Galactic Milieu - Diamond Mask Part 27

For the first time, the corners of her lips turned up in a hint of mischief. "Can you make it really weird?"

I put the book inside the dojigger, selected the BAD TASTE- MILD option, and hit the pad. A few moments later the finished present plopped out: screaming orange paper imprinted with motifs from Bambi Meets G.o.dzilla, all tied up with a glittering cerise ribbon. Dorothee was delighted.

Outside, the sky had started to spit snow pellets, those horrible little white bits like micro-popcorn that sting the face so badly when the wind is strong. I asked the girl if she would like to wait in the shop for a while and have a cup of cocoa by the fire until the nasty stuff either stopped or turned into honest snow.

Again I felt the brief touch of her prudent mental scrutiny, affirming that I was only a Kindly Geezer rather than a Dirty Old Man. She accepted my invitation-and at that point our long friendship began.

Marcel, purring like an outboard motor, sat happily on her lap as we chatted, and by the time she left, nearly an hour later, I had learned a fair amount about her background and she had cleverly extracted from me information about the Remillard family that I was not accustomed to share with casual acquaintances.

In the three years that followed, Dorothee came to The Eloquent Page every other week or so. At first she feigned an interest in my wares, but finally she admitted that she just liked to talk to me. She needed an adult operant with no axe to grind as a confidant, and none of the personnel at the Preceptorial Inst.i.tute filled the bill. Neither did her grandmother Masha, who had taken a Visiting Professorship at Dartmouth's Department of Metapsychology in order to remain close to the girl and her brother. The professor and her husband, the subversive comic novelist Kyle Macdonald-my ancient drinking buddy, as you may recall-had made a nice home for the children in a rented house on the south side of Hanover. But neither Masha nor Kyle were types who invited childish trust. I apparently am, as any attentive reader of these memoirs may have deduced, and it has got me into a peck of trouble for my pains.

But what the h.e.l.l.

At that time in my life things were tranquil enough. The bookshop was almost profitable, I was having a protracted no-strings affair with a delicious sloe-eyed librarian named Surya Gupta who worked at the Public Database around the corner, and the Remillard family members were engrossed in their own arcane machinations and not in need of a cantankerous but sympathetic father figure. Little Dorothee was.

So I got to hear blow-by-blow accounts of her painful progress from suboperant to adept metapsychic, and from mastercla.s.s operant to Grand Master Fa.r.s.ensor, Creator, Coercer, Redactor, and Psychokinetic. The ultimate accolade of paramount status waited in the wings, dependent upon her rooting out the last of the inhibiting dross in her unconscious and activating the full potential of her mind. Besides lending a sympathetic ear to stories of her travails at the Inst.i.tute, I made sure she learned the civilized behavior patterns and important bits of "metiquette" that kids raised in operant homes take for granted.

Dorothee was Cat Remillard's star pupil, and at the same time she acquired an education in our local ivy-clad halls of academe, majoring in higher mathematics and theoretical physics. Her hobbies were birdwatching (of which more anon), skiing, and hiking. She also enjoyed sewing her own clothes and creating jewelry, grinding the gemstones and doing the metalwork, too. Her favorite piece was a reproduction, in white gold and the relatively inexpensive diamonds of Caledonia, sent to her by her father, of a piece of costume jewelry she had cherished as a young child. She wore the small diamond-studded domino mask on a thin chain around her neck as a good-luck charm.

Dorothee sometimes came to the bookshop with her brother, a pleasantly nerdish youth two years her senior, who was also in training at the Preceptorial Inst.i.tute. I let Ken Macdonald use my database to hunt inexpensive collectible fantasy books in return for his doing ch.o.r.es such as packing mail orders and cleaning up the cat latrine. (I was never able to train this particular Marcel to use modern kitty sanitary facilities. He demanded, and got, a sandbox.) Ken had chosen to major in metapsychology. It bothered him not a whit that his mindpowers weren't as phenomenal as those of his baby sister.

My peaceful interlude as mentor to a saint in the making came to a crashing end in October of 2072.

Dorothee was fifteen years old by then and just finishing her postgraduate work. She had matured physically into a young woman of small stature, and was still too shy and preoccupied with her studies to be much interested in boys. Her manner was restrained-even enigmatic-but she had already developed the personal attribute that normals call "presence." No one would ever have mistaken her for an ordinary operant girl.

Like other powerful metas, Dorothee routinely suppressed her aura; but there was still a palpable air of specialness about her that she was unable to disguise-even though she tried. It was by no means the "odor of sanct.i.ty" that her legend imputes to her. Neither did she have Marc's daunting charisma nor Jack's fey and quasi-mystical aspect. The closest I can come to describing the quality she projected is ... steadfastness. Behind that little face, nearly expressionless for much of the time, was a person bound and determined to pursue her own Grail in spite of any obstacles the world or her own mind or body put in the way.

Now that her metafaculties were confirmed to be grandmastercla.s.s or above, it was expected that she would be nominated to the Concilium when she reached adulthood at sixteen, just as Jack had been. She was not looking forward to magnateship and the public revelation of her mental talents. Her near-paramount status had been kept quiet, and most of the operant students and faculty at Dartmouth knew nothing about it; but the fact of having all five of the higher mindpowers in the top category would be enough to make her a galactic celebrity. "High Five" metapsychics were rather common amongst the Krondaku (and the Lylmik, of course), but the other races boasted only a handful of them. Humanity, at that time, only had eleven (not including the two paramounts) that had been verified by MPC testing. The only adults in the group were Paul and Anne Remillard, Davy MacGregor, Cordelia Warshaw (nee Warszawska), who was the Intendant General of Earth, and Edward Hua-Kuo Chung, the Commander-in-Chief of the Fourteenth Fleet I had been aware for some time that Dorothee had a mysterious antipathy toward Jack, which he admitted was "his own fault" but declined to elaborate on further. She had continually refused to meet him face to face and he had not forced himself upon her. I never suspected that Dorothee's soul-struggles actually involved any person other than herself and the imaginary demons each one of us must confront, nor had the thought ever crossed my mind that she had been less than honest with me.

Then I made a very unpleasant discovery.

I had gone down to Concord, the Polity capital, to visit Severin Remillard in his spiffy new townhouse. I'd known Sevvie from the time he was a sc.r.a.ppy infant rebelling against the pacifistic philosophy espoused by his parents and most of the other pre-Intervention operants. I'd stood by him through the breakup of three marriages (one his own fault, the other two not), and surrept.i.tiously encouraged him to follow his conscience and his younger brother Adrien and join the Rebel faction of magnates. Like me, Sevvie had a happy-go-lucky streak that went against the High Seriousness considered appropriate in the most exalted operant circles. He hip-hopped from one Concilium Directorate to another without ever seeming to find a committee with work he genuinely cared about, which drove his brother Paul and his straitlaced sister Anne to distraction. A tall, fair-haired, rather cynical individual, he was actually happiest plotting with his anti-Unity cohorts. It was inevitable that he would stand at the forefront of the Metapsychic Rebellion in 2083.

Since Sevvie was the least priggish of the family stalwarts and a sometime professional redactor and neurosurgeon, I had gone on this occasion to seek his help in a delicate problem peculiar to the masculine gender. My adorable young librarian, Surya, had tried to be patient and understanding with me, but I had disappointed her far too often of late, and I feared that if I didn't find some way to stiffen my resolve, she would seek a more talented bed companion.

To his credit, Sevvie didn't laugh when I told him my predicament. We sat together on his balcony overlooking the autumn colors of the Merrimack Valley, he considering treatment options and I observing morosely that it was a long, long while from May to December, and my days weren't the only thing growing short as I reached September.

"Well, you are a hundred and twenty-seven years old, Uncle Rogi," Severin observed.

"And you're sixty-nine and I'm as immortal as you are, dammit! I feel just fine otherwise and I haven't even been overindulging all that much. But my libido's sagging like a tired souffle."

"You could try some poppers. Caledonian Sunrise would tumefy an Egyptian mummy."

"I don't like those things," I grumped. "Might as well be goosed by a moose. Can't you redact whatever's wrong? It's gotta be all in my mind. Maybe I'm just tired of the lady and don't want to admit it."

