"May,.Julian.-.Galactic.Milieu.1.-.Jack.The.Bodiless" - читать интересную книгу автора (May Julian)

A RETROSPECTIVE DIGRESSION
BERLIN, NEW HAMPSHIRE, EARTH
30 MARCH 2040

Rogi drove into the town of his birth late on a dreary spring afternoon, bringing Teresa and little Marc with him from Hanover, as he had been instructed to. Wrathful and profane protests to the contrary had got Rogi nowhere: Paul had been adamant. This time Rogi, too, would come to Berlin and participate in the annual ritual because Denis had insisted upon it. And that was that.
It always seemed to rain on Good Friday, but at least this year the rain was warm, and it was making short work of the remnant patches of street ice and the old gray mounds of snow that still lay about in the sun-starved nooks of town. By Easter, Rogi told himself subvocally, Berlin would be nearly washed clean. The pussy willows in the gardens along the Androscoggin River, where the smoke-belching paper mills once stood, would have snowdrops and blue Siberian squill and pink hellebore blooming beneath them, and the first robins would sing in the budding sugar maples, and the townsfolk in their Easter finery would stroll the riverside paths.
And with luck, before next Easter, Vic would be dead.
"Why will that be good?" Marc piped up. "Who is Vic, Uncle Rogi? And why will it be a good thing for him to die?"
"Oh, merde et puis merde," Rogi muttered.
Teresa said: Rogi for heaven's sake!
Secure in his little car seat in the back of the big Lincoln groundcar, the child turned from his interested scrutiny of the town to attack his great-granduncle with a precocious mental probe that made Rogi yelp with sudden pain. Marc's chubby face reflected in the rearview mirror revealed nothing but solemn curiosity, and his own mind was guarded with its usual indomitable screen. He was two years old.
Marc stop that! Teresa said.
"Yes, Mama," said the boy. The probe withdrew almost as quickly as it had penetrated, leaving only a lingering ache behind Rogi's eyes. But the cute little tyke had nearly mind-sucked him like a plass pouch of orange juice.
"Shame on you for invading Uncle Rogi. I want you to apologize!" Teresa's uneasiness, which she had carefully concealed during the hour-long drive from Hanover, now tinged the exasperation that she projected to the old man on his intimate mode:
For the love of God Rogi can't you control yourself for my sake and Marc's if not for common decency?
The two-year-old said, "I'm sorry, Uncle Rogi."
"You're forgiven," the old man said. And then to Teresa: Once we get to Vic's house the kid will read the whole family like billboards no matter how they try to screen Denis is an integral idiot asking you to bring Marc along to this damned charade does he actually intend to use this baby in a metaconcert forchrissake and whatthehell good is a lowwatt mind like mine the whole goddamn thing is a farce a sop to Denis's guilt the lot of you should have put an end to it years ago and Paul should have more sense than to upset you in your conditionЧ
Marc asked, "Does Uncle Rogi think making this Vic dead will hurt you and Maddy, Mama?"
"No, dear. Not at all. I'm fine, and so is Maddy, safe inside me." Rogi TRY to stay more securely on the intimate mode! Better yet think of something else like watching where you're going if you insist on driving manually. Look isn't this High Street where we turn? "Marc, dear, you've misunderstood Uncle Rogi's thought. The Vic he was thinking about is Victor Remillard, who is Grandpere's brother. We're going to see him and pray for him. Victor is very, very sick. He's been sick for nearly twenty-seven years, ever since the Great Intervention."
The small boy was prodding and thrusting now at his mother's mental shield, as a frustrated kitten scratches at a closed door. But there was no easy way through the maternal barricade; nature, compassionate of metaphysically operant parents, had rendered most of them proof against the onslaughts of their loving offspring.
"But why should Vic be made dead? Open to me, Mama, so I can understand better! I want to understand. Being dead is bad, isn't it? How can it be good for Vic?"
"Dear, stop poking at me. How many times must I tell you to respect the integrity of other minds? And you must call him Granduncle Victor, not Vic. Politesse, dear, always! . . . When a person is very sick and unable to get well, it's usually better for him to die and go to heaven rather than live on and suffer."
Rogi uttered a short, explosive laugh. "Heaven! That's rich."
Teresa said calmly to the child, "Uncle Rogi is being ironic, Marc. Do you remember what irony is?"
"Yes, Mama. But I'd rather discuss death with you now, please."
"There isn't much time, but I'll do my best, dear."
Rogi had slowed the car as they drove through the central district of Berlin. The town had undergone great change since the last time he had been here, and now seemed gussied up and gentrified almost beyond recognition. The older buildings that were worth rehabilitating had been expertly restored and framed in plantings, and the new structures looked as though they had stood there from time immemorial, mellowing gracefully. There were small parks at every other block, quaint wrought-iron streetlamps already glowing against the early dusk, even though it was still two hours until sunset, and not a trace of shabbiness was anywhere to be seen. Even in the pouring rain the old cottages and frame apartments of the core residential area seemed to glow in their coats of fresh paint, many done in classic New England white with dark shutters, while others sported the cheerful ice cream colors traditional to southern Quebec.
Teresa continued in her attempt to explain mortality to the child. The tiny head with its thick mass of black ringlets had lowered as she spoke, apparently in obedient concentration. But all at once Rogi felt Marc renewing his quest for more interesting data, drilling into his own all-too-vulnerable cortex. Rogi exerted all of his adult coercion to fend off the infantile probing, addressing the boy with considerable precision on the intimate mode so that Teresa would have no hint of what he said:
Stop that digging you snoopy little foutriquet! Dammitall I'll tell you if you stop pestering me! Vic is a bad man or at least he was bad before he got sick the baddest man that I ever knew and the sooner he's dead the better off for all of us now is THAT plain enough for you?
