The Big Book of Science Fiction

by The Big Book of Science Fiction (retail) (epub)

  “Rand Gladney? The composer? I thought he’d been sucked.”

  “He was. But he’s out of full quarantine now, and his new personality’s grown into mature form. He’s lucky his old recording company had regeneration insurance on him. Of course, he’s not really Gladney anymore and never will be again.”

  “Have they told him who he used to be?”

  “Oh, yeah. Every detail. He wanted to know. Most victims of involuntary mind-suck do. They’re all intensely curious about their former lives, and the doctors figure honesty is the best policy. Better for them to hear about it in a sheltered environment where they can learn to deal with it. Anyway, I thought this would be a good opportunity for a pathosfinder to work with an adult who has no history whatsoever and help him become an artist.”

  For the millionth time, I thought about the career in neurosis-peddling I’d given up. NN had promised (sort of) that someday he’d let me go back to it.

  I’d never thought peddling things like compulsive cleanliness to wealthy people who enjoyed feeling a little more unstable than usual was easy work until NN had made a pathosfinder out of me.

  But I didn’t have to tell him I’d take the job. He knew I would.

  —

  I ran through the bare minimum of information on Gladney that NN had dumped into the data-keep in my apartment while the portable system I used for mind-to-mind contact with clients was being overhauled. Prior to having his mind stolen, Rand Gladney had been a composer of middle-high talent with a fair number of works that had settled into the cultural mainstream. At the time of his erasure, he’d been approaching a turning point in his career where he would have either ascended to greater ability and prominence or settled slowly into repetition and, eventually, semioblivion. In seven years, he had peaked twice after his breakthrough. And that was just about all NN wanted me to know about the Gladney-that-had-been. I could have easily found out more, but I trusted NN’s judgment as to how much information on Gladney’s previous incarnation I should bring with me to the job.

  The Gladney-that-was-now had been out of full quarantine for a month, though he was still hospitalized and his movements were restricted. Rehabilitating mindwipes is a precarious business, like trying to stand with your hands both on and off someone’s shoulders. Personality regrowth begins with the restoration of language, first by machine, then by humans. If humans don’t replace the machine at precisely the right moment, you end up with a person unable to think in anything but a machine-type mode. People like that may be great logicians, but they’re lousy on theory. Most often they resolve the conflict between the definite and the gray in their lives by suicide or voluntary mindwipe, which is pretty much the same thing. There are very few brains hardy enough to redevelop a mind after a second erasure, the myelin sheathing on the axons just won’t stand up to that kind of abuse.

  In any case, Gladney (who was apparently still going by that name for the sake of convenience) had passed all the critical points in redevelopment and had become a person, again or for the first time, depending on your point of view. He was certainly not the same person—the man who had emerged from the blank brain was reminiscent of his former self but no more that self than he was anyone else.

  The extreme convolutedness of such a situation was one reason why I chose not to go into rehabbing mindwipe as a profession when I’d had the chance. Still, it was a fascinating field, easier to succeed in if you have a bit of a mystic bent, or so I’ve been told. I’d never thought of myself as particularly mystical, but I suppose all mindplayers are to a certain extent, if you accept the mind as the ghost in the biological machine or something like that.

  I filed the idea way for later meditation and went over Gladney’s aptitude tests. His new personality had grown in with a definite talent for music and more—I was startled to find that he now had perfect pitch. The previous man did not. It made me wonder. Was the perfect pitch something that had shown up due to some alteration in Gladney’s brain chemistry brought about by the mindsuck? Or was it just due to a different brain organization? Possibly it was a combination of both.

  Whatever it was, I didn’t really have to worry about it. I was supposed to treat Gladney as I would any other client, which is to say as though he had never been anyone else but who he was now.

  “Truth to tell,” said the woman with the carnelian eyes and the too-short apple-red hair, “we ended up selecting you for your business name. Anyone operating as Deadpan Allie must have quite a lot of control over herself.” She smiled brightly. Her name was Lind Jesl, and she looked less like the chief doctor on the Gladney case than she did someone finishing up her own recovery. Except for the carnelian eyes and the hair, she was as plain as possible, her stout body concealed in a loose, gray sacksuit. The office we were sitting in was even more austere, a cream-colored box with no decorations. Even the computer desk was all folded into a stark, bare block. The whole thing reminded me of the infamous white-room image I’d come across in certain clients’ minds.

  “Of course,” she went on, “your self-control will be vital when you delve our boy. An involuntary wipe is supremely sensitive and impressionable, even at such an advanced stage of regeneration. Just the experience of you probing his mind is going to make quite a mark on him. Your flavor, as ’twere, will leave a bit of an aftertaste.”

  “I’m very careful.”

  “Yes, certainly you are.” Her gaze snagged briefly on my equipment piled up beside me before she gave me her five-hundred-watt smile again. “And we wouldn’t have hired you if we weren’t as confident of his ability to think independently as we are of your ability to refrain from exerting too much psychic influence.”

  She was putting a lot of emphasis on the very thing guaranteed by the fact that I was licensed to pathosfind in the first place. “What kind of results are you looking for?”

  “Ah.” Five hundred watts went to six hundred. She folded her pudgy hands and plunked them on her stomach. “We’re hoping you’ll help him learn how to combine the various elements that make up a composer into a whole that will be greater than the sum of the parts.”

  I blinked.

  “We know that he has a musical bent, as ’twere. A definite leaning toward music, an affinity for playing instruments that tends to accompany perfect pitch. But as yet, these things are fragmented in him. He’s having difficulty achieving a state where they all work together. In fact, he has yet to achieve it even for a few moments.”

  “Isn’t that just a matter of”—I shrugged—“practice and experience?”

  “Usually. But I know Gladney. This Gladney. There are signs of a definite barrier of some kind that he just can’t or won’t find his way around. We don’t know for certain because we haven’t delved him since the very early part of the regeneration, which he does not remember. Delicate Plant Syndrome, you see—if you keep digging up a delicate plant to see how well the roots are taking, it dies.” She sat forward, her hands disappearing into the voluminous cloth of the sacksuit. “We feel he’s ready for mind-to-mind contact now but with a pathosfinder rather than a doctor. We want him to feel less like our patient and more like a person.”

  “How long has it been since you delved him therapeutically?”

  “About nine or ten months. It’s been a year since the mindsuckers got him. We’re hoping to release him completely in another six months at the most. Depending on how much progress he makes with you.”

  “Have you let him listen to any of his old compositions? The previous Gladney’s music, I mean?”

  “Yes and no. Which is to say he’s heard it, but he doesn’t know who composed it. We removed all identification from all the recordings we’ve given him, not just Gladney’s, to foil whatever deductions he might have tried to make.”

  “Does he react any differently to the Gladney compositions than he does to any of the others?”

  “He reacts to all music somewhat guardedly. He puts it through some kind of mental sorting procedure, and he ca
n tell with an accuracy of close to ninety percent, sometimes more, whether different pieces of music were composed by the same person. I suspect he could also arrange a composer’s works in the correct chronological order as well. He’s extremely bright. But—” Jesl spread her hands. “Something inside isn’t meshing.”

  “Has he tried to compose?”

  “Oh, yes. Some short things he won’t let us hear. We had to bug the synthesizer we gave him. His work shows potential. There are moments when it almost breaks through, but it always stops short of achieving—well, fullness, as ’twere. You’ll hear that for yourself, I’m sure.” She looked at my equipment again.

  She was awfully sure about a lot of things, it seemed to me. I considered the possibility that her evaluation of his music might be faulty. Perhaps the musical direction he was taking was just different from the old Gladney’s, and what he wasn’t achieving were her expectations. But a sight reading of her Emotional Index didn’t indicate any smugness. Her certainty seemed to come from the fact that she’d been with him at every step of his regrowth. She smiled again, this time somewhat reservedly, and I realized she knew I’d been taking her Emotional Index.

  “When can I see him?” I asked.

  “Right now, if you like. We’ve fixed up a room for you not far from his so you’ll be within easy reach of each other. I’ll take you down there, and then we’ll visit our boy.”

  The room they’d given me was an improvised efficiency with a freestanding lavabo unit and jury-rigged meal dial. My apartment at NN’s agency had spoiled me for any other kind of accommodations, no matter how temporary. The bed was a hospital bed disguised as a civilian—not very wide but, to my great relief, hard as a rock.

  I’d brought only a few personal things with me, which I didn’t bother to unpack. I debated taking my equipment with me to Gladney’s room and decided against it. He might feel too pressured to begin work if I appeared wheeling my system with me. I wanted some extra time myself, just to see what an eighteen-month-old adult was like on the outside before I went inside.

  The man lying on the bed had once had the pampered good looks found in most people of celebrity status. Over the months, he’d lost a good deal of them, the way an athlete or dancer will lose a certain amount of strength after a long period of inactivity. He was still attractive, but his appearance was changing, veering off in another direction. Typical of a regrown mindwipe. In a few months it was possible he would be so changed that no one from his previous life would recognize him.

  He got up for Jesl’s brief introduction, touching hands with me gingerly, as though I might be a hot iron. Something like bewildered panic crossed his face as Jesl made a quick but unhurried exit, leaving us on our own.

  “So, you’re my pathosfinder.” He gestured at a small area arranged around an entertainment center with a few chairs and a beverage table. He’d probably set it up himself, but I could tell he wasn’t completely at home with it.

  “Anything you’d like to ask me in particular?” I said, sitting down. The chair I selected gave like soft clay under me, and I realized it was one of those damned contour things that will adapt a shape to complement your position. It was made of living fiber, supposedly the most comfortable kind of furniture there was, though how anyone could be comfortable with a chair that needed to be fed, watered, and cleaned up after was not within my understanding. Occasionally you’d hear horror stories about people who had sat down on one of those things and then needed to be surgically removed later. I wondered why they’d given Gladney a contour and then remembered it was also supposed to be a boon to the lonely. I was going to have a rough time being deadpan if it started any funny stuff with me. Fortunately, it seemed disposed to let me sit in peace; so I decided to tough it out rather than change seats. Gladney appeared to be watching me closely.

  “I hardly ever use that one,” he said as it molded itself to support my elbows. “I can’t get used to it. But it’s fascinating to watch when someone else is in it.” He turned his attention to my face. “What kind of eyes are those?”

  “Cat’s-eye biogem.”

  “Cat’s-eye.” He sounded slightly envious. “Everyone here at the hospital has biogems. Even some of the other ’wipes. Dr. Jesl says that I can order some whenever I want to, but I don’t feel like I can yet. He had biogems.”

  “Who?”

  “Gladney. The original one, not me. After he was sucked, the hospital replaced them with these, which I guess are reproductions of the eyes he was born with.” He smiled. “I remember how surprised I was when they told me almost everyone has his eyes replaced with artificial ones. It still amazes me a little. I mean, my eyes don’t feel artificial—but then, I guess I wouldn’t know the difference, would I?” His smile shrank. “It’s strange to think of you going into my brain that way. Through my eyes. It’s strange to think of anyone else in there except me.” He put his hand on his chest and absently began rubbing himself. “And yet there have been a whole lot of people in there. Mindplayers. For him. And then the suckers. The doctors. And now you.”

  “Direct contact with the mind is a way of life. Not just the mindplay but many forms of higher education. People buy and sell things, too. Neuroses, memories, or—” Nice rolling, Deadpan, I thought. You had to bring that up.

  “Yeah. I know. People buy and sell. They steal, too.” He lifted his chin with just a trace of defiance. “I made them tell me about that, and what they wouldn’t tell me, I looked up. How Gladney’s mind got stolen because there was some guy who admired him so much that he wanted to be Gladney. So he had Gladney overlaid on his own self. He went crazy. Trying to be two people at once.” He slouched in his chair and rested his head on his right hand, digging his fingers into his thick, brown hair. I didn’t make a move. “I asked them why they didn’t just take Gladney out of him and put him back, but they said they couldn’t do that after he’d already been implanted. Even if they’d found the suckers before that, it would have been impossible because this brain”—he pointed at his head and then resumed rubbing his chest—“had already begun developing a new mind. Me. There would have been too much conflict. Doesn’t seem fair.”

  “Fair to whom?”

  “Gladney.” Beneath the thin material of his shirt, I could see his flesh reddening. “He just disintegrated. Evaporated when they cleaned him out of the other man. And here I am. Variation on a theme.” His gaze drifted away from me to something over my left shoulder. I turned to look. He was staring at the synthesizer near the bed. It was a small one as synthesizers go, taking up about twice as much space as my portable system did when assembled. There was a very light coating of dust on the keyboard cover.

  “Use it much?” I asked.

  “From time to time.”

  “I’d really like to hear something you’ve composed.”

  He looked mildly shocked. “Ah, you would. Why?”

  “Get acquainted with your music.”

  “So that after you get into my brain and find my music box, you’ll know whether it’s mine or not, huh?” He waved away his words. “Never mind. I’ve done nothing but short pieces, and I don’t think of any of them as complete. Not when I compare them to other things I’ve heard.”

  “I would still like to hear something.”

  He hesitated. “Would a recording be all right? I don’t like to play in front of anyone. I’m not an entertainer. Or at least not that kind of entertainer.”

  “A recording would be fine.”

  He got up and puttered around with the entertainment center for a minute, keeping his back to me.

  Generally it’s difficult if not impossible to sight-read the Emotional Index of someone who isn’t facing you but it was easy to tell that Gladney was dry-mouthed at the idea of my hearing one of his compositions. It was far more than stage fright or shyness. His shoulders were stiffened as though he expected someone to hit him.

  Abruptly music blared out of the speakers, and he jumped to adjust the volume.

/>   “Set it to repeat once,” I told him.

  He turned to me, ready to object, and then shrugged and thumbed a shiny green square on the console before sitting down again. “Just a musical doodle, really,” he muttered, apologizing for it before it could offend me.

  In fact, it was a bit more than that, a dialogue between piano and clarinet, admirably synthesized but too tentative. And he’d been right—it wasn’t complete at all. It was more like an excerpt from a longer piece that he’d heard only a portion of in his mind. I was no musical authority but the second time through, I could pick out spots where a surer composer would have punched up the counterpoint and let the two instruments answer each other more quickly. There might even have been the makings of a canon in it, though I couldn’t be certain. Perhaps he’d been mistaking Bach for Gladney. Whatever he’d been doing or trying to do, something was definitely missing.

  “How did you compose it?” I asked after the music finished.

  He frowned.

  “Did you just sit down at the synthesizer and fool around until you found a sequence or—”

  “Oh.” He laughed nervously. “That’s a funny thing. I heard it in a dream, and when I woke up, I went to the synthesizer to play it out so I wouldn’t forget it. First I just played all the notes as I’d heard them. Then I put them with the appropriate instruments.”

  “Was that how it was in the dream—piano and clarinet?”

  “I don’t remember. I just remember the music itself. Piano and clarinet seemed right.”

  I had a feeling I knew what the answer to my next question would be, but asked anyway. “What was the dream about?”

  He was rubbing again. “Gladney.”

  —

  I managed to talk him into playing a few more of his incomplete compositions. When his discomfort went from acute to excruciating, I gave him a reprieve and told him I was going to get some rest. His relief was so tangible I could have ridden it out of the room and halfway down the hall.

  There was a message in my phone, an invitation from Dr. Jesl to have dinner with her and the other medicos working on Gladney’s habilitation. I begged off and asked her if she could supply me, without his knowing it, with dupe recordings of Gladney’s recent attempts at composition, and also some of the previous Gladney’s work. She could and did, and I spent most of the rest of the day and a good part of the evening in an audio-hood.