The other man was beginning to relax a little, but he was far too tense for such a casual conversation. What was it that Howard Anson had said to Rob? “Whatever the connection is between those names, it’s something terrible.” And one of those names had been Joseph Morel.
“How long have you been working on these experiments?”
Rob kept his voice as casual as possible, but there was no doubt about it: Morel had tensed again, biting at his lower lip for a long moment before he answered.
“This type of research has been my life’s work. I have been engaged in it for many, many years.” He turned abruptly away from Rob to look out of the window into the still, green shadows beyond. “So. You are interested in Caliban, are you? He is a worthy subject for study. One of my oldest successes. I began to sense his potential more than thirty years ago, back when I was aware of no more than a few unexplained reactions from him in early experiments. We didn’t try for communication for a long time after that. Even at the beginning, I felt that anything we did would probably have to be through a computerized interface — we are too much mutual aliens for any direct communication. Except, one might say, on the basics.”
Morel had pulled the communicator again from his pocket and was holding it close to his chest. He pressed twin buttons on the side of it.
“Are you calling him?” Rob asked.
Morel nodded. “Through Sycorax. It is curious, our work went much faster once we had done the modifications for him to live in a fresh-water environment.” He was staring again out of the window. “Caliban will be at the display screens, out in the aquasphere. He does not like to leave those once he has settled by them. You knew, did you, that Caliban sees everything that we receive through any of the video links? Not just here on Atlantis, but all over the System. I’m drawing his attention now to the screen outside here.”
Morel nodded at the camera set in the wall above their heads. As he did so, Rob recalled other cameras, in Regulo’s office, on the aircraft that Corrie had first used to pick him up, and in the Space Tug. Thinking back, he could not recall a time when they had not been under some kind of surveillance. If Caliban could accept all those inputs, his data-handling capacity must be enormous.
“But how do you get the signals to him?” he asked. “As I recall, radio frequencies don’t pass through water.”
“Quite true. We use ultrasonics, and also communications lasers. The sound signals are received by piezoelectric crystals set into Caliban’s skin and converted to electrical impulses. They are fed straight into his brain. The laser data rates are much higher, but we can send stronger commands through the ultrasonics.” He shrugged. “The whole system is rather primitive. Some day we will no doubt update it — perhaps with design advice from Himself. Come, my pretty one.”
Out in the aquasphere, the dark form of Caliban was approaching, slowly, from the shadow of the screens of vegetation. Despite his size, the movement was graceful and flowing.
“And how does he send messages back to you?” Rob was unable to keep his eyes off the squid as it drifted towards them.
“Through display panels set in the walls of Atlantis. His replies all go through Sycorax, of course, for processing before we get them.” Morel was looking fondly out at the approaching animal. “They are never easy to understand, which is why Regulo calls Caliban my oracle. The way that Caliban and Sycorax think together is not as we think. There are non-Aristotelian elements to it. I believe that any serious student of formal logic would find his time well-spent if he could examine Caliban’s inferential processes for a year or two. Now, do you have more questions?”
It sounded like a dismissal. Rob suspected that Morel would not leave the area as long as he remained there also. He shook his head, and began to move away from the sealed door. “I’m sure I’ll get a chance to study Caliban in more detail, the next time that I am here. He’s quite a monster, isn’t he? I’m sure you are used to him, but I didn’t like the way he was straining at the partition the other night.”
Morel smiled, his first sign of real pleasure since their conversation began. “He becomes, shall we say, excited by my presence. He is very strong, stronger than you can imagine. I would not advise you to go out into the aquasphere with him.”
“I don’t intend to. But presumably someone does. How else can you gather the food from the sea-farms?”
“Caliban is controllable. I can give him shocks from the communicator, directly into the pain or the pleasure centers of his brain. There is no danger to someone in the aquasphere when I am present to manipulate him. I am obliged to use that control sometimes for other things. For instance, when he is reluctant to offer data on problems of interest to me, I stimulate him to answer. He does so, reluctantly. But there is no doubt that he does not like it.”
