The Mind Pool tmp-1

by Charles Sheffield

  “You mean you are almost finished?”

  “By no means. As I said, this is a challenge. And it is also a mystery, which prompts my next question.”

  “The specification is all the information I will provide.”

  “I understand perfectly. If you choose not to answer, that is no offense to me — but I will ask. Let me show you something.” The Margrave flashed onto another screen a color image of a life form. “This is drawn from your specification. But there are certain elements, here and here” — he touched the lower part of the screen — “that I found preposterously difficult to mimic with organic components. I wonder if perhaps this is actually some kind of cyborg, inorganically enhanced.”

  The screen showed a four-meter oblong shape, with well-defined rounded head, compound eyes, and a small mouth. The silver-blue body terminated in a tripod of stubby legs. Regular indentations ran along the whole length of the shining sides, and lattice-like wing structures were furled close to the body.

  Brachis nodded. “I see no reason why you should not know this much. It is partly inorganic.”

  “Then you realize that I cannot actually copy this using organic components? I can make the external appearance very similar, good enough to fool anyone. That is easy. What I cannot do is create the internal circuits and the total psych profile.”

  “I understand. Is the difficulty in the intelligence?”

  “No. In the emotions.”

  “Then if you must err, I want you to favor pacifism.”

  “That was my intention.”

  “And you will be finished — when?” For the first time, Luther Brachis was showing signs of impatience, standing up and glancing at the chronometer.

  “Difficult.” Fujitsu stroked his straggly beard. “Two weeks, perhaps? Is that satisfactory?”

  “For all copies?”

  “I see no reason why not. As in many things, after the first the rest are easy. But I will require the remainder of my payment, hand-delivered as soon as the Artefacts leave Earth and have been inspected.”

  “Delivery before payment? That is not what we are told of Earth trading. You are a trusting person.”

  “Find someone on Earth who will agree with that, Commander, and you will receive your order for nothing.” The Margrave directed his snaggle-toothed smile at Brachis. “I never threaten, but as we say in my family, I have a long arm. It reaches far out, and it brings me my just dues across time and space. All my clients pay in full — in one way or another.”

  Fujitsu started to walk Brachis towards the studded outer door. “One more thing, Commander. Again, I fear that it takes the form of a question and a possible request. This project is the most intriguing one that I have had for many years. No one has ever before asked me to replicate an organism — and such a strange one! May I ask you who made it? For the privilege of meeting that person’s mind directly, I would pay well.”

  “I can give you the name.” Brachis paused at the outer door. “Unfortunately, that is all I can give you. Her name was Livia Morgan. She is dead.”

  “And the original design?”

  “Died with her.”

  “Ah. A tragic loss.”

  The great door closed, leaving Brachis standing in darkness. Out on the surface it was raining, a heavy downpour under black clouds. Brachis ducked his head and strode rapidly back towards the closest tunnel entry point.

  Would Fujitsu now seek to explore the origin and nature of the Morgan Constructs? Probably not. And it was worth the risk of mentioning Livia Morgan’s name, to see if King Bester stayed bought. Bester would surely learn that information from the Margrave. The question was, would anyone else then hear about it?

  The weather was foul, the night dark, and Brachis had been hurrying along with less man his usual caution. He realized his mistake when his feet were yanked abruptly from under him, and he went skidding flat on his back down a steep slope. At the bottom he tried to stand up. He felt a loop of rope tight around his ankles.

  “Gotcher!” said a gruff voice. A shielded lamp shone into his eyes.

  Brachis straightened up slowly and carefully. There were five of them. Four were dressed in dark, mottled clothes that blended well into the vegetation patterns of the surface. The fifth man, obscenely fat, wore a sequined robe and carried an ornate mace over his shoulder like a club. Knives and grinning teeth flashed in the lamplight. The men moved to form a small circle around Brachis. He recalled Bester’s warning. “Never forget: the surface is dangerous. I don’t mean the local patrols — I’m talking about the Scavvies.”

