Magnificat (Galactic Milieu Trilogy) Read Free

You know:
Time-Travelers Return!
Whoop-dee-doo … then on to the next bit of fast-breaking news. My husband, Kuhal, had a harder time of it, but at least he’s humanoid and so he adapted. We’ve been kept busy doing certain work connected with our conditionalUnification and we’ve managed to live more or less in peace—until now.”
    Hagen said, “The entity who countermanded the Directorate’s gag order told us that he was Atoning Unifex, the head of the Milieu’s Supervisory Body. Cloud and I were properly overawed at first. But as the Lylmik spoke to us we both experienced a shocking sense of déjà vu. After Unifex vanished we were confused—no, we were terrified!—and we wondered if we had experienced some shared delusion, a waking nightmare. Not long afterward, the Lylmik’s orders to us were reconfirmed by the First Magnate of the Human Polity and also by the Intendant General of Earth. Both women took some pains to tell us what an extraordinary communication we’d been honored with.” The young man’s face was sardonic. “That was a considerable understatement.”
    “We agreed to come here and talk to you only after it became evident that we would be coerced if we refused,” Cloud added. Her voice was low-pitched, but warm and without rancor. “We’ve had quite enough of that already in our lives.”
    “Did you recognize Unifex, then?” Rogi asked softly. “Do you know who he really is?”
    “I knew almost immediately,” said Cloud. “I was always closer to him than my brother. The realization was … shattering. Hagen didn’t want to believe it.”
    “Unifex is Marc Remillard,” Rogi said. “Your father.”
    “Damn him!” Hagen exploded to his feet and began striding about the lanai like a caged catamount. “We were so relieved when the time-gate closed after us and the Milieu authorities obliterated the site! Cloud and I and all the rest of us thought we were finally free. Papa was trapped six million years in the past along with that madman Aiken Drum, and he could never hurt us again.”
    “He never meant to be cruel,” Cloud murmured.
    Hagen rounded on her. “He never thought of us as thinking, feeling human beings at all. We were nothing but subjects in his grand experiment.” He turned to Rogi and Malama. “Do you know what his gang of decrepit Rebel survivors called him behind his back? Abaddon—the Angel of the Abyss! At the end almost all of them repudiated him and his lunatic plan for Mental Man.”
    “Papa gave it up, too,” Cloud insisted. “Or he would never have sent us back through the time-gate.”
    Hagen’s rage seemed suddenly extinguished, leaving hopelessness. He slumped back into his chair. “Now we discover that our father won out after all. Not only did he miraculously survive for six million years, but somehow he also managed to transmutehimself into the Overlord of the Galactic Milieu! God help us and our children.” He lifted hate-filled eyes to Rogi and Malama. “God help all of you.”
    “Unifex atoned,” the Hawaiian woman said serenely. “During all those endless years he tried to make restitution for his crimes. He performed his penance not only in this galaxy but in the other one—where the Tanu and Firvulag people came from. I know almost nothing about his Pliocene activities and his later accomplishments in Duat, but everything that he’s done for the races of the Milky Way has been for the good. He founded the Milieu and guided it every step of the way. Thanks to him there are six coadunate racial Minds secure in Unity—and thousands more nearly ready to join the galactic confederation.”
    “Too bad he didn’t do a better job shepherding his old home planet,” Hagen said bitterly, “preventing natural disasters, plagues, famines, wars—to say nothing of the Metapsychic Rebellion. His Lylmik self just stood idly by while his earlier self nearly destroyed galactic civilization.”
    Malama only smiled. “The greatest