Mondrian followed that movement, a puzzled look on his face. “You don’t know this, Princess, but a walk like that should be impossible in a quarter-g field. I can’t think how she does it. She moves just the same here as she did down on Earth. And she looks exactly the same, too.”
“She probably always will. She certainly hasn’t aged a day since I first met her. Remember what I told you, before I ever introduced you? It’s true, isn’t it?”
“You said that nobody could watch the Godiva Bird walk, without being aware that she was naked underneath her clothes. I laughed at you. But you were right.”
They had not called out to Godiva, but simply followed her back towards their table. It was located in a dim-lit area at the rear of the restaurant, a quiet quarter reserved for small, intimate parties who wanted discreet service and no public attention. None of the other tables was occupied. Luther Brachis sat alone, examining a menu. As they reached the table he stood up and greeted Tatty with an odd formality.
She had not seen him since they were all on Earth together, and she was astonished by the change in him. He was still in superb physical condition, but his face had lost the severe and brooding look. He was more cheerful and animated, he had lost five to ten kilos, and his eyes glowed with health and physical well-being.
He was studying Tatty just as seriously. “Congratulations, Princess Tatiana. It is an unusually strong person who can ever break the Paradox addiction.”
“You never break the addiction, Commander. You only stop taking the injections.”
“For, let us hope, the rest of your life.” Brachis helped Tatty to her seat. “I am not sure, Princess Tatiana, that I ought to have dinner with you, even though Commander Mondrian particularly requested it. I understand that it is thanks to you that I have lost a wager. I will be handing over a surveillance system to the Commander.” He sat down, and looked across the table at Godiva. “What do you think, my dear? Should I blame the Princess for her success with Chan Dalton?”
Godiva smiled, slow and dreamy. “I could never be annoyed with the Princess, or with Commander Mondrian. They are the people who introduced me to you.”
She gazed lovingly across the table at Brachis. Her mouth was wide and full-lipped, in a pink-cheeked oval face that was slightly too plump, and the wide-set blue eyes wore their usual trusting and contented expression.
An analysis of Godiva’s individual features would suggest no exceptional beauty. Her chin was a fraction too long, her nose slightly bobbed and asymmetrical, her forehead a shade too nigh. But the whole was somehow much greater than the sum of the parts. The totality of Godiva, face and figure, was stunning. She arrested the eye, so that in a crowded room she inevitably became the center of attention.
Brachis turned to Mondrian. “You see my problem. If I express annoyance with Princess Tatiana, Godiva will interpret it as a lack of esteem for her. I can’t afford to have that.” He gestured to the other man to sit down opposite Tatty, but Mondrian remained on his feet.
“In a moment.” He turned to Tatty and Godiva. “I promised everyone that this evening would not be business, and now I am breaking my promise. Could you give us just a few minutes for private security talk? Then I give you my word that will be the last business discussion tonight.”
Godiva merely smiled and said nothing. Tatty at once got to her feet. “Come on, Goddy. You don’t want to ear their boring business. You can show me around this place.”
She sounded cheerful enough. Mondrian knew better. He was frowning when he sat down opposite Luther Brachis.
“You’re in the dog house, Commander,” said Brachis. “With both of them. It was supposed to be dinner tonight, and no work. I agreed only on that basis.”
“I know. This is new, it’s urgent, and we can handle it in two minutes if you’ll give me a straight reply to one question: Have you been getting a lot of trouble recently from Dougal MacDougal?”
“I have.” Luther Brachis’ expression became murderous. “Constant interference. I can’t do one thing now without him sticking his big nose in. And he’s the Stellar Ambassador, so I can’t tell him to go away. That man’s a total bonehead.”
“We’ve not reached the difficult part yet. If he’s like that now, how will he be when the Anabasis begins to tangle with the Morgan Construct?”
“Hysterical.”
“So what’s the answer?”
“No answer—unless you’ve got one.”
Mondrian nodded. “I do. We have to get him out of the way, so he can’t be always second-guessing us.”
Brachis regarded him skeptically. “Easy to say. But how do you do it? He’s certainly immune to hints. You’d have to kill him to get rid of him.”
“It might come to that—but not yet. I know a better way. Dougal MacDougal would stay out of the way if the Stellar Ambassadors told him to. You know how he grovels to them.”
“He does. But dictating to the Stellar Ambassadors is harder than controlling MacDougal. They won’t get him out of our hair, just because we’d like them to.”
“They might.” Mondrian lowered his voice. “I’ve got clout now with the Pipe-Rillas. I can get them to suggest something to the Angels and the Tinkers: Our complete independence from MacDougal in operating the Anabasis.”
“I’d give a lot to get rid of him. But what’s the other half? Pipe-Rillas don’t operate from charity, any more than you do. What do they want in return?”
“Something I can’t give them alone. That’s why we’re talking now. The Pipe-Rillas have made it very clear what they’re after. They want the secret plans for human expansion beyond the Stellar Group.”
“The what?” Brachis snorted in disgust. “Secret expansion plans? There’s no such thing—or if there is, no one bothered to tell me.”
“I know. And you know. But the Pipe-Rillas don’t believe that. They think we have plans to expand the Perimeter without telling them, and are keeping our schemes secret. You have to remember the way they think of humans. In their eyes we’re madmen—aggressive, rash, and dangerous.”
“And they’re not far off the truth, for some of us.” Brachis laughed. “Oh, we can be dangerous enough. But how do we give them secret expansion plans, when we don’t have any?”
“We make them up—you and me. Between us we have shared security responsibility from Sol to the Perimeter. We can produce something that’s consistent and plausible.”
“What if we can? Nobody believes there’s any such plans.”
“Not now they don’t. But we can drop hints in a few places, suggesting they exist. For a start, you could plant it around MacDougal’s office. That place leaks information out faster than it goes in. When rumors get back to the Pipe-Rillas, it will confirm their ideas. And then after a while we give them the plans themselves.”
“How?”
“You leave that to me. I have a delivery system already in place. They’ll accept what I give them.”
“The Pipe-Rillas think you’re a traitor?”
“That concept is not in their vocabulary. In their view, I will be allowing the better side of my nature to triumph over natural human wickedness. They don’t seem to understand cheating.”
“But I do. And so do you.” Luther Brachis leaned across the table. “How do I know this whole thing isn’t just some game of yours, setting me up for something?”
“I realize I’ve got to prove that to you. I will.” Mondrian motioned slightly with his head. “Later. For now, it’s a truce. Here come Tatiana and Godiva.”
The two women had appeared in the doorway and were threading their way through the tables. A tall waiter was in front of them, carrying a broad covered dish. He placed the silver tureen between Brachis and Mondrian and straightened up.
“With the compliments of the management,” he said stiffly. “I will return shortly to take your order.” He hurried away, bowing his head deferentially to Godiva and Tatty as he passed them.
“That’s peculiar,” said Bra
chis. “I’ve been here a dozen times, and I’ve never before had free appetizers.”
He reached out and took hold of the cover, lifting it from the dish. As he did so the fire opal at Mondrian’s collar changed color. It pulsed with a vivid green light, and a high-pitched whine came from it.
“Drop that!” Mondrian leaped to his feet, glanced around him, and grabbed the tureen off the table. He hurled it away to his left. “Get down, all of you!”
He grabbed the end of the table and tilted it upwards so that it served as a shield. At the same moment Luther Brachis dived at Tatty and Godiva, gathering one in each arm and knocking them off their feet. He dropped on top of them.
There was a hollow, deep whomp and a bright flash of white light. The table that Mondrian was holding flew violently backwards, smashing into him and throwing him down on top of Brachis. A sound like violent hail rattled on the other side of the table. After it came a sudden and total silence.
Tatty found herself lying on her right side, ears ringing. Sharp pain tingled and stung all the way along her left arm. Brachis and Mondrian were on top of her, making it impossible to move. As she tried to wriggle out from under them she heard a curse and a pained grunt from above.
“Ahggh! Esro, for God’s sake get your head out of my guts. Esro?”
The weight on top of her rolled away. Tatty could move to one side, and finally crawl free. She stood up, dizzy and aware of the dull, padded feeling inside her skull.
She peered around her. The table, upside down, showed a cracked, splintered surface. The plastic was pocked and cratered, with metal splinters embedded all over its surface. Off to the right the whole wall showed a similar pattern of shrapnel impact. Godiva stood at the other side of the table. She looked astonished, but unharmed.
“Help me.” Tatty nodded to Godiva to take hold of the other end of the overturned table. Between them they lifted it off the two men. Mondrian was unconscious. Tatty dropped to her knees, looking first at his face and then feeling for his pulse. It was slow and steady. She noticed in a detached way that her own left arm was punctured and bleeding and marked by scores of metal fragments.
Luther Brachis had finally made it to his feet. He was holding his head in his hands and staring vacantly around him. His right shoulder and neck were riddled with metal fragments and bleeding profusely. The restaurant staff had finally appeared and stood looking helplessly on.
“Medical care,” said Brachis gruffly. “Did anyone send for help?”
One of the waiters nodded.
“All right, then.” Brachis motioned to Esro Mondrian. “Take him outside. I don’t want him in here a second longer than he has to be.”
“But moving him—” began Tatty.
“He’ll live, but we have to get him to a hospital. Don’t worry, Princess Tatiana, I’ll see to that. And we’ll get you patched up, too. And then”—Brachis shivered, and his voice dropped to a whisper—“and then I’ll get after the bastard who did this.”
He shook his head as though to clear it, reached for his shoulder, and gasped. He tilted, straightened, and started a slow crumpling. Tatty and Godiva reached out for him together. They lowered him gently to the floor. Their hands came away from his uniform covered with fresh bright blood.
Tatty wiped her palms absently on the front and side of her white dress. As she did so she suddenly thought of Chan. Where was he, what had he been doing?
A lot of things were beginning to make sense. The picture of Mondrian, back on Horus—it had been the spur that drove Chan towards intelligence. She had used it that way on purpose, to relieve her own feelings. And then the way that Chan had looked at Mondrian’s image when he came onto the display screen to ask her to go to dinner with him.
She had created Chan’s feeling deliberately, a focused and intense hatred. Was this the terrible result?
Please God, no.
But Tatty felt sure that she was right. It was her fault, she was the one who had caused this carnage. She dropped to her knees, cradled Esro Mondrian in her arms, and hid her face against his dark tunic.
* * *
First there had been that sudden, terrible moment when the whole world rushed in on him. It had created nausea, pain, and disorientation. At the time Chan would have said that nothing could ever be worse than those final few minutes in the Tolkov Stimulator. And it could never happen again. Self-awareness and loss of innocence occur at a unique moment in a life.
But there are degrees of torture, refinements of pain beyond the simple and the immediate. A more complex animal can admit more subtle agonies.
Those came later, and more gradually.
Even now, when he could speak perfectly well, Chan could not put his suffering into words. All he had was analogy. It was as though the illumination level of the world around him had been increasing, hour by hour and day by day. The light had been constant and dim for many years, until the Tolkov Stimulator produced that first flood of light. Ever after that the radiance level had risen, little by little. More and more detail became visible—and the brightness reached the point of discomfort, and far beyond.
Occasionally a single event would produce a flare, a quantum change in the brightness around him. The sight of Esro Mondrian, earlier in the day, had been a supernova. It brought in a torrent of new sensation. He knew Mondrian—but how, and when, and where?
Chan brooded on the question. Mondrian’s drawn, aristocratic features were utterly familiar, more familiar to Chan than his own face. The memory was there in his brain, it had to be—but he was denied access. Thinking about it only made his mind regress along an endless loop.
Finally Chan had wandered over to Tatty’s apartment. He had no particular reason for going there, no explicit goal in mind, but he wanted to talk to her. Maybe she could help him; if not, she might be able to comfort him.
It was a shock to find Tatty preoccupied with her own affairs, rather than being wholly devoted to Chan’s. He found her cold, remote, and unsympathetic. She was obviously far off on her own mental journey, and she did not want company.
When she went into the bedroom it was a clear hint for Chan to leave. He didn’t. Instead he hung around the apartment, convinced that he had nowhere else to go.
Finally Tatty had come out again, dressed for her dinner appointment. She had checked her appearance in the full-length mirror on the living-room wall. And it was then that Chan, looking over her shoulder and also seeing his own reflection, became disoriented and faint. For the first time in his life he experienced the most intense form of self-awareness. That tall, blond figure staring back at him with eyes of sapphire blue was him—Chancellor Vercingetorix Dalton, a unique assembly of thought, emotions and memories, housed in a single and familiar frame. There he was. There was his identity.
Chan felt like screaming aloud with revelation. But that was what children did. Instead he left the apartment—quickly, so that the great flood of thoughts would not be lost or diverted by conversation with others. In the corridor he saw the approaching figure of Esro Mondrian. That had set up its own resonance within him, adding to the internal storm.
Chan did not want to speak—to anyone. He hid until Mondrian had passed by and gone to Tatty’s door, and then he watched from the shadows. When the pair left he followed them along the walkway. He had no objective, beyond an unarticulated urge to keep both of them within his sight.
At the restaurant Chan was greeted by a waiter who politely barred his way. Did Chan have a reservation?
Chan shook his head dumbly and retreated. He wandered away along the corridor. His head was throbbing, stabs of pain shooting across his eyes. At each intersection he made a random choice of direction. Up, down, east, west, north, south, on through the convoluted interior paths of Ceres.
At last, quite by accident, he found that he had traveled all the way to the surface chambers. Great transparent viewports opened out on to the jumble of ships, gantries, landing towers, and antennae that covered the outer levels of t
he giant asteroid. Ceres was the power center of the solar system, and as such it had a surface that bustled with activity twenty-four hours a day.
Beyond that surface stood the quiet stars. Chan settled down to stare at them.
What was he? A month ago, anyone could have answered that question: he was a moron. A misfit, a folly of nature, the brain of an infant in the body of a grown man. Just a few days ago, Chan had asked Kubo Flammarion a question. Before the Stimulator, his brain had not developed. Chan understood that—but why had it not developed? Had the cause been chemical, physiological, psychological, or what?
Flammarion had shook his head. He had no idea; but he would ask the experts.
In a few hours he was back. They did not know the answer, either. Chan had always possessed what appeared to be a perfectly normal brain; and now, after the treatment, Chan had a normal brain—or one that was rather better than normal, according to the latest tests. But as to why—Flammarion’s experts had offered nothing. Why was Einstein, why was Darwin, why was Mozart, all with brains no different in appearance from yours or mine?
Kubo Flammarion was content with that answer. He did not realize how totally unsatisfying it was to Chan. For if no one could explain the source of his earlier abnormality, what assurance was there that Chan would not regress? And in how many other ways, less easy to measure, might he still be abnormal?
How would he even know he was abnormal? Maybe he was still a total misfit, still a freak of nature—just a rather smarter one.
Without even realizing it, Chan was exploring his own sanity and normality. The process was natural for all maturing humans above a certain intelligence. But Chan did not know that—and he was doing it on an accelerated time scale, struggling to make in weeks the adjustments of outlook that normally take years. He had no time to examine the libraries or talk to older friends, to cull from their millions of pages and ten thousand years of shared human experience the reassurances he needed.
So Chan stared at the stars, pondered, and could find no acceptable answers. He was overwhelmed by uncertainty and sorrow and pain.
The Mind Pool Page 18
