Jack the Bodiless (Galactic Milieu Trilogy) (36 page)

“No!” I shouted wildly, shaking my knife at the gray sky. “Don’t you dare tell anybody we’re alive! Not Anne, not Paul, not even Lucille!”

Rogi, they already know
.

“Oh,” I said, deflated.

He explained how the family had found out, and why they decided to do nothing about it.

“If Paul did agree with the others not to press the search for us,” I said, “then I don’t care whether you consult with him or any other family member you please. Just try to figure out a way to get us home as quickly as possible without having us land in some exotic jail.”

I will. But it will have to be after the birth, when the child is legally a separate entity from his mother.

“You and all the rest of the family will be on Concilium
Orb when the baby’s born, and it’ll take weeks for you to get back to Earth—”

Don’t worry about it, Uncle Rogi. Paul and I will find a way.

“Okay. I’ll salvage all of the moose I can, and we’ll have food to last until spring. We’ll get awfully sick of venison stew, but we’ll survive.”

We’ll get you out of there long before that … H’mm! I’ve found an interesting book in the data bank entitled
Moose on the Table
, by one Swede Gano, with recipes. I can farspeak them to Teresa. By the way, exactly where is she?

I hesitated, then realized it was ridiculous not to answer Denis’s question. He could body-scan the area and find her easily enough now, even without my help. And of course, I really did trust him. “She’s in a cabin at Ape Lake, about six or seven kloms up the creek. But will you let me break the news to her about you finding us? She’s—she’s a little leery of you, Denis. Not to make too big a point of it, but you do come on strong without realizing it. You wouldn’t want to upset her.”

No. I understand.

“You could take a look at her and let me know if she’s all right, though. I can’t scan through rock worth a damn.”

I’ll be glad to … She seems fine. And so is the—
Jesus!

“Denis! What’s wrong?” My stomach had done a backflip as he cried out in shock. For at least two minutes he was silent. Then I felt a kind of mental shiver, and he said:

The baby. My God, the baby.

Oh-oh. “He sort of screens himself when I’m around, so I haven’t really experienced him yet, if you know what I mean. I take it you got a peek at what his mind’s really like.”

Rogi, I touched that fetus for the merest instant, with my lightest probe. And he locked on, traced my position, rummaged through his mother’s memories to identify me, said, “Hello, Grandpère,” and slammed down the strongest screen I’ve ever encountered in a human mind. Even stronger than Marc’s. I’m—I’m completely at a loss.

“Well, well.” So was I. “So the little guy’s really got the watts, has he?”

He’s got
something
extraordinary … I won’t try to touch him again. I’ve got to think about this. I’ll leave you now—

“What about this damned moose?” I cried. “At least send
me a meat-cutting diagram so I know where the frigging tenderloins are.”

Denis said: Of course. I’m sorry … [Image.] There. Complete instructions for butchering. Uncle Rogi, I’d like to talk to you later at more length. I’ll return to you this evening after you’ve made camp.

And he signed off abruptly.

It was my first inkling of the kind of reaction young Jack would provoke among other human operants. Especially a certain type of operant.

Shrugging, I got on with my job, and an unbelievably messy one it was. Of course, I had no way of hoisting the carcass, and it was only through the kindness of the Family Ghost that I had downed it near the creek, where there was a small area of open water I could use for washing the meat. Thanks to Denis’s instructions, I knew enough to open the creature’s neck blood vessels before beginning; and I also knew the great trick for skinning—which involves slicing the hide very carefully over the belly to avoid puncturing the innards, and cutting a circle around the anus and then tying it closed with string, so that shit doesn’t come pouring out all over everything when you remove the entrails.

The skinning and gutting of the massive animal took me over three hours, and the cutting of the meat another two. I ended up soaked with blood, and when the last rump roast and the last bag of flaky body-cavity fat was either hanging high in the trees near the creek or ready to be packed, I looked like a slaughtered, half-frozen thing myself.

