May, Julian - Diamond Mask

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Diamond Mask
Book 2 of the Galactic Milieu Trilogy
By Julian May
Scanned and proofed by BW-SciFi
Release Date: July, 1st, 2002
Every culture gets the magic it deserves.
DUDLEY YOUNG, Origins of the Sacred
A mask tells us more than a face.
OSCAR WILDE, Intentions
Sancta Illusio, ora pro nobis.
FRANZ WERFEL, Star of the Unborn
PROLOGUE
KAUAI, HAWAII, EARTH
12 AUGUST 2113
He knew it had to be some kind of miracle—perhaps one programmed by Saint Jack the Bodiless
himself. The misty rain of the Alakai Swamp ceased, the gray sky that had persisted all day broke
open suddenly and flaunted glorious expanses of blue, a huge rainbow haloed Mount Waialeale over
to the east... and a bird began to sing.
Batège! That bird—could it be the one? After four futile days?
The tall, skinny old man dropped to his knees in the muck, slipped out of his backpack
straps, and let the pack fall into the tussocks of dripping grass. Muttering in the Canuck patois
of northern New England, he pulled his little audiospectrograph from its waterproof pouch with
fingers that trembled from excitement and hit the RECORD pad. The hidden songster warbled on. The
old man pressed SEEK. The device's computer compared the recorded birdsong with that of 42,429
avian species (Indigenous Terrestrial, Indigenous Exotic, Introduced, Retroevolved, and
Bioengineered) stored in its data files. The MATCH light blinked on and the instrument's tiny
display read:
O'O-A'A (MOHO BRACCATUS). ONLY ON ISL OF KAUAI, EARTH. IT. VS.
The man said to himself: Damn right you're Very Scarce. Even rarer than the satanic nightjar
or the miniature tit-babbler! But I gotcha at last, p'tit merdeux, toi.
The song cut off and a discordant keet-keet rang out. Something black with flashes of chrome
yellow erupted from the moss-hung shrubs on the left side of the trail, flew toward a clump of
stunted lehua makanoe trees twenty meters away, and disappeared.
The old man choked back a penitent groan. Quel bondieu d'imbécile—he'd frightened it with
some inadvertent telepathic gaucherie! And now it was gone, and his feeble metapsychic seekersense
was incapable of locating its faint life-aura in broad daylight. Everything now depended upon the
camera.
Taking care to project only the most soothing and amiable vibes, he hastily stowed away the
Sonagram machine, uncased a digital image recorder with a thermal targeter attached, and began
anxiously scanning the trees. Wisps of vapor streamed up, drawn by the tropical sun. The sweet
anise scent of mokihana berries mingled with that of rotting vegetation. The Alakai Swamp of Kauai
in the Hawaiian Islands was an eerie place, the wettest spot on Earth, a plateau over 1200 meters
high where the annual rainfall often exceeded 15 meters. The swamp was also home to some of
Earth's rarest birds, and it attracted hardy human students of avifauna from all over the Galactic
Milieu.
The old man, whose name was Rogatien Remillard, knew the island well, having first come to it
back in 2052, when his great-grandnephew Jack, whom he called Ti-Jean, was newborn with a body
that seemed perfectly normal. Jack's mother Teresa, rest her poor soul, had needed a sunny place
to recuperate after hiding out in the snowbound Megapod Reserve of British Columbia, and the
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island afforded a perfect refuge for the three of them.
Rogi had returned to Kauai many times since then, most recently four days earlier, for
reasons that had seemed compelling at the time.
Well, perhaps he'd imbibed just a tad too much Wild Turkey as he celebrated the completion of
another section of his memoirs ...
Crafty in his cups, he had decided to get out of town before his Lylmik nemesis could catch
up with him and force him to continue the work. He'd done a damned good job so far, if he did say
so himself—and he might as well, since only God knew when any other natural human being would ever
get to read what he'd written.
Even though he was drunk as a skunk, Rogi had wit enough to toss a few clothes and things
into his egg, climb in, and program the navigator for automatic Vee-route flight from New
Hampshire to Kauai. Then he had passed out. When he awoke he found his aircraft in a holding
pattern above the island. He was hungover but lucid, with no idea why his unconscious mind had
chosen this particular destination. But not to worry! His old hobby of ornithology, neglected for
more than a decade, kicked in with a brilliant notion. He could backpack into the Alakai Swamp,
where he might possibly see and photograph the single remaining indigenous Hawaiian bird species
he had never set eyes upon. He landed the rhocraft at Koke'e Lodge, rented the necessary
equipment, and set out.
And now, had he found the friggerty critter only to lose it through gross stupidity? Had he
scared it off into the trackless wilderness of the swamp, where he didn't dare follow for fear of
getting lost? He was a piss-poor metapsychic operant at best, totally lacking in the ultrasensory
pathfinding skills of the more powerful heads, and the Alakai was a remote and lonely place. It
would be humiliating to get trapped armpit-deep in some muck-hole and have to call the lodge to
send in a rescuer. Still, if he was careful to go only a few steps off the trail, he might still
snag the prize.
