Complete Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks)

by James H. Schmitz

  He’d found two groups who were obtaining longevity and rejuvenation effects as a by-product of mental experimentation. One was the Psychovariant Association. Nile knew as much about their work as they’d chosen to publish in the digests she followed. They used assorted fording procedures to extend and modify mental experience. “Don’t they make heavy use of synthetics?” she asked.

  Ticos nodded. “Yes. Not only to replace failing organs but to improve on healthy ones. That’s their view of it. I don’t fancy the approach myself. But they have systems of basic mind exercises directed at emotional manipulation. Longevity’s a secondary interest, but they’ve accumulated plenty of evidence that the exercises support it . . .”

  The other project was a branch of the Federation’s Psychology Service. Its goal was a total investigation of the mind and the gaining of conscious controls over its unconscious potential. The processes were elaborate. In the course of them, deep-reaching therapeutic adjustments were required and obtained. Physical regeneration frequently was a result—again not as a primary objective but as a beneficial side effect.

  Ticos decided this approach also went beyond his own aims. His interests were outward-directed; his mind was an efficient instrument for that purpose, and he demanded no more of it. However, the goals of both organizations were as definitely bent on overcoming normal human limitations as longevity research. They were aware of the type of inherent resistances he had suspected and had developed methods of dealing with them.

  “The matter of mind-body interaction,” he said. “I can learn to distinguish and control instinctual effects both in my mind and in associated physical processes. And that’s what I’ve started to do.”

  He’d presented his problem to members of the two groups, and a modified individual schedule of mind-control exercises was worked out for him. He’d practiced them under direction until his mentors decided he was capable of continuing on his own. Then he’d closed out the final phases of his university work. His search for more effective biochemical serums would continue; he was convinced now it was the basic key to success.

  “Keep the instincts from interfering and who knows—we might have it made!”

  “Immortality?” asked Nile.

  He gave her his quick grin. “Let’s try for a thousand standard years first.”

  She smiled. “You almost have me believing you, Ticos! And how does becoming a floatwood hermit fit in with it all?”

  “Nandy-Cline evidently is a simmering hotbed of life. I know the general type of substances I’ll be looking for next, and I think I’m at least as likely to find them here as anywhere else.”

  Nile nodded. “You might find almost anything here. Why make it a one-man job?”

  “Planned solitude,” said Ticos. “What will that do for you?”

  “The mind exercises. Does it seem to mean anything if I say that at the stages at which I’ll now be working I step outside the standard mental patterns of the species?”

  She considered. “It doesn’t seem to mean much. Very advanced stuff, eh?”

  “Depends on the viewpoint. The people I dealt with consider it basic. However, it’s difficult work. There’s seepage from other mind patterns about you, and if they’re established human ones they jar you out of what you’re doing. They’re too familiar. It’s totally disruptive. So until I become sufficiently stable in those practices, it’s necessary to reduce my contacts with humanity to the absolute minimum.”

  Nile shrugged. “Well, that’s obviously out of my line. Still, I’d think . . . you just can’t go into a room somewhere and shut the doors?”

  “No. Physical distance is required. Plenty of it.”

  “How long is it going to be required?”

  “The estimates I’ve had range from three to four years.”

  “In the floatwood?”

  “Yes. It’s to be both my work place and my source of materials. I can’t park myself in space somewhere and continue to do meaningful research. And I think that adequate preparations should reduce any risks I’ll encounter to an acceptable level. A reasonable degree of risk, as a matter of fact, will be all to the good.”

  “In what way?”

  “The threat of danger is a great awakener. The idea in this is to be thoroughly alert and alive—not shut away in a real or symbolical shell of some kind.”

  Nile reflected. “That makes a sort of sense,” she agreed. She hesitated. “What’s your present physical condition? I’ll admit you look healthy enough.”

  “I’m healthier now than I was ten years ago.”

  “You don’t need medical supervision?”

  “I haven’t needed it for several years. I’ve had one arterial replacement—the cultured product. That was quite a while ago. Otherwise, except for a few patches from around the same and earlier periods, my internal arrangements are my own. Nothing to worry about in that department.”

  “Well—we’ll still have to convince Parrol it isn’t suicide. But you’re hired, Ticos. Make it a very high salary and nail down your terms, including your interests in anything that could classify as a longevity serum. After we’ve settled that, I’ll start briefing you on the kind of difficulties you’re likely to run into on your island. That can’t be done in a matter of days. It’s going to take weeks of cramming and on-the-spot demonstrations.”

  Ticos winked at her. “That’s why I’m here.”

  She made it a very stiff cramming course. And Ticos turned out to be as good a student as he’d been an instructor. He had an alert, curious mind, an extraordinarily retentive memory. Physically he proved to be tough and resilient. Nile kept uprating his survival outlook, though she didn’t mention it. Some things, of course, she couldn’t teach him. His gunmanship was only fair. He learned to use a climb-belt well enough to get around safely; but to develop anything resembling real proficiency with the device required long practice. She didn’t even attempt to instruct him in water skills. The less swimming he did around floatwood, the better.

  They moved about the Meral from one floatwood drift to another, finally selected a major island complex which seemed to meet all requirements. A shelter, combining Ticos’ living quarters, laboratory and storerooms, was constructed and his equipment moved in. A breeding group of eight-inch protohorns and cultures of gigacells would provide him with his principal test material; almost every known human reaction could be duplicated in them, usually with a vast advantage in elapsed time. The structure was completely camouflaged. Sledmen harvesting parties probably would be about the island from time to time, and Ticos didn’t want too many contacts with them. If he stayed inside until such visitors left again, he wouldn’t be noticed.

  He had a communicator with a coded call symbol. Unless he got in touch with her, Nile was to drop by at eight-week intervals to pick up what he had accumulated for the Giard lab and leave supplies. He wished to see no one else. Parrol shook his head at the arrangement; but Nile made no objections. She realized that by degrees she’d become fiercely partisan in the matter. If Ticos Cay wanted to take a swing at living forever, on his feet and looking around, instead of fading out or sliding off into longsleep, she’d back him up, however he went about it. Up to this point he hadn’t done badly.

  And somewhat against general expectations then, he lasted. He made no serious mistakes in his adopted environment, seemed thoroughly satisfied with his life as a hermit, wholly immersed in his work. The home office purred over his bimonthly reports. Assorted items went directly to the university colleagues who had taken over his longevity project there. They also purred. When Nile had seen him last, he’d been floating along the Meral for eighteen months, looked hale and hearty and ready to go on for at least the same length of time. His mind exercises, he informed Nile, were progressing well.

  III

  There were three men waiting in the central cabin of the Sotira sled to which lath presently conducted Nile. She knew two of them from previous meetings, Fiam and Pelad. Both were Venn, members of t
he Fleet Venntar, the sledman center of authority—old men and former sled captains. Their wrinkled sun-blackened faces were placid; but they were in charge. On a sled a Venn’s word overrode that of the captain.

  Doncar, the sled captain, was the third. Quite young for his rank, intense, with a look of controlled anger about him. Bone-tired at the moment. But controlling that, too.

  lath drew the door shut behind Nile and the otter, took a seat near Doncar. She held a degree of authority not far below that of the others here, having spent four years at a Hub university, acquiring technical skills of value to her people. Few other sledmen ever had left Nandy-Cline. Their forebears had been independent space rovers who settled on the water world several generations before the first Federation colonists. By agreement with the Federation, they retained their independence and primary sea rights. But there had been open conflict between the fleets and mainland groups in the past, and the sleds remained traditionally suspicious of the mainland.

  Impatience tingled in Nile, but she knew better than to hurry this group. She answered Pelad’s questions, repeating essentially what she had told lath.

  “You aren’t aware of Dr. Cay’s exact location?” Pelad inquired. Ticos had become a minor legend among the sled people who knew of his project.

  Nile shook her head.

  “I can’t say definitely that he’s within four hundred miles of us,” she said. “This is simply the most likely area to start looking for him. When I’m due to pay him a visit, I give him a call and he tells me what his current position is. But this time he hasn’t answered.”

  She added, “Of course there’ve been intensive communication interferences all the way in to the mainland in recent weeks. But Dr. Cay still should have picked up my signal from time to time. I’ve been trying to get through to him for the past several days.”

  Silence for a moment. Then Pelad said, “Dr. Etland, does the mainland know what is causing the interferences?”

  The question surprised, then puzzled her. The interferences were no novelty; their cause was known. The star type which tended to produce water worlds also produced such disturbances. On and about Nandy-Cline the communication systems otherwise in standard use throughout the Federation were rarely operable. Several completely new systems had been developed and combined to deal with the problem. Among them, only the limited close-contact band was almost entirely reliable.

  Pelad and the others here were as aware of that as she. Nile said, “As far as I know, no special investigation has been made. Do the sleds see some unusual significance in the disturbances?”

  “There are two views,” Jath told her quietly. “One of them is that some of the current communication blocks are gromgorru. Created deliberately by an unknown force—possibly by an unnatural one.”

  Pelad glanced at Jath, said to Nile, “The Venntar has decreed silence in this. But young mouths open easily, perhaps too easily. We may have reason to believe there is something in the sea that hates men. There are those who hear voices in the turmoil that smothers our instruments. They say they hear a song of hate and fear.” He shrugged. “I won’t say what I think—as yet I don’t know what to think.” He looked at Fiam. “Silence might have been best, but it has been broken. Dr. Etland is a proven friend of the sleds.”

  Fiam nodded. “Let the captain tell it to our guest.”

  Doncar grinned briefly. “Tell it as I see it?”

  “As you see it, Doncar.”

  “Very well.” Doncar turned to Nile. “Dr. Etland, so far you’ve been asked questions and given no explanation. Let me ask one more question: Could human beings cause such communication problems?”

