Stress Pattern

by Barrett, Jr. , Neal

  I don't think she believed that, but she touched my head and pressed it close against her.

  It was either island thirty-seven or thirty-eight or close to it. I knew it was the fifth day past Melisa. In the beginning, the little mounds of sand had nestled close to one another, but now they put distance between them. I had ridden through shallow water half the morning before reaching this particular gray hummock.

  And as Melisa had put it—what exactly was the point?

  I was still sleeping fitfully, still dreaming. I decided I had been thoroughly brainwashed by Sterzet and Melisa—if I had been a less practical person and prone to emotional antics I'm sure I could have made a great deal out of the whole business of my adventure in the bad places.

  So it was the most practical of all creatures, then, that finally thrust the fear of God down my unemotional throat, and raised the fine hairs at the back of my neck.

  The Bhano had been irritable for the past day or so. Skittish, uninterested in its share of bulbs. Unusual behavior for a Bhano, who is ordinarily the most dull and placid of creatures.

  When I awoke sometime in the middle of the night I saw it standing there, stiff-legged against the stars. It was making some sort of sound—or trying to, and I thought this peculiar because I hadn't known a Bhano could make any sort of noise at all.

  It stood rigid on spindly legs. The whole body trembled and the slope-head canted straight out to sea, at the dark islands beyond. I got up and walked up to the beast slowly and looked at its pinhole eyes. Nothing. It didn't see me. I touched it gently behind the neck. It gave a strangling cry and bolted away, darting crazily about the island, stumbling over its legs, jerking spasmodically. It desperately wanted to gain control of itself, but the signals were hopelessly jammed. Finally, it twisted in a violent convulsion and, threw itself into the sea. The water brought it back to its senses for a moment, and it began to swim away in stiff, jerky, motions. There was nothing I could do. I watched it for a long time, and listened to its fearful moans, and finally I couldn't see it anymore. Eventually, the sounds stopped, too.

  And that's when the chills began and the friendly night seemed full of shadow. For the first time since I had landed on this world, I was afraid of something I couldn't see.

  The Bhano felt something.

  And Sterzet.

  And Melisa.

  I couldn't feel anything at all. But I didn't have to feel because I knew something was there.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Island forty-four. . . .

  Fifty-four?

  And five days since the Bhano disappeared. I think. And that bothers me because I don't forget things. But I'm forgetting things now, and remembering. And the remembering's the frightening part because a lot of the things I remember are things I don't remember.

  That doesn't make sense, but it does. It's simply that things pop into my mind that don't belong there. They may belong to someone, but they don't belong to me. I'd like very much to set this nonsense aside. I've always been good at that—Andrew Gavin, the voice of reason and common sense. Right now, I'm having a hard time living up to my reputation.

  Island number—what?

  Something is happening here. It's not just a question of peculiar memories that don't belong to me. I'm hearing things. I never did that before.

  Mostly at night. Not always.

  It feels like I have a very bad radio in my head and a nervous listener keeps switching the dial from one station to another.

  Some of the stations are rather pleasant.

  Interesting smells.

  The good taste of water in a dry throat.

  The climax of lovemaking.

  Some of the others aren't so nice. I think the Bhano tuned in to one of those.

  Death.

  Pain.

  Fear. Fear, more than anything. I caught some of that the night the Bhano plunged into the sea.

  The dreams are stronger. Loneliness. And that terrible sense of the passing of the ages. I had one fleeting moment of understanding. A micro-microsecond. What a billion years really means. How far it is between the stars. It went quickly and none too soon. Just a hair more of that and I think all the little think-cells would fry in their juices. We're not built for that.

  Island umpty-seven. . . .

  The shore has long since disappeared. I can stand and look in either direction and the islands stretch forever ahead, forever behind. Yesterday I woke up and looked about. Sudden, terrible sense of panic. Couldn't remember whether I had come from the left or the right. Ahead or behind. Which way the shore, and which way the sea? I couldn't remember where the sun was supposed to rise, where it was supposed to set.

  Simple answer.

  There are footsteps in the sand where I've been. None where I'm going.

  I miss Melisa terribly.

  I long to be with her.

  But I can't go back. Got to wait. Looking for something. Or something's looking for me.

  I've run out of islands.

  If there are any past this one they're too far below the horizon to see. And I don't buy that. This one has an air of finality about it. A period at the bottom of the page. Finis.

  So now?

  So now I can draw a little chart with eleventy-nine dots marching out to sea and I can name it the Andrew Archipelago.

  I'm terribly tired.

  It's not even sunset and I feel the weight of a thousand hours on my shoulders.

  I can't think straight anymore.

  No more radio stations.

  Or fears.

  Or good smells. Just the quiet, soft humming of bees. There must be a million sleepy bees buzzing about.

  Can't be. No bees on this bloody world. Wouldn't allow that sort of thing here.

  I guess I'm asleep.

  Peculiar thing to say, Gavin. You're asleep or you aren't. If you're asleep, close your eyes.

  Can't look up and see the stars with my eyes closed.

  Sometimes you can.

  What?

  Sometimes you can see them better that way.

  Melisa?

  No, Andrew.

  Listen, what the hell are you doing out here? You're supposed to be on island seven. Or nine. Somewhere.

  Not Melisa, Andrew.

  I don't like that. It doesn't feel good!

  Don't think. Just be.

  Just bees.

  Think about bees, then.

  There aren't any bees.

  Imagine there are.

  Yes.

  You like the humming.

  Yes.

  I can use that, if it makes it easier. Better?

  Better.

  You understand now, Andrew?

  Yes. Only— Oh. It's you, isn't it?

  You know me, now.

  I know something.

  Just be.

  I know you had to be here. Or somewhere.

  Yes.

  It was you I was looking for, then. Not a place.

  You were looking for answers.

  You could have made it easier.

  No.

  You could have—brought me here in the first place.

  I didn't bring you here at all, Andrew. I can't do that. You brought yourself.

  You're the one who dreams. About being lonely and old.

  No. It was about me. But you dreamed, Andrew. I gave up dreaming. It didn't help.

  No. No, I guess it didn't.

  It's bad enough remembering. You can stop the dreams, but you can't stop the remembering.

  Don't! You're doing the thing with the years, again. I can't handle that.

  I forget that we're not the same.

  We're not. But I understand. Some, anyway. About you and about me.

  Yes.

  You're here. Close to here.

  Past the island. Not far.

  Under the sea.

  Under the sea and under that. It's the place I think most about being, if I can be in a "place"—it's a strong place for me.

/>   The capsule fell there. Only not a capsule.

  You see that, then.

  I thought it was my capsule. In the dream. It wasn't, though.

  No, it was mine, Andrew. It fell here, but there was no sea, then. There wasn't much of anything.

  Wait. Wait, now.

  You see the rest of it.

  I don't know what I see.

  Don't think. Just be.

  Good God!

  You see it.

  It was you, wasn't it? They're like they are because of you!

  There's more to it than that.

  Is there?

  I thought you'd understand, Andrew. We're alike in that way.

  No. We're not.

  We are. Would you create a world like this? What for? So there'd never be anyone to talk to?

  You made them that way.

  They made themselves that way. All right, because of me. But there's a difference. I didn't ask to come here. No more than you.

  But we are here.

  Come on, Andrew. Don't talk to me about responsibility. I've had plenty of time to work on that one. I landed. I was alive. I chose to stay alive. What happened, happened.

  Because of you.

  Things have happened here because of you, too, Andrew. Could you stop them from happening?

  Look—

  The child.

  You son-of-a-bitch! It was your presence—

  Blame me, then. For being alive.

  I don't blame you for being alive. That's not it.

  Hypothetical question: If your breath poisoned the atmosphere of this planet—

  All right. Your point, maybe. I could kill myself for the sake of the planet. I can't say what I'd do. I think I would. I hope I would. Obviously, you didn't.

  You think I knew what I was doing here.

  Didn't you? How could you not know?

  You don't sense what I am.

  Some. It's not clear.

  I'm in my natural environment, if you can call it that on this sandpile. That's like saying your normal element's a city of a million people. Only, there's no one else around. The city's there, but it's empty.

  You're saying you're alone. And—you're showing me the years again. Don't!

  No, I'm not. You're just seeing more. Sensing me better.

  Some. Not much.

  I don't expect much now. But it's important that you understand, Andrew. What I am has everything to do with what happened here. I'd like someone to see that.

  I'm trying.

  You can see something.

  Something. You, or a lot of yous.

  No. Just me.

  Wiggly lines. Patterns. . . .

  It's an abstraction. The thought of a mind/body. Like a—what? Network? I'm picking the word-image from you. Roots. Capillaries. Even better—you, Andrew. Strip away the bone, flesh, and muscle and leave the circulatory and nervous systems. Multiply the size of that a hundred thousand times and you have me. Only it's not the same. The analogy's limited.

  Yes. I know that. I see something—dark and cool. Under the earth.

  Right. Deep enough to find the cool places. Not too deep to feel the sun, though. You'd see us—how? A multiple network of life? Your words, not mine. It's hard. . . .

  You're doing something with—music? Only not music.

  Good. You understand that. How the notes and chords are different. They come together to be something else when they want to.

  Yes.

  You can be what you like on my world, too. But you're never alone—not unless you want to be. There's always sharing and knowing, and half a billion lives to touch. Maybe we had bodies, once, but if we did we put them aside a long time ago. We took to the earth instead, and wove a life fabric there and learned as we grew. We put mind things and real things together when we wanted to—and finally we sent little pieces of ourselves out to the stars. Male and female pieces, Andrew, though that's not the same, either. We wanted to bring other worlds alive—only we never took a world where something else had a beginning. Not deliberately.

  All right, but there was life here. And something happened to it.

