The Many-Coloured Land - 1 by Julian May Read Free Book Online Page B

can't help but like the kid, and he's got a brilliantly inventive mind in that troll body of his. But what the hell are we going to do with him? The Galactic Milieu just has no niche for I'lll Eulenspiegel!"
    They tried redirecting his narcissism into comedic entertainment, but his fellow troupers nearly lynched him when he queered their acts with practical jokes. They tried to harness his mechanical ability, but he used the engineering school facilities to build outlaw black boxes that gave illegal access to half the computerized credit systems in the Sector. They tried metapsychic deep-redact and deprivation conditioning and multiphase electroshock and narcotherapy and old-time religion.
    Aiken Drum's wickedness triumphed over all.
    And so, when he reached an unrepentant twenty-first birthday, Aiken Drum was confronted with a multiple-choke question, the answer to which would shape his future:
    As a confirmed recidivist, counterproductive to the ultimate harmony of the Galactic Milieu, which of these options do you choose?
    a Permanent incarceration in Dalriada Correctional Institution
    b Psychosurgical implant of a docilizarion unit
    c Euthanasia
    "None of the above," said Aiken Drum. "I choose Exile."
    CHAPTER SEVEN
    Sister Annamaria Roccaro first met Claude when he brought his dying wife to the Oregon Cascade Hospice.
    Both of the old people had been salvage exopaleontologists, Claude Majewski specializing in macrofossils and Genevieve Logan in micros. They had been married for more than ninety years and one rejuvenation, and together they had surveyed the extinct life-forms of more than two score planets colonized by humanity. But Genevieve had grown weary at last and refused a third lifetime, and Claude had concurred in her decision, as he had throughout most of their time together. They stayed in harness as long as possible, then spent a few declining years in their cottage on the Pacific Coast of Old World North America.
    Claude never thought about the inevitable end unI'll it was upon them. He had a vague notion that they would someday drift off quietly together in their sleep. The reality, of course, was less tidy. Claude's Polish peasant body proved in the end to have a much greater staying power than that of his Afro-American wife. The time came when Genevieve had to go to the Hospice with Claude accompanying her. They were welcomed by Sister Roccaro, a tall and open-faced woman, who took personal charge of the physical and spiritual consolation of the dying scientist and her husband.
    Genevieve, riddled with osteoporosis, partly paralyzed and dulled by a series of small strokes, was a long time passing. She may have been aware of her husband's efforts to comfort her, but she gave very little evidence of it. Suffering no pain, she spent her days sedated in a dreamy reverie or in sleep. Sister Roccaro found that more and more of her professional efforts were devoted to dealing with Claude, who was frustrated and deeply depressed by his wife's slow drift toward life's end.
    The old man was still physically sturdy at the age of one hundred and thirty-three, so the nun often took him walking in the mountains. They tramped the misty evergreen forests of the Cascade Range and fished for trout in streams running off the Mount Hood glaciers. They checklisted birds and wild-flowers as high summer came on, climbed the flanks of Hood, and spent hot afternoons sitting in the shade on the mountainside without speaking, for Majewski was unable or unwilling to verbalize his grief.
    One morning in the early Jury of 2110, Genevieve Logan began to sink quickly. She and Claude could only touch one another now, since she could no longer see or hear or speak. When the sickroom monitor showed that the old woman's brain had ceased to function, the Sister celebrated the Mass of Departure and gave the last anointing. Claude turned off the machines himself and sat beside the bed holding Genevieve's skeletal brown hand unI'll the warmth