Julian May - Jack the Bodiless

file:///F|/rah/Julian%20May/May,%20Julian%20-%20Galactic%20Milieu%201%20-%20Jack%20the%20Bodiless.txt

Jack the Bodiless

Book One of the Galactic Milieu Trilogy

By Julian May

Version 1.0

I will praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made!

My soul knows how marvelous are your works. You were aware when my very bones were formed,

Growing secretly inside my mother's body

As a plant's root grows beneath the earth. You knew me before I was born.

The days of my life were all written in your book

Before they had ever begun.

PSALM 139

Whereas in the familiar closed systems of physics the final state is determined by the initial

conditions, in open systems, as far as they attain a steady state, this state can be reached from

different initial conditions and in different ways.

LUDWIG VON BERTALANFFY, A Systems View of Man

God writes straight with crooked lines.

SPANISH PROVERB

PROLOGUE

SNOW GROTTO PLANETARY PARK, KANNERNARKTOK TERRITORY

SECTOR 14: STAR 14-661-329 [SIKRINERK] PLANET 6 [DENALI]

GALACTIC YEAR: LA PRIME 1-400-644 [17 MAY 2113]

It was a dark and stormy night, as so many nights were on Denali, where topography and climate

conspired to produce some of the Galaxy's worst weather. Worst from a human point of view, of

course, unless that human was addicted to Nordic skiing . . .

The mind of the supervising Lylmik entity named Atoning Unifex smiled as Its material essence

hovered above the blizzard-lashed park. Denali was a rugged planet, wintery throughout most of its

year, the veritable haunt of the Great White Cold celebrated in a certain Earth song that was very

familiar to the First Supervisor. On most of Denali's continents, glaciers and permanent

snowfields spread wide amidst a fantastic landscape of dazzling peaks, black precipices, and crags

that thrust up like the broken tusks of primordial monsters. Denali had no sapient indigenous life-

form. No rational creatures had as yet evolved on it when it was assigned to the Human Polity by

the world evaluators of the Galactic Milieu. Its most famous honorary native son, Saint Jack the

Bodiless, was conceived before the first Earth settlers arrived.

The hardy people who originally colonized Denali in the mid-2000s had hailed from Alaska and

other parts of the United States having severe winters. They were quickly joined by Canadians,

Siberians, Samoyeds, Lapps, and a host of others who craved a life of challenge that could be

lived in a setting of wild natural beauty. The World-Mind those human colonists engendered might

have been expected to be as dark and moody as Denali's weather; but for some reason the very

opposite mental climate prevailed, and Denali was an invigorating place with an aether that fairly

glowed with friendliness and verve. The original rationale for establishing the colony had been

the planet's deposits of valuable gallium ore, and this was still a major economic resource. But

Denali had also become a popular vacation resort, first appealing mainly to Human Polity winter-

sports fans (including the famous Remillard clan of New Hampshire) and later attracting hordes of

like-minded Poltroyans as well.

Atoning Unifex let memories crowd to the fore of Its consciousness, recollections that had

been repressed for aeons. This small planet had been loved by both of them . . .

She, of course, had been born here, living and working in the colony's capital city of

Iditarod until a fateful tragedy had taken her to Earth, where the two of them had so improbably

met. On the very brink of their great adventure she had spoken casually of her own experiences as

a native of Denali, and they had laughed together over the unexpected mutual reminiscences. The

shared laughter had come to an end long ago, but the memories remained in a deep level of the

Lylmik's ancient mind, guarded and cherished and eventually becoming almost too precious to

file:///F|/rah/Julian%20May/May,%20Julian%20-%2...ic%20Milieu%201%20-%20Jack%20the%20Bodiless.txt (1 of 207) [1/15/03 7:34:12 PM]

file:///F|/rah/Julian%20May/May,%20Julian%20-%20Galactic%20Milieu%201%20-%20Jack%20the%20Bodiless.txt

contemplate. The pain that had once darkened these memories had long since faded, and their

scrutiny at this particular time was now actually appropriate.

And so Atoning Unifex lingered there in the middle of the storm, Its mind in a state that a

human being would have recognized as part reverie and part prayer, thinking of a person who had

once been a woman, who had twice loved deeply, and who had mothered Unity in countless nonhuman

minds in a distant Galaxy.

Finally the Lylmik uttered the mental equivalent of a deep sigh. The epilogue of the comedy

was nearly complete, but One waited upon the inimitable Uncle Rogi, who kicked at the goad as

usual, dawdling while cosmic destiny hung suspended.

Unifex focused Its mind narrowly on the subsurface snow cavern that sheltered Rogatien

Remillard from the raging snowstorm. It saw a hunched, lanky man sitting beside a tiny tent,

taking off his ski boots. Like other members of his famous family, Uncle Rogi possessed the genes

for self-rejuvenation. His face was that of a raddled fifty-year-old, belying his actual age of

167 Earth years. His gaunt cheeks were frost-reddened, and his nose and eyes watered a little when

he forgot to mop them with the red bandanna handkerchief he carried up the cuff of his old L. L.

Bean Penobscot parka. He had tossed aside his knitted toque, and sweaty silver curls straggled

over his forehead and ears. He was whistling as he peeled off the archaic twentieth-century ski

garb and stripped faded red long johns from a pale and sinewy body. Then he lowered himself with

exquisite care into a geothermal pool in the center of the small snow cave. The telepathic

emanations from his ever obstinate and uncoadunate mind were happy ones.