He skirted a pool bordered with brown, white, and orange lichens, then peered through the
camera eyepiece from a fresh vantage point. The luminous bull's-eye of the thermal detector shone
wanly green in futility. Despair began to cloud his previous mood of elation. The very last bird
on his Hawaiian Audubon Checklist, forfeit because he'd failed to control his doddering
mindpowers—
No! Dieu du ciel, there it was! He'd moved just enough so that the infrared targeter, preset
to the parameters of the prey, could zero in on it as it sat mostly concealed behind the trunk of
a diminutive tree. The bull's-eye blinked triumphant scarlet. The old man cut out the targeter,
cautiously shifted position once more, and the bird was clearly revealed in the camera's view-
finder: a chunky black creature 20 cents long, seeming to stare fiercely at him from its perch on
the scraggly lehua tree. Tufts of brilliant yellow feathers adorned its upper legs like gaudy
knickers peeping out from beneath an otherwise somber avian outfit. The bird flicked its pointed
tail as if annoyed at having been disturbed and the old man experienced a rush of pure joy.
It was the rarest of all nonretroevolved Hawaiian birds, with a name that tripped ludicrously
from the tongues of Standard English speakers: the elusive o'o-a'a!
Nearly beside himself, the old birdwatcher used the imager zoom control, composed his shot,
and pressed the video activator. Before he could take a second picture the o'o-a'a repeated its
double-noted alarm call almost derisively, spread its wings, and flew off in the direction of
Mount Waialeale.
The rainbow had faded as a new batch of dark clouds rolled in from the east. In another
fifteen minutes or so the sun would set behind the twisted dwarf forest and the Hawaiian night
would slam down with its usual abruptness. He had barely found the bird in time.
He touched the PRINT pad of the camera. A few seconds later, a durofilm photo with exquisite
color detail slipped out of the instrument into his hand. He stared at the precious picture, now
curiously dispassionate, and heaved a sigh as he unzipped his rain jacket and tucked the trophy
into the breast pocket of his shirt.
A voice spoke to him from out of the steamy air:
What's this, Uncle Rogi? In a melancholy mood after your great triumph?
Rogatien Remillard looked up in surprise, then growled a halfhearted Franco-American epithet.
"Merde de merde ... so you couldn't let me celebrate my hundred-and-sixty-eighth birthday in
peace, eh, Ghost?"
The voice was gently chiding: You have done so—and received a fine present besides.
"You didn't!" the old man exclaimed indignantly. "You didn't chivvy that poor little bird
here on purpose, just so I'd find it—"
Certainly not. What do you take me for?
"Hah! I take you for an exotic bully, mon cher fantôme, that's what. Not even a week since I
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turned off the transcriber, and here you are breathing down my neck. Go ahead: deny that you came
to nag me to get on with my memoirs."
I don't deny it, Uncle Rogi. And I realize that the work is hard for you. But it's necessary
that you resume writing the family chronicle without delay. It must be completed before this year
is out.
"Why the tearing hurry? Does your goddam Lylmik crystal ball foresee that I'm gonna kick the
bucket come New Year's Eve? Is that why you keep the pressure on? I've had a sneaking suspicion
about that ever since I finished the Intervention section. You and your almighty schemes! What's
the plan? You squeeze my poor old failing brain like a sponge, then toss me on the discard heap
once you get what you want?"
Nonsense. How many times must I tell you? You are immune to the normal processes of human
aging and degenerative disease. You have the self-rejuvenating gene complex, just as all the other
Remillards do.
"Except Ti-Jean!" Rogi snapped. "Anyway ... I could always be destined to die in some
accident that you and your gang of galactic snoops in Orb prolepticate, and that's why the mad
rush."
The sky was completely overcast again and the tussocks of sedge and makaloa grass rippled in
the rising wind. More rain was imminent. Turning his back upon the region from which the
disembodied voice came, Rogi went squishing through the mire to retrieve his abandoned backpack.
He hauled it up, mud-splattered and dripping.
"Damn slavedriver. If you really did give a hoot about me, you'd do something about this
mess."
The pack was instantly clean, dry, and as crisp and unfaded as the day Rogi had purchased it
from the outfitting store in Hanover, New Hampshire, eighty-four years earlier. His initials newly
adorned the belt buckle, which had once been homely black plass but now appeared to have been
transmuted into solid gold.
The old man let loose a splutter of laughter. "Show-off! But thanks, anyway."
De rien, said the Ghost. Consider it a small incentive. A birthday present. Hau'oli la hanau!
Rogi frowned. "Seriously, though. My bookshop business is getting shot all to hell with me
taking so much time off for writing. And I don't mind telling you that rehashing this ancient
history is getting more and more depressing. There's a whole parcel of stuff I'd just as soon
forget. And if you had a scintilla of pride, you'd want to forget it, too."
The personage known to Rogi as the Remillard Family Ghost and to the Galactic Milieu as
Atoning Unifex, Overlord of the Lylmik, was silent for some minutes. Then It said:
The truth about the Remillards and their intimate associates must be made available to every
mind in the Galaxy. I've tried to make this clear to you from the very beginning. You're a unique
individual, Uncle Rogi. You know things the historians of the Milieu never suspected. Things that
even I have no inkling of ... such as the identity of the malignant entity called Fury.
The old man paused in adjusting his pack straps and looked over his shoulder with an
expression of blank incredulity. "You don't know who Fury was? You're not omniscient after all?"
Rogi, Rogi! How many times must I tell you that I am not
God, not even some sort of metapsychic recording angel—in spite of the silly nickname that
was given me! I am only a Lylmik who was once a man, six million long years ago. And I have very
little time left.
"Jesus!" Rogi's eyes widened in sudden comprehension. "You! Not me at all. You ..."
Abruptly, the rain began to fall again; but this time it was not the gentle drizzle called ua
noe that usually cloaked the Alakai Swamp but a hammering tropical deluge. Rogi stood stark still
in the midst of the downpour, transfixed by his invisible companion's words, seeming to be unaware
that he had neglected to pull up the hood of his rain jacket. Water streamed from his sodden gray
hair into his eyes.
"You," he said again. "Ah, mon fils, why didn't you tell me before, when you came to me at
the winter carnival after the long years of silence? Why did you let me rave on, resisting your
wishes, making a fool of myself?"
The mind of the Lylmik Overlord erected a transparent psychocreative umbrella over Rogi, but
tears mingled with rain continued to flow down the old man's cheeks. He reached out awkwardly to
the empty air.
The Ghost said: Keaku Cave is nearby. Let's get out of the wet.
Rogi was conscious of no movement, but he found himself suddenly within a fern-curtained
grotto, sitting on a chunk of weathered lava in front of a small, brisk fire of hapu'u stems.
Outside, a torrential storm battered the high plateau, but he was miraculously dry again. What was
more, the profound grief that had pierced him seemed to have receded and he felt embraced by a
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great peace. He knew that the paradoxical being who had haunted him since he was five years
old—the person whom he both loved and feared—had meddled once again with his mind, short-
circuiting emotions that would have interfered with Its plans.
The lava cave the Ghost had brought him into was the site of ancient mysteries sacred to the
local Hawaiians, all but inaccessible to foot travelers. None of the hikers or birdwatchers or
botanical hobbyists who came to the Alakai Swamp dared to visit the place. It was
kapu—forbidden—and said to be protected by powerful operant Hawaiians claiming descent from the
kahuna magicians of ancient Polynesia.
Rogi had entered Keaku Cave only once before, not quite fifty-nine years ago. On that day in
the fall of 2054, just after the Human Polity had finally been granted full citizenship in the
galactic confederation, he and the teenaged Marc Remillard and young Jack the Bodiless had flown
to the Alakai in a rhocraft, accompanied by the kahuna woman Malama Johnson. Their mission was to
remove the ashes of the boys' mother that had been sequestered in the cave a year earlier
according to Malama's solemn instructions. Rogi and the boys had found the interior of Keaku Cave
mysteriously decorated with leis of gorgeous island flowers and fragrant berries. The box
containing Teresa Kendall's ashes was as clean and dry as it had been when they left it.
Sitting in the cave now, knowing that the unseen Lylmik Overlord lurked close at hand, the
old man seemed once again to smell the anise scent of mokihana. He remembered Marc, a stalwart
sixteen-year-old, and Ti-Jean, apparently only a precocious toddler, on their knees beside the
small polished pine box holding their mother's remains. They had asked Rogi to carry the urn to
their waiting rhocraft, since he had been her protector during the greatest crisis of her life.
Teresa's ashes had been scattered over the green tropical ridges and canyons on a day of
resplendent rainbows. In the years that followed, Jack the Bodiless returned often to the island
of Kauai, visiting his great friend Malama and eventually making his home there, bringing his
bride to the place he loved more than any on Earth. But Marc Remillard had never set foot on the
island again.
"Are you glad?" Rogi asked abruptly. "Glad it's almost over?"
The Ghost's reply was slow in coming:
I had feared that I was fated to live until the very consummation of the universe.
Fortunately, it didn't come to that, even though God knows I richly deserved it.
“Tommyrot! You sincerely believed that the Metapsychic Rebellion was morally justified. Hell,
so did I! Back then, lots of decent people had serious doubts about Unity. Maybe not to the point
of going to war, but—"
My principal motive for leading the Rebellion had nothing to do with the Unity controversy. I
instigated an interstellar war because the Milieu condemned my Mental Man project ... because it
rejected my vision for accelerating the mental and physical evolution of humanity. With me, Unity
was only a side issue.
Rogi looked up from the fire in surprise. "Is that a fact! You know, I never was too sure
just what that Mental Man thing was all about."
The Ghost's tone was ironic: Neither were most of my Rebel associates. If they had known,
they might not have followed me.
"And the Mental Man project was—was so wrong that—"
Not wrong, Rogi. Evil ... There's a considerable difference. It took me many years to
recognize how monstrous my scheme actually was, to understand just what kind of galactic
catastrophe my pride and arrogance might have brought about.
"It didn't happen," Rogi said very quietly.
No, said the Ghost, but there remained a grave necessity for me to atone, to make up for the
damage I had done to the evolving Mind of the Universe. My sojourn in the Duat Galaxy was a
partial reparation, but incomplete. The evil had taken place here, in the Milky Way. The Duat
labors were exciting, satisfying—joyous, even—because Elizabeth shared them with me and helped me
to fully understand my own heart. Before we came together, my self was unintegrated; I had no true
notion of what love meant.
