by Carol
In the early day, psionic psychotherapy vitiated itself because the amplified thoughts of one man, entering the brain of another, would combine with the latter’s own neural cycles according to the ordinary vector laws. The result was that both men felt the new beat frequencies as a nightmarish fluttering of their very thoughts. An analyst, trained into self-control, could ignore it; his patient could not, and reacted violently.
But eventually the basic human wave-timbres were measured, and psionic therapy resumed. The modem esprojector analysed an incoming signal and shifted its characteristics over to the “listener’s” pattern. The really different pulses of the transmitting brain, those which could not possibly be mapped on to the pattern of the receiving neurones—as an exponential signal cannot very practicably be mapped on to a sinusoid—those were filtered out.
Thus compensated, the other thought could be apprehended as comfortably as one’s own. If the patient were on a psibeam circuit, a skilled operator could tune in without the patient being necessarily aware of it. The operator could either probe the other man’s thoughts or implant thoughts of his own.
Cornelius’ plan, an obvious one to any psionicist, had depended on this. He would receive from an unwitting Anglesey-Joe. If his theory were right, and the esman’s personality was being distorted into that of a monster—his thinking would be too alien to come through the filters. Cornelius would receive spottily or not at all. If his theory was wrong, and Anglesey was still Anglesey, he would receive only a normal human stream-of-consciousness, and could probe for other troublemaking factors.
His brain roared!
What’s happening to me?
For a moment, the interference which turned his thoughts to saw-toothed gibberish struck him down with panic. He gulped for breath, there in the Jovian wind, and his dreadful dogs sensed the alienness in him and whined.
Then, recognition, remembrance, and a blaze of anger so great that it left no room for fear. Joe filled his lungs and shouted it aloud, the hillside boomed with echoes:
“Get out of my mind!’*
He felt Cornelius spiral down towards unconsciousness. The overwhelming force of his own mental blow had been too much. He laughed, it was more like a snarl, and eased the pressure.
Above him, between thunderous clouds, winked the first thin descending rocket flare.
Cornelius’ mind groped back towards the light It broke a watery surface, the man’s mouth snapped after air and his hands reached for the dials, to turn his machine off and escape.
“Not so fast, you.” Grimly, Joe drove home a command that locked Cornelius’ muscles rigid. “I want to know the meaning of this. Hold still and let me look!’9 He smashed home an impulse which could be rendered, perhaps, as an incandescent question mark. Remembrance exploded in shards through the psionicist’s forebrain.
“So. That’s all there is? You thought I was afraid to come down here and be Joe, and wanted to know why? But I told you I wasn’t!”
I should have believed—whispered Cornelius.
“Well, get out of the circuit, then.” Joe continued growling it vocally. “And don’t ever come back in the control-room, understand? K-tubes or no, I don’t want to see you again. And I may be a cripple, but I can still take you apart cell by cell. Now—sign off—leave me alone. The first ship will be landing in minutes.”
You a cripple …you, Joe Anglesey?
“What?” The great grey being on the hill lifted his barbaric head as if to sudden trumpets. “What do you mean?”
Don’t you understand? said the weak, dragging thought. You know how the esprojector works. You know I could have probed Anglesey’s mind in Anglesey’s brain without making enough interference to be noticed. And it could not have probed a wholly nonhuman mind at all, nor could it have been aware of me. The filters would not have passed such a signal. Yet you felt me in the first fractional second. It can only mean a human mind in a nonhuman brain.
You are not the half-corpse on Jupiter V any longer. You’re Joe—Joe Anglesey.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Joe. “You’re right.”
He turned Anglesey off, kicked Cornelius out of his mind with a single brutal impulse, and ran down the hill to meet the space ship.
Cornelius woke up minutes afterwards. His skull felt ready to split apart. He groped for the main switch before him, clashed it down, ripped the helmet off his head and threw it clanging on the floor. But it took a little while to gather the strength to do the same for Anglesey. The other man was unable to do anything for himself.
