Jack the Bodiless (Galactic Milieu Trilogy) (30 page)

The new wife herself presented one attractive option.

Socorro Ortega was very good at her job, which was officially listed in the employment roster of Dartmouth as “First Lady to the President of the College.” She was compensated with a salary equivalent to that of a full professor and worked a good deal harder than most academics did, serving as the official hostess (and unofficial mother confessor) of the institution, as well as being the president’s wife and the co-parent of their children. More often than she liked, she was also called upon to defuse potentially disastrous social situations, among which this Halloween dinner for the operants certainly qualified.

Ordinarily, the first lady had no qualms about entertaining the human metapsychic elite, though some highly educated “normals” did have. Why, nearly a tenth of the Dartmouth faculty were operants, and most of them were sedulously agreeable people who would never dream of condescending to nonoperants. But human metas nonetheless
possessed the same frailties as the rest of the race, and therein lurked the challenge that Socorro Ortega had faced—and bested—tonight.

Her husband, President Tom Spotted Owl, had once been a student of Davy MacGregor’s in Edinburgh, before the Scotsman (who was the only son of the famous Jamie MacGregor and a celebrity in his own right) had given up the teaching of xenopsychology to serve in the European Intendancy. When an important speaker at the symposium on Milieu politics had fallen ill the day before the event, Tom had prevailed upon his old mentor to egg up from Concord and fill in, and so both of the principal candidates for First Magnate of the Human Polity, David Somerled MacGregor and Paul Remillard, lectured on their personal political philosophies on the same day. The result had been a public-relations triumph for the college, heavily covered by the media. The next afternoon, which was Halloween, a mated pair of distinguished psychopoliticians of the Amalgam of Poltroy had joined the two human Magnate-Designates on a brilliant (and often contentious) panel that was bound to keep the dovecote of political science aflutter for months to come.

It was Tom who had decided at the last minute that Davy and his wife Margaret must also attend the little informal dinner at the President’s House that was being given for the two Poltroyans, who were newly installed visiting fellows at the college. The first lady had agreed; but without thinking through the more subtle repercussions, she had decided that Paul Remillard should be invited, too. Paul was not an old friend of Tom and Socorro’s, as was Davy MacGregor; neither she nor her husband was particularly fond of the dashing Intendant Associate, whose media popularity and fierce loyalty to the Galactic Milieu were somewhat at odds with his reputation for sexual adventurism. But the college could not afford to snub Paul, either. He was one of Dartmouth’s most famous alumni, and he would expect to be invited to the dinner if MacGregor was.

And so the invitations to MacGregor and his wife were conveyed by the first lady personally to Seuss Auditorium, where the symposium was being held, and were accepted. But when Socorro went in search of Paul, she happened upon the two Poltroyans in the participants’ lounge and
blithely mentioned the expanded guest list for dinner. To her dismay, she met with distressed hemming and hawing and finally a “sudden indisposition” on the part of the female exotic that precluded their attending the dinner after all.

The president’s wife was no mind reader, but she was an experienced diplomat. She quickly ascertained through a sympathetic third party what the problem was: Paul Remillard’s inseparable female companion all throughout the symposium had been none other than that puta callejera Laura Tremblay, the wife of Paul’s perennially cuckolded colleague, Intendant Associate Rory Muldowney! It was common knowledge that Paul and Laura had been intimately involved for more than a year. The two Poltroyan academics (especially the female, who was a keen devotee of human opera) had been scandalized by what they considered to be Paul’s insensitive behavior following so closely upon Teresa Kendall’s tragic death. It was instantly obvious to Socorro why the exotics had abruptly declined to attend the dinner she had planned in their honor. They were afraid Paul would bring along the lovely, round-heeled Laura. And he
would
, too—if Socorro did not find a way to outwit him.

¡Caracoles! Was Dartmouth College to insult the kindly (and anthropophilic) Poltroyans merely for the sake of Paul Remillard’s insatiable cojones?