Yes Uncle Rogi.
You'll find out pretty soon what this Good Friday thing the family does with Vic every year is all about just keep QUIET and watch and listen and it'll sort itself out. Afterward if you still have questions ask Grandpere Denis.
IЧI don't want to. I don't like Grandpere. I'll ask you. On the way back home. Will that be all right?
I suppose so. Now let me alone while I try to find this place. I haven't been here in twenty-four years. Damn everything looks different up here! I guess I'll have to turn on the computer.
"Чand so the elements of our bodies that were formed ages and ages ago in the hearts of giant exploding stars, elements that we only borrowed for a little while, must be returned to the Galaxy for reuse," Teresa was saying. "But even if our bodies die, our minds will live on in the Mind of the universe and be happy with God and all our friends and loved ones in eternal light. That's what heaven is."
"Will I die?" Marc asked her.
She grasped his tiny hands and kissed the top of his curly head. "Not for a long, long time. You haveЧyou have a very special body to go along with your special mind."
"Will you die? And Uncle Rogi?"
"Your Uncle Rogi has the same kind of special body that you have. He won't die for a long time, either, and neither will Papa. I don't have the same kind of body you all have, but if I get old or sick I'll have myself regenerated so that I can stay with you. Do you remember what regeneration means?"
"Like Grandmere. In the regen-tank."
"Exactly. When I get old I'll go to a place that fixes me, just like Grandmere Lucille did, and I'll be made young and strong again. She'll be coming back to us very soon now. You'll hardly recognize her. She'll look as young as Aunt Cat."
The car's guidance system, having digested the code designation for the Victor Remillard estate on Upper Hillside Drive that Rogi called up, now switched on the vehicle's autopilot. Rogi sighed and sat back in his seat while the car drove itself, using satellite reference points. In his reactionary heart of hearts, Rogi considered such refinements obscene, even worse than the now obsolete computerized highway speed-strips. They took all the fun out of driving. A man might as well take the bus! Or one of those bloody flying eggs that wafted around on preset flight paths set up by Air Traffic Control. Up until now, Rogi had refused even to consider learning to fly. But he was weakening. One had to move with the timesЧeven these days, when the damned times seemed almost to zip along at the square of the speed of light.
The dashboard chimed and a robot voice spoke. "You will arrive at your destination in approximately three minutes. Prepare to resume manual control of the vehicle." Rogi mumbled under his breath.
Marc asked his mother: Will we meet Papa and Uncle Philip and the others at Granduncle Victor's house?
Yes. They're all flying in.
The car had turned off Hillside Drive, following a narrow lane shaded by massive white pines and hemlocks. This manicured imitation of the primeval forest of New England opened at length into an expanse of lawn, sere with winter, and a magnificent vista of the Androscoggin River beyond. Parked near the house were five egg-shaped rhocraftЧthree Wulf-Mercedeses, a Mitsubishi, and a sporty green De Havilland Kestrel belonging to Severin Remillard. Paul's scarlet Maserati was nowhere in evidence.
The house from which Victor had directed his commercial empire prior to the Great Intervention was fully as ugly as Rogi had remembered it: a looming pseudobaronial pile of brick, stucco, and false timbering, built in the 1930s for some satrap of the extinct paper mills. It had leaded glass windows, pointed gables, and a slate roof that gleamed oily in the rain. Rambling decayed extensions with fanciful cupolas mounted upon them had once been stables, garages, and servants' quarters. Inside the main building were ten huge bedrooms, an oak-paneled library, a pretentious drawing room with an attached conservatory (the latter devoid of vegetation), a vast echoing ballroom, drafty hallways paved in marble, a modern kitchen and formal dining room that would have done credit to a small hotel, an empty indoor swimming pool, and a superlative state-of-the-art security system.
Victor Remillard had lived in this house since 2009, from the time of Remco Industries' first great prosperity. With him were his younger twin brothers Louis and Leon, and his widowed sister Yvonne Fortier, all of whom he had rendered nonoperant in early childhood, turning them into his creatures. In 2013, when Victor's criminal schemes were thwarted and he was reduced to a sense-deprived, helpless vegetable, the house became his place of exile. Louis, Leon, and Yvonne were promised immunity from prosecution by Denis and his politically influential friends provided they lived quietly in the old place, caring for Victor, supervising the small staff of domestics and nursing attendants, and staying out of the public eye.
Beginning in 2016, when his youngest son Paul was two years old, Denis Remillard and his wife Lucille Cartier and their seven powerfully operant children had come once each year, on Good Friday, to visit Victor. Denis explained to Yvonne, Louis, and Leon that he and his family were praying for Victor's spiritual recovery.
Yvonne, Louis, and Leon never really understood what Denis meant by that; but they were grateful that they had escaped federal prison after aiding and abetting Victor in his crimes, and they willingly performed their assigned duties according to Denis's instructions. Since they were virtual "normals," they did not take part in the annual metaconcerted prayer ritual except to see to the needs of the operant visitors, who eventually came to include the spouses of Denis and Lucille's adult children. Without Denis's knowledge, Yvonne, Louis, and Leon themselves prayed every day of their lives that Victor Remillard would never awaken from his mysterious coma to reassume his domination over them. In point of fact, the trio prayed that Victor Remillard would die.
And finally, this year, it looked as though their petition might be granted.