Jack the Bodiless

by Julian May

  The young face was doubtful. “You infer that Fury and Hydra are inseparable. I don’t think the assumption is warranted.”

  I was crestfallen. “Maybe not. But it seems logical. Adrien was crazy about his daughter and he’s been a wreck since she died. And Anne … Oh, shit. Any of ’em could be Fury! Even you.” I lifted the bottle to my lips again.

  But this time Marc’s coercion stopped me. I was compelled to put the liquor down on the desk. The boy came up close to me and took my sweating head in both his hands, and our eyes locked.

  Coercion. He had me cold. My mental screen hadn’t a hope in hell of keeping him out, and for the merest instant he showed me what lay behind his own mental barrier. He showed me who he was. He said:

  I AM NOT FURY.

  My mind uttered a silent yelp of amazement. I’d seen a veiled version of Jack’s incredible infant mind, and I’d known Paul’s awesome inner resources and those of Denis. Marc’s mentality was different—deeper and darker than the mind of his father or grandfather, of a completely different order from Jack’s—more frightening to me than any of the other three. But he’d spoken the truth to me: he wasn’t Fury. I remembered Fury from Good Friday and I remembered him from a later time as well. A time I had forgotten until this very moment.

  Fury had also been present when Jack was coming down the birth canal. He had tried to take control of the baby even before he drew his first breath.

  This time I howled out loud.

  Marc’s coercion tightened like an iron vise.

  UncleRogiI’vegottodothispleaseunderstand! I need you and I can’t have you getting drunk and going all to pieces you and Jack are the only ones I can really trust FURY COULD BE ANY OF THEM and we know what he wants even if we don’t know about Hydra FURY WANTS ALL OF US. He told you so. Whoever he is whatever he is however he’s managed to concoct this Hydra HE IS THE REAL MONSTER and we’re the only ones who can stop him!… So I’m going to fix you. I’m going to delete your alcoholism.

  Marc was an uncertified Grand Master in coercion, but not even he could sustain control of me indefinitely. To really bend my mind, he would have to exert another mindpower, one he was equally expert in: redaction, the faculty that could be used to heal minds, or to destroy them.

  I had always refused to let metapsychiatrists mess with my head. Again and again Denis and Lucille had pleaded with me to let clinical metapsychic practitioners root out the most perverse of the geraniums in my cranium, especially my propensity to abuse alcohol, but I had always balked. I refused to let mental healers “edit” the parts of my personality that others found reprehensible. I admit that I am neurotic and bibulous. It’s the self I’m familiar with, the one that somehow manages to survive. I have no desire to change. But now here was my awful great-grandnephew prepared to drag me kicking and screaming into the pitiless glare of permanent sobriety, merely to serve his own selfish needs—and perhaps the well-being of the family and the Human Polity of the Galactic Milieu. I screamed:

  NO! FortheloveofGod not the booze! You plant that damned inhibition in me and I’ll go stark staring MAD I’m not a true alcoholic Lucille found that out years ago don’t you know the liquor’s a safetyvalve for a supersensitiveegocentriccowardly personality? GHOST! DON’T LET HIM!!

  Marc hesitated.

  “If you zap me,” I whispered, “you’re no better than a monster yourself.”

  The gray eyes were unblinking. He could do it. Oh, yes he could. Even though he was still only a boy and not the metapsychic titan he was to become as an adult, he could have exerted his redaction and fixed me so that I could never take another sip of alcohol again without puking my guts out. Fixed me so that I’d never find sweet oblivion again.

  But he didn’t.

  He let go of my skull and whirled away in a rage of frustration and stood with his back to me and both fists clenched. “Damn you, Uncle Rogi! I don’t want to hurt you or make you miserable; I want to help you! So you can help me. Please …”

  Shakily, I got up and put a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll do the best I can. That’s all any man can do. You can’t force a person to be better than he is.”

  The clenched hands slowly relaxed. Marcel the Maine Coon cat came out from wherever he’d been hiding during the rumpus and rubbed against Marc’s calves. The boy turned around. The words seemed forced through his teeth. “I’m—sorry.”

  I sighed. “De rien, mon enfant.”

