Julian May - Magnificat

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Magnificat
Book 3 of the Galactic Milieu Trilogy
By Julian May
Scanned and proofed by BW-SciFi
Version 1.0
Release date: July, 4th, 2002
Magnificat anima mea dominum, et exsultavit spiritus meus in deo salutari meo.
LUKE 1:46-47
God said: It is necessary that sin should exist, but all will be well, and all will be well, and
every manner of things will be well.
JULIAN OF NORWICH
Love is the only thing that makes things one without destroying them.
PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
PROLOGUE
KAUAI, HAWAII, EARTH
27 OCTOBER 2113
It was dawn in the islands. In the ohia thickets of the highland forest, apapane birds and
thrushes gave a few drowsy chirps as they tuned up for their sunrise aubade. Inside a rustic house
on the mountainside above Shark Rock, the old bookseller called Uncle Rogi Remillard yawned and
stopped dictating into his transcriber. He looked out of the big sitting-room window at the dark,
choppy Pacific nearly a thousand meters below, pinched the bridge of his long, broken nose, and
squeezed his eyes shut for a moment while he gathered his thoughts. The adjacent isle of Niihau
was just becoming visible against the rose-gray sky and a few lights in Kekaha village sparkled
down along the Kauai shore.
Uncle Rogi was a lanky man with a head of untidy grizzled curls and a face that was deeply
tanned after a three-month stay in the islands. He wore a garish aloha shirt and rumpled chinos,
and he was dead tired after an all-night session of work on his memoirs, so close to finishing
this volume that he couldn't bear to break off and go to bed.
Now only the final page remained.
He picked up the input microphone of the transcriber again, cleared his throat, and began to
record:
I stayed on the planet Caledonia with Jack and Dorothée for nearly six weeks, until they bowled
me over (along with most of the rest of the Milieu) by announcing that they would marry in the
summer of 2078. Then I finally reclaimed the Great Carbuncle, which had done a damn fine job, went
back to my home in New Hampshire, and tried to decide what kind of wedding present to give the
improbable lovers.
I was feeling wonderful! Le bon dieu was in his heaven and all was right with the Galactic
Milieu.
Rogi studied the transcriber's display. Not bad. Not a bad windup at all! He yawned again.
His ten-kilo Maine Coon cat Marcel LaPlume IX stalked into the room and uttered a faint, high-
pitched miaow. Rogi acknowledged the animal's telepathic greeting with a weary nod. "Eh bien, mon
brave chaton. All done with this chunk of family history. Only the worst part left to tell. One
more book. Shall we stay here on Kauai and do it, or go back to New Hampshire?"
Marcel levitated onto the desk and sat beside the transcriber, regarding his master with
enormous gray-green eyes. He said: Hot here. Go home.
Rogi chuckled. Hale Pohakumano was actually situated high enough to be spared the worst of the
tropical heat and humidity. But the cat's shaggy gray-black pelt and big furry feet had been
designed by nature for snowy northern climes, and even the joys of chasing geckos and picking
fights with jungle cocks had finally paled for him.
Home, Marcel said again, fixing Rogi with an owl-like coercive stare.
"Batège, maybe you're right." The bookseller picked up the silver correction stylo, tapped the
display, and dictated a final word, changing "the planet Caledonia" on the last page to "Callie."
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Then he hit the FILE and PRINT pads of the transcriber. "Yep, I guess it's time to get on back to
Hanover—make sure the bookshop's okay, enjoy the last of the autumn leaves. And put my goddam
stupid wishful thinking in the ash can where it belongs. There's no reason to stay here. I've got
to stop acting like a sentimental sap."
Marcel inclined his head in silent agreement
"She's just not going to show up. Haunani and Tony must have let her know I was staying in her
house. If she'd wanted to see me, she had plenty of chances to drop in, casual-like."
Rogi looked out the window again, letting his inefficient seeker-sense sift through the human
auras glimmering far downslope. The residents and holidaymakers in Kekaha village were mostly
still asleep, their minds unguarded so that even a metapsychic searcher as clumsy as he was could
sort through their identities quickly.
None of those minds belonged to Elaine Donovan, the woman he had loved and lost 139 years ago.
The farsensory search was a futile gesture, bien sûr, and he didn't bother to check out any of
the other towns. Elaine was probably nowhere near the Hawaiian Islands—perhaps not even on the
planet Earth.
Borrowing her house while he wrote the penultimate volume of his memoirs had been a bummer of
an idea after all, even though the Family Ghost had colluded in it and mysteriously made all the
arrangements. Rogi really had thought it wouldn't matter, sleeping in Elaine's bed, cooking in her
kitchen, eating off the tableware she'd used, mooching around the garden of tropical flowers she
had planted.
But it had mattered.
Rogi had seen her image on the Tri-D and in durofilm newsprint rather often in recent years,
for she was a distinguished patron of the arts, both human and exotic. The rejuvenation techniques
of the Galactic Milieu had preserved her beauty. She retained the same silvery eyes, strawberry-
blonde hair, and striking features that had left him thunderstruck at their first meeting in 1974.
He had no idea whether or not she still wore Bal à Versailles perfume.
Long ago, his pigheaded pride had made marriage impossible and they had gone their separate
ways. He had loved other women since their parting but none of them were her equal: Elaine
Donovan, the grandmother of Teresa Kendall and the great-grandmother of Marc Remillard and his
mutant younger brother Jack.
The Hawaiian couple who served as caretakers for her house told Rogi that Elaine hadn't visited
the place for over three years. But that wasn't unusual, they said. She was a busy woman. One day
she'd return to Hale Pohakumano...
The transcriber machine gave a soft bleep and produced a neat stack of infinitely recyclable
plass pages. Like most people, Rogi still called the stuff paper. He riffled through the printout,
skimming over Dorothea Macdonald's early life, the challenges she had overcome, her great triumph,
her eventual recognition of a very unlikely soul-mate.
"Gotta go into that a tad more thoroughly," he said to himself. "C'est que'q'chose—what a
bizarre pair of saints they were! Little Diamond Mask and Jack the Bodiless." He thought about
them, smiling as his eyes roved over the final page.
But his reverie evaporated as he reached the last line. He was suddenly wide awake with
something horrid stirring deep in his gut.
"No, goddammit! I can't get away with a happy ending. I'm supposed to be telling the whole
truth about our family." He grabbed the mike, barked out a concluding sentence, then reprinted the
page and read what he had produced.
Pain tightened Rogi's face. He slammed the durofilm sheet down on the desk, mouthed an
obscenity in Canuckois dialect, and sat with his head lowered for a moment before looking up
toward the ceiling. "And you say you didn't have any idea who Fury was, mon fantôme?"
Marcel the cat flinched, skinning his ears back, but he held his ground. Rogi wasn't talking to
him and he was used to his master's eccentric soliloquies.
"You really didn't know the monster's identity?" the old man bellowed furiously at the empty
air. "Well, why the hell not? You Lylmik are supposed to be the almighty Overlords of the Galactic
Milieu, aren't you? If you didn't know, it's because you deliberately chose not to!"
There was silence, except for the dawn chorus of the birds.
Muttering under his breath, Rogi pulled a key ring from his pants pocket and lurched to his
feet. A gleaming fob resembling a small ball of red glass enclosed in a metal cage caught the
light from the desk lamp as he shook the bunch of old-fashioned keys provocatively.
"Talk to me, Ghost! Answer the questions. If you want me to finish up these memoirs, you better
get your invisible ass down to Earth and start explaining why you didn't prevent all that bad
shit! Not just the Fury thing, but the Mental Man fiasco and the war as well. Why did you let it
happen? God knows you meddled and manipulated us enough earlier in the game."
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The Family Ghost remained silent.
Rogi crumpled back into the chair and pressed his brow with the knuckles of his tightened
fists. The cat jumped lightly into his lap and butted his head against his master's chest.
Go home, Marcel said.
"Le fantôme familier won't talk to me," the old man remarked sadly. He tugged at the cat's soft
ears and scratched his chin. Marcel began to purr. Rogi's brief spate of wakefulness was fading
and he felt an overwhelming fatigue. "The Great Carbuncle always rousted the bastard out before.
What the hell's the matter with him? He hasn't been around prompting me in weeks."
He's busy, said a voice in his mind. An' not feelin' so good. He come back laytah an' kokua
when you really need 'im.
"Who's that?" Rogi croaked, starting up from the chair.
It's me, brah. Malama. I got da word from yo' Lylmik spook eh? Somet'ing you gotta do fo' you
go mainland.
"Oh, shit. Haven't I had enough grief—"
Hanakokolele Rogue! Try trust yo' akamai tutu. Dis gonna be plenny good fo' da kine memoirs.
Firs' t'ing yo' catch some moemoe den egg on ovah my place. Da Mo'i Lylmik wen send special
visitors. It say dey gone clarity few t'ings li' dat fo' yo' write summore.
"Who the hell are these visitors?"
Come down in aftanoon fine out Now sleep. Aloha oe mo'opuna.
"Malama?... Malama?" Rogi spoke a last feeble epithet. Why was his Hawaiian friend being so
damned mysterious? What was the Family Ghost up to now, using the kahuna woman as a go-between?
Sleep, urged Marcel. He jumped down from the desk and headed out of the room, pausing to look
back over his shoulder.
"Ah, bon, bon," the old man growled in surrender.
Outside, the sky had turned to gold and wild roosters were crowing in the ravines. Rogi turned
off the desk lamp and the transcriber and shuffled after the cat. The key ring with the Great
Carbuncle, forgotten, lay on the desk looking very ordinary except for a wan spark of light at the
heart of the red fob, reminiscent of a similar, more sinister object buried in Spain.
Rogi slept poorly, plagued by dreams of the Fury monster and its homicidal minion, Hydra.
Roused by the pillow alarm at 1400 hours, he slapped shave on his face, showered, put on fresh
slacks and a more subdued shirt, and went out to the egg parked on the landing pad at the edge of
the garden.
Tony Opelu was trimming a hibiscus hedge with a brushzapper. He waved. "Howzit, Rogi! Goin' to
town? Try bring back couple E-cells fo' da Jeep, eh? She wen die on me this mornin'."
"No trouble at all."
"T'anks, eh? Howza book goin'?"
"Just finished the chunk I was working on. I'll be taking off for the mainland tomorrow, leave
you and Haunani in peace. It's been a real pleasure being here, but I've got a hankering for
home."
"It happens," Tony conceded.