No, thought Rob. But you do, my friend. I see the expression on your face when you think about it. Right now, you’re gloating over the memory. Thank God you don’t have those electrodes wired into my brain.
He started to leave, heading back to his own quarters in the living area. But his mind remained uneasy with what he had seen, and at the exit he turned. Joseph Morel remained standing by the window, gazing out at the hulking shape of Caliban glaring in from the aquasphere. If Rob was thoughtful, it appeared that Morel was no less so.
CHAPTER 9: “Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, raze out the written troubles of the brain”
“Well, at first sight it doesn’t look like we have much that’s new.” Howard Anson, lean and elegant, was draped lazily over the back of a tall chair. As usual, he appeared to have come straight from some expensive personal grooming service. “Summing it up, you like Regulo, you like Corrie even more, you don’t care at all for Morel, and you had an encounter with an overgrown oyster. I’m not sure what all that will produce from Senta.”
Rob, sitting on the sofa opposite, seemed pale and tired in the golden light of a Rome evening. His eyes were reddened, and there were dark circles under them. The journey back had been a rough one, with little sleep and much to do.
“Oyster be damned,” he said. “If you got one look at Caliban, you’d change your tune. I’ve got a lot of respect for that big squid. The brightest cephalopods are no closer to the oysters than you are to a duck-billed platypus.”
Anson grinned, unabashed. “Both mollusks, aren’t they?”
“They are, and that’s the end of the resemblance. Caliban’s big and he’s fierce. And I’m inclined to agree with Joseph Morel, much as I dislike the man. There’s intelligence inside that decapod’s head. You should have seen the way that he tried to get into the dining area and tackle Morel. I wonder what they had to do to Caliban, so that he could survive in fresh water? Nothing pleasant, that I’ll bet.”
“If you really want an answer to that question, I may be able to find out.” Anson, as usual, found it unnecessary to make any sort of notes. “It might be one reason why Caliban hates Morel. I found out a good deal more about the fellow after you left. That tie to your father looks like a weak one, though I did confirm that Joseph Morel and Gregor Merlin were students at the same time in Göttingen. They studied rejuvenation and life-prolongation techniques together for a couple of years. That’s the only personal connection, though they seem to have kept in touch professionally after Morel left Germany.”
Anson was examining Rob closely, his lazy eyes shrewd. “God, I must say you do look terrible. You’ve been pushing yourself too hard. I think we should wait another day before we try and work with Senta, so you can get back in shape.”
Rob shook his head firmly. “I can’t afford to do that. In a couple more days I have to be back in space. We’ve got the final design for the beanstalk all worked out, and the next step is fabrication plans up at L-4. There’s a tough year ahead with no time for slippages, otherwise the schedule that I promised Regulo won’t hold. I didn’t build in much slack, and what little there is we have to keep for production outages.”
“I don’t t
hink it’s your promise to Regulo that’s doing it. You want to see the beanstalk yourself, that’s what’s driving you along. Driving you too hard, I’d say.”
Rob shrugged. He found it hard to disagree with Howard Anson. The period since they had last met had indeed been hectic, with the trip to Atlantis, then the plunge into beanstalk design. He had modified the Spider to operate in a free space environment, shipped a second version equipped for high-temperature extrusion back up to Regulo, for passage to Keino out in the Belt, and begun recruiting for the main project.
The results of his first calls had surprised him. A high percentage of his old work crews were willing to follow him off Earth and help on the beanstalk.
Then the surprise left him. Of course the others wanted in. Like Rob, they were taken with the sheer scope of the project. No one who liked to work on big construction efforts could resist the lure of a bridge hundreds of times longer than any that ever had been built on Earth. So what that it would be going straight up, rather than along the surface?
He had been able to get most of them to sign on with hardly a mention of money. And if Regulo’s plans for new asteroid mining included a role for Rob, there might be even bigger projects ahead for all of them, out in the Belt and off in the Outer System. Regulo’s enthusiasm for space projects seemed to be infectious.
