Jack the Bodiless (Galactic Milieu Trilogy) (56 page)

All of the persons examined answered “No” to the first nine questions and were ascertained to have told the truth.

Aurelie Dalembert the wife of Philip Remillard; Cecilia Ashe the wife of Maurice Remillard; Cheri Losier-Drake the wife of Adrien Remillard; and Teresa Kaulana Kendall the wife of Paul Remillard, answered “No” to the tenth question and were ascertained to have told the truth.

Lucille Cartier answered “No” to the tenth question and lied.

Philip, Maurice, Severin, Anne, Catherine, Adrien, Paul, Denis, and Marc answered “Yes” to the tenth question and told the truth.

Because of the overly broad nature of the tenth question, Dirigent David Somerled MacGregor appealed directly to the Lylmik Supervisors for a ruling on whether he had grounds to continue his investigation of the family. The Supervisors ruled that, at the present time, he did not. They also reminded him that he was not the one who would ferret out the murderer of his wife.

The results of the interrogation were sealed by the Dirigent and not turned over to the Human Magistratum.

T
HE MOON SHONE DOWN ON THE
D
EVIL’S
D
ITCH, AND THE
inevitable wind of East Anglia rattled the windowpanes of the cottage that was quaintly English on the outside and peculiarly Russian inside. Flames crackled in the stone hearth, Mozart played softly on the stereo, and eight of the persons who had informally dubbed themselves the Metapsychic Rebels settled down with great relief and prepared to drink to the health of the newest of their number.

Anna Gawrys-Sakhvadze filled silver-mounted glasses with steaming tea from a brass samovar and had her nephew Alan Sakhvadze serve them. She herself offered a lacing of Georgian brandy to those who wished it. Gerrit Van Wyk accepted with his usual enthusiasm, and so did Will MacGregor and Alan. Hiroshi Kodama took a few drops. Oljanna Gathen, Jordan Kramer, and Adrien Remillard declined.

“And you, Esi, my dear?” Anna poised the bottle above the glass of the newcomer. “Perhaps after your experience with our nasty little lie detector machine over at the IDFS, you would like something to calm your nerves.”

“No, thank you. My nerves are recovering nicely,” declared Esi Damatura. “But I don’t mind telling you that I’m glad Gerry and Jordy had only a single question to ask me.”

“Poor Adrien recently had to endure ten in a row from those two,” Anna said, topping off her own glass and then
taking a seat. “But we will discuss that after our little toast … Hiroshi, will you do the honors?”

“It will be my great pleasure.” Hiroshi Kodama rose to his feet. They were all sitting around the fire, and the rest of the room, filled with relics of Anna’s former homes in Moscow and Central Asia, was in deep shadow except for flickering flamelight. “I have known Esi Damatura for over nine years. Even though she served on the African Intendancy and I on the Asian, we learned very early on that both of us had an abiding love for this planet and its people, and an uneasy feeling toward those who, not being human themselves, nevertheless felt convinced that they knew what was best for our human race. I was overjoyed when Esi, like Anna and myself, was appointed to the Human Directorate of the Galactic Concilium. I was even more gratified when she joined me in urging that Teresa Kendall and Rogatien Remillard be pardoned for conspiring to violate the Reproductive Statutes. Even though we did not carry the day in that infamous vote, Esi’s heartfelt defense of human reproductive freedom led me to approach her at last about the possibility of her joining our little group, and ultimately to my bringing her here tonight for the final affirmation of her acceptance. Jordy and Gerry did their duty as inquisitors, and the result is one we all witnessed … And so, my friends, I give you Director Esi Damatura, Magnate of the Concilium, Grand Master Farspeaker and Creator—and now also, of her own choice, a Metapsychic Rebel together with us.”

He lifted his glass. The others rose to their feet and drank. Then Esi proposed a toast of her own.

“To that great countryman of Adrien’s, Thomas Jefferson! For years he has been highly esteemed in Namibia, the land of my birth. Among other things, Jefferson said: ‘A little rebellion now and then is a good thing.’ ”

The others all laughed and drank. Then Hiroshi asked Adrien, “What’s this about your having to endure ten questions on the interrogation machine?”

“It was in connection with the Hydra killings. Which are by now the worst-kept secret in the Human Polity—among operants, at any rate.”

