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

Aurelie Dalembert stood at the casement windows of the library, looking out at the rain and sipping sherry. In spite of the roaring fire in the big fireplace, the room was chilly. Cecilia, Maeve, and Cheri sat in uncomfortable damask chairs as close to the hearth as they could get, fortifying themselves with hot tea.
"Any sign of the Prima Donna yet?" Maeve O'Neill asked sharply.
"No," Aurelie replied. "Rogi's bringing her and Marc. In a car."
Cheri Losier-Drake, the youngest of the Remillard spouses at twenty-three, suppressed a tendency to shiver and reached for the silver teapot. "Every year this damned prayer vigil gets weirder. My nerves are a wreck. If only I could have a drink! Cele, you're a doctor. Surely a single brandy couldn't hurt."
Cecilia Ashe gently laid a hand on her sister-in-law's arm. A surge of calming redaction flowed from her brain to that of the other woman. "You know we mustn't . . . Did that zap help a little?"
Cheri sighed. "Must have. Parni gave a happy kick."
"It'll all be over soon." Aurelie's voice was soothing.
"Can't be soon enough," snapped Maeve. She downed the last of her tea in a gulp, plunked the fine china cup and saucer down on the table with a rattling crash, and went to get another birch log from the cradle.
"I find the notion of an annual prayer ritual fascinating," Cecilia said. "It's touchingЧthis concern for the family black sheep."
"It's easy to tell that it's your first go-around," Maeve said, tossing the log onto the blaze. A shower of sparks fled up the chimney. "I don't know how much Maury told you about it, but we don't actually pray, you know. Denis links all of our minds in a coercive metaconcert, and he does the praying. Or whatever. It's Sevvy's opinion that the whole thing is nothing more than a colossal guilt compensation on the part of Denis. Because he's refused to pull the plug on Vic for all these years."
Cecilia, who had married the widowed Maurice Remillard seven months earlier, assumed a professionally bland expression. "That might be one explanation. But there are others."
"I think we're coercing Vic to die," Cheri said tersely. "And a consummation devoutly to be wished!"
"Amen," said Maeve. She had thrown still another piece of wood on the conflagration and now dusted her hands and plopped back into her chair. "And if Paul's right, and the infamous invalid is finally sinking, this might be the last year we'll have to put up with Denis's obsession."
From the window, Aurelie said, "I see car lights. It's Rogi and Teresa. And I've farspoken Paul. He and Denis will be here soon. The express Vee-route from Baltimore to Boston was OS and they lost time in a holding pattern. It's a scandal, the way the traffic jams keep getting worse and worse." She came to the fire and poured herself a cup of tea before sitting down with the others.
Cecilia said, "As a neurosurgeon, I find the whole matter of Victor Remillard's mysterious coma fascinating. Is it true that his body has remained in perfect condition up until just recently?"
"He's got the immortality gene complex like all the rest of these lucky sods," Maeve said, with a bitter laugh. "Thank God the regen-tank therapy is perfected at last. Can you imagine how poor old Lucille must have felt? Turning into a decrepit old crone of seventy-two in spite of the best that cosmetic surgery could do, while her husband, who's only a year older, still looks like a graduate student!"
"This will be the first Good Friday that Lucille has missed," Cheri said.
"Probably planned it," Maeve decided. "Nine months in the tank, thenЧtah-dah!Чreborn, young and gorgeous." She patted her thickening midsection. "It's a crock that we still have to do babies the old-fashioned way. Look at us! Aside from Aurelie and Anne the virgin-martyr, we're a bloody maternity ward. That's all these dynastic Remillards seem to want out of us women: babies. Sometimes Sevvy seems positively irrational on the subject! I wonder if that's why Jenny and Galya divorced himЧ"
"Teresa's nearly due, isn't she?" Aurelie remarked, changing the subject abruptly. "And Cat has only another month to go."
"No, seriously," Maeve persisted to Cecilia. "They're planning to use artificial gestation to help populate some of the ethnic planets. Why not make it a general thing? I don't mind being pregnant twice, but I'll be damned if I'll go through it again and again just to help fill the Human Polity with superior Remillard minds. But if we could pop the fertilized eggs into incubatorsЧ"
"We've had the technical capability for a long time," Cecilia admitted, "and it is useful under certain circumstances. But it's far better for the baby to grow inside its mother naturally. There are both physical and psychological factors involved. That's why the Reproductive Statutes restrict artificial gestation so drastically."
