Jack the Bodiless (Galactic Milieu Trilogy) (63 page)

“Well, for starters, I can’t use my metafaculties or I’ll be disqualified. So would other operant racers. We’re being monitored. For seconds, a driver using CE isn’t necessarily more competent than one controlling a machine in the usual way. That’s why I can enter my bike in the Junior Open. Against a really experienced MX racer, I’m a babe in arms, and there’ll be twenty-year-olds up against me who could eat me and the Honda for breakfast on a motocross track. But ice racing isn’t dirt racing, so I figure I’ve got a good chance. You going to come out tomorrow and watch?”

“Damn tootin’. But God help you if you break your neck right before my eyes. I’ve had enough grief this week already, what with getting outbid on a Robinson-mint March
1952
Planet Stories
, with Poul Anderson’s “Captive of the Centaurianess” on the cover, and finding out that Perdita’s going to marry some young twit in the college’s Sociology Department.”

“But you and Perdita were finished,” Marc pointed out reasonably.

“Wouldn’t expect
you
to understand,” growled Rogi. He headed for the private door opening into the building’s main interior stairway, which led to his third-floor apartment. The Maine Coon cat Marcel LaPlume, anticipating supper, emerged from some lurking spot among the bookshelves and trotted ahead of his master, nearly tripping Rogi up as the door opened. “See you tomorrow,” the bookseller said to Marc. “Set the lock on your way out.”

“Uncle Rogi, wait.”

The old man turned around tiredly. “Well?”

“I was just visiting Jack. And he said—he
thinks
that Hydra’s on the loose again.”

Rogi uttered a Franco expletive, and when Marc explained the circumstances behind Jack’s suspicions, Rogi’s response was even more ingeniously obscene. “Go tell the Magistratum! Tell that superior prick Davy MacGregor! But don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”

Marc’s voice was quiet. “Jack wants us to be careful. Not to be alone with Papa or any of the other members of the Dynasty, just in case. And to be especially careful when we’re asleep. You should change the lock on your apartment door.”

“What good would that do? Your Papa and your uncles and aunts are all PK wizards. They can pick any lock ever made. And if they’re really part of Hydra—which I don’t believe for a minute—they can zap me no matter what precautions I take. So I’m not going to do anything. I’m so sick of the whole business that I don’t give a good goddam if Hydra and Fury both fly down the chimney and zorch me to Kundalini charcoal. I think poor Ti-Jean’s imagining things, and if you had a whit of sense, you’d think so, too.”

Marc stood glaring at the old man. “All right,” he said at last. “Be a silly old coot! But will you at least stay sober until I can do some checking myself on these new operant disappearances? If Hydra really was responsible, Jack may need our help.”

Rogi’s martyred expression changed to one of apprehension. “Jack? You really think so?”

Completely exasperated, Marc headed for the outer door. “Just lay off the sauce for a few days, okay?”

Marcel meowed impatiently from the middle distance, and Rogi yelled, “Will you shut up? Is the whole goddam world out to bug me?”

“Take care, Uncle Rogi,” Marc said, and went out to his waiting turbocycle.

The two-kilometer section of the river between the Wheelock Street Bridge and Girl Brook, where the race would be held, was flagged off-limits so that the surface wouldn’t be too badly chopped up ahead of time, but the section just to the north was open to spike-bikers. It wasn’t illuminated by portable lights as the racecourse was, and most of the other riders had put in their practice time during daylight. Day and night were immaterial to farseeing operants, though, and Marc found nearly a dozen other heads making the chips fly in the fairly straight part of the river between Girl Brook and the Rivercrest Bend. None of the other students in Junior Division steered with CE, but there were a few in Senior who used the technique. One of them, a graduate student who taught one of Marc’s CE engineering courses, was working out when the boy arrived and farspoke a brief greeting.

