Jack the Bodiless (Galactic Milieu Trilogy) (47 page)

“Back in a jif,” I told Teresa, and went outside.

The aurora was crazily blazing, and every bare twig and branch was encrusted with glittering rime. The crystalline world was flooded with pale rainbow light. My heart caught in my throat at the beauty of it.

Thank you, I said. Thank you so much. Now let them live. Let it all work out for the best.

Then I crunched off into the cold-flaming night.

Both the woodshed and the latrine were on the west side of the cabin. I didn’t bother looking into the shadowy gnarled trees farther over to the east, beyond the door. If I had, I might have seen the creatures that made the big footprints I found in the snow the next morning, right by the window.

One of them, I have since been told by a reliable source, had gray eyes.

D
ENIS HAD FARSPOKEN
R
OGI ON THE DAY AFTER
J
ACK’S
birth, telling him that he was on his way back to Earth and would be coming to take the two of them and the baby away from Ape Lake. He would hide them, he said, in a more salubrious place until the Dynasty was able to repeal or modify the Reproductive Statutes and procure retroactive pardons for Teresa and Rogi.

The two of them spent the next two weeks very quietly. A new series of storms swept over the Coast Range, dumping deep snow upon the cabin so that it was almost buried to the eaves. Rogi always managed to shovel the roof clear, and he traveled easily to the cache of moose meat and to the lake on snowshoes. But the routes to the latrine and the wood supply in Le Pavillon were now snow tunnels, and he worried about how the chimney would draw if the cabin was buried much deeper.

Jack almost always behaved like a normal infant, nursing and sleeping and watching the two of them with solemn eyes during his periods of wakefulness. He spoke mentally mostly with his mother. Rogi gathered that he was hard at work processing a monumental batch of new sensory data input and had little time for social conversation. Jack intensified the bonding to his mother once he had “formally” identified her as a being separate from himself. And when Rogi baptized him, the infant bonded to the old man as well, somehow seizing upon the memory of Denis’s long-ago christening and judging that Rogi, too, was an appropriate person to love without qualification.

The sun rose tardily during winter in the northland, and Rogi and Teresa usually did, too, conserving their body energies against the ever-deepening cold. She kept the cradle close beside her bunk, and when Jack indicated telepathically that he needed nursing during the night she would simply take him into bed with her and put him to the breast without really waking up. Rogi, in a similar state of somnambulism, would rise at night several times to restoke the fire. Even so, in the morning the door would be frosted from top to bottom and the water in the bucket frozen nearly solid. The adults found that they could sleep ten or eleven hours at a stretch; the baby slept twenty hours out of every day. They all seemed to be in a state of semihibernation, recuperating from the tension of the time before Jack’s birth and marshaling their strength for whatever was to come.

On the evening of 21 January, Teresa and Rogi finally broke the news to the baby that Denis was on his way and they would probably be leaving the cabin the next day. Teresa spent a long time reassuring Jack that the change was necessary and good, but he was frightened at the prospect of meeting other persons and living in a new place. She tried to make a game of it by having him designate which things he would like to take away with him. He chose the swansdown bunting, the swing-papoose carrier that Rogi had made, and Herman the Ermine, who had fascinated Jack with his antics.

“No, dear,” Teresa said. “Herman can’t come. This is his home, and he would be unhappy going with us.”

This is my home too!
Jack said, his tiny face crumpling with woe. And he began to cry dismally.

“Not really.” Teresa cuddled him against her shoulder. She and Rogi together projected images of the big house in Hanover in an attempt to show Jack what his real home was like. They showed him images of his father and his brothers and sisters and grandparents, new minds he would be able to bond with; but the only other person who seemed at all acceptable as a love object was Marc, whom Jack remembered very clearly. Paul and the others were equated with danger.

Jack finally fell asleep, and Teresa put him into his cradle with a sigh. “This is going to be very hard on him, Rogi. We probably won’t even be able to go to the New Hampshire house.”

The old man shrugged. “Denis only told me he’d find us a safe place.” He was packing Teresa’s musical equipment and the few other things they were going to take. “Jack will just have to learn to adapt. Other babies do. You can’t raise the little nipper in an isolation chamber. He’s supersensitive, and change will seem awful to him at first, but he’ll get over it. I get vibes from him that tell me he’s a lot tougher than we think.”

