Jack the Bodiless (Galactic Milieu Trilogy) (54 page)

“It was bad enough finding out about this Hydra. But it’s not the only monster out there. Jack said Hydra was ‘sustained and controlled and loved’—his exact thoughts!—by still
another
mind. I looked at the faint image of this second thing, which was all Jack could perceive, and it wasn’t the same kind of entity as Hydra. Hydra wasn’t human. But the other thing was—and what’s more, it was vaguely familiar to me.”

“Nom de dieu! Was the second thing Victor?”

“I wondered about that, too. And so I replayed my own childhood memories from that last Good Friday vigil twelve years ago to see whether I’d stored any data at all on Uncle Vic. I found no trace of any mentality that I could positively identify as his … but there
was
a faint recollection of someone very frightening. My infantile self-redaction had done its best to erase the memory because it had really traumatized my little mind. But I was able to catch this mnemonic glimmer. I’d been scared by a human person way back then, and it was nobody that I knew
at the time
. But I’d stake my life that the scary person who tried to make mental contact with me when Uncle Vic died and the entity who sustains the Hydra are the same.”

“And you have no notion of this—this controller’s identity?”

“None at all. But Jack called it Fury.”

I whispered, “Oh, Christ!”

I tottered up out of my chair, ripped open the filing cabinet drawer, grabbed the bottle of Wild Turkey I had stashed inside, and downed three great gulps of the whiskey right before the eyes of the scandalized boy. And then I flopped back into my seat with a crash that sent Marcel leaping a meter straight up into the air. I sat there with my eyes bugging out from terror and clammy sweat breaking out all over me as my
own
twelve-year-old memories suddenly came rushing to the fore, escaping from the limbo I’d banished them to.

Fury.

 … I’d refused to go into Denis’s metaconcert with the others. I’d lurked somewhere in the mental lattices outside. And I’d seen it.

Who are you? I asked
.

And it said: I am Fury
.

Where did you come from? I asked
.

I am newborn. Inevitably
.

What do you want? I asked
.

And it said: All of you
.

Marc said, very calmly, “It’s one of them. One of the family members who were there at Uncle Vic’s deathbed. As he died, he somehow … I don’t know what he did. Infected? Merged? Coerced? Transferred his perverted ambition—”

“Such a thing isn’t possible!” I cried.

But Marc was lost in his own thoughts, speaking aloud. “And that’s why my own unconscious made me hold back from telling Papa about Fury. Fury could be any of them!… No, wait, not the wives, and certainly not poor Uncle Brett. Fury has to be a Remillard. He could even be Papa himself—maybe a disjunctive part of his personality that he’s not aware of.”

“Then who the fuck is
Hydra?”
I croaked. “Some other member of the family?
Five of them?”

Marc frowned but only shook his head.

I took another slug of whiskey to quell the shudders. It didn’t work. But the old eau-de-vie must have given a momentary boost to my frazzled cerebral synapses, because a brilliant thought popped into my head.

“Adrien’s out of it!”

Marc stared at me in perplexity.

“Your Uncle Adrien. He was here on Earth when Margaret Strayhorn died on Orb, ergo he’s not Fury or Hydra! He’s the one member of the Dynasty who stayed behind. All the others were in Concilium Orb at the same time Margaret was … And your Aunt Anne is safe, too! When Margaret was attacked on Halloween, Anne had already gone with you to Orb, in advance of the rest of the family.”

The young face was doubtful. “You infer that Fury and Hydra are inseparable. I don’t think the assumption is warranted.”

I was crestfallen. “Maybe not. But it seems logical. Adrien was crazy about his daughter and he’s been a wreck since she died. And Anne … Oh, shit. Any of ’em could be Fury! Even you.” I lifted the bottle to my lips again.

But this time Marc’s coercion stopped me. I was compelled to put the liquor down on the desk. The boy came up close to me and took my sweating head in both his hands, and our eyes locked.

Coercion. He had me cold. My mental screen hadn’t a hope in hell of keeping him out, and for the merest instant he showed me what lay behind his own mental barrier. He showed me who he was. He said:

I AM NOT FURY.

