Diamond Mask (Galactic Milieu Trilogy) (62 page)

His health had remained excellent until his wife’s accidental death in 2064. Then, like a lot of brilliant but careless old farts, he let himself go to pot physically once there was no dedicated spouse in the house to keep an eye on him. He ate wrong and drank wrong and kept the doctors and the genetic engineers at bay declaring he’d redact any little aches and pains that bothered him.

Hamilton was a hell of a coercer but a bush-league redactor. By the time Dorothée came to Callie in 2073 he was seventy-nine years old. He had been fitted with a bionic heart, liver, and kidneys, and also suffered from a maverick strain of chronic lymphocytic leukemia that defied treatment. He had been dying for at least two years and was fated to hang on for another four.

There was nothing whatsoever wrong with his wits.

He recognized at once that Dorothée was the successor he had been waiting for—a young woman endowed with a full bag of extraordinary mental talents who was loyal to the Milieu and fiercely devoted to Caledonia itself. Unlike Catriona Chisholm, she was ready to put the welfare of her planet and its inhabitants above galactic politics. Her extreme youth made her malleable and eager for Hamilton’s counsel; her energy and intelligence provided him with fresh insight and made him feel confident that when he cashed in his chips, he’d be leaving Callie in the best possible hands.

No wonder the two of them got on together like a house afire.

Ideally, the office of Dirigent involves ombudsmanship, fiscal oversight, the expediting of communication between the citizens and their government, and liaison between the Intendant Assembly of the planet and the Milieu. The Dirigent has a large staff of assistants, but most of them report directly to the top, so that the chief executive and First Deputy are able to keep their fingers on the planetary pulse at all times. Although the Dirigent
and the deputy are both empowered to use coercion, deep-probing, and the other metapsychic powers in the course of official investigations, good old horse sense is apt to prove a more effective tool in the long run.

The Dirigent’s deputy is expected to act as the boss’s sampler of public opinion, troubleshooter, and inspector general. Sophisticated Catriona Chisholm had spent most of her time in the capital city; but Dorothée was almost compulsively on the move, interviewing citizens in the frontier regions of the planet as well as the centers of commerce and culture.

Nobody knew where she and her souped-up Lotus egg would turn up next. One week she’d be prowling the farmsteads of Argyll, the next she might be visiting pearlfishers in Strathbogie, buckyball mines in darkest Caithness, or checking out tourism in the sportfishing resorts of Cairngorm.

Her paramount status made her an object of pride to the operant Callie citizenry; but the normals didn’t really give a hoot about her awesome mindpowers. It was her unassuming manner, intelligence, and genuine interest in their lives that won the hearts of those crusty kiltie hinterlanders. They called her the “Dirigent Lassie” and accorded her a fondness that the aloof Chisholm had never enjoyed.

Not everyone thought Dorothée was a superstar, however. Certain Caledonian Assembly bureaucrats with private agendas, professional sharpsters, sleazy corner-cutters, and thimblerigging entrepreneurs came to view her as a holy terror. She’d come poking around some trouble spot, winsome and innocent-seeming, and when the lowlives were confident they’d pulled the wool over her young eyes—whammo! Wyatt Earp rides into Dodge City disguised as a girl in a tartan culotte. She could read the minds of flimflam artists like they had windows in their skulls, and she was merciless with the exploiters and environmental spoilers who always seem to infest the planetary frontiers.

During her four years as Graeme Hamilton’s deputy, she played an important part in helping her world to achieve its long-sought goal of a positive balance of payments. The time finally came when the old Dirigent saw his beloved Scottish planet no longer dependent upon Milieu subsidies. Thanks to him and his tireless young deputy, Caledonia proudly took its place among the dozen or so ethnic worlds in the Human Polity that were prosperous and financially secure.

Dorothée remained dubious about her own performance, however,
suspecting—perhaps correctly—that the citizenry viewed her more as a beloved mascot than as a competent executive. She continued to beg the Lylmik to demote or remove her, feeling that she had failed to measure up to her high office. Some of her insecurity was due to Calum Sorley and his Rebel allies, who waged a subtle and persistent campaign designed to belittle and discredit her. But even aside from this subversion, the nagging feeling persisted in her heart that she was only a jumped-up prodigy who had been thrust into high office through an exotic whim. No reassurances by Graeme Hamilton or any other close associates in Dirigent House could convince her otherwise.

Much later, Dorothée confessed to me that each morning during those early years, when she looked at herself in the mirror and combed her hair, she felt a pang of anxiety and disbelief. The person looking back at her from the glass was a freak and a fraud. This plain-faced, very small, very young woman did not deserve to be Deputy Dirigent and could not possibly command the true respect of the planetary populace. She was only a celebrity, not a genuine leader. The Lylmik had made a terrible mistake, and one day she would surely be exposed as the incompetent she felt herself to be. Each morning and night she prayed for deliverance from a situation she felt was hopeless.

But during her working days, she continued to do the very best she could.

I did not see Dorothée again until 2076, three years into her term as deputy, when she returned to Earth for the marriage of her brother. News about her doings came to me mostly from my old drinking buddy Kyle Macdonald, who shared many an ethanol-tinted evening with me in my favorite Hanover oasis, the Sap Bucket Tavern, just about the only bar in town that actively discouraged college students.

It was there that Kyle converted me to the Rebel cause. Not that I wasn’t already tilting toward sedition on my own, what with Sevvy and Adrien’s shining example to poison my willing mind. Not even Jack’s devotion to the Milieu and keen advocacy of Unity was able to overcome my own long-standing sense of unease at the prospect of humanity getting into some sort of permanent mind-meld with the exotic races. The Poltroyans were fine and dandy, regular folks if you could forget their purple skin, ruby eyes, and painted little bald heads. But who would seriously want to share mental intimacy with a gang of green-dripping, technocratic crepehangers like the Simbiari? Or be
mind-buddies with the nightmarish Krondaku? The Gi were a hoot at parties, but they were alarmingly oversexed and so sensitive they were known to drop dead just to make an aesthetic statement. The Lylmik were probably the scariest of all, and I had my own Family Ghost to prove it.

Fortunately, le Fantôme Familier had left me in peace during most of the years since Jack’s birth. But I knew It was still out there, ready to bedevil me again when I least expected it.

So I felt right at home when Kyle Macdonald gradually introduced me into the local Rebel sewing circle. The activities of the Hanover Disunity Club at that time weren’t especially exciting, concentrating as they did upon refuting the propaganda of the Panpolity Directorate and subverting operant Dartmouth students. Kyle’s wickedly anti-Milieu fantasy satires enjoyed a wide readership throughout the Human Polity and he was once again rolling in money. Even his passage into low-grade operancy didn’t harm his popularity among the xenophobic normals, who would eventually become cannon fodder in the Metapsychic Rebellion.

One prime objective continued to elude the Rebel leadership: they still hadn’t managed to net Marc! Believe it or not, I was given the assignment of brainwashing my paramount great-grandnephew and converting him to the cause. Laughable in excelsis, you’ll agree, but at that time no one else among the insurgents had ready access to him. I at least visited Marc now and then in his Pacific Northwest home, and even joined him on fishing excursions to Belize, Christmas Island, the Yakima River, and even the Irish planet. I did my insidious best to put across the Rebel party line when we were together; but Marc, while sympathetic to anti-Unity philosophy, seemed quite uninterested in doing anything about it.

He mocked my fellow conspirators (especially the magnates) as a bunch of cocktail-party mutineers with no viable alternative to the Milieu they were so anxious to escape. Anyone possessing higher mindpowers, said he, needed to be part of a highly structured, altruistic civilization; Homo superior was too dangerous to be let loose in the kind of old-fashioned laissez-faire society the Rebels advocated.

Yes, I recognize the irony here! But Marc would remain a staunch supporter of the Milieu for years—until his own precious ox got gored, whereupon he revised the Rebel manifesto and assumed leadership of the movement himself.

* * *

Kenneth Macdonald and Luc Remillard were married in the same fieldstone church where Denis and Lucille had wed eighty-one years earlier. Anne officiated, Dorothée was maid of honor, and Catherine, the boss and professional colleague of both young metapsychologists, served as best woman. There was a reception at the Hanover Inn following the ceremony, and it was there that Dorothée and I managed to renew our friendship after its long hiatus.

“It’s too bad Ian couldn’t make it,” I said, having danced her onto the hotel terrace away from the noisier celebrators. We found an empty wrought iron table with four chairs in a corner under an ornamental tree and took possession. It was June and the weather was perfect. A waitron came along with sloe gin fizzes and made it even better.

“Dad still believes the farm can’t function without him,” she said. “And he’s an active Intendant Associate for Beinn Bhiorach as well.”

Although she hadn’t grown a cent since I’d seen her last, she was most definitely a woman now at nineteen, poised and mature and still very private behind that grave little face that never betrayed what she was thinking. She wore a trouser suit of cherry-colored linen and a white blouse with a froth of lace at the wrists. Around her neck on a gold chain hung the little diamond-mask talisman.

“Do you get to spend much time with Ian yourself?” I asked.

“Not as much as I’d like.” She pushed back a lock of straight brown hair that the breeze had disarranged. “I did break the news to him about Ken and Luc. Dad was slightly … disconcerted. His attitudes on marriage are still rather old-fashioned, like a lot of people who live on outlying ethnic worlds. But he came around in time and even sent wedding rings of Callie gold inset with black diamonds from the local mine.”

“The stones didn’t look black to me,” I remarked in surprise.

“No, they’re really brilliant gray. Lovely things. I suppose the Callie diamond merchants think black sounds sexier. Our mines produce diamonds in all kinds of odd colors, but black is the rarest. Our pearls are tinted, too. Even the trees on the planet come in outlandish tartan colors. Caledonia’s a wonderful place. I want you to come and visit soon, Uncle Rogi. The Deputy Dirigent gets a quota of free transport tickets as an official perk and I’ll send you one.”

“I’d like that. How’s the fishing?”

“Fantastic!” She actually smiled. “Angling is one of our
prime tourist attractions. We have genuine Scottish salmon, of course, but the real prizes are some naturalized blue Siberian trout as long as your leg planted years ago on Clyde by a chap named Vladimir Ilyich MacNaughton.”

“Send three tickets,” I chortled, “and I’ll bring Marc and Jack.”

“If you like.” She looked away and the smile disappeared.

“Batège!” I exploded. “Are you still on the outs with Jack after all these years?”

“Certainly not.” She took a prim little sip of fizz and gazed out at the college green across the street. Young women her own age, college students dressed in Levi’s and T-shirts and bright cotton shifts, were lounging about on the grass as carefree as meadowlarks. I wondered if Dorothée ever took time off to birdwatch anymore—or even to relax.

“Director Jon Remillard and I conferred at the last Concilium session about some of Callie’s geophysical problems,” she went on matter-of-factly.

“Anything really serious?”

“We hope not. The studies have only just begun, and they’ll take over a year. Human scientists are conducting them this time rather than the Krondaku, who did the original survey thousands of years ago.”

“Another one of their fuck-ups like Satsuma and Okanagon?”

“Evidently,” she said. “Dirigent Hamilton has been after the Milieu to do a complete new lithospheric evaluation for ages. Work finally began in earnest about five Earth months ago.”

“After you put the arm on Jack,” I remarked.

She nodded uncomfortably.

“Speak of the devil,” I muttered.

Two men, one towering and dark, the other medium in height and so unexceptional that he almost faded into the woodwork, had come out onto the inn terrace. They were looking about in that offhanded operant way that invariably means you are the target of subliminal attention and had better acknowledge the overture unless you have a damned good reason not to.

I waved and grinned, Dorothée produced a dutiful social smile, and the two Remillard brothers ambled over carrying drinks and little plates of dessert.

“May we join you?” Marc inquired, looking dapper as the devil in a Brummelesque outfit with a dark green tailcoat, fawn breeches, shiny boots, and a white stock. Jack wore the only
brown
nebulin suit I’ve ever seen in my life. The glittery fabric actually looked drab on him.

“Certainly.” Dorothée was gracious. “Please sit down.”

Jack took the place next to her and made small talk about the lovely wedding and the happy couple. Dorothée produced similar pleasantries and then remarked that his goodie looked delicious.

“It’s Almond Mademoiselle wedding cake,” he said eagerly. “Please share it with me.”

The fork, the plate, and the cake all fissioned like mutant amoebae, yielding half-sized replicas of the originals. Marc and I rolled our eyes and heroically refrained from snide utterances, but Dorothée might have been young Queen Victoria confronted with a flower-bearing guttersnipe.