Teresa began to rummage through her clothing. She held up her improvised Snegurochka headpiece. “Do you think we could find room for this and for the rest of the costume in our baggage?”

Rogi grinned. “Hell, yes. Someday you and Jack ought to do a repeat performance of the opera for the whole family. It could become a Christmas tradition!”

Later that evening, when the bundles were packed, they retired to their bunks, feet to feet, with the wind hooting down the stovepipe.

Teresa said, “I don’t want to leave here, either.”

“I know. I know exactly how you feel. And him, too. This place has been good to us, keeping us all safe. But Denis is right about taking us out of here. You need to get back to civilization, where you can wear clean clothes and take regular baths and eat fresh fruits and veggies and get some decent exercise. God knows how much deeper the snow will get here before the spring thaw. And what would happen to you if I got sick or broke a bone?”

“You’re right. I was only thinking of myself. I’m sorry, Rogi. I keep forgetting what a terrible responsibility the two of us have been for you.”

He made a growling sound deep in his sleeping bag. “Fool girl. I haven’t enjoyed myself so much in years. And that includes hunting the moose! I’ll be bored out of my mind back in the bookstore.”

They laughed together and then went to sleep, lulled by the wind.

Mama!
the baby’s mind screamed. Both Teresa and Rogi woke with a start.

A thing
[image]—
a terrible big thing!

Rogi struggled to sit up in his bunk. It was pitch black except for the dull glow around the edge of the stove door.
He squinted at his wrist and blearily made out that it was 0523 hours.

A THING!

“Rogi, what is it?” Teresa was petrified. She snatched Jack from his cradle and clutched him tightly. The cabin was like a deep freeze.

Rogi pulled his wits together. He could see well enough in the dark once he exerted his ultrasenses, but Teresa was very poor at that particular mental trick, and her agitation made things worse. Neither could she identify the farseen image that the terrified infant was projecting—something huge, silvery, and elongate that apparently hovered silently only a few meters above the smoking chimney pipe of the cabin.

But Rogi knew what it was.

“Easy! Easy, you two. It’s only Denis, come to get us. And damn my eyes if he hasn’t come in a Poltroyan orbiter!”

The old man flung himself out of bed, lit a lamp, and hastened to pull his clothes on over grubby long johns. Jack was wailing softly. Teresa put him back in his cradle and began to dress. No sooner were the two of them decent than something shocking happened.

There was a knock at the door.

Rogi stamped his feet into his Paks, ran his fingers through his greasy silver curls, and straightened up. He strode to the door and yanked it open. There stood a human in a full environmental suit with the helmet closed, and a lilac-faced Poltroyan male in a heavily bejeweled fish-fur parka and mukluks. They entered in a swirl of frigid air and ice crystals and slammed the door behind them. Jack abruptly stopped crying.

Denis lifted his visor. “Hello, Uncle Rogi, Teresa. Meet my good friend Fred.”

“Enchanté,” said the Poltroyan, stripping off his elaborate mittens. He shook Teresa’s and Rogi’s hands, beaming genially, and waved to Jack.

“We’ve come to take you away,” Denis said. “Let’s not waste any time. Fred’s vessel is field-screened, but I’d like to land you two on Kauai while it’s still night in the islands.”

“Kauai!” Teresa exclaimed joyfully. “We’re going to my folks’ old place?”

Denis nodded. “It’s all arranged. You and Rogi and the
child will stay there until the mess is resolved. There’s no longer any danger of a search by the Magistratum. The Human Polity is finishing up its preliminary work on Orb, and in a week or so everyone will head for home. There’ll be debate on the Reproductive Statutes, and a lot of tap-dancing by the family lawyers once the Intendant Assembly reconvenes with the new magnates seated, but Paul plans to introduce a resolution granting you a retroactive pardon as soon as possible.”

“And when can we go home?” Teresa demanded.
“Really
go home?”

“I can’t be certain. Perhaps as early as March if the Dynasty can get you bail or push through a general amnesty for Repro Statute violators.” Denis’s gaze moved for the first time to the cradle with its furs and silent tiny occupant. “He’s still well?”

“Perfectly,” said Teresa.

“I see he’s already learned to erect a mental barrier.”

“He could do it in the womb,” she said.

