Alone, he fell willingly into the abyss.

The living diamond that was himself shattered. He came and all energy was spent and it was over.

Marc awoke. He was lying p.r.o.ne on the hearthrug in front of a grate full of dead ashes. The helmet and its accoutrements were on the floor next to him and the cabin was frigid and silent. He remembered nothing.

Pulling himself up, he muttered an obscenity. Every joint and muscle throbbed with pain. What the h.e.l.l had happened? And what was the CE rig doing here, out of its pod?

He couldn't possibly have used it to ...

G.o.d.

But he must have. The signs were unmistakable.

Cursing himself and consumed with self-loathing, he limped off to the bathroom. Puzzling out this piece of idiocy could wait. All he wanted now was a long, hot shower.

13.

FROM THE MEMOIRS OF ROGATIEN REMILLARD.

The wish Lucille Cartier made at St. Brigit's Spring on St. Patrick's Day, 2063, came true. For five years the affairs of the Human Polity of the Galactic Milieu seemed to run peacefully, even though the Rebel faction continued to flourish and gained some distinguished new adherents. Human colonies grew apace, exotic-human relations continued to be cordial, and human philosophers and ethicists noodled away at the concept of Unity, making it more and more acceptable to the majority of operant Earthlings.

Rory Muldowney's attack on Paul was a nine days' wonder that was never publicized outside of Orb. A good many people took secret satisfaction in the dapper First Magnate's comeuppance, and I admit to sn.i.g.g.e.ring over it myself. It's only human, after all, to enjoy the dis...o...b..bulation of the high and mighty! But the Dirigent of Hibernia apologized handsomely once he sobered up, and no one believed Paul was actually responsible for Laura Tremblay's death-even though nasty comparisons to the demise of Teresa Kendall were inevitable. Once the brief hullabaloo died down, Paul carried on his official duties effectively and efficiently.

However, he may have subsequently vetted the mental health of his mistresses with more care. No more ladies died for love of him.

The rest of the Remillards also dwelt in relative tranquillity during that half-decade, thanks largely to the fact that Marc had left New Hampshire and immured himself in his spiffy new CE laboratory in the Pacific Northwest, barring every family member except young Jack from the premises. Throughout this time Marc was very closemouthed about his research progress. He did some kind of seismic tinkering on the planet Okanagon that allegedly staved off a large earthquake, but the event was publicized only in a paper he wrote for Nature.

He socialized with the family only on special occasions and carried out his Concilium duties punctiliously but without distinction. Having turned Orb on its ear during his freshman outing, he now seemed content to rest on his oars. He apparently had nothing whatsoever to do with the Rebel faction.

The Dynasty was grateful but had no illusion that Marc's quiescent phase would last for long. They had reluctantly agreed to let the Remillard Family Foundation finance the lion's share of Marc's mind-boosting research since the alternative-he had threatened to move the project lock, stock, and barrel to Okanagon-would have given them no control over him whatsoever. As it was, from time to time Marc's a.s.sociate Pete Dalembert, Jr., would unveil a formidable new piece of cerebroenergetic equipment to the admiring metapsychic establishment and license its manufacture by Remco Industries or some other commercial outfit.

The Concilium pa.s.sed stiff laws regulating the use of creative CE. Certain viewers-with-alarm still voiced their opposition to the entire concept of artificial augmentation of creative mindpowers. But the equipment proved exceptionally useful in many different fields, and fatalities among its operators were within reasonable limits, so Marc was able to carry on his work virtually without interference. He fulfilled his promise to Dirigent Patricia Castellane by training numbers of Okanagon's Grand Master Creators in CE techniques. Their crudely metaconcerted modification of an unstable chunk of crust on that planet in 2066 was hailed as a geophysical triumph of the first order.

Jack the Bodiless absorbed every single academic discipline that Dartmouth College had to offer within three years of matriculation, and then turned his voracious, polymathic young mind loose upon other top inst.i.tutions of learning. He simultaneously did clinical work with his Aunt Catherine, wrote a book on colonial economics with his Uncle Maurice, and coauth.o.r.ed a monograph on novel aspects of metaconcert design in collaboration with Denis. Although Ti-Jean rarely spoke of it, he also worked closely with Marc for many years, until his older brother's increasing obsession with the Mental Man concept caused a tragic rift between the two of them.

All throughout his life, Jack would continue to absorb knowledge as though it were an essential nutrient-and perhaps, to him, it was.

Ti-Jean was scrupulous in maintaining his simulacrum of physical normality in the presence of outsiders and grew up to be an attractive teenager, of medium height and build and pleasant but unexceptional appearance. His hair was usually black and his eyes vivid blue, and he ate and drank and peed and shat and breathed and perspired and slept and behaved just like a natural boy ... some of the time.

We in the family did have to put up with episodes of adolescent experimentation, in which he concocted and wore every sort of body imaginable in order to "attain empathy with fellow beings," going about incognito behind his totally impregnable mind-screen. Sometimes he became female; sometimes he disguised himself as an adult. He took on the decrepitude of extreme old age and also inhabited forms that were diseased or imperfect so that he could experience the limitations of the human condition. He tried out exotic bodies, too, and even experimented with animal shapes-confessing to me once that he greatly enjoyed being feline, prowling the back fences of Hanover with my Maine c.o.o.n cat, Marcel LaPlume.

His one great frustration was his failure to make mental contact with the girl Dorothea Macdonald. Jack's stupendous farsight had been able to view her ever since he first learned of her existence by eavesdropping on his Lylmik examiners in 2063; but if she was aware of his persistent telepathic calls she never gave any sign.

"I'm positive she can hear me, Uncle Rogi," the boy complained to me, one day in 2067. He was at that time fifteen years of age and Dorothee was ten. "But she refuses to respond. I've got to find out if her mind really approaches mine in its potential, as the Lylmik hinted. They've refused to confirm or deny it, and they also say that they won't intervene to help establish communication between us. It's very frustrating. I've decided that the only way to resolve the situation is to go to Caledonia and confront her."

We were mooching around my bookshop on a rainy autumn afternoon in the company of Marcel. Jack was helping me to shelve a new shipment of carefully preserved, shrink-wrapped antique volumes that had just arrived-real rarities like The Green Man by Harold M. Sherman, a beautiful first edition of Lovecraft's Beyond the Wall of Sleep, a signed copy of Stephen King's Night Shift, and-rarest of all-a VG 1964 paperback copy of the mildly p.o.r.nographic Sin Service, written under a pseudonym during his hungrier years by a science-fiction immortal. (If you wish to know who, the revelation is included in the price. Write for a brochure.) "Have you considered," said I, when Jack began to detail his callow scheme to visit the Scottish planet, "that this little girl may not want to farspeak with you-or even meet you in person?"

"Why not?" Obviously, the thought had never entered Ti-Jean's t.i.tanic mind, any more than he had thought to simply write Dorothee a letter or call her on the subs.p.a.ce communicator.

I shrugged. "You told me she's not fully operant. She may think you're some kind of delusion: a nightmare ... or even a ghost. You may be scaring the poor little girl to death farshouting her across the lightyears."

Jack was crestfallen. "But I've tried to make it plain that I'm a friend. That I only want to talk to her, to get to know her, because we might have a great deal in common-both being so out of the ordinary. The Lylmik have told me that I'll be nominated to the Concilium next year when I turn adult-the youngest magnate in human history! I'll be designated a Paramount Grand Master just like Marc. This little girl has the potential to become a paramount, too."

"Lucky her," said I.

But Jack wasn't having any of my cynicism. "Do you know how Dorothea lives? It's a crying shame. She's on this farm way out in the middle of nowhere on Caledonia, getting an ordinary education from satellite school and spending the rest of her time doing silly prosaic things like feeding chickens and cattle, weeding gardens, and patching holes in the farm's landing pad. She isn't being given the opportunity to develop her metafaculties at all!"

"Maybe she doesn't want to, Ti-Jean." I set the last book in place, closed the armor-gla.s.s door of the display safe, and set the combination. You can't be too careful in a college town.

Jack stared at me, aghast and disbelieving. "Doesn't want to? But why on earth not, Uncle Rogi?"

He trailed after me as I headed for my little office in the shop's back room. Mr. Coffee had just brewed a fresh batch, which I served out to us. We sat at my desk in two comfy broken-down chairs with the cat in his favorite spot, overflowing my OUT basket with his gray s.h.a.ggy bulk.

