Jack the Bodiless (Galactic Milieu Trilogy) (5 page)

And Victor.

“How is he?” Denis asked.

“The nurse had to adjust the machine again,” Louis said.

“The rate of hemoglobin synthesis continues to decrease,” Leon added. “Heartbeat and respiration are normal, he assimilates nourishment and excretes, skin and muscular tone are nearly normal, and the EEG is as usual.”

“Nevertheless,” Louis finished, his voice completely neutral, “unless therapy is started soon to relieve the anemia, he’ll eventually die.”

Denis was already heading for the red-carpeted central staircase. “Paul, get the others together and bring them up at once.”

“Papa! Wait …”

Denis halted and turned around, one hand on the banister.

Paul took a breath, sealed off his inner thoughts with as much strength as he could muster, and readied his coercion. “Papa, I’ve thought the matter over all throughout our flight from Baltimore. I won’t let little Marc participate in
the metaconcert. We don’t know enough about the way mind-linkage affects the participants.”

Denis’s face wore a gentle smile. He did not meet his son’s eyes. “Victor is failing, Paul. We may not have another chance, and we’re lacking your mother’s input this year. I assure you that the program I use is entirely benign. And Marc’s mind is more powerful than that of many adults. Far stronger than those of the wives and Brett.”

“Papa—
no
. Marc’s my son. A baby. The rest of us are consenting adults. I’ve always had reservations about this Good Friday thing, and yet I’ve gone along with it because it was so important to you. But I can’t put a tiny child at risk. Uncle Rogi’s agreed to participate. He should help a little.”

Denis turned away. “Very well.” He continued up the stairs, letting his mind rove on ahead of him to the sickroom. The nonoperant day nurse looked up from her plaque-book as he entered Victor’s room.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Gilbert. We’re nearly ready.”

“Oh, Professor Remillard! I’ve been wanting to talk to you, but Mr. Philip and Dr. Severin said you were too ill—”

“I’m feeling better.” He calmed her redactively. “Draw the drapes, will you, please? I’ll just check the machine.”

He stood at his younger brother’s side for a few moments, looking at the pale, tranquil face of the man he was certain had damned himself. Then he went to the console of monitoring and life-support equipment set up at the foot of the big canopied bed.

The nurse persisted. “Doctor Cournoyer was here yesterday. He’d like to discuss Mr. Victor’s deteriorating condition with you. The urgent need for therapy if the anemia is to be arrested.”

Denis did not reply. He finished his inspection of the equipment, drew a chair up to the bedside, and sat down. His extraordinary bright blue eyes now lifted and caught those of Mrs. Gilbert, holding her hypnotized as she stood with the drapery cord in one hand.

“When my brother’s coma was pronounced irreversible many years ago and the authorities allowed me to take responsibility for his care, they assumed I would do the usual thing—order the cessation of intravenous hydration and gastrostogavage so that he would soon die. For reasons that seemed valid to me, I did not follow this course of
action. Instead, Victor has been given food and water and ordinary nursing care for more than twenty-six years. Up until two months ago, his body maintained itself in perfectly normal condition through self-redaction. And his mind, although incapable of any external manifestation, apparently continued to function as well. Victor is blind, deaf, and mute, unable to respond to any sensory stimulus, incapable of voluntary movement, incapable of telepathic communication, coercion, or any other external metapsychic manifestation … But he still thinks. A mentality such as his would not have continued to live unless he
wanted
to. Do you understand, Mrs. Gilbert?”

“I—I think so.”

Denis inclined his head, so that the terrible eyes were shuttered and he suddenly seemed to be only a very weary, very frail young man. “If Victor is declining now, it’s also because he wants to, and we will undertake no special measures to arrest the deterioration. Only carry on as usual. Is that clear?”

“I—yes.” The nurse slowly closed the draperies, then touched a switch that lit two shaded brass sconces on either side of the bed. The only other illumination in the room came from the machine readouts, the small lamp at the nursing station, and a single candle in a ruby-glass cup, mounted beneath a wall crucifix opposite the bed.

“Please ask my family to come in now.”

“Yes, Professor.” She went out, closing the door softly behind her.

