He couldn’t see her smile but he knew it was there. She had derailed his logic. Language. Telepathy was impossible—but as a child her mind had built a unique translator between her thoughts and the galactic standard tongue.
She translated “Petunia” thoughts into galactic standard sentences (or a close approximation); he took her galactic standard sentences and, using his own unique translator, recoded them into “Eton” thoughts which he could understand. Neat.
“Do your people talk to ghouls?” he asked incredulously.
“No,” she replied with sadness. “It is considered sacrilegious. Fams are never reused any more than you’d zombie the dead body of your mother to do housework. Back home you would be considered an abomination. But my grief goads me. I want to talk to Daddy.”
“What would you say?”
“I’d ask him how to get out of this predicament.”
“I see. Ancestor worship. Why not ask me, instead of bossing me around?”
“You’re a criminal. You don’t know beans from turnips.”
“I’m a bona fide psychohistorian, albeit a handicapped one. That means, at the least, that I have a very good organic brain, even if it is criminal. Do you want your father’s fam sent to a safe place?” He was desperately looking for a common goal. “I’m probably better able to get us out of our fix than any mere astrologer.” That was a dig at her father.
“You’re a psychohistorian? Of the Fellowship?” she said, aghast.
Eron had never bothered to mention that detail. “And a criminal,” he added.
Petunia began to pound her skull with both fists. “Space, am I stupid. Of course Daddy wanted you to take over his fam!”
“Why?”
“Do you think I’ll tell you? You’re worse than a criminal. Now I’ve got to figure a way to make you his slave! You’re fried meat if I ever catch you sleeping! I’m already conjuring dire fam adjustments. Maybe I should just cocoon-wrap you right now and get to it, if I only had some string. Talk to my Daddy! That’s a direct order!”
Did men who had been bonded in slavery go mad when they were given impossible orders? It amazed him how his mind was motivating itself to the pursuit of Petunia’s hopeless problem. “Let’s do a weakness analysis of the isolated fam; you handle the technical aspects, I’ll be in charge of the math.”
“I’m already building a machine,” she said ominously.
Eron could well believe that this Scogil had been his tutor; the mathematical reference algorithms of this new fam were identical with those which had been installed in Eron’s architecturally very different Faraway fam: convenient in that he didn’t have to learn how to use them—but very mysterious. It might make an interesting common ground between two totally unmatched personae.
A fam was designed as an intelligent but subservient helper. The initiative lay with the organic brain which had millions of centuries of evolution behind its behavior, initiative being critical to survival. Scogil’s fam would lack initiative, wouldn’t even perceive itself as a separate entity any more than a thumb perceives itself as separate from the eye—but it was designed to assume delegated authority, and so a fam wasn’t passive when working out problems beyond the interest or capacity of its organic companion. The ghoul was that part of the fam which was still carrying out the duties assigned to it by the previous user. It dreamed and schemed, trying to act in its old body’s interest much the same way a man paralyzed from the neck down might try to walk or scratch his head.
An image came to Eron of the ornate hall in which he had taken his zenoli training on Faraway; rows of young men embracing fervently their fad for ancient wisdom, perhaps to reconstruct, in the safety of a cathedral, times when men lived dangerously. Zenoli was all about fam-mind integration. Surely some of that was applicable now. Long after Petunia had gone to sleep he lay in the dark, deep in meditation, recalling what he could of this arcane wisdom, trying to reconstruct what he couldn’t. What was useful to him now, what was not?
He kept cycling back to the zenoli way of drawing out a passive opponent. It required absolute mental silence. He wondered if he could still create that state—the positive image of an active organic mind overlaid by a negative image deliberately created and projected by the fain’s tuned probe so that the total would sum to quiescence. Had he attained enough rapport with his new fam to do that? He tried unsuccessfully.
In the morning—which meant the light of Imperialis struggling in through a lightpipe—Petunia brewed him navy tea. “Any progress?”
“No. My mind was too active. Hiranimus may be thinking—but he’s off in a comer muttering to himself and not able to understand anything I’m thinking. He won’t even know that I’m listening.”
