Jack the Bodiless (Galactic Milieu Trilogy) (19 page)

No. But doubting isn’t the issue at hand. Action is.

You needn’t worry. The interrogators won’t find any incriminating data in my mind. The family honor is safe—

Paul cried out, “Damn you and your half-baked arrogance! Don’t you realize that a Krondak Grand Master forensic redactor will be questioning you today?”

Mind-reaming me
, Marc corrected. Out loud, he said, “Papa, nothing the Magistratum learns from me will damage
your reputation or compromise your authority. You and Grandpère searched my mind three days ago, right after the drownings, and Uncle Severin and Aunt Anne and Professor Barnes all had their chance to turn me inside out later. All of you believe that I’ve told the truth. Now it’s time for the exotics to satisfy themselves officially. They’ll either believe me, too, and let me go—or decide I’ve broken their laws and pass sentence on me right here this morning. That’s fine with me. Just let me get on with it!”

Because the longer we delay the more afraid I am.

“Marc, let me into your mind,” Paul pleaded, gripping the boy’s upper arms. “Into the secret place. I know we failed to turn you inside out. You were very good at hiding the inner thought-masking, but I know you concealed things from us. Let me see! Trust me! For the love of God tell me whether or not your mother and Uncle Rogi are alive!”

Marc’s psychokinesis gently canceled the muscular tension of his father’s hands, and he pulled free. “You know the answer already, Papa. You tore my screens down and looked for yourself. All of you did.”

We did yes we
think
we did but if the drowning story’s true why is there no grief Marc you can’t not care you can’t have killed her deliberately you did love her—

More than you did Papa.

Paul said, “That’s not true!” Look in me. Look!

The boy shrugged, ignoring the invitation. Through his mind danced the fleeting images of many different women—all of them beautiful, all powerful operants, all infatuated with Paul Remillard.

“You don’t understand,” Paul said. “That … has nothing to do with love.” The hint of empathy he had extended vanished like a snuffed candle flame, and once more the father looked down from his Jovian rampart. “You’re too young to understand the complexities of male sexuality. You’re too—[inhuman!]—emotionally detached.”

“Uncle Rogi used to tell me that. I’m going to miss him.”

Marc tell me ARE THEY REALLY DEAD?

The full force of Paul’s coercion struck the boy. Marc stiffened convulsively and would have tumbled into the water if Paul had not caught him. No sooner had Paul struck than he retreated, frustrated again by the unbridgeable abyss that separated his own passionate nature from
the icy profundity of the young mind’s psychic core, those dark distances that could be concealing anything …

The father held the son in a desperate physical embrace while their minds remained walled apart. Paul said aloud, “I love your mother and I love you. If you’ve done what I think you have, I believe that your motives are good. I can’t help you, but I’ll do my utmost to salvage the situation. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Papa.”

Paul let the boy go. Then they walked on across the stepping-stones and through the trees and came to another plaza that fronted a large gray building.

The Polity capital’s departmental structures, unlike the magnificent office towers of the continental Intendancies, were modest in design. This one seemed to be trying to efface itself by melting into the wooded hillside. Its stepped granite balconies dripped with flowering vines and other foliage, and the windows were deeply embayed and mirrored, so that they seemed part of the stone or the lush greenery. The building entrance, like the windows, was hooded and unpretentious. The double doors of massive carved oak were stained gray, with black iron fittings in American colonial style. A granite plinth on a small patch of lawn beside the steps held an identifying sign:

MAGISTRATUM OF THE GALACTIC MILIEU EARTH PROCTORSHIP

The handsome bearded man and the tall boy walked up the steps side by side. Marc held the door politely for his father. Inside was a very small lobby with a polished black-and-white marble floor and richly paneled walls of chestnut wood. On either side of the room stood well-worn brown leather settees, each flanked by an occasional table and a brass Stiffel lamp. One of the tables had a book-plaque reader, the other a telephone without a viewer. The third side of the room, opposite the entrance, was inset with a featureless brushed-bronze door. Beside it was a viewscreen and a small bronze plate with an old-fashioned mammary push button that was labeled:
INFORMATION
.

Paul pressed the button.

The screen lit, showing the glistening green countenance of a male member of the Simbiari race. “Good morning,
Intendant Remillard,” said the exotic in unaccented Standard English.

