Magnificat (Galactic Milieu Trilogy) (30 page)

Lucille said: I haven’t heard that song in years sentimental lyrics certainly but perhaps also uncannily apropos for our troubled times when did Longfellow flourish anyhow?

Denis said: Middle 19thcentury I suppose he was referring to the turmoil of the War Between the States plus ça change plus c’est la même chose.

Lucille said: I see Phil&Aurelie&Maurie&Cecilia [there] and Catherine [there] and Cheri&Adrien&UncleRogi [there] no Paul no Severin I hope they haven’t been delayed but it would be just like them to come in after the sermon it’s rather crowded do you want to sit with any of the children? We could ask an usher to squeeze us in.

Denis said: I think not. We’ll have plenty of time to be with them later on. Let’s just be selfish for once and sit here in the last
pew and sing along with the carolers and pretend it’s our first midnight mass together.

The First Magnate’s rhocraft, a Saab without official markings that he had borrowed from the staff transport pool, hurtled through the starry sky high above the storm clouds. Paul Remillard was dressed in casual slacks of charcoal nebulin and a bulky red-and-white cardigan that Santa Claus might have envied. He sent his powerful farsight arrowing ahead of the egg, scanning the farm outside of Hanover.

“Most of the others are finished eating and are getting ready to pass out their presents. We’ve timed it perfectly.”

“Everything you do is perfect,” said Severin Remillard without a trace of bitterness. “As for myself, I’m highly imperfect and the first to admit it.”

He was seventy-five years old, Paul’s senior by eleven years, but the family’s arbitrary self-rejuvenating gene complex had given Severin an earlier climacteric than his brother. He was a tall, blond man who might have been in his late thirties, more muscular than Paul, with strong features that would have been attractive had he not been so haggard. A deep vertical crease was drawn between eyes that had turned bloodshot with fatigue, and his mouth was a taut line. He had on a down vest, a blue plaid flannel shirt over a bronze polo-neck, and heavy whipcord pants stuffed into Timberline boots.

Paul said, “You have nothing to worry about, Sevvy. You were more than competent in the CE practice sessions. This flop sweat you’re experiencing is distressing but it can be overcome if you’ll just let me do a—”

“No,” Severin said. “I’m telling you for the last time that I can’t participate in the metaconcert operation. I’ve tried to psych mystery
out of this—this stupid negatory mind swamp I’ve fallen into, but it’s no good.
I’m
no good.”

“Stop talking like an idiot. Let me into your brain and I’ll banish whatever horrors are eating you with a quick Band-Aid fix. Later, after we’ve taken care of Papa, Cat and I will do a permanent redact job on you.”

“Tranquilizing me isn’t the point, Paul. I’m not just yellow-bellied—I’m a weak link in the structure, a danger to all the others in the metaconcert. You don’t understand …”

Back in Concord, faced with Severin’s sudden panicky recalcitrance, the First Magnate had been obliged to coerce his brother into accompanying him to Hanover. But there was no way that he could force Severin to assist in their father’s healing.

“You can’t let us down now, at the last minute,” Paul remonstrated. “You’ve got a strong grandmasterly redactive faculty that’s a vital component of the program.”

“You don’t need me,” Severin insisted. “The concert design is more coercive than redactive anyway, and with the CE hats it generates gigawatts of mindpower. My God, at full zorch you could probably coerce the whole damn population of New Hampshire to dance a jig in the snow in their birthday suits and still have enough mental energy left to shrink Papa twice over.”

“Not if he’s a suboperant paramount in redaction. And Jack thinks he almost certainly is.” LOOK [image] how your absence would fuck up our attempt to integrate dual personae we
must
have your input!

“Postpone the operation and find somebody to take my place. Both Luc and Ken Macdonald are trustworthy and strong in redaction. Train them up and plug them in.”

The First Magnate exploded. “Dammit, Sevvy, we’re ready now! We’ve spent four tough weeks perfecting the metaconcert using the eight of us. It’s been a bitch setting this thing up without arousing anyone’s suspicions and we can’t start all over now because of your cold feet. We can’t risk Papa finding out. We’ve got to go ahead.”

The pinched face of the retired neurologist had begun to shine with greasy perspiration. Severin pulled out a handkerchief and swabbed his brow. He shrugged off his down vest and fiddled with the air vents on his side of the rhocraft cabin. “I tried to tell you it might be psychologically impossible for me to function in this metaconcert, but you kept shouldering my objections aside. You convinced everyone that I was just afraid of risking my own skin. But that’s not the problem at all.”

“Then what the fuck
is
it?”

Severin’s head was bowed. “I’m vulnerable to Fury in a way you never even suspected. I’ve never told anyone. Ah, shit … I can’t even articulate the engram now. Just take a look at this.” [Image.]

The memory was more than thirty years old. In a shadowy sickroom, Denis and his seven adult children and their brave spouses and reluctant old Uncle Rogi gathered around a bed where a comatose figure lay. The patient was a ruggedly handsome man with dark curling hair. He bore an uncanny resemblance to Paul’s son Marc. But he was not Marc.

The First Magnate was incredulous as the meaning of the vision became clear. “
Victor?
You think that Papa’s dissociative persona is actually his dead brother Victor? That’s preposterous! You can’t tell me you’re afraid of a ghost.”

“I know … my fear seems … irrational to you.” Severin spoke slowly, in an oddly pitched, strained tone, as though he were pulling each word past some dense mental obstruction. “But you never knew Vic when he was in full control of his faculties. I … did. And every time we gathered for that annual Good Friday prayer session I was … frightened nearly out of my mind by … that devil who had tried to seize control of me when I was a child … and afterward.”

“Seize control?” Paul was stunned. “What do you mean?”

Severin plodded on, speaking more easily now, forcing himself to tell the story as he stared unseeing at the flickering positionreport images on the navigation screen. “The only way I could get through those Good Fridays was by redacting myself affectless, suppressing every human emotion, turning myself into a fucking block of wood. Papa never seemed to notice what kind of shape I was in when we linked minds for the prayer—or whatever it was that he did with us. All through the years that Victor lived on in a coma, I’d go home from the Good Friday sessions and vomit my guts out from sheer relief. I was safe from Vic for another year. The bastard hadn’t managed to get me.”

“Get you,” Paul repeated, stricken.

“He’d tried, you see. When I was just a little kid.”

“Jesus, Sevvy. You should have told us. We could have helped you—”

“No. It was my battle and I had to win it. I don’t expect you to understand, Paul. You were the youngest of the Dynasty, the prodigy, everyone’s pet, trained from the time you were in the uterus with exotic preceptive techniques. But the three of us who
were born before the Intervention had to pull ourselves up by our mental bootstraps. It was hard. Phil and Maurie were always pretty tough nuts, but I was the weak little brother. Victor must have known it and he never bothered either of them, only me. He said I was special, damn him! He pretended to know how I felt, how I chafed under the ethical restrictions our parents made us live by. Oh, he was clever—he knew what buttons to push and I almost gave in to the temptation more than once. His mind-fucks were quick and short and they only happened at the big family get-togethers like Easter and Christmas. I always managed to fend him off.”

Paul shook his head but said nothing.

“I was there at the Great Intervention along with Phil and Maurie and Papa and Mama. I was ten years old. Uncle Rogi zapped Victor on the mountain and turned him into a vegetable, and the whole world was saved, and I thought my fight with the demon was over. But it hadn’t even really begun yet. When Papa began that annual prayer vigil, I became obsessed with the fear that Victor would recover and begin the harassment all over again. Then, in 2040, Vic’s body finally died … but his spirit was reborn as Fury. In some obscene coercive way he seduced my poor unborn son Quint—along with Celine and Gordo and Parni and your Madeleine. He made them Hydras. He would have made me a Hydra, too, if I hadn’t resisted him with all my strength. Earlier on, I guess Vic was too inexperienced in evil to spring the trap on me properly. So he tried again when I was a full-grown man.”