Mindworlds

by Phyllis Gotlieb

  Ned was taken aback at the longest speech he had ever heard from a Lyhhrt.

  “Please! Say that you will consider helping me/us do this! If such an action came to pass Galactic Federation would become involved, there would be threats and embargoes, then military operations, and our already crumbling world would be completely shattered!”

  Ned muttered, “I have a wife and children.” He was breathing hard, and Zella was still clutching him around the neck, with her fists a knot under his chin. And I’m over-age for a pug. The lesson had been well drummed into him a few hours ago.

  “The Khagodi know you from your work there five years ago,” the Lyhhrt said. “They owe you favors. And when I/ we can find help we will take care of your wife and children while you are away—and later you and your family for at least as far as the third generation. After that, if things go on as they are doing, we may be incommunicado.”

  “I don’t see how it could get that bad.”

  “It may seem like a local quarrel to you! But our Councils, which we would never have needed one Cosmic Cycle ago, because we were One, have been torn into factions over the states of individuality, kinds of individuality we can allow among us, what we can afford to accept, and what we must refuse.

  “All because of our trade, travels, explorations. Every day we grow a megamultiple of dogmas—why need I tell you this? If we are drawn into any kind of exoplanetary action there will be complete chaos!”

  “And I’m to say all that to the Khagodi?” Khagodi were six times his weight and nearly twice his height, and looked like that dinosaur—

  “Allosaurus. Say anything you like as long as it keeps Khagodis from believing we will attack them! My Other has been destroyed and I have nowhere else to turn, but I will make myself their hostage.”

  “But will that work!”

  “Your friends Skerow and Hasso will know you, and Spartakos will be our own best represent—”

  “One moment, my Maker,” Spartakos said in a voice even deeper and warmer than the Lyhhrt’s.

  “—representative of—what? what?”

  “Do you say that you want me to go with you, Maker?”

  “Of course! You would be—”

  “You are not asking me whether I want to go! I have had a useful existence here finding friends and taking care of the O’e, whom you made and then deserted when you gathered yourselves in. You made me a world-citizen, if you remember, with volition, and I want to stay where I am.”

  The Lyhhrt seemed thunderstruck. Spartakos was the one being among the worlds that he could not esp, and now was not allowed to touch without permission. The Lyhhrt stared at him for a speechless moment and Spartakos stood straight before him as if his splendor had not dulled.

  “I need you, Spartakos,” the Lyhhrt said weakly, almost wheedling, “to be our representative of Lyhhr’s mastery of crafts Khagodi have depended on for—” He stumbled a bit and then recovered his passion: “Please! If we can carry out this mission we will give you new bearings of sapphire and titanium, replate your head and hands with newly-refined gold, and coat your steel body with rhodium! We will tip your fingers with iridium, give you fingernails of nacre from the finest shells of the hugest pearls in the seas of Xirifor, we will burnish you!!!”

  Ned’s only thought was if.

  Spartakos stood silent for a moment, then said, “Will you also take care of the ones I have been serving?”

  After the same scrupulously timed moment, the Lyhhrt said, “I/we will.”

  He turned to Ned. “Of course, we will give you risk pay also.” And as an afterthought, “And we will rebuild that ugly jaw with newly grown skin and real bone.”

  “If I get back,” Ned said. “I’ll take you up on it.”

  “Ned!”

  “It’s all right, Zel. I have to risk it. I’m damned if I’m going back to Lisboa. This way everybody gets taken care of and that’s how it’s gotta be.” The sloshing of a wave at the sea-wall made him jump, and he stared as a thick hairy arm came over the edge and got a grip, pulled up a soaked head with a draggled beard. “What—”

  The Lyhhrt stood up and bent forward; Ned caught a flash of truly alien suspicion and terror that nearly cracked his skull. He gasped, “Watch it, man—that’s Geordie, he drinks here!”

  Zella cried, “Ned? What is it?” No one else had noticed the flash, and Ned shook his head; he’d learned something else he didn’t want to know: that a Lyhhrt could be caught off guard.

  The Lyhhrt hunched his workman’s shoulders once and then the hand reached out of its sleeve further than an arm ought to go, he gripped the fleshly one, another hairy arm grabbed the railing, and it was one of the tavern brawlers who finally dragged his thick body up and over to stand dripping on the steps.

  “Much obliged.”

  “Any time.”

  Ned said, “Hey Geordie, where’s your friend?”

  “Over by the pier waitin till his head stops spinnin!” He pulled himself up the Grottoes steps into shadow, with no idea how narrowly he had missed—what? Being struck down? Dropped back into the sea?

  The Lyhhrt, for all his admitted weaknesses, his lack of the usual splendor, once again gave Ned a sense of being bound in deep and uncontrollable forces.

  There was a silence, full of thoughts that might have been spoken but were let pass. After a few moments the Lyhhrt broke it.

  “Ned Gattes, now you know everything I know. I beg you, as soon as you are able, take a walk at noon in that market up the road from here.” He slipped away down the Grottoes stairs toward the darkness.

  Ned and Zella did not watch him go but, arm-wrapped, climbed the steps upward toward home and bed. Spartakos looked once at his friends, then turned and followed his maker with footsteps faintly ringing.

  Good Night

  “If your old man was such a sonofabitch what are you doing here with Brezant?”

  It was a house, a hotel, a castle, it could be anything, they’d been travelling in darkness, and now they were here, alone and hidden in the depth of a forest. A place with stucco-effect walls, and its doorways were arched. Tyloe had hardly seen the light of day since he joined up with Brezant. Tyloe and Lorrice had adjoining rooms, too cozy; she’d opened her door into his, and was standing in its arch, her face sharpened by curiosity.

  He was just sitting on the edge of his bed digging in his bag for tooth-cleaner. He stood up. “My father wasn’t a sonofabitch, he just wouldn’t give me room to breathe.” Mercifully, she was wearing an impervious helmet, muting the tuning fork; its velvet sheathing looked like crisscrosses of red veins. Her dressing-gown was quilted black satin, an almost too obvious emblem of the darkness of night and the forest around them; somewhere in the depths of forests over the world, ten thousand men. He felt vulnerable, almost virginal, in his paper-white seersucker jams. “Does your ah … employer know what you think of him?”

  “He knows everybody’s scared shitless. He likes that.”

  “I don’t like being scared. What does he want from me? So far all I’ve done is hang around.”

  “Well … I think you’re sort of a reward for me … for letting every slimy exo crawl around in my skull … .”

  “What does he think of this?”

  “I’m the one with the esp here, and he doesn’t say a word.”

  He stared at her and his hair stood on end. He was profoundly grateful for her helmet. Picturing those thick fingers twisting the fabric. Keeping his face straight, not put off. That’s his idea, is it? But he dared not ask that question, or the other one, What about crawling in my skull?

  “But he thinks you’ll make the business look more respectable, give it some class, you’ve got height and build, went to a bunch of expensive schools, you can talk right. Not like those greasy lawyers and thick-butt thugs who sit around playing skambi all day.”

  “I was kicked out of all of those schools.”

  “But they chipped off some of your edges just the same, didn’t they? Otherwi
se you wouldn’t be here.”

  “What about you? You’re here too, and I know you’re a registered ESP.”

  “Ah, yes, one star.” She grimaced. “The Registry sent me out here. I thought I was going to be the high-salary hostess of a wonderful luxury entertainment complex, know just what everybody wanted or needed and make sure somebody else got it for them. But Zamos blew up and I fell into a cheap whorehouse where the johns were scared I knew their secrets … so I was getting beat up in S&M fantasies until Andres found me, and I’m grateful for that, and I’m loyal, even though he is nervewracking. And he’s—he’s even kind of exciting … but you—you ran away from all the ones that wouldn’t let you breathe. Do you breathe easy here? What are you loyal to?” Stepping forward, closer to him.

  He found himself mumbling. “Maybe I never found out. I wanted to be something completely different. Thought I might be a pug and even went to a training school, but with my height I’m more of a target than a weapon and they all went out of business anyway. Like with you. Right now I think all I wanted was another chance to start over. Save up a little money and go home.”

  She said nothing to that, and it occurred to him that staying with Andres Brezant and starting over were mutually exclusive possibilities. Tyloe knew he was naive, but he wasn’t stupid. Brezant, after all, had allowed him to see and hear everything. “But this minute I’m loyal to Andres Brezant, and you can tell him whatever you want.” Almost, in his mind, “him” with a capital H.

  “I’m damned if I’ll tell him anything.” She grabbed his wrists and took backward steps toward her doorway, pulling him with her; she had strong cool hands, very white on his brown ones. “I’m the one that picked you off the street, and I’m here to make sure you have plenty to do.” Drawing him over her threshold, flinging open her black quilted satin to clench him against her nakedness, crinkled jams and all.

  What she wanted. No mirrors in these ceilings … not a Zamos whorehouse, but … anybody watching?

  TWO

  Khagodis, Gray-green Great Equatorial River

  Khagodi rarely travel by air because they weigh at least three times as much as any other species in Galactic Federation; Galactic Federation ships take them to whatever worlds that need them as judges, scholars, or telepathic therapists; their air cargo carriers are piloted by feathered Kylkladi.

  Hasso was resigned to the lengthy voyage on the paddle-wheel barge down his world’s greatest river on his way to the world’s greatest institution, the Interworld Court. Hasso had already informed World Governors’ Office of the Lyhhrt’s message, and appointments for further discussion were set; so that with the three-thirtyday window he had been given by the Lyhhrt there was minimal urgency to his mission. But he could not help feeling resentment at the burden he was bearing. Being obliged to declare that Khagodis was under the threat of Lyhhrt attack had parched his mouth and choked the voice in his throat.

  The wheel splashed and flickered, but its wake hardly puckered the smooth and heavy breadth of the river, whose other coast, though deeply forested, was faint with mist. There was no quiet aboard. Khagodi in official red and blue shoulder-sashes were mingled among Dabiri with braided tails, bright-feathered Kylkladi, and Bengtvadi with tattooed heads: tourists or embassy staffs on winter holidays, chasing after scattered children; in the mind silence underneath the whickering and squawking the Khagodi carried on their esp conversations, careful to focus them away from their alien neighbors.

  At every stop on the long way traders boarded, mainly Kylkladi, to hawk jumbles of oxycaps, dried zimbfruit, fresh sea-stars, dopesticks, vials of allergy spray and necklaces of imitation Pstyrian fire-beads. Heavily muscled blue-skinned Varvani followed to push their creaking wagons for them.

  Hasso, who rarely wore a helmet, rested in his circled place and was grateful to be distracted with noises and colors, multi-tongued arguments, children’s counting games, calls from passing boats. The afternoon rain was loosening in the clouds, and the bargehands unscrolled the long green awnings with ropes and squeaking pulleys.

  The sky flickered, but the lightning that struck Hasso did not come from the clouds. It was a psychic cry of grief and anger uttered by a woman—no, a girl scarcely older than himself, for Hasso in spite of his position and dignity was not long past adolescence.

  She had ripped the strap off her impervious helmet, dragged it off her head and flung it away somewhere on the deck, where it rolled and clattered among the peaceful travelers who jumped as one and radiated a wave of surprise.

  Hasso caught one glance from her tear-bursting eyes and knew a thousand things at once:

  What is happening to me!

  Dear Saints, I love that woman!

  He was not only instantly in love—but in the grip of an embarrassing surge of lust that made him twist where he crouched. He yearned, with his whole being, with everything he had suppressed for all his life, with all the passion of the one heart he had been given instead of the Khagodi’s doublehearted birthright, with all the effort he had put into learning and seeking in dusty records for grimy secrets—

  All those around him should have been staring, snickering, jeering. No one stirred a limb or lifted a scale. The young woman’s companion, a big southerner in brilliant scales and flash helmet, was grasping her arm, was about to twist it, she was shrinking away, his eyes squirted blood that splattered his blue official sash—too obviously a Khagodi with high blood pressure and a bad temper—

  And all at once Hasso knew, as if the world had cracked open and spilled every secret of its millions, that the lout in the blue sash and the helmet crusted with false jewels was an Emissary of the Governor of Western Sealand, whose borders half-circled those of the Isthmus Territories, that the mother of the young woman was a widow whose husband had once been wealthy but left her in poverty, and having failed to win the Governor for a husband, had succeeded in selling him her daughter, and that this daughter, in her despair had cried out—

  Just as Hasso’s mind was about to boil over, in the instant when he was wondering how he knew all of this, he felt a peculiar stillness and almost knew what was coming next. Knew what was coming next.

  An exceedingly sharp mindvoice aimed at him alone said:

  PUT ON YOUR HELMET QUICKLY, ARCHIVIST! YOU DO NOT WANT THAT ONE TO RECOGNIZE THE MASTER OF ARCHIVES WHO CAN SEE ALL THINGS AND FIT THEM INTO ONE.

  Hasso did not need to look: he knew the Lyhhrt was settled beside him on a three-legged stool, still wrapped in his ugly clothing. “By Saint Gresskow’s Seven Bastards!” He actually heard himself whispering this unaccustomed oath. In a moment of breathless silence after he had hastily pulled on his helmet, he added, “Lyhhrt, whatever are you doing here?” He realized that he knew everything because impervious helmets mean nothing to Lyhhrt.

  All was calm now. A child ran to fetch the tumbling helmet and the young woman meekly put it on. With a touch of the Lyhhrt’s mind her guardian had let go his grip on her arm and forgotten his anger. He fished a wipe from his kit-bag and absent-mindedly dabbed at the blood drops on his face and official sash.

  But Hasso’s spirit sank. With his glimpse into her mind he had given her one into his own, and in that instant she had seen kindness and the hope of help. And he did not repel her—surely not when she considered what she was travelling toward! Because Hasso had no blemish but his weak leg, though the pains he took to move his body neatly deepened the lines in his face.

  But on a thinly populated world where reproduction was all-important, Hasso did not expect that any woman would risk her fertility with a man who had a wasted leg and only one heart, no matter how many times others called him a prodigy and a genius.

  “Why are you here, Lyhhrt?” he asked again.

  The Lyhhrt wrapped himself more tightly into his thick clothes and pulled down his brimmed hat even further. “A duty I have been forced into … no matter how I tried to shirk … .” And went on: :I was conceived on this strange world and carried in the metal body of
a robot to another one. That fellow you call Ned Gattes who guarded me sent me home safely, but by then it was I who had become too strange for us/my others, and they would not let me be One. I made my un/one self a gold and silver body and marched about like a bejeweled fool, but no matter how hard I worked for Galactic Federation I was no one and had no true being.:

  :I had forgotten that you worked for them.:

  :It is worth forgetting, except that they pay me a pension!:

  :For a being five years of age by GalFed Standard, you are surely not a failure!:

  :If you say so, Archivist. Finally I came back here where my genitors conceived me, where they at least had a few moments of sweetness before their sacrifice, and I keep watch, to honor them … my only us/ones.:

  :You watch very well, Lyhhrt. Now tell me what danger it is that you’ve kept me from. The governor of Western Sealand has not much to do with me.:

  And will have even less when she is his wife.

  The Lyhhrt did not answer the private thought. : You recall that Zamos bought a tract of land in the Isthmuses, a decayed estate belonging to the impoverished branch of a wealthy family. They bred clones and also found gold there. That governor—:

  :Of course! He’s from a branch of that same wealthy family, they were named Nohl and he is Gorodek—and he bought up that land after Zamos was disbanded … yes, the gold ran out, and it was put up for sale … a worthless piece of land, but … its eastern border is only eighty-five thousand siguu from the Great Platinum-Iridium Field! He had bought it in his first wife’s name, I had heard the rumors—and even sent for the documentation to keep in my Zamos archive—because an elected official is not allowed to own land in another country, and he was being investigated! I was only distracted and put it out of my mind because you dragged me into this business, Lyhhrt!: