The Mind Pool

by Charles Sheffield

  Angel was still talking. Chan could not listen. His thoughts went to the Q-ship, orbiting somewhere high overhead. He had to decide what they would do about that threat, or they would be condemned to spend the rest of their lives on Travancore.

  But such things were no longer his worry alone—the decision would be made by Almas! Chan felt huge relief.

  He fell into a profound sleep, too deep for dreams.

  It was a few nours before Travancore’s slow dawn when he was awakened. A warm body slid under the sheet that covered him and snuggled close to his side. He felt a moment of tingling terror, then relaxed as fingers gently covered his mouth.

  “Sshh,” breathed a voice in his ear. “It’s me. Leah. It was wonderful meeting you as Nimrod, but I wanted to meet you just as me, and reassure you. You won’t lose anything when your team forms a union. You’ll gain.”

  “I know. It already happened. Together, we are Almas.”

  “That’s wonderful. Tomorrow, the two mentalities can have their first meeting.” She wriggled against him. “Move over a little bit. I want to get comfortable.”

  Chan tried to see Leah, but the darkness was close to total and she was nothing but a moving patch of lesser darkness. He reached out and put his arms around her. “All this time I’ve waited to see you, and still you’re invisible. I wonder if you’re anything like the Leah I used to know.”

  She chuckled in the darkness. “Me! I haven’t changed one bit—you’re the one who’s so different. Don’t confuse me with Nimrod, because when we’re not in union I’m still me.” She settled comfortably in his arms, fitting her body to his. “It was wonderful with you when I was Nimrod, and everything was shared. But tonight I decided that isn’t enough. I want you for myself too. This time, it’s going to be just us. Ah, my sweet Chan. You feel wonderful.”

  Their lovemaking was gentle and slow, lacking any urgency. It was the culmination of twenty years of deep affection. Even Chan’s climax carried no stress, only love and fulfillment. Afterwards Leah fell asleep quickly, nestled close to his chest, but Chan remained awake.

  A new worry began to gnaw at him.

  Leah was still Leah, quite sure of her own identity and not worried about being lost within the union of Nimrod. But three months ago, Chan had been no one. And ever since that hour of revelation on Horus, he had puzzled over the question of his own identity. Who was he, what was he? He did not have Leah’s strong, well-defined personality, the identity that easily survived mind pooling and dissolution. Despite Leah’s reassurances, he wondered if the still-developing entity who was Chan Dalton would survive.

  Am I going to become nothing more than one piece of a union, as undefined as one of Shikari’s components? I hate that idea. I want to be me, I don’t want to be absorbed. I hope this isn’t going to be my last night as Chan Dalton.

  His thoughts were drifting in long, lazy lines. How long have I lived? Obituary: Chan Dalton, born at twenty years and three months, dead at twenty years and six months. What counts more, mental life span or physical?

  I’m afraid to go to sleep, knowing that tomorrow the real me may disappear.

  He felt Leah stir in the darkness. Her arm moved, to lie protectively across his chest as though she was reading his mind.

  It’s all right. Leah will take care of me. She always has.

  And with that thought, Chan went peacefully to sleep.

  * * *

  Far above the sleeping figures in the tent, the brooding hulk of the Q-ship floated in space. Power on board had been damped, to minimize instrument interference. All sensors were trained on the night side of Travancore. All weapons were primed.

  Within the Q-ship’s central control room sat Esro Mondrian and Luther Brachis. They were busy with a curious late-night ritual. Each of them was quietly entering a sequence of digits into a recording block. As soon as both were finished they exchanged records and examined the other’s notations.

  “Looks all right to me,” said Brachis. His face was still a patchwork of synthetic skin, but his color was good. “I’m going to call it a day.”

  Mondrian reached out and took both recording blocks. “We’re going to carry this sequence in our heads, you know, until the day we die. But it has to be done. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life here any more than you do.”

  “I could tell Godiva the sequence, as a safety precaution.”

  “No.” Mondrian shook his head. “You, me, and Flammarion, and nothing as a written record. If we in Security don’t handle this right, who does? We play it by the book until we’re absolutely sure that down there”—he nodded towards Travancore’s dark disk—“there’s nothing too dangerous for us to handle.”

