Jack the Bodiless (Galactic Milieu Trilogy) (37 page)

Uncle Rogi, has this alleged Lylmik given you specific information about Teresa’s unborn child? About its future role in the Galactic Milieu?

“Ohhh … Denis, go away. Leave me alone. Withdraw your EE. I’m sick. And I’m going to get sicker. If you’ve any sense of decency—”

Yes, of course. I’m sorry. But I’ll be back, Uncle Rogi. I want to hear more about your Family Ghost.

“Go!” I croaked, and started struggling frantically into my half-frozen outer clothes.

I made it outside in time, but just barely.

The rest of the night was an intestinal nightmare, and I remember very little of the next day’s journey up the steep ledges. I suspect the Ghost helped me along, for my poor body retaliated against the sudden influx of rich food with an even more sudden outflux. I couldn’t even retain the oatmeal cakes. I didn’t dare make camp at dusk. If I stopped hiking, I’d knew I’d never start again.

Viewed partially through my ultrasense, the snow seemed to glow once night fell, and I was able to see well enough. It was impossible to get lost. All I had to do was keep crawling up Ape Canyon, and eventually I would make it home. My guts finally calmed down, although I was still unable to even think of eating any food. The cold was diabolical, and after a while I couldn’t feel my feet. I slogged on mindlessly, grasping saplings to pull myself up the steep incline, sometimes even having to use a rope, trying not to trip over my snowshoes or fall down too many times beneath my back-breaking load.

And then, when I was starting to hallucinate, seeing Teresa, dressed in her Queen of the Night opera costume, come toward me with a steaming chalice of hot tea with brandy and honey in it, I finally reached Ape Lake. Up there on the flat ice, the Arctic wind blasted straight into my face with full-gale force. I groaned aloud. Less than a kilometer to go—but I couldn’t possibly make it. I fell to my knees on the windswept ice, tried to get up, and failed.

Lying there, with my face turned away from the howling wind of the rapidly approaching storm and the terrible weight of the pack off my shoulders, I was too far gone even to think of appealing to the Ghost. I felt that I was beginning to warm up at last. I would sleep for a little, then continue on. Teresa wouldn’t mind waiting a while longer. Just a little while …

I saw her face. So very, very beautiful.

But was it really Teresa? Or was it another woman, a woman from long ago with strawberry-blonde hair and eyes of a blue so pale that they were almost silver, a woman who had once awakened me to love, whom I had also awakened, whom I had pledged myself to and then stupidly rejected, love poisoned by my wounded pride.

Was it Teresa, or was it—

Teresa Kendall’s grandmother, Elaine Donovan.

I opened my eyes and saw the beams and close-set poles of the cabin ceiling. It was night and the lamps were on. I was on my bunk, warm at last, my body inside a down sleeping bag, my head wrapped in soft white fur. My face was painful. So were my feet. The stove roared softly. I could smell coffee and freshly baked sourdough bread—

And roasting meat.

None of it made any sense. I closed my eyes again and seemed to open them almost instantly as the cabin door swung wide, admitting a blast of icy air and swirling snowflakes, then slammed shut.

“Elaine?” I mumbled.

There was a multiple thud as heavy things hit the floor. A bucket of snow and an armload of wood. She came running to me, making little mewing sounds of concern when she realized she was exuding cold. She stepped back and peeled off her snowy outer garments, dropping them in front of the stove.

Not Elaine. Teresa.

“You’re awake! Oh, thank God. You’ve slept for nearly twenty hours! I thought you’d gone into some kind of coma. How do you feel? I brought back all the meat you were carrying before the storm hit us. It’s wonderful! Can you smell it roasting? And I have your pack and the rifle and all your equipment safe, too. It took me three trips down the lake to bring it all, and then the blizzard started, and it’s been continuing ever since. Oh, Rogi—we were so worried!”

“How did I get back here?”

She came to kneel beside the bed. Her hair, escaping
frowsily from its ponytail after being crushed beneath her parka hood, was dark and not strawberry blonde. The eyes, watering slightly from the intense cold outside, and perhaps from some other emotion as well, were hazel green and not silvery blue.

“I heard you out on the lake. Your mind was calling very loudly, and I knew you were in dreadful trouble. So I dressed and took a flashlight and went after you. Once I got down the slope and onto the ice, it wasn’t too hard going. The wind had blown away most of the deep snow. I found you near the Ape Creek outflow, nearly covered with drifted snow, and took off your pack and your snowshoes. You were conscious, but you seemed to be delirious. You called me by my grandmother’s name.”

“I remember.”

“You—you were too weak to get up. I knew you’d freeze to death if you stayed there, so I began to drag you along the ice. But I was able to go only a little way before I had to stop. You were too heavy and I didn’t know what else to do … so I asked Jack to coerce you.”

“Coerce me!”

She nodded. “And he did, and you walked the rest of the way and fell onto the bed.” She smiled and shrugged. “I undressed you and warmed you up, then went out for the meat and equipment before the blizzard began. And that’s all there was to it.”

I lifted my arms to her and she hugged me tightly, and I whispered, “Thank you. Both of you.”

She took one of my hands and guided it solemnly to her distended belly. “I’ve explained to him very carefully all that you’ve done for us. How good and unselfish you are. He won’t hide from you anymore. If you want to, he’ll speak to you. He’d like to learn to love you.”

I said: Baby? Jack? Ti-Jean?…

The cabin and its furnishings seemed to fade away, and I was surrounded by a strange light of the deepest carmine red. I heard a symphony of sound: a double-time beat played on two giant tympani, an accompanying fluid rustle adorned with small peeps and squeaks, slow periodic gusts of wind. I tasted something that was sweet-salty-bitter, felt lapped in warmth, comforted, shielded. My own heart seemed to catch on fire as the other mind touched me, came joyfully into me. I saw him and he saw me. His eyes were
enormous and wide open and aware. He was serenely afloat, tiny hands clasped, a perfectly formed unborn baby boy. Perfect. Perfect …

He said:
Rogi!

And let me know him.

A
DRIEN
R
EMILLARD HAD HAD NO IDEA WHY
P
ROFESSOR
A
NNA
Gawrys-Sakhvadze was so anxious to see him. She had farspoken him in mid-morning, New Hampshire time, and asked him to have dinner with her that evening if it was at all possible.

Adrien was rushing to complete his portion of an extensive revision of his father’s textbook
Metaconcert Structure and Template Programming
—its looming deadline being the reason he and Denis had stayed behind on Earth when the rest of the family left for Concilium Orb. He definitely did
not
have any time to spare for a chin-wag with an old family friend. Not even one so beloved as Dotty Annushka, so named by Adrien when he was a toddler unable to pronounce “doctor” and she was a visiting fellow at Dartmouth’s physics department. Anna adored the seven Remillard children with the fervor of a woman unable to have any of her own, and as a frequent guest she had introduced them to homemade Russian ice cream and other unforgettable ethnic treats.

Adrien pleaded the press of urgent work when she called. He had only three days left to finish his section of the book before he and Denis were scheduled to leave Earth themselves.
Couldn’t he and Dotty Annushka get together when they were all in Orb, when there would be all the time in the world for lengthy discussion? Or perhaps whatever was on her mind could be talked about right now.

But Anna said: I must see you in person immediately Adrien. Please I beg of you I would not make such a request if the matter were not of the most paramount importance.

So he took off at once in his egg, and three hours later met her for a quick supper at The Windmill. The pub was not far from the Institute for Dynamic-Field Studies, where Anna worked, situated in a little village northeast of Cambridge. Although she greeted him with a hearty Russian hug and kiss, her rejuvenated face had a drawn look. She was clearly very much keyed up and apprehensive, betraying deep anxiety in spite of determined efforts to shield her emotional state. She would not talk about her “important business” in a public place—especially not one like The Windmill, filled with operant scientists champing sandwiches and cottage pie and swilling old ale. The discussion must wait until they went to her laboratory after the meal. There, she told him, they could converse behind the secure shelter of a mind-proof sigma-field and be sure that no one on Earth overheard them.

Adrien’s eyes widened at that. He said: For heaven’s sake Dotty!

But she would say no more until he finished eating. Then they went out of the cozy pub into the winter night. A bitter wind was blowing off the frozen fens, but it was only a short walk to the IDFS complex. Following Anna’s instruction, Adrien had left his rhocraft in the crowded car park of the pub.

When they were away from the center of the village, Anna said, “Do you know that Davy MacGregor’s wife has died?”

“Yes. Paul farspoke the news to Papa, and he told me. It’s a terrible thing. Margaret and Davy seemed so happy together. I understand that Davy is devastated by her suicide.”

Anna took Adrien’s arm as they crossed the road and entered a side lane. “Davy farspoke me early this morning with further details of the investigation. The Magistratum did find incinerated human elemental remains consonant
with a woman of her mass, including gold and alloy metals equal to the weight of her wedding ring. And her aura is extinct, as far as the Krondak comparators can determine. She certainly isn’t within a thousand lightyears of Orb. The Magistratum is prepared to declare her legally dead, but the verdict will remain open.”

“But she left a suicide note—”

“The note was in her handwriting and had her fingerprints and DNA traces on it. But Davy is convinced that she never would have taken her own life. He thinks she was coerced to write the note, then was murdered in the same mysterious way that Brett McAllister was—by the person who attacked her at Dartmouth on Halloween. Davy told me he suspects that the killer is a member of the Remillard family. Perhaps even Paul himself.”

Adrien halted in his tracks, looking down at the Russian physicist. She wore a long faux-fur coat and hat, which combined with her stocky build to lend her a roly-poly teddy bear aspect that belied the brutal words she had just spoken. This dear old woman had known him and his family for over forty years; but she was more than a friend—she was also the Director of the Department of Sigma Studies of Cambridge University, and not one prone to vaporous fancies.

Adrien asked, “But what motive could any of us Remillards have?”

“Some Magnate-Designates of my acquaintance believe that the only conceivable motive for Brett’s murder was his opposition to his wife’s serving on the Concilium. Once he was dead, Catherine acquiesced. And now we have Davy as the only one opposing Paul for the position of First Magnate. Davy is too powerful an operant to attack with impunity. But this murderer—if Davy is right and Margaret
was
murdered—might well have thought that Davy would be so distraught with grief after Margaret’s death that he would give up the candidacy. You know, of course, that Davy’s own mother was murdered by an anti-operant fanatic years before the Intervention took place. And losing his first wife Sybil just after Will was born crippled him emotionally for thirty years.”

They began walking again, and soon they entered the IDFS complex, with its scattered large buildings. The east
wind raked the expanse of frost-silvered grass and strummed the leafless black poplars lining the drive.

“This murderer can’t be one of my family,” Adrien said. “I’d stake my life on it.”

“Would you?” Her tone was as cold as the rising gale. “No doubt the Magistratum would agree with you. They subjected all of you to mental probing after Brett McAllister was killed, and they were forced to exonerate you.”