“Well, I never heard of them,” Esi declared. Oljanna Gathen, her husband Alan Sakhvadze, and Hiroshi Kodama echoed her.

“Then lean a little closer, fellow conspirators,” Adrien Remillard urged, his mental tone grim in spite of the fact that he spoke lightly, “and I’ll tell you a murder mystery to freeze your gizzards and confound your deductive faculties.”

For the next quarter hour he regaled them with details of the affair, winding up with the disappearance of his eldest daughter and the interrogation of the Remillard family by the Dirigent. Jordan Kramer and Gerrit Van Wyk already knew a good deal of the background, since they had conducted the questioning; but the others, with the exception of Anna, who already knew almost everything, and Will MacGregor, who was aware of the suspicions about his stepmother’s death, were fascinated and appalled by Adrien’s story of a metapsychic vampire named Hydra that apparently killed by inflicting seven chakra-like wounds on its victims and was controlled by an unknown human named Fury.

When Adrien finished, the young starship captain, Oljanna Gathen, said flatly: “I don’t believe it. Granted, Brett McAllister was murdered in this peculiar way. There’s no real proof Margaret Strayhorn was killed by the same person; but I’ll give that the benefit of the doubt. But the other deaths—? By your account, there is no hard evidence at all that your daughter and the others who died last summer were killed by this alleged monster. The entire story of Hydra and its fiendish puppeteer comes from the unsupported testimony—and
thirdhand
testimony, at that—of an infant! Has the child himself been questioned with the machine?”

“Can’t be done,” Jordan Kramer said. “The procedure is traumatic enough for adults. It could inflict irreparable mental damage on a baby, and this one isn’t even in good health. As I understand it, he’s undergoing therapy for nearly three dozen genetic defects.”

“The poor thing,” murmured Oljanna. “What’s the prognosis?”

“Favorable, so far,” Adrien said. “Little Jack is some kind of metapsychic Wunderkind. No one can get past his mental screens, and he’ll only let his older brother Marc examine his memories. But Davy MacGregor was willing enough to accept Uncle Rogi’s account of Marc’s examination of Jack.”

“My father,” Will MacGregor put in, grimacing, “is hardly unbiased. He nearly went out of his mind when Margaret died. He’d seize on any clue that might lead to her killer. Even something as fantastic as this.”

“The burns on Brett McAllister,” Hiroshi said thoughtfully. “They actually occurred at the seven chakra points and had a lotus form?”

Adrien said, “I saw them myself. Each brandlike pattern was slightly different from the others. They were white, ashen. The rest of the body looked as though it had been seared with a blowtorch. It was some kind of psychocreative flaming, evidently a side effect of the drain.”

“Fascinating,” said Hiroshi. “You are aware, of course, of the significance of the chakra points in Kundalini Yoga?” He projected a mental image. “But the yogi uses the seven body points in esoteric healing, or in endeavors to attain a higher level of consciousness. The vampiric Hydra has apparently perverted the yogic technique to cause a redactive outflow of the victim’s vital energies. Amazing!”

“There was a clear connection between Brett McAllister’s murder and the attack on Margaret at the Dartmouth president’s house,” Adrien said. “The strange burn on her scalp was identical to the one on Brett’s head—and if we can believe my father, Brett’s burns were identical to ones caused by Denis’s late brother Victor, a family black sheep of the deepest dye, when he murdered two people many years ago.”

“But there’s no firm evidence that Margaret was actually killed that way,” Alan said.

“No,” Will admitted. “A suicide note was found. But my father is convinced that she
was
murdered, and he did claim to hear her farspoken death shout saying, ‘Five.’ In his mind, this corroborates what the baby said about Hydra being a fivefold entity.”

Oljanna shook her head. “Thin. Very thin.”

“You might not think so,” Adrien growled, “if you were better acquainted with the crimes of my late unlamented Granduncle Victor.”

“Tell them, Adryushka,” Anna commanded.

“I was only two years old at the time,” Adrien said, “and I never knew Vic. But my older sibs, who did know him, rated him as an amoral opportunist with superior metafaculties
who intended to conquer the world—and came damned close to managing it. He’d gained control of the Zap-Star laser-satellite net and one of the biggest corporate empires on Earth just before he was turned into a vegetable.”

Gerrit Van Wyk had been listening wide-eyed. “When did that happen?”

Adrien gazed into the fire, cradling the tea glass in his hands. “It was the night of the Great Intervention.”