"Not all humans are at ease with higher mindpowers," I said, careful to keep my deepest thoughts veiled. "I'm not-even after all these years. The powers complicate life. They're scary. Normal people will always be uneasy with operants. Even afraid of them ... at the same time that they expect us heads to be more n.o.ble and altruistic than they are. The Milieu is more explicit on the bounden duties of operants: n.o.blesse d.a.m.n well better oblige-or else! During most of my early life I tried to conceal and deny my powers. When I got wild one day in 1991 and demonstrated them for the first time in public, I had a nervous breakdown. I realized I'd never be able to pretend I was normal again. And it was horrible."

"But-that was before operants were accepted. Before the Great Intervention. Now things are different. You have no valid reason to feel uncomfortable with your operancy anymore. No one persecutes you. I daresay most of the customers who come into The Eloquent Page don't care what kind of mind you have-unless they're planning to shoplift one of the rare books. I've tried to tell Dorothea that she has nothing to be afraid of. Why won't she believe me?"

I drank some coffee before I answered him. Marcel was broadcasting requests for food, as usual, but I ignored them. "The little girl may be timid. In very young people, the emotions outweigh reason. It could frighten her to think she has weird powers that could go out of control. I know it used to scare the s.h.i.t out of me! I don't worry about it now because I realize I'm only a low-cla.s.s head. I'm not even adept-much less mastercla.s.s-so who gives a d.a.m.n?"

Jack's voice had an odd timbre as he said, "Your creativity is much more powerful than you may realize. I could help you develop it-"

"G.o.d d.a.m.n it, no!" I slammed my clenched fist on the desk in panicky fury, nearly upsetting my cup and terrorizing Marcel so that he levitated out of his perch and streaked to the top of a storage shelf.

"That's exactly the kind of thing that bugs the h.e.l.l out of me!" I shouted. "You want to help me develop my powers. Marc wants me to develop my powers. Even the f.u.c.king Family Ghost wants me to get real and attain my full MP potential. Denis wants to redactify my love of the bottle and make me sober. Lucille wants to coerce bourgeois restraints into my skull so I won't mortify our famous family acting like a sloppy old loufoque. But I won't stand for it-you hear me?"

"Who is the Family Ghost?" Jack blurted out, mystified.

"None of your d.a.m.n business!" I roared.

Jack said: I'm truly sorry to have reopened this old psychic wound UncleRogi please forgive me [comfort + love] I won't meddle with your private mind again.

"Bon, bon," I muttered, squeezing my eyes shut so I wouldn't break down and bawl. "It's not your fault. You are what you are and I can't expect you to understand how lesser mortals feel."

"I've been trying," he whispered. A strong young hand squeezed my bony shoulder. "I really have been."

I opened my eyes and let my gaze lock onto his. "Try harder. Let this poor little girl alone, Jack. For G.o.d's sake, forget about traveling to the Scottish planet and hara.s.sing her. She's only ten! Give her the chance to grow up before you force her to confront her operant obligations."

Jack retrieved the spooked cat and sat down again with Marcel on his lap, scratching the base of the cat's ears. "Leaving Dorothea alone ... might be dangerous."

"Don't be ridiculous. Who'd think of harming an innocent suboperant child?" Another thought occurred to me. "Or is the Mind of the Galactic Milieu in such dire need of her talents that it might fall apart without her?"

"The Milieu needs every powerful loyalist mind it can get." Jack spoke with grave insistence. Marcel had closed his gray-green lynx eyes in ecstasy as the boy continued scratching his head. "Caledonia is one of those ethnic planets where the Rebel faction is especially well entrenched, and Dorothea's father and grandparents are firmly committed to separatism. She loves them very deeply. The longer she remains within their circle, the more likely she is to grow up prejudiced against Unity and the Milieu."

"Hogwash. If the kid's as brainy as you say, she'll make her own decisions no matter what influence her relatives try to exert. n.o.body's managed to coerce you, buster."

"There could be another danger," Jack said. "If her mind is destined to be in the paramount cla.s.s, she might be perceived as a threat by Fury and Hydra."

I felt my guts plummet. "Merde alors, I almost forgot about those salopards."

Neither the Dynasty nor Denis and Lucille had apprised me of the terrible events that had taken place on Islay; but I'd found out the bare fact of the monsters' renewed activities from Marc, who had warned me to be on my guard. He had also warned his little brother. Since no member of the Dynasty could keep data in their conscious minds secret from Jack's peerless redactive power, he had gently probed them from time to time to keep tabs on the Hydra hunt.