Severin sighed and rose from his wicker chair. "Come inside then, and let me rummage around inside your brain-pan. Maybe you're suffering from a mild depression."

I shuffled in after him and arranged myself on a white leather sofa strewn with black pet.i.t-point pillows. He pulled up a matching leather pouf, ordered me to close my eyes, and put his hand on my forehead. My lights went out.

When I came to, my grandnephew was pacing the floor with a fierce scowl on his face. My groin ached dully. I elbowed myself up and bleated, "What's wrong? Is it prostate cancer?"

"Don't be an idiot," he snapped. "You're healthy as a horse." He helped me to my feet. "And hung like one, too. I fixed what was wrong. You'll stop hurting in a minute. Your block and tackle went into action mode in antic.i.p.ation after the redact job. I had to put the brakes on a bit crudely."

Oh, joy! I was a man again! I limped after Severin to the well-appointed wet bar behind his gilded grand piano. "What was the matter with me?"

He poured a double shot of Wild Turkey and handed it over. "Uncle Rogi, somebody has systematically subjected you to a very subtle type of powerful coercive-redactive probing. Apparently, it's been going on over a period of two years or more. The reaming was probably imperceptible to you while it was being done, but it had adverse and c.u.mulative side effects on the hypothalamus and limbic septum, which I've repaired. Your love life is now back on the rails ... but I suggest that you review the Grand Master Coercer-Redactors of your acquaintance and find out which one is the likeliest to have tossed your cerebrum."

I choked on my booze. "No!" I cried. "She couldn't have!"

Severin shrugged. Fortunately, I had not attached my words to a legible mental image. "Get another girlfriend," he advised. "One who's too weak in coercion to slip into your mind when your bells are chiming. G.o.d knows your mind-screen's strong enough to repel all boarders when you're not shtonkered or o.r.g.a.s.mic."

"Merde," I groaned. "Merde et contremerde!" And then I had sense enough to keep my mouth zipped and my mind shut tight. s.e.x and drinking had nothing to do with my violation. There was only one person aside from my great-grandnephew Ti-Jean who could have perpetrated a ream-job without a trace, and only one who would have had the opportunity, the talent, and the blatant chutzpah to do it in a public place, in the course of a casual conversation: Little Dorothea Macdonald.

I was going to have to confront her with what she had done, even though it might mean the end of our friendship.

I have mentioned that Dorothee, like myself, was an enthusiastic birdwatcher. Both of us belonged to the local branch of the Audubon Society, met frequently at its meetings and outings, and tipped each other off when a rara avis blew into town. On a certain lovely Sunday in mid-October we made a date to go down to the evergreen woodland bordering the Connecticut River after 11:30 Ma.s.s. I told her about an uncommon pileated woodp.e.c.k.e.r that had been reported lurking among the towering white pines, and we planned to photograph it.

We sat on rocks beside the river, eating the Jarlsberg sandwiches and mola.s.ses cookies she had brought and drinking my contribution, winesap apple cider. Serious p.e.c.k.e.rwood hunting was supposed to commence after lunch.

I got down to the real business at hand right off the bat.

"Dorothee, I've learned something that disturbs me very much. Some person, a very powerful coercer-redactor, has been probing my mind without my consent. I think that person is you."

"Me?" she exclaimed, all indignant. "Me, prying into your mind? What in the world gave you that idea?"

"Don't try that reverse-question gimmick on me, kiddo," I retorted, looking sad and betrayed. "And spare me the hurt feelings act, too. It's taken me long enough to discover what you were doing-but then I never was accused of being the sharpest thorn on the family rosebush. You've been grubbing around my brain almost from the first day we met, haven't you."

She looked away toward the river. "Yes. It was necessary that I obtain the life-history and detailed psychosocial profile of you and every one of the older Remillard family members, plus Marc and his siblings. The information I got was incomplete, but it sufficed for my purposes. I probed you the most extensively because you've lived so long and made so many objective judgments about members of the family. But I also probed all of the others except Marc and Jack, who stayed out of reach."

Whatever excuse I had expected for the reaming, this wasn't it. "For G.o.d's sake, why?"