  “Scavengers, is it?” growled Brachis, using low Earth-tongue. “What you want, then? Money, trade crystals, I got both.”

  “A bit more than that, squire.” It was the fat man, smiling amiably. “Don’t you think so, boys?”

  “Do a deal, then? I got friends.”

  “I know you do. Good friends.” The man pointed the mace at Brachis. “I know you, see. There’s people up aloft who’d pay good to have you back — ’specially when they’ve had a few of your fingers and toes to show I mean business.”

  Brachis had recognized that gross shape and oily voice. “Bozzie, we can do a deal. Listen, squire, I can get you—”

  “Not Bozzie to you,” said the other man viciously. “No, and not squire, either. Off-Earth trash like you call me Your Majesty. All right, lads. Do him!”

  The four came diving at him from sides and back. Luther Brachis switched to Commando mode. He smashed the larynx of the man on his left with the outer edge of his hand, at the same time back-heeling another in the testicles. He sensed a knife stabbing in at him and ducked, pivoted right, and drove into the third man’s eyes with the stiff outstretched fingers of his left hand. He kept the turn going, spinning through another hundred and eighty degrees. His extended right arm swept on like a flail. The sleeve of his combat uniform, stiffened by rapid acceleration, shattered the jaw of the fourth man. Then all were down, groveling and moaning on the wet earth.

  The Duke of Bosny had seen the rapid demolition of his Scavenger force. He dropped the lamp and went waddling away across the dark field. Brachis caught him in half a dozen strides, hurled him facedown on the ground, and knelt on the huge back. He took a grip on Bozzie’s neck, forearms locked.

  “All right, Your Majesty. I want some honest answers. And if you lie to me, you’ll find your Scavvies got off easy.”

  “Anything! Anything.” Bozzie was trembling, quivering on the ground like a monstrous jello. “Don t hurt me. Please! Take my jewels — anything you want.”

  “I want an answer. You were lying in wait for me. Did you know it was me, or was it set up for anyone who happened to come along? Remember, now, I have to have the truth.”

  Bozzie hesitated. Luther Brachis tightened his grip, flattening the windpipe in the gross neck.

  “No!” Bozzie gave a whistling scream. “I’ll tell you. We saw you when you first came up on the surface, and I recognized you then. We watched you go into Fujitsu’s Needler lab, and decided to wait for you until you came out.”

  “That the truth?”

  “It is, it is. For God’s sake, don’t hurt me. It’s the truth.”

  Brachis nodded. “I believe you. Sorry, Bozzie. That was the wrong answer. It means you don’t have any more information for me.”

  He shifted his grip, moved his hands to lock his own arms, and twisted. Bozzie’s neck cracked sharply. The great hulk jerked, shivered, and lay silent.

  Luther Brachis did not give the body a second look. He went to each of the other four in turn, breaking necks cleanly and effortlessly.

  He straightened up. The whole episode had not lasted more than two minutes. He thought of rolling the bodies down into an irrigation ditch, and decided against it. Scavvie fights on the surface must be common enough, and this would look like just another one — a bit more notable than usual, perhaps, because the Duke of Bosny was one of the victims.

  Brachis brushed mud off his uniform
and hurried on towards the tunnel entrance. Already he had begun the process of self-discipline needed to put the incident into the back of his mind. He was determined not to let it ruin the rest of the evening, even though he told himself, with a mocking self-awareness, that he was behaving totally illogically. He should be worrying about the possibility that he had somehow left clues to his identity on one of the bodies.

  But all that seemed unimportant. What was important was the need to get to a certain apartment on the fifty-fifth level.

  Was he crazy? He must be. Here he was, after only two meetings, rushing to a tryst with Godiva Lomberd as though she were an innocent virgin and this was his first romance. And it was not as though she would not wait if he were late. There was no questionable outcome for this rendezvous, no uncertainty, no doubt about what they were going to do, no danger of rejection. It was a wholly commercial transaction, arranged by money and controlled by lust, the sordid temporary purchase of a woman’s body.