“I was there,” Anna said softly. “It was to be the last Metapsychic Congress, the farewell gathering of the beleaguered operant leaders of the world, held at this huge old hotel in New Hampshire in the U.S.A. I attended along with my mother Tamara and my dear grandfather, and my brothers Valery and Ilya and their wives. Our final banquet was held in a chalet on top of a mountain above the hotel, and this madman Victor Remillard conspired to kill us all by manipulating a group of anti-operant fanatics called the Sons of Earth. Surely you have read about it in your history books.”

Hiroshi Kodama frowned. “There was nothing in the books about Victor Remillard engaging in psychic vampirism.”

“No,” Anna conceded. “But the entire world knows that he and a dissolute capitalist named Kieran O’Connor were behind the attack on the chalet. O’Connor’s body was found on the mountain after the Intervention, marked with the seven chakra burns. His daughter was killed in the same way, and it is certain she was murdered by Victor. We learned this only afterward, of course. Victor himself attempted to blow up the chalet, with all the delegates of the Metapsychic Congress inside. Is this not so, Adrien?”

“It’s true. But he failed. He was found later among the building piers, in a coma. My Great-granduncle Rogi seemed to have stopped him somehow—perhaps by inadvertent use of some powerful psychocreative impulse. Ordinarily, Rogi’s mindpowers are very weak. But Victor had tried to kill him there on the mountain, and we know that extreme stress can sometimes greatly augment a person’s metafaculties. Rogi himself is hazy about what happened. What we’re certain of is that somehow Victor was paralyzed and sense-deprived and rendered metapsychically latent,
just as he was about to murder the cream of operant humanity. And Vic remained that way, completely helpless, until he died in 2040.”

“But McAllister was killed eleven years after Victor died,” Oljanna objected. “Surely you don’t think that this—this Hydra is Victor’s ghost!”

“We don’t know what it is,” Adrien said wearily. “Except it’s not a member of my family. Neither is its controller, Fury. Gerry and Jordy proved that with their mind-reaming machine.”

“We really didn’t, you know,” Jordan Kramer said in a low voice.

“What
?” Adrien started in his chair as if he had been electroshocked.

“We didn’t prove you lot were innocent. The machine ascertains truth or falsity only as it’s perceived by the conscious mind of the examinee. If either Hydra or Fury is an artifact of the unconscious—if they’re aspects of a multiple-personality disorder—then the guilty party wouldn’t
know
that he or she was guilty unless the Hydra or Fury persona was on deck at the time of the testing.”

Gerrit Van Wyk added: “With the guilty persona suppressed, your unknown fiend can deny that he’s Hydra or Fury, or that he knows anything about them—and the machine will register that he’s telling the truth.”

Adrien cried out, horror-stricken: “Then it could even be me! I could be a part of Hydra, or even the controller. I could have ordered the murder of my own daughter!”

“Well,” Gerry temporized, “we’re psychophysicists, not clinical psychologists. But multiple-personality disorders are well documented in psychiatric literature. The—er—secondary mental aspect doesn’t usually communicate with the original personality at all.”

“There’s no proof that Hydra or Fury exists,” Oljanna reiterated. “All you know is what
Marc
maintains that the baby said.”

“What will happen now in the investigation?” Hiroshi asked.

Adrien shook his head. “The Dirigent decided to do nothing. The investigation into Brett’s murder is still open. Margaret’s been declared dead, but the murder/suicide question is unresolved. All of the other disappearances, including my daughter’s, are officially attributed to shark attacks.”

“Is there any way,” Esi Damatura asked slowly, “that
we
can make use of this affair?”

“Tame the Hydra and enlist it into our little conspiracy?” Van Wyk gave a shaky giggle. “There’s a thought!”

“I was thinking of using it to discredit Paul.” Esi regarded Van Wyk with poorly disguised distaste. “Get him out of the First Magnate chair. All we would have to do is spread details of the Dirigent’s test—plus Jordy’s second opinion on the exoneration.”

“It would discredit not only Paul but all the rest of us as well,” Adrien said in a neutral tone. “There’d be a public uproar, even though nothing’s been proved. The Remillards would be castigated as operant Draculas—especially by the normal-minded Intendant Associates of North America and the American colonies. The non-ops never have been able to decide whether we’re operant role models or a gang of unholy elitist schemers.”