Jack the Bodiless (Galactic Milieu Trilogy) (23 page)

Solution the First:
Our hardware-store loot included ten-penny nails. These could be used to spike small log stringers to the larger timbers, forming them into narrow rafts. I could pole these along the V-shaped shore to the cabin, a distance of perhaps two kloms. It would be desperately hard work, but my arms are strong, and I could walk on shore some of the time, lining the rafts and playing Volga boatman.
Evaluation:
Practical, but very slow. And I’d surely get wet, and the water was ice cold.

Solution the Second:
If I could rig a sail, the rafts could travel directly across the lake, less than half the distance of the shore route. No sweat for me, speed dependent upon the wind … which unfortunately prevailed from the west, straight down the lake, when it wasn’t dead calm, as it had been rather often during our week-long stay.
Evaluation:
I’d still get wet, and how the devil do you steer a 400-kilo log raft through deep water in a crosswind?

Solution the Third:
Tow the rafts across the lake behind another boat.
Evaluation:
We didn’t think to bring an inflatable,
and I hadn’t a prayer of building a canoe or dugout.

Solution the Fourth:
Stop thinking like a deadhead normal, you klutz! Chop and slice the wood to size on this side of the lake, then use your psychokinesis on a calm day to push the individual pieces of lumber across. Even your lousy PK is strong enough to move floating wood.
Evaluation:
Eureka!

The whisky-jack laughed at me.

Feeling very pleased with myself, I finished lunch and then scrambled up the slope to cruise the trees and select appropriate specimens. Then I stood quietly among the doomed spruces and told Ape Lake that I would do my best not to scar the landscape if
it
would cooperate by keeping its waters calm during the transport phase of the logging operation. The local vibes remained tranquil, and I decided that the response was affirmative. Tomorrow I’d begin cutting with the wonderful new Matsu woodzapper, the laser device that had made chain saws obsolete—to say nothing of simple axes. With luck, I’d have the cabin in good shape inside of three or four weeks.

The day had lengthened into late afternoon. Across the lake, a small plume of smoke rose from the campsite. Teresa had fired up the iron stove for the first time, and perhaps even now she was beginning to cook us a civilized meal. I decided not to farspeak her; it would be more fun to be surprised.

I started back along the shore, feeling more vigorous than I had in years. Negotiating the Ape Creek logjam was easier the second time around, and when I reached the opposite bank I sat down and stared at it for a while. Providential, that mass of tangled timbers. Without it, I would have had a hell of a time crossing the strong creek outflow to my tree farm. Once again, my mind acknowledged the genius loci.

And my eyes, suitably cast down, spotted the gigantic naked footprint, twice the length of a man’s, freshly impressed in the white mud along the creekbank.

P
ROFESSOR
D
ENIS
R
EMILLARD SAT ON A STOOL AT THE GREEN
house bench, preparing the last orchid plant.

A violent storm was sluicing the vicinity of Hanover, filling the air with thunder and lightning and ebullient ions, so of course this had to be the night that the several-times-postponed Remillard family conference was finally scheduled to take place—here, at his farm, in just a half hour or so.

When the more spectacular varieties in Denis’s orchid collection came into bloom, he was accustomed to bring them into the house for Lucille to admire, or to use as decorations when she gave one of her famous dinner parties or other academic entertainments. Tonight’s somber family gathering had nothing festive about it; but that was all the more reason, she had said, for some distracting flowers.

Lucille had wanted to select the orchids herself. Just as she and Denis were about to go out to the little semidetached greenhouse, she had a sudden brilliant idea—coinciding with the arrival of a massive cloudburst—and dashed heedlessly into the rain to her car. Her motivations and goal were artfully hidden, but she did fling belated mental reassurance at Denis as she roared away into the storm. She had just remembered something, she told him, something that might be an important clue in the disappearance of Teresa and Rogi. She would be back soon, and Denis was not to let the family conference start without her.

After fifty-six years of married life with Lucille Cartier,
Denis had learned to be philosophical about his wife’s volatile mood swings and abrupt flashes of creativity. He knew it would be futile to attempt to stop her or to demand an explanation, so he simply went about the business of fetching the orchids, and now and then thought to pray peace for the whole troubled Remillard family.

As the hour drew near for the seven children’s arrival, Denis had already prepared and carried in two beautiful plants. One was a long spray of Phalaenopsis for the mantelpiece, delicate as pale yellow moths perched on a bough. The other was a huge specimen for the Chinese porcelain pot by the front window, an Oncidium ornithorhynchum bearing a cloud of dancing rosy-lilac blossoms of quaint birdlike form. There remained only one last plant to groom: the pride of his collection, a Fujiwara Azurine “Atmosphere” with a cluster of three splendid sky-blue flowers, each nearly 18 centimeters wide. It had just reached perfection, and it might help to raise the spirits of poor Cat, who had always admired it extravagantly.