I built a roaring fire, rinsed my gory mitts and my parka exterior in the icy water, and let them steam more or less dry while I broiled exquisite cubes of moose liver à la mode sauvage and stuffed myself to the eyeballs. Then I packed the rest of the now frozen raw liver in a plass bag to take back to the mother-to-be. I was also taking the well-rinsed heart and kidneys, the tongue, and of course the pendulous nose—or muffle—which I knew from my youth was a notable delicacy when boiled. To this load I added about fifteen kilos of loin and chuck meat, together with plenty of the fine white fat, which is a nutritional necessity. I had decided against making a sled. Time enough for that on the next trip. I needed to return to the cabin as quickly as possible, and that meant toting everything on my back.

With about two and a half hours of daylight left, I started off for Ape Lake and Teresa and Jack, carrying enough food to keep us going for at least two weeks.

Denis bespoke me again as I lay me down to sleep in the canyon on that frigid, starry night. This time, since I was not distracted, I could see as well as hear him. With his blond hair flopping boyishly over his unlined brow, and his rueful altar-boy smile, he looked to be in his early thirties rather than his actual age of eighty-four. You might have guessed that he was a computer technician, or the manager of a supermarket, or a graduate student, or even your friendly neighborhood egg-bus driver—just as long as he didn’t look you squarely in the eye. Denis was usually careful not to do that; there was a code of etiquette among the grandmasterly coercers to the effect that Thou Shalt Not Absentmindedly Sandbag Innocent Bystanders. In the vision, he was staring at me directly; but I was far beyond his compulsive range, and so those devastating blue eyes appeared to reflect only loving concern. Which may have been all that was in Denis’s mind at the time.

Once again he reassured me that he would not give us away to the authorities. I asked him why, and he said:

I’m not quite sure myself, Uncle Rogi. Perhaps I don’t view Milieu ethics in quite the same light as more dedicated humans do. I’m afraid that I’ve come to believe that the welfare of my family—and the human family, in the larger sense—is more important than any Galactic civilization. It’s reprehensible of me, but there it is.

“I’m reprehensible, too,” I admitted. Just my nose stuck out of the sleeping bag. I was completely exhausted, I ached all over from wrestling and chopping up the moose, and my stomach was beginning to feel collywobbly from all that liver. “Is that why you declined to serve as a Magnate of the Concilium?”

That, and other reasons.

“I think even Lucille was shocked when you turned it down.”

Denis laughed, then said: She had been looking forward to the social aspects of magnateship. Giving parties on that level would have been a considerable leg up from our little faculty shindigs here at the college.

“Poor Lucille. Well, at least you get to attend the inauguration.”

Yes. You should see the incredible dress she got for the ceremony. All black and green and silver beads. She’s left Earth already, along with Paul and most of the others and their families. They’re scheduled to arrive in Concilium Orb on second December Earth date. Only Adrien and I are still here, winding up some work. We’ll be taking off in about two weeks, and we’ll get to Orb in time to join the family for Christmas.

“About Paul … Denis, Teresa is convinced that having this superior baby will patch up the troubles between them.”

I’m afraid she’s indulging in wishful thinking. You know that the marriage has been on shaky ground for years now. Teresa’s criminal pregnancy and her collusion with Marc in his scheme to fake her death were the last straws for Paul. He’ll never divorce her, and he’ll go along with the family in seeking a pardon for her. But that’s about it.

“Merde … But what’s done is done. Would he farspeak her from Orb, do you think? Reassure her on the baby’s behalf, at least?”

I can ask, but I doubt he’d want to speak to her. Look at things from Paul’s point of view: She deliberately set in motion a chain of events that will eventually do great damage to his prestige and that of the family. What’s more, her disappearance also helped influence the exotics to impose a thousand-day probation on the Human Polity’s full admission to the Concilium.

“What the hell does that mean?”

It means that, given cause, within that period they can summarily rescind our full voting membership in the Galactic Milieu and reinstate the Proctorship for an indefinite period … or even abandon us.

“Abandon—! You mean cancel the Great Intervention?”

They probably wouldn’t bring all the human colonists back to Earth. The planetary resources could never accommodate them. But the Milieu could fix up Mars or some of the asteroids for the overflow population and cut us off completely from any intercourse with their confederation.

“Oh.” I thought about that for a bit. “But they could hardly take back the scientific goodies they’ve already given us—the superluminal drive and the new energy technology, especially. We already have a whole generation of human
scientists who know as much about that stuff as any exotic does. And the metapsychic advances can’t be canceled, either.”

Denis said: No.

“We’ve been told again and again that the Milieu doesn’t wage war. That their Unity—whatever it is—precludes any hostility between rational entities. But operant human metas are getting more numerous and more powerful every year, and we’re supposed to have minds that will eventually surpass those of the exotic races. When we really get geared up,
could
the Milieu prevent us from retaking our colonial planets without fighting us?”

I don’t know … I don’t know.

“Maybe,” said I, “getting out of the Milieu wouldn’t be a bad thing at all! Sure—we’d have some problems after we cut loose, but eventually we’d be better off than before. It’s a big goddam Galaxy.”

For a long time, Denis was silent. I could see him in the study of his gentleman’s farmhouse, sitting before the fire with one hand over his eyes.

Then: Why did you do it, Rogi? Go along with Marc’s crazy plan?

“It wasn’t so crazy. Both Marc and Teresa were convinced that the baby was a supermind—”

But
you
weren’t, were you! You’re too sensible to fall for an unsubstantiated notion like that. Why did you endanger your life, helping them?

I no longer gave a damn. I was beginning to feel very sick. That damned moose was getting postmortem revenge. Subliminally, I said to Denis: Just go away and let me alone. I’m feeling rummy in the tummy!

But he refused to take the hint. I muttered, “Denis—you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

Try me.

I sighed. My guts churned. “Do you remember the night of the Great Intervention?”

?? Of course. But what’s that—

“Just before Vic’s men started attacking the chalet on Mount Washington, I mind-hollered a message to you. I said I had been told to tell you and your metapsychic colleagues to renounce violence, to unite in a metaconcert of goodwill. And if you did, I said, then beings from the stars
would let our poor little planet out of its Galactic Coventry and come to help us. Do you remember that?”

I … thought you were hysterical. Even so, your idea was a good one, and it crystallized notions that I had held for some time.

“I wasn’t hysterical. A Lylmik has been talking to me for years.”

Rogi—

“Shut up. You asked to hear it, and you’re going to, by damn! This Lylmik told me that the exotics needed my help. Our family was pivotal, they said. Pivotal in the goddam destiny of the goddam world. From time to time this Lylmik gave me orders. Like telling me to take a hand in your mental education when you were a baby. Some kind of exotic in disguise saved me when Vic came after me, ready to turn me into a zombie like poor Yvonne and Louis and Leon. Exotics meddled with my life at other times, too, forcing me to do things. And the Lylmik who talked to me—I’ve always called him the Family Ghost—farspoke me on the day last summer that Marc came back to Earth convinced he had to save his mother and her unborn child. The Lylmik quite flatly ordered me to help them.”

Uncle Rogi, the Lylmik don’t work that way! They’re aloof, almost cosmically disinterested entities, who concern themselves with only the most long-range aspects of Milieu policy. They almost never participate in ordinary Galactic affairs—much less try to manipulate a mere human individual.

“Try to manipulate …? Hell’s bells, the goddam Family Ghost nearly drove me nuts before the Intervention, pulling my strings! Then it lay doggo until now, except for making me introduce Mary Gawrys and Kyle Macdonald. You might want to think about what plans it has for
them!”

Do you have any proof of all this? Why haven’t you ever said anything before?

“Ah … I knew what you’d say. I was given permission to tell you about their Intervention scheme, but I wasn’t going to be laughed at. As for proof, they gave me a cute little magical talisman. The Great Carbuncle. You remember it.”

Your
key-ring fob?

“Don’t knock it. It’s a genuine twenty-five-carat red diamond,
polished spherical. It’s something else, too, but I’m not sure what.”

This is incredible. Do you have the thing with you?

“Damn right. Never go anywhere without my lucky charm. And the Family Ghost is hanging around, too. Who do you think delivered the fucking moose?… Not that I’m complaining. It was a beauty. That liver was the tastiest thing I’ve had in years. But I think I might have overeaten just a little.”

Et maintenant t’as la chiasse, non?

“Maybe. Why didn’t you warn me when I was stuffing myself? Now I’m going to have to get up and go, and it’s damned cold out there!”