"The Remillards are the most prominent human family in the Milieu, but very little about their private lives or mental attributes has ever been published. You know that complete metapsychic a.s.says of operant newborns have only been mandatory for the past fourteen years. For individuals born before 2068, the complete a.s.say is only optional. Since the procedure is likely to be painful for an adult, few older operants have submitted to it-and that includes all of the Remillards except Paul and Anne. I needed the information for a very important research project."

"You reamed the lot of us for research? C'est drolement couillon!" I scoffed.

She had no trouble at all deciphering my meaning, which roughly equates to "bovine fecal matter," and her little face flushed with chagrin.

"I'm telling the truth," she insisted. "My-my research project is private, but it's consequential. You may verify my statement coercively if you wish."

"I'm no good at reaming, and you know it." But I was capable of erecting and maintaining a cosmic-cla.s.s mental barricade if my life depended upon it, and I had an uncanny feeling that it just might. Now that I was forewarned, Dorothee would never again probe me with impunity.

"You've been using me, young lady," I continued, "and that's tacky behavior from someone I thought was my friend. Your excavating had side effects, too-knocked some of my mental machinery out of whack. I had to be redacted, for G.o.d's sake, and that's how I discovered what you'd been doing."

"I'm sorry you were hurt, Uncle Rogi. Truly I am! I had no idea the probing would do you any harm." Her distress and contrition were genuine, all right. But then she had to spoil the effect by adding, "I did it for a very good reason, though."

"I'll be the judge of that," I said sternly. "I want you to explain yourself right here and now ... or I'll have to tell Catherine Remillard that her school harbors an embryonic Grand Inquisitor."

"No!" she cried, now regarding me with real fear on her face. "Please, don't! If you tell her, then Jack will surely hear about it. Or even Marc himself."

I goggled at her. "What the b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l do they have to do with this? Are you going to tell me what you've been up to, or not?"

She squeezed her eyes shut in some monumental act of emotional self-discipline. When she looked at me again her face was not that of a misbehaving child but of an adult on a mission of capital importance.

"You're different from the other members of your family, Uncle Rogi. You have no ... dynastic or personal ambition. No need to prove your superiority, no great cause to promulgate. You know your operant talents are insignificant and it doesn't bother you. You accept people as they are, without trying to change them. You have a kind heart in spite of your grumpiness and you were very good to me when I came wailing and whinging to you about my painful therapy. And so I'm going to trust you with the most important secret of my life."

Still seated on the rock, I sketched an ironic bow at the insolent chit and said, "Plut au ciel qu'il en fut ainsi!" Which is more or less the equivalent of "Thanks all to h.e.l.l for the dubious honor."

She took a deep breath. "Let me tell you how my mother died."

My sarcastic att.i.tude popped like a lighted bulb touched by a wet finger. I said quietly, "All right, Dorothee. If you'd like to."

Sitting there at my side in the pleasant forest park, taking occasional sips of apple juice when her throat dried, the girl told me her own ghastly and fascinating tale of Fury and Hydra- everything she knew, including official data from the Magistratum investigation. (G.o.d only knows how she pried out that information.) She not only described Hydra's atrocities in the Hebrides, she showed me explicit mental images that turned my stomach. She also told me how Fury had invaded her dreams back on Caledonia, pretending to be her dead mother.

... And she told me how the monster had been appearing to her in her sleep ever since then, at intervals ranging from a few days to months apart, believing that it was slowly converting her to its cause.

When she finished I was in an icy sweat, frightened to death for Dorothee, for myself, and for all the rest of my family. I couldn't speak for several minutes and simply cowered behind my mental shield, willing that it not be true. But clearly, it was. I had nearly forgotten the monster and its multiheaded minion, having a.s.sumed that their threat had pa.s.sed after the Islay incident. But now Dorothee told me that Fury was apparently more determined than ever to destroy the Galactic Milieu and dominate the planets of the Milky Way-not only with the original Hydra-units, but apparently also with a gang of new recruits!

I paused to glug down more cider, wishing fervently that it was a more bracing kind of drink. "What did you mean when you said you were afraid Marc or Jack would find out what you're up to? Don't tell me you suspect one of them is Fury."

"They're the only Remillards whom I haven't been able to probe. Whose metafaculties are powerful enough to insert dreams-or any other kind of psychocreative icons-into minds located lightyears away." Her face was set in stubborn lines. "When I had that first dream about my mother back on Caledonia, Jack Remillard was in Orb and Marc was on Earth."

"Dorothee, you're way off the beam on this. I probably know Fury better than most members of my family. I saw the d.a.m.n thing born, for G.o.d's sake! It can't possibly be Jack because he didn't exist when Fury first appeared. He was born twelve years later."

I told her about the awful Good Friday epiphany of 2040, which she had obviously failed to retrieve from anyone's memory bank. (Small wonder it had been repressed. It traumatized the h.e.l.l out of the whole Remillard clan!) I described my own adventures as potential Hydra prey, and told her how the monster had tried to murder teenaged Marc and baby Jack. I also told her the family's conclusion that Fury had to be a manifestation of multiple-personality disorder, probably unknown to the core persona whose body it shared, and having a completely different armamentarium of powers.

"It could be any of the people you've already probed," I pointed out. "Did you come across hints of a second persona in any of the Remillard skulls you poked around in?"

"No," she said, clearly dismayed by this new idea. "I didn't. I never considered the idea of multiple personalities at all! Inside the host mind, a second persona would-would be disguised. It might not even exist except when it was in control of the body! ... Oh, s.h.i.t, Uncle Rogi. This could change everything!"

"Exactement," said I.

"Perhaps Jack isn't a viable suspect after all," she conceded grudgingly.

"d.a.m.n tootin' he ain't."

Her indignation boiled over. "But he did try to coerce me into revealing my operancy, which was hateful of him! At the time, I was doing everything I could to conceal my powers so that I wouldn't be forced to leave my father's farm, and here was this fool trying to start an interstellar mind-pal exchange! He obviously knew about me-perhaps from my ... from the Lylmik. They know everything, d.a.m.n them, even if they don't always admit it. And then along came Fury, who was also very eager for me to develop my metafaculties and become part of the Milieu operant community. I was no good to it half-latent, working on a colonial farm. Can't you see why I thought Jack might be Fury? The thing began bespeaking me out of the blue just as he'd done."

"I'm sure Jack didn't mean you any harm. It's only natural that he'd be curious about another person with a mind approaching the caliber of his own. He'd like to be your friend-"

"He had no right to meddle with me on Caledonia and he has even less right to bother me now! I've made that very clear. But I know for a fact that he continues to snoop into my progress at the Inst.i.tute. I've overheard Luc Remillard discussing it with Doctor Cat."

"I'll just bet you have," I said. "But you're wrong in thinking Jack's your enemy. My Lord, girl-I've known Jack since before he was born! He's a good boy. Not a malicious bone in his-uh-body."

She glowered at me, unpersuaded. In the middle distance I heard an authoritative tunk-a-tunk-tunk-tak-tak that could only be the work of the rare feathered pile driver that backwoodsmen call the Good G.o.d Woodp.e.c.k.e.r, an amazing bird nearly half a meter in length with black and yellowish-white plumage and a jaunty red crest.

I couldn't help perking up and opened my pack in search of my camera. But Dorothee was not about to be distracted from the main chance.

"Never mind the b.l.o.o.d.y bird," she said. "There's other game afoot. What about Marc?"

There she had me. What about him? He had always been the top Fury suspect, even though his cousin Gordo, a proven Hydra, had run him down with a spike-wheeled motorcycle, killing himself in an attempt to murder Marc when both of them were teenagers.

In maturity, Marc Remillard was prodigiously intelligent, blessed with devastating good looks, and the acknowledged leader of a growing clique of exceptional young grandmaster-cla.s.s operants. His research in metacreative CE had sp.a.w.ned a whole adjunct industry-geophysical engineering through mindpower. Lately he had turned his talents to the design of complex metaconcert programs based on the work of his grandfather Denis and his brother Jack. At that very moment, Marc and Jack were on the planet Satsuma attempting to fend off potentially devastating crustal movements using the latest-model CE equipment in dual metaconcert. It was a much trickier piece of work than the Okanagon operation.

