"May, Julian - Galactic Milieu 3 - Magnificat" - читать интересную книгу автора (May Julian)

We'd reached the big terrace behind the chairs, just outside the door of the Roosevelt Parlor. Guests were already leaving their seats and surging toward us. Lucille bustled about trying to organize a receiving line, an effort that wasn't helped at all by Ian continuing to play the bagpipes at a lusty fortissimo. The bride and groom were right in front of him, doing some kind of stately Scottish minuet while Janet and Kyle and Masha and Davy MacGregor and a bunch of others clapped in rhythm. Marc was nearly ten meters away from me, still encumbered with his recession partner, Ellen Gunn. The young maid of honor clutched his arm in a steely grip and gazed up at him in adoration. Having the Human Polity's most eligible bachelor in hand, even momentarily, she was not about to give him up meekly.
My one chance had come. I said to Malama, "I've got to have a quick word with Jack and Diamond."
In a trice I seized the dancing newlyweds by their free hands. While Lucille spluttered furiously and the pipes skirled, I waltzed the couple back inside the hotel and slammed and locked the double doors of the parlor. They laughed and thought it was some kind of prank until they saw my face. Then both of them sobered.
Dorothщe said anxiously, "Uncle Rogi, what is it?"
I sagged into a handy chair. People were pounding on the doors, yoo-hooing and laughing and calling out arch witticisms.
"I wish there was another way to do this," I said, "but there isn't. Read my mind, for God's sake! As quick as you can. Then laissez le foutu bon temps rouler."
With that I cancelled my mindscreen and opened the relevant thoughts about Fury's identity to them.