"What do the Simbiari Proctors know about it?" Maeve flared. "Damned egg-laying salamandroids! They don't risk their lives having babies." She sprang to her feet and strode over to the window. The car had pulled up to the porte cochere at the entrance to the mansion, and the obsequious Louis and Leon were hurrying to greet the arrivals.
"This pregnancy of yours is going much better than the last, Maeve, dear." Aurelie tried to be consoling. "If you can just restrain your contraredactive tendenciesЧ"
"Чand avoid stress," Maeve finished in an arch tone. "You can talk. Six kids already, and ready to keep it up till your ovaries pack it in. You drop babies as easily as an Indian squaw."
Cheri said, wearily, "Try to calm down, Maeve. Give the rest of us a break."
The Irishwoman said, "Oh, I'll simmer down soon enough. Just as soon as we finish with this ghoulish wake for the living dead!" She stared out at the rain-swept sky. "If my feeble farsight's not mistaken, that's Paul's egg coming now. Shall we go find our husbands and get this damned thing over with?"

Paul used his creativity to shield them from the rain as he and his father hurried from the egg to the house. Once Denis stumbled, and would have gone to his knees if Paul hadn't seized his arm. "Papa, you're still too weak to be out of the hospital. This was a mistake."
Denis shook his head stubbornly. If anything, he looked even younger than his twenty-six-year-old son, who was nearly 30 cents taller than his father and sported a debonair mustache to enhance his image as a rising planetary statesman. Both men were dressed in sober suits and topcoats, and water from the sodden lawn threatened their highly polished shoes. Lucille had always insisted that the family dress in a semiformal fashion for the Good Friday ritual; and even in her absence they had automatically complied.
"I'm quite all right," Denis insisted. "You know very well I was scheduled to leave Johns Hopkins next week. There's nothing whatsoever wrong with me physically. Tucker
Barnes was probably right when he diagnosed me as suffering from exhaustion and acute depression aggravated by Lucille's absence."
"All the more reason for us to postpone Good Friday."
"No. That's unthinkable, especially under the circumstances."
They reached the porte cochere, and Paul canceled the metapsychic umbrella. The entry hall was brightly lit, and Louis and Leon hastened to open the front door and relieve Paul and Denis of their coats. The twins were sixty-two years old, stocky and balding and hollow-eyed, for all that they possessed the precious self-rejuvenating heritage. Unfortunately, it tended to express itself differently in different individuals, and the complex interaction of the thousands of genes involved was still poorly understood. Aunt Yvonne, who was a year older than the twins, was still pallidly youthful; but these two poor devils would always look middle-aged, like Uncle Rogi. Paul masked his disesteem as he greeted his uncles with cool formality. Would he retain his vitality and good looks as the years passed? Denis had, but he was a slightly built blond man, while Paul was robust and dark, as Rogi had been in his youth.
And Victor.
"How is he?" Denis asked.
"The nurse had to adjust the machine again," Louis said.
"The rate of hemoglobin synthesis continues to decrease," Leon added. "Heartbeat and respiration are normal, he assimilates nourishment and excretes, skin and muscular tone are nearly normal, and the EEG is as usual."
"Nevertheless," Louis finished, his voice completely neutral, "unless therapy is started soon to relieve the anemia, he'll eventually die."
Denis was already heading for the red-carpeted central staircase. "Paul, get the others together and bring them up at once."
"Papa! Wait. . ."
Denis halted and turned around, one hand on the banister.
Paul took a breath, sealed off his inner thoughts with as much strength as he could muster, and readied his coercion. "Papa, I've thought the matter over all throughout our flight from Baltimore. I won't let little Marc participate in the metaconcert. We don't know enough about the way mind-linkage affects the participants."
Denis's face wore a gentle smile. He did not meet his son's eyes. "Victor is failing, Paul. We may not have another chance, and we're lacking your mother's input this year. I assure you that the program I use is entirely benign. And Marc's mind is more powerful than that of many adults. Far stronger than those of the wives and Brett."
"PapaЧno. Marc's my son. A baby. The rest of us are consenting adults. I've always had reservations about this Good Friday thing, and yet I've gone along with it because it was so important to you. But I can't put a tiny child at risk. Uncle Rogi's agreed to participate. He should help a little."
Denis turned away. "Very well." He continued up the stairs, letting his mind rove on ahead of him to the sickroom. The nonoperant day nurse looked up from her plaque-book as he entered Victor's room.
"Good afternoon, Mrs. Gilbert. We're nearly ready."
"Oh, Professor Remillard! I've been wanting to talk to you, but Mr. Philip and Dr. Severin said you were too illЧ"
"I'm feeling better." He calmed her redactively. "Draw the drapes, will you, please? I'll just check the machine."