“You’re discouraged,” she reproached.
“Sure. I’m trying to get my fam to broadcast a negative thought-field to cancel mine and it wavers. Too much of my stuff gets through. I’ve been zenoli adapted—but the part of the fam I’ve learned to control hasn’t. It’s a long training process. I did it once, so I suppose I can do it again.”
She grinned. “You were jacked to Faraway junk. Daddy and I blank with a built-in utility. No fam training necessary. I told you—we’re the best fam builders in the Galaxy. Brain shut-down is easy. My fam doesn’t have to read a thought to null it. Never learn what you can buy as a built-in resource. I’ll give you the code.” She wiggled her fingers gaily. “But be careful with the wake-up routine you choose—don’t put yourself into a full coma. Or else I’ll have to rescue you!” She finished her tea and stood. “Got to go. Scrounge time. Remember, your brain goes to mush if you’re not here when I get back. I’ll give my Daddy to someone else.”
Eron was stunned at how well the commands worked. Within half an hour he had drifted into a fully quiescent state. He could even blank his visual field with his eyes open. But nothing else happened for hours. Until...
Something filled his dormant intention, like a rabbit sniffing the air when the snake is gone, a dream calling up his resident math utilities without being willed to do so. It was weird to watch the standard routines of his fam set about solving a problem that he hadn’t posed, and even weirder to be part of a tranced mind so inactive that he couldn’t understand what appeared to be elegantly organized logic. The Scogil symbiont was an accomplished mathist, trapped in a dark brig, alone, writing on the walls to keep himself sane— in a dream-code rich with the illusion of meaning that would mean nothing to Eron when he came out of his trance.
Eron stirred himself. All that he retained from the dream was the conviction that Murek Kapor, whoever he had been, was far better at math than his young student had ever realized. He took a torch and wandered through the abandoned ruins pensively, promising himself to be home before Petunia returned. When he came to a section that had been broken off and half-welded shut by the demolition crews, he clambered outside along the side of the catacombed canyon and found a perch. Imperialis was low in the sky, casting purple shadows. Aridia, in crescent, was rising to the east. How fragile Splendid Wisdom seemed among this jumble and open firmament. Evening was only beginning, the sky barely darkened, but already a hundred giant stars were out.
He was mulling over the dream-math that had passed across his mind, unable to question a deaf Hiranimus. Had he only imagined that the doodling contained clear traces of the Founder’s Hand, anachronisms even, yet also full of odd twists of thought and notation? Inspired, he used his increasing control of the fam’s workings to set up a shunt that would record all calls to the math routines while he was in trance, which he would be able to analyze when he came out of trance.
A mathist rides my back! There was joy in the assertion.
Home again, he found a Personal Capsule waiting for him in the receiver. The message read: “I have found you! Irregulars of the Regulation will be discussing your dissertation at the Orelian Masked ball.” He skipped details of location and time. “Important that you be there. I, for one, have questions. You will
be needed to interpret your work. Wear a black fur mask, trihomed with red eyes, template 212, Orelian Masks Cat-#234764. I will be the one in blue scales with plumes and an upper jaw sprouting crocodile teeth. Sorry I ran. My name can wait.” Unbelievably included with the message was a template file containing his precious work, set to remain permanent. The rest of the sphere disintegrated.
Eron smiled. The beautiful Frightfulperson. Another piece of the puzzle! He relaxed into a zenoli pleasure trance to relish his luck. Suddenly the alien was there again calling up routines and getting coded answers that were beyond comprehension. He froze, drifting as far as he dared into endless peace. Hours later when he broke from zenoli trance, Petunia was sitting in front of him, legs twined. “Anything?”
“One-way contact.”
“With my Daddy?”
“When I withdraw into zenoli mute-mind he seems to be able to use the utilities. I can’t tap his thinking, but I certainly can watch his call-ups.”
She was excited. “Do you think he can watch your callups?”
“No. Different architecture. His call-ups are supposed to be available to me. But my call-ups are only back-loaded to the fam through my cognition codes. That’s the problem with me being the priority mind.”
She shrugged. “We’ve got to set up two-way comm. Otherwise the conversation will be as futile as broadcast video.” She emitted an unpleasant gloating sound. “I’ve been scrounging something that might work.” She held up a five-node keyin for the right hand. “These are hard to come by on Splendid Wisdom. We use them all the time. You’ve already learned five-finger typing.”
Eron frowned. “He can’t read my fingers; he isn’t connected to the utilities the same way I am—and he can’t see through my eyes no matter what kind of typeface I build for him.”
Petunia grinned. “Yaah, the code. I know. Keep it simple, Mommy always said. Daddy knows the Helmar binary code for the augmented galactic standard alphabet.”
“Augmented alphabet?”
“Helmarians augment everything. It’s a tinkerer’s disease. Now listen. Daddy’s ghoul can read your mind, providing we don’t use normal channels; it’s just your private code that’s boggling him. So we use everyday language. How does he get his input? We use the signal that carries the code and modulate it with a couple of transducers for your skull.” She showed him a handful of circular plates stripped out of a psychic probe and a haywire of chips that looked like a bad hairdo. “Quick and dirty.”
Eron paled. “That’s going to introduce errors into my thinking, maybe bad ones. How am I to carry on a rational conversation while I’m distracted by, say, the odor of colors and the screaming of tortured babies?”
“You’ll survive.” She cocked her head. “If not, I can always scrounge another slave.” She grinned. “But I know what I’m doing. I’ve fooled with this stuff—meaning my school chums and I. It’s better than drugs. We had to stop when Mommy caught us. Don’t worry! Neural networks are wonderful for their error-correcting robustness. You look robust to me. You’ll be okay. It’s Daddy who isn’t going to enjoy this. It is going to sound to him like he is in a metal cage and someone is pounding on it with two iron bars, the bang for one and the crash for zero ”
“Why don’t we try some kind of transduction on the fam directly?” Eron pleaded hopefully.
“And violate its shielding? You want to destroy my Daddy? You’re forgiven. I know you Splendid psychohistorians are tech dummies.”
When they had the device rigged, Eron simply finger-typed a galactic standard message. The haywire then translated so that his mind wogged in Helmarian binary flashes. It was awful. Just typing hello was like being kicked out of a high-flying aerocraft into a supersonic set of turbine blades.
H-e-l-l-o. U-s-e t-h-e m-a-t-h u-t-i-l-i-t-i-e-s t-o r-e-p-l-y. H-e-l-l-o... When he could no longer stand his binary broadcasting, he went into zenoli mute-mind to listen. Calm again, he tried typing the alphabet—blasting his mind with the binary output of Petunia’s device. He listened. He broadcast. He waited. He banged and crashed on the walls of his ghoul’s dungeon. It was during a meal anxiously prepared by
Petunia that the reply came via the symbol generator of the math utilities.
To whom...
Eron, impatient with the slowness of the communication, typed E-r-o-n O-s-a. Suppressing his excitement, he returned to his zenoli calmness.
A pause. The symbol generator began to write across Eron’s visual cortex in a happy yellow typeface: Your benefactor is pleased that his last desperate gesture was of assistance to you. What remains of Hiranimus Scogil is at your service—minus various endearing biological quirks. How much psychohistory does the rebel Eron Osa remember?
Thus began a remarkable conversation between two crippled minds.
51
ADMIRAL KONN STRIKES, 14,810 GE
Isar Imakin: Do the equations demand that the monitoring Psychohistorians remain hidden indefinitely?
Smythos: No. Adherence to the Founder’s Plan provides that the establishment of a Second Galactic Empire will coincide with a political operandi in which Mankind understands the benefit of being governed by Mental Science. At that time invisibility may be cast aside with the proviso that the Laws of Psychohistory themselves cannot be revealed.
Imakin: Why the proviso?