Then a brilliant thought struck Socorro. Instead of a dinner for eight, the Dartmouth president and first lady would host a dinner for ten. Socorro quickly phoned Lucille Cartier, begged for her help in the emergency, and obtained it. Later, when the first lady finally managed to corner Paul alone and give him his invitation, she mentioned that she had also invited his parents, and “wondered” demurely if he would like to bring his godmother, Dartmouth’s Emeritus Professor of Human Genetics Colette Roy, as his dinner companion. Socorro and Tom were
so
fond of Colette, and they had not seen her in quite some time …

After an instant’s hesitation, the outmaneuvered Paul had agreed. Whereupon the first lady had recontacted the Poltroyans, begging them to reconsider, mentioning casually that Paul would be squiring the venerable Professor Roy. The exotic couple reaccepted with alacrity, and Socorro was finally able to tell Tom that all was in order.

From the beginning, the dinner party had every indication of being a notable success. Paul and his rival for the office of First Magnate put aside the political differences that had provoked fireworks at the symposium and confined their audible conversation, at least, to innocuous chitchat. Denis Remillard was happily renewing his old friendship with Davy MacGregor and charming the socks off Margaret Strayhorn. The diminutive mauve-skinned Poltroyans, looking almost like bald-headed Earth children costumed for Halloween in their bejeweled exotic robes, turned out to be hilarious raconteurs of exotic political shenanigans. And Lucille, whose faculty parties had been legendary when Tom Spotted Owl was no more than a lowly assistant professor of political science at Dartmouth and Socorro a doe-eyed undergraduate from Campeche, had been lavish in her praise of Socorro’s recent redecoration of the President’s House.

It was, the first lady thought happily, going to be a night to remember.

In the plant room, where the dinner was in progress, Tom and Socorro and their eight guests were seated on white iron chairs around a large round glass-topped table. Brightly colored chrysanthemums and asters growing in black Oaxaca pots were combined with great stoneware vases of flaming maple leaves to make a display around the diners that almost, in Lucille Cartier’s opinion, crossed the bounds of good taste.

Or am I just being bourgeois? Lucille thought. Or could it be a touch of indigestion? (The fish had been so terribly spicy.) But everyone except for her seemed to be enjoying the dinner tremendously. The panel with Davy and Paul and the Poltroyans this afternoon had evidently been a smashing success, and there wasn’t the least hint of enmity between the two men tonight. Why, then, did she have this feeling that something awful was about to happen?

The first lady had arranged a meal in a pre-Conquest Meso-American mode. The exotic couple, Fritiso-Prontinalin and Minatipa-Pinakrodin (“Call us Fred and Minnie”), and the visitors from Scotland had gone into raptures over the fish in annatto-pepper sauce, the mole de poblano, the tortillas, rice, frijoles, and the accompanying guacamole
sauce. Denis and Paul made positive pigs of themselves, especially over the Mayan-style fish, which Socorro had prepared herself from an old family recipe. But Lucille had only toyed with the highly spiced food, having felt unaccountably queasy all during the day because of the maliferous vibes that seemed to pervade the aether. When she and Denis had suddenly received the invitation to dine at the President’s House, Lucille had almost declined; but she had not wanted to let Socorro down, and she was also curious to meet Margaret Strayhorn, a powerful operant whom Davy had recently married, after being widowed for over thirty years. Lucille had steeled herself and accepted.

But now she bespoke her son Paul, seated at her left, on his intimate mode:

Darling can you manage a quickie redact of your poor old mother? I’m feeling just the least bit delicate in the head and tummy.

[Sympathy.] Is that better?

Much. Are you aware of any peculiar disruptions in the mental lattices today? Sunspots or supernovae or anything?

No. I’m only rather surprised that Davy and I are getting on so well. He came at me hammer and tongs during the discussion this afternoon. The audience just loved it, too—especially when Davy castigated me and the other North American Intendants for not taking a stronger stand against the thousand-day probation period summarily imposed by the Lylmik. There’s nothing the academic crowd likes better than to see a bigwig politico savaged with style by one of their own. Even one of their ex-own! Davy MacGregor seems to think that if the Remillard family members had withdrawn en masse as Magnate-Designates, then the Human Polity would have been admitted to the Concilium without condition. We Remillards are suspicious characters in exotic eyes, you see, holding back Galactic Humanity through our dynastic hubris.

Oh my dear. But that’s so unfair! The Lylmik never
asked
you to resign.

On the contrary. It was made quite clear that the Remillards were to remain on the roster of the Designated and I was to continue my campaign for First Magnate—

“Our dessert tonight will be something very special,” Socorro Ortega announced, as the dinner plates were being
cleared away. “They are sapote-pietos, tiny blue persimmons that my sister picked earlier today in her garden down in Mérida, in the Yucatán, and sent to me on the XP shuttle to Boston. I hope you’ll all enjoy them.”

