Jack the Bodiless (Galactic Milieu Trilogy) (68 page)

A spurt of flame and a great cloud of dark smoke rolled out. The firefighters pressed forward, plying their hoses and chemical canisters. There were shouts. More firefighters hauled a smoke evacuator up, thrust its intake nozzle into the room, and switched it on. Marc and I crouched on the floor under the meager shelter of my sodden parka, coughing.

So this is the way it ends, I thought. The greatest mind the human race has ever known, kept alive against all odds by
the best modern medical technology, perishing ignominiously in a fire, one of the most ancient of disasters. Had the four Hydras done it? At the time I thought so; but later, of course, the culprit was proved to be Fury. Unknown Fury, who had psychocreatively fuzzed his image so that even the room cameras had transmitted no identifiable picture to the security company, although the tapes showed how the fire had been started.

Fury had used the simplest kind of incendiary device: a glass bottle filled with flammable j-fuel, fitted with a wick. The oxygen line leading into Jack’s life-support unit had been torn out, the blazing bottle smashed on the floor, and the door quickly slammed as the culprit fled. Meanwhile, the brilliant brain wrapped in rotting flesh had slept on oblivious, knowing himself to be safe from mental attack behind his own powerful mind-barriers, safe from physical attack inside an array of expensive security equipment.

Without the added oxygen, the fire might have burned itself out harmlessly in a few minutes. With oxygen to feed it, it had roared into an inferno, searing and melting the delicate and ingenious mechanisms that supported the last remnants of living tissue in which Jack’s mind resided.

The Chief yelled something.

The ceiling sprinklers shut off, and so did the hoses held by the firefighters. No more smoke came from within the ruined sickroom. The Chief shone his lantern into the darkness. Suddenly Marc’s lethargy fell away. He was on his feet, shoving the astonished man aside, stumbling into the sodden, charred mess.

I was behind him.

The window was broken, and snow blew in. Water dripped from the ceiling and pooled on the littered floor. Cooling metal ticked, and the wind moaned softly. The lantern light behind Marc and me dimly illuminated a scene of steaming chaos—twisted and blackened remnants of furniture, collapsed equipment cabinets, the ruined hulk of the life-support unit that had occupied the center of the room. There was a charcoal smell and a sharp chemical stench of melted plass. For the merest instant, as a fresh gust of icy wind blew in, I imagined that I smelled something else—something incongruously sweet, almost like Pernod or licorice or anise. I was weeping like a baby and could barely see, but memory told me that I had known that fragrance last on
a misty plateau high above a tropical island, and in my dazed misery I had fleet recollections of Teresa: alive and embracing her newborn son in a snowbound cabin … lying still and cold in her bed … smiling at me from amid garlands of ferns and flowers.

Marc now stood just inside the door, with me and the firefighters pressing behind him. He grabbed one of the lanterns and swept the light about the large room.

We saw lingering wisps of steam laced with snowflakes. Contorted pieces of burned equipment like incinerated bones. Some fragments of pale, fragile ashy substance that reminded me for a second of the little white roses Jack had fashioned at Christmas with his creative metafaculty …

Psychocreativity.

He was so very good at that.

The lantern beam moved far to one side, to the dark corner at the left of the door. Both Marc and I saw him, and both of us cried out.

A man.

Crouched almost in a fetal position, with his arms curled protectively about his head, his body as perfect as that of Michelangelo’s David, completely naked and clean except for his feet, ankle-deep in the filthy water. His arms moved. He raised his head to look at us, a bewildered expression on his face. He was perhaps in his twenties, dark-haired, quite good-looking, with the distinctive aquiline nose of the Remillards. He smiled hesitantly at Marc and me, and we goggled at him, bereft of speech and nearly frightened out of our wits. The Fire Chief was doing his best to push past us, cursing good-naturedly, trying to see what held us enthralled.

I’ve completed the first part of the work
.

“Ti-Jean?” I whispered. “But it can’t be you—”

The young man’s face lost its bemused look. His perfect form seemed to dim and go translucent before my astounded eyes, becoming as insubstantial as the tendrils of steam that the storm wind plucked and tore. Instead of a beautiful mature male body I saw all at once a naked brain—not a raw or repugnant denuded organ but a thing supremely elegant and
correct
—suspended in air. It was attached to nothing and sustained by nothing except the atmosphere, photons of light, and its own conquering psychocreative mindpower.

