Galactic Milieu - Diamond Mask Part 10

"How's your little boy doing?" Maurice inquired. "Settling in at Dartmouth? I don't think Cecilia and I have seen him since Marc's birthday party in February. Amazing, the way the two of them seem to relate almost like colleagues rather than big brother and kid brother."

"One of the matters we're going to discuss involves Jack's collaboration with Marc," Paul said.

"Oh-oh. That'll be the new CE rig," Philip guessed shrewdly. "Marc told me he'd had flak from the Concilium Science Directorate already, and the news of the proposed design modification isn't a week old."

Paul c.o.c.ked his head, listening to something inaudible, then let out a sigh. "Papa's finally here. Elsie Fitch is aiming him in our direction. Now we can get on with this b.l.o.o.d.y d.a.m.ned conference."

Maurice said, "Are things really as serious as all that, Paul? I realize that Marc's mind-booster research is ethically problematical, and Sevvy and Adrien's anti-Unity faction has embarra.s.sed you before the media. But surely-"

"There's more," the First Magnate broke in. "And it's as serious as it gets ... Anne, if you're sending in drink orders, make mine a Scotch rocks. Double. Somehow I don't think plain iced tea is going to do me much good this evening."

DENIS: h.e.l.lo, children.

PHILIP+MAURICE+SEVERIN+ANNE+CATHERINE+ADRIEN: [Murmurs of greeting.]

PAUL: Good evening, Papa. I'm glad you could join us. Can I offer you a drink? A Hawkeye? Certainly. Excuse me for a moment while I turn on this sigma ... There. Now we're ready to begin our family conference.

DENIS: You're shielding us, Paul? For heaven's sake, what's wrong?

PAUL: What we're going to discuss concerns the family and the innermost circle of the Concilium. It's vital that no one else hears about it-most particularly not the Planetary Dirigent of Earth.

DENIS: Davy MacGregor? But- PAUL: Please, Papa. I'll explain. I've just returned from Scotland. Three unusual murders were committed there a week ago. I have positive proof that the killer was Hydra.

VARIOUS: [Expletives and gasps.]

ANNE: The four missing Remillard children? ...

PAUL: My own investigators, a forensic evaluation team from the Galactic Magistratum under Throma'eloo Lek, and the local police have gathered a fair amount of information about the perpetrators-although Lek and his Krondak a.s.sociates in Orb are the only ones aside from the Lylmik Supervisors who know their true ident.i.ty. Quentin, Parnell, Celine, and my own daughter Madeleine have been living on Islay in the Inner Hebrides ever since they disappeared eight years ago on the night Uncle Rogi and Jack were attacked.

SEVERIN: Son of a b.i.t.c.h.

PAUL: The Hydra-children fabricated new ident.i.ties with the help of some unknown adult who has access to nearly unlimited, untraceable funds. Since the planet-scan done at the time of their disappearance failed to pinpoint them, we have also a.s.sumed ... that they were able to change their mental signatures.

CATHERINE: Impossible!

PAUL: According to current Milieu technology, yes. But it was done. We're virtually certain that the children themselves lacked the expertise to manage the alteration. It must have been done by Fury, Hydra's adult controller. It was probably also Fury in an illusionary aspect who posed as the guardian of the four children during their stay on Islay. And no one but Fury could have helped them escape again after these latest killings without leaving a single clue to their whereabouts.

MAURICE: And the Galactic Magistratum has the whole story?

PAUL: Evaluator Throma'eloo Lek was practically a material witness.

SEVERIN: Oh, s.h.i.t.

PAUL: The Evaluator was vacationing on the island when it happened. He recognized Hydra's modus operandi from his investigations of the earlier deaths and immediately called me. Here's a precis of the findings.

[Data.]

As you can see, Lek's bureau of the Magistratum knows almost everything except Fury's ident.i.ty and a plausible motive for the murders- CATHERINE: And where the fugitive Hydra-children have gone.

PAUL: [Nods.]

MAURICE: This opens the old can of worms all over again. Any one of us could be Fury-or none of us! What does the Galactic Magistratum intend to do about the Dynasty?

PAUL: In this matter, as in the earlier crimes, Lek and his people ceded authority to the Lylmik Supervisors. I offered them our joint resignation from the Concilium and suggested that we all accept voluntary preventive incarceration.

[Stunned silence.]

My proposal was turned down. The Lylmik were adamant that we retain our official positions, and they intend to keep the continuing investigation as confidential as possible so that we won't be tainted by scandal. But their protection will cease if the truth somehow leaks out. If Davy MacGregor or some other hostile magnate finds out about this matter and formally demands our impeachment, we'll have to put it to a special vote of the plenary Concilium.

SEVERIN: And end up f.u.c.ked to a fare-thee-well.

MAURICE: Is there a chance of keeping it under wraps?

PAUL: The Hydra-children were living in Scotland under a.s.sumed names. They'll keep those names as far as lower-level law-enforcement bodies are concerned. The manhunt will go on-but not for young Remillards. Their DNA a.s.says have been transferred to the fict.i.tious ident.i.ties along with all of the other forensic material.

ANNE: [troubled] It's the same kind of cover-up that we had eight years ago. At the time I thought the deception was despicable. I don't like it any better now!

PHILIP: Disclose the fact that the Hydra has killed again and Davy MacGregor will surely make the entire affair public- including the fact of Fury's existence and its probable relation to us. At the very least, we'll all be forced to resign from the Concilium. And to what end?

ANNE: Truth. Honesty. The prevention of further killings! ... Oh, G.o.d, Phil, I don't know. Why are the Lylmik so determined to protect our family-to the point of letting five homicidal maniacs remain at large?

PAUL: Annie, it's useless to agonize about this unless you're prepared to defy the authority of the Supervisors and condemn the lot of us to disgrace and probably to imprisonment as well. All for the sake of a moral abstraction! No matter what we may suspect, there's no more evidence now that one of us is Fury than there was eight years ago. Of course, we'll all be interrogated again by Lek-but it's largely pro forma. The Galactic Magistratum doesn't expect to learn anything new.

PHILIP: What about Marc?

PAUL: He'll also be put to the question, since he's also a Grand Master who was a suspect in the earlier crimes. We'll have to swear him to secrecy as well.

MAURICE: Has the Magistratum had any luck tracing the movements of the Hydra-children after the crime?

PAUL: No. The four fugitives could have escaped from Earth by a.s.suming the ident.i.ties of genuine human pa.s.sengers after having disposed of the originals, but we think it's more likely that Fury created completely new ident.i.ties and inserted them into the Human Vital Statistics Database.

ADRIEN: No way! Do you know how many layers of encryption would have to be penetrated in order to accomplish that? How many backups would have to be modified? And to make the sneetch foolproof, Fury would have to cook every single human vital-stat database in the Galactic Milieu. We're talking more than seven thousand planets, exotic as well as human, to say nothing of the Lylmiks' central database at Concilium Orb!

PAUL: There was a brief anomaly noted at Earth VitalStat in Geneva just before noon on the day after the Scottish murders. The same kind of momentary glitch affected the database at Orb pip-two-six Galactic hours later. We've since learned that every other vital-statistic system in the Milieu experienced an anomalous data modification in a cascade of impulses propagated via subs.p.a.ce from the Orb central system. The modification was complete within twelve nanoseconds. All of the databases are currently in complete accord. It took a Lylmik to uncover the cascade and deduce what must have happened. There's no way of identifying the fudged data.

PHILIP: Good G.o.d. The hack couldn't have been electronic. It had to be mental ...

PAUL: Hitting the computer at Geneva must have been child's play for Fury. But to reach the base at Orb, he'd need a shaped PK-creative impulse in the gigawatt range.

SEVERIN: I'm impressed.

ADRIEN: Paul, not to put too fine a point on it, but who among us, with the possible exception of you and Marc and Jack, has the potential to perform a humongous mind-ploy like that? G.o.d knows I couldn't zorch a computer system four thousand lightyears away with a shaped thought to save my soul. Maybe Fury's outsmarted himself by showing off! A simple review of our metapsychic armamentaria should show who in the family is a go and who's a no-go in the PK and creativity necessary to pull off the stunt.

SEVERIN: Don't forget Marc's new brain-bucket. What's it supposed to do? Augment creativity thirty times?

CATHERINE: But he only has a design as yet-nothing operable.

ADRIEN: Marc gongs out of sight in creativity with only his naked gray. So does Jack.

PAUL: [irritably] Dammit, Jack's not a suspect! He wasn't even born when Brett and Margaret Strayhorn were killed, and he wasn't conceived until twelve years after Vic died. There's no way that boy could be Fury.

SEVERIN: Marc was there at Victor's deathbed, though. He was a baby, but he was near enough for Victor to have ... infected him. His mind surpa.s.ses all others in our family in every metafaculty. If we concede that Fury must be a Remillard, then Marc is the most logical suspect PAUL: I-I had reluctantly come to that conclusion myself.

ANNE: No. It won't wash.

PAUL: Why not?

ANNE: You've all forgotten the reason why we weren't exonerated by Davy MacGregor after twice pa.s.sing the truth tests on the Cambridge machine.

CATHERINE: The possibility of multiple-personality disorder. Of course!

