Diamond Mask (Galactic Milieu Trilogy) (39 page)

“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 Dorothée 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 pornographic
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 titanic mind, any more than he had thought to simply write Dorothée a letter or call her on the subspace 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-glass 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 shaggy 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 noble and altruistic than they are. The Milieu is more explicit on the bounden duties of operants: Noblesse damn 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 shit out of me! I don’t worry about it now because I realize I’m only a low-class head. I’m not even adept—much less masterclass—so who gives a damn?”

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—”

“God damn 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 hell out of me!” I shouted. “
You
want to help me develop my powers.
Marc
wants me to develop my powers. Even the fucking 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 damn 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 God’s sake, forget about traveling to the Scottish planet and harassing 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. Nobody’s managed to coerce
you
, buster.”

“There could be another danger,” Jack said. “If her mind is destined to be in the paramount class, 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 Coon 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:

It
would have known would have told Its colleagues would perhaps even have warned the child herself years ago. Is It guarding her overtly now? … No. I thought not. That lies even beyond the power of the Lylmik unless they were to meddle with the child’s free will … AH! but I perceive Its crafty strategy the Second Great Enemy is hedged about with mundane protectors and complicating circumstances most of her faculties are still latent but she is invulnerable to coercive or metacreative attack by Hydra and yet a physical assault upon her now might pose an unacceptable hazard to my dearest little one … Let me think … Let me think … As she grows older a suitable opportunity to eliminate her will undoubtedly present itself. But on the other hand … Why did I not think of
that
possibility before? Not a Second Great Enemy at all but a potential new creature! As I once hoped Marc or Jack would be … Yes. She is a proud little thing full of vainglorious dreams. A suitable candidate for temptation once she is forced into operancy. But the Lylmik not I will accomplish that! All I need do is bide my time.>