Magnificat (Galactic Milieu Trilogy) (44 page)

must
have paramounts …>

That’s the only valid rationale for Mental Man. The Rebellion would never be able to control the political indoctrination of thousands of grandmasterly nonborn children. We need the hundred paramounts Marc originally planned for. A manageable number for the preceptive program.

I’m convinced that all we need are the right ova. It seems obvious that there was a component of genotypic variability in our previous female donor that fought the dominance of paramount traits present in Marc’s gametes. In short, all grandmasterly oocytes aren’t created equal where Marc’s sperm are concerned! [Complex diagram.] Although Dierdre Keogh has a splendid genetic heritage, it was apparently wrong for Mental Man.

proven
paramount potential in their germ-line.>

Exactly. The candidates were limited to women from the Remillard and the Macdonald families. Dorothea Macdonald would have been an ideal donor, but of course her participation was out of the question. Her two Macdonald aunts are good Rebels who would have given up an ovary willingly, but both of them are menopausal rejuvenates with eggs of dubious vitality. Neither one has daughters, so that essentially eliminated the Macdonalds. In the Remillard line, we don’t have a gamete viability problem because of the so-called Immortality Complex. Remillards not only self-rejuvenate, but they also seem to produce viable germ plasm for an indefinite period. However, only women with a firm commitment to Rebel politics were feasible Mental Man donors. In the first generation, Catherine declined to contribute for personal reasons. In the second generation, all three of
Severin’s grandmasterly daughters contributed sample ova. These are the eggs being tested now.

Yes, given Marc’s supradominant MP heritage, we should be able to engender fair numbers of paramounts. Adrien’s daughter Rosamund has said she would also contribute an ovary. We’ll hold it in reserve.

I
/I presume you know that their mother, Teresa Kendall, was herself a second-generation Remillard via her grandmother Elaine Donovan’s liaison with Rogi’s brother.>

I know about it. And I
did
approach Marie, because Marc was too scrupulous to do it himself. But she cut me dead. The woman’s not even that much of a Milieu loyalist—only puritanical about the incest factor, damn her! Marie is a latent subparamount in both coercion and redaction and an operant GM in the other faculties. Since we know that Marc’s MP traits are being inherited as supradominants, it’s virtually certain that we could have had a breed-true situation in at least two metafunctions using Marie’s ova.

His son Hagen is a latent paramount in two metafunctions and Marc is operant in three. Given the heterozygous mating with Cyndia, I concluded that Marc’s MP traits must be transmitted as supravital with incomplete penetrance of the operancy factor.

 … What?

Jesus Christ! But no one ever—

Shit, yes! I see what you mean. If Marc’s sperm
don’t
carry supradominant MP genes, it could signal a disaster for Mental Man! Only his children with Cyndia or Marie would be reliably paramount, and even then their operancy couldn’t be guaranteed—

The Hydra? That’s ridiculous! She’s been a fugitive from
justice for twenty-six years. No one knows her whereabouts—much less whether she’d cooperate in the project.

<
I
/I know where she is. And she will cooperate.>

You … you’re really bespeaking me.

<
I
/I am.>

This isn’t just a daydream.

Who are you? What do you want?
Are you Madeleine herself?

My God.

Jesus! Yes! Of course! And with the homozygosity—

 … Yes. It can be easily done, if you insist.

<
I
/I demand it.
I
/I also demand that the paramount embryos that will be engendered from these ova be raised to term, not frozen. No matter what the Galactic Milieu decides, Mental Man must live and grow. Now!>

Marc will have to make that decision, not me.

<
I
/I will take care of Marc … 
You will remember the substance of this conversation but not its source. >

Yes … yes.

Jeffrey Steinbrenner stored the results of the assay in the computer. He de-energized the CE helmet and lifted it from his head. Sitting back in the chair waiting for his mind to recover, he absently wiped the tiny line of electrode wounds on his brow with an antiseptic towelette.

The craziest dream! He remembered every bit of it—and it was sheer lunacy.

Worse luck.

He picked up the command mike and ordered the conveyor to take the embryo inside the assay unit to the deep freeze. Then he got up, stretched his cramped arms and shoulder muscles, and gave his balls a scratch. He’d better pack it in for the day. It was clear that overwork had finally caught up with him.

He was heading for the door of the gestatorium when he saw the small insulated container lying on the floor, unobtrusive in the red light. Murmuring an astonished obscenity, he stooped to retrieve it. The label said:

“Oh, shit!” said Dr. Jeffrey Steinbrenner.

He went rushing upstairs in a rage, ready to mind-ream the technicians on duty. He’d find out soon enough which one had been guilty of this piece of egregious carelessness. And when he did, the idiot could kiss his or her sorry ass goodbye!

After it was good and dark and he was certain that the fucking social workers had finished their sweep, the Dene derelict named Sam Ontaratu came out of hiding.

He had lurked all day long in Underground Seattle, the damp and stinking warren of ancient streets and decaying nineteenth-century structures that still underlay portions of the modern city. Now he was glad to be back outside in the clean open air, even if the weather was rainy and cold. With its noxious vapors and rats the size of terriers, the Underground was no place for a Dene man to stay any longer than he had to.

Carrying his duffel, Sam left the abandoned building that gave secret basement access to the subterranean world and slouched along Yesler Way, the original Skid Road of North America. He scavenged a big sheet of bubble wrap from the recycling bin of an antique shop, crossed Pioneer Square, then turned into a dark alley and made his way to his favorite nighttime hangout, a loading dock behind a rug store on First Avenue. An iron ladder set in the wall brought him up to the raised, sheltered nook. He grinned happily when he saw that his usual corner was bone dry and unoccupied.

He peed off the dock, then pulled a sleeping bag out of his duffel, along with an unopened liter of Potter’s Crown Canadian and a meatloaf sandwich left over from lunch at the Union Gospel Mission yesterday. When the bag was arranged on the bubble-wrap mattress, he slipped off his boots, tucked them into the duffel (which became a pillow), and got ready for bed.

He was well on his way into drunken oblivion when the weird head showed up and rousted him.

“Get out of the sleeping bag and stand up,” the guy commanded. He was on the other end of the dock, over near the ladder.

Sam Ontaratu cursed and told him to go away, and that was
when the dude socked it to him with his metacoercion. Sam let out a groan. “Aw, man. What d’ya wanna do that for?”

“Up!”

The coercion intensified, conquering Sam’s flaccid musculature, and he realized he was going to have to obey. Still muttering, he managed to cork the flat whiskey bottle and shove it into his shirtfront before he squirmed out of the warm nest and staggered upright, supporting himself against the wall of the old building.

The head was wearing pricey civvies—a rainproof down jacket, heavy pants, and snow boots—therefore he was neither a beat cop nor a member of the dreaded Seattle PD Skid Road Homeless Squad. But Sam should have known that already. None of the night-crawling fuzz were metas. Once in a great while a Holy Joe operant would come prowling around the waterfront, hassling bums for Jesus. But this dude didn’t fit the mold. No way did he have a do-gooder air about him.

No way at all.

A tingle of alarm penetrated Sam’s alcoholic haze. “I got no money, no scag,” he moaned. “Gimme a break, man.”

The weird head closed in, arms held out from his sides like a wrestler ready to pounce. His eyes were wide and blazing. He wore no gloves and his hands trembled violently.

“Down on your knees,” he said in a grating voice.

Oh, no! None of that shit! Sam was a Sahtu Dene Native American and a Sahtu was a man. No meta snakecharmer was going to force him to do
that
.

The coercion abruptly eased off. The dude got this funny look—a kind of double-take, like he just remembered something.

Sam ducked sideways, out of reach, and pulled out the whiskey flask. When the weird head made a clumsy turn Sam slammed the bottle smack into his face. The creep screamed and blood spurted from his nose. He tripped over his own feet and went sprawling.

“You get the fuck outa here!” Sam yelled, brandishing the booze.

The weird head looked up at him with the damnedest expression: not anger, not pain. Terrified surprise. Like he didn’t even know where he was.

Then, just like a candle flame blown out, he disappeared.

“Christ,” Sam whispered fearfully. The dude was totally gone! Sam shuffled to the edge of the loading dock and looked down into the alley, expecting to see a body.

Nobody. Nothing. Only the wet alley pavement and rows of Dumpsters and recycle bins shining in the rain. Over on the Ave,
groundcars whizzed by. Sam Ontaratu squinched his bleary eyes and took a good look at the bottle that he still held. It had blood on it. It was also a little less than half full.

“Christ,” Sam said again, shaking his head. Then he crawled back into his sleeping bag, finished off the whiskey, and slept.

Out in the San Juan Islands off the Washington coast, the precipitation fell as icy rain that rustled against the drape-shrouded windows of the small sitting room.

Marc and Cyndia had gone off a couple of hours earlier to catch a performance of
Die Walküre
at the Seattle Opera. Thierry Lachine, the houseman, was in bed with the flu. The nanny, Mitsuko Hayakawa, was off in Twisp, visiting her elderly mother over the weekend. But Rogi didn’t mind babysitting. There was a nice blaze going in the fireplace, and the armchair was comfortable. He’d put a good old Carl Hiaasen comic thriller into his plaque-book and a modest quantity of Wild Turkey into himself, then settled down for a quiet winter evening.

Rogi nodded off after a while, waking eventually to find the fire dwindled away to embers and the clock pushing midnight. He got up, yawned, and went off to the nursery to check on the baby. Hagen was sleeping peacefully in his cherrywood crib. He was a good kid, never fretful, and his little brain was chock-full of the usual operant infantile dreams—blunt sensory perceptions and the braided loops of learning experiences, unscreened and innocent.

Rogi smiled down at the child, thinking how different he was from precocious, wary Baby Jack …

And different from young Denis too. Do you remember how you comforted Denis when he was frightened by the cold water poured on his head during his baptism? And how he bonded to you when his mother asked you to be his teacher?

The old man smiled, looking up into the empty air of the nursery. “I remember it like it was yesterday, mon fantôme! Amazing, the way little Denis was able to farspeak real words almost from Day One. This godson of mine’s not quite so talented as the other two, but he’s gonna do just fine.”

I hope to God you’re right Rogi. But I’m afraid that this child may be in great danger. From his own father
.

“Ghost, are you crazy? Marc loves Hagen! He’d never hurt him.”

He might—thinking he was doing good … I can only warn you of the possibility. There’s no one else I can tell no one who would believe me no one who can help me to prevent it danger to the
baby his mother to you to the entire galaxy it’s not only Marc it’s ME turn around Rogi TURNAROUND AND LOOK AT ME!

In a panic of confusion, Rogi obeyed. He did not expect to see anything. The Lylmik entity that he called the Family Ghost was always invisible during its infrequent visits.

But this time, there was a man standing near the dark nursery window. He was slightly built, and his hair was fair, and his youthful face had a smear of blood around the nose and mouth.

“No,” Rogi said. “Oh, no. This isn’t happening.”

Marc and I are the most dangerous men ever born—God help us!—but if he won’t then you’ll have to I can’t explain I can’t even stay here any longer ROGI HELP ME! Help Hagen and Cyndia and the whole human race and the Galactic Milieu …

“Denis?” the old man whispered. “Denis, mon fils, is it you?”

But the apparition had vanished. The dark nursery was empty, except for Rogi himself and the wailing baby.