Read Online Jack the Bodiless (Galactic Milieu Trilogy) by Julian May - Free Book Online
Authors: Julian May
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thought-mode is like nothing I’ve ever experienced before, human or exotic. It’srather frightening until you get used to it. At least it was for me! Probe deep. Be open for something quite different. And be gentle, because he feels he must hide, sometimes, like a little frightened animal …”
Marc knelt beside Teresa, placed both hands on his mother’s abdomen, and closed his eyes. Transfixed, he hardly seemed to breathe for many minutes. Finally he gave a low, inarticulate cry. He opened his eyes and regarded his mother with mingled elation and fear.
“It’s all right,” Teresa said, smiling. “He’s really very happy to meet you. And—yes. It seems that he was expecting you after all.”
4
HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE, EARTH 24 AUGUST 2051
T HE ANTIQUE BELL ON THE FRONT DOOR OF T HE E LOQUENT Page tinkled, and the teenaged boy came inside. Even before she looked up from her computer inventory check, Perdita Manion was aware that a metapsychic operant of exceptional stature had come into the bookshop. The mind-signature was not only unreadable; it was encrypted to the point of nonexistence. It could belong to only one person.
She smiled a greeting both with her lips and with her mind. “Well, hello, Marc! So you’re back home in time to enjoy the last days of this beautiful New Hampshire summer, are you? I thought you were going to be off-world until the start of the Dartmouth fall term.”
“The undergraduate seminar on psychocreative ambivalence at the Okanagon Institute ended earlier than I expected. The Simbiari prof came down with some kind of exotic allergy and couldn’t stop dripping green.”
“Good heavens!”
“And then there was the big news about the selection of the first human Magnates of the Concilium. Anybody named Remillard was fair game for the local media. So I caught the next ship for Earth.”
“But it was your first star trip all alone. Didn’t you want to stay on and explore for a bit? Okanagon is such a gorgeous world. All those flowering trees and the singing fire-moths in the jungle gardens … Lindsay and I seriously considered settling there in 2020, when the first colonial planets were opened.”
Marc’s response was edgy and formal. “The planet is certainly very attractive physically, but I found it mentally unsettling. It has such a large cosmopolitan population of nonoperants. Their excessively mercantile mind-set has generated a very anharmonic planetary aura.”
“Oh.”
“I suppose I’m oversensitive. But … there’s no place like home.”
“Well, of course.” Perdita Manion offered him maternal sympathy well flavored with humor. Masterclass adolescents had such a difficult time coping, poor things! The brighter they were, the harder it was for them to adapt when they were first cut loose from the hothouse of operant training they had known since early childhood and were forced to swim in the perverse mainstream of “normal” humanity. Her own brilliant son, Alexis, who like Marc had recently graduated from Brebeuf Academy, was a sore trial himself these days—an idealistic champion of the Altruism Ethic one moment and a power-tripping little fascist the next, in spite of the best efforts of the school’s operant Jesuit preceptors. It was high time that both boys were off to college, where their psychosocial adjustment to nonoperant people and to members of the five exotic races would be even more closely monitored than their academic progress.
Perdita said, “Alexis will be very glad to see you, Marc. He and Boom-Boom Laroche and Pete Dalembert are planning a fishing trip to Maine next week. I know they’ll want you to go along. That might help calm your nerves.”
“I’ll catch Alex later, Miz Manion—but I’m afraid I may be too tied up with other business to go on the trip.”
Marc spoke casually; but for the briefest instant, Perdita caught a hint of anxiety, flashing involuntarily from theexpertly shielded young mind.
Marc knelt beside Teresa, placed both hands on his mother’s abdomen, and closed his eyes. Transfixed, he hardly seemed to breathe for many minutes. Finally he gave a low, inarticulate cry. He opened his eyes and regarded his mother with mingled elation and fear.
“It’s all right,” Teresa said, smiling. “He’s really very happy to meet you. And—yes. It seems that he was expecting you after all.”
4
HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE, EARTH 24 AUGUST 2051
T HE ANTIQUE BELL ON THE FRONT DOOR OF T HE E LOQUENT Page tinkled, and the teenaged boy came inside. Even before she looked up from her computer inventory check, Perdita Manion was aware that a metapsychic operant of exceptional stature had come into the bookshop. The mind-signature was not only unreadable; it was encrypted to the point of nonexistence. It could belong to only one person.
She smiled a greeting both with her lips and with her mind. “Well, hello, Marc! So you’re back home in time to enjoy the last days of this beautiful New Hampshire summer, are you? I thought you were going to be off-world until the start of the Dartmouth fall term.”
“The undergraduate seminar on psychocreative ambivalence at the Okanagon Institute ended earlier than I expected. The Simbiari prof came down with some kind of exotic allergy and couldn’t stop dripping green.”
“Good heavens!”
“And then there was the big news about the selection of the first human Magnates of the Concilium. Anybody named Remillard was fair game for the local media. So I caught the next ship for Earth.”
“But it was your first star trip all alone. Didn’t you want to stay on and explore for a bit? Okanagon is such a gorgeous world. All those flowering trees and the singing fire-moths in the jungle gardens … Lindsay and I seriously considered settling there in 2020, when the first colonial planets were opened.”
Marc’s response was edgy and formal. “The planet is certainly very attractive physically, but I found it mentally unsettling. It has such a large cosmopolitan population of nonoperants. Their excessively mercantile mind-set has generated a very anharmonic planetary aura.”
“Oh.”
“I suppose I’m oversensitive. But … there’s no place like home.”
“Well, of course.” Perdita Manion offered him maternal sympathy well flavored with humor. Masterclass adolescents had such a difficult time coping, poor things! The brighter they were, the harder it was for them to adapt when they were first cut loose from the hothouse of operant training they had known since early childhood and were forced to swim in the perverse mainstream of “normal” humanity. Her own brilliant son, Alexis, who like Marc had recently graduated from Brebeuf Academy, was a sore trial himself these days—an idealistic champion of the Altruism Ethic one moment and a power-tripping little fascist the next, in spite of the best efforts of the school’s operant Jesuit preceptors. It was high time that both boys were off to college, where their psychosocial adjustment to nonoperant people and to members of the five exotic races would be even more closely monitored than their academic progress.
Perdita said, “Alexis will be very glad to see you, Marc. He and Boom-Boom Laroche and Pete Dalembert are planning a fishing trip to Maine next week. I know they’ll want you to go along. That might help calm your nerves.”
“I’ll catch Alex later, Miz Manion—but I’m afraid I may be too tied up with other business to go on the trip.”
Marc spoke casually; but for the briefest instant, Perdita caught a hint of anxiety, flashing involuntarily from theexpertly shielded young mind.
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