"I don't agree," the old man said stubbornly. "Neither would Jack."
The Ghost was not to be sidetracked. It continued:
When the Duat work was done, Elizabeth was weary and ready to pass on. She begged me to
follow her into the peace and light of the Cosmic All ... but I could not.
Instead, I felt compelled to return here. Alone, cut off from every mind that had loved me
and from the consoling Unity I had known in Duat, I undertook what I judged was my true penance:
to assist the maturation of our own Galactic Mind.
Through years that seemed without end I guided one promising planet after another, cajoling
civilization from barbarism, altruism from savagery. Of course I could not truly coerce the
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developing races of the Milky Way. I only assisted the inevitable complexification of the World
Mind that accompanies life's evolution.
I made many ghastly mistakes.
Can you conceive of the doubts that assailed me, Rogi, the fear that I might have succumbed
to a hubris even more immense than that which originally obsessed me? No ... I see that you can't
understand. Never mind, mon oncle. Only believe me. It was a terrible time. Le bon dieu is as
silent and invisible to the likes of me as he is to any other material being. I could not help but
ask myself if I was committing a fresh sin of pride in thinking that my assistance was needed.
Was I helping the Galactic Mind, or merely meddling with evolution again, as I had been when
I tried to engender Mental Man?
Our galaxy has so many planets with thinking creatures! Yet so few—so pathetically few!—ever
achieved any sort of social or mental maturity under my guidance, much less the coadunation of the
higher mindpowers that leads to Unity. But finally, perhaps in spite of my efforts rather than as
a result of them, I found success. The Lylmik were the first minds to Unify, and I adopted their
peculiar race as my own. Then, aeons later, the Krondaku also achieved coadunation.
After that came a great hiatus, and I feared that my infant Galactic Milieu was doomed to
eventual stagnation and death. But le divin humoriste elevated the preposterous Gi race to
metapsychic operancy against all odds (the Krondaku were deeply scandalized) and not long after
that the Mind of the engaging little Poltroyans matured as well. The Simbiari were accepted into
the Milieu next, even though they were imperfectly Unified. And suddenly there seemed almost to be
an evolutionary explosion of intelligent beings, burgeoning on planet after planet—not yet ready
for induction into our confederation, but nevertheless making great progress.
One of the less likely worlds in this group was Earth.
Knowing what I do, I overruled the consensus that rejected the human race as a candidate for
Intervention. The result was the Metapsychic Rebellion, a towering disaster that metamorphosed
into triumph. And now the Mind of this galaxy stands poised at the brink of a great expansion you
cannot begin to imagine ...
"Are you going to tell me about that?" Rogi asked.
I cannot. My own role in the drama is nearly complete and my proleptic vision fails as my
life approaches its end. Assisting you to write the cautionary family history will be my last bit
of personal intervention. Others will oversee the destiny of this Galactic Mind henceforth and
guide it to the fullness of Unity that is so very, very close.
The old man fed the fire with an armful of tree fern stalks as Atoning Unifex fell silent.
The swirling smoke seemed to slide away from a certain region near the cave entrance. Out of the
corner of his eye (his mental sight perceived nothing) Rogi caught occasional hints of a spectral
form standing there.
"What next, mon fantôme? You gonna snatch me back to New Hampshire through the gray limbo
like you did the last time, on Denali?"
Would you rather write the Diamond Mask story here on Kauai?
Rogi brightened. "You know, I think I would! She and Ti-Jean did honeymoon here, after all."
There is also the matter of the Hydra attack that took place here.
Rogi's brow tightened. "Maudit—why'd you have to remind me about them?" He fumbled with the
side compartment of his backpack and took out an old leather-bound flask. Unscrewing the cap, he
tossed down a healthy slug of bourbon. "To do a proper job on Dorothée's early life, I'll have to
tell all about those poor, perverted bastards. Just remembering 'em turns my stomach." He took
another snort.
The Ghost said: I can alleviate your gastric distress more efficiently than whiskey can, if
you'll permit the liberty.
Rogi gave a bark of nervous laughter. "And will you be able to flush my skull of Fury dreams,
too?"
The Lylmik's thought-tone was wry: I've had experience with them myself, as you may recall.
I'll build you a protective mental shield—
"Hey! Now wait just a damn minute!"
The Ghost was insistent: It can be done while you sleep, so you'll have no experience of
invasion whatsoever. I can leave all your precious neuroses intact, but you must permit me to
install the dream-filter. It would be the height of ingratitude on my part if your writing chores
precipitated anxiety and a fresh bout of alcohol abuse. You will suffer no nightmares, I promise.
We Lylmik are the most skilled redactors in the universe.
"Oh, yeah? Then where the hell were you when Fury and his Hydras were doing their metapsychic
vampire act back in those thrilling days of yesteryear?"
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Our interference would not have been appropriate at that time. The crimes of those entities,
heinous as they were, were necessary to the evolution of Higher Reality, just as the Metapsychic
Rebellion was.
"I," the old man declared wearily, "do not give a rat's ass for the Higher Reality. Or the
Lower, for that matter." He lifted the flask again.