And then the brain vanished in turn, and a little boy stood there in the corner, shivering slightly but still smiling. He seemed to be about three or four years old.

“This body is more appropriate for now,” he said. “Don’t you think so? At least until people get a little more used to me.”

Marc handed me the lantern. I followed him as he walked into the room, and the Fire Chief and a couple of his cohorts pushed in behind me. They uttered awed exclamations.

Marc knelt in the muck, holding one of the little boy’s hands in his own uninjured one. Jack was not a phantom or any other sort of illusion. Marc’s hand was very dirty, and he soiled the child’s clean flesh as they touched each other.

“Just like the Christmas roses?” Marc asked Jack.

“Not quite. But almost. I’m actually bodiless except for my brain, but clothed in a quasi-solid molecular envelope of optional form.”

The Fire Chief said, “Merciful God, he’s alive.”

Marc turned to me. “I can’t pick him up with this sprained wrist of mine, Uncle Rogi.”

I bent down and took the small boy into my arms. Jack was warm, and the snowflakes melted as they struck him. “Can we all go to Uncle Rogi’s place?” Jack said. “I think that would be the best for now. And it’s been so long since I’ve seen Marcel.”

Both Marc and I burst out laughing. Marc got to his feet. The firefighters drew aside, murmuring, as I came out into the hall carrying Jack the Bodiless. Then we all trooped into the undamaged part of the hospital and began to look around for something dry to wrap the little boy up in.

T
HE GALE WINDS OF THE
N
ORTH
A
TLANTIC LASHED THE
great blunt headland of Ton Mhor, and the tall seas leapt and creamed about its foot and marched roaring into the bay of Sanaigmore around its eastern flank. In the gray first light, with a storm slowly abating, that northwest shore of the island seemed a grim place, broken cliffs and rocky reefs facing the sea and only a few patches of twisted conifers and winter-sere peat bogs and moorlands stretching between the small inland lochs. Unmetaled tracks and narrow roads led from the scattered small farms and homesteadings, many of them deserted and in ruins, toward the main highway that skirted the deep south-coast indentation of Loch Indaal. Along the gentler lee shores, lighted villages were dotted along the sands and tide flats like sparkling beads widely placed on a string. The bustling little distilleries of the south and west were lit like Christmas trees, for they operated day and night to fill the demand for those fine single-malt whiskies that were Islay’s gift to the Galaxy. On the rest of the island there were sheep and berry farms, and some of Earth’s most beautiful golf links, and holiday hotels that catered to bird-watchers and walkers and antiquarians.

But not in the northwest. There most of the old crofts and farms were long abandoned, as lifeless as the prehistoric standing stones and the tumbledown chapels and ornate crosses raised by the Celtic monks, and the castle the Macdonalds held when they were Lords of the Isles in the Middle Ages. The people who had once struggled to earn a hard
living on Islay were almost all gone away now to the lovely “Scottish” planet of Caledonia. Islay’s smaller modern population was prosperous and, thanks to the ubiquitous rhocraft, no longer isolated from the mainland. But there were parts of the island where locals and visitors seldom went, and one of them was isolated Sanaigmore Farm, once owned by relatives of the late metapsychic giant Jamie MacGregor.

The red egg landed there at dawn.

Following Fury’s instructions, the four surviving Hydra heads trundled the egg into the barn. It would have to stay there until the hue and cry died down, and it could be relicensed by fiddling the aircraft registration computer in Edinburgh.

The children found the house key where Fury said it would be and entered the dark farmhouse kitchen. It was clean and secure from the elements, and aside from a spider or two and a smell of mildew about the sink, reasonably inviting. Especially when one considered the alternatives.

Quint got the miniature fusion plant going to warm the place up and provide power for lights and cooking. Celine primed the well and flushed the antifreeze out of the plumbing. Parni checked out the food, found a more than adequate supply, as Fury had also said there would be, and solicited orders for breakfast. Maddy hunted out bed linen and ran it through the clothes dryer to freshen it. The pillows and mattresses were synthetic and not too musty. There were clothes and footgear in the closets.

