the cerebroenergetic (CE) equipment that he has invented, although CE allows him to resist counterprobes. She even manages to slip into Denis's mind, but he quickly throws her out before she can find out much. Dorothea and Jack have a role in saving an inhabited planet from a diatreme eruption, using their paramount powers aided by CE. But her lower face is terribly deformed in this heroic act, so after this she always wears a diamond-studded half-mask, and acquires her nickname "Diamond Mask". Magnificat By the third book in the series, Marc has matured into a highly capable metapsychic and is regarded as a Paramount. Through manipulated dreams, Marc conceives an idea called 'Mental Man' which would create a new subspecies of Man called Homo [sapiens] summus. It would use selective breeding, surgical modification, mental training (through induced pain) and technological enhancement to create hundreds of humans with the powers — and disembodiment — of Marc's younger brother Jack. This project has been kept highly secret for several years, but peers and competitors of Marc begin to get suspicious. He develops several increasingly powerful CE devices. These amplify a human's inherent metapsychic ability by orders of magnitude. The CE device is discussed in the debates of the Concilium, and is deemed too dangerous to be generally used. Marc disagrees, his research continues in secret although outlawed, and culminates in devices capable of 600× amplification. Marc's increasing ambition draws him to side with a rebel faction of the Concillium — those that do not wish to join 'Unity' with the other races and therefore with the Galactic Mind itself. The rebel faction determinedly opposes this as they believe humans will lose their individuality and privacy and will become thralls to the other races. By this time, only two out of the original five Hydra units remain, Parnell Remillard and Madeleine Remillard — Marc's cousin and sister (it is revealed that the Hydra heads were the unborn children present at the vigil around Victor, where Fury corrupted their infant minds). One wet night, Denis' favorite daughter, Anne Remillard — a staunch loyalist and advocate of Unity — visits Rogi's bookshop. She has deduced that Denis is Fury. Rogi doubts this but when Anne is attacked and nearly killed, he realises that he must inform Jack and Dorothea of the identity of Fury. The only opportune moment seems their upcoming wedding. After Rogi