Rogi—
"All right! Go ahead and fix my brain so I don't go apeshit after dredging up those old
horrors. But don't you dare try to do me any favors plugging in Unity programs or any other Lylmik
flimflammery."
The phantom in the cave's darkened entrance now seemed to be approaching the fire, and Rogi
stared in fascination at the way the smoke wafted about the invisible form. As the Lylmik mind
spoke soothingly and the liquor did its work, the old man suddenly caught his breath. For an
instant, he thought he'd glimpsed a man's face there in the shadows—one he remembered all too
clearly. He surged to his feet, calling out a name, and tried to throw his arms about the
evanescent shape; but he embraced only a cloud of smoke. His eyes began to sting, and he pulled a
bandanna handkerchief from his hip pocket and blew his nose, subsiding back onto his rocky seat.
The Ghost said: Vas-y doucement, mon oncle bien-aimé! Think only of the memoirs. When you
complete them, I'll be able to go in peace.
The old man mopped at his eyes. "Batège! Who'd have thought I'd get all soppy over you? A
goddam figment of my goddam booze-pickled imagination! That's what Denis and Paul always said you
were. Merde alors, it makes more sense for me to believe that than the cosmic bullshit you've been
dishing out."
If it makes you more comfortable, by all means believe it.
"I'll make up my own mind what to believe," the old man muttered perversely. Then he asked:
"Where do you think I should settle in to do the writing? Down at the old Kendall place in Poipu?"
I have a better suggestion. How about Elaine Donovan's lodge near Pohakumano? It's at a high
enough elevation to be cool, and no vacationing Remillards are likely to bother you there, as they
well might down at the coast. The house is isolated and it has been kept in excellent condition by
caretakers, even though Elaine has not visited it for many years. You'd find it very comfortable
and much quieter than Hanover in the summertime.
"Elaine ..." Rogi's face stiffened. "I didn't know she had a vacation house on Kauai. But she
was Teresa's grandmother, of course."
I can arrange to have your transcriber and any other personal items you might need brought
over from New Hampshire. Even your cat, Marcel, if you like.
"I—I don't think I better stay at Elaine's place."
The thought of her still brings you pain?
"No, not anymore."
Then use her house. You know she wouldn't mind.
The old man sighed. What did it matter, after all? "All right. Whatever you say. Bring my
stuff and old Fur-Face, too. And a stock of decent food and liquor." He stretched, easing his
aching muscles. It had been a long day, and now it was pitch black outside and the rain was
pouring down harder than ever. "I don't suppose I could spend the night here in the cave, could
I?"
Do you wish to?
Rogi shrugged. "It feels real good in here. Metasafe! If I'm going to stay on the island, I
guess I'll have to ask Malama Johnson to tell me more about this place. Funny thing—when you and I
first brought Teresa's ashes here after the funeral Mass at St. Raphael's in the cane fields,
Malama seemed to think you'd been here before."
[Laughter.] Kahunas know too much. They are an anomalous type of human metapsychic operant,
as any Krondak evaluator will tell you ... And now, why don't you make yourself something to eat
and then get some sleep. I have other matters to attend to and I must leave you for a time. I'll
come and collect you in the morning.
"Suit yourself," said Rogi, and opened his backpack.
Even though there was no discernible physical manifestation, the old man was aware that the
Family Ghost had abruptly vanished. Shaking his head, Rogi took out packets of gamma-stabilized
food and a tiny microwave stove and began to prepare a Kauaian-style supper of chicken-feet
appetizers, fried rice, Spam, pineapple upside-down cake, and lilikoi punch. As he ate, the small
mystery of why he had been drawn to Kauai also seemed to resolve itself. The birds, of course. The
island had always been a magnet for amateur ornithologists like himself.
And like Dorothea Macdonald, the subject of this next part of his memoirs.
It had been her doing that brought him here—or perhaps that of her memory abiding deep within
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his own unconscious. Dorothée. Saint Illusion. The woman who always wore a mask, even in her
youth, when her face was bare.
* * *
Much later, when he was snug in his sleeping bag and the fire had gone out and the continuing
rain had freshened the air, Rogatien Remillard let the tranquil ambiance of Keaku Cave lull him to
sleep. The air was fragrant again now that the smoke had dissipated; but oddly enough the scent
seemed not to be that of mokihana berries but rather of a certain old-fashioned perfume called Bal
à Versailles.
How did I know that? Rogi asked himself drowsily. More huna magic? Or are the Family Ghost
and Dorothée still playing games in my head?
A moment later he was fast asleep, dreaming not of the monster named Fury and its attendant
Hydras, nor even of Diamond Mask. Instead he dreamed about a woman with silvery eyes and
strawberry blonde hair who had first smiled at him on top of Mount Washington in New Hampshire,
years before Earth knew that the Galactic Milieu even existed. It was a sweet dream, without
remorse.
In the morning, Rogi had forgotten it completely.
1
FROM THE MEMOIRS OF ROGATIEN REMILLARD
UNITY!
God, how we Earthlings were afraid of it, in spite of all that Paul and Ti-Jean and Dorothée
did. Quite a few normals still have their doubts—and so do I. A minority of one: the only
uncoadunated meta head still at large.