"I'll leave a note for Elaine. Give her my best when you see her again." Rogi climbed into the
ovoid rhocraft, lit up, and lofted slowly into the air under inertialess power.
Rainclouds shrouded the uplands, but the lower slopes of Kauai were in full sunlight. He flew
across Waimea Canyon, a spectacular gash in the land that Mark Twain had compared to a
miniaturized version of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. Beyond were dark lava cliffs, gullies
carved in scarlet laterite soil, and lush green ridges with glittering streams and the occasional
waterfall. He flew on manual, heading southeast, descending over lowland jungles that had once
been flourishing cane fields. Some sugar was still grown on the island, but most of the local
people now earned a living catering to tourists. There were also colonies of artists and writers
on Kauai, enclaves of retired folks who scorned rejuvenation and intended to die in a paradisiacal
setting, two cooperatives dedicated to the preservation of island culture that staged immersive
pageants, and a few metapsychic practitioners who specialized in the huna "magic" of ancient
Polynesia.
Malama Johnson was one of those.
Her picturesque house, deceptively modest on the outside, was in Kukuiula Bay, a few kilometers
west of the resort town of Poipu, not far from the place where Jon Remillard and Dorothea
Macdonald had resided when they were on Earth. There were no other eggs on the pad behind Malama's
place, but a sporty green Lotus groundcar with a discreet National logo on the windscreen was
parked in the shade of a silk oak tree next to her elderly Toyota pickup.
Rogi disembarked from his rhocraft and tried farsensing the interior of the house. But Malama
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had put up an opaque barrier to such spying, and his mind's ear heard her scolding him in the
Pidgin dialect that Hawaiians loved to use among their intimates:
Wassamatta you peephead? Fo'get all yo' mannahs o' wot? E komo mai wikiwiki!
With a shamefaced grin, he knocked on the rear screen door and came into the empty kitchen.
"Aloha, tutu!"
Malama Johnson called out in perfectly modulated Standard English. "We're in the lanai, Rogi.
Come join us."
He passed through the cool, beautifully appointed rooms to the shaded porch at the other end of
the house. It was dim and fragrant, with a fine view of the sea. The stout kahuna woman bounced up
and embraced him, kissing him on both cheeks. She wore a royal blue muumuu and several leis of
rare tiny golden shells from Niihau. "Cloud and Hagen flew in last night from San Francisco," she
said, indicating the two guests.
Rogi swallowed his astonishment. "Hey. Nice to see you again."
The fair-haired young man and woman nodded at him but remained seated in their rattan chairs,
sipping from tall tumblers of iced fruit juice. They were immaculately attired, she in a snowy
cotton safari suit and high white buckskin moccasins, he in a white Lacoste shirt, white slacks,
and white Top-Siders. Rogi knew the visitors, all right, but no better than any other members of
the Remillard family did. They were still very reclusive and reticent about their early lives.
Their presence here on Kauai under these peculiar circumstances came as a considerable shock to
the old man.
He took a seat at Malama's urging. On the low koawood table was a tray holding an untouched
dish of pupus—Hawaiian snacks—and two beverage pitchers, one half-empty and one that was full.
Pouring from the latter, the kahuna offered a glass to Rogi. The drink had a sizable percentage of
rum and he gulped it thankfully as he eyed the young people. They were in their early thirties. A
remote smile touched the lips of Cloud Remillard as she looked out at the sea. Her brother Hagen
was blank-faced, making no pretense of cordiality.
Rogi ventured an awkward attempt at heartiness. "So the Family Ghost put the arm on you two
kids to collaborate in the memoirs, eh?"
Hagen Remillard's reply was chill and formal, and every aspect of his mind was inviolably
shielded. "We were bespoken by a Lylmik wearing the usual disembodied head manifestation. He
ordered us to come here and talk to you about certain events that took place during our exile in
the Pliocene Epoch."
"That... should be mighty interesting." Rogi's grin was wary.
"You know that our entire group was debriefed by the Human Polity Science Directorate when we
first came through the time-gate." Hagen did not meet the old bookseller's eyes. "At that time we
were instructed not to publicize details of our Pliocene experiences, and we complied
scrupulously. Even now, very few people know that the two of us were among the returnees."
"It was a relief, having an official excuse to keep quiet about our identities," Cloud said.
"We knew that if the public were spared the more gaudy details of our prehistoric adventures,
there would be less likelihood of our lives becoming a media circus. In most of the Milieu, our
group was just a nine days' wonder. You know: Time-Travelers Return! Whoop-dee-doo... then on to
the next bit of fast-breaking news. My husband, Kuhal, had a harder time of it, but at least he's
humanoid and so he adapted. We've been kept busy doing certain work connected with our conditional
Unification and we've managed to live more or less in peace— until now."
Hagen said, "The entity who countermanded the Directorate's gag order told us that he was
Atoning Unifex, the head of the Milieu's Supervisory Body. Cloud and I were properly overawed at
first. But as the Lylmik spoke to us we both experienced a shocking sense of déjà vu. After Unifex
vanished we were confused—no, we were terrified!—and we wondered if we had experienced some shared
delusion, a waking nightmare. Not long afterward, the Lylmik's orders to us were reconfirmed by
the First Magnate of the Human Polity and also by the Intendant General of Earth. Both women took
some pains to tell us what an extraordinary communication we'd been honored with." The young man's
face was sardonic. "That was a considerable understatement."