“Good morning, Enforcer Abaram. I have in my custody the witness-defendant Marc Alain Kendall Remillard, who is scheduled to be interrogated at this time.”

“You are three minutes early, Intendant, but this insignificant deviation can be readily accommodated by Enforcer Chief Malatarsiss and Evaluator Throma’eloo Lek—unless the witness-defendant prefers to wait out the interval.”

“He does not,” said Paul.

The bronze portal slid open, revealing two expressionless Simbiari in golden uniforms. “The witness-defendant will accompany these enforcers,” Abaram said.

As Marc came forward, Paul said sharply, “When the questioning is completed, please bring the boy to my office in North America Tower. Immediately.”

“This will be done,” Abaram said, “if the action is feasible, pending the outcome of the interrogation. We will notify you promptly if the witness-defendant’s presence is required elsewhere.” The screen went black.

Marc stepped between the two exotics, and they about-faced. Then the door slid closed, leaving Paul standing alone.

When they had finished, and the boy was breathing normally again and his brain cycling in dreamless sleep, the two exotic redactors went into the adjacent parlor to escape the examination room’s lingering aetheric stench of pain and terror.

Moti Ala Malatarsiss dug a handful of Kleenex from the platinum sabretache case that hung from her uniform belt, scrubbed her slimy palms, and dropped the green-stained wad into a wastebasket. Her complexion had gone an unhealthy olivaceous tan. She flung open a refreshment cabinet, filled a glass with carbonated water, and tossed it down in a single swallow.

Belatedly, she said, “My apologies, Evaluator, but I felt an overpowering need for rehydration. May I offer you a drink also?”

“Single-malt Scotch, if you please. Straight up.”

The Simbiari Enforcer Chief seized a fresh bottle of Bunnahabhain and fumbled to open it. The bottle neck clinked
as she poured sloppily, and she left sticky padprints on the glass. “Sorry about
that
, too.” She thrust the drink into Throma’eloo Lek’s extended tentacle.

The grotesque Krondaku blinked his primary optics in mild acknowledgment of his colleague’s unusual state of flusteration. “A most peculiar and fascinating case, is it not? Once again the human race displays its bottomless capacity to astound.”

The Chief refilled her own glass. “And this one is only a pubescent child!” She sipped with partially restored composure. “Let us go out on the balcony to discuss this, shall we? Disturbing resonances still propagate in here.”

“As you wish,” Throma’eloo sighed, slithering after her into the fierce sunlight through sliding doors opened by psychokinesis. Unobtrusively, he sent a restoring redactive impulse into the limbic system of his fellow interrogator, while on another level of his mind he was assembling a précis of the bad news for the Select Judicial Evaluation Committee back at Concilium Orb. A more primitive level of the Krondak consciousness deplored the excessive gravity, low oxygen partial-pressure, and intense ultraviolet radiation of the Human home planet. The booze was superb, however, and Moti Ala had remembered to bring the bottle out onto the balcony with her.

The Chief flopped into a deck chair, rolled up her silvery uniform sleeves, and extended her bare green arms to the healing sunlight. “Sacred Truth and Beauty, that’s better!”

The monstrous Krondaku squatted in the shadiest spot, near the place where the balcony merged with the granite of an artificial cliff. A waterfall splashed down mossy stones and beaded Throma’eloo’s warty integument with welcome moisture. He appropriated the Scotch and began a formal recapitulation.

“I understand now, colleague, why you requested my assistance in this apparently straightforward investigation. The metapsychic precocity of the Remillard line is, of course, a continuing topic of study amongst evolutionists of the Concilium. We were not aware, however, that an individual with the potential of this examinee had been born into the family. His ability to resist Simbiari-Krondak psychoprobing technique has disturbing implications. Of course, Marc could be unique. His father and the father’s siblings are arguably the most powerful of human operants,
yet our probing of
them
was readily accomplished. Nevertheless, I must point out that the blocking mechanisms that Marc used, virtually instinctively, are susceptible to program analysis and could, at least in theory, be passed on to and utilized by other humans of high metafunction.”

“But we broke him … I think.”

The Krondaku indicated qualified assent, simultaneously introducing a generous nip of Scotch into his buccal orifice. “I believe we have ascertained the truth of the drowning incident, at least, lamentable though it may be. The boy was clearly appalled by his mother’s procreative risk-taking. Like many immature male Earthlings, particularly those of high intelligence and stunted affect, he represses sexual feelings for the female parent while at the same time craving the maternal consolations she vouchsafed him during his infancy, which she now denies him. In the human species, the hormonal imbalance of puberty exacerbates the aforesaid psychological turmoil. Thus we may see that, all unconsciously, Marc hates his mother for denying him and envies both his father
and
the unborn sibling, seeing in the latter, especially, a usurper of the love that he feels is owed to him—and also a metapsychic challenger. The boy’s relationship with his father is complicated by the role-model factor. He has a powerful respect for Paul, at the same time that he is jealous of him. This is quite normal amongst humans. When Marc’s mother revealed her illicit pregnancy, the boy’s highest level of consciousness perceived a grave threat to both himself and his father—”

“While the deeper mental strata cogitated the situational potential for simultaneous revenge upon both parents and elimination of the sibling rival. Yes, yes, I agree with your assessment, Evaluator.”

The Chief’s face slowly regained its normal emerald hue as her hyperactive mucus glands simmered down. The area around her chair was now littered with used Kleenex, a situation that distressed the orderly sensibilities of the Krondaku. Before the Simbiari race had undertaken the Proctorship of planet Earth, they had been accustomed to blot up their excess bodily fluids with unobtrusive small sponges concealed in their clothing. Their stewardship of the Earthlings had proved so stressful, however, that the traditional expedient became inadequate without inconvenient wringing-out operations; and so Earthbound Simbiari
had become addicted to Kleenex, which they carried in ornamental belt containers and rarely disposed of properly. They passed on the nasty new habit to their congeners throughout the Milieu (to the delight of human paper-product companies), and nowadays crinkled wads of tissue seemed to litter half the planets of the Orion Arm. Throma’eloo Lek, like many of his ancient and fastidious race, secretly deplored the lowering of standards but never would have dreamed of humiliating the Simbiari by reproaching them. Earth was the first Proctorship undertaken by that semiUnified race, and the project had shaken Simb courage severely.

“Is it your conclusion, then,” the Krondaku inquired, “that the boy is innocent of double homicide by drowning?”

The Chief assumed a more dignified posture and refastened her cuffs. “Volition in the immature human psyche is not easy to pin down. But I believe our efforts show that Marc Remillard acted entirely through unconscious impetus when he brought about the drowning of his mother and the incidental demise of the aged male relative. Marc suggested the canoe trip in the first place, then neglected to portage around the rapids. However, there was never in his mind a deliberate intention to kill. I do not believe he has any complicity in the McAllister murder, either.”

The Krondaku hesitated. “Let us postpone for a moment any deliberation on the boy’s possible implication in that truly heinous crime. I would like to clear up the tag ends in the matter of the illicit pregnancy. Are you satisfied that Paul Remillard was unaware of his wife’s condition and her determination to flout Milieu law?”

“My personal redactive examination of Paul Remillard immediately prior to his appearance before the Special Committee on Ethics convinced me that he was innocent of conspiring with his wife. What has puzzled me is Paul’s equivocal reaction to Marc’s original account of the canoe trip. His apparent
fear
that his wife was not actually dead.”

“Neither Teresa’s body nor that of Rogatien Remillard has been found.”

“The Hartland rapids, in which the canoe capsized, have apparently trapped human victims among their dense and chaotically tumbled rocks before.” The Chief rose from her seat, frowning. “Still … it would be most unsettling if thou and I shall have erred in our analyses of these affairs, my
dear Lek. There were aspects of mentation in both the boy and his close relations that I could not apprehend at all. And the coincidence of the two fatal events happening so close in time is peculiar, to put it mildly. Yet there seems to be no connection between the deaths. No one but Marc seems to have been involved in the canoe incident, and the adult Remillards appear to be completely innocent of any involvement with that or the murder of Brett McAllister. The Magistratum has been obliged, as a result of these mental examinations, to exonerate Paul and his six brothers and sisters. Now it is the boy’s turn to be discharged … And still thou seest that I am sorely dissatisfied.”