Jack the Bodiless (Galactic Milieu Trilogy) (55 page)

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Rogi said. “I thought a dirigent was kind of like top dog of the Intendant Assembly—the king of the world.”

“Certainly not,” sniffed Delevan. “The Dirigent is independent of the ordinary planetary legislature. He is accountable to the entire Galactic Concilium, not merely to the Human Polity.”

Sam Goldsmith remarked, “You’re not alone in being confused, Rogi. The legal profession is still trying to sort out the way the Dirigency operates, and some of us suspect that Davy MacGregor is making up the rules as he goes along! By definition, the Dirigent is the primary
metapsychic
official of a planet, providing a direct link between the ordinary citizenry and the Concilium. Each Milieu Polity views the office a bit differently, but generally speaking, the Dirigent is more of an overseer or a public advocate than an administrator. When this probationary period is over, every one of our colonial worlds will have its own dirigent, and he or she will be solemnly charged with the nurturing and guidance of the planetary Mind.”

“Sounds to me,” Rogi said, “like MacGregor is more of a glorified nanny than anything else.”

Goldsmith laughed, but the other lawyers looked pained.

“It must be a very difficult job,” said Teresa.

Goldsmith said, “A Poltroyan friend of mine told me that most of their dirigents burn out after only a few years in office.”

“Goodness!”

“Here comes one of the staff,” Woody Bates said. “It’s about time.”

A slender young man with sandy hair, wearing a blazer with the ODE insignia, picked out the two petitioners immediately. “Hi, there! Teresa Kendall and Rogatien Remillard, I presume? I’m Bart Ziegfield, one of the Dirigent’s assistants. Would you two like to follow me? He’s ready to see you right now—”

Spencer Delevan interrupted smoothly. “We are the legal counselors for Citizens Kendall and Remillard, and we respectfully request that we be allowed to accompany our clients and present their petition to Dirigent MacGregor.”

“Sorry,” said Ziegfield with good-humored firmness. “You were told when the application was accepted that the Dirigent would see the principals only. This isn’t a law court.”

Delevan flushed. “But—”

Rogi pushed forward. “We get the picture. Come on, Teresa.”

Ziegfield winked at the disconcerted attorneys, then led Rogi and Teresa out of the atrium into a long corridor. It was very quiet, with handsome Chinese carpets on a parquet floor and many tall, anonymous doors. The paneled walls were hung with impressive paintings.

“Can that possibly be a real Van Gogh?” Teresa asked.

“Oh, yes,” their guide replied. “Dirigent MacGregor has always been a keen art buff, and he was very quick to take up the perquisites of the office, along with the duties and responsibilities. The paintings are on loan, of course. Lovely little Fra Angelico there … and don’t you just adore Hieronymus Bosch’s
Ship of Fools?
It’s the Dirigent’s favorite.”

The assistant knocked on a door that looked no different from the others they had passed. “There you go,” Ziegfield
said cheerfully. He gestured for them to enter and then hurried away, leaving them standing there.

Rogi and Teresa. Please come in
.

The old man gave a violent start. He took hold of the doorknob, opened the door, and stood aside to let Teresa precede him.

The room was small, even cozy. There was a fireplace where a few birch logs lay on a grate, ready to light. A pine credenza against one wall had an elaborate data-retrieval station built into it, but there was no other evidence of modern technology to be seen. Behind the pine table-desk with its nut-brown leather morris chair was a single window with homespun drapes, which looked out over the Merrimack Valley.

Davy MacGregor came out from behind his desk to meet them. Rogi had not seen the former Intendant Associate for Europe in person since his rejuvenation, and he was reminded anew of Davy’s strong resemblance to his late father. The hair was a different color, but the dundreary side-whiskers were the same, and Davy even wore a tweed jacket and a vest of the MacGregor tartan with staghorn buttons, that were virtual duplicates of Jamie’s favorites. He shook hands as though Rogi and Teresa were welcome guests, drew up two ladder-back chairs with crewel seats, complimented Teresa on her dress, and inquired after baby Jack. Returning to his seat behind the desk, he asked Rogi to keep an eye out for a fine copy of L. Sprague de Camp’s
Wheels of If
with the Hannes Bok dust jacket, which he said he was eager to add to his personal fantasy collection.

“I’ve got one in stock,” the bookseller managed to say. “All deacidified and permeditioned. I’ll have it shipped. My compliments.”

MacGregor’s dark eyes twinkled. “Have it shipped with an invoice, Rogi,” he insisted.

“Uh—of course.”

There was a silence.

Davy MacGregor said, “I’ve already done my own investigation of your case. There is only one thing I want to ask you, Teresa: Knowing what you do about young Jack, would you conceive another child?”

She answered with her head high. “No. But I still feel certain it was right to have
him.”

MacGregor turned to Rogi. “Why didn’t you tell the
Human Magistratum the truth about Marc’s role in the flight and concealment of Teresa?”

The old man felt his throat constrict. He’d been living in a fool’s paradise, thinking he’d successfully diddled the cops by taking the full blame. Rogi took a slow, deep breath. He said: “I’m an old man who earns his living in an unimportant trade. If I get sent down for ten years, it’s no big deal. The other accessory to the crime is a juvenile. He’s at a critical point in his education, and he’ll doubtless mature into an important person. I thought it was the better part of prudence to shield him. To let him enter adult life free of stigma.”

MacGregor’s gaze lowered to his own hands, lightly clasped on the polished dark wood of the desk. He still wore a wide golden wedding band.

“Both of you deliberately broke the laws of the Proctorship. You, Teresa, were driven by a subrational compulsion—a species of metacoercion recognized but not understood by the exotic races of the Milieu. Ancient humans would have said you were God-driven. Perhaps they would have been right.”

He lifted his eyes to Rogi. “You didn’t really want to break the law by helping her. You were also compelled—by two persons. One of them was Marc Remillard, and the other … you know who the other was.”

Teresa turned to the old man in surprise. “But you never told me—”

Davy MacGregor silenced her with his coercion. “I believe that the circumstances justify pardoning you both without condition.”

Teresa was instantly on her feet, bursting into tears of joy, stammering out her thanks. The door opened and Bart Ziegfield came in, took her gently by the arm, and led her away. The door closed behind him.

“I’d like to thank you, too,” Rogi began, rising and holding out his hand.

But MacGregor ignored it and motioned for him to sit down again. His face was grave. “You and I aren’t finished, Rogi.”

Rogi heaved a sigh. Only one person could have told Davy MacGregor his own motivation, to say nothing of Teresa’s. Rogi found himself wondering just what kind of training had been given to the Dirigent by the Lylmik.

Davy MacGregor smiled. “It was rough, my lad. Damned rough. But the details are none of your business, for all that you’ve had a bit of the treatment yourself.”

“Hah!” Rogi said, his eyes lighting up.

“It’s not camaraderie I want from you,” MacGregor said curtly. He was no longer smiling. “It’s something quite different, and you’ll cooperate or suffer some serious consequences.”

Rogi stared at him, openmouthed.

“Now, you might not be aware,” MacGregor said matter-of-factly, “of the trick certain Remillards have of shutting others out of their minds while appearing to submit to coercive-redactive probes. We’re going to be able to do something about that, as you lot will find out. It will take precious time to implement, however, the Magistratum being subject to the constraints of due process and the laws governing evidence-gathering, and such tedious things. But the Dirigent has the option to cut a few corners in a good cause. Having you here in my web, so to speak, I’m opting for a simpler and more direct method of information-gathering.”

“About what?” Rogi bleated.

MacGregor seemed not to have heard him. “The simplest and least painful option open to you is to tell me the truth freely, and then just open wide and let me see into your mind to confirm it.”

“But you’ve just pardoned Teresa and me—”

“I’m no longer interested in Teresa’s crime. It’s something infinitely more important you’re going to tell me about. You can do it voluntarily, or you can refuse. In which case I’ll be forced to apply my very own brand of mind-ream, which is still a very rough-and-ready instrument, even after the Lylmik training regimen. Now I concede that my ream wouldn’t get me much if I tried it on Paul Remillard or on his eldest son. But I guarantee it’ll turn
your
brain permanently to clotted porridge if you try to fight back.”