"We agreed to come here and talk to you only after it became evident that we would be coerced
if we refused," Cloud added. Her voice was low-pitched, but warm and without rancor. "We've had
quite enough of that already in our lives."
"Did you recognize Unifex, then?" Rogi asked softly. "Do you know who he really is?"
"I knew almost immediately," said Cloud. "I was always closer to him than my brother. The
realization was... shattering. Hagen didn't want to believe it."
"Unifex is Marc Remillard," Rogi said. "Your father."
"Damn him!" Hagen exploded to his feet and began striding about the lanai like a caged
catamount. "We were so relieved when the time-gate closed after us and the Milieu authorities
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obliterated the site! Cloud and I and all the rest of us thought we were finally free. Papa was
trapped six million years in the past along with that madman Aiken Drum, and he could never hurt
us again."
"He never meant to be cruel," Cloud murmured.
Hagen rounded on her. "He never thought of us as thinking, feeling human beings at all. We were
nothing but subjects in his grand experiment." He turned to Rogi and Malama. "Do you know what his
gang of decrepit Rebel survivors called him behind his back? Abaddon—the Angel of the Abyss! At
the end almost all of them repudiated him and his lunatic plan for Mental Man."
"Papa gave it up, too," Cloud insisted. "Or he would never have sent us back through the time-
gate."
Hagen's rage seemed suddenly extinguished, leaving hopelessness. He slumped back into his
chair. "Now we discover that our father won out after all. Not only did he miraculously survive
for six million years, but somehow he also managed to transmute himself into the Overlord of the
Galactic Milieu! God help us and our children." He lifted hate-filled eyes to Rogi and Malama.
"God help all of you."
"Unifex atoned," the Hawaiian woman said serenely. "During all those endless years he tried to
make restitution for his crimes. He performed his penance not only in this galaxy but in the other
one—where the Tanu and Firvulag people came from. I know almost nothing about his Pliocene
activities and his later accomplishments in Duat, but everything that he's done for the races of
the Milky Way has been for the good. He founded the Milieu and guided it every step of the way.
Thanks to him there are six coadunate racial Minds secure in Unity—and thousands more nearly ready
to join the galactic confederation."
"Too bad he didn't do a better job shepherding his old home planet," Hagen said bitterly,
"preventing natural disasters, plagues, famines, wars—to say nothing of the Metapsychic Rebellion.
His Lylmik self just stood idly by while his earlier self nearly destroyed galactic civilization."
Malama only smiled. "The greatest spatiotemporal nodalities are immutable and the past,
present, and future form a seamless whole. It is impossible to change history. Unifex acted as he
must act—and yet his actions were and are freely done. Our own actions are free as well,
contributing to and formulating the mystery of the Great Reality."
Hagen gave a scornful laugh. "And 'God's in his heaven and all's right with the world'?"
"Perhaps," Malama said.
They sat in silence for several minutes. Then Hagen spoke again. "Something's just occurred to
me. The Lylmik race is the closest thing to Mental Man that our galaxy has produced, but it's
decadent and headed for extinction. What do you want to bet that Papa tried to modify Lylmik
evolution just as he wanted to modify ours—and failed!"
Rogi shrugged "Nobody knows a damn thing about Lylmik history."
"Maybe," the young man continued slowly, "Papa plans to return to his original scheme now that
he's six million years wiser after the fact ... and he has his original experimental subjects back
in hand."
"Don't talk like a fool," Cloud cried out to her brother. "The Galactic Concilium would never
permit the Mental Man project to be revived—not even by the arch-Lylmik himself."
"Would you bet your life on it?" Hagen shot back at her. "Again?"
"I can think of one sure way you two can help prevent it," Rogi said suddenly, "in the unlikely
event that Hagen's right."
"How?" the brother and sister demanded.
"Tell me all you know about Marc's scheme, and I'll publish it in the fourth volume of my
memoirs. The full story of Mental Man has never come out. Most of the details of the plan were
suppressed by the Galactic Concilium—supposedly to preserve the tranquillity and good order of the
Milieu."
"You were on the brink of the Metapsychic Rebellion then, weren't you?" Cloud asked.
"Right. Officially, the Rebellion was fought to liberate humanity from the Milieu and its
Unity. But the main reason Marc decided to declare war was because he was so pissed off at having
his great dream condemned. He caused a monumental uproar when the Mental Man project was
cancelled, charging that the exotic magnates and their loyalist human confederates were conspiring
to deprive our race of a great genetic breakthrough. He said that the Milieu was afraid humanity
would become mentally superior to all the rest of creation, and the only solution was breaking
away, as the Rebel faction had advocated for so long. A lot of normals believed that the Mental
Man project would insure that all their children would grow up to be metapsychic operants. But
Marc and his people never did explain to the general public exactly how this miracle was going to
be accomplished."
"He didn't dare," Hagen muttered. "They would have lynched him."
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Cloud said, "It was years before Hagen and I finally discovered what Papa had planned. When our
mother found out the truth... well, you know what happened."
"No, I don't," Rogi said. "Not really. Tell me! Help me tell the story to the whole Galactic
Milieu. That's got to be the reason why you two were sent here to talk to me. I don't understand
why Unifex doesn't give me the information himself, but he must have his reasons."