It had gotten exactly nowhere. If the Hydras were killing and feeding in their customary vampiric fashion, they were doing it so artfully that they left no clues.

Jack said, "Dorothea's mother, Viola Strachan, and her uncle and aunt were killed by the Hydra. Since Dorothea herself was left unharmed, we might logically conclude that Fury and its creatures didn't think she was a danger to them at the time. Perhaps her paramount potential hadn't yet manifested itself. But it might occur to Fury to look her over again now that she's older-perhaps to see whether any memories that might incriminate Hydra have resurfaced in her mind."

"That doesn't seem likely. Why bother? We know the Hydra-children have altered mental signatures. They could change their appearance even more easily. What have they got to fear from a little girl on a backwater ethnic world? They're probably hiding out on some planet in the Perseus Spur, fifteen thousand lightyears away."

"I doubt it," Jack said quietly.

"If you're really concerned about Dorothea Macdonald's welfare, you can always tell the Lylmik. They'll protect her."

Jack sighed. "You're right, Uncle Rogi. About everything. I promise to leave the little girl alone until it's possible for us to meet in a nonthreatening, casual manner. And I'll confer with the Lylmik on the other matters and let them decide what to do."

"Good," said I with bluff approval. "You want to go over to the Peter Christian Tavern for supper? They've got cheese soup and baked turkey drumsticks tonight."

Marcel meowed plaintively.

"I promise to bring back most of my share for you, Fur-Face," said Jack the Bodiless, and the big Maine c.o.o.n cat nestled against the boy's warm, inhuman chest and purred.

At the same time that Jack and I were tramping companionably through the rain in downtown Hanover, sheltered beneath the umbrella of his creative bubble, the nemesis of our family was watching us. How do I know? It told me, of course, during our confrontation when I- No.

That revelation must await its appropriate place in these memoirs. For now, the reader will have to take my word for it that Fury was mulling over what Jack and I had just discussed in the bookshop and thinking these thoughts:

14.

SECTOR 12: STAR 12-337-010 [GRIAN].

PLANET 4 [CALEDONIA].

22 MIOS AN FHOGHAIR [14 APRIL] 2068.

The acorn Dee had picked up in the Edinburgh graveyard sprouted and flourished in the exotic soil of Glen Tuath Farm. She had planted it in a special place down near the river where the irrigation system didn't reach, a sunny meadow where the shy wild coinean burrowed and transplanted b.u.t.terflies and bees sought nectar from unearthly flowers. It was a part of the farm where the nonborns and the hired farm workers rarely went, west of the airplant processing building and screened from the other structures by a grove of spindly, maroon-leaved fearna trees. The oak would dwarf them when it was full-grown and make a welcome patch of shade.

She had watered the young tree all through this unusually dry summer, even though the three fosterlings and Thrawn Janet told her she was wasting her time-that an oak would never thrive in this far-northern lat.i.tude. The tree had come close to dying after last year's severe winter, but Dee had redacted it secretly (just as she redacted her father when his depression became too painful) and it had pulled through.

Now the Harvest Month had come and she knew she could safely leave the oak to drop its leaves and go dormant; but since today was going to be very special she came out early and dipped a bucket from the River Tuath and gave the tree a last drink for luck. She was also wearing her lucky pin, the domino mask encrusted with rhinestones that she had brought from Earth.

Grian, the sun, was just rising over the Daoimean Mountains.

A few streamers of mist sagged down the slopes and pooled in the little swales across the river. The sky had a pearly overcast, and faint patches of greenish pink drifted high in the air. The luibheannach an adhair were blooming in vast quant.i.ties. It was going to be a beautiful day on Callie, and Dee was eleven years old at last and ready to help with the airplant harvest.

She heard the whoop-whoop of the ready siren and ran all the way back to the pilots' locker room. Her father was out on the pad, already dressed in his flight suit, inspecting the waiting line of flitters. She waved to him and dashed inside. The place was crowded because Glen Tuath Farm was prospering and this season Ian Macdonald had hired four extra free-lance harvesters in addition to the three regulars. Her brother Ken, looking sad and dreamy as usual, was suiting up. So was the oldest nonborn, Gavin Boyd, who called out in a jeering voice: "It's about time you showed up, Dodo! We were all set to take off without you. Since you were so late, Dad says I'm going to fly The Big Cheese after all."

