colette Roy on the family’s double tragedy. Triple, when you counted Brett’s weird demise.

Paul asked, “Were you comfortable in the hotel?”

“As comfortable as any prisoner could ask.” Marc was expressionless. “It was kind of the Magistratum to allow me to have family friends for custodians.”

“A professional courtesy. And Dr. Roy and Professor Barnes were glad to take the responsibility, to spare you being confined in an exotic detention facility. But such courtesies can extend only so far.”

“I understand, Papa.”

They descended the shallow steps of North America Tower and started across Canada Plaza. “I’m sorry I was unable to have breakfast with you. There was an early vote on the new ‘American’ planet proposal, and I’ve been scheduled
for two weeks to do the summing-up speech in favor.”

“That’s all right.”

The young mind’s adamant screening was unperturbed. If Marc was apprehensive about the upcoming interrogation, no mental or physical clue betrayed his emotional state. He wore white slacks and a white rugby shirt with green, navy, and gold stripes. His hair, which usually stood out in a careless halo of dark curls, was neatly combed and sprayed. He asked casually, “How did the vote go?”

“The ‘ayes’ had it by a landslide. The new world will be called Denali, after the highest mountain in Alaska, and a precedent-setting compromise amendment will allow unlimited immigration from Canada and Greenland and the Arctic areas of Europe and Asia after the initial wave of Yank settlers takes first dibs.”

“So it’s going to be a kind of bastard ethnic world rather than a true cosmop?”

“Looks like it. And that’s just what the sponsors were hoping for. Aside from the rich mineral deposits, the place is more marginal in human preferenda than the typical cosmop planet. The landmasses are mostly polar, and the climate is severe. It’s unlikely that Denali will ever attract a large enough population to warrant true cosmopolitan status. It certainly wouldn’t repay any Milieu subsidization or immigrant incentive bonus plan. So it falls into the ethnic class by default. The ‘American’ ethnic label is broad enough to embrace the hodgepodge of settlers the planet will no doubt attract.”

“Yukon gold-rush adventurer types?”

“Those and deep-sea fishermen. Its oceans are incredibly well populated with gourmet-class pseudocrustaceans. There’s a certain je-ne-sais-quoi romantic charm to the planetary landscape, too—if you enjoy Old Man Winter wearing his wildest, most majestic face. Lots of neg-ions in the air and superb mountains. I liked the place myself when the committee checked it out. You may remember that survey junket your mother and I took in March.”

“I remember. Mama said it was the best holiday you two had had in ages …” And very romantic.

Paul’s mental aspect remained bland in spite of the unsubtle provocation. The illicit child had undoubtedly been conceived during the Denali trip, and Teresa had very likely
worked the whole thing out in advance as carefully as blocking the stage moves in one of her operas. God damn her!

Or have mercy on her if she’s dead … Please, God: dead.

Paul said to Marc, “Denali may not be your typical picture-book colony, but what ethnic world is? After all, the whole idea behind the concept is to encourage settlers with special solidarity to go out together to planets that are more difficult to colonize. And the Alaskans
did
scrape up the minimal seed-population requirement for ethnic planet status—with some surreptitious help from Minnesota and Maine and Wyoming and North Dakota. After I delivered my little rouser of a speech in favor of the amended proposal, and hinted that any IA who presumed to question the ethnic dynamism of those sourdoughs would end up lynched with a walrus-hide rope, most of the Assembly caved in and passed the resolution by a big majority.”

Marc nodded soberly. “Sounds like Denali is going to be a great planet. I’d like to visit it myself.”

“Funny … quite a few of the Intendant Associates said the same thing. And their subliminals all flashed
SKIING
in neon lights. Just like yours do.”

Marc managed a wan smile. “I may not be doing any skiing for a long time, Papa.”

“That,” said Paul carefully, “is entirely up to you.”