Smythos: The Laws are statistical in nature and are rendered invalid if the action of individual men are not random in nature. If a sizable group of human beings were to team key details of how their future political situation was being predicted, their actions would be governed by that knowledge and would no longer be random.
Imakin: How is such concealment of the Laws to be maintained?
Smythos: A Galaxy approaching a population of 100 quadrillion will produce less than a hundred humans per billion with the mathematical, emotional, and ethical abilities necessary for the mastering of Mental Science. Many models, notably those of su’KIe and Giordom, indicate ways to attract all such talent into the ruling class.
—First Rank Isar Imakin Questions a Student: Notes Made During the Crisis of the Great Perturbation, fourth century Founder’s Era
Petunia had to talk to her daddy and grabbed the keyin of her machine. While Eron endured the “sledgehammer” of her input and then, with less stress, translated replies, daughter and Daddy made broken-language contact with each other. But when they fell into argument about why she was still on Splendid Wisdom, Eron gracefully retired from assisting the reunion, claiming headache. It was evident from this exchange that poor Hiranimus had been as disoriented by detachment from his organic half as Eron had been after losing his fam.
While Petunia slept Eron was haunted by images of his Gandarian farman going crazy inside his fam prison. He pulled out his metricator and with its small glow lamp crawled over to the girl’s makeshift probe and reluctantly donned the instrument of torture. What was a headache between student and tutor? He clanged and banged out an old private joke they shared.
W-a-i-t u-n-t-i-l y-o-u t-r-y t-o s-i-g-n h-e-r u-pf-o-r V-a-n-h-o-s-e-ru
All of these first conversations between ghoul and host were awkward collaborations—a little gossip and news but mostly compact exchanges of compatible protocols. It was a number-one priority of both ghoul and man to replace Petunia’s unpleasant device. Then they went on to trials of various dodges that promised to allow them to share fam space without Eron overwriting territory occupied by Scogil. Eron had the normal fast-access to the fam space he was beginning to colonize, but no ability to read Scogil’s space except via the language bridge they were establishing which was many orders of magnitude slower than normal fam-wetware exchange. Their situation reminded them of the pair whose legless member rode in a backpack on the shoulders of the armless member.
Once when Eron was taking some exercise out on the roof, Hiranimus broke in excitedly, I'm sure I see something to your left!
A ghoul is blind. He can receive sensory input from his new host but can’
t make sense out of it because he is using the coding of the old host. He is essentially in the position of a man who has been blind all his life suddenly regaining his vision; he can now see but he can’t relate to what he is seeing. Scogil knew the difference between a square and a triangle, but he didn’t see the difference. “To my left is Imperialis,” said Eron, translating into the coding they had agreed upon. “The sun is low in the sky and lathering the clouds with a golden topping.” Language was again the bridge—Eron could give words to what his ghoul saw. It was slow, but there was no doubt that Scogil could be taught to see again through Eron’s eyes.
Sometimes silence between them was appropriate. Osa’s most pressing goal was to understand his dissertation. After all, he was scheduled to give an explanatoiy talk to the Ore-lians, whoever they were. Rediscovering his life’s work— with the help of his fam’s utilities—was like stumbling across another man’s astonishing outlook and becoming an instant disciple. His old style now seemed quaintly conservative but meticulously detailed. He remembered Konn’s rejection of his methods and conclusions as “sloppy” and was thankful that he had spent years reorganizing his approach to make it crystal clear so that Jars Hanis wouldn’t have the same negative reaction. That care now made it possible for him to understand himself. It was like coming across a pile of old poems and being pleasantly surprised that the handwriting was readable.
He wanted to keep Scogil abreast of his rediscovery but communication between them was still both time-consuming and frustrating—they hadn’t yet been able to achieve anything faster than talking—so they arranged a compromise; they pursued their independent thoughts but came together every watch to share conclusions. Eron found the comments of this seasoned mathist immensely stimulating. Scogil gloated a little bit at having put Eron on the right track as a young student and reminisced with a fascinated Eron about a youth his ex-student had difficulty recalling.
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