Uncle Rogi said to himself: If the storm lasts, I'll forget about the final leg of my trek

and call the park's shuttlebug and go wallow for a week in the lodge's apres-ski entertainments

casino cabaret string quartets Lucullan food good company perhaps a new science fiction novel

savored in the Wintergarden while the bar waitrons keep the drinks coming and I check out the

snowbunny crop!

The old man settled deeper into the steaming water, smiling.

Poor Uncle Rogi! Unifex had other plans for him. But Rogi had had a good enough holiday, ski-

touring more than 200 kilometers throughout the beautiful park during an unusual three-week spell

of calm bright days. Now the weather pattern had changed, and whether Rogi was willing to admit it

or not, he was adequately refreshed and recreated after his first stint of journalistic labors. It

was time for both of them to get back to work.

Unifex descended toward the planetary surface. The negligible physical substance of the

Lylmik mind-receptacle deflected only the tiniest of the hard-driven snowflakes and easily

penetrated the three-meter-thick crust of ice and snow above the grotto where Rogi had elected to

camp. The place was typical of the subnivean hollows that gave the Denali planetary park its name:

an irregular cave as big as a good-sized room, melted from the permanent icefield by the heat of a

small geothermal spring. The walls and ceiling were ice, but the rocky floor was cushioned with a

dense lichenoid carpet of tough gray and lavender saprophytes. Close to the shallow burbling pool

grew larger and more fragile exotic lifeforms, sessile animals that resembled scarlet onions with

peculiar flowers that gave off a pungent sulfurous scent if they were bruised. As the mildly

carnivorous blossoms of the onion creatures bent toward Rogi's exposed shoulders, he flicked hot

water at them by way of discouragement.

The walls of the grotto were cupped and dripping near the ground and glittering with crystals

of hoarfrost in the cold upper reaches. There thin tendrils of vapor coiled golden in the light of

Rogi's antiquated electric lantern before disappearing into a natural flue. Touring skis were

propped against one wall, and a backpack lay near the little tent. On the far side of the chamber

was the closed entry door, fashioned of harmonious translucent plass, that led to the enclosed

surface-access tunnel and modern latrine. (Park visitors were strictly forbidden to dig down into

the snow grottoes directly, or to camp in undesignated "virgin" caves except in emergency

situations.)

Here and there on the nacreous walls were circular openings, not quite large enough to admit

a human hand. From several of these, and from a larger hole at ground level where runoff water

from the spring exited, came a glitter of tiny eyes and an occasional peevish hiss. The natural

inhabitants of the grotto, hotblooded eight-centimeter "ice crabs" temporarily displaced by the

human who had come to spend the night, were keeping a close watch on developments. The crabs

considered these alien invaders to be a great nuisance, in spite of the fact that they usually

brought along something worth stealing.

A determined onion flower began to nibble experimentally on Rogi's wet shoulder blade. He

reached for his backpack, unzipped a compartment, and brought out a battered leatherbound flask. A

stiff tot of Armagnac and a guided puff of alcoholic breath caused the lifeform to shrink back

from the poisonous exhalation, blanch to a muddy mauve color, and broadcast its disgust on a

file:///F|/rah/Julian%20May/May,%20Julian%20-%2...ic%20Milieu%201%20-%20Jack%20the%20Bodiless.txt (2 of 207) [1/15/03 7:34:12 PM]

file:///F|/rah/Julian%20May/May,%20Julian%20-%20Galactic%20Milieu%201%20-%20Jack%20the%20Bodiless.txt

primitive telepathic mode. The entire plantation of scarlet carnivores desisted from snack attacks

forthwith.

Rogi nodded in satisfaction, took another snort, and sank more deeply into the hot spring. Up

on the planetary surface the hurricane wind roared in the darkness, and there was a distant rumble

as an avalanche let loose somewhere. The grotto trembled slightly. Ice spicules sifted down toward

the bather, glittering until they melted just above his head. Rogi began to sing softly:

"For the wolf wind is wailing at the doorways,

And the snow drifts deep along the road,

And the ice gnomes are marching from their Norways— "

Unifex joined in:

"And the Great White Cold walks abroad!"

The old man in the pool leapt like a speared sturgeon. "Bordel de merde!"

It's only me, Uncle Rogi.

"Dammit! One of these days you're going to give me cardiac arrest doing that!"

[Laughter.] I apologize. It was the old college song. I had been thinking of it myself just

as I arrived. It brought back all kinds of memories.

"Now look what you made me do." Rogi was accusing. His eruption had splashed hot water over

the onion animals and they were flailing in wild distress, the tiny teeth of the flowers

chattering like elfin castanets. "You know the park rules about disturbing the native lifeforms!

These little chompers are sensitive. If any of 'em decide to croak, I could be blamed and end up

paying a helluva fine—"

Calm yourself. Look. I've restored them.

"Damn good thing," Rogi muttered, climbing out onto the not-quite-lichens. The clumps of red

onions were swaying luxuriously now, and a delicate humming sound filled the grotto. "Don't often

hear that. It's their full-tummy serenade."

It was the least I could do.

Rogi chuckled. Naked and steaming, he retrieved the brandy flask, which fortunately hadn't

spilled, and tucked it into a safe place. "I'm feeling pretty hungry myself. Want to share some

chili cagado with me, mon fantome?"

Thank you. But no.

"Too substantial for your Lylmik guts, eh? You used to love it."

Unifex's thought was wistful: I don't suppose you brought along any Habitant pea soup . . . ?

"Ate the last of it two days ago."

The Lylmik's mind sighed.