DENIS: That does const.i.tute a very plausible hypothesis for Fury. I've devoted a whole chapter to the dysfunction in my new book, Criminal Insanity in the Operant Mind.

[Data.]

If one of us has this affliction, a second persona-normally submerged and imperceptible to the core personality-could be the malignant ent.i.ty called Fury. This second persona might possess an entirely different metapsychic complexus. It could be much more powerful than the core as well as driven by a different moral imperative: Victor's ...

CATHERINE: Papa, there is no psychiatric evidence whatsoever for the transfer of a persona from a dying mind to a living one. In the recognized forms of multiple-personality disorder, the additional personas are generated in reaction to some profound trauma suffered by the core, and they split off from the core.

DENIS: That's true. But- SEVERIN: A last-ditch a.s.sault by Vic was enough of a trauma to st.i.tch five fetal minds into a homicidal monster and turn poor old Louis and Leon and Yvonne into cold meat. Who can tell what else Vic might have done, striking out at the rest of us?

PAUL: And finding the one who was unconsciously vulnerable.

DENIS: If only I had not brought us all together that last Good Friday! If I had not led that presumptuous prayer! If I'd simply withheld water and nourishment when it was obvious that Victor would never emerge from his coma- ANNE: Papa, don't castigate yourself all over again. You did what you thought was best at the time. You aren't to blame.

ADRIEN: If anyone is, it's Vic. How the flaming h.e.l.l could such a depraved thing be born of man and woman?

ANNE: The engendering of a moral monster is one of life's great mysteries. But there's one thing that psychologists and theologians agree on: In almost every case, monsters are made, not conceived.

SEVERIN: Then who or what made Vic?

DENIS: I've thought a lot about that. And I've talked the subject into the ground with Uncle Rogi, sifting through some of his memories of Victor's childhood and of our parents, Don and Sunny. You all know that my poor father had a neurotic dread of his own metabilities and also a profound self-hatred. It turned him into an alcoholic and ultimately led to his death. I was Don's firstborn and my very obvious powers terrified him. Victor, the second child, was more subtle in his operancy from the very beginning and Don adored him. Made him his pet. My mother was an old-fashioned Catholic who thought birth control was sinful. She had ten children, one after another, and each time she was pregnant Don's alcoholism intensified-perhaps from his sense of inadequacy because he was unable to earn a decent living, perhaps from s.e.xual frustration if Sunny denied him or if he found her repugnant when she was with child. Don might have turned elsewhere for gratification, especially when he was crazed by alcohol. It's taken me a long time to admit this to myself, but I now suspect that Don might have had good reason for self-hatred during his sober moments.

CATHERINE: Oh, sweet Jesus. Not that.

DENIS: Uncle Rogi says there was never any hint of it. I remember nothing of the sort. But by the time Vic was a toddler, he was already a mental thug. He coerced every one of my siblings into latency when they were infants, and played s.a.d.i.s.tic games with them. Whatever unspeakable trauma turned my brother into a monster first happened when he was very young. He would have repressed the memory of it, of course.

CATHERINE: [abstractedly] It affects different victims in different ways. Many of them survive to live almost normal lives. Some are left emotional cripples until therapy helps them drain away the old poison. A few are so wounded that their only release is in wounding others. The wickedness isn't completely involuntary, however. We psychologists took quite some time to concede that. Always, somewhere along the line, the nascent monster chooses to do what he or she knows is evil. Genuine insanity and lack of culpability may follow, but in the beginning there is always that fatal yes.

[A long silence.]

PHILIP: [doggedly] Victor Remillard is dead. His sins-his guilt or innocence-are beside the point. The thing called Fury, whoever and whatever it is, is alive but apparently inaccessible. As I understand it, we have no idea how to uncover and eliminate Fury, but its creature Hydra is another kettle of fish. What are we going to do about those four wretched young people? Simply hope that the Magistratum will eventually track them down?

ANNE: I think we have a moral obligation to hunt them ourselves.

PAUL: I think so, too ... but maybe not for the same reasons Anne does. I've been considering possible long-range motivations that the Fury-Hydra combine may have. Certainly it's slaughtered people casually, apparently for no reason other than to slake its beastly appet.i.te. But the killing of Brett seemed consequential, and so did Margaret's murder. And if Rogi and Marc and Jack had died, Fury would have been rid of one inconvenient old man who knew too much, and two highly independent, extremely righteous Remillards who are arguably the most powerful non-Lylmik minds in the galaxy. Now we have the latest atrocity: the killing of three Scottish researchers. Was it simply feeding time at the zoo? Perhaps not. The Scots had nearly completed a detailed study on CE operator safety. Not starship control-hats or other conventional cerebroenergetic applications but the most sophisticated kind of mind-boosting.