An improvised slalom course had been marked with tall saplings hung with trail ribbon, and most of the riders were practicing on that, since jamming the in-and-outers would be the trickiest phase of the race. Marc gave the poles a few whirls, then worked on his fast turnarounds and jumps. The jumps weren’t high, just a couple of meters. This amateur race had only one triple, but there were four doubles and ten bun-bouncers. Landing a spikester after taking to the air without nailing your bike to the ice or floundering in some other guy’s slush crater took finesse, revving up both wheels just the right amount at the touch to prevent the big punch, then easing off so you wouldn’t dig too deep a trench and go out of control. Marc knew that his jumps were his weakest maneuver so he worked on them for more than an hour, catching air above the iced-over heaps of snow bulldozed onto the ice until his shaken kidneys hollered for mercy.

Time for a single good long run flat-out, and then he’d pack it in. He rolled out of the practice area and cast upriver with his farsight, making sure he had a clean reach. There was only one other biker out there, and he was inbound at a moderate turn of speed. Marc tuned to the aura, and bedamned if it wasn’t his fourteen-year-old cousin Gordo McAllister joyriding on the old BMW that Marc had made him a present of. He was in his final preppie semester at Brebeuf down in Old Concord and would be entering Dartmouth next fall. He must have come to Hanover for the Winter Carnival weekend. Most of the cousins tried not to miss it.

Hey Gordo!

 … Yo Marc!

Been chewing up the river kiddo? How’s the old Beemer handling?

Sweet&lovely but I sureashell wish I had a CE brain-bucket like yours to goose her with.

Build your own mylad.

I’m trying … You wanna race?

No
way
I’m saving it for the real thing tomorrow just going out for a long run to make sure I didn’t shake anything loose practicing hops.

[Disappointment.] Bet this goodole Beemer could take your Honda in the straightaway.

Probably. It’s a road warrior. But this new bike of mine has the edge in agility and that’s what wins ice-cycle races.

Gimme time Marco I’ll be out there smokin’ you.

Ha ha. Come out and watch tomorrow and find out how much you’ve got to learn babycakes!… And now watchit I’m coming right at you.

Eek. Be still myheart!

Marc flicked the Honda’s headlight to high beam. No sense straining his farsight when he wanted to check out the bike’s performance through the cerebroenergetic interface, which meant not only controlling the machine mentally but also simultaneously scrutinizing a mental projection of its system readouts. Full concentration was required.

He spooled up the turbos and then let the Honda charge into the white, shimmering night. In seconds he met Gordo and passed him in a cloud of flying ice crystals, and then he was completely alone on the frozen river. He flashed past two small islands, skirted the bigger one at the county line,
tore around a bend, and roared beneath the two Thetford bridges. The Honda wound up to 195 kph on the unimpeded stretches and handled like a dream. The innards were go all the way, and the machine was as responsive as one of his own limbs, a perfect extension of his body.

Marc let himself relax. He cut the analysis and just let the bike howl. Above Orford there were almost no houses near the shore, and the surface of the ice was smooth. The moon came up, and he turned off his lights and sped up the broad white thoroughfare like a dark meteor trailing a silver glittering plume, throttling back just a tad when the great river began to meander in wide bends. He was the bike and the bike was him and the only thing that mattered was running in the moonlight, on and on and on …

He was dreaming.

No longer on the river, no longer on the machine. Elsewhere. In darkness shot with a billion colored stars above him and a black pit below. Paralyzing terror flooded his mind, and he tried to regain control of himself, to cancel the dreaming—tried tried tried—only to fail. Helpless! He was helpless. But it was only a dream, and soon he’d wake in his room in the fraternity house, and it would be morning—

Marc listen to me
.

 … Oh no! Oh Jesus! It was him it was him only THIS TIME IT WAS NOT A DREAM—

Marc.

GOD IT WAS REAL REAL
WHATDOYOUWANTWHOAREYOULETGO—

I want you Marc. You know perfectly well who I am. I’m Fury. The hope of the human race and the Remillard family. The only one who can save us all from eventual ruin abandonment enforced stagnation eternal imprisonment by the perfidious exotics who envy us and fear us because they know our potential is so much greater than theirs! Haven’t you been listening when I spoke to you? Don’t you agree that what I say makes sense?

No!… Yes.… I don’t know. Go away! Let me alone!

I’m going to free us from exotic constraints that hold humanity back. Free us from the threat of so-called Unity! Do you know what Unity is Marc? It’s a mind-homogenizing process that destroys individuality among operants and makes them nothing more than cells in a single gigantic
Overmind dominated by the Lylmik. Is that what you want for your race? for your family? for your
self?

