Jack the Bodiless (Galactic Milieu Trilogy) by Julian May Read Free Book Online

come from? Rogi asked.
    I am newborn. Inevitably
.
    What—what do you want?
    And it said:
All of you
.
    Rogi’s mind screamed its fear and loathing. He seemed tohear laughter—and this time, the voice was recognizably Victor’s. Rogi cried out again, pleading, begging for Denis—for anyone!—to come to his rescue. But Denis seemed to be gone, and the minds he had woven so skillfully about him were gone as well.
    I require assistance
, Fury said, reaching out.
And I’ll take you to start with. Silly, flawed old Rogi! But you’ll be useful
.
    You can’t! You can’t!… See? I told you so!
    Now Rogi was laughing hysterically, and the horror that was Fury roared, and the negation of the mental chasm was lit by a crimson radiance that grew brighter and brighter, becoming a red sphere suspended in utter darkness.
    He is mine
, another voice said. A familiar voice.
You may not have Rogi. Do what you must do, but not with him
.
    The red sphere hovered, seeming to become more solid, a glowing thing that Rogi thought he recognized. He took hold of it somehow, and it pulled him away, away, out of the depths, away from the mind-monster named Fury, and back into ordinary reality—
    —the bedroom. Severin and Cecilia Ashe bending over the supine figure, she seeking a wrist pulse, he lifting an eyelid to reveal a dilated, fathomless pupil. Denis on his knees, head bowed, hands touching the covered feet of the body, weeping. Paul and Adrien at the machine, where the once-green telltales now blinked red. Anne standing apart, her face frozen. Catherine, Teresa, and the other women together in an agitated group, murmuring. Philip, Maurice, and Brett staring at each other helplessly.
    Suddenly, through the closed door, Rogi heard a baby scream.
    His paralysis evaporated and he raced to the door, yanked it open. Then he halted, stunned, at the scene in the hall.
    Three bodies lay on their backs on the Oriental runner rug. Yvonne, Louis, and Leon, their faces contorted and their eyes wide open, were stone dead.
    From the doorway of the bedroom across the hall, Mrs. Gilbert, the nurse, stared down at the bodies in astonishment, while the two-year-old boy in her arms shrieked and struggled like a wild thing.
    Rogi’s hand went involuntarily to his pants pocket, to the key ring that he always carried with him, the one with a foblike a red glass marble. His strong fingers tightened about the little caged sphere.
    It’s all right, Rogi said to Marc on the intimate mode. He’s gone.
    Abruptly, the boy’s cries ceased. Flushed and tousled, breathing in noisy gulps, Marc held out his arms to the old man. Rogi took him from the nurse, cradled the small head against his chest, and hurried off downstairs.

3
OKANAGON/EARTH 24 AUGUST 2051
     
    H E HAD BEEN SUMMONED .
    Coerced. He—the uncoercible!
    It was nothing so concrete as a call on the telepathic intimate mode. It was a compulsion, an aching cryptesthetic urge having nothing at all to do with the usual workings of his powerful and orderly young mind. It was a
feeling
(and that, of course, made it totally suspect) that his mother, more than 540 light-years away on Earth, was in danger from some purposeful agency that would cause her irreparable harm. And only he, Marc Remillard, could save her.
    But that was counter to all logic; and he had arranged his life so as to subdue in himself the messier, nonintellectual aspects of the human psyche. When irruptions of the feeling function occasionally got the better of him, he counted it a personal defeat, and analyzed the phenomenon rigorously, and strove to bring it under control so as to lessen his susceptibility on the next go-around. But somehow, where his mother was concerned, emotional skewing tended to persist. It was odd that he should continue to love her with such unreasoning ardor in spite of her benign indifference; no amount of metacreative sorting and rechanneling on hispart had been successful in transmuting the filial bond with