PHILIP: Like Marc's.

PAUL: Exactly. Do you realize what would happen to Marc's E15 research project at Dartmouth if a highly reputable study condemned his work as unacceptably hazardous to the human mind?

SEVERIN: At the least, there'd be a departmental review and Marc's enemies on the faculty would have a field day sniping at him. At the worst, the whole E15 project might be axed ... and Marc would very likely resign his professorship.

PAUL: I checked out the work of the murdered researchers. It seemed to conclude that there was no serious risk in using upper-end CE. But when I talked to a close relative of one of the victims, who is a respected scientist herself and a grandmastercla.s.s operant, she recalled conversations implying that the research had pointed to the opposite conclusion.

ANNE: The hyperhacker strikes again, altering the data?

PAUL: I can't prove it. But suppose Fury sees Marc and his work as potentially useful?

ADRIEN: Hydra's creativity brain-boosted! Christ ... that's the way the thing kills, isn't it?

DENIS: There is a redactive component to Hydra's lifeforce-draining procedure as well as a perversion of creativity, but the creative metafaculty has the greatest potential for misuse. It might be directed into any number of destructive activities, including mental lasers and fire-raising-the kind of thing your mother did inadvertently when she was a disturbed young woman. The faculty is present on the Remillard side of the family as well. I don't know if Uncle Rogi ever told you children, but he managed a bit of energy-projection himself many years ago. He melted a hole in a windowpane. The mental wattage wasn't large, however, and Rogi only accomplished it under conditions of extraordinary stress. I've never had any indication that you children or I have this aspect of creativity, but it's certainly possible.

PHILIP: [quietly] It's part of the family heritage, even if we've never been crazy enough to sharpen the faculty up and use it.

SEVERIN: Yet! The possibilities are verrrry intriguing.

CATHERINE: Don't joke about it, Sevvy. Don't you dare joke about it. I saw what that d.a.m.nable power could do-did!-to my husband. I'll see it for the rest of my life ... And if we've judged correctly, the monster's only motive for murdering Brett was to force me to become a Magnate of the Concilium. But why is Fury dedicated to this-this twisted notion of Remillard family aggrandizement?

MAURICE: If Fury is one of us, as we suspect, he or she might have some mad scheme to manipulate the rest of the family. Not by bald-faced coercion but by other, more subtle means.

CATHERINE: But why?

PAUL: To dominate the Milieu.

SEVERIN: [laughs] Seems to me that we're doing fair to middling along those lines already: six well-polarized magnates; one Lord High Panjandrum of the entire human race; our revered sire the Grand Old Man of Metapsychology-who keeps getting nominated to the Concilium and keeps turning it down; and young Jack the Amazing Superbrain. Remillards Uber Alles! And if Marc isn't nominated to the Concilium and affirmed a Paramount Grand Master next session, then I'm a monkey's uncle instead of his.

[Uneasy chuckles.]

DENIS: [testily] Paul, you must convince the Concilium to stop nominating me to be a magnate. I'm not interested in politics. I don't think that Marc is, either.

ADRIEN: I hope Marc does get nominated and I hope he accepts. We Rebels could use a big gun on our side- ANNE: What makes you think Marc would go along with your undermining of the Milieu?

SEVERIN: Ask him yourself, Reverend Sister.

ANNE: I certainly shall!

PAUL: [forcefully] The fact that Sevvy and Adrien are prominent in the anti-Unity party poses a very serious problem when taken in conjunction with the reappearance of Fury and Hydra. Objective observers-such as the Lylmik-might now see the Rebel movement as the beginning of an attempt to dissociate humanity from the Milieu altogether. A scheme like that, using Remillards as catalysts, would seem to play right into the hands of Fury ... if the monster really does aim to dominate the galaxy.

ADRIEN: [hotly] Wouldn't you and your gang of exotic a.s.s-lickers like to think so! Is that what you've got up your sleeve? Using the Fury thing to discredit the loyal opposition? Well, lotsa luck, Number One! The Rebel party is no more dependent upon Sevvy and me than the pro-Unity gang is dependent upon you and Annie!

SEVERIN: Your idea won't fly, Paul. Before the Human Polity got the franchise, opposing Unity was high treason. Now it's a perfectly legitimate political option. The exotics don't like it, but they've conceded our right to hold the position.

ADRIEN: And that position is getting more viable by the minute! The whole d.a.m.ned galaxy knows that our group isn't a gang of crazed anarchists coerced by some shadowy Satan. We're honest magnates and respected citizens. We simply believe that Earthlings shouldn't trade personal freedom and individuality for an exotic security blanket guaranteeing peace and happiness forever in the Great Unified Beehive.

ANNE: Unity isn't like that!