Rogi squatted and set up a small microwave campstove. He dipped a pot of water from the

spring, peered into it, and extracted a black gelatinous blob and a glass-shrimp that were

swimming languidly about the container's bottom. The invertebrates were returned to the pool and

the pot set inside the stove to boil. Rogi had tossed in two Aqua Pura tablets for seasoning,

since Denali bred tough microorganisms as well as tough colonials.

"So you couldn't resist coming after me." The old man dried himself with a diminutive towel

and put his long Johns and socks back on.

Unifex said: It was a species of sentimental journey. I had felt compelled to avoid Denali

during her first-cycle sojourn here.

Rogi hesitated. "You want to tell me about the two of you? All I know is the little bit

Cloudie and Hagen told me—and they didn't know all that much."

Not now. Perhaps later.

"M'mm." Rogi took the seething pot out of the stove and filled two bowls and a large cup,

adding a different-colored cube to each container of water. After four seconds of effervescence,

the highly compressed food reconstituted and the pungent aroma of chili rose from the first bowl,

and the smell of cinnamon-apple cobbler from the second. The cup was full of black coffee. Rogi

added five lumps of sugar and a shot of Armagnac to the latter, and sprinkled almost 200 grams of

grated natural-state Tillamook cheddar onto the chili.

A sibilant, yearning chorus came from the crab holes, and there was a frantic blinking of

eyes. Rogi chuckled wickedly. "Cheeky little bastards. Remember how they used to eat Adidas if you

left 'em outside the tent in these snow caves?"

Unifex laughed. It said: I note that you wear inedible Salomon ski boots now. Very

comfortable-looking. I like the new Rossi boards, too. But isn't it rather imprudent of you not to

file:///F|/rah/Julian%20May/May,%20Julian%20-%2...ic%20Milieu%201%20-%20Jack%20the%20Bodiless.txt (3 of 207) [1/15/03 7:34:12 PM]

file:///F|/rah/Julian%20May/May,%20Julian%20-%20Galactic%20Milieu%201%20-%20Jack%20the%20Bodiless.txt

wear an environmental suit?

"For sissies! I been skiing my brains out for a hundred fifty years in this outfit and I

haven't froze my bizoune off yet. You'll notice that my wrist-com's modern enough.

Keeps me alerted to weather changes. And if I get snowed in or come a cropper or even run

outa coffee or munchies, the Ski Patrol or a robot monitor'll home in on its transponder-locator

and take care of me. I knew this storm was on the way. I figure to spend the night here, then call

for a shuttlebug to fly me back to the park lodge tomorrow if she don't blow out as per forecast.

Wouldn't mind at all spending the last week of my vacation lolling around in style—"

I'm sorry, Uncle Rogi. I've come to collect you.

"I'm booked for seven more days, dammit!"

You are well rested and quite able to begin work on your Memoirs again—as am I. Take your

time finishing your meal, but tonight you'll sleep in your own bed back home in New Hampshire.

"Back to Earth tonight—? That'll mean hopping the hype at maximum displacement factor. I'll

be a nervous wreck!"

I'll take you myself . . . more gently.

Rogi's eyes narrowed and he squinted at the portion of air from which his invisible

companion's thoughts appeared to emanate. "So! You Lylmik do have a mitigator for the pain of

hyperspatial translation—just like Ti-Jean always said you did."

Yes. Jack was perceptive as always. But the device is not yet appropriate for general use

among our client races in the Galactic Milieu. You will make no mention of it.

Rogi spooned down chili and drank coffee. "I wouldn't dream of violating the glorious Lylmik

master scheme . . . But what's the damn rush to get me humping again on the Memoirs?"

One has one's reasons.

Rogi rolled his eyes hopelessly. Then for some time he ate in silence, his mind idly

recapitulating the things he had already written and shuffling through what would come next, in

the period following the Great Intervention. "Gonna take another book, big as the last one, to

cover the thirty-eight years of the Simbiari Proctorship. Be a pain in the ass for me to get all

those family shenanigans sorted out, too."

Unifex said: I want you to skip over most of that and begin immediately on Jack's early life

and disincarnation, and the growing threat of human opposition to Galactic citizenship. Then you

will describe Dorothea's part in the earlier drama, and finish up with your view of the

Metapsychic Rebellion, making a Milieu Trilogy. The events of the painful Proctorship years, the

time before the Human Polity was admitted to the Galactic Concilium, have been covered well enough

by Philip and Lucille in their own autobiographies. But they never knew Jack's full story, or

Diamond's—

"Or yours, mon cher fantome."

Or mine.

"I'll have to backtrack some to make it hang together, you know. Start out with a kind of

retrospective digression. And I'll still need a lot of fill-in help from you to give a proper

overall picture."

I realize that.

"Is that why—" Rogi paused. He swallowed hard, banishing a certain thought before it could be

formulated, even subvocally. "Eh bien, mon fils. I reckon you know what you're doing by now."

Beyond a doubt. To paraphrase one of your favorite fantasy writers, even the most modest

intellect can hardly help learning a thing or two after six million years.

The old man grinned with forced cheerfulness at the vaporous air. "Six million . . . Ah,

those self-rejuvenating Remillard genes! A real drag, immortality, eh? Not that I'm ready to knock

it myself yet, you understand. Um... do you know . . . can you foresee when I'm . . ."

Not really. Moi, je ne suis pas le bon dieu, j't'assure! But I do intend to see to it that

you survive at least long enough to finish the family chronicle.

"Well, thanks all to hell for small favors."

Rogi licked the last of the apple cobbler from his spoon and drank the dregs of the coffee.