My mind uttered a silent yelp of amazement. I’d seen a veiled version of Jack’s incredible infant mind, and I’d known Paul’s awesome inner resources and those of Denis. Marc’s mentality was different—deeper and darker than the mind of his father or grandfather, of a completely different order from Jack’s—more frightening to me than any of the other three. But he’d spoken the truth to me: he wasn’t Fury. I remembered Fury from Good Friday and I remembered him from a later time as well. A time I had forgotten until this very moment.

Fury had also been present when Jack was coming down the birth canal. He had tried to take control of the baby even before he drew his first breath.

This time I howled out loud.

Marc’s coercion tightened like an iron vise.

UncleRogiI’vegottodothispleaseunderstand! I
need
you and I can’t have you getting drunk and going all to pieces
you and Jack are the only ones I can really trust FURY COULD BE ANY OF THEM and we know what
he
wants even if we don’t know about Hydra FURY WANTS ALL OF US. He told you so. Whoever he is whatever he is however he’s managed to concoct this Hydra HE IS THE REAL MONSTER and we’re the only ones who can stop him!… So I’m going to fix you. I’m going to delete your alcoholism.

Marc was an uncertified Grand Master in coercion, but not even he could sustain control of me indefinitely. To really bend my mind, he would have to exert another mindpower, one he was equally expert in: redaction, the faculty that could be used to heal minds, or to destroy them.

I had always refused to let metapsychiatrists mess with my head. Again and again Denis and Lucille had pleaded with me to let clinical metapsychic practitioners root out the most perverse of the geraniums in my cranium, especially my propensity to abuse alcohol, but I had always balked. I refused to let mental healers “edit” the parts of my personality that others found reprehensible. I admit that I am neurotic and bibulous. It’s the self I’m familiar with, the one that somehow manages to survive. I have no desire to change. But now here was my awful great-grandnephew prepared to drag me kicking and screaming into the pitiless glare of permanent sobriety, merely to serve his own selfish needs—and perhaps the well-being of the family and the Human Polity of the Galactic Milieu. I screamed:

NO! FortheloveofGod
not the booze!
You plant that damned inhibition in me and I’ll go stark staring MAD I’m not a true alcoholic Lucille found that out years ago don’t you know the liquor’s a safetyvalve for a supersensitiveegocentriccowardly personality?
GHOST! DON’T LET HIM!!

Marc hesitated.

“If you zap me,” I whispered, “you’re no better than a monster yourself.”

The gray eyes were unblinking. He could do it. Oh, yes he could. Even though he was still only a boy and not the metapsychic titan he was to become as an adult, he could have exerted his redaction and fixed me so that I could never take another sip of alcohol again without puking my guts out. Fixed me so that I’d never find sweet oblivion again.

But he didn’t.

He let go of my skull and whirled away in a rage of frustration and stood with his back to me and both fists clenched. “Damn you, Uncle Rogi! I don’t want to hurt you or make you miserable; I want to help you! So you can help
me
. Please …”

Shakily, I got up and put a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll do the best I can. That’s all any man can do. You can’t force a person to be better than he is.”

The clenched hands slowly relaxed. Marcel the Maine Coon cat came out from wherever he’d been hiding during the rumpus and rubbed against Marc’s calves. The boy turned around. The words seemed forced through his teeth. “I’m—sorry.”

I sighed. “De rien, mon enfant.”

“It’s just that I don’t know what to do! Five or six members of the Dynasty—my own aunts and uncles, maybe even my own father—might be mental monsters! But there’s no proof. I can’t go to the Magistratum. Even if humans are running it now, they’re still so new at the game that they’d call in the exotics like a shot over something as big as this.”

“Probably.”

“I couldn’t do it!”

“No.”

“But I don’t know what else I can do.”

“Neither do I. Tell you what: we’ll both do nothing at all for the time being. Just get on with our regular work and try to think about this affair as calmly and rationally as we can. We may get a brainstorm, or we may find some kind of useful clue that will prove things one way or another. There’s even a chance that
Paul
will discover something, if he’s not Fury himself.”

Marc slumped down onto the stool, drained. The cat continued his furry consolation. It was pushing suppertime, and Marcel was really asking for food on the feline telepathic mode, but both of us had heartlessly tuned him out.

“I thought I hated Papa,” Marc said. “But when there was deadly danger, I called
him.”

I didn’t say anything.

“When you were in a panic, you called on a ghost, Uncle Rogi.”