"It was his worst sin," Malama Johnson stated in her calm voice. "Worse than leading the
Rebellion into violent conflict and causing the deaths of all those people. Deep in his heart,
Marc thought the war against the Galactic Milieu and its Unity was justified, as his followers
did. But the Mental Man project was quite different. He knew it was wrong, and yet he couldn't
resist the awful elegance of the concept—the opportunity to personally engineer a great leap
forward in human mental and physical evolution."
The three others stared at her wordlessly.
"Don't you see, dear grandchildren?" Malama spread her hands, embracing all their minds in huna
healing. "Unifex is too ashamed to talk about it. Even now."
1
FROM THE MEMOIRS OF ROGATIEN REMILLARD
I flew home to New England on auto-vee the next day, sleeping most of the way with my cat curled
up beside me on the rear banquette. Oddly enough, I didn't have bad dreams after the interview
with Marc's son and daughter, for which I suppose I can thank Malama Johnson. God knows, I would
never be able to think of Marc—or the Family Ghost—in the same way again after the horrors that
poor Cloud and Hagen disclosed to me back on Kauai.
I woke up, feeling fairly decent, as the egg announced that we were nearly home and demanded
further navigational instructions. We traced a leisurely holding pattern 1200 meters above
Hanover, New Hampshire. It was a lovely morning and the old college town by the Connecticut River
was at its most charming, spread out below like a patchwork quilt of bright colors thanks to the
autumn foliage.
I discovered that I was ravenously hungry. Half a dozen congenial campus eateries lay within
strolling distance of my apartment, and I had opened my mouth to give the command to descend— when
suddenly a completely different notion on where to break my fast occurred to me.
Sheer serendipity.
Right.
I programmed the aircraft for Vee-flight to Bretton Woods, and a few minutes later we'd whizzed
90 kilometers northeast and descended into the egg-park area of the old White Mountain Resort
Hotel. It crouched at the foot of Mount Washington, a gargantuan white wooden confection with
bright red roofs on its gabled wings and quaint towers. As the rhocraft landed, I announced myself
over the RF com and confirmed that the establishment would be delighted to accommodate Citizen
Remillard for breakfast.
I opaqued the egg's dome for decency's sake, used the facilities, freshened up with a Beard-
Wipe, combed my hair, and donned my old corduroy jacket. Then I opened a pouch of cat food for
Marcel and thrust him into his carrier-cage. He bespoke telepathic indignation as he realized I
was about to go off and leave him behind.
"Sorry, old boy. No companion animals allowed in the hotel dining room. Old Yankee custom."
Marcel gave a bitter hiss of betrayal as I exited the rhocraft Silly brute. When were the
goddam cats going to admit that the raison d'être of the human race was not humble service to
felinity?
I came through the gardens, where chrysanthemums and dahlias and winter pansies still bloomed,
and ambled into the hotel's main entrance, giving my nostalgia free rein as I sopped up the
familiar Edwardian ambiance. I hadn't been here in thirty years, but the old place, beautifully
restored, subtly tricked out now with high-tech innovations to allow year-round operation and
adapted to accommodate other races besides humankind, looked almost exactly as I remembered it.
The lobby was crowded with tourists, both human and exotic, many of them preparing to ascend Mount
Washington via the antique cog railway.
I went out on the veranda, where there was a gorgeous view of the Presidential Range, not yet
touched by snow. The lower slopes were a blazing mosaic of dark evergreens and gold-and-scarlet
sugar maples.
Memories overwhelmed me like a psychic avalanche. The wedding of Jack and Dorothée had been
held here in 2078, and I'd been the ring-bearer and killed a man for the second time in my life.
And in 2082, the last time I had stood on the mountain, my nephew Denis had been with me.
Denis. And the other.
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But I dared not think of that yet. So I went in and had a fine breakfast, then returned to my
egg, where Marcel had retaliated against my perfidy in the time-honored catty fashion. I didn't
even bother to chide him, only turned on the aircraft's environmental deodorizer full-blast and
flew home. It was time to begin writing again, with or without the Family Ghost's help.
It was more than happenstance that brought me back to the White Mountain Hotel.
In my younger days, before opening the bookshop, I worked at the place as a convention manager.
My nephew Denis, who adopted me as his father figure when my twin brother Don let him down, first
visited the hotel in 1974 when he was seven years old. We rode the smoke-belching cog train to the
summit of Mount Washington together, and it was there that the boy and I first met Elaine Donovan
and made the joyous discovery that there were other people on Earth with operant higher mindpowers
besides ourselves.
Fifteen years later, as I attended mass in the Catholic chapel in nearby Bretton Woods, I heard
my wretched brother's telepathic death-scream. Even worse, I experienced Don's last burst of
furious hatred for me—and also, mysteriously, for himself. At his funeral I received disquieting
news from Denis, who was then a professor at Dartmouth College in Hanover and one of the most
famous metapsychic researchers in the country. My nephew blamed himself for not preventing his
father's death. Denis also told me that Don had been murdered, and that I myself was in deadly
danger. He urged me to come live near him—so that he could protect me and also help me to attain
my full metapotential.
I didn't want to leave the White Mountain Hotel. I had a job that I was good at and thoroughly
enjoyed, and nobody in the place knew I was a metapsychic operant—which suited me just dandy. In
the end, however, Denis did convince me to join him. I moved to Hanover and became an antiquarian
bookseller, sole proprietor of the shop called The Eloquent Page; but from then on the
relationship between Denis and me was more ambiguous and troubling.