Later, when they all sat around the kitchen table after eating, Celine dared to ask the burning question. “How long do you think we’re going to be stuck here?”

“Till the flap cools down,” Parni said gloomily. “And you can bet it’ll be one helluva flap.”

Maddy left the table and went to look out the kitchen window at the hills and bogs in the rain-soft dawn. “Why in the world do you suppose Fury sent us here?”

“He must have had a reason,” Quint said. “And he said he’d come and explain as soon as it was safe.”

“That could be a long time.” Maddy sighed. “Damn that Gordo. It was all his fault, egging us on to go after Marc.”

Celine huddled more deeply inside the big old sweater she’d found. “We’re lucky Fury didn’t just feed us to the wolves … Parni, turn up the thermostat. I’m still freezing.”

“Fury needs us,” Parni said. “At least old Gordo was right about that. Whatever the great scheme is, Fury can’t do it by himself.” After adjusting the environmental control on the kitchen wall, he went to the counter and got another mug of coffee from the brew machine. “I wonder who Fury really is?”

The other three Hydras shrugged.

“What are we going to
do
here?” Celine asked fretfully.

Quint leered. “At least now there’s no odd man out.”

“Oh, really?” Celine was arch. “On beyond nervebomb—is that your idea of few and simple pleasures on this tight little island? And is it going to be ladies’ choice or love pile? Or were you thinking about stable monogamous relationships until we’re all bored stiff?”

At the window, Maddy gave a low cry. She turned slowly to the others, a beatific smile spreading across her face. “We won’t be bored here. It’s a wonderful island. Fury knew what he was doing when he picked this place.”

“How so?” Parni asked, still dubious.

“Natural suboperants,” Maddy whispered. “Islay is chock-full of them. The best kind—untrained in the aggressive metafaculties and brimming over with lifeforce. I’ve been scanning with my seekersense, and the whole south coast of the island is alive with delicious bright auras.”

Parni snapped his fingers delightedly. “Sure! Celtic genes! I forgot that this part of the world was one of the prime irruptive metapsychic foci.”

“Fury didn’t.” Quint was grinning.

“This time,” Maddy said firmly, “we’re going to be extremely careful. No more flying off half cocked and giving the game away.”

“No,” the others agreed solemnly.

“Who knows how long we’ll have to stay holed up here?” she added. “It might even be as long as a year. And we wouldn’t want to deplete the natural resources.”

M
ARC AND
I
TOOK
J
ACK TO MY APARTMENT, AS HE HAD
requested. The hospital personnel were aghast when we tried to carry the child out of there, and told us that Jack had to be kept for observation—at least until Colette Roy got there and pronounced him fit to be discharged. But Jack said very reasonably that
he
knew he was perfectly all right, and reminded everyone that the Lylmik had given him the right to pull the plug on himself if he chose. And he had chosen.

So we left, with the Fire Chief trailing after, declaring that it had been a goddam miracle the kid had survived, and this was a night he’d tell his grandchildren about. Like almost all of the general public, the Chief was familiar with Jack’s case from the earlier media hooraw. But the bootleg tapes that the nurse had sold were made when Jack’s head still had a normal appearance and his nearly decomposed lower body was hidden by the machines, and so the Chief had no notion of the real nature of the “miracle” that he and his fellow firefighters had witnessed. As far as the official reports of the fire went, Jack had saved himself by retiring inside a psychocreative bubble. It was a self-defensive ploy not unknown among powerful adult operants, and Jack was acknowledged to be an extraordinary child.

When the three of us got to my place, we put through the subspace call to Davy MacGregor. An all-points bulletin went out for the four children suspected of participation in the Hydra metaconcert. It was quickly determined that Anne Remillard’s red rhocraft was missing. But she, like all
the other members of the Dynasty, had been at Denis and Lucille’s farmhouse, having supper and commiserating with Paul and Catherine, all throughout that evening. Anne’s egg had apparently been stolen from its parking space in the farm’s backyard. Colette Roy, Professor Tukwila Barnes, and Lucille’s housekeeper, who were also at the supper, vouched for the fact that none of the seven Remillard magnates had been out of the house at the time arson experts determined that the fire had been set.