Magnificat (Galactic Milieu Trilogy) (59 page)

“The Milieu might still capitulate peacefully to your ultimatum.” She had come down to poolside with a robe of white terrycloth for him.

He climbed out, pressing the water from his thick curling hair with one big hand, and put on the robe. “I doubt that the exotic magnates would succumb to my coercive wiles this time, darling. They’d think I was bluffing. It seems inconceivable to the exotics—especially to the damned Lylmik!—that a human leader with paramount mindpowers would attempt anything but an intellectual solution to a grievance. They’ve never understood human nature. Our craven acceptance of the Simbiari Proctorship lulled the Milieu into thinking that we’d accept despotism if the trade-off was peace in a galactic civilization. They can’t believe we’d be willing to risk losing that. The only way we can convince them otherwise is to demonstrate a willingness to destroy them unless they agree to let us go.”

“Molakar,” she whispered. “Ah, Marcas, Marcas! You’ve intended it all along.”

“It was always the most effective option.” He started up the steps to the dressing room.

“You might consider one other,” she said very softly, following after. “Try appealing to Davy MacGregor when he assumes the position of First Magnate at the Concilium session.”

Marc frowned. He toweled his hair damp-dry, then stuck his head momentarily into the styler. “Just what are you suggesting?”

“Davy isn’t as stiff-necked as your father was. His own longstanding doubts about Unity are well publicized, and his years as
Earth Dirigent have given him a more tolerant mindset. If you could make him understand how determined and well armed the Rebellion has become—if Davy realized just how close to the brink of war the galaxy is—he might try to broker a compromise. Especially since there’s no longer any danger of Fury or the Hydra tainting the Rebellion with their own secret agenda. The controversy is a purely moral one now: a question of human liberty versus the intractable position of the Milieu on Unity. Perhaps a mutual concession is possible! Paul would never even consider it. Davy might.”

“I doubt it.” He went to the Moduplex and ordered up a pair of black silk pajamas.

“Marcas a mhuirnín, dearest love, if there’s any chance of avoiding violence—of sparing the lives of all those Krondaku on Molakar—you
must
make the try!”

His retort was icy. “It’s my decision to make.”

“Of course.” She turned away, her vision blurring with tears.

He caught her arm. “Cyndia. It’s necessary. Regrettable, but necessary. We really have only the single chance to shock the Milieu out of its self-righteous complacency—to prove that we’re in deadly earnest and compel their surrender to our demands. Blowing up an uninhabited planetoid like Cible wouldn’t have the same impact at all. We’d tip our hand uselessly, lose the psychological advantage. It would be different if we could have destroyed a sun with mindpower …”

She faced him, composed again. “Might Mental Man have accomplished that?”

“Perhaps. If there had been time for the children to mature. But my first choice for the demonstration has always been Molakar. The enforcers’ world. The Milieu’s base for the sequestration of Earth. Do you know how many Krondak starships are gathered there now?”

She shook her head.

“Nearly four thousand. I’ve seen them myself through far-sensory CE. And more of them arrive every day from remote sectors of the galaxy—a concentration of high-df vessels that hasn’t been seen since the Great Intervention seventy years ago.”

“Dia linn! Then the Milieu must suspect us.”

“They’d be imbeciles if they didn’t. But they’ve done nothing to stop us yet. I admit I don’t know what to make of it.”

“Talk to Davy MacGregor,” she begged, taking both his hands in hers. “At least ask him if he’ll try for a compromise. Promise me that much, mo mhuirnin dílis. Please!”

The powerful fingers tightened. Then he freed her with a small sigh. A peculiarly sweet smile lifted one side of his mouth. “Let’s go to bed. I want to make love to you more than anything in the world.”

“You
will
do it!” she cried joyously, and flung her arms about his neck. “Thank you, Marcas. Thank you.”

He picked her up and carried her to the bedroom.

He had never asked her if she knew about their consanguinity.

At first, immediately after he’d dealt with Madeleine, he had feared that personal inhibition would taint their marital relations; but his desire for Cyndia remained as strong as ever. He had looked briefly into psychology and anthropology reference works, not trusting his own instinct, and discovered that the taboo was a social artifact, largely enforced by childhood conditioning. Sex with Madeleine had been repugnant and unthinkable because she was truly his sister. Cyndia—whatever her biological heritage—was simply not.

Their first coupling on the Earth New Year of 2083 was fierce and needful. He never surrendered, not even at the climax, and so she waited. The device was hidden deep within her pelvic cavity, harmless unless she deliberately activated its sophisticated mental switch. She had bench-tested it extensively, but there had been no way to insure its proper functioning at the kairotic moment. Only one thing was certain: He would feel no pain.

If she used it.

If there was no other choice.

They lay naked, side by side, drinking champagne, letting the erotic tension rebuild before beginning again. The bedroom was lit by sconces of candles, open to scented light air from the gardens. Fire-moths blinked and sang softly in the ornamental shrubbery. Tiny seismic tremors, the sort that longtime citizens of Okanagon never even noticed, vibrated a sculpture on the patio outside and caused it to tinkle faintly.

“There’s something I must ask you,” she said. “About Mental Man.”

“What is it?”

“I was surprised when you didn’t reinitiate the project immediately after the disaster. So were Jeff and the Keoghs, especially since you said you intended to do so. Of course you revised the offensive metaconcert so that it would work with adult CE operators—but as you told me, the new configuration is much less
efficient. Have you decided to abandon the Mental Man project after all?”

His mindscreen tightened. “The time factor is against us now. Still, if the Rebellion should be prolonged, a new generation of young paramounts might still be an important strategic asset But I’ve been faced with a significant moral dilemma in connection with starting over. It’s still unresolved.”

“A … moral dilemma?” A sunburst of hope dazed her. Was it possible that he had actually reconsidered the hideous encephalization procedure that deprived the babies of their bodies? Did he finally realize what she had known for so long, that it was intrinsically evil to attempt the acceleration of human mental and bodily evolution, to engender Homo summus while fully incarnate Homo sapiens and Homo superior still lived?

Was it possible for her to spare him after all?

He lay on his back with one arm folded behind his head and the other holding her tenderly. The flickering candlelight danced on the clean planes of his face. He was so serene, so powerful, so very beautiful. Her favorite endearment for him in the Irish was ardaingeal ionúin—“beloved archangel”—a deliberate defiance of the dreadful nickname the loyalists had pinned on him.

She said, “Tell me about your problem, grá mo chroí. Perhaps I can help.”

“After Mental Man died, I discovered that the ova used to conceive the children weren’t those of my cousin Rosamund, as we’d all thought. They belonged to the Hydra. Madeleine. My sister.”

Cyndia was deathly silent, willing hope not to die, guarding her own fearful thoughts.

“Maddy admitted it to me,” Marc said. “She also admitted that she’d turned Mental Man into a new, hundred-headed Hydra.”

“That’s … appalling. Then the death of the babies was a miraculous escape for all of us!”

“So it would seem.” His voice was grim. “I killed Maddy. It was both premeditated and just. All of the Hydras had been condemned in absentia by the First Magnate because of their earlier crimes, and there seemed no good reason for me to hand her over to the authorities. It would have tainted Mental Man beyond redemption in the public eye.”

“And you couldn’t risk that,” Cyndia whispered.

“I destroyed Maddy’s cerebrum but her body is still in cryogenic storage at CEREM. With a single ovary intact. The body is vegetative, but Jeff Steinbrenner is confident that regen-tank technology could replicate the germ plasm if we use external redactive
input to augment the residue in the cerebellar network and the nervous system of the living body.”

“So your great moral dilemma involves whether or not to use your Hydra sister’s ova … not any intrinsic doubts about the project itself.”

He seemed not to hear her. Still holding her close to him, he said, “Cyndia, I despise and abominate Madeleine. I hope she burns in hell when I finally let her die. The thought that that monster should be the in-vitro mother of Mental Man, even posthumously … is unbearable.”

“And yet you saved her body.”

“Out of sheer desperation,” he admitted. “There is another way to engender Mental Man but I was afraid to tell you—afraid it might drive you away from me.”

“Ah, m’ aingeal. My poor, poor angel! So you
do
know!” She drew away slightly so that their eyes could meet, and spoke firmly. “And so do I. I know who my true father is.”

“Cyndia—” His voice broke and his gaze fell.

“My father’s name is Rory Muldowney. The biological accident between Paul Remillard and my mother was just that. It can make no difference between us, my love—neither to me nor to God in heaven, who sees love and not procreative technicalities. And if you wish me to be the mother of nonborn Mental Man, I’ll do it.”

His face lit in impassioned relief and both of his arms tightened about her. “You will! Chérie, how could I have doubted you?”

She held her breath, hardly daring to believe her deliverance. But then he said:

“Our Mental offspring will still have a serious latency factor, but that can be overcome by encephalization. Steinbrenner is certain of it. Even then, we can’t be certain that every conceptus of ours will be paramount. But the geneticists assure me that there won’t be a problem in the second generation.”

Her calmness did not waver as the truth pierced her heart and hope perished. “You—you mean with Hagen and Cloud.”

“Of course. Their in-vitro offspring will all be operant paramounts.”

Of course … That’s what he’d meant all along. If she had turned him down, and he couldn’t bring himself to accept Madeleine as the mother, there were always their own true babies to be the parents of Mental Man.

Marc went on: “And afterward, when we’ve won the Rebellion and nothing stands in the way of Mental Man’s triumph, Cloud
and Hagen will still be young enough to achieve their own full mental potential, just as my brother did.”

“Your brother …”

“I tried to explain it to him. To Jack, that is. I thought he’d see the beauty of it—the
rightness
. But he’s a blind fool. Selfish. Locked into his own limited vision of Unified humanity. Not like you, my darling.”

Hagen and Cloud would achieve their mental potential. He’d said it.

He kissed her closed eyelids, then her lips. She felt his arousal and knew that the time had come.

“Love me,” Cyndia said, making the decision for herself and for Mental Man and Mental Woman. “I love you so very much.” Her PK snuffed out the bedroom candles.

In time, he would recover. Her love would help.

She felt her body levitating with his, floating and turning in the warm air. He kissed her mouth, her throat, her breasts, would have continued if she had not taken hold of him and guided him into her, kindling her first orgasm. She cried out, clinging to him, laving and caressing him internally, wrapping him in vital energies wrung from the profound depths of her body and soul. She would have flamed again but she turned the neural energies back to him, magnified by love.

If it went as she hoped, he might never know it had happened. By the time the war was won (of course he would win!), she would have found a way to destroy Madeleine’s body, to arrange for her own sterilization and that of the children. Marc’s sister Marie would also take the appropriate steps once the necessity was explained to her. Then, even if Marc regained his fertility in the regen-tank, the nightmare of Mental Man would be over.

He caught fire and she heard his preorgasmic cry as he was carried helplessly forward to the culmination. Yes—this time he would relinquish himself in mutuality. Their bodies merged fully, joyously, paired on the summit, engulfed in a shared flood of stellar blue-white.

She willed it.

At the instant, she could not help visualizing the device. He farsaw it within their conjunction and knew what it was for.

Knew what she did, for love of him, killing Him.

There was no physical pain, only devastation of the soul. Marc convulsed. His scream shattered their rapport, froze the warm, liquid light to a heart-slashing blade of black ice.

WHATHAVEYOUDONEOGODWHATHAVEYOUDONE!

She said: Loved you. Always. I did it for love of you as well as for humanity.

His attack was reflexive, an involuntary striking back against an injury perceived as mortal. Paramount vital energies surged from his root to his crown, obliterating his ultrasenses. Psychokinesis failed and he fell from the air, a meteorite drowning in an arctic sea, hearing her repeat at the last:
I do love you
.

Then the abyss claimed him.

He woke at dawn. It had not been a dream.

Her body was there beside him, cold as his knowledge of betrayal, inert as disbelief, quite beautiful still. Her long hair spread in a perfect silken halo of pale gold. The sea-colored eyes were half-open, lusterless behind dark lashes. Her soft lips, parted, almost seemed to be smiling.

How could she? What was she thinking? Had the love always been a lie?

Of course not.

Then why? Why?

No overt genital trauma was perceptible to his ultrasensory deepscan. But he was not a physician and the structures were minute and mysterious. A detailed diagnosis of what the sonic disruptor had done to him—and his healing—would have to wait.