“For God’s sake!” Rogi cried. “Just tell me what the hell you want to know!”

“Everything you know about the person or persons who murdered Brett McAllister and my wife, Margaret Strayhorn. Or by God, you won’t leave this place a sane man.”

Davy MacGregor had lied.

He admitted it after Rogi had spilled his guts in a pool of muck sweat and confessed everything he knew about Fury, Hydra, Vic, baby Jack, and the seven deaths. After Rogi had recovered from the ordeal (with the help of four fingers of Lagavulin Limited Edition), Davy admitted that he would not really have mind-probed the old bookseller to the point of madness.

“Not that I’m incapable of it, old son,” the Dirigent said amiably, “because my coercive-redactive faculties have assayed out at some really filthy potential, and the Lylmik did teach me a thing or two. But I’m actually a kindly sort of chap who wouldn’t hurt a fly—and besides, my authority doesn’t quite extend to the infliction of mental mayhem, even though I do have more leeway than the Magistratum in questioning Earth citizens.”

Rogi snarled and whined about the unfairness of it all, but Davy only said he intended to get to the heart of the killings by what he suspected would be the most direct route available—to wit, Rogi himself. And while Milieu law protected Magnates of the Concilium such as the Remillard Dynasty from being mind-probed without firm grounds, a mere private citizen was dead meat if the Dirigent decided to dig.

“Now I have some information to give you,” Davy said, still smiling, “and I want you to be sure to pass it on to the members of your family. Within a month, the Human Magistratum will have a new mechanical interrogation device at its disposal that will be able to get an accurate true-or-false reading out of even the most stalwart mental screeners. Thanks to you, there are now legal grounds for questioning the seven Remillard magnates with the machine—based upon information received. If they agree to submit voluntarily to the machine here in my offices, without me having to turn the matter over to the Magistratum for the lengthy legal rigamarole, then the testing will be done under strict confidentiality. No one’s reputation will be even slightly besmirched, provided they’re innocent. Again thanks to your cooperation, we now know just what questions to ask.”

“Beautiful,” Rogi said bitterly. “I can add stool pigeon to my personal roster of guilt trips.”

The kindly façade melted from Davy MacGregor’s face,
leaving Caledonian rock. “The devil take your wounded sensibilities! The only thing that matters is finding the fiends who killed my poor Maggie and the others, and sending them straight to hell. Tell
that
to your precious Remillard Dynasty.”

T
ERESA’S OPENING-NIGHT PORTRAYAL OF THE ICY
C
HINESE
princess Turandot, whose heart is finally softened by love, was one of the great triumphs of her career. She had wisely chosen a role that showcased her brilliance as a singing actress and a vocalist of rich and apparently effortless power. No one noticed that her voice was no longer as agile as it had been in her youth or that the exceptional high notes that had been her trademark were now few and far between. Her Turandot was a stunning comeback, and if the critics noticed that she was not the paragon of yore, they were not about to mention it and risk being lynched.

The entire family was there in New York on opening night, including Paul, and after the standing ovation given the performance, he dashed to her dressing room with tears running down his cheeks. The two of them frustrated her adoring fans and irritated the media by staying sequestered for nearly an hour. When they emerged, they came arm in arm, with dazed grins on their faces, to ironic applause and whistles. Baby Jack, who was being toted in a backpack by Marc, apparently made some telepathic remark that caused his older brother to blush to the ears.

The next day, Paul moved back into the family home in Hanover.

Teresa had signed to do seven more performances of the opera, scattered throughout October and early November, and during this time she commuted between New Hampshire and New York City, with Paul attending every performance but one. He missed the matinee on October 19, because that was the day the family submitted en masse to the Cambridge mechanical mind-ream, which was moved from Magistratum Headquarters to the Office of the Dirigent for Earth by special order of Davy MacGregor.

Not only the Dynasty but also their wives, Denis, Lucille, and Marc were questioned. (Teresa was tested the next day.) The machine was operated by Drs. Van Wyk and Kramer, and since both men were respected scientists and also magnates, the confidentiality of the procedure was erroneously presumed to be assured.

Because of the traumatic nature of the examination, only ten yes-or-no questions were asked of the examinees: