Mindworlds

by Phyllis Gotlieb

  Ned stared back the way he had come but could not see Spartakos. He was very far away … What’s going on with him?

  :Why ask me?: Rrengha said. :I cannot esp him.:

  He had not asked, but was relieved to connect with her worldview, because he could feel his group unraveling. “Go ahead, Azzah, do it!”

  Azzah cried, “Spartakos has a plan! Let’s do what he wants, come on!” Each of the O’e looked ragged, skin puckering with heat, but they followed in ranks and files. “Bring others!”

  Cawdor, the real one, drove up screeching and kicking dust in a wheeled pickup and began yelling, “I told you goddam dumb oinks to stay in your own camps!” He was redfaced and his words slurred.

  Azzah suppressed her rage and said, “We do your work better on our own.”

  “You giving me orders you piece of shit! I’ll show you—” He jumped out of the carry-all with stunner sprung to fire, Ned threw himself between the two with his baton swinging at Cawdor’s wrist but could do no more than graze his elbow.

  Cawdor sneered, “You! Got something else for you!” and unholstered something that Ned could not identify except that it was a gun, raised and cocked—

  —Cawdor did not see the crew of O‘e at his back, and the O’e had knives—

  —and his face wrenched with shock, then went blank and he fell, knees, hands, head. The crew picked his body clean of weapons, and Azzah pulled at Ned’s arm, urging him, “Come with us! Come!”

  But Ned could not. He pulled away. “You go and I’ll be with you in a—”

  Turning back he could just see in strobe blinks among the moving friezes of trampling bodies that Spartakos was unhooking the auxiliary fuel tank from the loader. Oh my God.

  Before he could move again he felt a savage pain in his left shoulder, one of the few places he hadn’t been battered. No one was near him, his shoulder was untouched, but he found himself looking through Rrengha’s eyes as she licked at a bloody wound in her shoulder. The eyes shut for a moment and his heart jumped, they blinked on again with the bass rumble of a snarl, alive right now, he closed his mind to it and ran after Spartakos pushing bodies to right and left, shouting, “No, for God’s sake! Don’t!”

  Everything happening at once, noise of riotous movement growing by the second, no way to tell friend or enemy in the mix, those who had found weapons firing them off in foolish rebellious bursts that wasted ammunition; others without weapons knocked down tents and set them on fire.

  The thug Oxman ran right by Ned without seeing him, Istvan and Demarest followed a moment later, struggling through tangles of fighters thrashing and screaming, and after them a straggle of their NCOs with frightened faces—at full force they were outnumbered nearly ten to one—heading for the corner between the gate and the watchtower that seemed to have nothing in it, and had all the striking power they needed now.

  Ned was diverging from them at a narrow angle toward Spartakos, who was standing on the hood of the loader, calmly pouring ethanol from the tank over the heaps of brush.

  “No, Spartakos!” Ned found himself screaming.

  Spartakos swiveled his head by a hundred and eighty degrees to look down at him and said kindly, “You have always been my friend, Ned Gattes. Now keep back and everything will be well.” He turned away and bent his head forward to open its laser panel.

  Ned sensed Rrengha running forward lopsided on three legs with her pain flickering around her, the laser light flashing out like an arrow, the heap of brush in instant flame, the loader with its blaze began to move, roared straight-lined at the weapons cache.

  Because hypnoforming meant nothing to Spartakos. He himself had slid down from the loader and was running now, as swiftly as if he were on wheels, to place himself between the conflagration behind him and the streaming crowds before him, calling out, “Keep back, all of you, keep back!” with his voice at its fullest and most melodious.

  A score of shooters yelling defiance aimed and shot.

  Spartakos became a dazzling flash and a rain of bright dust.

  The loader rammed into the corner and the mob turned and ran as thousands of bullets, grenades and gas canisters exploded, the watchtower teetered and crashed down, and greenish black smoke billowed.

  Ned found himself lying on the ground and deaf in both ears.

  The gate was open and its electric current broken, but nobody hurried out through the flames and stinking smoke.

  Rrengha? Ned pulled himself up and staggered over and around bodies that were dead, wounded or unconscious, feeling sickeningly alone among them. He caught sight of the Dabiri, whose tail had caught a spark he was trying to beat out, and then Grushka, who seemed to be whole and sane. The sun kept shining over all of this, casting the smoke cloud in a yellow-green light. Rrengha?

  Ned’s hearing was coming back in echoes and popping. After some panicky moments he found Rrengha crouching; her eyes were closed but she was panting. There was blood in her claws. “A few scratches, no bites,” she said, and managed to grin.

  A low roaring sound was rising over the crackle of fire and the popping of explosives. After a moment the sun was occluded by a great dark shape, a behemoth of a carrier with police markings, as gray-green as the cloud of smoke. It slowed and hovered.

  WORLD POLICE, a robot voice said. DROP ALL WEAPONS AND REMAIN STILL. The voice did not stop the flurries among the scared and wounded, nor the sudden flights of those who realized there were no more fences and were willing to risk the bush.

  “You can’t take all of us!” someone yelled, firing. A bullet’s flash cracked and ricocheted off the undercarriage of the ship.

  Another voice spoke then, in resonant tones echoing between ground and ship: “Your employer is dead. I saw him die. Your weapons are destroyed. There is no work for you on Khagodis and the money that was to be paid for it has been seized. You have nothing. Put down arms or be put to sleep.” A bay door opened and three ladders extended to the ground. The Lyhhrt in silver spattered with something like blood, descended one of them and said, “You there, Ned Gattes, come here, and whoever can do it, bring over that wounded Ungrukh.”

  Ned walked up to him and as they met he pulled the folded helmet from his arm and held it out. The Lyhhrt took it and it also flashed and became dust between his hands.

  Port City: Rounding Up

  Rrengha became the patient of a doctor and a veterinarian; the doctor for respect and the veterinarian for treatment. The police kept everyone else in a holding area, except for the twenty-three dead and the hundreds wounded, who were treated at whatever hospitals found room for them. Some hundreds, who preferred to avoid any authorities, had taken Azzah’s advice and pressed southward, broken through the fences and found their way to villages with a population much like themselves.

  The Lyhhrt, after consulting with others of his kind who held office on Fthel IV, promised that his world would pay for all treatments and transportation. Then he helped the police sort out the rotten apples that were left.

  The media descended, whacking around the sky when they were not allowed into the compounds, but during the few days until the story deflated, Ned had a cubicle to himself and spent it sitting on his bed, knees and arms folded and head down on them, thinking of Spartakos. A flash and a fall of dust … He didn’t know whether Spartakos had been hit by the shots or self-destructed to keep control over himself to the end. Everything will be well. Famous last words.

  When he called Zella her voice trembled more than his. “They didn’t show you on the trivvy—”

  “I was hiding from them and—eh, I’m all right, Zel … .”

  He forced himself to get up and go into the compound where most of the others that he knew were gathered, Grushka laughing now and arm-wrestling with anyone who took the challenge; over in the corner of the yard Azzah, joshing with her corps, and Lek beside her.

  Ned paused to console the Dabiri over the damage to his tail, and finally learned to pronounce his name, Hrihranyi, then went to spea
k to Azzah. He found himself unable to utter the name, Spartakos.

  She looked at him wisely. “Spartakos said he wanted to lead us freely into the world … but, in the end we are the only ones who can lead ourselves. He let me make myself a leader … .”

  Ned said to Lek, “Are you going to follow the leader?”

  Lek grinned. “What’m I gonna do, recruit for murder gangs? I done that already. Wherever we can find work … and if we need children we’ll find some of them, somewhere, too.”

  Ned smiled. “Don’t look at me, I haven’t got any to spare.”

  Finally realizing that he was truly free to look homeward.

  When he visited Rrengha in the infirmary, she said, “Doctors tell me they believe I walk on four legs again. If not, three must do. Let some other lucky one from my land go to Khagodis and give them our story, I have enough. My bartender tells me my place is open still, and there is red meat too, so I don’t want to eat the customers. That is better than being useless on my own world.

  “I am glad to know you, Ned Gattsss, and I wish you safe home.”

  When his i.d. had been established and the police had found no reason to hold him, Ned was let go and the Lyhhrt booked him into the biggest hotel in Port City, a clean place of modest size where the food was good instead of merely edible. The Lyhhrt went off and Ned took three baths, one after the other, until the water ran clean.

  In the late afternoon the Lyhhrt came back with beer and clothing for Ned, as well as travelling money.

  Ned, not yet feeling grateful, could not keep himself from saying: “If you ever make another robot citizen I hope to God you don’t name him Spartakos.”

  The Lyhhrt said, “That Earther one died fighting as well, according to your history.”

  “Ours told me more than once that he was a guide and lighthouse, to keep you safe, and free the O’e. Did you make him to ease your guilt, Lyhhrt?”

  The Lyhhrt answered nothing for a moment, because he owed Ned much. Then, patiently, “You must answer that for yourself,” and while Ned drank the beer told him everything. About Brezant, his shadowy staff, Lorrice and Tyloe, the murders, the plots and their failures, whatever he knew of the plans on Khagodis, the story that branched off in so many directions, and folded in on itself and became something entirely different; not an exhaustive story, but enough to set Ned into the landscape for the first and only time in his career.

  Ned heard him out in silence. He had become a different Lyhhrt from the one Ned had met in Dusky Dell’s.

  After that the Lyhhrt said, “I/we made promises to you.”

  “Damned little I did,” Ned said.

  “You risked your life to do what I asked. And without you and Spartakos those hundreds would be dead. I told you what I did for Tyloe and Lorrice. I will do the same for you, and whatever else you ask.”

  Ned shook his head. “I don’t need wealth to the umpteenth generation. If you want to reward me right now you can help me find a job and one for Zel if she wants it, so we can keep sending the kids to school. I don’t need to be plated with rhodium.”

  “Not quite done, but will be done.”

  “And you can take care of the O’e the way you promised Spartakos …”

  “I/we will.”

  Before the Lyhhrt could slip away, Ned asked, “What do you think your world is going to do about itself, Lyhhrt?”

  “I alone cannot speak for us/them. I can only say: we don’t know if that poisonous growth Zamos has been extirpated root and branch throughout the Galaxy and its poisons washed away, but we no longer need fear it.

  “We are creators of science, healing and artistry. Worlds are begging us for our talents, and the more we trade with them the more power and protection we have and less likely we are to be enslaved ever again, forced to create slaves, or have our bodies used for egg yolks by peoples like the Ix. Whether we like it or not we will never again be ignorant enough to be content.”

  “That should spin their brains for them,” Ned said.

  “And,” the Lyhhrt added hesitantly, “I will tell them that as long as we live among worlds and must work with them we cannot keep from becoming many minds in many gatherings of them, and cannot go on believing that differences among us are heresies. At the same time we must no longer travel only in pairs … it leads to agony. There must be more of us to absorb … losses.”

  Ned was sitting in the city’s Port Complex over a drink, impatiently waiting for his lift home, when his transcomm signal beeped. Ned clicked on nervously. Zel? But the message was from his agent Manador. He had not asked her for work in years.

  NED GATTES, I HAVE A JOB FOR YOU, THEY NEED A TOUGH PUG ON KEMALAN V TO TAKE CARE OF.

  Ned had signed off.

  He sat there drinking and listening to a slim young woman with long fair hair and a dress of iridescent uki scales who was singing:

  and sometimes I feel like the mermaid

  walking on footsteps of pain

  crossing bridges over rivers I was born to swim

  down to the sea

  and I want to be

  free to swim the rivers to the sea again

  and fleetingly he thought of the Lyhhrt before his mind turned once again toward home.

  Then someone sat down beside him and said, “Hello, thought you lived up in Miramar.” Tyloe, by himself.

  “Thought you lived around there too. What’s doing?”

  Tyloe smiled. He and Lorrice had returned to the hotel, packed all their purchases and rigorously divided the Lyhhrt’s money.

  And she had said, “One last drink?”

  “Why not?”

  The bar, just before noon, had been empty except for two women drinking coffee and a gray-haired man wearing a diamond ring and a silk shirt with pearl buttons. He was drinking a BlueVine cocktail with zimb slices and she had her eyes on him right away, smiled and esped him down to the last cred; eventually he noticed her.

  Tyloe nodded and murmured, “It’s been nice knowing you,” and went off to pay the check.

  Since then he’d hung around Port City waiting for a ship but not sure where he wanted it to take him. “Dunno what I want to do, go home and listen to Daddo earbanging or somewhere else on my own.”

  Ned dared to say, “Didn’t you once have a lady friend?”

  “Not really. She found somebody older and wealthier than me.”

  Ned grinned. “Here’s an address.” He clicked a couple of buttons on his comm. “Look.”

  Tyloe squinted at the tiny display:

  Manador of Pinaxer, Registered Gladiatorial Agent.

  “Eh, one of those blue women …”

  “Yeh. She won’t make you a pug, but she’ll damn right find something for you to do. Just don’t let her get you into bed.” Tyloe’s reddening face made Ned raise his eyebrows. “You go there, tell her Ned Gattes sent you, tell her, thanks for the memories, but I’m outa this life. I’ve had some gaudy times, but this THE END.”

  All’s Well That Ends

  The Lyhhrt went home and decontaminated until the grit and filth of other worlds washed out of him in waters of welcome salt and bitterness. He gave his people one of those mind-crimping reports that Lyhhrt specialize in, and told them what he had told Ned. Then immersed himself in long years of dreaming.

  Eventually the world Lyhhr fulfilled all promises. They established trades workshops for the O’e on five worlds, and for Ned they bought Waxers Works, renovated it until it esthetically matched the ancient grotto it had been built inside, and gave it to him. Ned and Zella hired Knuck and Ham, and found customers among the embassies who enjoyed working out in a safe place that looked dangerous.

  The world Lyhhr sent a delegation of five, a good working unit, to Khagodis, apologizing for their murderous extremists and asking for a resumption of trade … but that was deeper into the future.

  And gradually the universe got used to existing without Zamos.

  Sometimes in his mind’s eye just before he falls aslee
p with his arm around Zella, Ned sees Spartakos as he must have looked when the Lyhhrt first created him, splendid in his gleaming chromium and gold, his iridium fingertips and pearl nails, burning with light like the sun.

  He has never seen Spartakos so newly made, and wonders if the Lyhhrt has given him this vision.

  Hasso is full of joy, Skerow waits beside him and he feels her joy redoubling his own, as the child comes forward with her young thoughts tinkling like a ring of bells, just learning to speak in the difficult way Khagodi do.

  And he stoops to take her hand: :We are so very pleased to meet you, dems’l!: While Dritta smiles from above.

  The Lyhhrt will never again reach out to find an Other, but when dreams of fire and blood threaten to pull his spirit down into the demonic Anti-Force he sends for his workshell, encases himself to rise above the swamp and succulent growth of his world, and through his adamant eyes he watches the sundogs, the halos and at night the stars.

  TOR BOOKS BY PHYLLIS GOTLIEB

  Flesh and Gold

  Violent Stars

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

  MINDWORLDS

  Copyright © 2002 by Phyllis Gotlieb

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  Edited by David G. Hartwell

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

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  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor-forge.com