  Yes, I happened to it. But I couldn't know that. It was a young world and there was life—or the beginnings of it, anyway. I didn't bother it. I burrowed into the earth and grew. And if the other piece of me had survived we would have multiplied, and I wouldn't have covered the world alone. It didn't, though.

  And the life that had started here?

  Like the beginnings of life everywhere. Trial and error. One proto-creature, and then another. Only it was a long and agonizing process here. It didn't make sense to me. They broke all the rules, and I couldn't understand that. The active, curious species couldn't adapt. Cunning and intelligence were handicaps. And if you had anything going for you at all you disappeared rather quickly. It was survival of the fittest in reverse, Andrew. When the winner finally appeared it was the most unlikely candidate in the race.

  Uhuh. Our dun-colored friends.

  Of course. And I couldn't imagine why the dull had inherited the earth. I thought, maybe this is a beginning. A proto-type. Since it survived, maybe it'll grow and develop into something else. Only it didn't.

  Not at all.

  Oh, a few individuals showed promise. But the group found them out quickly enough.

  You saw that. But you didn't do anything. . . .

  I knew what had happened, yes. But it was too late, then.

  Was it?

  Andrew. Why don't you just ask me? Why didn't I destroy myself then, and give them a chance?

  All right. Why didn't you?

  Because it wouldn't have made any difference. Besides—

  It might have.

  Besides, you don't know what I am. Not really. Suicide isn't that easy for us. I could have done it when the capsule fell, when there was no more of me than there is of you. After I grew, I was incapable of that.

  Why?

  It's a matter of complexity.

  Physical or philosophical?

  You're quick to judge, Andrew. Are you confident you have the knowledge to do this?

  No. I know I don't.

  But you've found me guilty.

  I can't find you guilty. Maybe it sounded like that. It wasn't supposed to. It's just that I can't understand what's happened here. How a whole world went down the drain.

  I haven't denied the responsibility for that, have I? It went down the drain because my presence was the survival factor on this world, and it was a factor that didn't work for the strong. The fit couldn't survive. I didn't have to interfere. I was here.

  How, though? If you weren't aware. . . .

  What I am and how I am is a beautiful thing on my world. It links all our lives together. It lets us know and be one another. Remember the bees? That's the sound of life, Andrew.

  Not on this world it isn't.

  No. Not on this world.

  And you're talking to me now. With this—humming.

  Yes.

  Telepathy? ESP?

  No. It's—like an electrical current? And I'm the wiring. My body that's webbed beneath the world. That's why it isn't telepathy. If you weren't within range of where I am, you couldn't hear me. Only that's not what you're doing.

  A radio you can't turn off.

  Yes. Like that. Only not quite. I don't "send" like a radio. I don't because I don't have anyone to talk to here. I'm a transmitter, but I don't transmit.

  Good God. . . !

  You see what happened here? They do the transmitting, Andrew. Not me. I make it possible, of course. I'm a vast, auxiliary nervous system that links every creature here to every other. An individual with strong drives or emotions "touches" everyone around him. That's why strength and intelligence got you stoned out of the tribe here from the very beginning. Dominant individuals affected the group's behavior. The group sensed this danger, though they couldn't know where the trouble was coming from—only that once a certain individual was out of the way, the trouble stopp
ed. Isolation and conformity became survival factors. A placid mental profile and ritual life patterns.

  That's why they kicked me out of the settlement. . . .

  Yes. Your emotions were disturbing. You didn't know how to nonthink.

  But—isolation, you said. They live with each other.

  They know how to turn it off. You don't. And there's something else. The settlements are always in areas where my—roots?—aren't overly extensive. They instinctively pick spots like that.

  The crazies. Sterzet and his bunch. Poor Thraxil.

  The creatures on this world have developed an instinctive dampening factor, Andrew. You've seen it. Mental withdrawal. They turn off something in their heads so they won't be vulnerable to each other. It may even be a genetic factor, now. I don't know. But Sterzet and Thraxil don't have it.

  So they get the best and the worst of everything. Awareness and intelligence they can't handle. And every stray emotion that comes down the pike. Christ!

  Sad, Andrew. Because they're the only hope, here. And no real hope at all. They can't stabilize themselves mentally or physically because they don't have the dampening factor. And if they had the dampening factor they wouldn't be what they are.

  The mental thing I can understand. Some of it. But the physical—thoughts did that? To Sterzet and Thraxil?

  You made Melisa and your son. Unconscious acts, but the manifestation of strong emotions, Andrew. Do you wonder that the creatures here stopped thinking? Can you imagine what kind of chaotic world this could be? You're relatively unaffected by anything transmitted on this planet. That's because you weren't born repressing your emotions. If anything, you use the transmitter, and magnify your will. But Sterzet and Thraxil are vulnerable to every small fear that leaks from the racial unconscious.

  The unconscious makes monsters, then. I have to believe that. I made one myself.

  Didn't you know the unconscious was a physical force, Andrew? Look at the world around you.

  What? What about the world?

  It's their world. The way they want it. Or the way their unconscious told them they wanted it. It's never been much—it didn't have a chance to get started because they held it down to size.