The Mind Pool tmp-1

by Charles Sheffield

  “Mummy, Mummy, Mummy, Mummy.” He said the incantation over and, over, beneath his breath. “Mummy, Mummy, Mummy, Mummy …” She was the only thing he had to hold onto in the whole world. But he dared not call out to her (Make a noise out there, or go running around, and there’d be nothing tomorrow to collect and take back…). He dared not even whimper.

  He lay on the ground and shivered. He must not cry. He must not cry. He will not cry. She will come back soon . … she will come back soon … she will come back soon . …

  Esro Mondrian does not know it, but dawn and rescue are ten hours away.

  The sale to the basement warrens of the Gallimaufries will take place a few days later.

  Tatty was talking to him, gripping him by the shoulders. “Chan. What s wrong? Why are you crying?”

  “I can cry. I can, it’s all right.” Chan closed his mouth and snuffled in hard through his nose. “It’s all right.”

  She put her arms around him. “What happened?”

  “Memories. I know why Esro Mondrian couldn’t trust anything in the world. I know why he needed the Constructs so badly.”

  They both became aware that Tatty was holding him to her chest. She released him and went back to the hassock. They were oddly embarrassed. She had been his first-ever lover, even if no more than a surrogate.

  “I’ve known for a long time,” she said. “The Constructs were going to be his shield, his safety net out on the Perimeter. That’s why he had them built.”

  “And they led to his destruction. Or maybe that was my fault. Or maybe yours.”

  “Whoever it was, it was no more than justice.” Tatty did not hide her bitterness. “He was willing to destroy everybody else so he could keep the Constructs. Damn that man.”

  “I’m sorry. I was trained to hate him — by you — but I didn’t know you were so angry.”

  “You don’t know what hate is. If anyone has a right to hate Esro Mondrian, I do. He used me over and over — and I jumped at the chance.”

  “That settles one thing.” Chan stood up. “I know all I need to know. I’ll go.”

  She stared up at him, rubbing her brown eyes with a too-thin hand. You mean you came to see me, and you didn’t want anything from me? My God, that must be a first. I don’t think anybody has ever been down to see me without wanting something, except maybe poor old Kubo. He comes and we take our Paradox shots, and then we sit there grinning at each other like idiots until it wears off.” Her voice broke. “And then Kubo goes, and I think of what I was. I was a Princess, Chan. And look at me now, what I am — what Esro Mondrian made me.”

  “You’re being too nice to me, Tatty. I did want something from you. But I can see I’m not going to get it.” Chan reached out as though to touch Tatty’s greasy hair, then drew back his hand. “I guess Kubo told you that Mondrian is alive. But now I see how you feel about him — ”

  “Alive? What are you talking about? He’s dead.”

  “Yes and no. Technically, he’s alive.”

  “How can he be dead, and alive?”

  “We did it to him. I did it to him. He would have destroyed the ship, and everyone on board it. I had to reach in and pull the abort sequence out of his mind, but it was buried deep. I went in all the way, and exploded everything that kept the mind pool out. There’s not much left. What there is can’t communicate. Maybe there’s something that could be reached, but to do that you would need to — ”

  “No! You bastard, you’re as bad as Mondrian. Worse!” She reached out at him with hands like talons. “I know what you’re thinking. I know why you came to see me.”

  “I only wanted to — ”

  “Liar! You only know what the Stimulator did to you, you have no idea what it did to me. I don’t know now you have the nerve to come here.”

  “I’m sorry. Kubo Flammarion told me to talk to you, and I guess I was ready to try anything. I’ll go now.”

  Chan went into the cramped hall and waited for the outer door to open.

  “You are going to Ceres?” Tatty had followed him.

  “Farther than that.”

  “To the stars again?”

  “No. I’m going to a place in the solar system that makes Horus look like Paradise.”

  ’There’s no such place. There can’t be.”

  “Believe me. Our quarantine has been set up in the Sargasso Dump. The Morgan Construct is there, held in stasis. It’s my team’s job to try to make it sane.”