They sat outside sickbay and waited. It was a harshly lit barrenness of metal and plastic, smelling of antiseptics: down near the heart of the satellite, with miles of rock to hide the terrible face of Jupiter.
Only Viken and Cornelius were in that cramped little room. The rest of the station went about its business mechanically, filling in the time till it could learn what had happened. Beyond the door, three bio-technicians, who were also the station’s medical staff, fought with death’s angel for the thing which had been Edward Anglesey.
“Nine ships got down,” said Viken dully. “Two males, seven females. It’s enough to start a colony.”
“It would be genetically desirable to have more,” pointed out Cornelius. He kept his own voice low, in spite of its underlying cheerfulness. There was a certain awesome quality to all this.
“I still don’t understand,” said Viken.
“Oh, it’s clear enough—now. I should have guessed it before, maybe. We had all the facts, it was only that we couldn’t make the simple, obvious interpretation of them. No, we had to conjure up Frankenstein’s monster.”
“Well,” Viken’s words grated, “we have played Frankenstein, haven’t we? Ed is dying in there.”
“It depends on how you define death.” Cornelius drew hard on his cigar, needing anything that might steady him. His tone grew purposely dry of emotion:
“Look here. Consider the data. Joe, now: a creature with a brain of human capacity, but without a mind—a perfect Lockean tabula rasa, for Anglesey’s psibeam to write on. We deduced, correctly enough—if very belatedly—that when enough had been written, there would be a personality. But the question was: whose? Because, I suppose, of normal human fear of the unknown, we assumed that any personality in so alien a body bad to be monstrous. Therefore it must be hostile to Anglesey, must be swamping him—”
The door opened. Both men jerked to their feet.
The chief surgeon shook his head. “No use. Typical deep-shock traumata, close to terminus now. If we had better facilities, maybe—”
“No,” said Cornelius. “You cannot save a man who has decided not to live any more.”
“I know.” The doctor removed his mask. “I need a cigarette. Who’s got one?” His hands shook a little as he accepted it from Viken.
“But how could he—decide—anything?” choked the physicist. “He’s been unconscious ever since Jan pulled him away from that…that thing.”
“It was decided before then,” said Cornelius. “As a matter of fact, that hulk in there on the operating table no longer has a mind. I know. I was there.” He shuddered a little. A stiff shot of tranquilizer was all that held nightmare away from him. Later he would have to have that memory exorcised.
The doctor took a long drag of smoke, held it in his lungs a moment, and exhaled gustily. “I guess this winds up the project,” he said. “We’ll never get another esman.”
“I’ll say we won’t.” Viken’s tone sounded rusty. “I’m going to smash that devil’s engine myself.”
“Hold on a minute,” exclaimed Cornelius. “Don’t you understand? This isn’t the end. It’s the beginning!”
“I’d better get back,” said the doctor. He stubbed out his cigarette and went through the door. It closed behind him with a deathlike quietness.
“What do you mean?” Viken said it as if erecting a barrier.
“Won’t you understand?” roared Cornelius. “Joe has al
l Anglesey’s habits, thoughts, memories, prejudices, interests…oh, yes, the different body and the different environment, they do cause some changes—but no more than any man might undergo on Earth. If you were suddenly cured of a wasting disease, wouldn’t you maybe get a little boisterous and rough? There is nothing abnormal in it. Nor is it abnormal to want to stay healthy—no? Do you see?”
Viken sat down. He spent a while without speaking.
Then, enormously slow and careful: “Do you mean Joe is Ed?”
“Or Ed is Joe. Whatever you like. He calls himself Joe now, I think—as a symbol of freedom—but he is still himself. What is the ego but continuity of existence?”
“He himself did not fully understand this. He only knew—he told me, and I should have believed him—that on Jupiter he was strong and happy. Why did the K-tube oscillate? A hysterical symptom! Anglesey’s subconscious was not afraid to stay on Jupiter—it was afraid to come back!
