"Quite clear," said Paul dryly.

Abruptly, the little girl broke free and dashed back within range of the communicator scanner. Relief transfigured her tear-drenched face. "Oh, Daddy, thank you! ... Can Kenny and I come live with you now that Mummie's dead? We want to so very much."

Ian Macdonald was struck speechless. Rage melted into astonishment and he hesitated for a long moment. Then he glared out of the screen at Paul, his lips drawn back from his teeth in a smile of fierce triumph.

"Come to Caledonia, Dorrie," he said. "As soon as you can. I'll order your ticket and Ken's right now."

And with that his image vanished.

Forensic anthropologists comparing Dorothee's depictions of the four Hydra units with early Tri-Ds of Madeleine, Quentin, Celine, and Parnell Remillard confirmed that the girl had described the a.s.sailants accurately, but there seemed little likelihood that the fugitives would be foolish enough to go about undisguised while they were on the lam. All four might be expected to alter their features drastically-at least during the early hue and cry. Plastic surgery or regen-tank alteration of their appearance were distinct possibilities; but the easiest method of disguise was metacreative masking-the technique used by Throma'eloo and others of his race when they a.s.sumed a human aspect. This involves the spinning of an illusion, pure and simple, and any reasonably competent operant child with a modic.u.m of creativity can pull it off ... for a short time. Long-term illusion-projection, however, is an energy-draining exercise that no meta can be expected to continue indefinitely. Mug shots, DNA samples, and copies of the original mental signatures of the four Hydra-units circulated Milieu-wide against the day that the Hydra might shed its camouflage or make some criminal mistake that allowed official scrutiny; but no one had high hopes for an early apprehension.

Police teams continued to comb Islay for weeks, searching for the bodies of the missing suboperants with the aid of the most advanced equipment. Later, archaeologists would sing the Hallelujah Chorus over the thousands of bones and other human remains-Neolithic to Modern-that the searchers turned up and meticulously left in situ after determining that they were immaterial to the case at hand.

But no other Hydra victims were positively identified. The investigators were morally certain that Fury's creature had killed the missing suboperants of Islay, leaving only charred husks that could easily be disposed of in the sea or in some deep and secret cave impervious to any technique of geophysical detection or farscanning.

However, there was never any proof of that hypothesis until years later, when the adult Dorothee had her encounter with Madeleine, Parnell, and Celine Remillard after coming for the second time to the island of her forebears.

7.

CONCORD, HUMAN POLITY CAPITAL,.

EARTH, 4 JUNE 2062.

The evening was exceptionally warm for early June in New Hampshire, and Paul Remillard suggested that his brothers and sisters bring their drinks outdoors while they awaited the arrival of their father, Denis. The flowers in the large informal rose garden behind the new residence of the First Magnate were already in full bloom, perfuming the still air, and there was also a smell of freshly cut gra.s.s.

"I hate designer-gene turf that never grows higher than three centimeters," Paul said, when his oldest brother Philip commented on the unusual lawn. "Oh, the modern gra.s.s is easier to maintain and the landscapers just love it. But to me it looks like green bath-toweling and it feels so stiff and crunchy when you walk on it. I had this good old stuff seeded in while I was away at the last Concilium session and it's looking quite decent by now. It's even guaranteed to have a dandelion or two."

"But how do you keep it clipped?" Catherine asked. "Surely it's too short for the laser-reapers that farmers use."

"Fitch's nephew cuts it with a modified antique tractor mower-when I don't beat him to it. It's a very soothing thing, cutting gra.s.s. Just driving up and down while rotating blades do the work, breathing in the scent of new-mown hay."

Philip shook his head in mock disbelief. "This man can't be the hard-charging workaholic First Magnate we all know and love."

"I've turned house-proud in my middle age," Paul said. "Now that Human Polity administration is finally out of the learner-permit stage, I intend to take life a lot easier. I've even learned to cook."

"Good G.o.d," said Philip.

"I don't believe a word of it," said Catherine.

The other members of the Remillard Dynasty laughed warily. None of them had seen Paul for months, and they knew he had not summoned them tonight so that they could admire his gra.s.s and flowers and indulge in polite chitchat. Something was wrong, and beneath his bantering facade the First Magnate frankly exposed a stratum of grave concern.

Paul was forty-eight and the climacteric of his individual self-rejuvenating gene complex had come when he was in his mid-thirties. Except for the quirky silvering of his black hair and neatly trimmed beard, he had apparently aged no further. He wore dark slacks and a white, open-necked pirate shirt with balloon sleeves.

For a time they strolled along in silence. Only two of the guests, Severin and Adrien, had the remotest idea what this family council might be about. Unlike the First Magnate, they were keeping their mental aspects closely shrouded.

The sky was deep purple with the first stars beginning to come out. At the garden's perimeter was a woodland of mutant elms, b.u.t.ternuts, and sugar maples that did not quite conceal the softly lighted, soaring stratotowers of the administration buildings situated a couple of kloms to the north. The capital city of the Human Polity of the Galactic Milieu spread over the Merrimack River valley adjacent to Old Concord, the venerable capital of the state of New Hampshire. In the nearly half-century since the Great Intervention, the seat of human government had expanded as the population on Earth and in the colonial planets approached nine billion. Concord had long since overflowed its original site; but the necessary growth had been handled gracefully, with most of the new offices hidden in an enormous underground complex, called the Ants' Nest by the irreverent, carved out of the native rock. Lower-echelon government officials and workers lived in the quaint old villages of New Hampshire, Vermont, and even Maine, commuting via a maze of high-speed subways. Only bureaucrats at the very highest level had homes in the parklands of Concord proper. These lately included the First Magnate.

In 2054, when the Human Polity was freed at last from the hated Simbiari Proctorship and finally admitted to full citizenship in the Galactic Milieu, Paul Remillard abandoned the pretense that his official Earth domicile was the old family home on South Street in Hanover, New Hampshire, the college town where he and his children had grown up ... and where his troubled wife Teresa Kendall had taken her own life. In the peculiar egalitarian oligarchy of the Concilium, there was at that time no such thing as an official mansion for the Human First Magnate, and so a simple apartment in Concord served as Paul's literal pied-a-terre during the brief periods he was on Earth. A similarly modest place in the Golden Gate enclave sufficed as his residence in Concilium Orb.

Unlike the historical chief executives of Earth nations, the First Magnate of the Human Polity was unburdened with time-wasting ceremonial duties. His statutory obligations were considered formidable enough. The first five years of human enfranchis.e.m.e.nt had been wildly hectic for Paul. He arranged for his four children to be supervised by operant housekeepers and governesses when they were not away at school and saw them only rarely. Paul's parents, Denis Remillard and Lucille Cartier, both semiretired from the faculty of Dartmouth College, became increasingly concerned about the motherless brood of their brilliant youngest son. Eventually the two of them rented out their elegant farmhouse and moved back into the old place on South Street that had been their original home in order to act as surrogate parents to their grandchildren.

Paul did meet frequently with his six siblings during the thirty-three-day plenary sessions of the Galactic Concilium that took place about once each Earth year. All of his brothers and sisters were magnates who had come to occupy high positions in the Milieu's primary governing body. But Paul's attendance at purely social family gatherings had for a long time been infrequent. What s.n.a.t.c.hes of leisure he did enjoy were almost invariably spent in the company of his lover, Laura Tremblay, the wife of a complaisant Hibernian magnate named Rory Muldowney.

In 2059 Laura died suddenly, under curious circ.u.mstances. Along about the same time Human Polity administration finally attained a fairly satisfactory condition of homeostasis, chugging along without the need for urgent executive action or reaction at every other turn. The First Magnate discovered that his crushing burden of work was easing. It was no longer necessary for him to spend interminable months in Orb overseeing the extraparliamentary affairs of the Human Concilium and its fledgling Directorates. Less and less was he required to rush from one colonial world to another staving off brushfire crises, or forced to undertake visits of appeas.e.m.e.nt to exotic planets in order to smooth over some atrocious solecism committed by members of his race.

As the Golden Anniversary of the Great Intervention approached, it seemed that human magnates-except for the contentious Rebel faction-had finally learned to conduct their legislative business with reasonable facility and diplomatic aplomb. In the colonies, the system of Milieu-appointed Dirigents, combined with multilevel elected representational government, had shaken down to the point where special Concilium action-and Paul's personal attention-was only rarely required.

The Human Polity's relationship with the exotic races was largely cordial. The Simbiari now cooperated with humans in a wide variety of scientific works and at the same time resigned themselves to being forever unappreciated by their ungrateful ex-wards. The bonh.o.m.ous little Poltroyans had become humanity's most enthusiastic trading partners and closest allies. The Gi love affair with human arts and entertainment persisted, while Earthlings had learned to tolerate that strange race's flamboyant and outrageous behavior. The Krondaku were as ever ponderously benevolent, and as ever skeptical of long-term human potential. As for the wise and evanescent Lylmik, they remained enigmatic and were hardly ever at home to callers.

Two sessions ago, the plenary Concilium had adjudged that the Human Polity was in such good shape that it was time to think about redefining the office of Human First Magnate, pruning it of autocratic and troubleshooting accretions that had been necessary during the formative years and making it more of a true presidency. Paul Remillard enthusiastically supported the decision and was reelected by a huge majority. He then decided it was time for him to settle permanently again on Earth. He was tired of apartments and felt he had worked hard enough to deserve a real home and some sort of normal social life.

But where would he live?

The old family place on South Street in Hanover was out of the question. Two of Paul's adult children, Marie and Luc, still lived there together with Denis and Lucille. So had young Jack, until he entered Dartmouth College as a ten-year-old prodigy and took up residence in the freshman dorm. Marc, Paul's oldest child, having earned a string of advanced degrees and immersed himself in CE research financed by the family foundation, had dipped into his all-but-untouched investment fund and bought a tiny, isolated house in the hills east of Hanover. Paul's brothers and sisters also had permanent residences in and about the lovely old town and they now urged him to build his new home in the vicinity and rejoin the close-knit family circle.

Unspoken was the Dynasty's hope that the First Magnate would marry again and have done with the series of well-publicized s.e.xual liaisons he had pursued since the death of Laura Tremblay. But Paul was not about to let the family cramp his style. He chose to live in Concord, a safe 90 kilometers away.

When Paul was not presiding over his metapsychic peers at Concilium sessions or otherwise engaged in Polity affairs, he was supposedly a private citizen just as the other magnates were, free to enjoy any lifestyle and engage in whatever personal or professional business he chose. Practically speaking, however, it would have been unseemly for the First Magnate to resume his career in the North American Intendancy as just another IA. Even under the new order, there were still semiofficial calls on Paul's time when he was away from Orb, notwithstanding the fact that the turmoil of the shakedown years had subsided.

Paul suggested that he set up an unofficial headquarters for the First Magnate, separate from the bureaucracy of the Concilium and having no ties to the Office of the Dirigent for Earth. He would hold himself available for extraordinary consultation and use his free time to study Milieu law and human-exotic relations. His proposal was accepted, and the Human Polity voted to provide him, gratis, whatever kind of dwelling he fancied.

The First Magnate might have chosen to live in splendor. A replica of the Chateau de Versailles or even Mad King Ludwig's sumptuous Neuschwanstein Castle could have been his for the asking. His family and colleagues a.s.sumed he would at the very least erect some stately home appropriate to his exalted position.

But instead Paul Remillard indulged his notorious whimsy.

When Lucille Cartier, renowned in the Dartmouth academic community as an arbiter of good taste, first clapped unbelieving eyes on her son's new home in Concord, she p.r.o.nounced it to be a b.a.s.t.a.r.d cross between a Swiss chalet and a wedding cake.

