Mindwarp

by James Follett

  His terminal bleeped. The Guardian of Destiny computer was on standby, it would automatically log anything of interest for his attention later. He could ignore it if he so wished, but the selection reports were of little interest.

  He rose from his desk, sat at the terminal, and regarded the screen with hard, grey eyes.

  SIMO BELAN.

  Someone was accessing information on the former student.

  Interesting.

  His gaze dropped to the information at the foot of the screen. That someone was Ewen Solant.

  Inman rested his bony elbows on the arms of his chair, steepled his long fingers against his chin, and watched.

  A old sports report on Simo Belan’s performance during an inter-faculty pyramid tournament appeared on the screen. It disappeared after ten seconds. Ewen Solant was either a fast reader or skimming.

  A review of a show in which Simo Belan had dazzled everyone with his juggling and acrobatic skills appeared and disappeared almost immediately.

  Skimming.

  Even in the privacy of his office, Caudo Inman’s control over his forbidding features was such that it was not possible to gauge his feelings about this prying.

  Unaware that everything he called up on his screen was being echoed on a screen far away in the Revelation Centre, Ewen stopped his search to give himself time to think. He was wasting his time; there was nothing of significance in the databases about the mysterious Simo Belan. It was what the records did not say that was interesting.

  Fact 1: Simo Belan’s name was missing from the 11th year roll of honour of his contemporaries who had been ordained as technicians.

  Fact 2: There were no more references to Simo Belan after his 9th year at the Centre. He had vanished at the age of 16.

  Ewen checked the census databases. Simo Belan had not died during the period, and his name wasn’t on the Department of Defence listings as having been a war casualty, or a serving soldier. The civilian index showed two Belans living at Keltro, about a thirty-minute metro ride from the Centre. They turned out to be Simo Belan’s mother and father. Next he looked up the communication directory to check on guardian angel assignations. The names of Simo Belan’s parents occurred again, listed as sharing a guardian angel. All perfectly normal, but still no trace of Simo himself.

  By now Ewen’s curiosity was fired. If Simo Belan hadn’t wanted to complete his studies, the normal procedure would have been to mindwarp his knowledge acquired at the Centre, assign him a guardian angel, and let him take his place in the community. His name would be unchanged. People did not disappear in Arama.

  He sat staring at the screen, recalling Father Dadley’s words on his last visit to the old man:

  “There have been others, Ewen. Long before your time. Gifted students like you… They used to have similar dreams before coming to the Centre… A vast blue dome… They all vanished.”

  Ewen was about to call Simo’s parents via their guardian angel, but hesitated. He knew that all guardian angel circuits were routed through the Revelation Centre, and he had never been able to find out why.

  8.

  Elena and Gal Belan’s apartment was on the 5th floor of a middle class block in the centre of Keltro. The woman who answered the door became flustered when she saw Ewen’s medallion.

  “I’m so sorry. I had no idea a technician was due to call. I’ll go out immediately. If you’d just give me a minute.”

  Ewen put his hand on the door to prevent it sliding closed. “It’s all right. I’m only a technician-student. Are you Elena Belan?”

  She was small and neat, dark-haired, aged about 55. She looked more closely at Ewen’s medallion and nodded. His friendly smile reassured her. “Are you from the Centre? What’s the matter?”

  “I’ve been sent to replace the battery in your guardian angel headband.”

  “But it was replaced only a few months ago.”

  “A field trip. Training only. Can I come in?”

  She showed Ewen into a small living-room and handed him a headband. He sat down, opened his shoulderbag and fitted the headband into a servicing jig. The woman turned instinctively away; one didn’t pry into the work of the technicians. A burst of pulses from the jig released the headband’s atomic lock. It opened. Ewen removed its tiny battery.

  “We can talk freely now.”

  The woman looked surprised and glanced worriedly up at the room’s GoD receptor. “What about?”

  “I need your help, Elena. May I call you Elena?”

  She nodded uncertainly and frowned. “Now how could I help a technician-student?

  “Father Dadley sends you his regards,” said Ewen gently. “Do you remember him?”

  “He used… Yes, of course. He was very kind to… To Simo.”

  “Your son?”

  A nod.

  “He told me about him,” said Ewen. He looked at the wall. Beneath the usual bleak picture of the emperor was a photograph of a smiling, fresh-faced youth with swept back dark hair. There was another picture that showed him in an acrobat’s costume with the cast of a revue. He was dominating the setting, sitting on a trapeze at the rear of the group. “Is that him?”

  Elena glanced at the pictures. “Yes.”

  “I heard that he disappeared a long time ago. Have you ever heard from him?”

  The questions hurt. A little flash of anger. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I don’t know your name.”

  Ewen gave her his full name.

  “I think you’d better tell me why you’re here, Mr Solant.”

  “Do you know why Simo disappeared?” Ewen pressed.

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “I believe we might have something in common. Like your son, I was sent to the Centre when I was seven.”

  “What could you possibly have in common with my son? He disappeared fifteen years ago.”

  “I believe we used to have the same sort of dream.”