There were dutiful exclamations of appreciation from around the table. Lucille found the sweetness of the little fruits to be almost cloying, but she ate them resolutely while the Poltroyan called Fred, sitting on her right, told her how much he and his mate were going to enjoy being visiting fellows at Dartmouth College.

“The countryside with its sugar maples is extraordinarily beautiful now,” Minnie said, her ruby eyes twinkling with enthusiasm. “I can scarcely think of any other place in the Galaxy where the changing of the seasons proclaims itself so vividly.” She sat on the opposite side of the table, between Tom Spotted Owl and Davy MacGregor, looking almost doll-like next to the burly Native American and the rangy Scot. Both Poltroyan sexes had hairless heads, but the females painted their shapely purplish skulls with elaborate designs in gold paint. “We are also greatly looking forward to winter here, which will be so much more like the climate on our native world. Fred and a colleague actually did pre-Intervention research in this region of Earth, and he jumped at the chance to return here.”

Fred said, “Our twin daughters will be joining us on campus beginning with the winter term. They’ve enrolled in several music courses, and they’re eager to try human winter sports.”

“How nice that your family can join you,” Denis said. “Dartmouth has its own skiing facilities, you know. Both alpine and cross-country. And there’s a college ice hockey team, and toboggan races, and dogsledding and skating, and even an ice-cycle racing event on the frozen river that my grandson Marc has been dying to enter. But he’s only a freshman, and so he’ll have to wait until next winter.”

“Ice-cycle racing? I don’t believe that I am familiar with that particular sport,” Fred said.

Paul Remillard frowned into his dessert dish. “It can be quite dangerous, and that’s undoubtedly why my son wants to participate. The motorcycles are high-powered, heavily built machines, and the wheels are shod with steel spikes to grip the ice.”

“Love’s Oath!” Fred exclaimed. “This son of yours must be a very brave lad.”

“Foolhardy might be a more apposite term.” Paul nodded pleasantly to the Poltroyan and turned away to converse with Margaret Strayhorn on his other hand.

Fred leaned close to the kind-faced Colette Roy, who sat at his right, and spoke very quietly. “Didn’t I hear that one of Intendant Remillard’s sons was—
oof!
” Too late, Minnie had delivered a sharp mental caution to her mate on his intimate mode.

But Colette only sighed. “That’s the boy, I’m afraid. After he was acquitted, Paul sent him on to Orb for prudence’s sake.”

“The young man is said to be—uh—amazingly talented in the higher mindpowers,” Fred persisted, in spite of his mate’s anxious looks, “as is his distinguished father, of course. Is it true that Intendant Remillard was the first human to be educated in the womb by means of the preceptorial techniques of the Milieu?”

Colette Roy nodded. “I had the honor of making the suggestion.”

“Which is why you’re my godmother,” Paul said, showing snow-white teeth in a flashing smile. “With your work cut out for you, trying to keep me sinless and worthy!”

Denis said quickly, “Lucille and I had considered our family to be complete when we had six fine operant children. But Colette insisted that we make one more baby and teach him in utero more or less the way you Poltroyans teach your fetuses.”

“I learned about the technique quite by accident a month or so after the Intervention,” Colette said. “One of the Poltroyans in the local liaison group was pregnant. I’d had a hysterectomy years earlier after the birth of my son, so I put the proposal to Lucille and Denis. It seemed a marvelous research opportunity.”

“Funny thing,” Denis added. “My Uncle Rogi had made the very same suggestion to me less than a week earlier. God knows where
he
picked up the notion. He’s only an antiquarian bookseller.”

“The Milieu has cause to be very grateful to your vision, Dr. Roy,” Fred said. “The book that resulted from the—uh—cooperative researches of Lucille Cartier and Denis
Remillard proved to be seminal in human metapediatric studies.”

“We humans have so much to thank Poltroyans for,” Margaret Strayhorn said warmly. “You’ve always been so friendly and sympathetic to our race of primitives. You—you
humanized
the Galactic Milieu for us during the difficult Proctorship years. If we had had only the other exotic races as examples of Galactic citizenship, we might not have been able to persevere, to hold on to the belief that humanity really belongs among the coadunates of the Milieu. You’re a rather daunting lot, you know.”