I'm still a Rebel. The very last unconverted human operant, shunning Unity's consolations,
thumbing my nose at the Coadunating Noösphere, evading all that magical, mystical superstuff that
the Milieu confers on good little minds who participate in Teilhardian ultracerebration. All the
other human operants live in Unity. Even those odd young people—some of them my own kin—who
escaped the Pliocene Exile have undergone the initiation and signed on as conditional uniates. But
not me. No siree! I'm not much, but what there is, is straight up and 190 proof Everclear.
What's more, the Milieu can't do a thing about it. Up until the reappearance of the Family
Ghost and my embarking upon these memoirs, I thought the Unanimity Affirmers had just overlooked
me. After all, I'm no high-powered meta, just an unimportant old bookseller making no particular
use of my meager powers ... unless I'm really backed into a bad corner.
But that isn't the reason I escaped.
At this late stage of the game I realize that my apparent immunity was all part of the Family
Ghost's plot. I was allowed to evade the Unity net so that the really outrageous deeds I had
witnessed or perpetrated wouldn't be exposed to public scrutiny too soon, as they would have been
if I had been forced to Affirm and hang out all my mind's dirty laundry during the initiation.
Earlier on, especially during the crucial decades immediately following the Metapsychic
Rebellion, the time just wasn't ripe for the revelations contained in these memoirs. The Remillard
family—even the ones who were dead or otherwise removed from the chessboard by then—were still too
important to the grand game to be accidentally traduced by the likes of me.
Now those considerations are moot. Even the most scandalous doings of my illustrious family
can be revealed in these chronicles because the tenure of Atoning Unifex, Overlord of the Lylmik
and founder of at least two Galactic Milieux, is finally at an end. I have been assured that
uncounted billions of entities as yet unborn will study these processed words of mine, making God
knows what of them. I have not been told what consequences will fall upon me, their author, once
the memoirs are published and the cat's out of the bag.
C'est une bizarrerie formidable, mais c'est comme ça et pas autrement!
And it's probably wiser not to think about it.
2
HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE, EARTH
9 MAY 2062
Nineteen days before the murders would take place in Scotland, at a little past two on Tuesday
morning, Fury prowled the campus of Dartmouth College.
Only an occasional groundcar moved along North College Road in front of the School of
Metapsychology. There were no pedestrians. The elegant buildings of the meta complex were set on a
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wooded slope, where the spring foliage of spreading sugar maples and tall mutant elms gleamed in
the light of old-fashioned iron standard lamps set along paved walkways. At this hour the
buildings themselves were mostly dark. There was a single pair of lighted windows in the office
block and several more in a line on the second floor of the Cerebroenergetic Research Laboratory
further uphill, which had been established less than two years earlier with a generous (and still
controversial) endowment by the Remillard Family Foundation.
For a moment Fury paused to survey the scene. Long ago, before the Great Intervention, a
ramshackle old gray saltbox building scheduled for imminent demolition had given grudging shelter
to the college's infant Department of Metapsychology, and its workers had been regarded with
bemusement and a fair amount of uneasiness by fellow academics of more traditional scholarly
disciplines. These days, the Dartmouth School of Metapsychology was one of the premier research
establishments for higher mindpowers in the Human Polity of the Galactic Milieu, and a favorite
object of Fury's scrutiny.
Tonight the monster's mission was more urgent than usual.
Fury proceeded to insinuate itself into the faculty offices. Its virtual presence was
imperceptible to the senses of normal people, to the metafaculties of operant humans and exotic
beings, and to the sensors of mechanical security systems and janitorial robotics.
In the single lighted suite it found Denis Remillard, Dartmouth's nonagenarian Emeritus
Professor of Metapsychology and living legend, sound asleep at his desk with his blond head
cradled on his arms and his perennially youthful face touched by a gentle smile. He had dozed off
while scribbling annotations on a durofilm printout of a chapter for his latest book, Criminal
Insanity in the Operant Mind. The project had occupied most of the great man's time during the
past five years, for reasons that Fury knew only too well.
The MESSAGE WAITING telltale on the desktop communicator was blinking unheeded—perhaps with a
plea from the professor's wife, Lucille Carrier, that he come home and go to bed. (Formidable
personality that she was, Lucille would never have dared to disturb her husband's work with a
telepathic summons.) Denis's dreams, Fury noted, were innocuous, even banal, involving the
cultivation of bizarre strains of orchids in his home greenhouse.
The egregious twit!
On another night, Fury might have invaded those dreams to give Denis a personal taste of the
horrors madness might evoke in the metapsychic personality ... but not tonight. There was more
urgent business to attend to.
After scrutinizing the newly written book chapter and sneering at the worst of its
misperceptions, Fury used the professor's computer terminal to access a highly confidential file
of galaxy-wide cerebroenergetic research projects. Having no physical voice, the monster activated
the input microphone by means of psychokinesis. It had learned this trick, and certain others, by
observing Jack the Bodiless. In an encrypted delete-protected volume tagged RESTRICTED ACCESS: BY
ORDER OF HUMAN MAGISTRATUM was an updated précis of the research being done at Edinburgh by Robert
and Viola Strachan and Rowan Grant.
Fury studied this data with mounting dismay. Damn them! They were moving in the very
direction it had feared. The monster cursed the circumstances that had prevented it from checking
out the update sooner. If the Scottish workers managed to publish their findings, there was a good
chance that Marc's dicey E15 cerebroenergetic project would be shut down in the ensuing uproar
over operator safety.
That would have to be prevented.
Erasing the dangerous data files and replacing them with innocuous material would be easy.
Ensuring that the three Scots did not discover the fiddle and raise a flaming row was more
difficult—but Fury already had a notion how the problem might be resolved.
First, however, a brief check on the E15's progress.
Eliminating all trace of its illicit access to Denis Remillard's computer, Fury gave the
professor a final glance of contempt and then abolished its presence in the administration
building. It reappeared an instant later on the second floor of the CE lab. There, inside a
chamber crowded with workbenches and racks of apparatus, two scientists were totally absorbed in
their work.
The elder was a very tall, powerfully built man twenty-four years of age. His name was Marc
Remillard and he was the grandson of the eminent Denis. In addition to holding the Marie-Madeleine
Fabré Chair of Cerebroenergetic Research at Dartmouth College, he was conditionally acknowledged
to have the most powerful farsensory, metacoercive, and metacreative faculties in the Human
Polity. He had just been nominated a Grand Master and Magnate of the Galactic Concilium. His
acceptance, as well as the affirmation of his mental status, was still pending.
Fury had yet to decide whether Marc was a true antagonist or a potential ally in its grand
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scheme.
The enigma sat now at the console of a late-model Xiang analytical micromanipulator, intent
upon the holographic display. The command headset of the machine was nearly buried in his untidy
black curly hair, and its two short, hornlike antennae projected vertically above his temples,
giving him an uncanny resemblance to a young Mephistopheles. His eyes were the luminous gray of
brushed steel, set deeply in shadowed orbits, and his brows had a winglike shape, being narrowest
just above the distinctive aquiline nose that characterized so many members of the Remillard
family. Marc wore a faded green twill shirt over a white cotton turtleneck, a pair of tattered
Levi's, and muddy Gokey chukka boots. Caught at the edge of one pocket flap by its barbless hook
was a tiny artificial fly that Fury recognized as a Number 18 Black Gnat.
Marc's unofficial colleague, also dressed in grubby outdoor clothing and perched on a high
stool, was a ten-year-old boy. From time to time he attempted to explain to his elder brother what
he was doing wrong, only to be sedulously ignored. Jon Remillard was a child prodigy, a
prochronistic mutant whose intellect was arguably the most powerful of any entity in the Galactic
Milieu—always excepting members of the ineffable Lylmik race. Marc and the other members of the
Remillard family vacillated between regarding the boy as a potential saint or a world-class pain
in the ass. To Fury the wretched child was the Great Enemy who would have to be destroyed
eventually, no matter what the cost.
Two rod cases and a pair of battered Orvis tackle bags lay on the floor beside the
micromanipulator. The two brothers had evidently come to the lab directly from a session of
evening flyfishing, and had felt impelled to burn the midnight oil.
The object of their attention, invisible within the machine, where it was being worked upon
by means of microscopic tools controlled by telepathic transmissions from Marc's command headset,
was a tiny synorganic intraventricular enhancer. The SIE, less than a millimeter in length, was
both a computer and an endocrine-function stimulator. It was designed to be inserted, together
with similar units of slightly different design, into the hollow spaces within the human brain.
Externally energized SIEs were capable of triggering neurochemical production and causing other
profound changes in brain activity, greatly augmenting that organ's own processing abilities. The
effect was described by lay people as "mind-boosting," and by metapsychic professionals as
cerebroenergetic enhancement.
Fascinated, Fury hovered behind the oddly matched pair and watched the split holodisplay
above the console. In the left-hand section was the 200x image of the SIE itself, looking like a
gnarled and leafless bush with a myriad of finely looped branch-lets. It was hung about with
several dozen multicolored objects called electrochemical initiators that bore a resemblance to
quaint Christmas ornaments. A single ECI was targeted with a red circle. The further magnified
image of this particular device, opened like a Fabergé egg of outlandish design, filled the right-
hand side of the display. Tiny testing probes and quasi-living miniature tools guided by Marc's
thoughts had latched onto the innards of this minute object. Graphical and numerical analyses of
its output flickered continually beside the image as Marc attempted to fine-tune the program of a
newly modified gallium-lanthanide operating module that controlled the ECI's complex
neurostimulation effects.
"That revision of the glom's not going to mesh with your changes in my SIECOM program," said
the ten-year-old, after his brother had completed a certain painstaking adjustment.
"Look what's happening to the simulated NMDA functions. They really suck."
"Ferme ta foutue gueule, ti-morveux," Marc said pleasantly. "Je m'en branle de ton opinion."
Distracted for a moment by the fascinating new French obscenity, the boy's face lit up. "You
do what to my opinion? Shake? ... No, it means something really filthy! Tell me, Marco! Or just
open your mind so I can translate."
Marc's laugh was wicked. "Not a chance, pest." Another level of his mind continued feeding
program changes into the ECI.
"Please! It's the very latest fad among Dartmouth undergraduates, cussing in one's ancestral
tongue. It's very important that I be au courant in Franco slang. It enhances my prestige and
helps compensate for the fact that I'm so much younger than the other freshmen."
"Ask Uncle Rogi. I learned my stuff from him."
"But he won't teach me the really interesting old vulgarisms. He says I'll have to wait until
I'm a teenager. And I can't sneak into him to root out the phrases on my own. His mind is
curiously impenetrable to redactive infiltration, in spite of the fact that he's such a weak meta
otherwise. Of course I'd never coerce him—"
"Quiet! I've nearly got this damned thing ready."
"It's not going to work right You deviated too far from my original infusion parameters.
That's what I've been trying to tell you."
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"Programming the ECIs my way will give us more efficient feed back to the third-ventricle
SIECOMEX when all twenty-six of these little hummers are cooking. Ah ... there we are. Finished at
last."
"But, Marco—"
Ignoring the child's flood of revisionary expostulation, Marc's mind said to the machine:
Integrate and consolidate all modifications. Open test path to SIECOMEX. Energize. Ready for Mode
One ECI operational simulation. And now GO you bastard!
The boy shook his head gloomily as the analyzer began its model cerebroenergetic operation.
"You'll get better feedback, all right, but you'll also mess up the brain's limbic functions—
destabilize the model CE operator's mental equilibrium as his creativity is enhanced. Look where
the NMDA factor's going! You know that this config of the E15 is already marginal for operator
safety. Your cobble is going to push it right smack over the edge."
"Give it a chance, dammit! It's only started to run."
But after only three minutes of simulation had passed, the projection showed that any CE
operator whose analog brain held the modified SIE would suffer acute schizophrenia—and very likely
have epileptic seizures as well.
Fury bespoke an imperceptible curse.
Marc groaned and said, "Welcome to Shit City."
The little boy said, "I told you so. The simulation's going into grand mal and it's crazy as
a bedbug."
Marc halted the test, took off the command headset, and massaged his aching temples. "It
looks like you were right after all, shrimp. I was trying for too much, too fast in this
configuration ... I should have stuck to the original concept you dreamed up on the river this
evening instead of trying to embroider it. Now we're well and truly fucked. Nearly five hours of
work wasted."
"Just backtrack," the child urged. "Kill the divagination starting from CAH Path 83.4. We'll
still be able to crank up creativity by a factor of more than thirty if we reprogram the glom and
fix the ECI infusors my way."
Marc glanced at his wrist-chronograph and flinched. "My God, look at the time. Almost half
past two, and you've got three seminars tomorrow! Grandmère Lucille's going to kill me if she ever
finds out I kept you up so late. We'll have to pack it in, kiddo, and get you back to the
dormitory. You can do your own mind-wipe of the proctors."
The boy's face crumpled in disappointment. "I really want to see if this will work, and you
know I always get more sleep than I really need. Let me take the comset! I can do the fix lots
faster than you can. Please!"
"Oh, no you don't. You know you're not supposed to use this equipment. Officially, you're
only an observer in this lab, even if Tom Spotted Owl did give you free run of the place."
"Uncle Tom'll never know. And it's not as if we were really doing anything wrong. It's only a
technical infringement of college regulations. Not even as bad as my staying out after hours."
As Marc hesitated, Fury damned the young scientist's puritanical rectitude, together with the
stubborn pride that did not want to concede that his little brother had been right after all. The
monster was as keenly interested in seeing whether this experiment succeeded as the abominable
child was. Its own long-range plans required that powerful new cerebroenergetic equipment be
available to its Hydra component; and if these two had actually achieved a major breakthrough with
the E15, then it would be imperative to squelch the Scottish spoilers immediately.
Might metacoercion work on Marc? His brain was deeply fatigued after hours of unrelenting
concentration and possibly vulnerable—given that the violation of his principles was so minor.
Although the Great Enemy had never been allowed to use the micromanipulator, he knew every nuance
of its complex operation even better than Marc did. There was no danger that the child might
damage the equipment or harm himself.
Fury said: <Give Jack the machine's comset.>
Marc blinked, then uttered a weary expletive and handed over the command headset to the
little boy. He started to rise from his seat in front of the console.
With a crow of glee, Jack hopped from his stool. "Just stay there, Marco. You don't have to
get up. I'm going to de-bod so I can give the job my full concentration!"
Marc sat immobile, his face expressionless and his mind tightly shuttered, as Jon
Remillard—Jack the Bodiless—began blithely to disincarnate before his eyes.
Jack had been born with the body of a normal infant, but before he reached three years of age
his mutant genes accomplished a metamorphosis that was both ghastly and wonderful. Leaping
millions of years of evolution, he became what other members of the human race would eventually
become in the far distant future: a being Marc had dubbed Mental Man. Neither Marc nor any other
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摘要：

file:///F|/rah/Julian%20May/May,%20Julian%20-%20Galactic%20Milieu%202%20-%20Diamond%20Mask.txtDiamondMaskBook2oftheGalacticMilieuTrilogyByJulianMayScannedandproofedbyBW-SciFiReleaseDate:July,1st,2002Everyculturegetsthemagicitdeserves.DUDLEYYOUNG,OriginsoftheSacredAmasktellsusmorethanaface.OSCARWILD...

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