“And then, today, I listened in. By now, his whole self was focused on Joe. That is, the primary source of libido was Joe’s virile body, not Angelesy’s sick one. This meant a different pattern of impulses—not too alien to pass the filters, but alien enough to set up interference. So he felt my presence. And he saw the truth, just as I did—
“Do you know the last emotion I felt, as Joe threw me out of his mind? Not anger any more. He plays rough, him, but all he had room to feel was joy.
“I knew how strong a personality Anglesey has! Whatever made me think an overgrown child-brain like Joe’s could override it? In there, the doctors—bah! They’re trying to salvage a hulk which has been shed because it is useless!”
Cornelius stopped. His throat was quite raw from talking. He paced the floor, rolled cigar smoke around his mouth but did not draw it any farther in.
When a few minutes had passed, Viken said cautiously: ‘All right. You should know—as you said, you were there. But what do we do now? How do we get in touch with Ed? Will he even be interested in contacting us?”
“Oh, yes, of course,” said Cornelius. “He is still himself, remember. Now that he has none of the cripple’s frustrations, he should be more amiable. When the novelty of his new friends wears off, he will want someone who can talk to him as an equal.”
“And precisely who will operate another pseudo?” asked Viken sarcastically. “I’m quite happy with this skinny frame of mine, thank you!”
“Was Anglesey the only hopeless cripple on Earth?” asked Cornelius quietly.
Viken gaped at him.
“And there are aging men, too,” went on the psionicist, half to himself. “Someday, my friend, when you and I feel the years close in, and so much we would like to learn—maybe we, too, would enjoy an extra lifetime in a Jovian body.” He nodded at his cigar. “A hard, lusty, stormy kind of life, granted—dangerous, brawling, violent—but life as no human, perhaps, has lived it since the days of Elizabeth the First. Oh, yes, there will be small trouble finding Jovians.”
He turned his head as the surgeon came out again. “Well?” croaked Viken.
The doctor sat down. “It’s finished,” he said.
They waited for a moment, awkwardly.
“Odd,” said the doctor. He groped after a cigarette he didn’t have. Silently, Viken offered him one. “Odd. I’ve seen these cases before. People who simply resign from life. This is the first one I ever saw that went out smiling—smiling all the time.”
1957
HABIT
Lester del Rey
Science-fiction writers are a durable lot (a quick calculation shows that the nine writers represented in this book have amassed a grand total among them oi some two and a half centuries ol writing time!). and so the fact that Lester del Rey Is busily Writing as bard as ever some thirty-five years alter his first story was published is not particularly surprising. It is not even surprising that his newest work is as exciting and innovative as his first—hie most recent novel. Pstalemate, is one of his best. “Habit” does not actually take place on Jupiter, or even on one of its moons; but it does suggest some of the complicated navigation problems in the complex Jovian system—problems that Pioneer 10 is facing right now!
Habit is a wonderful thing. Back in the days of apelike men, one of them invented a piece of flint that made life a little easier; then another found something else. Labor-saving ideas were nice, and it got to be a habit, figuring them out, until the result was what we call civilization, as exemplified by rocket racing.
Only, sometimes, habits backfire in the darnedest way. Look at what happened to the eight-day rocket race out of Kor on Mars.
I was down there, entered in the open-class main event, with a little five-ton soup can of rare vintage, equipped with quartz tube linings and an inch of rust all over. How I’d ever sneaked it past the examiners was a miracle in four dimensions, to begin with.
Anyway, I was down in the engine well, welding a new brace between the rocket stanchion and the main thrust girder when I heard steps on the tilly ladder outside. I tumbled out of the dog port to find a little shriveled fellow with streaked hair and sharp gray eyes giving the Umatila the once-over.
“Hi, Len,” he said casually, around his cigarette. “Been making repairs, eh? Well, not meaning any offense, son, she looks to me like she needs it. Darned if I’d risk my neck in her, not in the opens. Kind of a habit with me, being fond of my neck.”
I mopped the sweat and grease off the available parts of my anatomy. “Would if you had to. Since you seem to know me, how about furnishing your handle?”
“Sure. Name’s Jimmy Shark—used to be thick as thieves with your father, Brad Masters. I saw by the bulletin you’d sneaked in just before they closed the entries, so I came down to look you over.”
Dad had told me plenty about Jimmy Shark. As a matter of fact, my father had been staked to the Umatila by this man, when racing was still new. “Glad to meet you.” I stuck out my hand and dug up my best grin.
“Call me Jimmy when you get around to it—it’s a habit.” His smile was as easy and casual as an old acquaintance. “I’d ’a’ known you anywhere; look just like your father. Never thought I’d see you in this game, though. Brad told me he was fixing you up in style.”
“He was, only—” I shrugged. “Well, he figured one more race would sweeten the pot, so he blew the bank roll on himself in the Runabout. You heard what happened.”
“Um-hm-m-m. Blew up rounding Ceres. I was sorry to hear it. Didn’t leave you anything but the old Umatila, eh?”
“Engineering ticket that won’t draw a job, and some debts. Since I couldn’t get scrap-iron prices for the old soup can, I made a dicker for the soup on credit. Back at the beginning, starting all over—and going to win this race.”
Jimmy nodded. “Um-hm-m-m. Racing kind of gets to be a habit. Still quartz tubes on her, eh? Well, they’re faster, when they hold up. Since you aren’t using duratherm, I suppose your soup is straight Dynatomic IV?”
I had to admit he knew his tubes and fuels. They haven’t used quartz tube linings for ten years, so only a few people know that Dynatomic can be used in them straight to give a forty-percent-efficient drive, if the refractory holds up. In the new models, duratherm lining is used, and the danger of blowing a tube is nil. But the metal in duratherm acts as an anticatalyst on the soup, and cuts the power way down. To get around that, they add a little powdered platinum and acid, which brings the efficiency up to about thirty-five per cent, but still isn’t the perfect fuel it should be.
Jimmy ran his hand up a tube, tapped it and listened to the coyote howl it gave off. “A nice job, son. You put that lining in yourself, I take it. Well, Brad won a lot of races in the old shell using home-lined quartz tubes. Must have learned the technique from him.”
“I did,” I agreed, “with a couple of little tricks of my own thrown in for good measure.”
“How about looking at the cockpit, Len?”
I hoisted him up and helped him through the port. There wasn’t room
for two in there, so I stood on the tilly ladder while he looked her over.
“Um-hm-m-m. Nice and cozy, some ways. Still using Brad’s old baby autopilot, I see, and the old calculator.
Only that brace there—it’s too low. The springs of your shock hammock might give enough to throw you against it when you reverse, and you’d be minus backbone. By the way, you can’t win races by sleeping in your shock mattress—you ought to know that” He held up my duffel and a half can of beans. “And that isn’t grub for a meteor dodger, either.”
“Heck, Jimmy, I’m tough.” I knew he was right, of course, but I also knew how far a ten-spot went on Mars.
“Um-hm-m-m. Be like old times with a Masters in the running. Got to be a habit, seeing that name on the list.” He crawled out of the port and succeeded in lighting a cigarette that stung acridly in the dry air. “You know, Len, I just happened to think; I was supposed to have a partner this trip, but he backed down. There’s room and board paid for two over at Mom Doughan’s place, and only me to use it. We’d better go over there before her other boarders clean the table and leave us without supper. Eating’s sort of a habit with me.”
He had me by the arm and was dragging me across the rocket pit before I could open my mouth. “Now, Jimmy, I’m used—”
“Shut up. You’re used to decent living, same as anyone else, so you might as well take it and like it. I told you I’d paid for them already, didn’t I? All right. Anyhow, I’m not used to staying alone; sort of a habit, having somebody to talk to.”
I was beginning to gather that he had a few habits scattered around at odd places.
Jimmy was right; shock cushions and beans don’t make winners. With a decent meal inside me, and an air-conditioned room around me, my chances looked a lot rosier. Some of the old cocksureness came back.