  “By duplicating the solar effect locally?” Nile hesitated, nodded. “It should be possible. Is there reason to believe it’s being done?”

  “Some of us think so,” Doncar said dryly. “We’ve lost men.”

  “Lost them?”

  “They disappear. Work parties harvesting a floatwood island—small surface craft and submersibles in the immediate vicinity of floatwood. Later no traces are found. Whenever this occurred, communication in the area was completely disrupted.”

  “To keep the men from reporting attackers?”

  “That’s what’s suspected,” Doncar said. “It’s happened too regularly to make coincidences seem probable. You understand, Dr. Etland, that this isn’t a problem which affects only the Sotira Sleds. There have been similar disappearances near floatwood islands in many sea areas of late.”

  Nile asked for details, her mind beginning to race. She and Parrol were known as accomplished troubleshooters. They considered it part of their job; it was in Giard’s interest to keep operations moving as smoothly as possible on Nandy-Cline. The sledmen had benefitted by that in the past as had the mainland. And trouble—man-made trouble—was always likely to arise. The planet’s natural riches were tempting—particularly when some new discovery was made and kept concealed.

  This then might be such trouble on a large scale. The pattern of disappearances had begun north of the equator, spread down through the Sotira range. It had started three months ago. And the purpose, she thought, presumably was to accomplish precisely what it had accomplished—to keep the sleds away from the islands. For a period long enough to let whoever was behind the maneuver clear out whatever treasure of rare elements or drugs they’d come across and be gone again.

  No local organization was big enough to pull off such a stunt. But a local organization backed by a Hub syndicate could be doing it—Gromgorru? Nile shrugged mentally. The deeps of Nandy-Cline were only sketchily explored; great sections of the ocean floor remained unmapped. But she had very little faith in unknown malignant powers. In all her experience, whenever there was real mischief afoot, human operators had been found behind it.

  The others here were less sure. There was something like superstitious dread unspoken but heavy in the air of this cabin, with the deck shuddering underfoot and the typhoon howling and thudding beyond the thick walls. She thought Doncar and Jath weren’t free of it. Jath had acquired a degree of sophistication very uncommon among the sledmen. But she still was a woman of the sea sleds, whose folk had drunk strangeness for centuries from the mysteries of ocean and space. Space life and sea life didn’t breed timid people. But it bred people who would not go out of their way to pit themselves against forces they could not understand.

  Nile said to Pelad, “You spoke of those who hear voices of hate when the communicators are blanked out.”

  The Venn’s eyes flickered for an instant. He nodded.

  “Do the other-seeing”—Nile used the sledman term for psi sensitives—“connect these voices with the disappearances in the floatwood drifts?”

  Pelad hesitated, said, “No. Not definitely.”

  “They haven’t said this is a matter men can’t handle?”

  “They haven’t said it,” Pelad agreed slowly. “They don’t know. They know only what they’ve told us.”

  So the witch doctors had suggested just enough to stall action. Nile said, “Then there may very well be two things here. One, what the other-seeing sense. The second, a human agency which is responsible for the present trouble in the floatwood. What if the sleds learn that is the case?”

  Doncar said, “There’re six spaceguns mounted on this sled, Dr. Etland, and men trained in their use.”

  “I myself,” said Pelad, “am one of those men.”

  Fiam added, “There are two other Sotira sleds not far from here. Each armed with four spaceguns—very old guns but in excellent working order.” He gave Nile a brief smile. “The mainland may recall them.”

  “The mainland does,” Nile agreed. “You’ll fight if you know you’re not fighting gromgorru?”

  “We’ll fight men,” Pelad said. “We have always fought men when necessary. But it would be unwise to challenge blindly an evil which may not be affected by guns and which might be able to wipe the sleds from the sea.” His face darkened again. “Some believe there is s
uch an evil at no great distance from us.”

  She must be careful at this point. Still, so far, so good. In their minds the Venn were committed now to fight, if shown an enemy with whom weapons could deal. Too early to ask them to cooperate with mainland authorities in this. Their distrust was too deep.

  Five minutes later she knew what she must do. Her immediate concern was to get Ticos out of harm’s way. The big floatwood drift for which she had been looking was eighty miles south of this point. A Sotira seiner had been missing for several days, and the last reports from it indicated it might have moved too near the drift in the storm and become another victim of whatever menace haunted floatwood waters. Doncar’s sled had been hunting for the seiner in the vicinity of the drift but found no clue to what had happened. The search had now been abandoned.

  There were no other sizable floatwood islands within two hundred miles. Therefore the one on which Ticos had set up his project should be part of the drift. It was almost a certainty. If she took her aircar there at once, she could identify the island while daylight remained. The risk shouldn’t be too great. Aircars hadn’t come under attack, and the one she had was a fast sports model. If there was a suggestion of hostile action, she could clear out very quickly. If there wasn’t, she’d try to wake Ticos up on the close-contact channel and establish what the situation down there was. She might have him out inside an hour.