Scatterlings

by Isobelle Carmody

  Merlin thought that the Citizens were a cold people. Had the long sleep made them that way, or had they been like that before? Had all those thousands of D-jumpers been so unfeeling, so remote, so cruel? Was that what humanity had become?

  ‘I do not bargain with savages,’ Andrew said.

  ‘They are descended from you, and you from apes,’ Merlin snapped, the information unexpectedly offered by her computer-designed memory.

  ‘Not quite,’ Andrew said calmly, wiping his hands on a cloth. ‘They are descended from the refuse that was left to rot outside the dome societies. Criminals, lunatics, drug addicts. Walking rubbish. Against all odds they survived, as did the hardiest of other lifeforms which also adapted to cope with the changed world. In a sense, we should have foreseen it. After all, cockroaches survived the nuclear holocausts.’

  The impregnable coldness in the scientist’s face rendered Merlin speechless. Unlike Sedgewick, he seemed incapable of anger. She guessed this stemmed from his essential attitude to her. He might order Sedgewick to use her name, but his eyes told her she, like the clanpeople, was a worthless, expendable savage.

  She forced herself to answer calmly, feeling a display of emotion would weaken her in Andrew’s eyes. ‘I don’t care what you think of the clanpeople, or of me for that matter. Either they go free, or I won’t do a damn thing to save you.’

  Her blunt demand had succeeded as nothing else had in making Andrew look at her as a person, but even so, his expression was curious rather than angry.

  ‘So. The worm turns,’ he said softly. ‘I wonder what exactly William used in the sleep-teaching program. I doubt the brief time spent among the savages could have made you so independent without a little help in other quarters. Perhaps I should have kept a closer watch over the process.’

  Merlin felt sorry for William, for she felt that Andrew guessed the truth already about his illicit programming. But she had to think of Sear and Ford before the dreamy Citizen youth who seemed incapable of applying himself to the real world. She had to make sure Ford and Sear got out of the dome safely, otherwise the Rememberers would be right about her bringing destruction and death on them.

  ‘They will be freed. It is a small matter,’ Andrew said indifferently, after a slight pause.

  Merlin looked into the smooth, calm features of the scientist. ‘I want to see them freed.’

  He nodded. ‘But first, you will demonstrate that you are capable of doing what has to be done. I assume William told you all you needed to know?’ He seemed to be staring closely at her and Merlin felt herself flush. Andrew nodded as if her reaction had confirmed something.

  ‘I must have a few words with young William,’ he said. ‘Nevertheless, I think we understand one another.’

  Doggedly, Merlin pointed at the caged scatterlings. ‘I want proof that they’re still all right,’ she said, her throat dry with fear. There was nothing she could do if Andrew refused, but she had to try.

  He smiled. ‘Of course. Sedgewick will deactivate one of the collars. Which one?’

  ‘Both,’ Merlin said.

  Andrew laughed. ‘One. You choose.’

  Torn, Merlin stared at the two scatterlings. More than anything, she wanted to speak to Ford, to tell him she had been a stupid, prejudiced idiot, and to say she was sorry. She would have given much to see him smile his lopsided smile and to hear him laugh out loud.

  But she pointed at Sear.

  Andrew smiled. ‘So be it. As soon as the simulation has been successfully completed, we will return, and you will see that he still has his mind, such as it is.’

  Merlin shivered with hatred, seeing Andrew had no intention of letting her talk to the scatterlings. She nodded, as if believing the illusion that she had a choice.

  The simulation room was a square divided in two by a thick wall of glass which represented the force-field barrier. On one side were a number of instruments and a chair facing the glass; on the other was a computer on a desk.

  Andrew pointed to the computer. ‘It has been programmed not to allow entry to the room by blocking any command to raise the glass. It has control of the mechanism which moves the glass wall. Your task is to access the computer and to alter the programming. If you succeed, the glass will slide away and allow entry to the other side of the room.’

  On the way to the laboratory that morning, Sedgewick had taken pleasure in telling Merlin that none of the few who had managed to access the simulation computer had survived the experience with their mind intact. Those who had failed to access at all had been killed. Disposed of, Sedgewick said. Merlin had the feeling he would like to see her fail, even if it meant the Citizens were doomed to extinction.

  Sacha, clad in a white coat and carrying a clipboard, directed her to sit in the chair facing the glass wall. A number of tracers and measuring wires were taped to her forehead and temples.

  ‘What we need to know is can your mind survive the computer linkup, and if so, is it possible for you to actually alter a program telepathically,’ Sacha said. ‘You were sleep-taught a great deal of computer knowledge which should help you deal with the programming, and that should surface under the stimulus of this test.’

  Merlin remembered fleetingly the rush of computer knowledge that had assailed her immediately after the accident, and her naive assumption that this meant she was ‘something to do with computers’.

  ‘Can we start?’ she asked, her mouth dry with fear. It had not escaped her that all Andrew’s hopes might lead to nothing if the computer burned her mind out. She thought it would be like dying, and if that was the case, then she had already died once and been reborn. Would they bring her back again?’

  A thought struck her. ‘How come you didn’t do to the Voids what you did to me? Build them a new mind?’

