Galactic Milieu - Diamond Mask Part 36

The DNA of the woman who had attacked Dorothee yielded a positive identification of Celine Mireille Ashe Remillard, daughter of Maurice Remillard and Cecilia Ashe. The information was not made public, nor was it shared with the local police. The body was released to the custody of the First Magnate himself. After a private Catholic memorial service attended by certain anonymous operants, the ashes of the murderer were scattered over the Atlantic Ocean.

On 20 January 2073 Earth computation, her sixteenth birthday, Dorothea Mary Strachan Macdonald became a Magnate of the Concilium and was named a Paramount Grand Master in all five metafaculties. Her maiden speech, delivered a couple of weeks later, was brief but moving: a plea that all operant members of the Human Polity renounce forever the use of higher mind-powers as weapons, even in a cause that might be deemed "just," such as self-defense.

There was enthusiastic applause for the young woman's naive idealism, plus a certain amount of trepidation among the Rebel contingent, who feared that Dorothee might become a new and vocal member of Anne Remillard's pestiferous Unity Directorate. But instead the new paramount was quickly named First Deputy Dirigent of Caledonia, which effectively removed her from the forefront of Concilium politics.

Dorothee was both astounded and troubled by her unexpected appointment. She tried to decline the honor, insisting that she was too young and inexperienced for such responsibility, but the Lylmik Supervisors were adamant. The only concession she wrung from them was an agreement to review and evaluate her work critically in two years' time, and remove her from office if she proved incompetent.

When she returned to the planet of her birth, she had a warm reunion with her father Ian, who had recently married Janet Fin-lay. Her nonborn adoptive siblings Ellen Gunn and Hugh Murdoch were overawed at her new position of authority, while the onetime bully Gavin Boyd was scared s.h.i.+tless of her until she a.s.sured him she held no grudge.

Dorothee lived in a simple apartment in Dirigent House in the Caledonian capital, New Glasgow, and spent the first year of her term learning her duties while acting as all-around dogsbody to the aging planetary executive, Graeme Hamilton.

His former First Deputy, Catriona Chisholm, was transferred to the populous cosmop planet Avalon, where she became Deputy to Usha Singh. Although this was technically a promotion for Chisholm, she was furious at being replaced by a raw teenager, even one with paramount faculties. Chisholm had expected to succeed Graeme Hamilton, but there was small chance of that happening now. Calum Sorley, the Scottish planet's Intendant General, was livid at the thought of a youthful idealist "usurping" a position that the radical anti-Unity faction had counted heavily upon. Their scheme for manufacturing illegal CE equipment on Caledonia once Hamilton was out of the way had to be abandoned, with the result that the active phase of the Metapsychic Rebellion was put on hold for nearly a decade, until Satsuma was finally able to produce the mental weaponry.

Hamilton had been Dirigent since 2054, when the Simbiari Proctors.h.i.+p finally ended in the colonies. Before that he had served in the planet's Intendant a.s.sembly for over thirty years, he and his late wife having been among the first settlers. Graeme was a rugged old haggiswalloper who scorned rejuvenation, claiming that he had no time to waste floating in a vat of artificial amniotic fluid when there was work to be done. He knew every nook and cranny of Caledonia, was personally acquainted with almost every first-generation settler, and had tinkered and goosed the Scottish world's economy to an unexpected state of prosperity, considering its paucity of natural resources.

His health had remained excellent until his wife's accidental death in 2064. Then, like a lot of brilliant but careless old farts, he let himself go to pot physically once there was no dedicated spouse in the house to keep an eye on him. He ate wrong and drank wrong and kept the doctors and the genetic engineers at bay declaring he'd redact any little aches and pains that bothered him.

Hamilton was a h.e.l.l of a coercer but a bush-league redactor. By the time Dorothee came to Callie in 2073 he was seventy-nine years old. He had been fitted with a bionic heart, liver, and kidneys, and also suffered from a maverick strain of chronic lymphocytic leukemia that defied treatment. He had been dying for at least two years and was fated to hang on for another four.

There was nothing whatsoever wrong with his wits.

He recognized at once that Dorothee was the successor he had been waiting for-a young woman endowed with a full bag of extraordinary mental talents who was loyal to the Milieu and fiercely devoted to Caledonia itself. Unlike Catriona Chisholm, she was ready to put the welfare of her planet and its inhabitants above galactic politics. Her extreme youth made her malleable and eager for Hamilton's counsel; her energy and intelligence provided him with fresh insight and made him feel confident that when he cashed in his chips, he'd be leaving Callie in the best possible hands.

No wonder the two of them got on together like a house afire.

Ideally, the office of Dirigent involves...o...b..dsmans.h.i.+p, fiscal oversight, the expediting of communication between the citizens and their government, and liaison between the Intendant a.s.sembly of the planet and the Milieu. The Dirigent has a large staff of a.s.sistants, but most of them report directly to the top, so that the chief executive and First Deputy are able to keep their fingers on the planetary pulse at all times. Although the Dirigent and the deputy are both empowered to use coercion, deep-probing, and the other metapsychic powers in the course of official investigations, good old horse sense is apt to prove a more effective tool in the long run.

The Dirigent's deputy is expected to act as the boss's sampler of public opinion, troubleshooter, and inspector general. Sophisticated Catriona Chisholm had spent most of her time in the capital city; but Dorothee was almost compulsively on the move, interviewing citizens in the frontier regions of the planet as well as the centers of commerce and culture.

n.o.body knew where she and her souped-up Lotus egg would turn up next. One week she'd be prowling the farmsteads of Argyll, the next she might be visiting pearlfishers in Strathbogie, buckyball mines in darkest Caithness, or checking out tourism in the sportfis.h.i.+ng resorts of Cairngorm.

Her paramount status made her an object of pride to the operant Callie citizenry; but the normals didn't really give a hoot about her awesome mindpowers. It was her una.s.suming manner, intelligence, and genuine interest in their lives that won the hearts of those crusty kiltie hinterlanders. They called her the "Dirigent La.s.sie" and accorded her a fondness that the aloof Chisholm had never enjoyed.

Not everyone thought Dorothee was a superstar, however. Certain Caledonian a.s.sembly bureaucrats with private agendas, professional sharpsters, sleazy corner-cutters, and thimblerigging entrepreneurs came to view her as a holy terror. She'd come poking around some trouble spot, winsome and innocent-seeming, and when the lowlives were confident they'd pulled the wool over her young eyes-whammo! Wyatt Earp rides into Dodge City disguised as a girl in a tartan culotte. She could read the minds of flimflam artists like they had windows in their skulls, and she was merciless with the exploiters and environmental spoilers who always seem to infest the planetary frontiers.

During her four years as Graeme Hamilton's deputy, she played an important part in helping her world to achieve its long-sought goal of a positive balance of payments. The time finally came when the old Dirigent saw his beloved Scottish planet no longer dependent upon Milieu subsidies. Thanks to him and his tireless young deputy, Caledonia proudly took its place among the dozen or so ethnic worlds in the Human Polity that were prosperous and financially secure.

Dorothee remained dubious about her own performance, however, suspecting-perhaps correctly-that the citizenry viewed her more as a beloved mascot than as a competent executive. She continued to beg the Lylmik to demote or remove her, feeling that she had failed to measure up to her high office. Some of her insecurity was due to Calum Sorley and his Rebel allies, who waged a subtle and persistent campaign designed to belittle and discredit her. But even aside from this subversion, the nagging feeling persisted in her heart that she was only a jumped-up prodigy who had been thrust into high office through an exotic whim. No rea.s.surances by Graeme Hamilton or any other close a.s.sociates in Dirigent House could convince her otherwise.

Much later, Dorothee confessed to me that each morning during those early years, when she looked at herself in the mirror and combed her hair, she felt a pang of anxiety and disbelief. The person looking back at her from the gla.s.s was a freak and a fraud. This plain-faced, very small, very young woman did not deserve to be Deputy Dirigent and could not possibly command the true respect of the planetary populace. She was only a celebrity, not a genuine leader. The Lylmik had made a terrible mistake, and one day she would surely be exposed as the incompetent she felt herself to be. Each morning and night she prayed for deliverance from a situation she felt was hopeless.

But during her working days, she continued to do the very best she could.

I did not see Dorothee again until 2076, three years into her term as deputy, when she returned to Earth for the marriage of her brother. News about her doings came to me mostly from my old drinking buddy Kyle Macdonald, who shared many an ethanol-tinted evening with me in my favorite Hanover oasis, the Sap Bucket Tavern, just about the only bar in town that actively discouraged college students.

It was there that Kyle converted me to the Rebel cause. Not that I wasn't already tilting toward sedition on my own, what with Sevvy and Adrien's s.h.i.+ning example to poison my willing mind. Not even Jack's devotion to the Milieu and keen advocacy of Unity was able to overcome my own long-standing sense of unease at the prospect of humanity getting into some sort of permanent mind-meld with the exotic races. The Poltroyans were fine and dandy, regular folks if you could forget their purple skin, ruby eyes, and painted little bald heads. But who would seriously want to share mental intimacy with a gang of green-dripping, technocratic crepehangers like the Simbiari? Or be mind-buddies with the nightmarish Krondaku? The Gi were a hoot at parties, but they were alarmingly overs.e.xed and so sensitive they were known to drop dead just to make an aesthetic statement. The Lylmik were probably the scariest of all, and I had my own Family Ghost to prove it.

Fortunately, le Fantome Familier had left me in peace during most of the years since Jack's birth. But I knew It was still out there, ready to bedevil me again when I least expected it.

So I felt right at home when Kyle Macdonald gradually introduced me into the local Rebel sewing circle. The activities of the Hanover Disunity Club at that time weren't especially exciting, concentrating as they did upon refuting the propaganda of the Panpolity Directorate and subverting operant Dartmouth students. Kyle's wickedly anti-Milieu fantasy satires enjoyed a wide readers.h.i.+p throughout the Human Polity and he was once again rolling in money. Even his pa.s.sage into low-grade operancy didn't harm his popularity among the xenophobic normals, who would eventually become cannon fodder in the Metapsychic Rebellion.

One prime objective continued to elude the Rebel leaders.h.i.+p: they still hadn't managed to net Marc! Believe it or not, I was given the a.s.signment of brainwas.h.i.+ng my paramount great-grandnephew and converting him to the cause. Laughable in excelsis, you'll agree, but at that time no one else among the insurgents had ready access to him. I at least visited Marc now and then in his Pacific Northwest home, and even joined him on fis.h.i.+ng excursions to Belize, Christmas Island, the Yakima River, and even the Irish planet. I did my insidious best to put across the Rebel party line when we were together; but Marc, while sympathetic to anti-Unity philosophy, seemed quite uninterested in doing anything about it.

He mocked my fellow conspirators (especially the magnates) as a bunch of c.o.c.ktail-party mutineers with no viable alternative to the Milieu they were so anxious to escape. Anyone possessing higher mindpowers, said he, needed to be part of a highly structured, altruistic civilization; h.o.m.o superior was too dangerous to be let loose in the kind of old-fas.h.i.+oned laissez-faire society the Rebels advocated.

Yes, I recognize the irony here! But Marc would remain a staunch supporter of the Milieu for years-until his own precious ox got gored, whereupon he revised the Rebel manifesto and a.s.sumed leaders.h.i.+p of the movement himself.

Kenneth Macdonald and Luc Remillard were married in the same fieldstone church where Denis and Lucille had wed eighty-one years earlier. Anne officiated, Dorothee was maid of honor, and Catherine, the boss and professional colleague of both young metapsychologists, served as best woman. There was a reception at the Hanover Inn following the ceremony, and it was there that Dorothee and I managed to renew our friends.h.i.+p after its long hiatus.

"It's too bad Ian couldn't make it," I said, having danced her onto the hotel terrace away from the noisier celebrators. We found an empty wrought iron table with four chairs in a corner under an ornamental tree and took possession. It was June and the weather was perfect. A waitron came along with sloe gin fizzes and made it even better.

"Dad still believes the farm can't function without him," she said. "And he's an active Intendant a.s.sociate for Beinn Bhiorach as well."

Although she hadn't grown a cent since I'd seen her last, she was most definitely a woman now at nineteen, poised and mature and still very private behind that grave little face that never betrayed what she was thinking. She wore a trouser suit of cherry-colored linen and a white blouse with a froth of lace at the wrists. Around her neck on a gold chain hung the little diamond-mask talisman.

"Do you get to spend much time with Ian yourself?" I asked.

"Not as much as I'd like." She pushed back a lock of straight brown hair that the breeze had disarranged. "I did break the news to him about Ken and Luc. Dad was slightly ... disconcerted. His att.i.tudes on marriage are still rather old-fas.h.i.+oned, like a lot of people who live on outlying ethnic worlds. But he came around in time and even sent wedding rings of Callie gold inset with black diamonds from the local mine."

"The stones didn't look black to me," I remarked in surprise.

"No, they're really brilliant gray. Lovely things. I suppose the Callie diamond merchants think black sounds s.e.xier. Our mines produce diamonds in all kinds of odd colors, but black is the rarest. Our pearls are tinted, too. Even the trees on the planet come in outlandish tartan colors. Caledonia's a wonderful place. I want you to come and visit soon, Uncle Rogi. The Deputy Dirigent gets a quota of free transport tickets as an official perk and I'll send you one."

"I'd like that. How's the fis.h.i.+ng?"

"Fantastic!" She actually smiled. "Angling is one of our prime tourist attractions. We have genuine Scottish salmon, of course, but the real prizes are some naturalized blue Siberian trout as long as your leg planted years ago on Clyde by a chap named Vladimir Ilyich MacNaughton."

"Send three tickets," I chortled, "and I'll bring Marc and Jack."

"If you like." She looked away and the smile disappeared.

"Batege!" I exploded. "Are you still on the outs with Jack after all these years?"

"Certainly not." She took a prim little sip of fizz and gazed out at the college green across the street. Young women her own age, college students dressed in Levi's and T-s.h.i.+rts and bright cotton s.h.i.+fts, were lounging about on the gra.s.s as carefree as meadowlarks. I wondered if Dorothee ever took time off to birdwatch anymore-or even to relax.

"Director Jon Remillard and I conferred at the last Concilium session about some of Callie's geophysical problems," she went on matter-of-factly.

"Anything really serious?"

"We hope not. The studies have only just begun, and they'll take over a year. Human scientists are conducting them this time rather than the Krondaku, who did the original survey thousands of years ago."

"Another one of their f.u.c.k-ups like Satsuma and Okanagon?"

"Evidently," she said. "Dirigent Hamilton has been after the Milieu to do a complete new lithospheric evaluation for ages. Work finally began in earnest about five Earth months ago."

"After you put the arm on Jack," I remarked.

She nodded uncomfortably.

"Speak of the devil," I muttered.

Two men, one towering and dark, the other medium in height and so unexceptional that he almost faded into the woodwork, had come out onto the inn terrace. They were looking about in that offhanded operant way that invariably means you are the target of subliminal attention and had better acknowledge the overture unless you have a d.a.m.ned good reason not to.

I waved and grinned, Dorothee produced a dutiful social smile, and the two Remillard brothers ambled over carrying drinks and little plates of dessert.

"May we join you?" Marc inquired, looking dapper as the devil in a Brummelesque outfit with a dark green tailcoat, fawn breeches, s.h.i.+ny boots, and a white stock. Jack wore the only brown nebulin suit I've ever seen in my life. The glittery fabric actually looked drab on him.

"Certainly." Dorothee was gracious. "Please sit down."

Jack took the place next to her and made small talk about the lovely wedding and the happy couple. Dorothee produced similar pleasantries and then remarked that his goodie looked delicious.

"It's Almond Mademoiselle wedding cake," he said eagerly. "Please share it with me."

The fork, the plate, and the cake all fissioned like mutant amoebae, yielding half-sized replicas of the originals. Marc and I rolled our eyes and heroically refrained from snide utterances, but Dorothee might have been young Queen Victoria confronted with a flower-bearing guttersnipe.

"How very kind of you," she murmured. She began to eat, the very paragon of politesse.

"Dorothee was just telling me about the great sportfis.h.i.+ng on Caledonia," said I.

"Cosmic cla.s.s, so I've heard," said Marc. "I've always meant to give it a whirl, but the new E18 project at CEREM seems to be taking all my time."

"A new cerebroenergetic application?" Dorothee inquired.

Marc nodded. "We'll crank the enhancement of innate creativity up to nearly three hundred percent if I can get the bugs out of this model."

"Why, that's amazing!" She hesitated momentarily before continuing. "I wonder if your brother has mentioned the spot of seismic bother we've been experiencing on Caledonia? If your organization should ever need to field-test your new equipment in a geophysical application, we'd give you a grand Scottish welcome ... and take you fis.h.i.+ng besides."

"The offer sounds irresistible," Marc agreed, smiling his charming asymmetrical smile.

"Mind if I tag along?" Jack asked diffidently.

"You'd both be welcome, of course," she said. "Shall I keep you posted on the progress of the new survey?"

"Oh, CEREM's been keeping an eye on you ever since the crustal studies began," Jack said, with bland innocence.

"Then you must know," she said a bit more stiffly, "that we may have reason for grave concern. Within the last three years, deep-seated seismic activity has increased throughout the entire northern hemisphere, especially in the vicinity of the Clyde continent. We've even had a kimberlite diatreme for the first time in thirty thousand orbits. Fortunately, the pipe was less than a meter wide and the eruption took place in an uninhabited region."

"What's a diatreme?" I asked.

"A cold eruption of gas," Jack said, "usually carbon dioxide or water vapor. The phenomenon undoubtedly accounts for the abundant diamonds of Caledonia. The crystals form at great depths beneath ancient cratonic landma.s.ses and are blasted to the surface when diatrematic activity forms a kimberlite pipe. It's fascinating-"

"Unless it takes place in the midst of a densely populated area," Dorothee broke in gently. "But we're not so much concerned with the diamonds as we are with a possible threat to cratonic stability. A craton is a very ancient chunk of crust that forms the nucleus of a continent. On Earth, each continent is made up of a number of cratons. Caledonia has nineteen small continents with a single craton for each. We've left the seven most seismically active landma.s.ses uncolonized. The twelve populated ones were supposed to have cratons that stabilized aeons ago, but as you may know, doubts have been cast on the validity of the original Krondak survey."

"A charitable way to put it," Marc murmured.

"We're not sure yet," Dorothee continued, "but there may be a sizable reservoir of magma with an extremely high volatile content just below the lithospheric mantle of Clyde's craton. If signs of imminent instability turn up in the new study, then CE modification of the reservoir contents could be critically important."

"Sounds challenging," Jack said. "Do you have many trained CE ops with grandmastercla.s.s creativity who could work on geozap planning with Marc's CEREM people?"

"We have three," she said.

Jack was taken aback. "That sounds like a considerable challenge!"

"Forty-two Caledonian grandmaster geophysicists are undergoing training on Satsuma," Dorothee said, "but it will be some years before they're all fully certified for cerebroenergetic enhancement. Dirigent Hamilton is adamant about safety considerations."

"So am I," Marc said tersely.

"My brother and I have developed some interesting new metaconcert programs for multiple grandmaster heads," Jack said, "but we don't usually partic.i.p.ate personally in CEREM geophysical projects these days."

"Oh." Dorothee was plainly disappointed. "You see, it would be very difficult to get additional experienced grandmastercla.s.s creators to come in to Caledonia from other worlds. Those planets that have CE operators trained in geophysical creativity paid a fortune and waited a long time to get them certified. They're understandably anxious to keep the workers at home, where there tend to be more projects than they can handle. That's why I thought-that is, I hoped-that you two might consider working with our Caledonian operators in order to test your new equipment."

Jack shook his head with real regret. "Frankly, tacking just three grandmasters onto my own metaconcerted input and Marc's would hardly produce an appropriate configuration."

I let loose a derisive guffaw. "Be like hitching a trio of mice alongside a pair of Clydesdales!" But I shut my fool mouth and mentally kicked myself when I saw the look of dismay on the poor girl's face. It vanished immediately, however, and she appeared as composed as ever.

"I see," she said. "I apologize for the misunderstanding." She pushed back her chair and prepared to leave. We all politely climbed to our feet. "Whether or not you choose to test your new equipment on Caledonia," she said to Marc, "it would make me very happy to welcome you and Jack and Uncle Rogi for the fis.h.i.+ng. Now you must excuse me. I promised dances to Ken and Luc before I left."

She nodded pleasantly at each of us and went back to the ballroom.

"Nice going," Marc said to me, with heavy irony.

"Aw s.h.i.+t," I muttered wretchedly. "I didn't mean to make fun of her d.i.n.ky little CE corps."

Jack said, "Three GMs on their own wouldn't have a prayer of defusing a deep-seated high-pressure magma reservoir-even using CEREM's new E18 brain-booster." He lifted his inhuman eyes to his older brother. "Would they?"

"No," said Marc. "I thought the problem on Caledonia was typical subduction-zone volcanism, ten to fifty kloms deep. If Caledonia's mantle and crust are nearly terrestrial, then a subcratonic reservoir of the type she spoke of would likely lie one-thirty to two hundred kilometers below the surface. Deep-drillers can descend that far, but getting the metacreative impulse focused and shaped under those conditions of heat and pressure would be a real b.i.t.c.h. It may not be feasible under any circ.u.mstances, and it would certainly be b.l.o.o.d.y dangerous."

"But you and I might be able to pull it off using the new hats." Jack's tone was almost pleading.

"Creative CE is finally gaining acceptance with the Milieu conservatives," Marc said severely. "A fiasco now would put us back to square one ... or worse."

"But if a big subcratonic reservoir blows, it could be a major disaster for the affected planet."

"Dammit, Jack, I'm not touching this thing with a barge pole! I almost barbecued myself once before doing experimental geozap CE with you. Pardon me if I can't get all worked up at the notion of a fresh try! If the boil on Caledonia pops, they'll just have to evacuate the region and pick up the pieces."

"Poor Dorothee," I said.

"Poor CEREM," Marc retorted, "if I get myself killed or tangled in a no-win mess because Bodiless Bozo, here, thinks he's in love."

I gaped at Jack. The paramount naked brain and little Diamond Mask? The absurd contingency had never entered my mind.

"You know, Marc," Jack said in a friendly fas.h.i.+on, "sometimes you're really a primo p.r.i.c.k."