—He’s not weak, David. Lindy has courage to spare for ten people.—
I nodded. “Perhaps you’re right.” The emotion casements around her words showed nothing could shake her belief. I didn’t pursue the subject any further. Jill was remembering Lindy’s keen perceptions of risk, which were always intelligently calculated, and she was interpreting his responses as bravery. I knew Lindy more intimately than his wife ever could, just as he knew me. We supplied strength where the other was weak, called on superiorities as if they were owned.
But years of trust were falling away. I feared Lindy was ruthlessly capable of using any means available to resist death. I understood his temptations just as he knew my suspicions. Lindy had laughed and I’d relaxed, but I couldn’t deny what I saw. I feared my friend’s superior strength.
He was sleeping. I decided the first step in resisting the man was to match sleep cycles. Awake, he could not take possession without my willingness. I left Jill and went to bed.
* * * *
I outwitted Lindy for one sleep cycle. The next one, he was waiting and I awoke fighting from the place in my mind’s corner. But there was no leverage for me to pry even one finger from his control and in minutes he was on his way to his cabin in my body.
“David?” Jill asked, when he entered. “I’m due on the bridge in a minute.”
“Linden,” he said quietly. I screamed my own name: It was heard only by Lindy, who didn’t even flinch. But I did—just a shadow picture of Lindy performing a mutilation on my body before he returned to his own. Willful son of a bitch! I couldn’t tell if he’d really do it, but I wasn’t willing to take the chance. I cowered silently.
“I wish you’d tell me who’s coming through that iris,” Jill said, exasperated.
“David knocks ... or doesn’t he?”
“No. It seems you leave things like lock patterns in his head.”
Lindy laughed.
“Lindy, this isn’t wise. If for no other reason, consider my reputation. The crew is bound to see David coming in here and they won’t think much of me allowing it while you’re incapacitated.”
“We three know the truth. Let them think what they wish.”
“It’s not like you to disregard crew opinion.”
“It’s only temporary.”
“I still don’t like it.” Jill looked at him steadily. “Does David know you’re in there?”
“Oh yes, he knows.” Linden chuckled.
“And he was willing?”
Lindy frowned. “Does it matter?”
“Yes!”
Lindy didn’t like the scathing thoughts he saw in her mind, nor did he understand them. “I should think you’d want me to spend my last days with you,” he said.
—So that’s it! I didn’t believe David when he told me you were frightened. I can understand expediency because you are a self-centered man. But this! You say you don’t want my pity yet you come sniffing around in another man’s body and ask for pity. Sorry, I have none to give. Get out of my way, Lindy, I have work to do.—
Lindy let his wife pass. He could see she didn’t accept the inevitability of his death for one minute and he thought her very unreasonable. Angrily, he stomped into the corridor, turned away from the direction of the bridge, and went to the nearest pole radiating up a shaft to the other levels. He took the grips one at a time instead of his usual two by two and then stepped off at the hydroponic level. He walked through a maze of crops suspended in clear nutrient sacks, their roots as twisted and tangled as the thoughts in his mind. He stopped when he reached his body, lying inert, breathing shallowly. It seemed little different from the tomato plants surrounding it with the sacks of sucrose and pumps supporting his life. The tomatoes at least had purpose. Lindy felt less certain of his own existence.
“There’s no change, David.” It was the doc’s voice interrupting his maudlin musing.
Lindy nodded, then realized the doc was talking from a bed just beyond his own, where he’d taken up residency to tend his patient. Still nursing his abandonment by Jill, Lindy wondered if the doc’s concern was only for the paper he wanted to write, but he couldn’t tell, for the doc was not thinking along those lines.
“Is he asleep?” the doc said, swinging his feet over the bed and grabbing the rail to correct the overfast movement. He used more care to pull on his coveralls.
Lindy hesitated, then replied: “Yes.”
“David, I’m concerned for you. If Captain Linden dies while your minds are linked, how will you be affected?”
“I’ve been with dying men before. It’s a comfort to them. The hearing passes last . . . did you know that? Yes, well, I can answer their final questions.”
“But this is different. You’re both telepaths. You talk of Captain Linden’s mind within your own. It seems the link between telepaths is different from the link you have with normals.”
“That’s true, it is different.” It was all Lindy could say. He couldn’t describe a process where vocabulary had never been developed. We’d devised symbols to close the gap, but they weren’t anything you could draw or define for a normal.
“Could you be trapped in his mind at the moment of death?”
Lindy looked at the doc strangely, for dead minds could not be touched. Then he shook his head. “There is much about telepathy I don’t know. Even . . . Captain Linden . . . does not know, though he’s been telepathic since childhood.” He looked up at the doctor. “Are you suggesting a mind transfer?” Fringe thoughts were being drawn in for consideration. Would there be a bit of himself in my mind after his death—leavings, like the lock pattern, in the mnemonics? It came to him quickly then: Or his whole awareness?
“Schizophrenia... or a dual personality.”
“What?” Lindy said. The words shook him. Every tele-path has flirted with insanity before learning to cope.
The doc sighed. “I pose questions, David. I have no answers and it seems you don’t either.”
Lindy grasped the rail of the bed where his body lay wasting. If he died, would it be a final death? Now he doubted it. He hadn’t been distracted with near-death while he was in my body visiting Jill. Would he live on, in part? In entirety? In my body? What happened when a telepath who was half a love-bond died and the other half was near enough to possess? Suddenly, Lindy withdrew from my mind and I hastened to right the stagger it produced.
—Damn you, Linden!— I almost pummeled his body with my fists.
Lindy did not respond. His thoughts were spinning rapidly, seemingly shocked. I probed and he resisted.
I turned away from Lindy and the doc, traced a comma on the comm-system and reached the bridge. “Send Jill to my cabin.” She’d be wondering which telepath gave the order but she wouldn’t refuse. I left without even saying good-by to the doc, slid down the nearest pole, and walked down the corridor. What I’d hoped were only fringe thoughts could no longer be ignored.
I gave him two feet in the brain. —Why does it scare you, Lindy? Did you think telepaths wink out like novas?—
He didn’t answer, but was listening.
The implications were enough to have us both suspended between hope and fear. Skin prickling, I tried a solution on him. —We will share.—
—Ha! You think we won’t fight over control? You think I would share? I am more powerful.—
While Jill walked the dish of the outer rim corridor toward me, I wondered what a battle of two minds within the same body would be like. When Jill and I met at my cabin, I barely had enough presence to hold the iris for her.
“David?” she asked.
“Yes, it’s me.”
“It’s as you suspected,” she said, beginning to explain Lindy’s recent possession of my body. “He is frightened of death.”
—David.— Lindy interrupted. —I want you to have the doctor sedate me.—
—Wouldn’t work, Lindy. You can fight sedation. They can paralyze your muscles but nothing can stop your mind.—
—
It would give me something to fight . . . besides you.—
I looked at Jill. “He’s accepted death. In fact, he’s making arrangements for it.” Knowing he could live on in my body, suicide was a better word for it. Lindy wasn’t capable of suicide.
—No! You must not accept dying. I don’t!— Jill straight-lined to him.
—You heard?—I asked Lindy.
—She doesn’t understand the danger. It’s not Jill’s place to decide, it’s mine. I won’t risk a schizophrenic captain at the head of Linden Fleet.—
—Yet you’d disregard Jill? Leave her alone?—
—I’m not worried about Jill, I’m worried about you ... us and insanity. Send her out. We’ll talk without her.—
I looked at Jill. She’d barely noticed the pause. “He wants to be sedated until it’s all over.”
—Linden, you can’t just give up! I won’t take that from you. I love you. You know that I do.— Jill blazed with fury, indignant in her half-comprehension. Her love was undeniable.
Lindy groaned. —I can’t have her emotions distracting me now. Stop her. I’ve decided . . . David, please.—
There was a momentary silence.
Softly, his thoughts came to me. —When I’m dead you’ll be the head of Linden Fleet. It’s safe in your hands. Jill will get over it. Perhaps you and she . . .—
I blasted my reply, for I was angry with my temptation. —Don’t try arranging my life for me!—
—If you don’t do as I ask, I will spend the rest of your life doing just that!—
—No. I trust you, Lindy. If telepaths can live on after death, then there must be a way to cope with the dual existence. We’ll take the risk and find a way.— I didn’t believe myself, but I wanted to. Lindy, despite his pitiless mask, was my friend, closer to me than kin.
—You’re a fool!—
—Only a fool would think you’re dying.—
—Then we’re both fools.—
And I knew it was true. But there was Jill with true emotional quality and steadfast belief, insisting: —Lindy, you can’t die.— But we couldn’t be sure, so we had to deal with the alternative. Shortly, she left my cabin, her faith still impervious to all influences. I felt a prevailing dread that she might be right, that Lindy couldn’t die . . . at least, not his mind.
Lindy was outraged that I could think of sharing my body and of learning to cope with dual existence when all the while I was terrified. —You can’t act on intellect,— he told me, angrily, —while every instinct shouts denial.—
—Our friendship precludes reservations.—
—Our friendship demands confidence and I have none left in you, David. You’re groveling because I’m more powerful.—
There was no denying it. It hardly mattered that it occurred to him first; it fit in my head. —We both know I can’t escape your superior strength, so why is it strange that I want to retain your good will?— He’d always been stronger. There were good friendship-preserving reasons for us working on two different ships, separated by light-years.
—I asked your help in preventing this fiasco. Instead, you’re paving the way.—
—Drugs can’t hold you for long. You will possess me when you feel death approaching. I don’t think it will matter whether I’m awake or asleep when the times comes. Do you?—
—No, it won’t matter. But if you let me do this, it will destroy us, and Jill too. Fight me!—
—No.—
I felt his resolve to stay in his body despite my invitation and we both knew such resolutions were useless. Then Lindy withdrew, but not before I felt his aversion and it nearly sickened me to know it.
* * * *
I existed, hovering between somnolence and delirium; the drugs I’d denied Lindy I allowed for myself. Lindy saw it as escape from my torment. Perhaps it was. Or maybe I could not tolerate his growing disgust.
When the Nightwine returned with the specialist, I was barely lucid enough to comprehend. But while the surgeon and Doc Varner made preparations for surgery and Jill paced in the corridor, I ... I fled to the Nightwine. Puzzled crew obeyed my orders to leave the parking orbit and put as much distance between the Dandelion and me as the thrusters could.
I stayed in my cabin. The last drugs I’d taken were amphetamines and I was as jittery as a loose strut on an airborne wing. Sixty times an hour, I searched my brain looking for him, suspecting my drug-clouded senses had overlooked him. I screamed his name but he wouldn’t answer. Silently he lurked, waiting for an unguarded second in which to take control. Time passed. Had those first minutes of sedation been enough for me to escape without him?
There was a noise from my cabin iris. I froze, wondered where to hide from him. I glanced around. There was only the WC and he could break that down with his huge boots. The intercom blared my name: “Mr. Atkins? Mr. Atkins, are you all right?”
It was Greenberg’s voice. Shaking, I traced the lock pattern and let him in. I saw his mental reflection of me and was startled to composure.
“The Dandelion has been trying to raise us for the last hour, but your orders not to respond ...”
“The surgery must be over,” I said. “I’ll come to the bridge.”
Greenberg looked at me suspiciously. “You all right, sir?”
“I’m fine.” I wasn’t exactly, but I was better; I knew I was alone. I followed him to the bridge, avoiding stares and quizzical thoughts. It was Jill’s voice the speaker amplified. I motioned the comm-engineer out of the way and sat down.
“This is the Nightwine, Atkins here.”
“David!”
I was glad I wasn’t close enough to get the mental blast accompanying that single word. “How is he, Jill?”
Her voice was as cold as ice. “He’s out of danger now. Where the hell did you go? Tell me what’s going on!”
“Another time, okay?”
Jill hesitated. “All right, just hurry back.”
“Back?” Right then I realized I had no intention of going back. I’d deserted my brother, severed his life line. I was sure he wouldn’t want me near him.
“Of course, back. David, he’s had surgery on his brain! His telepathic abilities might have been destroyed during surgery.”
I still hedged. “Ask Lindy.”
“He won’t be able to talk for weeks.”
“Jill, did you surmise this all along?”
“Yes.”
And I thought she was hiding pity! Jill had strengths I’d not suspected. Lindy and I might learn something from a normal. Then I wondered how I’d dared to link his name to mine within the same thought. And I realized I had to know if our friendship had survived this ultimate test. “We’re coming about, Jill.”
* * * *
Wake for a telepath or reunion with a friend? If reunion, what kind? Lindy might understand that my survival instinct was completely dependable, not something I could shut off, not even for him. But I wasn’t sure: I was so damned filled with guilt that I didn’t know how I’d have the gall to touch the man’s mind.
Hand over hand, I pushed myself down the center pole. I’d do it for Jill’s sake. Equivocating, of course, and poorly too. That rock-hard woman was waiting for me when I touched the outer rim corridor in the Dandelion, her jaw as set as her thought pattern. I suspected an indignant barrage within her, one she wasn’t going to let out until she didn’t need me any more. I brushed past her.
“Is he . . . ?” I could hear her steps trailing me as I hurried toward the clinic. “David, is he receiving?” she said.
Maybe I was being unfair. Perhaps that privacy circle was for Lindy’s benefit. My defenses were hot-wired just then; I was half-eager, half-anxious for this confrontation she’d forced on me. “He’s sleeping,” I said. The iris dilated more quickly than I recalled, then Jill and I were in the clinic. The doc was beaming at me, nodding at his prize patient. “Out,” I said, ignoring his desire for my expressed gratitude. He thought he’d saved my closest friend, but for all I knew Lindy mig
ht now be my enemy, the most powerful kind in the universe. If I didn’t think I’d have to throw her bodily, I’d have ordered Jill out of the room, too. Two angry telepaths are capable of quite a lot of havoc, and angry we were. Lindy wasn’t sleeping, he was ignoring me. Ha! Think again, David Atkins, disarming me!
I felt two feet in my brain, toes first, pointed and rigid. —You should have kept running, David.— Then he realized Jill was present. He delayed a second blow and sought her mind. I swayed, leaned against the wall for support. My hands were at my temples and I was blinking back tears. Pain tears and guilt tears. Lindy felt them and hardened himself against them.
Universe 8 - [Anthology] Page 9