Ironic that it was Uncle Rogi’s favorite orchid, too.

Using a sterile knife, Denis cut away a few damaged roots, then swabbed the wound with fungicide. He inspected the plant carefully for pests, watered it, and set it into a decorative basket. Then he tidied everything up, washed his hands at the sink, turned out the lights, and stood quietly for a moment in the humid, fragrant dark.

Rain continued to batter the glass roof, but at least the thunder had stopped. Now and then a distant, silent lightning stroke illuminated the tossing maple trees outside. It had been one storm after another all throughout that dreary Labor Day weekend—not that the inclement weather had particularly discommoded the family. The recent tragedies had forced the cancellation of the traditional monster beach bash at Adrien and Cheri’s house; and in its place, Paul had called again for the family conference that had already been put off twice—the first time because of the disappearance of Teresa and Rogi, and then once more when it seemed that the Magistratum might demand that Paul and his siblings be barred from the Concilium. No spouses and no members of the younger generation were invited to the meeting. It was only for the seven grandmasterclass children of Denis and Lucille. They would discuss Catherine’s future, and what measures the family should take concerning the disappearance
of Teresa and Uncle Rogi, and whether they should attempt to intervene actively in the apparently stymied investigation into Brett McAllister’s ghastly death.

Denis brooded over the latter, as he had done all weekend, ever since a certain shocking notion had presented itself.

Dear God, he said to himself, it couldn’t possibly have been
him
that did it. He’s dead. You took him! Freed us … But the pattern of Brett’s burns was identical I can’t be wrong about that I’ll never forget that horrible sight her poor burned body as long as I live!
But he couldn’t have killed Brett
. He’s dead safely dead God he’s got to be but how else to explain it?

And Uncle Rogi …! He certainly hasn’t drowned. I can’t be sure about Teresa but I’d
know
if that old rascal had turned up his toes. I love him too much not to know and I deepviewed the Connecticut River from hell to Hinsdale and found nothing nothing nothing … and even if the bodies got over the Bellows Falls dam they never could have made it past the Vernon so they
aren’t there
no matter what Marc says the little wretch !!he knows!! and—

“God, you’ve got to let me know too!” he cried aloud.

But the sexternions of the Divine Concursus remained obstinately mum.

Standing there in the flickering, ion-charged night, fed to the teeth with mysteries, grief-bereft of his usual composure and self-command, Professor Denis Remillard did something very atypical. He lost his temper. Frustration channeled all his immense metapsychic power into a bellow of sheer rage directed along his uncle’s intimate mode:

Rogi! Answer me! I know you’re not dead. Farspeak me damn you vieux connard and tell me the truth!

And for the briefest instant—

Denis seemed to detect a minuscule response coded with Rogi’s mental signature, a telepathic squeak, quite involuntary, from a mind unexpectedly pricked. It came from far to the northwest—

Denis flung himself mentally in the direction indicated by that eyeblink-brief trace. He soared across North America out-of-body, scanning, scanning for Uncle Rogi’s familiar oddball aura, over the eastern mountains, the Great Lakes, the woodlands and high plains of Canada, the Rockies, the
interior plateau of British Columbia, the coastal mountains, the fjords and rain-forested islands of the Pacific—

And found nothing.

Of course, nothing. Even if Rogi’s paltry metafaculty had heard, if the old man was hiding with Teresa he would hoist mental barricades and lie doggo, mistrustful even of the man he loved like a son. Denis’s tremendous seekersense, still imperfectly trained according to Milieu standards, could only flail about in helpless wrath, not knowing where along that attenuated, fuzzy-edged mental beacon-flash to look.

I’m going to find you Uncle Rogi! Sooner or later! You’d better believe it!

Denis returned. He commanded himself to be calm again.

And at once a thought impinged on his still receptive mind. But this time the telepathic hail was from nearby, and it was his wife and not his quixotic uncle who bespoke him. Lucille was back, calling from the living room of their elaborately refurbished farmhouse:

DenisDenis come inside I’ve found A CLUE!!

 … a clue?

At the SouthStreethouse Paul’s place went there looked again found—Denis COME IN AT ONCE it’s Paul’s egg landing in the driveway and Philip and Maury together—

Right. Coming.

And here’s Anne. And Sevvy. And Adrien bringing Cat!

Yesyes I’m on my way.

He picked up the blue orchid plant carefully and used his PK to open the door to the passage leading to the main house. The powerful, precisely directed mindspeech of the seven Grand Master metapsychics who were his adult children called out affectionate greetings to Denis as he approached, and completely obliterated the dire aetheric reverberations of the storm.