The sense of liberation I felt after they'd drained me was overwhelming. Leaving the poor lovers stunned and incredulous (the bashing on the outer door and yelling was approaching riotous dimensions), I fled into the corridor of the hotel's lower level, intent on summoning an egg-limo and getting the hell out of there. They could send me my piece of wedding cake via UPS.
As luck would have it, I passed the open entry of the Cave Lounge on my way to the main staircase. Given my state of imminent mental collapse, it was a dim and appealing sanctuary and I said to myself: "Why the hell not?" I'd survived the wedding ordeal and successfully passed on the crucial intelligence to Ti-Jean and Dorothщe. Who was now more deserving of an altered mood than moi?
I lurched inside, draped myself over a barstool, and took off my slightly mashed top hat. The place seemed deserted. "Hello?" I croaked. "Are you open?"
From somewhere in back a soothing voice replied, "I'll be right there, sir."
It was very dark in the bar and almost quiet. The bridal couple had evidently unlocked the door of the parlor and escaped, and the tumult had subsided. The orchestra was playing "In a Sentimental Mood." I heaved a great sigh, ran a shaky hand through my sweaty silver curls, and let my eyes close. Safe! I'd told the great secret and now the Dynasty would have to take responsibility for the fates of Denis and Anne. The matter was out of my hands.
"What will you have, sir?" Still bemused, I heard the disembodied voice of the barkeep.
"Wild Turkey. Double. Straight up."
"Right away."
I felt myself drifting away on a tide of overwhelming release. No more worry, no more fear. The sensation was almost as delightful as the terminal excorporeal excursion I'd experienced while drowning. Limp as a dishrag, I rested my eyes, breathed deeply, and enjoyed Duke Ellington's music.
I heard the faint sound of a glass being set down before me. "Was it a nice ceremony, sir?"
I cracked an eyelid wide enough to let me home in on the 101-proof elixir of life. "Peachy. Just peachy." Imbibo, ergo sum!
The bartender went away, his footsteps tapping on the stone flags of the floor. I heard him moving some chairs around over by the entrance to the lounge. Then the sound of music cut off abruptly and it got darker. He'd closed the doors. I straightened, finally back among the living, and turned toward him to ask for a refill.
Parnell Remillard was standing there.
"I'm in a lot of trouble because of you, Uncle Rogi," he said casually. "But before I get the hell out of here I figure I might as well even the score. Just for my own personal satisfaction."
I tried to yell and my vocal cords came unstrung. I tried to far-speak a warning to Marc, but the grim smile on the Hydra's face told me that my telepathic ability had also been coercively squelched.
He took a single step toward me, still disguised in his waitron's outfit. His eyes were dead. And so, I realized in a shocked instant, was he. Whatever had once been human in Adrien and Cheri's lost son had died long ago, surrendered to his almighty god and controller, Fury. Parnell's mind was self-aware, the vital lattices still animated his body, and his aura burned bloody crimson; but he was a dead man by some awful choice of his own. He had died even before he was born.
I slid off the barstool. He was less than three meters away, poised momentarily to enjoy my terror.
"No metacreative shit this time, old man," he said in a friendly fashion. "Too bad I can't drain your lifeforce properly, but I'll give you a few good lessons in pain before I break your neck with my bare hands. They'll find your drunken bod at the foot of the lobby stairs. A tragic accident! And so inconsiderate of the old lush to spoil the wedding reception."
I squeezed my eyes shut and tuned the Hydra out. There was only one thing that might save me now, and it would require every bit of concentration I could muster.
As a young man, I'd experimented with yogic exercises called pranic spirals. The inspiral was supposed to help concentrate the mind's creativity, and the outspiral... did the opposite. I'd only half believed in the archaic discipline then, as I'd only half believed in the entire concept of metapsychic power; but the out-spiral thing had twice saved my bacon, surprising the hell out of me.
Perhaps there was a chance I could surprise Parni, too.
I am not normally operant in creativity. But every normal human being possesses a considerable latent store of the metafaculty, and I prayed I could extract enough energy from my mind and body to defend myself against the Hydra. With my eyes still tightly shut I lifted my arms and spread my feet, assuming the posture I'd called Leonardo's X-Man.
Parni let out a coarse guffaw. "You trying to surrender or something? Too late for that, asshole!"
Ignoring him, I summoned my body's creative power, bending the vital lattices pervading me, squeezing them like a sponge until the essential lifeforce began to pool and glow golden-hot in the region of my heart, my center. I urged that energy clot into motion, making it trace a flat spiral through the middle of my body--first downward, curving through my solar plexus, then back up to my trachea and the thymal remnant. I opened my eyes. A swelling radiance illuminated the dark room--not Parnell's bloody aura but a new clear amber light moving inside my thorax. I had become as transparent as glass, a kind of human lantern.
The Hydra froze in its tracks, dead eyes wide, unbelieving.
I made the golden comet of life-energy accelerate in its spiral path. It dove downward to my spleen, traversed the suprarenals, left my body for an instant, and then swung back through the thyroid gland in my throat.
"What the fuck?"
I barely heard Parnell's astonished shout. Every bit of my willpower was focused on keeping that shining ball of gold within its controlled outspiral. It illuminated the root chakra at my tail-bone and grew, soaring up in an ever-expanding blaze to my thalamus, dazzling my eyes, racing faster and faster, touching the left elbow of my upraised arm, the left knee and the right, my right elbow, the crown of my head, left hand, left foot, right foot--
Yes, Hydra, it's for you. A part of my life.
As the golden ball of energy spiraled into my right hand I lowered my arm and pointed my finger straight at Parnell Remillard's distorted face. Every nerve in my body seemed to discharge in an orgasmic explosion that momentarily stunned me witless and left me blind.
[IMAGE: Transparent skull sunlit from within jaws wide before dissolving jewel bones in centripetal whorl crumble chiming golden corona devouring red flameball fading ...fading to white ash.]
I felt myself tumbling down to the flagstones, meeting them so softly and painlessly that I might have been a scarecrow stuffed with feathers. My ears rang with a colossal reverberation. There was a peculiar wooden clatter. I fought to stay conscious, won the contest, hoisted myself up on hands and knees, opened my eyes.
The Hydra was gone. So was approximately half of a stout oaken tavern stool that had been close to him when my metacreative bolt hit. Where Parnell Remillard had stood was a scattering of gritty stuff that looked more like spilled white sand than ashes. The truncated stool lay in the middle of it. No steam, no smoke, no charring. No other evidence of any incinerating heat. Except for the ruined stool, the lounge was undamaged. I seemed to know instinctively that the gong-tone still echoing faintly in my ears had been heard by no one but me. The end of my nose, the tips of my fingers, my toes, and another cherished portion of my anatomy experienced an odd lingering warmth, but otherwise I felt righteous, fit, and chipper--better man I had in weeks.
I'd killed a man for the second time in my life, and I really hadn't the least notion how I'd managed it I experienced not a shred of remorse. Both Hydra and Fury had been condemned to death in camera by the First Magnate of the Human Polity, and I had simply acted as his terrible swift sword.
On one of the tables lay a discarded durofilm printout of the Boston Globe. I knelt and carefully scraped Parni's mortal remains onto a sheet of the newspaper and folded it up. He measured less than three cups full, and some of that had to be oak ashes. Humming along with Duke Ellington, I took the small package into the handsomely appointed gentlemen's restroom adjacent to the lounge. Fortunately, there was no one there.
I dumped Parni into one of the old-fashioned water closets, made the sign of the cross just in case, and flushed. Then I spruced myself up, retrieved my top hat, and went off to get some champagne and dance at the wedding.

10

KAUAI, HAWAII, EARTH
18 JUNE 2078