  “But where is Mondrian?”

  “He’s in the same place. If he is still Mondrian. Would it make you more likely to help, if I said that whatever is living now in the Sargasso Dump is not Esro Mondrian?”

  “No, it would not. It would make me … I don’t know.”

  Tatty stood, eyes blinking. “Damn him, damn him, damn him,” she said suddenly. “Wait here.”

  She disappeared into the cramped interior of the apartment and was gone for a long time. When she returned her hair was washed and brushed, she was wearing a clean dress of pale green, and carefully-applied makeup hid the Paradox stigmata and the dark rings around her eyes. She was still raddled and pathetically emaciated, but her back was straight.

  Chan wanted to offer a compliment. The words stuck in his throat. “You need to put on some weight,” he said at last. “Tatty, I won’t lie to you. I have to say one other thing. There will be no Paradox supply in the Sargasso Dump. Kubo Flammarion is there now, and he says it’s torture without it.”

  “Kubo doesn’t know about torture. But we know it, Chan. You and I, we can count the ways.” Tatty took his arm. “Come on.”

  “I’ll help you, Tatty.”

  “Don’t kid yourself. You can’t help me, and I don’t think I can help you. Or anybody. Just promise me one thing.”

  “Name it.”

  “The Paradox is going to wear off in a couple of hours. Just make sure I’m not on Earth when it happens.”

  Chapter 41

  “Captain,” said Phoebe Willard. “You just don’t understand.”

  “Mmm.” Kubo Flammarion reached down, well below camera level, and scratched at his crotch in mystification. “I guess you’re right.”

  On that, he was not lying. He stared at the scene sent back to Ceres through the local Link, and he didn’t understand. The Sargasso Dump was supposed to be a huge open part of space, in which drifted assorted junk of all kinds. That’s exactly what it looked like.

  “But you don’t have to stay there, you know,” he went on. “You can come back anytime.”

  “Not until I know what happened.” Phoebe’s expression when she glanced around her was not so different from his. Some irritation, but mostly simple puzzlement. “The loss has to be explained.”

  “I know, all that equipment. But with the other Construct available — ”

  “To hell with the equipment, and to hell with M-29, or whatever the new one calls itself. I’m talking about the guards.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Kubo had seen a lot of those guards, when they were originally being shipped out to the Sargasso Dump. Not much of a loss, in his opinion. “Yeah. The guards.”

  “Captain Kubo Flammarion, you great meathead, you’ve got no idea. Something amazing had been happening here, something wonderful, improvements in people who were never expected to improve. That’s what I care about. I feel sure M-26A was involved, but I can’t explain how. If only we could find them.”

  “We found out where they Linked to, if that helps at all.”

  “Nobody told me that! If you know where they are, why isn’t somebody going after them?”

  well, we don’t know where they are, see, only where they Linked to. They went to one of the probes, right out on the Perimeter, and they held the link open long enough to take tons of stuff from the Dump with them — supplies, and construction equipment, and both reserve drives, and trash we still haven’t managed to inventory as missing. But when one of our people from Boundary Security went after them, all she found was an empty
probe. The Link unit is still there, and it works fine, but it’s in the middle of a quintuple stellar system. There are forty planets and a hundred thousand planetoids within five billion kilometers. Our investigator wasn’t equipped for that sort of search, so she had to Link home again.”

  “We have to go back.”

  “Tell that to the Stellar Group ambassadors. Without a link, M-26A and the guards can’t go anywhere. They’re stuck somewhere in that stellar system, safe in cold storage. As far as the ambassadors are concerned they can stay there until more urgent problems are solved. like, how to handle the mind pools. They scare everybody rigid, a lot worse than M-26A. Anyway, why do you need M-26A? You could work with M-29. Chan and Leah are right on your doorstep, and you’ll soon have better work facilities. We’re shipping new stuff, living quarters and everything. That’s already happening.”

  Kubo did not add that the living raw material of Phoebe’s study would also be replaced, and that was already happening, too. Only two days earlier a frightful act of sabotage, high in the Venus Superdome, had provided three new recruits for Sargasso.