"Ian said nothing of the sort," said Sorcha MacAlpin, one of the resident workers. She was a ma.s.sive, kindly woman who strained the seams of her forest-green environmental outfit to the maximum. "You stop teasing your little sister."

"Aww. Would it make Daddy's Little Princess cry?"

"No," Dee said quietly, and that made Gavin's face turn red with anger. Ever since she had finished her flying lessons and Ian Macdonald announced that she would pilot the yellow flitter this year instead of Gavin, the big fosterling had been unbearably rude, putting Dee down every chance he got. He opened his mouth to make another cruel remark, but Dee's big brother Ken briefly touched Gavin's shoulder.

"Let her alone. You know the reason why Dad gave The Cheese to her. She's a better pilot than either of us, and she'll bring in more weed."

Gavin looked suddenly startled, as though Ken's light tap had hurt him. But he recovered in an instant and offered Dee a mocking salute. "Just try not to screw up too much on your first day out, Baby Dodo." He swaggered out, helmet tucked under his arm.

"Your brother doesn't mean anything," Sorcha said. "He's a wee bit jealous, is all."

Dee tried not to show her anger. In spite of the Caledonian foster-age custom, she could never think of sullen Gavin Boyd as a real brother. He was fifteen, two years older than Ken, and he had been hostile to her from the beginning. The two younger nonborns, Hugh Murdoch and Ellen Gunn, were more friendly, but they were Thrawn Janet's favorites rather than rivals for Ian's affection as Gavin and Dee were.

All five of the children worked hard at domestic and landside agricultural duties when they weren't attending the farm's tiny school, where lessons were piped in via satellite from the Education Center at New Glasgow. There wasn't much time left to play, and the fosterlings usually made it plain that they preferred their own company to that of Dee and Ken.

She'd tried to be understanding. It was hard being a nonborn-gestated in a laboratory from the ovum and sperm of anonymous donors, knowing that the only reason you'd been made was to help build the planet's population quickly. Ken had explained it all to Dee when she was eight and he felt she was old enough to understand: The two of them had been made during an act of s.e.xual love between Dad and Mum, but the poor nonborns had only been cooked. Grownups tried to pretend that it didn't make any difference, but kids knew better.

"Let me help you with your lovely new flight suit," Sorcha MacAlpin offered. "It'll be harder to get into than that old baggy thing you used during practice. You know how the plumbing works, don't you? You'll be staying up all day long now, not just an hour or so at a time."

Dee blushed. "I understand." She had thrown off her jacket and Wellingtons and sat on a bench in long underwear just like the other pilots wore, putting on extra socks to pad out the boots of her flying kit, which were not as stretchy as the rest of the outfit. Mercifully, Ken and the men finished and left the room before Dee had to wriggle into the unfamiliar skintight silvery garment and adjust it with Sorcha's help. Ian Macdonald had bought his daughter a flight suit of the highest quality, the same type as his own. Gavin and Ken, being so much taller, had been economically furnished with adult castoffs. The nonborn boy had made no bones about his envy.

Dee looked herself over in the cracked and dusty old mirror above the washbasin and felt a thrill of satisfaction. Except for her size, she looked just like an adult, ready to do an adult's job. Children were ordinarily permitted to work only three hours a day outside the schoolroom, but during the harvest season an exception was made for those who lived on farms and enjoyed good health. Ken, who was still far from strong and prey to every mutant strain of cold and flu germ that came along, would have to return to home base around noon, when his aerial storage-craft was full. But Dee, who was as st.u.r.dy as a Sheltie, would labor a full nine hours just like Gavin and the grownups.

"There now, nic-cridhe! You look just fine. Very professional."

Sorcha clipped Dee's gloves to her belt and handed her the silver hard hat and mask. Following the female pilot outside, Dee felt a twinge of anxiety. Briefly, she turned inward to her mental guardian.

Please, angel! she begged. Let me do everything right today. Don't let me be nervous or do anything silly or stupid. I want Daddy to be proud of me.

The angel, as usual, did not reply. He had been silent for over a year now, and it probably had something to do with that awful Jack.