Then he switched the stove to the dishwashing mode and thrust the tableware inside. A moment

later, he began to pack everything away, singing the chorus of Dartmouth College's "Winter Song"

under his breath.

At length the Remillard Family Ghost said: Are you ready, Uncle Rogi? The trip home will take

only a moment. There will be none of the usual discomfort of hyperspatial translation experienced

in a starship.

"Not in my underwear, dammit!"

The old man began to throw his clothes back on. He managed his pants and shirt before he

disappeared abruptly from the snow grotto, and all his gear with him.

file:///F|/rah/Julian%20May/May,%20Julian%20-%2...ic%20Milieu%201%20-%20Jack%20the%20Bodiless.txt (4 of 207) [1/15/03 7:34:12 PM]

file:///F|/rah/Julian%20May/May,%20Julian%20-%20Galactic%20Milieu%201%20-%20Jack%20the%20Bodiless.txt

The lichenoid cast a faint phosphorescent glow about the newly darkened chamber. There was a

rustling sound, then a medley of plops as the crablike exotic animals came rushing from their

burrows to scavenge leftover bits of Earth cheese. Outside the snow grotto, the Denali blizzard

wind howled.

1

FROM THE MEMOIRS

OF ROGATIEN REMILLARD

I still have the nightmare sometimes. I had it on the night that I was unceremoniously translated

from the planet Denali to Earth at the truncated end of my skiing holiday and commanded to resume

writing these Memoirs.

As always, the dream played itself out in a weird, accelerating time-lapse mode. There is

nothing terrifying about the scene at first. A beautiful mother holds an infant, completely

wrapped in a blanket, and she looks up from the baby as a fourteen-year-old boy approaches. This

older child of hers has a strangely ominous aura about him. He has come hurriedly home from his

classes at Dartmouth College on a blustery day, and he wears black turbocycle leathers and carries

a much-modified visored helmet tucked under his arm. His eyes are gray and his mind opaque, and

his smile is tentative and quirkily one-sided as he accepts his mother's invitation to open the

blanket and see his new little brother for the first time ... in the flesh.

The black-gloved hands are trembling slightly with an emotion that the older boy despises and

tries vainly to check. And then the baby lies revealed, unclothed, perfect. And the minds of Marc

and Teresa mingle in joy:

Mama he's all right!

Yesyes YES!!

Papa was wrong the genetic assay was wrong—

Yes dear wrong wrong wrong little Jack's body is normal and his mind his mind . . . !

Mind?

Oh Marc dear his mind just speak to him it's wonderful don't be afraid to wake him . . .

The baby's delicate eyelids open.

And in my dream, there are no eyes.

I hear laughter, and I recognize the voice of Victor. But it can't be Victor because he died

twelve years before Jack was born; and for nearly twenty-seven years before that he was helpless,

disembodied as Jack would be but unlike Jack deprived of all metafunction, all physical and mental

contact with the world outside himself. In my dream, the devilish laughter fades in a smell of

pine and a cataract of pain. Tears pour down Marc's face for the first time in his austere young

life. The eyeless infant smiles at us—

And suddenly the real nightmare takes charge.

No eyes. Only a void, a starless darkness that is somehow alive with fearsome knowledge. My

dream races on, and Teresa and young Marc are gone. There is only a pathetic little child shackled

to complex life-supportive equipment, and while I watch in horror, his human form begins to

disintegrate.

I try to tear my gaze away from the awful sight, but I cannot. Faster and faster, the self-

destructive process programmed by his own body proceeds.

The child's despairing mother blames her own hubris for his suffering. His father, Paul,

countering his own pain with clinical detachment, finds the disincarnation bleakly fascinating.

Marc sees his first glimpse of Mental Man. Denis Remillard and Colette Roy and the other

scientists of the Human Polity call the child a prochronistic mutant, an anomaly born out of

proper time, too early in the scheme of biological evolution, a throw-forward in the pattern of

orderly human development. Four of the exotic races of the Galactic Milieu, pitying, call the

little boy pathetic and doomed. The enigmatic Lylmik refuse to discuss his case at all, except for

flatly prohibiting his euthanasia.

In the dream, my mind is shrieking: No no Ti-Jean no God no how can you let his body die

while his brain lives the brain the wonderful potent superbrain God why why—

Then I see the brain naked.

I plead: Let it die too let the poor thing die stop the machines the genetic engineering

attempts the futile meddling let him go in peace let him go!

A monster that does not know its self sees the brain as the Great Enemy, and in a cataract of

flame the machines are stopped.

file:///F|/rah/Julian%20May/May,%20Julian%20-%2...ic%20Milieu%201%20-%20Jack%20the%20Bodiless.txt (5 of 207) [1/15/03 7:34:12 PM]

file:///F|/rah/Julian%20May/May,%20Julian%20-%20Galactic%20Milieu%201%20-%20Jack%20the%20Bodiless.txt

I hear the laughter of the dead fiend again as Victor savors the hideous irony of the

situation. For the brain that is Jack the Bodiless does not die, but lives. Impossibly, it lives,

impervious, sustaining itself in some arcane psychoredactive fashion, nourished by the atmosphere

and by photons, enduring and adapting and learning and growing in wisdom and grace and dieu de

dieu I am so afraid of it paralyzed with dread even as it tries to reassure me and in my dream I

call its name:

Ti-Jean! Jack!

This horrifying mutant, this thing, is still my dear little great-grandnephew Jon Remillard,

a brilliant and vibrant little human person only three years old, trapped in 1.7 kilograms of

unsupported humanoid encephalic protoplasm.

None of Jack's eventual triumph penetrates my nightmare. I know only my own fear and

revulsion and a demonic whisper: Who will be the next to disincarnate? Perhaps you, Rogi? . . .

Then Marc is at my side again, much older. This time his dark armor is the glistening wet

body-monitoring coverall of a cerebroenergetic enhancer, the perilous mind-boosting device

outlawed by the Galactic Milieu. Marc studies the bodiless thing that is his mutant brother with

open admiration. And a paradoxical envy.

I see a warning reflected from eyeless depths, and Marc sees it, too.

Jack's mind tells us: No. Human is better. For you, Marc. For all of you.

Marc smiles and shakes his head, denying. Mental Man is the inevitable, the culmination of

all rational being—and there is no need to wait upon evolution's laggard pace for His coming. He

can be summoned—

Suddenly I see three persons suspended in interstellar space: a faceless woman clad in a suit

of diamonds, a blazing plasma that enfolds the first Mental Man, and a black armored shape leading

an interstellar armada in opposition to the other two. The Metapsychic Rebellion of humanity

against the Galactic Milieu has begun.

At my dream's climax, a blue-and-white planet explodes, haloed by a mass death-shout. And in

that terrible moment the Galactic Milieu, the benevolent confederation that saved the human race

from its own folly and gave us the stars as a playground, itself begins to die . . .

The dream always ends at this point, before the final resolution, and I return to

consciousness freezing and paralyzed, with a half-strangled scream caught in my throat.

Peace! T'en fais pas, Rogi! Calm yourself and relax. It all happened long ago, and now at

last in the writing of this personal chronicle you have a way of exorcising the nightmare once and

for all.

Perhaps you already know me from the introductory volume of these Memoirs. If you do not, let

me introduce myself briefly. My name is Rogatien Remillard, and I am sometimes called Roger but

more often simply Uncle Rogi (pronounced, appropriately enough, as "rogue he") by those who find

my Christian name impossibly ethnic. It is of French origin, and the Remillards are a sizable

family who originally were colonists in Quebec and later migrated to the northeastern United

States, where there was a large but unobtrusive Franco-American population.

I have for most of my life been a bookseller in the college town of Hanover, New Hampshire. I

have a small antiquarian bookshop, The Eloquent Page, where rare old twentieth-century fantasy and

science fiction books printed on carefully conserved paper are offered to connoisseurs at

atrocious prices. Although I belong to a family of acknowledged mental giants, my own intellectual

and metapsychic functions are meager. This has not prevented me from being caught up in the

chequered careers of my more illustrious relatives. On the contrary, I have played at times a

rather significant role in the family's machinations—something that Milieu historians have seen

fit to ignore—and I have witnessed from my worm's-eye view the rise and fall of many a Galactic

worthy and villain, including two saints and one notorious individual whose misdeeds were so

appalling that he was known as the Angel of the Abyss.

I have never married, but I have loved unwisely several times. I have faced imminent death on

quite a few occasions and survived through improbable happenstance. I have killed three persons in

cold blood, even though I am the most easygoing and peaceable of men, and one of them was a person

I loved deeply.

My fraternal twin brother, Donatien, and I were born in the year 1945, in the New England

mill town of Berlin, New Hampshire. Our young father had already been killed during World War II,

and our mother died giving birth to us, so we orphans were raised by our kindly aunt and uncle,

who had six children of their own.

But no members of the Remillard clan except my brother and I had the "immortality" genes,

whose existence was not confirmed until after the Intervention, nor did they possess the genes for

higher mindpowers. (It was many years before my twin brother and I discovered that we were not

file:///F|/rah/Julian%20May/May,%20Julian%20-%2...ic%20Milieu%201%20-%20Jack%20the%20Bodiless.txt (6 of 207) [1/15/03 7:34:12 PM]

file:///F|/rah/Julian%20May/May,%20Julian%20-%20Galactic%20Milieu%201%20-%20Jack%20the%20Bodiless.txt

unique in our metapsychic operancy.) How we two responded to our more frightening metafunctions is

a story that I have already related at some length. In brief, I learned to live with such powers

as telepathy, psychokinesis, and metacoercion, while Don was ultimately destroyed by them,

tragically killed when he was only forty-four.

I was rendered sterile by a childhood illness. Don had ten offspring, and all of them

inherited the genes for high metafunction and self-rejuvenation; but only the two oldest children

were able to utilize their extraordinary mindpowers. Circumstances made Don's oldest child, Denis,

become a foster son to me; and it was he who founded with his operant wife Lucille Carder the so-

called Remillard Dynasty, which eventually included many of the most powerful minds the human race

has ever known. Don's second son, Victor, was not as intellectually brilliant as his older

brother; but his metapsychic mindpowers were probably even more formidable, and he used them

ruthlessly for his own self-aggrandizement until he was finally struck down, immediately prior to

the Great Intervention, either by me or by the mysterious being I had learned to call the Family

Ghost.

From time to time, especially when I am drunk and morose and seized with that melancholy

feeling of inescapable doom that francophones call malheur, I have been tempted to believe that

the Family Ghost is nothing more than a construct of my own imagination. But if that is true, then

by default I am responsible not only for the Great Intervention but for the Metapsychic Rebellion

as well, and ultimately for the even more momentous events that came afterward, bringing the long

story full cycle.

But that would be too farfetched a practical joke, even for le bon dieu, who is so full of

them.