  Sacha looked preoccupied, checking the monitoring devices. ‘A waste of time,’ she said briskly. ‘There was no mind left to build on, whereas your mind was simply empty.’

  Merlin swallowed, and looked at the computer through the faceted glass. The scene reminded her disturbingly of her dream of being trapped on one side of a wall of choking smoke. Perhaps the dream had been a kind of premonition. Or a Remembering, since it was obvious she now had a touch of that strange ability too.

  ‘Theoretically, it should be possible for you to interface with the computer. We have not been able to discover why the attempt destroyed the telepaths’ minds yet, since there is no physical evidence in any autopsy,’ Sacha went on.

  ‘The subjects in the past have always been completely receptive, because we made sure they experienced a very pleasant time in the city. They woke in beautiful surrounds, exposed to music and art. They ate magnificently and certain drugs were introduced to their food to heighten their sensory capacity so that ordinary pleasure became a kind of ecstasy. When they attempted interface, they were always relaxed and receptive because they trusted us and believed we were about to help them understand the magic of the Citizens.’ Sacha seemed to be talking more to herself than to Merlin.

  ‘In every case, access ended up destroying their minds.

  ‘I suspect the reason for the failures is something to do with the way the telepathy works. Unfortunately we haven’t done enough research to understand it fully yet.’ She looked at Merlin with chilling speculation, as if deciding how to dissect her skull.

  ‘Andrew is of the opinion that the failure is connected to culture shock – that the computer is simply too complex an artifact for the primitive minds. If that’s so, you have a better chance than any of the others.’

  Merlin laughed harshly, and the Citizen woman looked at her in mild astonishment.

  ‘Can we get on with it?’ Merlin said.

  ‘Of course. One last point though. If you do succeed in accessing the machine, avoid the red circuitry areas, since these coincide with the areas of the program dealing with retaliation. It’s no good if you get in, then accidentally blow us up. You might remember that you and the two in the laboratory, not t
o mention the group hiding outside the dome, will also die if that happens. In the simulation, the tripping of the retaliatory system will be represented by an alarm bell.’

  Merlin nodded without looking at the other woman.

  ‘Very well, we’ll proceed. I’m activating the monitors which will tell me if you have any success in altering the computer. Begin. Remember, use the knowledge in your own mind if you are able to access the program.’

  Merlin nodded. She looked at the computer, thinking how small and unimportant it looked. Just the same, she was frightened, not only for herself, but because if she failed, Sear and Ford would face mindlessness or death.

  She was also frightened because she knew as Sacha and Andrew couldn’t, that she had scarcely used her telepathic powers, and had generally refused access to others trying to Send to her. The ability was as alien to her as her yellow eyes. It was possible she did not know enough about how to use her own ability to do what Andrew asked.

  The other Offerees might have lacked knowledge of computers, but they knew how to use their telepathy. They used it easily and continually.

  On the other hand, that hadn’t helped them when it came to the crunch.

  She took a deep breath and tried to think positively.

  ‘What are you waiting for?’ Sacha demanded with a trace of impatience.

  Ignoring the scientist, Merlin tried to imagine her mind with a hand. She envisaged reaching the mental hand out through the glass to the computer. She made herself concentrate as she had when forced to respond telepathically to the guards at the gate of the Valley of Conclave.

  Then, all at once, she felt a surge and suddenly she seemed to be two people, one seated on the chair, and the other floating just above the computer panel.

  She questioned her memory about how computers were constructed. It told her the computer was operating. Again she thought of her mind as a hand, and tried reaching inside the machine.

  It was no good! She was inside the machine all right, but not inside the program.

  She withdrew, wondering how she was to do that. She searched her knowledge until she discovered that computers spoke in a language of numbers and codes and electrical impulses. She felt a rush of despair. How was she to reach a mind that wasn’t a mind?

  Then she thought of the mechanical voice that characterised her implanted memory. It spoke to her, had spoken to her. How had it managed to communicate with her unconscious mind? If the computer could access her mind, there must be a way to access it. She wished she had asked William for more detail as to how the sleep-teaching worked.

  She hovered above the panel uncertainly. Curiously, she found she could ‘see’ herself on the other side of the glass, sitting still with her eyes closed, when she turned her mind that way.

  She focused her attention on the computer.

  In order to issue a command, it was necessary to touch the keyboard in the same way you had to make noises out loud to be able to speak to someone. Telepathic communication was a thinking to, rather like throwing a ball to someone with your eyes closed.

  She tried thinking to the computer in the form of a command, imagining the command running from the keyboard along the wire and translating into the computer’s language.

  Nothing happened.

  She felt sweat running down the side of her face, and wondered what would happen if she couldn’t even get inside the computer, let alone change its program.

  She stared into the winking green eye of the computer screen, and her memory told her the screen was the input point. A tiny cursor winked in the top left corner of the screen. Merlin stared at it curiously. Her memory told her the cursor was manipulatable by her or any human user. That was where human and computer language was translated. With a tingle of excitement, she directed the hand of her mind towards the cursor, imagining going inside and merging.

  To her astonishment, she felt her mind rushing forward into the screen, into the cursor. She had the distinct physical sensation of being somehow connected, or linked up, then suddenly a great surge of energy rushed at her like a tidal wave. Already tense, she withdrew instantly out of reach, closing her mind deliberately to the computer as she had closed it to Ford.

  At the same instant, she understood with dazzling clarity why the others had failed. In fact, they had not failed to access the computer at all. It was what happened after access that destroyed their minds.

  The problem was that the clanpeople were natural telepaths, never questioning their ability or looking at it as something that might be dangerous. It was as much a part of them as their tongues. Their lives, she realised for the first time, were shaped by their ability to know completely what another person meant. They had no capacity for mental deception. That was why the Lord wardens had discouraged mindbonding, because it was a complete revealing.

  There had been no reason to set boundaries on their abilities, or to try to curtail them since telepathic communication at both a simple and mindbond level was a matter of mutual decision.

  But Merlin had woken with a mind bereft of memory. Her telepathy existed outside the framework and moral direction that ruled the clanfolk, for what she remembered was an older, more corrupt world. Her first reaction to telepathic contact had been to prevent Ford from accessing her mind. Instinctively, she had refused him entry, and from that moment she had gone on blocking out all other minds, regarding the telepathic ability she possessed with fear and distrust.

  Her attitude to telepathy had created an ability to block and this saved her from the computer which, once accessed, simply dumped its vast reservoir of knowledge into the accessing mind, as it would into another computer.

  Andrew had been right in believing she could do what the others had been unable to do, but he had no idea why.

  Merlin was sickened as she imagined the duped clanpeople trustfully reaching their minds out, unaware of what would happen to them. They had no power to protect themselves, and so they had been destroyed as completely as the death-weapon had cleared the thick trees outside the dome.

  Merlin turned her mind back to the screen and again cautiously imagined sinking into the cursor, but she pictured her mind screened on all sides by thick walls, except for a tiny hole.

  The computer accepted the limitation, and began to feed information through the tiny hole at an incredible pace. She requested the computer to slow down, and the information became a harmless trickle.

  Then she began to push out again, following informational bypaths and streams by moving the cursor, using the reservoir of knowledge available within her mind to guide her around the program.

  She realised very quickly that the computer’s simulated program was laughably simplistic. Unlike a human mind, the computer hid nothing, and was extremely logical. All it required was correct access. It would refuse her nothing within its power. But she hesitated to make the alterations, sensing this was a safe moment to stop and think about what would happen after she had done as they asked.

  She let the electrical impulses which made up the voice of the computer jostle her gently.

  Unexpectedly, she left the computer via an input line. She found herself inside a program designed to recirculate air. She moved quickly to the input line, and into a program which supervised the elimination of dust.

  She realised what the Citizens had not: all the computers were linked by input lines which were in turn linked to the main computer program which oversaw the city. Like a fish swimming against water she followed the input lines back to their source.

  In no time, she found herself inside the main program. It was enormous, but essentially designed along the same principles as the small simulater program. Merlin was startled to realise she could free the ship or switch off the air and light in the city, or open the electrical doors to the cages which held Ford and Sear if she chose.

  She felt a sense of incredible power at the knowledge that she held the lives of all the Citizens in her hand.

  But it was not as simple
as switching off the forbidden city. The computer would not accept that instruction because it had a series of red-linked circuits designed to emulate human decision-making processes. It would think of the changes as sabotage and set off the explosives which riddled the city. She could alter the programming slightly, if she were very careful. If she made a wrong move, the computer would retaliate. It was the same if she simply switched off the air. In the first place she and the two scatterlings would be suffocated along with the Citizens, and as soon as she passed out the computer would resume the air flow.

  She noted absently that the computer had a line which moved outside the dome. Curious, she followed the output to discover that the main computer was also linked up with the other, smaller dome William had mentioned. The program told her the dome was designed to serve as an emergency dome, but beneath one layer of programming lay another, which revealed that the dome was a secret weapon cache left by the scientists who had designed the two domes. This suggested the D-jumpers who would return in five centuries were preparing themselves for a less than complete welcome.

  That gave Merlin a frightening idea.

  She withdrew her mind carefully back along the circuits and input lines, thinking furiously. By the time she reached the tiny computer in the room with Sacha, she had decided what to do. With insulting ease, she altered the simulator’s programming as she withdrew into her own mind.

  There was a loud click and Merlin opened her eyes to see the dark glass slide up and into the roof.

  ‘You did it!’ Sacha cried.

  Merlin felt tired, but not from her immersion into the maze-like computer linkages that controlled the forbidden city.

  ‘I want to see Sear uncollared,’ she said wearily.

  Sacha seemed not to hear. ‘Andrew will want to know the result of the simulation,’ she said in a preoccupied voice, unsticking the monitoring wires. They went straight back to the laboratory.

  While Sacha described the test to Andrew, Merlin pretended to be far more exhausted than she was. She was surprised to find William in the laboratory. He looked pale and grim and she guessed Andrew had been questioning him about her sleep-learning. Little did he realise that without William’s programming and her exposure to the clanpeople, she would not have been able to think enough to protect herself from the computer.