Jack the Bodiless (Galactic Milieu Trilogy) Read online

  Marc Remillard whirled about, his heart pounding. He had been aware of no one approaching him, sensed no aura. But standing behind him was a very tall elderly man with a neatly trimmed white beard and a patriarchal halo of snowy hair. His eyes had a preternatural brightness, set deep within dark sockets.

  Marc suspected immediately that he was not human. The mental signature was totally absent, even to a third-level probe delivered at point-blank range. But what kind of exotic was he?

  Marc turned, his mental screen strengthened to the maximum. “Do—do I know you?”

  The tall man laughed but did not answer the question.

  By Julian May

  Published by Ballantine Books:

  The Saga of Pliocene Exile:

  Volume I: The Many-Colored Land

  Volume II: The Golden Torc

  Volume III: The Nonborn King

  Volume IV: The Adversary

  Intervention

  Volume I: The Surveillance

  Volume II: The Metaconcert

  THE GALACTIC MILIEU TRIOLOGY

  Volume I: Jack the Bodiless

  Volume II: Diamond Mask*

  Volume III: Magnificat*

  *Forthcoming

  Aux les bons copains—enfin!

  A Del Rey Book

  Published by Ballantine Books

  Copyright © 1991 by Starykon Productions, Inc.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States of America by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 91-53176

  eISBN: 978-0-307-77609-9

  This edition published by arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Remillard Family Tree

  About the Author

  I will praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made!

  My soul knows how marvelous are your works.

  You were aware when my very bones were formed,

  Growing secretly inside my mother’s body

  As a plant’s root grows beneath the earth.

  You knew me before I was born.

  The days of my life were all written in your book

  Before they had ever begun.

  PSALM 139

  Whereas in the familiar closed systems of physics the final state is determined by the initial conditions, in open systems, as far as they attain a steady state, this state can be reached from different initial conditions and in different ways.

  LUDWIG VON BERTALANFFY, A Systems View of Man

  God writes straight with crooked lines.

  SPANISH PROVERB

  PROLOGUE

  SNOW GROTTO PLANETARY PARK, KANNERNARKTOK TERRITORY

  SECTOR 14: STAR 14-661-329 [SIKRINERK] PLANET 6 [DENALI]

  GALACTIC YEAR: LA PRIME 1-400-644 [17 MAY 2113]

  IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT, AS SO MANY NIGHTS WERE on Denali, where topography and climate conspired to produce some of the Galaxy’s worst weather. Worst from a human point of view, of course, unless that human was addicted to Nordic skiing …

  The mind of the supervising Lylmik entity named Atoning Unifex smiled as Its material essence hovered above the blizzard-lashed park. Denali was a rugged planet, wintery throughout most of its year, the veritable haunt of the Great White Cold celebrated in a certain Earth song that was very familiar to the First Supervisor. On most of Denali’s continents, glaciers and permanent snowfields spread wide amidst a fantastic landscape of dazzling peaks, black precipices, and crags that thrust up like the broken tusks of primordial monsters. Denali had no sapient indigenous lifeform. No rational creatures had as yet evolved on it when it was assigned to the Human Polity by the world evaluators of the Galactic Milieu. Its most famous honorary native son, Saint Jack the Bodiless, was conceived before the first Earth settlers arrived.

  The hardy people who originally colonized Denali in the mid-2000s had hailed from Alaska and other parts of the United States having severe winters. They were quickly joined by Canadians, Siberians, Samoyeds, Lapps, and a host of others who craved a life of challenge that could be lived in a setting of wild natural beauty. The World-Mind those human colonists engendered might have been expected to be as dark and moody as Denali’s weather; but for some reason the very opposite mental climate prevailed, and Denali was an invigorating place with an aether that fairly glowed with friendliness and verve. The original rationale for establishing the colony had been the planet’s deposits of valuable gallium ore, and this was still a major economic resource. But Denali had also become a popular vacation resort, first appealing mainly to Human Polity winter-sports fans (including the famous Remillard clan of New Hampshire) and later attracting hordes of like-minded Poltroyans as well.

  Atoning Unifex let memories crowd to the fore of Its consciousness, recollections that had been repressed for aeons. This small planet had been loved by both of them …

  She, of course, had been born here, living and working in the colony’s capital city of Iditarod until a fateful tragedy had taken her to Earth, where the two of them had so improbably met. On the very brink of their great adventure she had spoken casually of her own experiences as a native of Denali, and they had laughed together over the unexpected mutual reminiscences. The shared laughter had come to an end long ago, but the memories remained in a deep level of the Lylmik’s ancient mind, guarded and cherished and eventually becoming almost too precious to contemplate. The pain that had once darkened these memories had long since faded, and their scrutiny at this particular time was now actually appropriate.

  And so Atoning Unifex lingered there in the middle of the storm, Its mind in a state that a human being would have recognized as part reverie and part prayer, thinking of a person who had once been a woman, who had twice loved deeply, and who had mothered Unity in countless nonhuman minds in a distant Galaxy.

  Finally the Lylmik uttered the mental equivalent of a deep sigh. The epilogue of the comedy was nearly complete, but One waited upon the inimitable Uncle Rogi, who kicked at the goad as usual, dawdling while cosmic destiny hung suspended.

  Unifex focused Its mind narrowly on the subsurface snow cavern that sheltered Rogatien Remillard from the raging snowstorm. I
t saw a hunched, lanky man sitting beside a tiny tent, taking off his ski boots. Like other members of his famous family, Uncle Rogi possessed the genes for self-rejuvenation. His face was that of a raddled fifty-year-old, belying his actual age of 167 Earth years. His gaunt cheeks were frost-reddened, and his nose and eyes watered a little when he forgot to mop them with the red bandanna handkerchief he carried up the cuff of his old L. L. Bean Penobscot parka. He had tossed aside his knitted toque, and sweaty silver curls straggled over his forehead and ears. He was whistling as he peeled off the archaic twentieth-century ski garb and stripped faded red long johns from a pale and sinewy body. Then he lowered himself with exquisite care into a geothermal pool in the center of the small snow cave. The telepathic emanations from his ever obstinate and uncoadunate mind were happy ones.

  Uncle Rogi said to himself: If the storm lasts, I’ll forget about the final leg of my trek and call the park’s shuttlebug and go wallow for a week in the lodge’s après-ski entertainments casino cabaret string quartets Lucullan food good company perhaps a new science fiction novel savored in the Wintergarden while the bar waitrons keep the drinks coming and I check out the snowbunny crop!

  The old man settled deeper into the steaming water, smiling.

  Poor Uncle Rogi! Unifex had other plans for him. But Rogi had had a good enough holiday, ski-touring more than 200 kilometers throughout the beautiful park during an unusual three-week spell of calm bright days. Now the weather pattern had changed, and whether Rogi was willing to admit it or not, he was adequately refreshed and recreated after his first stint of journalistic labors. It was time for both of them to get back to work.

  Unifex descended toward the planetary surface. The negligible physical substance of the Lylmik mind-receptacle deflected only the tiniest of the hard-driven snowflakes and easily penetrated the three-meter-thick crust of ice and snow above the grotto where Rogi had elected to camp. The place was typical of the subnivean hollows that gave the Denali planetary park its name: an irregular cave as big as a good-sized room, melted from the permanent icefield by the heat of a small geothermal spring. The walls and ceiling were ice, but the rocky floor was cushioned with a dense lichenoid carpet of tough gray and lavender saprophytes. Close to the shallow burbling pool grew larger and more fragile exotic lifeforms, sessile animals that resembled scarlet onions with peculiar flowers that gave off a pungent sulfurous scent if they were bruised. As the mildly carnivorous blossoms of the onion creatures bent toward Rogi’s exposed shoulders, he flicked hot water at them by way of discouragement.

  The walls of the grotto were cupped and dripping near the ground and glittering with crystals of hoarfrost in the cold upper reaches. There thin tendrils of vapor coiled golden in the light of Rogi’s antiquated electric lantern before disappearing into a natural flue. Touring skis were propped against one wall, and a backpack lay near the little tent. On the far side of the chamber was the closed entry door, fashioned of harmonious translucent plass, that led to the enclosed surface-access tunnel and modern latrine. (Park visitors were strictly forbidden to dig down into the snow grottoes directly, or to camp in undesignated “virgin” caves except in emergency situations.)

  Here and there on the nacreous walls were circular openings, not quite large enough to admit a human hand. From several of these, and from a larger hole at ground level where runoff water from the spring exited, came a glitter of tiny eyes and an occasional peevish hiss. The natural inhabitants of the grotto, hotblooded eight-centimeter “ice crabs” temporarily displaced by the human who had come to spend the night, were keeping a close watch on developments. The crabs considered these alien invaders to be a great nuisance, in spite of the fact that they usually brought along something worth stealing.

  A determined onion flower began to nibble experimentally on Rogi’s wet shoulder blade. He reached for his backpack, unzipped a compartment, and brought out a battered leatherbound flask. A stiff tot of Armagnac and a guided puff of alcoholic breath caused the lifeform to shrink back from the poisonous exhalation, blanch to a muddy mauve color, and broadcast its disgust on a primitive telepathic mode. The entire plantation of scarlet carnivores desisted from snack attacks forthwith.

  Rogi nodded in satisfaction, took another snort, and sank more deeply into the hot spring. Up on the planetary surface the hurricane wind roared in the darkness, and there was a distant rumble as an avalanche let loose somewhere. The grotto trembled slightly. Ice spicules sifted down toward the bather, glittering until they melted just above his head. Rogi began to sing softly:

  “For the wolf wind is wailing at the doorways,

  And the snow drifts deep along the road,

  And the ice gnomes are marching from their Norways—”

  Unifex joined in:

  “And the Great White Cold walks abroad!”

  The old man in the pool leapt like a speared sturgeon. “Bordel de merde!”

  It’s only me, Uncle Rogi.

  “Dammit! One of these days you’re going to give me cardiac arrest doing that!”

  [Laughter.] I apologize. It was the old college song. I had been thinking of it myself just as I arrived. It brought back all kinds of memories.

  “Now look what you made me do.” Rogi was accusing. His eruption had splashed hot water over the onion animals and they were flailing in wild distress, the tiny teeth of the flowers chattering like elfin castanets. “You know the park rules about disturbing the native lifeforms! These little chompers are sensitive. If any of ’em decide to croak, I could be blamed and end up paying a helluva fine—”

  Calm yourself. Look. I’ve restored them.

  “Damn good thing,” Rogi muttered, climbing out onto the not-quite-lichens. The clumps of red onions were swaying luxuriously now, and a delicate humming sound filled the grotto. “Don’t often hear that. It’s their full-tummy serenade.”

  It was the least I could do.

  Rogi chuckled. Naked and steaming, he retrieved the brandy flask, which fortunately hadn’t spilled, and tucked it into a safe place. “I’m feeling pretty hungry myself. Want to share some chili cagado with me, mon fantôme?”

  Thank you. But no.

  “Too substantial for your Lylmik guts, eh? You used to love it.”

  Unifex’s thought was wistful: I don’t suppose you brought along any Habitant pea soup …?

  “Ate the last of it two days ago.”

  The Lylmik’s mind sighed.

  Rogi squatted and set up a small microwave campstove. He dipped a pot of water from the spring, peered into it, and extracted a black gelatinous blob and a glass-shrimp that were swimming languidly about the container’s bottom. The invertebrates were returned to the pool and the pot set inside the stove to boil. Rogi had tossed in two Aqua Pura tablets for seasoning, since Denali bred tough microorganisms as well as tough colonials.

  “So you couldn’t resist coming after me.” The old man dried himself with a diminutive towel and put his long johns and socks back on.

  Unifex said: It was a species of sentimental journey. I had felt compelled to avoid Denali during her first-cycle sojourn here.

  Rogi hesitated. “You want to tell me about the two of you? All I know is the little bit Cloudie and Hagen told me—and they didn’t know all that much.”

  Not now. Perhaps later.

  “M’mm.” Rogi took the seething pot out of the stove and filled two bowls and a large cup, adding a different-colored cube to each container of water. After four seconds of effervescence, the highly compressed food reconstituted and the pungent aroma of chili rose from the first bowl, and the smell of cinnamon-apple cobbler from the second. The cup was full of black coffee. Rogi added five lumps of sugar and a shot of Armagnac to the latter, and sprinkled almost 200 grams of grated natural-state Tillamook cheddar onto the chili.

  A sibilant, yearning chorus came from the crab holes, and there was a frantic blinking of eyes. Rogi chuckled wickedly. “Cheeky little bastards. Remember how they used to eat Adidas if you left ’em ou
tside the tent in these snow caves?”

  Unifex laughed. It said: I note that you wear inedible Salomon ski boots now. Very comfortable-looking. I like the new Rossi boards, too. But isn’t it rather imprudent of you not to wear an environmental suit?

  “For sissies! I been skiing my brains out for a hundred fifty years in this outfit and I haven’t froze my bizoune off yet. You’ll notice that my wrist-com’s modern enough. Keeps me alerted to weather changes. And if I get snowed in or come a cropper or even run outa coffee or munchies, the Ski Patrol or a robot monitor’ll home in on its transponder-locator and take care of me. I knew this storm was on the way. I figure to spend the night here, then call for a shuttlebug to fly me back to the park lodge tomorrow if she don’t blow out as per forecast. Wouldn’t mind at all spending the last week of my vacation lolling around in style—”