Read Online Jack the Bodiless (Galactic Milieu Trilogy) by Julian May - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Julian May
Ads: Link
“There’s nothing wrong, is there?” she asked.
“Nothing you want to worry about. Just … personal stuff.”
“And here I am keeping you, when you want to talk things over with your Uncle Rogi. Well, go right on back to his lair. You’ll probably find him up to his neck in buyer want-lists. He’ll be happy to have a visitor.”
She returned to her own work, her subliminal thoughts radiating unqualified love for her own recalcitrant offspring and tolerant goodwill toward Alexis’s outré best friend. Perdita Manion did not know that most of her mind was as transparent as glass to Marc’s scrutiny. She thought: Thank God Alexis is only an ordinary genius. Since Lindsay’s death he’s been a handful … but what if I’d had to raise a child like Marc? The poor boy!
Marc mind-smiled a salute to her kind heart, ignoring the implication of her other thoughts. Like so many other low-level operants, Perdita had no notion at all of the way higher minds like his functioned; she persisted in judging the personality integration of masterclass persons according to her own, nearly “normal,” standards. No wonder she failed to understand Alex—much less
him
.
Marc made his way through the close-standing shelves of old-fashioned paged books—fantasy titles, science fiction, and horror novels—that were the stock-in-trade of his great-granduncle. The business catered exclusively to collectors, selling mostly by mail order. The only modern liquid-crystal plaque-books in The Eloquent Page were reference volumes or scholarly studies of the good old stuff.
The bookshop took up the corner premises in the venerable Gates House building on Main Street and had been a landmark in Hanover since before the Great Intervention. Its proprietor, who was called Uncle Rogi by most of the town as well as by the numerous members of the Remillard clan, lived in an apartment on the third floor. Suites of professional offices took up the second floor, and the building also housed a coffee shop, and an insurance office in the annex out back, where there was a garage that Rogi used for his personal groundcar. Marc and his two younger sisters Marie and Madeleine and kid brother Luc had practically grown up in the bookshop, as had their father Paul and their six paternal uncles and aunts before them. The shop was arefuge from the overstimulating ambiance of the Remillard family home just around the corner and down the block, where the elite of Earth’s metapsychic operant community, as well as members of the nonhuman races of the Galactic Milieu, were apt to drop in without ceremony and stay for days on end.
A shaggy gray animal strolled out from among the bookshelves and eyed Marc with benignant tolerance.
“Miaow.”
Greeting FriendofMaster
.
Hey. Hello yourself cat!
Food?
Don’t you ever think of anything else fatso?
The boy bent to scratch behind the ears of Rogi’s big Maine Coon cat, Marcel LaPlume. The animal stretched his ten-kilo body and yawned, then gathered his muscles to spring as Marc reached for the doorknob of the back room where Rogi usually worked. The door opened and Marcel streaked inside, muttering telepathic feline complaints against masters who shut out their beloved pets. The back room was sultry with summer heat in spite of the laboring of the antique air conditioner in the window. The unmistakable scent of fine bourbon whiskey mingled with the musty smell of preserved pulp paper. Uncle Rogi, dressed in his usual summertime costume of faded Levi’s and a Bean seersucker shirt, was asleep in his ratty old leather-covered recliner-rocker. A half-empty bottle of Wild Turkey and a ham-and-cheese sandwich with two bites out of it sat in front of him in the midst of a pile of videograms and tattered printouts.
The cat Marcel seemed to levitate onto the desk, landing his great bulk without disturbing a single item. He grabbed the sandwich, and his gray-green eyes regarded Marc with sly mockery before he took
“Nothing you want to worry about. Just … personal stuff.”
“And here I am keeping you, when you want to talk things over with your Uncle Rogi. Well, go right on back to his lair. You’ll probably find him up to his neck in buyer want-lists. He’ll be happy to have a visitor.”
She returned to her own work, her subliminal thoughts radiating unqualified love for her own recalcitrant offspring and tolerant goodwill toward Alexis’s outré best friend. Perdita Manion did not know that most of her mind was as transparent as glass to Marc’s scrutiny. She thought: Thank God Alexis is only an ordinary genius. Since Lindsay’s death he’s been a handful … but what if I’d had to raise a child like Marc? The poor boy!
Marc mind-smiled a salute to her kind heart, ignoring the implication of her other thoughts. Like so many other low-level operants, Perdita had no notion at all of the way higher minds like his functioned; she persisted in judging the personality integration of masterclass persons according to her own, nearly “normal,” standards. No wonder she failed to understand Alex—much less
him
.
Marc made his way through the close-standing shelves of old-fashioned paged books—fantasy titles, science fiction, and horror novels—that were the stock-in-trade of his great-granduncle. The business catered exclusively to collectors, selling mostly by mail order. The only modern liquid-crystal plaque-books in The Eloquent Page were reference volumes or scholarly studies of the good old stuff.
The bookshop took up the corner premises in the venerable Gates House building on Main Street and had been a landmark in Hanover since before the Great Intervention. Its proprietor, who was called Uncle Rogi by most of the town as well as by the numerous members of the Remillard clan, lived in an apartment on the third floor. Suites of professional offices took up the second floor, and the building also housed a coffee shop, and an insurance office in the annex out back, where there was a garage that Rogi used for his personal groundcar. Marc and his two younger sisters Marie and Madeleine and kid brother Luc had practically grown up in the bookshop, as had their father Paul and their six paternal uncles and aunts before them. The shop was arefuge from the overstimulating ambiance of the Remillard family home just around the corner and down the block, where the elite of Earth’s metapsychic operant community, as well as members of the nonhuman races of the Galactic Milieu, were apt to drop in without ceremony and stay for days on end.
A shaggy gray animal strolled out from among the bookshelves and eyed Marc with benignant tolerance.
“Miaow.”
Greeting FriendofMaster
.
Hey. Hello yourself cat!
Food?
Don’t you ever think of anything else fatso?
The boy bent to scratch behind the ears of Rogi’s big Maine Coon cat, Marcel LaPlume. The animal stretched his ten-kilo body and yawned, then gathered his muscles to spring as Marc reached for the doorknob of the back room where Rogi usually worked. The door opened and Marcel streaked inside, muttering telepathic feline complaints against masters who shut out their beloved pets. The back room was sultry with summer heat in spite of the laboring of the antique air conditioner in the window. The unmistakable scent of fine bourbon whiskey mingled with the musty smell of preserved pulp paper. Uncle Rogi, dressed in his usual summertime costume of faded Levi’s and a Bean seersucker shirt, was asleep in his ratty old leather-covered recliner-rocker. A half-empty bottle of Wild Turkey and a ham-and-cheese sandwich with two bites out of it sat in front of him in the midst of a pile of videograms and tattered printouts.
The cat Marcel seemed to levitate onto the desk, landing his great bulk without disturbing a single item. He grabbed the sandwich, and his gray-green eyes regarded Marc with sly mockery before he took
Similar Books