Denis lifted the coverlet and took out Victor’s arms, folding them across his breast. The comatose man was dressed in gold silk pajamas, and none of the life-supportive equipment was visible. His handsome face had lost its usual ruddiness to the anemia but seemed otherwise normal, with the hint of a smile lingering about the bluish, motionless lips. Victor’s crisply curled black hair had no more strands of silver in it now than it had had twenty-six years before, when he was struck down by … something on top of Mount Washington at the start of the Great Intervention.

Victor Remillard had killed nearly a hundred people without compunction, including his father and several of his own siblings. He had stolen billions of dollars and violated a bookful of criminal, financial, and commercial regulatory laws. He had conspired with the maniacal Kieran O’Connor
to seize control of Earth’s satellite laser-defense system. And he had very nearly managed to murder the cream of operant humanity, the three thousand delegates of the Last Metapsychic Congress, on the very day of Intervention.

Victor had also had the opportunity to ruminate over his sins ever since, thanks to his brother Denis.

“Vic,” Denis whispered. “Vic, have you found the truth? Have you finally discovered where you went wrong?”

Mind wide open and completely receptive, Denis listened.

Rogi was at the tail end of the procession as they trooped up to Vic’s bedroom, the seven metapsychic stalwarts of the Remillard Dynasty, their brave spouses, and him—scared shitless. At least baby Marc had been spared. The nurse had taken charge of him when Teresa declined to put him into the care of poor fey Yvonne, who now stood downstairs in the hall with Louis and Leon, the three of them watching with haunted expressions as the others climbed the stairs.

The bedroom furnishings, of dark and massive oak, were exactly as Rogi remembered them from twenty-four years earlier. The life-support gadgetry was more compact and sophisticated now, and there were new rugs and draperies and hangings about the bed. But the blackened old crucifix with its red vigil light was the one poor lost Sunny, Don’s wife, had nailed up as a newlywed in the cottage on School Street; and the face of the man lying in the bed still struck Rogi with a terror so profound that he found himself reeling and had to clutch at the back of a chair to keep from fleeing the room.

The participants in the ritual were ranging themselves about the bed in couples. On the left side, nearest Victor’s head, stood Philip Remillard, portly and comfortably homely, oldest of the seven siblings and the shrewd CEO of Remco Industries. With each passing year he reminded Rogi more and more of good old Onc’ Louie, the hardworking mill foreman who had raised him. Philip’s elegant wife, Aurelie Dalembert, stood calmly at his side, fingering a crystal rosary. She and her late sister Jeanne, who had married the second son of Denis and Lucille, had made careers of being wives to men destined for greatness and mothers of their children. Maurice Remillard, as fair and mild-looking as Denis but more sturdily built, had recently taken an
extended leave of absence from the Department of Sociology at Columbia University to join his three younger siblings, Anne, Adrien, and Paul, as an administrator in the Human Polity of the Galactic Milieu. His second wife, Dr. Cecilia Ashe, wearing country tweeds in contrast to the dark suits and dresses of the other women, was looking down at the comatose man with clinical interest. Next to her stood Severin Remillard, who had been Cecilia’s colleague in the Department of Neurology at Dartmouth Medical School and her unsuccessful wooer. He was a tall blond man with a dashing air and an iconoclastic view of the Galactic Milieu, which Rogi tended to sympathize with. Severin’s third wife, Maeve O’Neill, formerly a successful Irish horse-breeder, was a ravishing redhead, now pale as milk and with her large eyes alight with apprehension, flinching away from her husband’s proffered arm.

On the right side of the bed’s foot, standing hand in hand with their minds entwined in mutual redactive commiseration, were Catherine Remillard and her husband Brett Doyle McAllister, colleagues in a Child Latency Project at the Polity capital, where both were also Intendancy bureaucrats. Next to them were Adrien Remillard and the wealthy pop sculptor Cheri Losier-Drake. Like Maeve, Cheri looked unhappy and anxious. Her husband, for all his metapsychic talents, was often considered by family detractors to be a rough-hewn, slightly unfinished prototype of the youngest and most famous member of the dynasty, Paul. Paul Remillard was not only tall, built like an athlete, and endowed with princely good looks, but he also possessed what was perhaps the most powerful set of metafaculties in the entire human race. He had married the acclaimed coloratura soprano Teresa Kendall. Besides Marc, their eldest, they had an infant daughter named Marie. The unborn child Teresa carried, also a girl, was to be called Madeleine.