  “The Team Ruby reports have been looking good.”

  “So did the ones from Team Alpha and look what happened to them. I hope Dalton’s team will dispose of Nimrod for us, but we have to be sure. We’re dealing with an alien form down there. I don’t want to take any risks.”

  “Nor do I. But you know how I feel. We ought to fly lower, turn up the firepower in the region where Nimrod is lurking, and roast it to hell and gone. If we did that, we could get this over with in a hurry.”

  “And destroy the only Morgan Construct there is, the only one there will ever be? No. We go slow, and we make sure that we win.”

  Brachis shrugged and went out. Godiva was waiting. He didn’t care to waste time arguing.

  Mondrian made a check of the incoming messages. Nothing from Kubo. Another complaint from Dougal MacDougal about the energy cost of keeping open the Anabasis-Travancore Link. A confirmation from the Stellar Group ambassadors that no matter what happened, there could be no return from Travancore until the Morgan Construct was destroyed or rendered totally harmless. A query from Phoebe Willard, asking when Luther Brachis would return.

  If we knew that, we would he happy to tell you.

  Mondrian erased the lengthy string of digits on each recording block. The only written evidence of the Link sequence needed to return the Q-ship to a known region of space vanished.

  Once again, Mondrian, Luther Brachis, and Godiva Lomberd sat alone in space, a six-hundred-year journey away from home.

  * * *

  In the folded, multiply-connected mapping provided by the Mattin Link, space lacks both metric and affine connections. There is only the point-to-point Link transformation, with its own discontinuous topology. So long as the Link is maintained between two locations, they remain neighbors in Link-space.

  The Q-ship in orbit around Travancore and the control room of Anabasis Headquarters were close, an infinitesimal Link-space distance apart. The Link itself could provide the minute (but hugely energetic) nudge to move matter or messages across that tiny gap.

  The Mattin Link seems like magic—is magic—but it is an unforgiving magic. Transfer locations must be specified in real space, and converted exactly to Link-space. Fifty-three decimal digits are needed to specify each of three spatial coordinates for transfer. One hundred and fifty-nine digits identify the full transfer sequence, a sequence that must be stored in a data bank—or remembered, if all stored forms but that of organic memory are rejected.

  And there is no symmetry. The digit sequence needed to transfer from Q-ship to Anabasis Headquarters is unrelated to the sequence that takes a message (or an object) from the Anabasis to the Q-ship.

  * * *

  Night and morning, Luther Brachis and Esro Mondrian wrote out for each other’s inspection and approval a 159-digit Mattin Link sequence. It was their life-line to the rest of the universe. Without it, they would be marooned for the rest of their lives in the Travancore system.

  Chapter 37

  Chan woke late to find himself alone in the tent. When he rubbed the sleep from his eyes and went outside he learned that during the night the other members of Nimrod had also arrived.

  The whole group was unusually subdued, as though everyone was waiting for some signal. The two Angels had night-rooted out on the tent side-
lip and were sitting now in companionable silence (or ultrasonic communion), their spread fronds absorbing Talitha’s morning blaze. S’greela and S’glya had wandered away on a Pipe-Rilla food hunt. Chan could see them bounding around in the topmost branches, unconcerned by a possible five-kilometer drop all the way to the forest floor. And Ishmael and Shikari had both disassembled. The tent was filled with their purple-black components, covering every free surface. It was impossible to tell which was which.

  Chan reached out and picked a component from its roost by the tent wall. The creature fluttered its veined wings indignantly and made an attempt to fly away. The ring of tiny green eyes peered at Chan with no hint of understanding. When he released the component it flew up at once to perch on the vegetation canopy.

  Chan watched it hanging there and wondered. How did the two Tinker Composites retain their separate identities? What rule told a single component where to go? What happened if a component from one Tinker tried to cluster with members of the other?

  Meaningless questions. What told a human cell that it was to be part of a liver, and not part of a lung? Chan went across to Leah.

  She had tied her dark hair back with a scarlet turban, providing the brightest splash of color on Travancore. Sitting cross-legged on the floor of the tent, she was eating as fast as the heating unit would produce food. Chan watched for a couple of minutes, then went to put two more servings into the unit. He offered one to her when they were ready, and was amazed when she took both—and gestured to him to load in more.

  Leah ate and ate. It was a long time before she took a final mouthful, said “No more,” and leaned back against the flexible wall. She patted her belly and grinned at Chan. “There. You’ve just paid back the first installment on the thousands of meals that I’ve prepared for you. But take my advice, and stoke up yourself. You’re going to need all the energy and calories that you can get—and I don’t just mean on my account.”

  She gave him a quick sideways glance, then deliberately closed her eyes.

  Casual. They were all too casual. Chan wondered why he seemed to be the only one worried at all about getting away from Travancore. It was hard to remember that just one day ago, all his fears had been of the Morgan Construct.

  Chan thought of Esro Mondrian. It was easy to feel omnipotent when the mentality was in its merged state, but it would not take Mondrian long to recognize the weaknesses of Nimrod and Almas. Chan could think of one immediately: during union, the pooled minds were almost immobilized. A mentality could move only sluggishly as a unit. If it dissolved in order to move faster, the union was destroyed.

  Leah seemed to think that the mentalities were the next evolutionary step, something that would advance all the Stellar Group members. But Chan did not believe that every change was better for survival. Unless they could gain access to the Q-ship and somehow defeat Esro Mondrian and anyone else aboard, the mentalities would be revealed as evolutionary blind ends.

  Was Chan the only one who still thought that the individual members were in some ways more capable than the mind pools?

  The return of the two Pipe-Rillas brought an end to Chan’s train of thought. As they dropped together through a leaf layer and crouched down next to the Angels, it was the signal for every Tinker component to rise from its roosting position. They flew around the tent with dizzying speed and precision, and swarmed over each team member. The mentalities awoke, this time without delay. A thick braid of Tinker components formed a living cable between them and offered direct mental connection.

  GREETINGS . . . THE Q-SHIP BEHAVIOR IS UNPREDICTABLE . . . THE TIME IS SHORT . . . THE NEED FOR MENTALITY ACTION IS URGENT . . .

  One split-second across the broad channel of communication sufficed for a dozen main messages, a hundred overtones of meaning, a thousand cross-references to existing data. As the pooled minds began their assessment, parallel analyses computed the conditional probabilities corresponding to every option.

  OPTION ONE: MOVEMENT OF THE LANDING CAPSULE TO THE Q-SHIP, BUT NO PRIOR COMMUNICATION WITH THE Q-SHIP.

  PROBABLE OUTCOME: DESTRUCTION OF LANDING CAPSULE BEFORE REACHING Q-SHIP AT PROBABILITY LEVEL P = 0.58 IF ACTION TAKEN WITHIN 2 TRAVANCORE DAYS. AT P = 0.71 WITHIN 3 DAYS, AT P = 0.96 WITHIN FOUR DAYS.

  Chan sat within the group mind of Almas, but this time he retained some measure of individual self-awareness as the powerful thought streams of Nimrod and Almas swirled above him and around him. They created echoes in his mind, weak eddy patterns of the strong main current.

  Ideas from individual other team members came swarming in, alien yet accessible. Sometimes they appeared as sounds, sometimes as images, or as transient illusions of physical touch. In that cross-fertilization of mind, new ideas and speculations were like blazing fireships, moving to ignite convoys of thought within every member of the mind pool.

  From the Angel, a statistical conclusion blazed in on Chan as a crimson starfish of analysis:

  ******************************************************

  * Probabilities of specific Q-ship personnel. *

  * Esro Mondrian, P = 0.99 Luther Brachis, P = 0.72 *

  * Kubo Flammarion, P = 0.21 Godiva Lomberd, P = 0.66 *

  * Tatiana Snipes, P = 0.14 All others, P < 0.05 *

  *****************************************************

  The pooled minds did not wait for their individual members to wrestle with the complexities of probability analysis. They rolled on:

  OPTION TWO: A LANDING CAPSULE APPROACH TO THE Q-SHIP WITH NO PRIOR COMMUNICATION.

  PROBABLE OUTCOME: DESTRUCTION OF LANDING CAPSULE BEFORE REACHING Q-SHIP AT PROBABILITY LEVEL P > .99.

  The thoughts of the Pipe-Rillas were sinuous and delicate, filled with feeling more than logic. They rippled across the mind pools, drawing with them shimmering silver ropes of implication. Chan grasped at those gossamer strands. With Angel’s help he felt them condense in his mind and take on solid numerical forms:

  ******************************************************

  * Preferred contact points if present on Q-ship. *

  * Tatiana Snipes, success probability P = 0.65 *

  * Godiva Lomberd, success probability P = 0.47 *

  * Kubo Flammarion, success probability P = 0.29 *

  * Luther Brachis, success probability P = 0.09 *

  * Esro Mondrian, success probability P = 0.03 *

  ******************************************************

  Above and beyond the Pipe-Rillas’ thoughts, the pooled minds were already advancing:

  OPTION THREE: A LANDING CAPSULE APPROACH TO THE Q-SHIP BY THE RUBY TEAM, STATING IT WAS NOT SUCCESSFUL IN SUBDUING OR DESTROYING THE MORGAN CONSTRUCT, BUT IS SEEKING RETURN TO THE ANABASIS.

  PROBABLE OUTCOME: DESTRUCTION OF LANDING CAPSULE BEFORE REACHING Q-SHIP AT PROBABILITY LEVEL P = 0.87.

  Within the mind pool, Angel’s own thoughts formed a passacaglia and fugue in three dimensions. It was too complex for Chan to assimilate. He could sense, barely, that there was a rock-solid logic behind the patterns. That logic appeared to him as coral monoliths, reaching up from the bed of a crystal sea. Only the ship specification was visible, transferred directly to him from Angel:

  ******************************************************

  * Q-ship analysis. *

  * Three entry ports, monitored by the ship defense system *

  * Ship defenses: *

  * Main: radiative, gravitronic, particle beam, projectile *

  * Back-up: jamming field, shearing cones, fission/fusion, E/M shields. *

  * Ship offenses: fusion, subnucleon, gravity singularity, sterilizers. *

  * Sustained energy output level of weapons system: *

  * 940 gigawatts. *

  * Burst output energy level of weapons system: *

  * 14,400 terawatts. *

  ******************************************************

  Chan struggled to see more clearly into Angel’s data banks. Screened by the mentaliti
es, they would not come into focus. He persisted, looked again. Too bright, said an urgent internal voice. It showed a dark-glass image of a naked star. Chan groped within the mind pool for a message, and at last found one. It was a warning. The complexity of Angels’ thought was too great for direct contact by a human mind. He must settle for pale reflection.

  The message from the pooled minds continued.

  OPTION FOUR: APPROACH OF CAPSULE TO Q-SHIP. COMMUNICATION TO INDICATE THAT TEAM RUBY HAS CAPTURED THE MORGAN CONSTRUCT. NO MENTION OF TEAM ALPHA.

  PROBABLE OUTCOME: DESTRUCTION OF LANDING CAPSULE BEFORE REACHING Q-SHIP AT PROBABILITY LEVEL P = 0.62.

  The fourth option was accompanied by a bewildering jumble of sensation, like a light that pulsed and flickered and was never still. Chan struggled and. resisted, until finally he realized what had to be done. He relaxed, and allowed the patterns to dictate their own meaning. He was moved at once to a world where steady states had no existence. There were only averages of continuous fluctuations.

  Chan was seeing the thoughts of a Tinker Composite, in which individual components were added and subtracted, but all minor fluctuations had to be ignored. It was cerebration as a statistical process, a grand canonical ensemble of mental function. He learned to be content with a knowledge of only the average state. And now he saw the gleeful kaleidoscope of Tinker ideas, displayed in exuberance throughout the web of the pooled minds. A hard assessment came glinting through:

  ******************************************************

  * Evaluation. *

  * The current condition of the Morgan *

  * Construct is known to the Q-ship at probability level P = 0.24 or less *

  ******************************************************

  The mind pools drove on. Individual member contributions were absorbed and effortlessly merged.

  OPTION FIVE: APPROACH OF LANDING CAPSULE TO Q-SHIP, PRECEDED BY COMMUNICATION INDICATING THAT TEAM RUBY HAS SURVIVED AND HAS SUBDUED THE MORGAN CONSTRUCT, AND THAT TEAM ALPHA HAS BEEN DESTROYED.