  Elena’s face softened. “People could never take Simo seriously. He was always playing jokes, acting the clown. And such an acrobat… But underneath he was a dreamer.”

  Ewen smiled wistfully, watching her carefully. “So am I. At least, I used to be before I was sent to the Centre. I used to have dreams about being in vast dome. It was so big that you couldn’t see the edges.”

  She looked down at the floor. “Is this some kind of cruel trick?” she asked. “Because if it is-”

  “The dome was blue, Elena,” said Ewen quietly. “Memories of that dream have started coming back to me. I thought that perhaps there was some sort of madness growing in me. I told Father Dadley and he said that there had been others with the same dream… That was when he told me about Simo.”

  Neither spoke for a while. The woman eventually nodded. She raised sad eyes to Ewen. “That was Simo’s dream.” She bit hard on her lower lip.

  “I’m sorry to stir old memories,” said Ewen. “It’s just that I need to know. Did Simo ever say anything about his dream? Did he ever say what the dome was? Did he think it really existed?”

  “It wasn’t just a dream with him,” said Elena. “It was an obsession. And the dreams didn’t stop after he went to the Centre. The last time I saw him was at the visiting centre when he was 16. He told me that he was convinced that the huge blue dome really did exist and that he was going to find it.”

  “Where did he think it was? I’ve checked all the maps of Arama.”

  She closed her eyes to hide her distress. “If I told you where Simo thought that the blue dome was, you’d think of him as insane. I owe his memory more than that.”

  Ewen took her hand the way his mother used to hold his hand when he was troubled. He thought that the contact would be unpleasant and was pleased to discover that it was not. “Elena. I promise you that I’d never think that of Simo. We’ve never met and yet I feel that we have so much in common. Please believe me.”

  She looked questioningly at him and seemed to accept the sincerity in his eyes.
“Do you believe in the outdoors?” she asked.

  The question took Ewen by surprise. “A place where sinners and unbelievers and blasphemers against the GoD suffer eternal damnation? Well, I suppose as a future technician, I ought to believe in it, but I don’t think any of us really do at the Centre.”

  “But do you believe in it?” the woman persisted.

  “No. It’s an ancient myth that was cooked-up to frighten children.” He looked sharply at her. “Why?”

  Her lips moved silently at first, and then she blurted out: “Simo believed in it. He thought that the blue dome was the outdoors… That they were one and the same. He said that if flies and birds could find a way in, then he could find a way out.”

  9.

  “The outdoors?” Jenine queried, looking over Ewen’s shoulder, and reading the nursery rhyme that was displayed on his datapad. “We don’t get seriously into GoD studies until our final year. Aren’t you jumping the gun?”

  “I believe in panicking early,” Ewen replied equably.

  Jenine pulled up a chair in the library study booth. The desk was covered in children’s books, some that she remembered well. One large book was open at brilliant colour plates of birds and the many other mythical creatures that filled childhood stories and hologram cartoons. “Nursery rhymes, Ewen? I knew it - you’re regressing into childhood.”

  “There’s a lot of them. And nearly all about the outdoors. They go back over four-hundred years.”

  “And you’ll go back a year if you blow your exams.”

  “Just for once, Jenine, do you think you could stop going on at me? I don’t criticize you for all the time you waste playing that stupid pyramid game.”

  Jenine opened her mouth and promptly closed it. The library was not the place for a brawl. “So why nursery rhymes?”

  “They’re interesting.”

  “They’re silly.”

  “On the contrary, they’re very interesting.” He pointed to the screen. “There’s your old favourite.” He recited:

  Outdoors! Outdoors!

  Full of fire and fear,

  Outdoors! Outdoors!

  Where sinners disappear!

  Outdoors! Outdoors!

  Hell fires burn within,

  Outdoors! Outdoors!

  Throw the wicked in!

  Outdoors! Outdoors!

  Where flies and birds do dwell,

  Outdoors! Outdoors!

  Another name for hell!

  Jenine smiled. “We used to skip to that. Even the last verse. I hate flies and birds. What’s so interesting about these rhymes?”

  “Their wording hasn’t changed in nearly half a millennium. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”

  “Why should it?”

  “The Tenth Day prayers and hymns have changed quite a lot over the years. But not these little ditties. Every Tenth Day we troop along to church and sing hymns written by technician-scholars that have undergone change. Words altered here and there. Punctuation messed about. The venerable Technician-Scholar Trant wouldn’t recognise the words to his Guardian of Destiny, bind our spirits to you in Heaven today.”

  Jenine snorted. “Well of course they change. Society changes. The meanings of words change.”

  “But not these little rhymes,” Ewen insisted. He gestured to the screen. “Remember that one? “Tomy was a naughty boy, Tomy was a pain, They threw him to the Outdoors…””

  Jenine joined in with the last line:

  ““And was never seen again!””

  “The point is,” Jenine continued, surprised at herself for enjoying this discussion of what she considered a banal subject, “is that those little rhymes are so simple that you couldn’t change their wording without upsetting their scan and rhythm.”

  “That’s precisely it!” Ewen declared excitedly, thumping the arm of his chair. “Their simplicity is their strength. Whoever wrote them knew what they were doing. They’re timeless. And that’s what has made them so effective.”

  “Effective at what?”

  “At conditioning us from when we were children.”

  Jenine looked incredulous but Ewen pressed on, unperturbed. “When you think about it, these rhymes must be some of the most effective advertising copy ever written. All over Arama, they’re the first thing that children learn even before they even start talking because parents recite them. And the message running through all of them is the same, and it lodges deep in their subconscious: that the outdoors is a terrible place where they’ll end up burning in agony from the eternal fires of damnation if they don’t toe the line.”

  “Don’t be silly, Ewen. They were never actually written. They just…” She groped for the right words. “Well, they just happened.”

  “Did they? Then you tell me how it is that they’re more enduring than those stupid hymns we have to sing every Tenth Day that were written by some of the most worthy technician-scholars that Arama has ever produced.”

  Jenine stared at Ewen, not liking this unexpected turn the conversation had taken. “The outdoors is a metaphor,” she said with quiet conviction. “It’s to give us an insight into what will happen to our spiritual being if we don’t follow the Guardian of Destiny.”

  Ewen looked faintly contemptuous. “You mean what will happen to us if we don’t go to heaven?”

  “As you put it like that, yes… Look, Ewen. You better start work on revising. We’ve got our tenth year finals-”

  “Supposing it’s heaven that’s the metaphor and not the outdoors, Jenine? Supposing the outdoors is a real place? Supposing it’s a place where flies and birds really live?”

  “Then where is it?”

  Ewen opened his mouth to say something but his confidence deserted him. He shook his head.

  “And what is it, Ewen? Tell me that.”

  There was a noise outside and the booth door burst open. Two uniformed civilian police officers entered, their huge frames filling the confined space. Their equipment included plasma discharge handguns. Their heavy-jowled expressions suggested that they had left their sense of fun at home.

  “Technician-Student Ewen Solant?” the senior of the two men demanded. He managed to make Ewen’s name sound like the identity of a new and particularly virulent disease.

  Ewen’s face paled. He half rose from his chair. “Yes - that’s me.”

  “You’re under arrest, Technician-Student Solant.”

  “On what charge?”

  “Desecration and sabotage head the list. You can either accompany us without a fuss, or you can give us a rare and welcome opportunity to put our training in assertiveness to the test.”

  10.

  The years had been kind to Kally. Her youthful, dark beauty was unchanged. Ewen wondered if there would ever be a time when her remarkable loveliness would no longer move him as it did. She was sitting on the edge of his bed in his tiny cell at the detention centre, doing her best to keep her voice steady and the conversation normal.

  “It’s a five minute shorter journey to this place than the visiting centre,” she said, her tone matter-of-fact.

  Ewen turned from the barred window and sat beside her. He was wearing grey prison-issue coveralls and no students’ medallion. The last time Kally had seen him without one was when he had been taken from her at the selection centre ten-years before.

  “How’s Bel?” Ewen asked.

  Kally gave a half-smile. “Oh he’s fine. He’s waiting outside. He thought we’d prefer to be alone. Tomorrow’s our ninth wedding anniversary.”

  Ewen’s blue eyes flashed with his customary humour. “I know. I was planning on sending you a present, mother. But now…”

  She gestured dismissively. “And Tarlan starts his military service next week. He’s actually looking forward to it.”

  There was a long silence - each thinking the same: that Tarlan’s call-up at the age of 16 was inevitable. He was the sort of aggressive misfit that the army liked.

  A fly buzzed across the cell and settled on t
he wall. Kally eyed it with misgiving and made a move to kill it but Ewen stayed her hand.

  “Leave it, mother.”

  “It’s a fly!”

  “It’s company.”

  Kally gave a little shudder and did her best to ignore the loathsome creature. “Is it bad in here?” she asked at length. It was a trite question but she could think of nothing else to say.

  Ewen shrugged. “It’s an old building which they’ve not bothered to maintain because it suits their purpose. Criminals are rare these days. But it’s not as bad as it looks. There’s no lock on the door. I can wander about as I please.”

  “Then how…?”

  He pointed to a gleaming band around his right ankle. “If I venture beyond the perimeter path, that thing blows my foot off. If I try to tamper with it, it blows my foot off. If I throw a tantrum or get violent, it blows my foot off.” He broke off and smiled ruefully. “It could be just an ordinary hardened steel band, but I’m prepared to take their word that it isn’t.”

  Kally shuddered but refrained from comment because there was the brooding presence of the black hemisphere of a GoD receptor fixed to the ceiling, and a large, vandal-proof picture of the emperor glowering from the wall.

  “Funny having to live with one of those again,” Ewen remarked, noticing her furtive upward glance at the receptor. “I wonder how long they’ll keep me here?”

  His mother looked as if she was about to say something but changed her mind.

  “Go on…” Ewen prodded.

  “Your arrest was on the news last night.”

  The blue eyes twinkled at her. “Really? I’m that important? I don’t have a screen so you probably know more about my fate than I do.”

  “Your trial will be held in four days. They’re convening an imperial court.”