They walked under stately mutant elms that had grown to their full height of 40 meters in the twelve years since the establishment of Concord as capital of the Human Polity. Off to the west was a striking vista of the Merrimack Valley, and on the other side of the river lay Old Concord, the capital of the state of New Hampshire. The city had graciously agreed to change its name when the Human Polity capital was established in the Loudon Hills to the east of it. The most prominent landmark in Old Concord, easily visible to Paul and Marc in spite of the lingering morning haze, was the white dome of the venerable New Hampshire State House, where a stubborn and uniquely democratic legislature born in the year 1680 still met and prided itself on being the model for the regional level of Galactic government. Like so many Earth cities, Old Concord had been purged of all ugliness; its service, manufacturing, and commercial structures were either relocated underground or concealed in restored buildings of architectural importance, gathered from other parts of the state during the drastic population
redistributions of the early twenty-first century. The revitalized city evoked the image of a peaceful eighteenth-century New England village while catering efficiently to the needs of a population living in the Galactic Age.

Marc said, “I can detect Brebeuf Academy with my mind’s eye, over there behind Rum Hill. Funny. I couldn’t wait to graduate in March, get out from under the thumb of the Fathers, do my first field trip on an exotic planet, start college. But now I really miss Brebeuf. We seniors were the kings of the cosmos. We thought we knew everything there was to know. Now all of a sudden we’re bottom dogs again, college freshmen at large in an inhabited universe … and we realize that we don’t know beans, and we’re trapped like the rest of humanity under the biggest thumb of all.”

There were very few other people on this particular path. Paul had been looking at the landscape as he walked, not at his son. They had come to a deserted enclosed garden with a large informal pool overhung by willows. Pink and white lilies dotted the surface of the dark water, which reflected not only trees and shrubs but also the delicate alabaster stratotowers of the North American and European Intendancies that seemed to pierce the sky on either hand. The path traversed one arm of the pool by means of large flat stepping-stones, and now Paul halted on the midmost stone and prevented Marc from going any further.

His hands rested upon the boy’s shoulders, and Marc was forced to look into his father’s compelling blue eyes. Paul was tall but not massive, with a very erect carriage and a natural grace to his movements that was almost Latin. His black beard was closely trimmed, and his hair cut Caesar-style to minimize its waving and already beginning to gray, in defiance of the self-rejuvenating genes. As usual, he was smartly and expensively dressed. His suit was khaki-colored silk noil, and he wore a black open-neck shirt with a flame-red scarf.

“You do understand,” Paul said, “why it was necessary for me to report this affair—and your own role in it—to the Magistratum.”

“But you didn’t tell the Proctors what Grandmère Lucille and Uncle Severin planned to do, did you, Papa.” Marc spoke very softly. “That they would have taken the baby without reporting the pregnancy.”

“No. Their … desire to spare me, and avert the scandal at its source, was regrettable as well as illegal. But your grandmother’s scheme came to nothing. Unlike your own unfortunate escapade. And your overnight disappearance automatically made you a suspect in Brett’s murder as well.”

Marc remained silent. His mind seemed open, but the deepest levels were utterly impregnable. As they had been throughout Paul’s own assaultive mental interrogation on the morning following the alleged canoe accident.

Paul went on. “Two presumed criminal incidents that closely concern persons like me and your uncles and aunts, Grand Master metapsychics who are also high officials of the Polity and designated magnates, put your interrogation out of the jurisdiction of ordinary human law enforcement bodies. The matter
had
to be referred to the Magistratum. I was subjected to coercive-redactive probing myself and so were my brothers and sisters. You could not be exempted. Your metafaculties are too great, and your actions were too suspicious. The Magistratum must rule out a connection between Brett’s murder and the disappearance of your mother and Uncle Rogi.”

“I understand, Papa.”

“What will happen to you today—” Paul broke off to reinforce his own faltering emotional barricade. “Dammit, Marc, you
must
allow the exotic interrogators to see the truth! Whatever it is. No matter who it hurts! We have a solemn duty—all of us who are privileged operants in training to serve humanity—to conduct our lives honorably. To obey and uphold the laws of the Galactic Milieu.”

Without question?

For now … yes.

Some of the Milieu laws are unjust. Cruel. Inhuman!

SonmydearSon I know they may
seem—

Papa I’m not the only one to doubt.