  “The policy that Commander Brachis set up for staffing the Dump is still going on,” he continued, “even without him.”

  He glanced uneasily over his shoulder. A meeting with Dougal MacDougal was due in a few minutes, and despite friendly prompting from Lotos Sheldrake, that prospect made him nervous. With Mondrian and Brachis gone, Kubo was having greatness thrust upon him. He did not like it at all.

  “Anything else you need, Doctor Willard?”

  “Not that I can think of.”

  “Right then.” Kubo stared at her again, this time with a different expression. He dropped his voice. “Would you give Princess Tatiana a message from me? Tell her there’s a little package on its way to her in the next shipment. She’ll know what that means.”

  And so do I. I don’t know if you’re her friend or her enemy. You’re an idiot, Kubo, you could get caught. But you’re a kind man.”

  “Nah.” He wriggled in embarrassment. “Just killing me and the Princess that much faster.” He reached out to cut their connection, then hesitated. “I don’t suppose there’s any, well, progress, is there, on the other?’

  “Some days I think there is, some days I’m sure there isn’t. I’ll call you if there’s any real change.”

  “Ah. Do that for me.” Kubo sighed, shook his head, and was gone.

  Phoebe Willard sighed too, and again gazed around her. When she had first visited the Dump, the Sargasso facilities had seemed primitive and spartan beyond belief. But the replacement quarters, the prefabs that had been shipped in after the originals had vanished with the guards and M-26A, made those originals seem like luxury apartments.

  She closed her suit, left the air-bubble of the tiny communications hutch, and drifted back towards the hall that served as combined workroom, kitchen, recreation area and dormitory.

  The green sphere of liquid nitrogen containing M-29 was off to her left. She regarded it with scorn. It had done nothing to restrain M-26A, even when that Construct was no more than a battered and bewildered brain fragment. How much use was it likely to be with a complete Construct? But the Stellar Group ambassadors had insisted, and with this one there was at least the mind pools’ conviction that it was rendered harmless (just as Phoebe would have vouched that M-26A was harmless!).

  Well, cross her fingers, but that was Chan Dalton and Leah Rainbow’s problem, not hers. They were working in there now, either as individuals or in the uncomfortable union of the mind pools. One of them was sure to drop by with a progress report from the nitrogen bubble before the end of the day.

  She floated on, in no hurry to return to the main building. On the way she attempted something that she had already failed to do a dozen times. She tried to decide what else had gone from the Dump. She had heard about the old Mattin Link, refurbished and made serviceable — though not efficient, the energy drain on the power supply system when it operated had been monstrous! — but other objects had vanished, too. Her own recent ramblings in the Dump had revealed thousands of curiosities that she had never noticed before; on the other hand, nothing seemed to be missing.

  Today she drifted past a huge double-ended tree, more than a kilometer long and sprouting abundant silver-green leaves and globular fruit from every branch. It must be one of the obsolete free-space vegetation forms, harmless enough to be left alone here in the Dump. It might be even older than the vanished Mattin Link.

  Fresh fruit? The temptation to gather one of those giant orange globes from the slow-orbiting plant was strong. Except that “harmless” probably didn’t include being eaten by dimwit scientists with odd food cravings.

  Phoebe kept going, and at last came to the pressurized main building. It would be warm inside, and the field of the power kernel even provided gravity. But the moment that she hated worst of all was approaching.

  Well, it was pointless to put it off any longer. She went through the lock folds and stripped off her suit.

  They were there, all four or them. She realized that she’d entertained a vague hope that two of them might still be off in the treatment room. She walked across to join them, forcing herself to appear calm and relaxed.

  Esro Mondrian sat at a table, staring straight ahead. He ignored the food in front of him. His expression seldom varied, a strange little half-smile that suggested amusement at a secret joke. When Phoebe crossed his line of sight, he gave her a knowing nod and a sly little wink. But his forehead was beaded with sweat.

  Tatty Snipes sat next to him, holding his hand. She was neatly dressed and carefully made up; skeletally thin, with blue veins visible as a tracery on her temples. And she was trembling.

  It was obvious to Phoebe that a Stimulator session had recently ended. “Kubo says hello.” She offered the greeting to all of them equally. She hung up her suit and raised her eyebrows questioningly at Tatty. “Anything?”

  Tatty shook her head. “Nothing. Next time you talk to Kubo, tell him it’s no good.”

  “It takes time, you know. Maybe — ”

  “Phoebe, I’ve been through this before. I think I’m the system’s expert on what you can and can’t do with the Tolkov Stimulator. I can compare Esro with what happened to Chan, and I assure you, it’s just not working. I want you to tell Kubo that.”

  Instead of replying, Phoebe turned to the other couple in the room, if Tatty Snipes looked like a dying woman, Godiva Lomberd, who ought to have been dead, appeared in radiant health.

  Phoebe had seen her return from the Q-ship around Travancore, with that gaping hole right through her body. She could not believe now fast Godiva had healed. Today she was wearing a dress that left her midriff bare. There was no sign of any wound. The skin on her belly and back was smooth and flawless.

  What thoughts went through the brain behind that smooth forehead and serene face? Godiva was beaming fondly at the rigid form of Luther Brachis, strapped tightly into his chair. He in turn was glaring at Phoebe, one eye bulging asymmetrically from its orbit. His mouth was working angrily, and he again and again tried to rub the back of his mangled skull against the restraining head brace.

  “He’s having a bit of a bad day,” said Godiva. “He’s angry with me now, because I won’t let him try to feed himself. He makes such a mess. But he recognizes you. He’s making progress.”

  Brachis growled, like a caged and tormented bear, and Phoebe instinctively recoiled. She had heard no suggestion of trying a Tolkov Stimulator treatment on Luther Brachis. He was too far gone. It was a miracle that Godiva had managed to keep him alive at all. A second miracle, of restored higher faculties, was surely too much to hope for.

  Phoebe had no appetite, but she went across and helped herself to food also. Eyeing the other four as she ate, it occurred to her that both Tatiana and Godiva had given their typical responses. Tatty saw no progress at all, whereas to Phoebe s eye there was at least a glimmer of intelligence in Mondrian’s look; while Godiva, ignori
ng reality, saw Brachis as something more than a brain-dead animal.

  Seeing them together now, Phoebe managed a great leap of understanding. Godiva and Tatty were marooned here, far from home, far from every grace of civilization, far from all friends and all comforts. They were condemned to tend men who were no more than mindless husks of what they had been only a month earlier. The women were feeding them now, spoonful by patient spoonful, but there was no sign of acknowledgement or appreciation.

  And here was the real shock: Tatty and Godiva were happy. If Mondrian and Brachis improved and became human again, that would be wonderful. But if they did not, that was acceptable. The women would stay with them. They would never leave the Sargasso Dump.

  It was an even bigger shock to Phoebe to realize that the same was true of her. She was here, waiting. Waiting for Chan and Leah to tell her if M-29 could explain what had happened to the other Construct and to the old guards, before they vanished together across fifty light-years. Waiting for the brain-tattered zombies of new guard recruits to show up, so that she could begin to work with them.

  Waiting for the second miracle.

  Maybe Phoebe too would never leave the Dump. And maybe that was all right.

  Epilogue

  It was an alien landscape. But to men and women who had spent their whole lives patrolling the remoter reaches of the solar system, Earth would have been just as alien.

  With five suns to light the sky, true dark was the rarest of events. But a time of minimal light was approaching, with the closest and brightest pair already set and a third gliding towards the horizon. The ruddy glow of the other two, a pair of contact binary dwarfs a third of a lightyear away, provided the signal for the world’s nocturnal life to awaken.

  Crawling, creeping and flying forms emerged from their deep burrows. The guards stared at them. There was no sense of fear on either side, and indeed there was no danger. For the guards it was astonishment at sheer numbers, at a thousand different species appearing in the twilight.