The only unmarried sibling, Intendant Associate Anne Remillard, came up to Rogi with a sardonic twinkle in her ice-blue eyes and coerced him to stand at her side near Catherine and Brett, on the side of the room nearest the door. Denis himself stood next to them, at the very foot of the bed.

As always, the Remillards faced the crucifix and recited La Oraison Dominicale in the French language of their ancestors. Aurelie, Cecilia, and Teresa, who were also Catholics,
joined in the prayer. Rogi was too petrified to utter a sound.

Then Denis spoke softly. “Thank you all for coming. Especially you, Cecilia, because I realize this family custom must seem bizarre to you this first time … and you, Uncle Rogi, for reasons that I know you would rather I didn’t discuss.”

Someone coughed, and there was a general shuffling of feet.

“For Cecilia’s sake,” Denis continued, “let me explain what we are about to do. I intend to link all of our minds in a metaconcert and pray in a very special way for my brother Victor. For over twenty-six years he has lain in this room, in a deep coma. We know from the monitoring machine that he thinks. Orderly thought patterns that are almost certainly rational are generated by his brain. But he is totally cut off from the world of sensation, receiving no input at all as far as we have been able to ascertain. Victor is alone with his thoughts, alone with his memories, alone with recollections of the terrible crimes he committed. It has always been my personal prayer—my hope—that Victor would ultimately repent of what he had done, and when this was accomplished he would either recover or pass peacefully into death.”

Denis paused and turned his gaze upon Rogi, who was caught by those coercive blue eyes like a jacklighted deer, too frozen even to feel fear. And then Denis looked away.

“Recently, Victor’s body has suffered a severe decline in hematopoiesis, the manufacture of blood cells. In a person with the self-rejuvenating gene complex, this signifies a very grave prognosis. My brother is dying, and this is probably our last chance to come together on his behalf. Now let us prepare our minds for the metaconcert … Cecilia, the process is a very simple one for the participants in the configuration I’ve designed. Just open your mind wide, with all barriers as low as possible, and
trust me
. I’ll do the linkage very slowly, one of you at a time. When the concert is complete, I’ll direct it. You need do nothing except relax. Ready?”

Rogi closed his eyes. Immediately, a deluge of memories seemed to engulf him. He seemed to see again his twin brother Donnie, whose juvenile assaults on his mind—non-malicious in the beginning—had prompted in Rogi the
spontaneous development of strong mental shielding. Only once had the two of them conjoined in a self-defensive, triumphant metaconcert. But after that, seeking to renew the experience, Donnie had instead attempted to violate Rogi’s self, make the two of them into an inseparable whole. When Rogi refused, Donnie hated him—and hated himself for the hating—until the day that he died.

In the mnemonic flood, Rogi also saw Don’s son, baby Denis, at the baptismal font, felt the new young mind bond to him. Denis had made Rogi his adoptive father, taking the love Rogi vouchsafed to him freely after his own father had denied him—in favor of Victor. As young Denis’s mind matured and the shy child turned into one of the great minds of the world, Rogi had learned to fear him—even though the love was still there as well—and especially to fear joining mentally with him in metaconcert. Denis would never knowingly harm his beloved foster father; but he was so powerful, so
different
, that Rogi could not help being afraid.

He was very much afraid now.

Rogi’s mental screens were still up; he had defied Denis, refused conjunction at the last moment, so that the others had been forced to complete the mind-edifice without him. Rogi was dimly aware of the metaconcert hovering apart from him, engrossed in whatever esoteric activity Denis was conjuring. Elsewhere, deep within the ineffable, immense dynamic field of mental lattices that was called the aether, something without tangible form was looking at Rogi.

Not Denis. Not Victor. Not any of the other persons who had gathered around the bed, nor anyone that Rogi knew.

Something else watched him from deep within a great mental chasm, a thing horrible that encompassed an evil beyond anything he had ever experienced before. Rogi had known Kieran O’Connor and Victor Remillard, the two most iniquitous minds that the human race had ever spawned; but this thing was worse. And it was beckoning to him.

Who are you? Rogi asked.

And it said:
I am Fury
.