No.

Then help me destroy the Galactic Milieu and replace it with a confederation of worlds that is truly free. Work with me Marc. Open to me and let me show you—

Let you take control of me YOURSELF you fucker?
NO!
I know who you are you’re Victor go to hell
go back to hell—

I am not Victor.

Then who are you?!

[Hesitation.] I am Fury. I am born. Inevitably.

Who are you
really?
Are you my father? Are you part of a sick split personality? Tell me the truth if you really want me on your side!

I am Fury. I draw minds to me and enlighten and guide and reward the ones who are mine and the ones who oppose me perish in the most agonizing manner known in the present Reality. If you oppose me you will die this way.

Bullshit! You can’t get at me unless I open to you and I never will. I know what kind of mind I have and so do you. I’m the best. The best ever born—

Jack is greater. But Jack is going to die. I don’t want Jack I want
you
. Join me freely Marc trust me let me show you how to obtain everything your heart could possibly desire limitless power pleasure prestige I love you I can give it to you come with me come come come!

Fury … I almost think I
do
know you.

I burn for you! I’ve loved you so long needed you waited until the time you would be receptive you are so different from the others so free from venality from silly selfishness so noble in spirit so proud so clean so strong and still not yet mature oh Marc what you could be what I could help you to become … [Image.]

God—you really are insane.

No. This [image] can be you. You’ve dreamed of it! I’ve showed it to you! It’s you Marc. More than human. An angelic being more powerful than the Lylmik unfettered by the tawdry limitations of flesh and blood [image] a being whose very essence is Mind. A Mental Man.

No! Get away from me! You’re a liar a fucking conniving liar trying to trick me you don’t even know who
you
really
are and you think you can tell me who I can be? No dammit no!

If you will not join me I have only one choice. I will send my Hydra to kill you to suck your vital energies from one bodily font after another to drain you while inflicting the most excruciating torture as your body blackens and swells and bursts in the psychocreative flames—

“No!” Marc cried out loud. “No no no no—”

He seemed to see the dream image again, the luminous superhuman being that he himself had named Mental Man, the star-angel who shone immortal and transcendent over all humanity, paling the lesser stars, who would have one day lifted the human race to his own glorious level, making it perfect. Except … the angel was falling, plunging into the black pit, his glow dimming, until unending abyssal darkness engulfed him. And off among the little stars a black nebulous mass was glowing with birth-fire, in its heart five strangely colored lights coalescing, growing, becoming brighter, more powerful, sentient, sapient, imminent—

Marc awoke.

He was aboard the turbocycle, speeding through the night along a wide white frozen river. The velocity readout said he was traveling at 186.26 kph. The terrain display, blinking scarlet alarm in his mind, showed he was heading directly for one of the massive midriver concrete piers of the Route 302 bridge. His own eyes and his farsight confirmed it.

He screamed to the CE control to change vector.

The bike roared straight ahead. The pier was less than 100 meters away, and the Honda refused to respond to mental guidance. It was the same executive-circuit glitch he’d had earlier with the helmet, the malfunction he thought had been fixed—

Or was it? God! Had Alex been right after all about the helmet being tampered with?

He tried to cut off the CE input to the bike’s onboard computer. Tried to revert to manual control. The Honda wouldn’t respond.

The six-lane bridge loomed against the starry sky, golden strings of streetlamps along the roadway, ruby lights below marking the supporting legs. He was going to hit the right-hand pier in a few seconds unless—

As his mind kept trying in vain to override the CE system, he clawed at the quick-release helmet strap with both hands
and tugged upward. He felt the needle electrodes tearing loose from his scalp, saw a blinding white flash, and knew the interface between his brain and the machine was finally broken. He grabbed hold of the handlebars again and used all his willpower and physical strength to wrench the bike to the left.

The helmet flew away, a black missile bounding over snow-covered ice. The turbocycle was in a flat skid, heading for the abutment on the western bank, the spiked wheels spewing chipped ice sky-high. He cut the throttle, englished the bike upright with his psychokinesis, got it straightened out, began noodging the brakes, slowed, slowed, and finally stopped.