“Bullshit,” said I, stoutly.

But he wouldn’t be deflected. “I heard you do it. A ghost—and not a Holy Ghost, either! The mental image
attached to the concept was … strange.” For just an instant, he seemed poised to coerce it out of me. And then he caught himself and made a hasty gesture of self-deprecation, pretending to slice his throat. “Never mind. I’m sorry. I’m poking where I shouldn’t again.”

Are you?… The only two persons who might possibly be able to save me and the rest of the Remillards from Fury and Hydra and other things that go bump in the night were my old Lylmik friend who called himself the Family Ghost and this boy. Maybe it was about time Marc knew he had some sort of an ally!

I lurched up out of my chair and clapped Marc on the shoulder. “Hell, I don’t see why I shouldn’t share my ghost story with you. But not here. It’s getting late. Why don’t I take you over to the Peter Christian Tavern and buy you supper, and along with it I’ll tell you a few tales about my misspent youth.”

T
HE LAWYERS HAD THEIR DRIVER LAND IN THE RHOCRAFT LOT
of Europa Tower, and from there they took Rogi and Teresa in on the subway to Dirigent House, a good two kilometers away. But someone who was either operant or wired must have spotted them somewhere along the line, because a baying pack of media people awaited them when they stepped out of the subway car, brandishing camcorders and microphones and shouting questions in dozens of different accents of Standard English. There were even two Gi
and a Poltroyan among the reporters. Teresa seemed more pleased than annoyed as the shouting echoed through the little subway station.

“Miz Kendall! Tell us how you feel as you make your final plea to be pardoned!”

“Miz Kendall! Do you believe the third time is going to be the charm?”

“Miz Kendall! Do you think you’ve been treated fairly?”

“Will you still be singing on opening night at the Met next week if you have to stand trial?”

“How’s little Jack bearing up?”

“Look this way just for a second, Miz Kendall!”

“Is it true that you and the First Magnate are estranged?”

“Miz Kendall, will you be making a personal appeal to the Dirigent, or will your attorneys speak for you?”

“Miz Kendall—”

Rogi grabbed one of her arms and Chester Kopinski took the other, and they attempted to haul her toward the elevator while Sam Goldsmith and Woody Bates ran interference. Woody kept shouting, “No comment! No comment!” Teresa, a bright smile on her face, insisted on trying to answer the questions. The senior attorney, Spencer Delevan, stood just outside the mob fringe, clutching his briefcase to his tailored bosom and talking frantically into a portaphone.

Finally the police came and order was restored. Teresa and Rogi and the lawyers got into the elevator and ascended to the offices of the Dirigent for Earth, David Somerled MacGregor.

“The media hawks will still be waiting when we come out,” Chester predicted darkly.

“We’d better ask the ODE for permission to take Teresa and Rogi off from the roof,” said Sam, sotto voce. “Especially if we get a turndown.”

“I really don’t mind answering their questions,” Teresa said. “And we won’t be turned down.”

“Now, Teresa,” Woody chided. “You know what you promised. Leave it all to us.”

Nobody paid a bit of attention to Rogi.

Ommm
, said the elevator, and they all exited into the reception area, an atrium of no particular distinction, done in the popular neo-Romanesque style. There was a mosaic floor, a white marble pool at the center with small fountains
and large fishes, a glass roof, and an abundance of potted greenery. To Rogi’s surprise, there were nearly two dozen people sitting about, apparently waiting to see the Dirigent. They didn’t look like lawyers or other bureaucratic types, either: only ordinary citizens. One young woman had two little children with her, who were leaning over the edge of the atrium pool teasing the koi.

“I’d heard rumors that the Dirigent had decided to treat his office as a kind of glorified ombudsmanship,” Rogi murmured to Chester, “but this is a bit much. Do you suppose we’ll have to take a number?”

“We have an appointment for ten hundred hours,” Kopinski said, glancing at his old-fashioned gold pocket watch, “and we’re right on time.”

Teresa was astonished, studying the people who were waiting. “You mean that
anybody
can see the Planetary Dirigent?”

“Anyone may apply for an appointment,” Spencer Delevan said austerely. “Frivolous requests are denied, and matters that can best be handled by other authorities are appropriately shunted. Dirigent House has a very large staff as well, and only specially selected matters are referred to MacGregor himself.”