“Remarkable … It seems your illicit pregnancy is completely vindicated after all.”

She met his eyes without flinching. “I always knew it would be. Little Jack’s body is flawless. There is no congenital deformity and no physical dysfunction as far as I can tell. His mind is … superior. I should warn you that he doesn’t think like an infant. You might think of him as a precocious nine-year-old.”

“A very
innocent
precocious nine-year-old,” Rogi added. He began to stoke up the fire for the last time.

Denis took off his gloves. The wan lamplight gleamed on his silvery suit as he approached the cradle and looked down at the tiny baby.

Hello Grandpère, Jack said.

“Good morning, Jack. Are you ready to travel?”

I will be. Soon. I must be fed and changed. Will you and Fred mind waiting for a few minutes?

“Not at all,” Denis replied.

The baby said: I am going to try very hard not to be afraid. I hope you won’t be angry if I cry a little when something new startles me. It’s a reflex action I have very little control over as yet.

“I understand.” Denis reached out one bare hand toward the baby’s pink cheek. “May I touch you?”

With your hand? Yes. But not with your mind.

“Oh, Jack,” Teresa sighed. She made an apologetic gesture to Denis, who smiled with apparent understanding and withdrew his hand after a brief pat.

The baby said to Denis: I don’t think I will be able to love you.

“You don’t know me,” Denis said equably. “Later, you may change your mind. You have a great deal to learn, you know. Especially about other human beings like yourself.”

Are there others like me?

“Of course!” said Teresa, with mock indignation. She began to bustle about, getting a washcloth and clean diaper and gown for him, warming them first on the stove since the temperature in the cabin was still well below zero Celsius. She told Denis and Fred that the baby wouldn’t mind the brief exposure to the cold as she changed him. Even ordinary babies were able to adjust their body thermostats to frigid air for very short periods, and Jack was particularly adept at the trick.

“And I’m sure he has all kinds of other talents that we haven’t even begun to discover yet,” she said proudly. “Just wait until Papa meets you, Jack!” She looked brightly at Denis. “I suppose Paul plans to come to see us in Kauai as soon as he gets back to Earth.”

“He doesn’t think it would be wise to have any contact with you,” Denis said regretfully, “until the family lawyers have assessed the situation.”

“Foutre!” exclaimed Rogi indignantly.

Teresa’s face froze. But an instant later, she was smiling as she began to undress the baby. “It’s quite all right. I understand perfectly. We’ll do whatever Paul thinks is best. Won’t we, Jack?”

The baby stared at her with enormous eyes, his mind remote and silent.

B
Y THE CALENDAR, SPRING HAD COME TO
N
ORTH
A
MERICA
. But the calendar lied where New Hampshire was concerned, and it was almost enough to make Marc wish he were back in the climate-controlled perfection of Concilium Orb.

Freezing rain mixed with sleet beat against his leathers as he drove back to the frat house on his turbocycle after finishing his first full day at Dartmouth College. Grassy parts of the campus, rooftops, fences, and other unwarmed surfaces were beginning to glaze now that the sun had gone down. The bare branches of the big elm trees and the shrubs glittered in the streetlights. Pedestrian students slogged along, emanating misery and dodging sprays of slush from passing groundcars. Driving north on College Street, Marc got sprayed even more than those who were afoot. And his bike was balking worse than ever, fighting back every time he tried to change its vector. It had to be the guidance helmet. His tinkering with it after he discovered the weird brainboard interference must have screwed something up. The poor old turbocycle was probably receiving conflicting orders from his mind and the phantom glitch, and it didn’t know whether to shit or go blind.

Marc finally killed the cerebroguidance. He came onto slippery Clement Road, where the melting grids seemed to be on the fritz, then entered the driveway of the Mu Psi Omega house. He’d moved in the day before, less than a week after finally returning to Earth. The driveway was a sheet of glass. He could have deployed the ice spikes, but in
his present mood he chose instead to kill the engine and simply horse the heavy BMW along with his PK. No sense pissing off his new meta frat brothers with something so mundane as tearing up their driveway. The garage door opened in response to his mental nudge of the old-fashioned electronic opener. He rolled inside and put the machine in its allotted space in the cramped freshman section, between Alex Manion’s 10-speed bicycle and Boom-Boom Laroche’s Kawasaki Jet-Scoot.