I loved my foster son dearly. But deep in my heart I was afraid of him and his tremendous
mindpowers—as I was also afraid of my own metafunctions. The fear was entirely irrational, rooted
deep in my unconscious, and I never have managed to shake free of it
Like many geniuses, Denis Remillard was a man of unexceptional appearance. He was fair and
slightly built, with a manner that seemed gentle and self-effacing—unless you happened to look
directly into his electric blue eyes and feel the strength of the coercive power lurking there.
Whereupon you might be excused for thinking that your skeleton had suddenly liquefied and seeped
out through your paralyzed toes.
Denis's intellectual achievements were even more prodigious man his metapsychic talents. His
research earned him a Nobel Prize in psychiatric medicine, and his books and monographs are
classics, still highly respected thirty years after his death. As is Denis himself.
The 2013 Congress on Metapsychology was held at the White Mountain Hotel at his instigation,
and its fateful climax was largely his doing. Prominent metas came to New Hampshire from all over
the world for what was supposed to be their last annual convocation. They were a beleaguered
minority in those early days of the twenty-first century, weary of being assailed and
misunderstood by hostile normals, discouraged by the apparent inability of our race to live
together in peace and fellowship, but still hopeful that they might somehow be able to use their
higher mindpowers for the good of all humanity.
On the last night of the Congress, the operants were scheduled to dine at the spectacular
Summit Chalet atop Mount Washington... and there they were also supposed to die. Other historians
in addition to myself have told how the operant madman Kieran O'Connor conspired with Denis's
younger brother Victor to murder the Congress delegates. The failure of the plot has been ascribed
by some people to fortuitous coincidence—by others to the aggressive use of metaconcerted
mindpower by numbers of the delegates under attack.
In these memoirs, I have told what actually happened. Some of the besieged operants did use
their mindpowers as weapons. But then, rallied by Denis, they resisted the temptation to strike
back mentally at their enemies. It was Denis who integrated their minds—and the minds of countless
other human beings of good will, both operant and nonoperant—into a benevolent mental alliance
that extended worldwide. That unique, loving metaconcert, foreshadowing the greater one forged by
Jack and Dorothée in 2083, lasted only for a few moments. But it was sufficient.
The planet Earth had shown the watching Milieu that its immature, quarrelsome Mind was worth
saving. The sky above Mount Washington—and above every major population center in the world—filled
with exotic starships, and the human race was inducted willy-nilly into a galactic confederation.
I also had a hand in it, and so did a certain Lylmik. But the Great Intervention would never
have happened without my nephew Denis.
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Et maintenant la leçon touche à sa fin.
2
HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE, EARTH
2 FEBRUARY 2078
The rudalm-composer MulMul Ziml landed its rhocraft across the street from The Eloquent Page
bookshop, climbed out, and stood in the snow for some time absorbing the local telluric aura and
giggling in unashamed rapture at the heady stimulation of it all. Earth in winter! The veritable
heart-nest of the Remillard clan! It was inimitable. Sublime. Very nearly inenarrable!
The hermaphroditic exotic had feared that Rogatien Remillard's place of work and residence
would have been tarted up and modernized by now, sixty-five years after the Great Intervention.
But no—there the exquisite old three-storey building stood, Federal-style clapboards gleaming in
the thickening snowfall, windows cheerily alight (the upper ones had green shutters), and sloping
metal roof softly blanketed. So evocative. So human! One might readily compose a worthy rudalm on
this enchanting scene alone. (But, alas, if one expected to sell the work to the lucrative Human
Polity market as well as to one's own, more aesthetically sensitive Gi race, the leitmotif
required more interspecies appeal and pizzazz.)
The planet's sun had long since set. Increasing numbers of crystalline flakes danced in the
frigid atmosphere, glistening as they drifted through the beams of streetlights and the headlamps
of passing groundcars. Melting grids were working full tilt to keep the sidewalks and streets
clear for pedestrians and vehicles, but fresh snow was already thick on the bare branches of the
trees and other unheated surfaces. It lay nine cents deep on the little patch of frozen lawn in
front of the bookshop and whitened the concrete footing and the evergreen shrubs around the
building's central vestibule steps.
The Gi musician's tall quasi-avian body was clad in a rented environmental suit, and its
enormous yellow eyes peered out through a transparent protective visor. The creature found the
nocturnal townscape to be almost unbearably ravishing, especially when savored through the
pla'akst sensory circuit, but it now began to shiver and feel incipient chilblains in its feet and
hypersensitive external genitalia. Turning up the suit's thermostat didn't seem to help.
Reluctantly, the Gi decided it had accumulated enough outdoor imagery. It was time to get on with
the interview and the full-sensory extraction.
MulMul Ziml tripped off heedlessly across Main Street, only barely managing to dodge a
scannerless, aged groundcar full of Dartmouth students that skidded on the wet pavement trying to
avoid it. The reversed turbine whined and a horn blared furiously. The near-disaster had been
entirely the Gi's own fault and it prayed forgiveness from the Cosmic All as it scrambled clumsily
onto the opposite sidewalk. Fortunately, the human occupants of the vehicle weren't metapsychic
operants, so MulMul's excruciating telepathic cry of terror had not distressed them unnecessarily.