"It's nothing of the kind." Paul had been polite but firm in the face of his mother's disapproval. "It's an authentic reproduction of a carpenter-gothic New England cottage, in the style of the mid-nineteenth-century American architect Andrew Jackson Downing. The original version of this little beauty is still standing downstate in Peterborough."

His mother said, "It's preposterous!"

"But it suits me," the First Magnate had gently replied, "and I paid for it myself just so that I can take it with me when the Concilium lets me retire."

The white-painted wooden "cottage" had ten rooms-not including the west wing with its little ballroom, informal executive offices, and domestic apartments. Beneath the 20 hectares of landscaped grounds was a sophisticated subterranean complex that included everything from garages and a private subway terminal to a subs.p.a.ce communicator station. The quaint main house sported pointed-arch windows with pointed black shutters, handsome square columns on the porches and rear veranda, and scrollwork bargeboards dripping from the edges of the roof like ornate wooden lace. The overall exterior effect was conceded even by hostile architectural critics to be warmly human.

The dayrooms featured polished oak floors, stone fireplaces, sprigged wallpaper, and a cosy, eclectic mix of colonial and Victorian furniture. Paul's private bedroom was in the simple Shaker style; but the four s.p.a.cious guest chambers were decorated in frontier rustic, baroque Federalist, nineteenth-century Chicago cathouse, and 1930s Hollywood Art Deco. Robots in the woodwork and a small staff of nonoperant employees did the housework.

Paul's cook was a laconic Yankee named Asahel Fitch, whose culinary specialties were New England boiled dinners, lobster salad, coq au vin, and pot roast. Fitch's wife Elsie did desserts and flower-arranging and also supervised the wine cellar, the only area of the cottage where the vast Remillard family fortune proclaimed itself. It was a repository of the Galaxy's rarest and most costly vintages and ardent spirits-plus a case or two of good old Wild Turkey for the times that Uncle Rogi came to visit. When the First Magnate entertained semiofficially, he hired the best caterers in Old Concord, or flew them in from other Earth cities as far away as Kuala Lumpur. If a more intimate supper for two was appropriate-as it often was-the Fitches got the night off and Paul whipped up crepes or a fancy omelet himself.

About 100 meters from the First Magnate's cottage, at the margin of the surrounding woodland, stood a frivolous wooden summerhouse furnished with white-painted wicker chairs and settees and a number of discreet high-tech appurtenances. Paul indicated this structure to his brothers and sisters as they walked across the darkening lawn.

"We'll wait for Papa there. The place has a dumbwaiter to keep us supplied with drinks, and a state-of-the-art sigma-field installation we can activate for complete privacy during the family council. We might see some luna moths while we wait if we're lucky." He led the way among the irregularly shaped rose beds.

"A sigma?" Adrien was taken aback. "You really think someone might eavesdrop? What the h.e.l.l is this confab about, anyhow?"

Paul glanced back over his shoulder, smiling without mirth. "There are a number of matters we need to discuss. One particularly involves you and Sevvy."

"Is that so?" Adrien spoke lightly, but there was a hint of defiance in his mien. He resembled a less polished version of Paul with a small mustache and no beard; but his immortality genes had climaxed at a much earlier age, giving him a boyish air almost as incongruous as that of his father, Denis.

"So we're going to get political," groaned Severin. "I was half afraid of something like that when you summoned all six of us to Concord like a gang of wayward prep-schoolers."

"Paul did nothing of the sort." Catherine's defense was prompt and wholehearted. "What in the world's got into you two?"

Maurice said, "Perhaps the loyal opposition to Unity is feeling just a trifle b.u.mptious after its boost in the last const.i.tuent poll."

"A disgrace," Anne said. "You lot never would have got that high a vote percentage if you hadn't stooped to disinformation."

"Disinformation-?" Severin exploded. "Look who's talking. What well-known petticoat-Jebbie legal scholar tried to twist the Pope's arm so he'd issue an encyclical saying that Unity doesn't pose a threat to human free will?"

"It doesn't," said Anne.

"Que tu dis," sneered Adrien. "We've got tame theologians on our side who'll match your guys jot for t.i.ttle swearing it does. Psychologists, too! Anytime you Jesuits and swamis want a real debate on the Interstellar Tri-D Forum instead of an eye-glaze contest on the Philosophical Channel, we'll bring on Rabbi Morgenstern and Cardinal Fujinaga and Doctor Aziza Khoury to clean your clocks."

Briefly, Anne's composure slipped. "Unity is a serious subject for debate. You and your Rebels won't be allowed to trivialize it by treating it like some game show!"

"No," Severin said. "But the matter's not going to be decided behind closed doors by your clique of operant mystics, either."

Paul had thus far ignored the bickering, but now he broke in to thank his siblings for coming to this emergency family conference.

Anne's tone was cynical. "There was a choice? I had to egg in from a meeting of theologians in Constantinople. My paper will have to be delivered by Athanasius w.a.n.g, and he'll drone on and put everyone to sleep."

"Surely not," Catherine said. "What's the subject?"

" 'The Unanimisation Concept of St. Teilhard de Chardin as a Prefiguring of Unity.' "

"Ye G.o.ds and little fishes," croaked Adrien.

Anne shrugged. "Unity's going to happen, no matter how much you latter-day Sons of Earth p.i.s.s and moan. Full partic.i.p.ation in the Milieu by humanity demands that we embrace a consonant mental relationship with the Galactic Mind."

Severin's chuckle was ominous. "Think again, little sister. There are alternatives to the lockstep mentality of Unity, and you can be d.a.m.ned sure they're going to be discussed openly and exhaustively. Humanity has a right to choose whether or not to risk its racial individuality in a permanent mind-meld with exotics."

"Of course it does," Anne retorted. "But if your faction continues to spew distortions and half-truths instead of helping to clarify the issue, how in the world will people be able to make an informed choice? The tirade that Annushka Gawrys spouted before the Concilium last session was full of calculated misstatements-"

"You mean," Adrien broke in, "she raised points that hit too close to the mark for comfort! You ought to come down from your ivory tower once in a while and listen to what the normals and the metas opposed to Unity are saying. It's not operancy that worries the ordinary folks, it's the notion of being controlled by inhuman humans!"

"Please." The First Magnate held up an admonitory hand. "There are good reasons why we should wait until we're behind the sigma before discussing this any further." As Paul spoke aloud, his formidable coercion gently touched their minds. They were all Grand Masters, all Magnates of the Concilium, all among the most powerful human minds in the Galaxy. But at that moment, their youngest brother's will was irresistible.

For a time they continued walking in silence.

Finally, Philip ventured to say: "You made some changes in the rose garden, didn't you, Paul?"

"I had the gardeners rip out all the trendy new varieties the landscapers stuck in. The sky-blue ones, and the blacks and purples and lime greens, and the ones with fringed petals and polka dots and stripes."

"Once again ... you surprise me. I never realized you were such a traditionalist at heart." The firstborn of the Dynasty had a pleasant homely face with a receding hairline, and he tended slightly to portliness. Philip Remillard was sixty-five years old but seemed to be in his late forties. The only one of the family who was not physically impressive, he had long ago decided that none of his bodily flaws was serious enough to warrant wasting time having them corrected in a regen-tank.

"Traditionalist?" Paul seemed surprised at the accusation. "Hardly! But a rose is a rose is a rose, dammit. It should look like one and smell like one. Now the only varieties growing here are pre-Intervention."

"Good for you," said Catherine. "The plant engineers for the big nurseries seem to think that the more outlandish the flowers are, the better. There were roses in the catalog last fall that were the size of dinner plates, with more colors in each flower than a stained-gla.s.s window. They call them Chartres hybrids. Ridiculous."

"Just part of the general trend toward the baroque and outre," Maurice remarked. "Flowers, clothing, vehicles, music ... all kinds of things getting more and more intricate and fussy. Some popular-culture theorists think it's a reaction against the austerity of the Simbiari Proctorship years."

Catherine nodded. She was tall and blonde like Maurice, Severin, and Anne, but without the studied judiciousness of the first, the panache of the second, or the cool intellectuality of the third. She often seemed to be the most vulnerable of the Dynasty, pa.s.sionate in her opinions and imperious in manner, but paradoxically chilled by melancholy, never able to forget that her late son Gordon McAllister had been exposed as one unit of the Hydra who had killed her beloved husband, the boy's own father. When the Human Magnates of the Concilium were finally able to a.s.sume a lighter administrative work load, Catherine Remillard had once again taken up her original profession of clinical metapsychology, the work she had once shared with Brett McAllister. She was now acknowledged to be one of the princ.i.p.al latency research scholars in the Polity.

"I rather like the new Regency look in men's clothing," she said. "Those buckskin breeches and hussar boots are very dashing on you, Sevvy."

"Oh, well," muttered Severin, a trifle sheepishly. But he kicked at an imaginary pebble in the gra.s.s to make the boot-ta.s.sels swing.

"Better watch out, Paul." Adrien's sardonic smile was almost phosph.o.r.escent in the deepening dusk. "You'll find yourself displaced as First Fashion Plate of the Polity if Sevvy gets any more gorgeous."

"Quel dommage," Paul drawled.

Severin sketched a mock bow in Paul's direction. "No, you'll always have the edge with the ladies. Won't you, little bro? Nothing's quite as s.e.xy as unlimited political power."

"Did you say there were luna moths hereabouts?" Philip interposed quickly. They had finally reached the summerhouse.

"I'd love to see one." Anne relaxed on one of the chintz-cushioned settees and picked up the dumbwaiter zapper. Her lemonade gla.s.s was empty. Anne's aging had halted in her early forties and her features were as austere and precisely chiseled as those of a Greek statue. Except on the most formal occasions, she eschewed the clerical collar and black rabat of more conventional priests. Tonight she wore a fashionable royal-blue linen trouser suit with a silk blouse the color of caramel, making Catherine in her simple beige cotton shirtwaist dress look almost mousy.

"Perhaps the First Magnate will order a command performance of his little creatures of the night," Adrien suggested archly.

Not in the least put out, Paul dropped into a wicker chair, set his beaker of iced tea on the low table, and a.s.sumed an intent expression.

Severin nudged Adrien. The pair of them sat side by side on a second settee. "The regal coercive summons! Or is he cooking bug pheromones, do you suppose? And if he is, where is he getting the raw apocrine components from?"

"You're the ex-doctor," Adrien said. "Elucidate the disgusting possibilities-starting at his armpits and moving south."

Paul grinned. "Sorry to disappoint you two filthy minds, but coercion's a lot easier than creativity when you're dealing with s.e.x-crazed males ... and here they come."

"Oh!" Catherine's face brightened with delight. She instinctively held out both her hands.

Full night had now descended and the only illumination came from the windows of the distant residence and from the starry sky; but all of the grandmastercla.s.s operants of the Dynasty could see as well in darkness as they could in broad daylight if they chose to exert their visual ultrasense. What they now perceived was a fluttering squadron of large pale-green moths emerging from the canopy of trees nearby. The insects were about the size of a human hand and delicate as moonbeams. Their wings had long tails, narrow purplish margins, and four transparent eyespots. Prominent feathery antennae confirmed that the moths were indeed males. They flew into the summer-house and orbited Catherine with exquisite precision. Then, released from Paul's mental control, they flapped about uncertainly and began to scatter.

"How marvelous!" she said. "Thank you, Paul."

"It was actually young Jack who decided that my new place needed some special pets. He salted the forest with coc.o.o.ns last fall." The First Magnate chuckled. "I'm glad his tastes run to Lepidoptera rather than fruit bats."