So let me begin this Galactic Milieu Trilogy without further meanderings, first with a

retrospective.

2

A RETROSPECTIVE DIGRESSION

BERLIN, NEW HAMPSHIRE, EARTH

30 MARCH 2040

Rogi drove into the town of his birth late on a dreary spring afternoon, bringing Teresa and

little Marc with him from Hanover, as he had been instructed to. Wrathful and profane protests to

the contrary had got Rogi nowhere: Paul had been adamant. This time Rogi, too, would come to

Berlin and participate in the annual ritual because Denis had insisted upon it. And that was that.

It always seemed to rain on Good Friday, but at least this year the rain was warm, and it was

making short work of the remnant patches of street ice and the old gray mounds of snow that still

lay about in the sun-starved nooks of town. By Easter, Rogi told himself subvocally, Berlin would

be nearly washed clean. The pussy willows in the gardens along the Androscoggin River, where the

smoke-belching paper mills once stood, would have snowdrops and blue Siberian squill and pink

hellebore blooming beneath them, and the first robins would sing in the budding sugar maples, and

the townsfolk in their Easter finery would stroll the riverside paths.

And with luck, before next Easter, Vic would be dead.

"Why will that be good?" Marc piped up. "Who is Vic, Uncle Rogi? And why will it be a good

thing for him to die?"

"Oh, merde et puis merde," Rogi muttered.

Teresa said: Rogi for heaven's sake!

Secure in his little car seat in the back of the big Lincoln groundcar, the child turned from

his interested scrutiny of the town to attack his great-granduncle with a precocious mental probe

that made Rogi yelp with sudden pain. Marc's chubby face reflected in the rearview mirror revealed

nothing but solemn curiosity, and his own mind was guarded with its usual indomitable screen. He

was two years old.

Marc stop that! Teresa said.

"Yes, Mama," said the boy. The probe withdrew almost as quickly as it had penetrated, leaving

only a lingering ache behind Rogi's eyes. But the cute little tyke had nearly mind-sucked him like

a plass pouch of orange juice.

"Shame on you for invading Uncle Rogi. I want you to apologize!" Teresa's uneasiness, which

she had carefully concealed during the hour-long drive from Hanover, now tinged the exasperation

that she projected to the old man on his intimate mode:

For the love of God Rogi can't you control yourself for my sake and Marc's if not for common

decency?

file:///F|/rah/Julian%20May/May,%20Julian%20-%2...ic%20Milieu%201%20-%20Jack%20the%20Bodiless.txt (7 of 207) [1/15/03 7:34:12 PM]

file:///F|/rah/Julian%20May/May,%20Julian%20-%20Galactic%20Milieu%201%20-%20Jack%20the%20Bodiless.txt

The two-year-old said, "I'm sorry, Uncle Rogi."

"You're forgiven," the old man said. And then to Teresa: Once we get to Vic's house the kid

will read the whole family like billboards no matter how they try to screen Denis is an integral

idiot asking you to bring Marc along to this damned charade does he actually intend to use this

baby in a metaconcert forchrissake and whatthehell good is a lowwatt mind like mine the whole

goddamn thing is a farce a sop to Denis's guilt the lot of you should have put an end to it years

ago and Paul should have more sense than to upset you in your condition—

Marc asked, "Does Uncle Rogi think making this Vic dead will hurt you and Maddy, Mama?"

"No, dear. Not at all. I'm fine, and so is Maddy, safe inside me." Rogi TRY to stay more

securely on the intimate mode! Better yet think of something else like watching where you're going

if you insist on driving manually. Look isn't this High Street where we turn? "Marc, dear, you've

misunderstood Uncle Rogi's thought. The Vic he was thinking about is Victor Remillard, who is

Grandpere's brother. We're going to see him and pray for him. Victor is very, very sick. He's been

sick for nearly twenty-seven years, ever since the Great Intervention."

The small boy was prodding and thrusting now at his mother's mental shield, as a frustrated

kitten scratches at a closed door. But there was no easy way through the maternal barricade;

nature, compassionate of metaphysically operant parents, had rendered most of them proof against

the onslaughts of their loving offspring.

"But why should Vic be made dead? Open to me, Mama, so I can understand better! I want to

understand. Being dead is bad, isn't it? How can it be good for Vic?"

"Dear, stop poking at me. How many times must I tell you to respect the integrity of other

minds? And you must call him Granduncle Victor, not Vic. Politesse, dear, always! . . . When a

person is very sick and unable to get well, it's usually better for him to die and go to heaven

rather than live on and suffer."

Rogi uttered a short, explosive laugh. "Heaven! That's rich."

Teresa said calmly to the child, "Uncle Rogi is being ironic, Marc. Do you remember what

irony is?"

"Yes, Mama. But I'd rather discuss death with you now, please."

"There isn't much time, but I'll do my best, dear."

Rogi had slowed the car as they drove through the central district of Berlin. The town had

undergone great change since the last time he had been here, and now seemed gussied up and

gentrified almost beyond recognition. The older buildings that were worth rehabilitating had been

expertly restored and framed in plantings, and the new structures looked as though they had stood

there from time immemorial, mellowing gracefully. There were small parks at every other block,

quaint wrought-iron streetlamps already glowing against the early dusk, even though it was still

two hours until sunset, and not a trace of shabbiness was anywhere to be seen. Even in the pouring

rain the old cottages and frame apartments of the core residential area seemed to glow in their

coats of fresh paint, many done in classic New England white with dark shutters, while others

sported the cheerful ice cream colors traditional to southern Quebec.

Teresa continued in her attempt to explain mortality to the child. The tiny head with its

thick mass of black ringlets had lowered as she spoke, apparently in obedient concentration. But

all at once Rogi felt Marc renewing his quest for more interesting data, drilling into his own all-

too-vulnerable cortex. Rogi exerted all of his adult coercion to fend off the infantile probing,

addressing the boy with considerable precision on the intimate mode so that Teresa would have no

hint of what he said:

Stop that digging you snoopy little foutriquet! Dammitall I'll tell you if you stop pestering

me! Vic is a bad man or at least he was bad before he got sick the baddest man that I ever knew

and the sooner he's dead the better off for all of us now is THAT plain enough for you?

Yes Uncle Rogi.

You'll find out pretty soon what this Good Friday thing the family does with Vic every year

is all about just keep QUIET and watch and listen and it'll sort itself out. Afterward if you

still have questions ask Grandpere Denis.

I—I don't want to. I don't like Grandpere. I'll ask you. On the way back home. Will that be

all right?

I suppose so. Now let me alone while I try to find this place. I haven't been here in twenty-

four years. Damn everything looks different up here! I guess I'll have to turn on the computer.

"—and so the elements of our bodies that were formed ages and ages ago in the hearts of giant

exploding stars, elements that we only borrowed for a little while, must be returned to the Galaxy

for reuse," Teresa was saying. "But even if our bodies die, our minds will live on in the Mind of

the universe and be happy with God and all our friends and loved ones in eternal light. That's

what heaven is."

file:///F|/rah/Julian%20May/May,%20Julian%20-%2...ic%20Milieu%201%20-%20Jack%20the%20Bodiless.txt (8 of 207) [1/15/03 7:34:12 PM]

file:///F|/rah/Julian%20May/May,%20Julian%20-%20Galactic%20Milieu%201%20-%20Jack%20the%20Bodiless.txt

"Will I die?" Marc asked her.

She grasped his tiny hands and kissed the top of his curly head. "Not for a long, long time.

You have—you have a very special body to go along with your special mind."

"Will you die? And Uncle Rogi?"

"Your Uncle Rogi has the same kind of special body that you have. He won't die for a long

time, either, and neither will Papa. I don't have the same kind of body you all have, but if I get

old or sick I'll have myself regenerated so that I can stay with you. Do you remember what

regeneration means?"

"Like Grandmere. In the regen-tank."

"Exactly. When I get old I'll go to a place that fixes me, just like Grandmere Lucille did,

and I'll be made young and strong again. She'll be coming back to us very soon now. You'll hardly

recognize her. She'll look as young as Aunt Cat."

The car's guidance system, having digested the code designation for the Victor Remillard

estate on Upper Hillside Drive that Rogi called up, now switched on the vehicle's autopilot. Rogi

sighed and sat back in his seat while the car drove itself, using satellite reference points. In

his reactionary heart of hearts, Rogi considered such refinements obscene, even worse than the now

obsolete computerized highway speed-strips. They took all the fun out of driving. A man might as

well take the bus! Or one of those bloody flying eggs that wafted around on preset flight paths

set up by Air Traffic Control. Up until now, Rogi had refused even to consider learning to fly.

But he was weakening. One had to move with the times—even these days, when the damned times seemed

almost to zip along at the square of the speed of light.

The dashboard chimed and a robot voice spoke. "You will arrive at your destination in

approximately three minutes. Prepare to resume manual control of the vehicle." Rogi mumbled under

his breath.

Marc asked his mother: Will we meet Papa and Uncle Philip and the others at Granduncle

Victor's house?

Yes. They're all flying in.

The car had turned off Hillside Drive, following a narrow lane shaded by massive white pines

and hemlocks. This manicured imitation of the primeval forest of New England opened at length into

an expanse of lawn, sere with winter, and a magnificent vista of the Androscoggin River beyond.

Parked near the house were five egg-shaped rhocraft—three Wulf-Mercedeses, a Mitsubishi, and a

sporty green De Havilland Kestrel belonging to Severin Remillard. Paul's scarlet Maserati was

nowhere in evidence.

The house from which Victor had directed his commercial empire prior to the Great

Intervention was fully as ugly as Rogi had remembered it: a looming pseudobaronial pile of brick,

stucco, and false timbering, built in the 1930s for some satrap of the extinct paper mills. It had

leaded glass windows, pointed gables, and a slate roof that gleamed oily in the rain. Rambling

decayed extensions with fanciful cupolas mounted upon them had once been stables, garages, and

servants' quarters. Inside the main building were ten huge bedrooms, an oak-paneled library, a

pretentious drawing room with an attached conservatory (the latter devoid of vegetation), a vast

echoing ballroom, drafty hallways paved in marble, a modern kitchen and formal dining room that

would have done credit to a small hotel, an empty indoor swimming pool, and a superlative state-of-

the-art security system.

Victor Remillard had lived in this house since 2009, from the time of Remco Industries' first

great prosperity. With him were his younger twin brothers Louis and Leon, and his widowed sister

Yvonne Fortier, all of whom he had rendered nonoperant in early childhood, turning them into his

creatures. In 2013, when Victor's criminal schemes were thwarted and he was reduced to a sense-

deprived, helpless vegetable, the house became his place of exile. Louis, Leon, and Yvonne were

promised immunity from prosecution by Denis and his politically influential friends provided they

lived quietly in the old place, caring for Victor, supervising the small staff of domestics and

nursing attendants, and staying out of the public eye.

Beginning in 2016, when his youngest son Paul was two years old, Denis Remillard and his wife

Lucille Cartier and their seven powerfully operant children had come once each year, on Good

Friday, to visit Victor. Denis explained to Yvonne, Louis, and Leon that he and his family were

praying for Victor's spiritual recovery.

Yvonne, Louis, and Leon never really understood what Denis meant by that; but they were

grateful that they had escaped federal prison after aiding and abetting Victor in his crimes, and

they willingly performed their assigned duties according to Denis's instructions. Since they were

virtual "normals," they did not take part in the annual metaconcerted prayer ritual except to see

to the needs of the operant visitors, who eventually came to include the spouses of Denis and

Lucille's adult children. Without Denis's knowledge, Yvonne, Louis, and Leon themselves prayed

file:///F|/rah/Julian%20May/May,%20Julian%20-%2...ic%20Milieu%201%20-%20Jack%20the%20Bodiless.txt (9 of 207) [1/15/03 7:34:12 PM]

file:///F|/rah/Julian%20May/May,%20Julian%20-%20Galactic%20Milieu%201%20-%20Jack%20the%20Bodiless.txt

every day of their lives that Victor Remillard would never awaken from his mysterious coma to

reassume his domination over them. In point of fact, the trio prayed that Victor Remillard would

die.

And finally, this year, it looked as though their petition might be granted.

Aurelie Dalembert stood at the casement windows of the library, looking out at the rain and

sipping sherry. In spite of the roaring fire in the big fireplace, the room was chilly. Cecilia,

Maeve, and Cheri sat in uncomfortable damask chairs as close to the hearth as they could get,

fortifying themselves with hot tea.

"Any sign of the Prima Donna yet?" Maeve O'Neill asked sharply.

"No," Aurelie replied. "Rogi's bringing her and Marc. In a car."

Cheri Losier-Drake, the youngest of the Remillard spouses at twenty-three, suppressed a

tendency to shiver and reached for the silver teapot. "Every year this damned prayer vigil gets

weirder. My nerves are a wreck. If only I could have a drink! Cele, you're a doctor. Surely a

single brandy couldn't hurt."

Cecilia Ashe gently laid a hand on her sister-in-law's arm. A surge of calming redaction

flowed from her brain to that of the other woman. "You know we mustn't . . . Did that zap help a

little?"

Cheri sighed. "Must have. Parni gave a happy kick."

"It'll all be over soon." Aurelie's voice was soothing.

"Can't be soon enough," snapped Maeve. She downed the last of her tea in a gulp, plunked the

fine china cup and saucer down on the table with a rattling crash, and went to get another birch

log from the cradle.

"I find the notion of an annual prayer ritual fascinating," Cecilia said. "It's touching—this

concern for the family black sheep."

"It's easy to tell that it's your first go-around," Maeve said, tossing the log onto the

blaze. A shower of sparks fled up the chimney. "I don't know how much Maury told you about it, but

we don't actually pray, you know. Denis links all of our minds in a coercive metaconcert, and he

does the praying. Or whatever. It's Sevvy's opinion that the whole thing is nothing more than a

colossal guilt compensation on the part of Denis. Because he's refused to pull the plug on Vic for

all these years."

Cecilia, who had married the widowed Maurice Remillard seven months earlier, assumed a

professionally bland expression. "That might be one explanation. But there are others."

"I think we're coercing Vic to die," Cheri said tersely. "And a consummation devoutly to be

wished!"

"Amen," said Maeve. She had thrown still another piece of wood on the conflagration and now

dusted her hands and plopped back into her chair. "And if Paul's right, and the infamous invalid

is finally sinking, this might be the last year we'll have to put up with Denis's obsession."

From the window, Aurelie said, "I see car lights. It's Rogi and Teresa. And I've farspoken

Paul. He and Denis will be here soon. The express Vee-route from Baltimore to Boston was OS and

they lost time in a holding pattern. It's a scandal, the way the traffic jams keep getting worse

and worse." She came to the fire and poured herself a cup of tea before sitting down with the

others.

Cecilia said, "As a neurosurgeon, I find the whole matter of Victor Remillard's mysterious

coma fascinating. Is it true that his body has remained in perfect condition up until just

recently?"

"He's got the immortality gene complex like all the rest of these lucky sods," Maeve said,

with a bitter laugh. "Thank God the regen-tank therapy is perfected at last. Can you imagine how

poor old Lucille must have felt? Turning into a decrepit old crone of seventy-two in spite of the

best that cosmetic surgery could do, while her husband, who's only a year older, still looks like

a graduate student!"

"This will be the first Good Friday that Lucille has missed," Cheri said.

"Probably planned it," Maeve decided. "Nine months in the tank, then—tah-dah!—reborn, young

and gorgeous." She patted her thickening midsection. "It's a crock that we still have to do babies

the old-fashioned way. Look at us! Aside from Aurelie and Anne the virgin-martyr, we're a bloody

maternity ward. That's all these dynastic Remillards seem to want out of us women: babies.

Sometimes Sevvy seems positively irrational on the subject! I wonder if that's why Jenny and Galya

divorced him—"

"Teresa's nearly due, isn't she?" Aurelie remarked, changing the subject abruptly. "And Cat

has only another month to go."

"No, seriously," Maeve persisted to Cecilia. "They're planning to use artificial gestation to

file:///F|/rah/Julian%20May/May,%20Julian%20-%...c%20Milieu%201%20-%20Jack%20the%20Bodiless.txt (10 of 207) [1/15/03 7:34:13 PM]

Julian May - Jack the Bodiless

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: