Diamond Mask (Galactic Milieu Trilogy) (21 page)

CATHERINE
: Oh, sweet Jesus. Not that.

DENIS
: Uncle Rogi says there was never any hint of it. I remember nothing of the sort. But by the time Vic was a toddler, he was already a mental thug. He coerced every one of my siblings into latency when they were infants, and played sadistic games with them. Whatever unspeakable trauma turned my brother into a monster first happened when he was very young. He would have repressed the memory of it, of course.

CATHERINE
: [abstractedly] It affects different victims in different ways. Many of them survive to live almost normal lives. Some are left emotional cripples until therapy helps them drain away the old poison. A few are so wounded that their only release is in wounding others. The wickedness isn’t completely involuntary, however. We psychologists took quite some time to concede that. Always, somewhere along the line, the nascent monster chooses to do what he or she knows is evil. Genuine insanity and lack of culpability may follow, but in the beginning there is always that fatal
yes.
[A long silence.]

PHILIP
: [doggedly] Victor Remillard is dead. His sins—his guilt or innocence—are beside the point. The thing called Fury, whoever and whatever it is, is alive but apparently inaccessible. As I understand it, we have no idea how to uncover and eliminate Fury, but its creature Hydra is another kettle of fish. What are we going to do about those four wretched young people? Simply hope that the Magistratum will eventually track them down?

ANNE
:
I
think we have a moral obligation to hunt them ourselves.

PAUL
: I think so, too … but maybe not for the same reasons Anne does. I’ve been considering possible long-range motivations
that the Fury-Hydra combine may have. Certainly it’s slaughtered people casually, apparently for no reason other than to slake its beastly appetite. But the killing of Brett seemed consequential, and so did Margaret’s murder. And if Rogi and Marc and Jack had died, Fury would have been rid of one inconvenient old man who knew too much, and two highly independent, extremely righteous Remillards who are arguably the most powerful non-Lylmik minds in the galaxy. Now we have the latest atrocity: the killing of three Scottish researchers. Was it simply feeding time at the zoo? Perhaps not. The Scots had nearly completed a detailed study on CE operator safety. Not starship control-hats or other conventional cerebroenergetic applications but the most sophisticated kind of mind-boosting.

PHILIP
: Like Marc’s.

PAUL
: Exactly. Do you realize what would happen to Marc’s E15 research project at Dartmouth if a highly reputable study condemned his work as unacceptably hazardous to the human mind?

SEVERIN
: At the least, there’d be a departmental review and Marc’s enemies on the faculty would have a field day sniping at him. At the worst, the whole E15 project might be axed … and Marc would very likely resign his professorship.

PAUL
: I checked out the work of the murdered researchers. It seemed to conclude that there was
no
serious risk in using upper-end CE. But when I talked to a close relative of one of the victims, who is a respected scientist herself and a grandmasterclass operant, she recalled conversations implying that the research had pointed to the opposite conclusion.

ANNE
: The hyperhacker strikes again, altering the data?

PAUL
: I can’t prove it. But suppose Fury sees Marc and his work as potentially useful?

ADRIEN
: Hydra’s creativity brain-boosted! Christ … that’s the way the thing kills, isn’t it?

DENIS
: There is a redactive component to Hydra’s lifeforce-draining procedure as well as a perversion of creativity, but the creative metafaculty has the greatest potential for misuse. It might be directed into any number of destructive activities, including mental lasers and fire-raising—the kind of thing your mother did inadvertently when she was a disturbed young woman. The faculty is present on the Remillard side of the family as well. I don’t know if Uncle Rogi ever told you children, but he managed a bit of energy-projection himself
many years ago. He melted a hole in a windowpane. The mental wattage wasn’t large, however, and Rogi only accomplished it under conditions of extraordinary stress. I’ve never had any indication that you children or I have this aspect of creativity, but it’s certainly possible.

PHILIP
: [quietly] It’s part of the family heritage, even if we’ve never been crazy enough to sharpen the faculty up and use it.

SEVERIN
: Yet! The possibilities are verrrry intriguing.

CATHERINE
: Don’t joke about it, Sevvy. Don’t you
dare
joke about it. I saw what that damnable power could do—did!—to my husband. I’ll see it for the rest of my life … And if we’ve judged correctly, the monster’s only motive for murdering Brett was to force me to become a Magnate of the Concilium. But why is Fury dedicated to this—this twisted notion of Remillard family aggrandizement?

MAURICE
: If Fury is one of us, as we suspect, he or she might have some mad scheme to manipulate the rest of the family. Not by bald-faced coercion but by other, more subtle means.

CATHERINE
: But
why?

PAUL:
T
O
dominate the Milieu.

SEVERIN
: [laughs] Seems to me that we’re doing fair to middling along those lines already: six well-polarized magnates; one Lord High Panjandrum of the entire human race; our revered sire the Grand Old Man of Metapsychology—who keeps getting nominated to the Concilium and keeps turning it down; and young Jack the Amazing Superbrain. Remillards Über Alles! And if Marc isn’t nominated to the Concilium and affirmed a Paramount Grand Master next session, then I’m a monkey’s uncle instead of his.
[Uneasy chuckles.]

DENIS
: [testily] Paul, you must convince the Concilium to stop nominating me to be a magnate. I’m not interested in politics. I don’t think that Marc is, either.

ADRIEN
: I hope Marc does get nominated and I hope he accepts. We Rebels could use a big gun on our side—

ANNE
: What makes you think Marc would go along with your undermining of the Milieu?

SEVERIN
: Ask him yourself, Reverend Sister.

ANNE
: I certainly shall!

PAUL
: [forcefully] The fact that Sevvy and Adrien are prominent in the anti-Unity party poses a very serious problem when taken in conjunction with the reappearance of Fury and Hydra. Objective observers—such as the Lylmik—might now
see the Rebel movement as the beginning of an attempt to dissociate humanity from the Milieu altogether. A scheme like that, using Remillards as catalysts, would seem to play right into the hands of Fury … if the monster really does aim to dominate the galaxy.

ADRIEN
: [hotly] Wouldn’t you and your gang of exotic ass-lickers like to think so! Is
that
what you’ve got up your sleeve? Using the Fury thing to discredit the loyal opposition? Well, lotsa luck, Number One! The Rebel party is no more dependent upon Sevvy and me than the pro-Unity gang is dependent upon you and Annie!

SEVERIN
: Your idea won’t fly, Paul. Before the Human Polity got the franchise, opposing Unity was high treason. Now it’s a perfectly legitimate political option. The exotics don’t like it, but they’ve conceded our right to hold the position.

ADRIEN
: And that position is getting more viable by the minute! The whole damned galaxy knows that our group isn’t a gang of crazed anarchists coerced by some shadowy Satan. We’re honest magnates and respected citizens. We simply believe that Earthlings shouldn’t trade personal freedom and individuality for an exotic security blanket guaranteeing peace and happiness forever in the Great Unified Beehive.

ANNE
: Unity isn’t like that!

SEVERIN
: Blow it out your asymptote, Annie.

ADRIEN
: Amen with knobs on.

PAUL
: For God’s sake, you two! You
know
that the Great Intervention took place only because the Milieu anticipated eventual Unification with humanity. If you think we can split off from the confederation and go our merry, unreconstructed way you’re as crackbrained as Fury!

SEVERIN
: Don’t bet on it. The way our human colonists are increasing and multiplying, we’ll outnumber all races except the Poltroyans in less than a hundred years. And the little purple people just might fancy joining our side. They’re damn near human themselves—not like the other exotics.

PHILIP
: The majority of human operants don’t share your views, Sewy.

ADRIEN
: But the deadheads are more and more gung ho for Rebellion! Can’t blame them, can you? They know that someday they’ll have operant descendants—and they prefer their grandchildren human, not brainwashed into some alien mind-set.

ANNE
: Humanity has only just gained acceptance into the
Milieu—and already your Rebel faction is scheming to destroy it!

SEVERIN
: We don’t advocate violence. We believe in friendly persuasion over the long haul and a peaceable separation at the appropriate time. You Milieu daisy-chainers can go your way and the rest of us Earthlings will go ours.

ADRIEN
: And devil take the hindmost.
[A simmering pause.]

DENIS
: Children. Please listen to me for a moment. Paul’s opinion of the Rebel movement deserves to be taken seriously. Sevvy and Adrien are undoubtedly sincere in their beliefs and not overtly influenced by any machinations of Fury. But it remains plausible that the politics of Unity might be part of a larger, more sinister picture orchestrated in some subtle manner by the monster. Uncle Rogi claims he was present when Fury was born. You may recall that he was exconcert at Victor’s deathbed. Rogi says he asked Fury then what it wanted, and it said
all of us.
Is it possible that Rogi’s thinking was too limited in scale when he concluded that Fury only coveted the souls of the Remillard family?

PHILIP
: It wants the entire Human Polity? That’s preposterous!

MAURICE
: Not to a megalomaniac.

ANNE
: Fury could be afraid of Unity …

DENIS
: Perhaps this being prefers its own style of mental conjugation. We’ve seen a sample, and its name is Hydra! A many-headed monster, only fourfold now—but who can tell what it might become?

CATHERINE
: And if it includes Remillard minds, it could be immortal.

PAUL
: I can’t help but feel there’s a terrible kind of synchronicity at work here. This is why I called the family conference, and why I sequestered us beneath the sigma-field so that no one else would know what we discussed.

ANNE
: We seven have our differences. But we
must
attack this Fury-Hydra problem together.

SEVERIN
: [sighs] Yes.

PAUL
: Can we agree on this—that Fury and Hydra pose an unacceptable danger to the family, the human race, and the Galactic Milieu—and therefore they must be destroyed?

PHILIP+MAURICE+SEVERIN+ANNE+CATHERINE+ADRIEN
: Yes.

DENIS
: The Hydras are your own children. Fury may be one of you. Do you still agree with Paul’s assertion that they must die?
[Mutual affirmation.]

PAUL
: Do you also agree that we, personally, must take upon ourselves the responsibility for hunting these entities down and killing them?
[Reluctant mutual affirmation.]

DENIS
: And what if Marc is Fury? He fits the psychoprofile for multiple-personality disorder more closely than any of you.

CATHERINE
: Marc has Paramount Grand Master potential. If Fury resides within such a mind, it may be that only another paramount of equal or greater mental potential would be a match for him.

ADRIEN
: A Lylmik?

CATHERINE
: Nobody knows how their wispy minds check out. But the other exotics have no paramounts—and in all the human race, Jack’s the only other person that we know of so far whose mental assay approaches the paramount level. But he’s years away from maturity and psychologically fragile as well. We can’t draw him into this. You know how he adores Marc.

PAUL
: Marc is my son and I love him, too. But we must keep in mind that the latest Hydra murders may have been committed solely to protect him and his CE research. If high creativity enhancement is ever perfected and put to use by Fury and his creatures, the entire Milieu might find itself enslaved by a metapsychic tyrant … I’m seriously considering shutting down Marc’s project by executive fiat. I have the authority.