Buffalito Bundle

by Lawrence M. Schoen

  A few hours later I'd landed at Ushuaia. Davies's Argentine official had stamped my passport with a mark that got me through security without so much as a curious glance at Reggie. I identified the driver that Jeanie had arranged by the picture of a buffalito he was holding, and a few minutes later we were pulling up to a dock on Beagle Channel. Again, Jeanie had worked her magic and a crew was loading the last crates onto the ship I'd chartered. Penrose, on the other hand, would blow a gasket when all the bills came in. I doubted I'd be able to sell it to her as a business expense, and I could kiss goodbye any near future plans for a corporate plane, let alone a company spacecraft. And yet, what was the point of being the CEO of the only company on Earth leasing buffalitos if I couldn't use the profits for wild, quixotic quests? Yeah, the accountant would love that argument.

  I thanked and tipped my driver, and then hailed the ship in passable Spanish. The captain came down the boarding ramp to greet me with perfect English. Together we reviewed the plans that Jeanie had sent. He had everything in order, and soon after we were onboard and cruising east through the channel. We turned south around Isla Picton and then passed Isla Nueva on the left and Isla Lennox on the right. We continued until we'd left the Wollaston Islands behind as well. The next land was roughly five hundred kilometers away, Antarctica's Machu Picchu Base, a research outpost maintained by the Peruvian government. Which isn't to say it was clear sailing. There were plenty of ice floes in between and some of the roughest seas in the world. Fortunately, I had no intention of going all the way to Antarctica. I consulted my replacement phone and shared a set of coordinates with the ship's captain who in term programmed our destination into the ship's navigation system.

  I had an estimated twelve hours before we'd arrive. The captain had a crew member escort me down to a guest cabin. Moments later he returned with a box of random machines parts that had been included in the supplies as a snack for my buffalo dog. Reggie went to town on chunks of worn out metal and was soon farting up a storm while I sacked out on the cabin's bed. After the long day's travel, I fell asleep at once. Eleven and a half hours later, I awoke to a light tapping at the door and a voice on the other side telling me we'd arrived. The box of metal had vanished, both container and contents, and Reggie had snuggled himself up above my head. He lay sprawled out on the pillow, snoring softly.

  I left him sleeping and made my way up on deck. A massive ice floe lay immediately to our starboard and a couple crew men had leapt onto the ice and secured a pair of lines which allowed them to pull the ship into position. Others had already begun unloading the crates.

  I pulled a parka from one of the crates. Also thermal pants, ice boots, and a pair of hiking poles. As I was pulling on my gear Reggie rushed up from the cabin and danced around me to the amusement of the ship's crew.

  The captain came over to me. He was a short man, with a grizzled beard and wind burnt cheeks. I'd already heard some of the crew muttering about how I must be loco, but I was paying good money and the captain respected that. And yet, it wouldn't help his business if he had to return to port without his customer.

  “You are sure you wish to do this thing, señor Conroy?”

  “I am.”

  “This floe, it is a giant floe. Nearly ten kilometers across.”

  I nodded. That's fine. I don't expect to need to go more than halfway. Probably less.”

  “But there is nothing here.”

  “Maybe. That's kind of the point. Don't worry, I promise to be back in a few hours.”

  “And you will take the bisonito with you?”

  I grinned. “I don't think he'd let me leave him behind. This is his first time on an ice floe too. We'll be fine.”

  The captain handed me a pack with some supplies. I finished securing my boots and headed down the gang plank, Reggie trotting happily at my heels.

  A pair of cross-country skis might have been a better choice, but the ice boots worked well and the poles made sure I didn't slip and land on my ass. One foot at a time, I trudged across the ice. Whether because of his smaller mass, lower center of gravity, or just because he had hooves, Reggie scampered merrily ahead of me, having the time of his life.

  A howling wind blew across the ice. Little blasts of snow kept whipping around me and I mostly kept my head down. At one point when I looked up, Reggie was nowhere to be seen, but I wasn't worried. As the captain had said, the floe was less than ten kilometers across, he couldn't get too lost.

