Free Jack the Bodiless (Galactic Milieu Trilogy) by Julian May Page B

than it can engineer the mind by tinkering with the brain’s DNA. Ordinary evolution is doing just fine transforming our race into metapsychic operants and the Earth Mind is comingalong well enough toward coadunation under the Milieu’s Reproductive Statutes and I can’t see that it matters a hoot whether or not a few poor little crippled babies get to make their contribution—
    What does matter is that Mama is pregnant again.
    ??Impossible!!
    I heard her tell Grandmère.
    JesusGod. Teresa can’t be pregnant now …
    She is.
    Practically on eve Earth inauguration Concilium? And with Paul heading list of newly announced human magnates? Quelle catastrophe your father rest of family put in impossible position! Howcouldshehowcouldshe—
    Mama extracted the contraceptive implant herself. It was no trick at all for a person with her creative talents. She feels that she has a solemn obligation—an obligation to the entire human race!—to have this child even if it means violating the statutes of the Simbiari Proctorship.
    Sacrènomdedieu! We all knew that she was tottering on the brink after the loss of her last baby. But she seemed to have snapped out of it. Now this! Your poor mama. All that talent! All that beauty! And it’s plain what the source of her madness is: she and your father have always had that idiotic dynastic obsession about surpassing Denis and Lucille—
    This fetus is five months old. Mama says it speaks to her telepathically in a postinfantile mode.
    “Merde de merde!” Rogi exclaimed out loud. “Cette pauvre petite! She’s gone over the edge completely.”
    The canoe was now fixed firmly on top of the old Volvo, and all the equipment was stowed. As the two of them got into the car, the boy seemed gripped by an inappropriate excitement.
    “Grandmère Lucille scanned the fetal mind with her redactive deepsense. She heard nothing but the usual chaotic psychoembryonic cycling one would expect from such a young fetus. She had a discussion with Mama and then … went away. Of course, she didn’t detect my presence. I went in and spoke to Mama, clarifying the situation, and after that I came immediately to the bookshop to get you.”
    “But I still don’t understand—”
    “Grandmère has gone to get Uncle Severin. They’ll do an abortion before Papa—or anyone else—finds out. Maybe tomorrow.”
    “Et alors? It’s the only sensible course!” Rogi tapped the garage door opener, backed the car out, then closed the overhead door. Slowly they drove up the street.
    “No it’s not.”
    “You have moral scruples? It’s understandable. You’re young and fresh from the Jebbies at Brebeuf, and they’ve filled your mind with idealistic notions of human dignity and worth. But this is the real world, Marc! Not even the Church opposes the Reproductive Statutes. If a fetus shows intractable lethal genes, it may be aborted. Your poor Mama is deluded, sick. She needs treatment! Marc, you’re thirteen, but you’re a mature person. You know what this illegal pregnancy could mean—not only to the family but also to the whole Human Polity. Your parents aren’t just private citizens. Paul will surely be nominated First Magnate when humanity is admitted to the Concilium in January.
If
it’s admitted! Good God, boy, don’t you understand how serious an offense this is? Not even your mother’s mental lapse can excuse—”
    “Mama is quite sane, Uncle Rogi. I heard the fetus, too.”
    “You … 
what?”
    “It’s a boy. What I heard … I can’t describe it, and I certainly can’t transmit an image of it to a mentality as limited as yours. You’ll have to take my word for it that this baby is something extraordinary. I’ve listened to unborn babies before, but this one is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. God only knows what his metabilities will be.”
    “And what about his body?” Rogi was bleak. “If he’s carrying lethals, odds are strong that he’ll be a physical basket