  “It’s just that I don’t know what to do! Five or six members of the Dynasty—my own aunts and uncles, maybe even my own father—might be mental monsters! But there’s no proof. I can’t go to the Magistratum. Even if humans are running it now, they’re still so new at the game that they’d call in the exotics like a shot over something as big as this.”

  “Probably.”

  “I couldn’t do it!”

  “No.”

  “But I don’t know what else I can do.”

  “Neither do I. Tell you what: we’ll both do nothing at all for the time being. Just get on with our regular work and try to think about this affair as calmly and rationally as we can. We may get a brainstorm, or we may find some kind of useful clue that will prove things one way or another. There’s even a chance that Paul will discover something, if he’s not Fury himself.”

  Marc slumped down onto the stool, drained. The cat continued his furry consolation. It was pushing suppertime, and Marcel was really asking for food on the feline telepathic mode, but both of us had heartlessly tuned him out.

  “I thought I hated Papa,” Marc said. “But when there was deadly danger, I called him.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “When you were in a panic, you called on a ghost, Uncle Rogi.”

  “Bullshit,” said I, stoutly.

  But he wouldn’t be deflected. “I heard you do it. A ghost—and not a Holy Ghost, either! The mental image attached to the concept was … strange.” For just an instant, he seemed poised to coerce it out of me. And then he caught himself and made a hasty gesture of self-deprecation, pretending to slice his throat. “Never mind. I’m sorry. I’m poking where I shouldn’t again.”

  Are you?… The only two persons who might possibly be able to save me and the rest of the Remillards from Fury and Hydra and other things that go bump in the night were my old Lylmik friend who called himself the Family Ghost and this boy. Maybe it was about time Marc knew he had some sort of an ally!

  I lurched up out of my chair and clapped Marc on the shoulder. “Hell, I don’t see why I shouldn’t share my ghost story with you. But not here. It’s getting late. Why don’t I take you over to the Peter Christian Tavern and buy you supper, and along with it I’ll tell you a few tales about my misspent youth.”

  32

  CONCORD, HUMAN POLITY CAPITAL, EARTH 20 SEPTEMBER 2052

  THE LAWYERS HAD THEIR DRIVER LAND IN THE RHOCRAFT LOT of Europa Tower, and from there they took Rogi and Teresa in on the subway to Dirigent House, a good two kilometers away. But someone who was either operant or wired must have spotted them somewhere along the line, because a baying pack of media people awaited them when they stepped out of the subway car, brandishing camcorders and microphones and shouting questions in dozens of different accents of Standard English. There were even two Gi and a Poltroyan among the reporters. Teresa seemed more pleased than annoyed as the shouting echoed through the little subway station.

  “Miz Kendall! Tell us how you feel as you make your final plea to be pardoned!”

  “Miz Kendall! Do you believe the third time is going to be the charm?”

  “Miz Kendall! Do you think you’ve been treated fairly?”

  “Will you still be singing on opening night at the Met next week if you have to stand trial?”

  “How’s little Jack bearing up?”

  “Look this way just for a second, Miz Kendall!”

  “Is it true that you and the First Magnate are estranged?”

  “Miz Kendall, will you be making a personal appeal to
the Dirigent, or will your attorneys speak for you?”

  “Miz Kendall—”

  Rogi grabbed one of her arms and Chester Kopinski took the other, and they attempted to haul her toward the elevator while Sam Goldsmith and Woody Bates ran interference. Woody kept shouting, “No comment! No comment!” Teresa, a bright smile on her face, insisted on trying to answer the questions. The senior attorney, Spencer Delevan, stood just outside the mob fringe, clutching his briefcase to his tailored bosom and talking frantically into a portaphone.

  Finally the police came and order was restored. Teresa and Rogi and the lawyers got into the elevator and ascended to the offices of the Dirigent for Earth, David Somerled MacGregor.

  “The media hawks will still be waiting when we come out,” Chester predicted darkly.

  “We’d better ask the ODE for permission to take Teresa and Rogi off from the roof,” said Sam, sotto voce. “Especially if we get a turndown.”

  “I really don’t mind answering their questions,” Teresa said. “And we won’t be turned down.”

  “Now, Teresa,” Woody chided. “You know what you promised. Leave it all to us.”

  Nobody paid a bit of attention to Rogi.

  Ommm, said the elevator, and they all exited into the reception area, an atrium of no particular distinction, done in the popular neo-Romanesque style. There was a mosaic floor, a white marble pool at the center with small fountains and large fishes, a glass roof, and an abundance of potted greenery. To Rogi’s surprise, there were nearly two dozen people sitting about, apparently waiting to see the Dirigent. They didn’t look like lawyers or other bureaucratic types, either: only ordinary citizens. One young woman had two little children with her, who were leaning over the edge of the atrium pool teasing the koi.

  “I’d heard rumors that the Dirigent had decided to treat his office as a kind of glorified ombudsmanship,” Rogi murmured to Chester, “but this is a bit much. Do you suppose we’ll have to take a number?”

  “We have an appointment for ten hundred hours,” Kopinski said, glancing at his old-fashioned gold pocket watch, “and we’re right on time.”

  Teresa was astonished, studying the people who were waiting. “You mean that anybody can see the Planetary Dirigent?”

  “Anyone may apply for an appointment,” Spencer Delevan said austerely. “Frivolous requests are denied, and matters that can best be handled by other authorities are appropriately shunted. Dirigent House has a very large staff as well, and only specially selected matters are referred to MacGregor himself.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Rogi said. “I thought a dirigent was kind of like top dog of the Intendant Assembly—the king of the world.”

  “Certainly not,” sniffed Delevan. “The Dirigent is independent of the ordinary planetary legislature. He is accountable to the entire Galactic Concilium, not merely to the Human Polity.”

  Sam Goldsmith remarked, “You’re not alone in being confused, Rogi. The legal profession is still trying to sort out the way the Dirigency operates, and some of us suspect that Davy MacGregor is making up the rules as he goes along! By definition, the Dirigent is the primary metapsychic official of a planet, providing a direct link between the ordinary citizenry and the Concilium. Each Milieu Polity views the office a bit differently, but generally speaking, the Dirigent is more of an overseer or a public advocate than an administrator. When this probationary period is over, every one of our colonial worlds will have its own dirigent, and he or she will be solemnly charged with the nurturing and guidance of the planetary Mind.”

  “Sounds to me,” Rogi said, “like MacGregor is more of a glorified nanny than anything else.”

  Goldsmith laughed, but the other lawyers looked pained.

  “It must be a very difficult job,” said Teresa.

  Goldsmith said, “A Poltroyan friend of mine told me that most of their dirigents burn out after only a few years in office.”

  “Goodness!”

  “Here comes one of the staff,” Woody Bates said. “It’s about time.”

  A slender young man with sandy hair, wearing a blazer with the ODE insignia, picked out the two petitioners immediately. “Hi, there! Teresa Kendall and Rogatien Remillard, I presume? I’m Bart Ziegfield, one of the Dirigent’s assistants. Would you two like to follow me? He’s ready to see you right now—”

  Spencer Delevan interrupted smoothly. “We are the legal counselors for Citizens Kendall and Remillard, and we respectfully request that we be allowed to accompany our clients and present their petition to Dirigent MacGregor.”

  “Sorry,” said Ziegfield with good-humored firmness. “You were told when the application was accepted that the Dirigent would see the principals only. This isn’t a law court.”

  Delevan flushed. “But—”

  Rogi pushed forward. “We get the picture. Come on, Teresa.”

  Ziegfield winked at the disconcerted attorneys, then led Rogi and Teresa out of the atrium into a long corridor. It was very quiet, with handsome Chinese carpets on a parquet floor and many tall, anonymous doors. The paneled walls were hung with impressive paintings.

  “Can that possibly be a real Van Gogh?” Teresa asked.

  “Oh, yes,” their guide replied. “Dirigent MacGregor has always been a keen art buff, and he was very quick to take up the perquisites of the office, along with the duties and responsibilities. The paintings are on loan, of course. Lovely little Fra Angelico there … and don’t you just adore Hieronymus Bosch’s Ship of Fools? It’s the Dirigent’s favorite.”

  The assistant knocked on a door that looked no different from the others they had passed. “There you go,” Ziegfield said cheerfully. He gestured for them to enter and then hurried away, leaving them standing there.

  Rogi and Teresa. Please come in.

  The old man gave a violent start. He took hold of the doorknob, opened the door, and stood aside to let Teresa precede him.

  The room was small, even cozy. There was a fireplace where a few birch logs lay on a grate, ready to light. A pine credenza against one wall had an elaborate data-retrieval station built into it, but there was no other evidence of modern technology to be seen. Behind the pine table-desk with its nut-brown leather morris chair was a single window with homespun drapes, which looked out over the Merrimack Valley.

  Davy MacGregor came out from behind his desk to meet them. Rogi had not seen the former Intendant Associate for Europe in person since his rejuvenation, and he was reminded anew of Davy’s strong resemblance to his late father. The hair was a different color, but the dundreary side-whiskers were the same, and Davy even wore a tweed jacket and a vest of the MacGregor tartan with staghorn buttons, that were virtual duplicates of Jamie’s favorites. He shook hands as though Rogi and Teresa were welcome guests, drew up two ladder-back chairs with crewel seats, complimented Teresa on her dress, and inquired after baby Jack. Returning to his seat behind the desk, he asked Rogi to keep an eye out for a fine copy of L. Sprague de Camp’s Wheels of If with the Hannes Bok dust jacket, which he said he was eager to add to his personal fantasy collection.

  “I’ve got one in stock,” the bookseller managed to say. “All deacidified and permeditioned. I’ll have it shipped. My compliments.”

  MacGregor’s dark eyes twinkled. “Have it shipped with an invoice, Rogi,” he insisted.

  “Uh—of course.”

  There was a silence.

  Davy MacGregor said, “I’ve already done my own investigation of your case. There is only one thing I want to ask you, Teresa: Knowing what you do about young Jack, would you conceive another child?”

  She answered with her head high. “No. But I still feel certain it was right to have him.”

  MacGregor turned to Rogi. “Why didn’t you tell the Human Magistratum the truth about Marc’s role in the flight and concealment of Teresa?”

  The old man felt his throat constrict. He’d been living in a fool’s paradise, thinking he’d successfully diddled the cops by taking the full blame.
Rogi took a slow, deep breath. He said: “I’m an old man who earns his living in an unimportant trade. If I get sent down for ten years, it’s no big deal. The other accessory to the crime is a juvenile. He’s at a critical point in his education, and he’ll doubtless mature into an important person. I thought it was the better part of prudence to shield him. To let him enter adult life free of stigma.”

  MacGregor’s gaze lowered to his own hands, lightly clasped on the polished dark wood of the desk. He still wore a wide golden wedding band.

  “Both of you deliberately broke the laws of the Proctorship. You, Teresa, were driven by a subrational compulsion—a species of metacoercion recognized but not understood by the exotic races of the Milieu. Ancient humans would have said you were God-driven. Perhaps they would have been right.”

  He lifted his eyes to Rogi. “You didn’t really want to break the law by helping her. You were also compelled—by two persons. One of them was Marc Remillard, and the other … you know who the other was.”

  Teresa turned to the old man in surprise. “But you never told me—”

  Davy MacGregor silenced her with his coercion. “I believe that the circumstances justify pardoning you both without condition.”

  Teresa was instantly on her feet, bursting into tears of joy, stammering out her thanks. The door opened and Bart Ziegfield came in, took her gently by the arm, and led her away. The door closed behind him.

  “I’d like to thank you, too,” Rogi began, rising and holding out his hand.

  But MacGregor ignored it and motioned for him to sit down again. His face was grave. “You and I aren’t finished, Rogi.”

  Rogi heaved a sigh. Only one person could have told Davy MacGregor his own motivation, to say nothing of Teresa’s. Rogi found himself wondering just what kind of training had been given to the Dirigent by the Lylmik.

  Davy MacGregor smiled. “It was rough, my lad. Damned rough. But the details are none of your business, for all that you’ve had a bit of the treatment yourself.”