  I'd been walking about an hour. The ship was somewhere invisibly behind me. A yipping noise came from ahead and began to grow louder. Lifting my head I saw a furry brown cannonball bounding towards me across the ice. Behind him a human figure approached. Reggie had found Dr. Jayasuriya.

  The buffalito ran up to me, tagged me with his front hooves, and then turned and raced back toward Jayasuriya, tagged him in turn, and hurtled back my way to repeat the process again and again as the distance between us dwindled.

  “What are you doing here, Mr. Conroy?” Jayasuriya had to shout to be heard over the wind. I held up a hand and took off my pack, withdrawing a small, Insta-tent that unfolded in seconds. I secured it to the floe with a few stakes and crawled in. Jayasuriya followed. Reggie chose to stay outside and enjoy the wind.

  “I wanted to make sure you were okay here,” I said, answering his earlier question.

  He seemed more at ease than he had in Atlanta. He looked me in the eyes and from his look of surprise I had a pretty good idea what he'd read in my mind.

  “What do you mean you're responsible for me being here?”

  “The other part of the message I sent to you through the dreams of my audience members. I put a destination in your unconscious mind. Argentina. And once you were here, the second part clicked into place for you.”

  “Icebergs. Going with the floe.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But that performance, you did it before we met at the zoo It's how we met at the zoo. And yet, there was no part of this in your mind. I'd have seen it.”

  “Oh, it was there, just not at a conscious level. That mystery phrase you heard me say when you first sat down? I set that up to temporarily remove my own awareness of this part. I was gambling that your unconscious would work it out and follow through, whereas your conscious mind might reject the plan out of hand.”

  He nodded. “Because out here on this floe, there's no one around. No minds to pummel me. But how did you know which ice floe? How did you find me here?”

  I did my best to look sheepish. “The same way Davies found me at the zoo.”

  He gaped at me. “Your phone. I thought you'd left it in the backpack by mistake.”

  “Yeah, that was all smoke and mirrors.” I grinned. “Blame Tezcatlipoca.”

  Jayasuriya rolled his eyes and I moved on to more serious things.

  “It's pretty austere,” I said. “But you're free here. I've brought some supplies for you. Food, fuel, and equipment. Winter, when it comes, is going to be pretty brutal, but there's more than enough to get you through it. And I can send more. Or, whenever you're ready to leave, you can call me and I'll send someone to come get you.”

  He looked so sad as he shook his head, like he was letting me down. “You don't understand. If anything, the radius of my telepathic field has grown larger. I can handle a few minds, yours and those from the ship that brought you here, but it makes having a conversation with you like shouting in a noisy bar room. The thoughts and images coming from even so few people are a constant, roaring mishmash. I appreciate you coming here, but I'll be glad when you leave.”

  “But—”

  “You may have helped guide my destination, but I came here to die. I can't live like this, but at least here I can meet my end with my mind quiet and free. I won't be returning.”

  “You don't know that,” I said.

  “I do.”

  “No, you don't!” I was adamant and that must have leaked through the noise of the other minds. “You may believe that, but you
don't know it. I think I've proved that.”

  “Proved what?”

  “That I know more about your telepathy than you do.”

  That roused him. “I'm the world's foremost expert on the effects of Meyerson's Encephalitis B.”

  “Sure, but you didn't contract Meyerson's Encephalitis B, did you?”

  “What?”

  “If you did, you'd have been dead within forty-eight hours. So let's call whatever infected you Meyerson's Encephalitis C. And I think I know more about it than you do.”

  “What do you think you know?”

  “I know that it's controllable.”

  “Impossible! Don't you think I'd know?”

  “I said it before, you don't know what you don't know. But look at the facts instead of your preconceptions. I've shown you that your telepathy can be selective.”

  “Palmoplantar keratoderma,” he said. “Hepatoerythropoietic porphyria. The other disease names. You used those to alert me, to send a signal through.”

  “I did. It's perceptual filtering. Like how you can hear your name spoken across a noisy room.”

  He thought about that for a moment and then nodded. “Okay, I can see that.”

  “I figured you could. You're a scientist. You're all about rational thinking. And that's great, but it's also very much a conscious mind kind of thing. It never occurred to you that your telepathy might have an unconscious aspect to it. And it clearly does. That's what I spoke to when I planted the suggestion that you travel to Argentina, and that you head out to an ice floe.”

  “I don't understand the significance of what you're saying.”

  “The unconscious operates by different rules. It wants to help, that's its job. But yours doesn't know what to do. And your conscious mind has already decided there's no help to be had. You've created a self-fulfilling situation, one that ends with your slow suicide on this ice floe.”

  “You haven't shown me any other choices,” he said.

  “Open yourself up to possibility, Doc. Consider this a thought experiment. What if you put your rational mind on hold and let your unconscious explore other options?”

  He pulled the thought from my mind. “Hypnosis?”

  “I can't guarantee it will work, but what do you have to lose?”

  You might think it'd be impossible to hypnotize a telepath, but it's no different than putting a normal, alert person into trance. The trick is the patter, the language of the induction, the wordplay you use to slip suggestions to the unconscious all the while the conscious mind is listening and evaluating everything you say. I didn't need to put Jayasuriya in a deep trance, I just needed to tell him a story that gave the unconscious part of him an idea that it lacked.

  True story: there was once a mnemonist, one of those memory guys who can remember everything they've ever seen or heard. He met with a psychologist once, complaining that he was awash in a lifetime of random lists of things that he'd learned, vivid images of tens of thousands of words written on chalkboards at fairs and performance halls, from decades of endless demonstrations. They plagued him but he couldn't get rid of them. Remembering things was his life. He didn't know how to forget. The psychologist asked him to visualize one of the chalkboards, and the mnemonist instantly said he had. The psychologist asked him to visualize himself in the picture, standing in front of the chalkboard, and again the man said he could. And then the psychologist gave him one final instruction that solved all his problems. He told him to picture himself erasing the chalkboard. And just like that, the mnemonist learned to forget.

  Jayasuriya understood the point at once.

  “Telepathy isn't a chalkboard,” he said.

  “Isn't it? What am I thinking right now?”

  “You're thinking that you're thinking that I know what you're thinking.”

  “Very good, and now?”

  “You're thinking that my unconscious mind is processing what you've been saying and you're wondering if it will start trying something new any moment now.”

  “Better and better,” I said. “What about now?”

  “You're thinking... you're thinking that once I realize that you're thinking that I can't tell what you're thinking that I won't be able to... oh my god!”

  Dr. Jayasuriya, the world's first victim of Meyerson's Encephalitis C, the greatest telepath in the world, wrapped his arms around me and sobbed with relief, my thoughts a complete mystery to him.

  I didn't have all the answers, and it wasn't a miracle fix, but it convinced Dr. Jayasuriya to have hope. We set up a schedule for regular vid chats between his ice floe and my office back in Philadelphia where we'd do more trance work and explore how to give him conscious control over his telepathy. I had plenty of other stories I could tell him, more metaphors like erasing chalkboards to empower him. Winter was months away, and he had more than enough supplies to get him through it, but I had the feeling that he'd have a handle on his telepathy well before then. He was overjoyed when I told him that Davies wanted him back at his old job at the CDC. If anything, his experiences would make him even better at it.

  I left the Insta-tent behind and Reggie and I walked back across the ice floe to the ship that had brought us. The crew had finished unpacking the crates, loading everything on several large, motorized sleds that had been among the contents. I gave it all a quick once over and nodded to the captain. “We can head back any time,” I said.

  “Señor Conroy, this makes no sense.”

  “Hmm?”

  “This equipment, these supplies? What is it for? There is nothing here but the ice. What was the point of coming here? Why go to all this expense?”

  I just shrugged and boarded the ship, my buffalito scampering up the gang plank ahead of me. A couple of the crew secured the ramp while others released the mooring lines and jumped back aboard. The captain gave a signal and his ship slowly pulled away. It executed a lazy turn until it was pointing north again and began heading back to the tip of Argentina. I stood at the stern of the ship gazing back at the ice floe. A few minutes later the captain came to stand next to me, saying nothing. I smiled and ventured a little telepathy of my own.

  “You think I'm crazy, don't you?”

  “It is your money to spend as you choose, but yes, the thought did occur to me, señor.”

  “You may be right,” I said. “It's hard to know what you don't know.”

  * * *

  THE END

  Telepathic Intent

  I sold “Buffalo Dogs” to Warren Lapine, who published it in the Summer 2001 issue of Absolute Magnitude. I'd been sending him fiction for a couple years, and while I'd come close to making a sale with a few other pieces, that was the first one to break through. This had made me very happy, and Warren had seemed pretty pleased with it as well. So naturally, when I had the idea for another Conroy story, I sent it to Warren first. Instead of responding by mail or email, he phoned me.

  “It's a great story,” he said, “I'm not going to buy it.”

  I'd heard both of these phrases before (the latter more frequently than the former, alas), but never in the same sentence. I expressed my confusion to Warren with a muttered “Huh?” and he repeated himself. I asked him if there was anything that could be fixed or tightened or changed that would make the story more desirable to him, but he assured me it was wonderful as it was, and again that he wasn't going to buy it. After some more prodding he explained that he was putting out four issues a year, and was looking for the ten best stories he could find. In that grand scheme, my story was number twelve. Sorry, not going to buy it.

  I spent a few more days being confused, and then queried Steve Miller, half of the brilliant writing team responsible for that series of stories and novels known as the Liaden Universe. Curiously, there'd been a Liaden story in that same issue of Absolute Magnitude as my first Conroy story, and I'd come to know Steve from panels on self-promotion at the Nebula Awards Weekends. To keep Liaden fans happy between novels, he'd started his own small press and had
been publishing chapbooks of two or three stories—some reprints, some new work—and I wanted to pick his brain as to the expense of such an endeavor. My thinking was that if Warren wasn't going to publish my new story, maybe I could bundle it with the first one and publish it myself as a chapbook, and begin to build an audience.

  Timing, as has been noted, is everything. Steve told me he was at the point where he wanted to begin experimenting with publishing chapbooks of other authors' works, and perhaps I might like to be the first. All at once I went from spending my own money to self-publish and hope to find an audience to being paid a modest amount to be published by someone who already had an audience eager to read similar stuff. It was the start of a very satisfying business relationship and friendship. SRM Publishing went on to do three Conroy chapbooks in all, but it all began with this next story, my first attempt at a science fiction, romance, murder mystery.

  I admit that I’m not the nicest guy in the galaxy, but I never expected to be arrested for murder. It all started on Brunzibar during a lawn party at the estate of a local corporate industrialist. I’d recently reinvented myself as a sort of global mogul, the CEO of the newly formed Buffalogic, Inc. I was the man responsible for breaking the alien monopoly on the rare and obscenely expensive Buffalo Dogs, delightful little creatures that ate anything and farted oxygen. My position required me to rub elbows with the rich and powerful—a tough job, but you know what they say. Brunzibar’s a mercantile worldlet, a settled moon in neutral space where deals are made by governments and planetary corporations. The resident population is primarily human, but many alien governments and corporations maintain embassies and offices there. The current party was a typical example of the high level mingling commonplace on Brunzibar.

  I had arrived with Calinda, the Baroness Parmaq, one of only three members of Traken nobility on Brunzibar and easily one of the sexiest and most intelligent women I’ve ever had the pleasure to hypnotize. I was there because she wanted me there; that’s the way it is with the Traken. Call it telepathy of intention, call it unconscious mind control, the Traken nobility may act the very definition of conservative decorum, but they’re also the most self-assured people in the galaxy. Traken nobles always seem to get what they want without even asking for it. For reasons known only to herself, the Baroness wanted to be with me. I wasn’t about to argue.