The door of the bookshop opened and an operant human male peered out, broadcasting emanations
of anxiety. "God! Are you all right?"
"Quite safe, quite safe," the Gi fluted. "How kind of you to inquire! It was so silly of me not
to calculate the velocity of the approaching vehicle before attempting to cross the street, but
I'd forgotten how fast you Earthlings drive."
"Well, come inside before we both freeze our bizounes off," the man said rather tetchily. "I
suppose you're the one Dorothée said was coming."
"Yes, the Dirigent most kindly—'' The Gi broke off, did a double take, and shrieked in delight.
"It's you! Uncle Rogi!"
The bookseller sighed and shut the door behind the exotic visitor. "That's what everybody in
town calls me. You might as well, too. Take off your things and come sit by the stove with me and
my buddy. Tell us about this opera or whatever it is you're writing."
An antique cast-iron heating device and several chairs occupied one corner of the bookshop.
There were also reading lamps and a small table with a coffee-making machine. Another male human,
weakly metapsychic like Rogi, was sitting there quaffing from a mug. His mind-tone was amiable and
a species of small domestic animal rested on his lap.
MulMul hesitated. "You're sure you won't mind if I divest?
Some Earthlings feel uncomfortable in the presence of unclothed members of my race."
The bookseller laughed. "Hell, no. Go right ahead. Me and Kyle need more than a buck-nekkid Gi
to shock us. Just hang your suit on the clothes-tree there and kick off your boots. I know you
folks can't abide coffee, so I'm going to make you a hot toddy. You look like you need one."
Rogi went off to the back of the shop and MulMul shyly undressed, shaking out its compressed
filoplumage and untangling its testicular peduncles and accessory mammillae. "The rental agent at
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Anticosti Starport assured me that this garment would keep me comfortable in the coldest weather,"
the Gi remarked, "but I fear it may be defective. My toes have turned quite blue with cold and
just look at my poor phallus."
The second man seemed to choke slightly on his drink, but he recovered quickly and gave a
sympathetic nod. He was a robust specimen with abundant brown hair and a ruddy complexion. "Aweel
now, Citizen, that's truly a scandal. The stuff they hire out these days just can't be trusted.
You be sure to raise a stink when you return it and likely they'll cancel the fee."
"Oh, I'd never dream of complaining!"
"By damn, of course you will," Rogi said, returning with a steaming cup, which he thrust into
the Gi's elongated, near-humanoid hands. "When on Earth, you gotta do as the locals do. Stick up
for your rights! Sit down there now and toast your tootsies and let's get on with whatever it is
you want from me. I'm planning to close the shop early because of the snow... Oh, by the way, this
is my old friend Kyle Macdonald. You won't mind if he sits in?"
"Not at all!" MulMul Ziml burbled. "The Dirigent's grandfather! What a signal honor to make
your acquaintance." The exotic flopped into the indicated chair and extended its large four-toed
feet toward the stove. What a relief it was to be warm again! And the hot drink was truly
delightful, its generous alcoholic content enhanced with butterfat and a large helping of maple
sugar. The Gi expressed its gratitude after belatedly introducing itself.
"As Dirigent Macdonald may have explained, I am a composer. My specialty is the rudalm—a
musical artform that some critics have called a cantata virtuale. Recently, rudalma have enjoyed
considerable favor among human music-lovers. They are not true operatic works, but rather full-
sensory impressions of a significant event or scene, virtually realized for operant attendees,
accompanied by a Gi choir."
"And you're doing the deliverance of Caledonia," Rogi said.
"Precisely! The inherent excitement of the event—together with the participation of
distinguished beings such as Jon and Marc Remillard—make it what you humans deem a 'natural' for
both Gi and human audiences."
"My granddaughter Dorrie and a few other folk had a wee hand in saving Callie, too," Kyle
Macdonald put in, flashing a chilly smile.
"Yes, of course! Oh, dear—I didn't mean to imply otherwise. Most especially since Dirigent
Dorothea Macdonald and the Caledonian geophysical team have been so cooperative in sharing their
own memorecall of the averted catastrophe. Unfortunately, I've been unable to secure the memories
of Jon or Marc Remillard. They seem to be occupied with other affairs just now. The Dirigent
suggested that I come to you instead, Uncle Rogi, since you were there during the incident and you
enjoy such a close rapport with the heroic Remillard brothers."
"Umm." The old bookseller looked dubious.
"What a singular challenge it must have been!" the hermaphrodite caroled. "Using metaconcerted
mindpower to defuse an ascending magmatic plume that threatened to destroy the colony!"
"Not a plume," said Rogi. "A diatreme. Different kinda thing. With plumes, you don't get
diamonds in the eruption."
The Gi's huge eyes glazed in ecstasy. "And what a climax that fantastic shower of gems will
provide in virtual experience! I've viewed the media recordings of the event, of course, but you
were a sensory witness—"
Rogi shook his head. "Only viewed the blowout on monitor equipment in the observers' bunker.
Still, it was quite a show."
"If you would consent to share your impressions, you'll provide invaluable input on the entire
sequence of events. The Dirigent said that you did witness Marc Remillard's arrival on Caledonia,
and you also persuaded him to intervene in the geophysical operation. That occasion is crucial to
the exposition of my work."
The Gi took something small from its feathered armpit orifice and held it out to Rogi. The
device looked something like a badminton shuttlecock with a narrow, spongy tip. "This full-sensory
extractor will absorb your perceptions of the entire episode in short order. The process is quite
painless. All we do is insert the soft end into your ear, and I ask you questions—"
"Now, just a damned minute, you!" Rogi barked, starting up from his seat. "Nobody mind-probes
me. Nobody!"
The Gi fell back in confusion. "But—"
"You won't coerce me, either! I can put up a damn strong mind-shield if I have to. And I don't
care if Dorothée sent you or not. To hell with this virtual operetta, or whatever it is, if it
means fucking around in my brainpan!"
The hypersensitive exotic uttered a heart-wrenching soprano wail and sank slowly to the floor
in a disheveled heap of plumage and quivering primary and secondary sexual organs. "I never
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meant... I never intended ... Oh, forgive me!" The melodious voice coarsened to a rasp, the saucer
eyes rolled up into the Gi's head, and it swooned away.
"Now you've done it, you great clumsy gowk." Kyle Macdonald dumped the cat Marcel from his lap
and knelt beside the collapsed exotic. Unable to locate any of the Gi's hearts in the mass of
fluffy body feathers, nipples, and ovarian externalia, he felt for a pulse in its stringy neck.
"Could y'not have been more tactful? The big birdies are ower delicate things! Sometimes they drop
dead just to emphasize a point."
"Aw, shit." The dismayed bookseller helped his Scottish friend lift the Gi into a chair. Its
eyelids were beginning to flutter. "I didn't mean to hurt its feelings. But dammitall, I don't
even let members of my own family past my mindscreen nowadays."
"It wasn't going to probe, ye steamin' nit. Yon wee gadget just records memories as a man
thinks 'em. There's no ferreting or forcing as with mechanical mind-sifters ... Uist! I think the
critter's coming round."
"Hey, I'm really sorry about that," Rogi said to the exotic composer. "I didn't mean to knock
you for a loop."
MulMul Ziml opened its eyes and managed a tremulous smile. "You are quite blameless, dear Uncle
Rogi. We Gi have a psyche that is unfortunately a trifle fragile. One does realize objectively
that overly emphatic discourse is commonplace among humans and not necessarily charged with mortal
hostility, but—"
"I misunderstood you," Rogi said. He retrieved the fallen full-sensory extractor. "I'll be glad
to do what you want if you promise to stick to matters concerning the diatreme." He gestured to
Kyle. "My friend will make sure that your memory requests are on the up-and-up. Okay?"
"Excellent!" The Gi bounced to its feet, miraculously recovered. Its pseudomammary areolae,
which had gone waxy pale when it fainted, engorged to an enthusiastic cerise and its intromittent
organ became tumescent with anticipatory joy. "Just relax in your chair—splendid! Let me help you
with the extractor. Now, as I announce successive events, just close your eyes and try to relive
them briefly in a daydream. Don't worry about the details— the device will capture them. Ready?"
"I guess." Rogi's expression was resigned.
"Now!" The Gi crouched in front of Rogi and spoke with soft coercion. Kyle Macdonald, grinning
fiendishly in the background, made twiddling motions with his fingers, parodying a symphonic
conductor. "Think about when you and Jon Remillard first landed on Caledonia and learned details
of the imminent seismic peril to that planet."
"Wake up, old son," said Kyle. "It's all over and your fine feathered friend is gone, floating
on cloud nine. It promised to send you a special presentation fleck of the rudalm just as soon as
the thing is produced."
Rogi groaned and stretched. "Putain! Wait till I get my hands on that chit Dorothée, siccing
that oversexed turkey on me ... Look at that rug! It was just back from the cleaners."
"Och, don't be such a cranky old fart. So the Gi did get a wee bit transported. The music the
birdies make is glorious and their virtual vision's unique. Fascinating the way they manage to put
an erotic luster on everything. I can hardly wait to see what they do with the Callie diamond
shower."
"Three guesses." Grumpily, Rogi rolled up the rag rug with its fluorescent pink cum-stain. "For
God's sake, Kyle, grow up. Virtual-reality porn was old hat before you were even born."
"The Gi rudalma are nothing like that. No tickle-suits or buzz-hats or other paraphernalia. I
caught a show once on Zugmipl with Masha. Very tasteful and all done through the unencumbered
mind."
Rogi grunted dismissively and peered out the bookshop window at the thickening snow. "That Gi
didn't... try anything funny with my other memories when it was rooting around in me, did it?"
"Nary a bit. I stood by every minute guarding your mental integrity. The only memories it
called up were the ones relevant to the diatreme. What're you fashed about, anyhow? Who'd give a
rat's ass about the rubbish in your skull?"
"You'd be surprised," Rogi said darkly.
"Nobody cares if you're a Rebel. Any more than anybody cares that I write my little fantasy
novels pissing in the eye of the Milieu. We're small fry, laddie, beneath the notice of the
Magistratum and the Concilium. Or... is it the Fury thing that's got your knickers in a twist?"
Rogi whirled around and seized the lapels of the Scotsman's rough tweed jacket. "Now you listen
to me, haggis-breath! I was shitfaced last week when I blabbed to you about that. You gotta swear
you'll never tell a soul!"
Kyle Macdonald's eyes shifted. "Turn me loose, man. Are you daft? You and your fewkin'
skeletons in the family closet."
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