"Marc's a genius," I a.s.serted stoutly. "He has his flaws, but I'd stake my life that he's not Fury. If he intended to conquer the galaxy, he'd just do it-not whomp up some psychopathic alter ego to go about the job underhandedly."

With withering expertise, Dorothee pointed out, "One doesn't choose to develop multiple-personality disorder, so that argument won't wash." I waved one hand in disgust, but she continued. "I've used the material I got from your mind and from the others to calculate the probability that each member of the Remillard Dynasty is Fury. Even if a multiple personality is involved, I think my research may still be valid. Are you interested?"

"Oh, why not? I suppose you've got the odds calculated for me, too."

"Of course. I won't bore you with the details of my equations, but they include objective as well as subjective criteria. Marc checks in at a probability of 74 percent, the most likely suspect."

"Poppyc.o.c.k!"

She went on relentlessly. "For the others, Philip's probability is 23 percent, Maurice 26, Severin 51, Anne 68, Catherine 22, Adrien 49, and Paul 64."

"Paul?" I croaked. "Anne? The First Magnate and the Jesuit priest? Those are your other top suspects? Child, you're two bubbles shy of plumb-and I don't care if you're an apprentice paramount or not! Sevvie and Adrien I could understand. Both of them have had their doubts about the Galactic Milieu from Day One. But Paul and Anne have been its greatest champions in the family and in the Concilium."

"True," Dorothee said. "Both are nearly fanatical in their support of the Milieu and their advocacy of eventual Unity for the Human Polity. But, don't you see, Uncle Rogi? This is the very reason why they're the likeliest to have a shadow persona insanely opposed to the Milieu! That's basic psychiatry."

"Basic b.o.l.l.o.c.ks," I growled.

She ignored me. "Paul and Anne also have metapsychic complexi that a.s.say much higher than those of their siblings, which also weights their plausibility as Fury candidates. What's more, both of them-if your deep thoughts concerning them and the professional opinions of Catherine Remillard are valid-have significant emotional warpage. Anne, especially. Not nearly as serious as Marc's, but definitely sufficient to generate an abnormal persona."

"You must have really done a job on poor Cat to root out that kind of sensitive data."

"And Luc Remillard as well," she admitted. "He furnished most of my psychological profile on Marc, although he had nothing much of value on Jack. Both Catherine and Luc acted as preceptor-therapists to my brother and me, opening their own minds as they sought to open and integrate ours. With Kenny, as with the other partially latent clients at the Inst.i.tute, there was no danger of coercive-redactive backlash."

"But not with you ..."

I regarded the girl with a well-churned mix of awe and stark fear. It was not an unfamiliar sensation. I'd felt the same way at certain periods in the lives of Marc and Ti-Jean.

"I have no animus against Catherine," Dorothee said warmly. "She's a kind, sweet-natured woman and a brilliant psychiatrist. If I do achieve paramount status, it will be largely because of her. But I would have been a fool not to make use of her insights into the minds of her brothers and sister. Essentially, she has come to the same conclusions as I have regarding the Fury probabilities."

"Has she told other members of the Dynasty?"

"No. Only her mother and father, Denis and Lucille. They advised her that nothing is to be gained at the present time by revealing the information. They're right, of course."

"Oh, of course." I began collecting the remnants of our lunch and stuffing them into my daypack. "How likely am I to have a secret Evil Twin?"

"Your probability of harboring Fury is 52 percent. Denis Remillard and Lucille Cartier have a probability roughly the same. As you know, they've never intruded upon me at the Inst.i.tute. I'll need more data from their minds before completing their a.n.a.lyses. You'll be glad to know that the probability of Luc Remillard or his older sister Marie being Fury is vanishingly small. Their talents are intellectual, not metapsychic."

I sighed. "What now? Do you plan to blow the Dynasty out of the water by revealing your statistics in your maiden address at the Concilium next session? Or will you just send on your bit of homework to Davy MacGregor or Chief Evaluator Throma'eloo Lek and watch Remillards tumble like bowling pins?"