Magnificat (Galactic Milieu Trilogy)

Plot

The twenty-first century is drawing to a close. Thirty years have passed with the peaceful Galactic Milieu welcomed Earth into its federation, and the time is approaching for metapsychic humankind at last to achieve Unity - to be admitted into the group mind of the already unified alien races of the Milieu. But not all humans believe in Unity. A growing corps of rebels is plotting to keep the people of Earth forever separate in the name of human individuality. And the rebels have a secret supporter: Fury, the insane metapsychic creature bent on keeping humans out of the Milieu. Fury will stop at nothing to achieve its goal of ruling humanity itself. Whatever powerful minds it cannot co-opt, it will destroy. Fury's greatest enemy is Jack the Bodiless, the mutant genius whose family is leading Earth's struggle toward Unity. Jack will never be a tool for Fury - and so Fury must look elsewhere for the power it craves. And so it turns to Dorothea Macdonald, a young woman who has spent a lifetime hiding her towering mindpowers from the best mind readers of the Milieu. But she cannot hide them from Fury - or from Jack. Time and again she rejects their advances, unwilling to be drawn into the maelstrom of galactic politics or megalomaniacal dreams. Her own goals are simple: to protect and preserve the planet Caledonia, the Scots-settled world that was home for most of her childhood, and to avenge a gruesome murder at the hands of Fury itself. And in the end, no one - not Jack, not Fury, not even the Galactic Milieu - will be a match for the awesome powers of the girl who will come to be called Diamond Mask...