“All right.” Anson stood up. “If you’re going to simply sit there and look vacant, I may as well get Senta. She’s waiting to see if we want to go ahead.”
“Sorry.” Rob shook his head and sat straighter. “I’m feeling tired, that’s all. It makes me drift off and think about other things. You were quite right in what you just said. I’ve been pushing myself. Regulo hasn’t said one word about schedules. I think I’m trying to convince myself that I’m as smart as he is. You said I like him, but you’d have been more accurate to say that I respect the man. His brain works differently from anyone else’s I ever met. You ought to listen to him when he gets going on engineering design work, it’s no wonder he got to the position he has. Did you know that he controls more than half the ships that move around the Inner and Middle Systems?”
“Sixty-eight and a half percent.” Anson sniffed. “You are tired, Rob, if you think I wouldn’t know that. I run an Information Service, remember? If it’s random facts that you want, I’m your man.” He paused over by the door, his hand on the slide. “I have one request. Go easy on Senta, will you? She made herself stay on the lowest dose she could bear for the past few weeks, so she could tolerate a really intense high when we wanted her to. Right now, she’s feeling awful fragile.”
Rob nodded. He had seen enough of taliza addiction to know what those words implied. Withholding the drug from her would be slow, continuous torture for Senta Plessey; yet she had been willing to endure that, just to let them pursue their questioning. It settled one point beyond doubt: Senta returned Howard Anson’s feelings for her.
Anson left the room. Rob sat with his own thoughts for some minutes. He was beginning to wonder if something had gone wrong when Anson re-entered, leading Senta by the hand. She was a different woman from the one Rob had met in the social whirl of Way Down. Her damask cheek looked withered, and the bright brown eyes were dull and pained. Even her dark hair had lost its glossy sheen, hanging now in lifeless disorder about her downturned face.
As she came in she looked up at Rob, and forced a little smile. He went to her and took her hand in his. It felt cold and dry-skinned.
“Last time you saw me at my best — or worst,” she said. Her voice was husky and uncertain. “I don’t remember what you said to me, or what I did. It’s always like that when I come down again. Howard had to tell me what happened. Maybe this time I’ll be able to remember better. Afterwards.”
She spoke the final word like a threat of doom.
“Look.” Rob paused, still holding her hand. “Senta, I don’t know how to put this, but when you remember things under taliza-trance, is it painful for you?”
Senta did not look at him. She had turned and fixed her gaze on a small bottle of transparent fluid that Anson had taken from his pocket. The expression on her face made Rob shiver at the intensity of its yearning. Seeing that, he felt that no one who had seen a taliza addict could ever become one.
“Painful?” Senta’s voice was distant and uninterested. “That depends on what I remember. It is exactly as painful as the experience itself, no more and no less. How could it be anything other, since it is re-living? But this… this is more painful than memory.” Her voice faltered. “Howard, please don’t make me wait any longer.”
“Just a few more seconds, love.” Anson was pouring an ounce of liquid, carefully measured, onto a pad of clean cotton. He replaced the stopper, moved to Senta’s side and began to rub the pad steadily against her temples, first one side and then the other. After a pause of twenty seconds he repeated the action, watching Senta’s eyes.
She stood rigid and expressionless. Ten more seconds, and she sighed deeply. Her eyelids began to flutter in brief, spastic movements. Anson at once wrapped a dark cloth that he was holding around her brow, covering her eyes, and gently lowered her to sit on the sofa.
“Howard.” Rob spoke rapidly and softly, his eyes not moving from Senta’s face. “Do we have to do it like this? Isn’t there any other way to find out what we want to know from Senta, some way of just asking the right questions? If taliza can pull it out of her, she must have the information stored away somewhere.”
“I wish we could do it like that.” Anson was still watching Senta closely, apparently waiting for some key reaction. “But it’s not in her conscious mind at all, not now. I’ve asked her about it often enough when she’s not on the drug, and she can’t remember a thing. I don’t know if she was given a huge dose of Lethe and a spell of conditioning, or if she just rejected the memory herself because it was too painful to live with. The only thing we know for sure is that it’s buried deep. And we know that it’s there. When she is pulled into that experience during taliza-trance, it frightens her more than any other memory she has. Something is back there, something involving Morel and Merlin and Goblins.”
“I can see that memories of Joseph Morel might do that.” Rob was recalling the expression in Morel’s gray eyes as Regulo’s assistant fondled the communicator giving him control over Caliban. “He disturbs me, too. But doesn’t Senta—”
He broke off. Howard Anson was waving him urgently to silence. Senta had leaned forward and begun to breathe in rapid, shallow panting.
“A few more seconds,” Anson said softly. “She has the blindfold, so she won’t go off on some random visual trigger. Quiet now. The wrong words might push her off on some other memory track.”
He sat down on the sofa next to Senta, peering at her closely. Rob felt a shock of recognition. As he watched, Senta’s cheek was losing its shrunken look and taking on the bloom that he had seen at Way Down. Her full mouth was curving again into a faint, secret smile.
“Here I am, Howard,” she said. “I’m feeling good. Now, what game shall we play?”
She laughed, deep in her throat, and wriggled against the soft cushions of the sofa. Her look had become coquettish and full of explicit sexual promise. Anson gave Rob a quick, helpless glance, then bent forward close to Senta’s ear.
“Joseph Morel,” he said clearly. He paused after the name. “Gregor Merlin. Joseph Morel and Gregor Merlin. Say their names to me, Senta. Say them.”
Her look was blank, confused. “Joseph Morel. Gregor Merlin. Yes, I can say them. I’ve said them. But Howard, why do you…”
Her voice trailed away into silence. Once again, the parade of expressions was moving across her face: fear, joy, greed, compassion, lust. As her look stabilized, she bent her head to one side and nodded, then seemed to listen intently.
“Merlin… Merlin has them,” she said at last. She was looking up, a frown wrinkling her forehead and a look of worry and confusion on her face. “That’s right, Gregor Merlin. I just hea
rd it from Joseph, over the video. He has no idea how they got there, but he’s convinced of their location in the labs.”
“Damnation.” Anson bit his lip and looked across at Rob. “I was afraid of that. It’s the same one that you heard before. There was a good chance of it, because I used almost the same key words. Now I’m afraid she’ll have to play it right through.”
Senta was listening to unseen companions, until at last she nodded firmly. “That’s right, there are two of them. No, they weren’t alive — there was no air in the supply capsule. I don’t know if Merlin knows where they came from, but he must have a good idea. He told McGill he had found two Goblins — that’s his name for them — in a returned medical supply box. He sent one of them to another man, Morrison, and now he’s going to try and do the full autopsy. He already knows what has been happening to them, but he won’t…”
Her face was changing, again becoming a melting-pot for all the human emotions. Before the change was complete, Howard Anson was leaning forward, ready to speak to her again. Rob put up his hand in protest.
“Don’t go on with it, Howard,” he cut in. “Didn’t you see her expression? She’s in absolute torment when she goes into that part of her past.”
“I know that, Rob.” Anson’s manner was full of pent-up anger. “I don’t enjoy this any more than you do. But we have to find it before we can exorcise it. We’re doing it for Senta’s sake. Now, keep quiet or we may apply the wrong trigger.”
He leaned forward again. “Senta, once more. Say these names after me. Morel, Merlin, Goblins, Caliban, Sycorax. Do you hear me? Say them, Senta.”
Even before he had finished speaking the reaction to the spoken trigger began. Her features began to writhe and grimace, a travesty of her usual beauty. As her face twisted into grotesque expressions, the veins in her neck stood out, swollen and congested. Her final look was one of mounting horror. For a second, her mouth opened and closed wordlessly.
The Web Between the Worlds Page 13