  Luther Brachis could tell himself all that. It made no difference. He was going to meet Godiva Lomberd again. And for the moment nothing else mattered.

  Chapter 11

  The rings were all of different sizes and colors; the cylinder tapered from a blunt point at the top down to a thick base. The rings would all fit onto it only if they were placed there in the correct sequence, largest to smallest.

  Chan Dalton was sitting on the floor, hunched over the toy. His forehead, normally unlined, was wrinkled with effort. He was picking up the rings one after another, studying each, and after a few seconds putting it down between his splayed legs. The chamber he was sitting in was cheerfully decorated in pinks and blues, with paintings and drawings around the wall and a thick soft carpet on the floor.

  Chan had positioned himself in the exact center of the room. Now after long deliberation he picked up the red ring and placed it on the cylinder. A few moments later he did the same thing with the orange one. Then the yellow.

  “He’s getting them right!” Tatty was whispering, although there was no chance that Chan could hear her. She and Leah Rainbow were watching him through a one-way glass set into the nursery wall. “Could he ever have done that when he was with you?”

  Leah shook her head. “Never — he wouldn’t have had the slightest idea.” Her voice echoed Tatty’s excitement. When she had first returned to Horus, she and Tatty had not found it easy to talk. Finally and simultaneously, they had realized why. They were like mothers to Chan — and both the old and the new mother were jealous. Tatty had resented it when Chan ran to hug Leah as soon as he saw her, with a great yell of pleasure and excitement; Leah hated the way that Tatty organized Chan’s day, telling him what to do next, where his clothes must go, and what he had to eat. Leah still saw that as her prerogative.

  The daily session with the Tolkov Stimulator had been another cause of tension between them. Leah mistook for heartlessness Tatty’s insistence that Chan could not miss a treatment, whether there was a visitor or not. She would not help Tatty to catch him, or to strap him in. And the presence of both her own and Esro Mondrian’s picture, where Chan could see them when he was in the Stimulator, perplexed her. What did Tatty think she was doing?

  But when the treatment began and Chan writhed in the padded seat, Leah could not ignore Tatty’s own anguish and misery. Tatty was suffering. And when Leah saw the bedroom and nursery that Tatty had made for Chan, she was finally won over. They were so thoughtfully done, and they showed so much evidence of love and caring.

  Leah remembered Horus very well from her brief stay before she went off to begin her training. It had been horrible: gloomy, dirty and depressing, more like a detention barracks than any place to bring a child (and Chan was a child, in spite of his physical age and adult appearance).

  Now Horus, or at least this part of it, was transformed.

  “How did you possibly manage all this?” Leah had followed Tatty through room after room, elegantly decorated and furnished and designed to take advantage of the natural and manmade features of the interior of Horus.

  Tatty laughed. She hadn’t done any of this to show off to other people, but it was wonderful to have someone else appreciate her efforts. Chan was indifferent, and Kubo Flammarion seemed more at home with the old dirt and mess.

  “I got tired of living in a pit. Nobody could tell me how long I might be here, and all the old excavation and service robots were around because nobody thought it was worthwhile to haul them away. I taught myself how to re-program them.”

  “But it must have taken ages.”

  “It took time, but I had plenty of that. Then I set them to work, first to clear out the trash and then to make this place livable. I hooked one of them in with a synthesizer, and it produced pretty good carpets and wall hangings. Once I started, I guess I got a bit compulsive. Poor old Kubo.” Tatty smiled, at one of her rare pleasant memories of Horus. “He came out here a couple of weeks ago, and I wouldn’t even let him into Chan’s quarters until he’d taken a bath and had his uniform cleaned. He did it, but he didn’t like it. And Chan made it worse. ‘Kubo change,’ he said. ‘Not stink now — except hat.’ Then he stole it.”

  “That same old hat — covered in grease and dandruff?”

  “That’s the one. Kubo hadn’t bothered to clean that when he cleaned his uniform. I suppose he thought we’d never notice. But Chan noticed, and he threw it into the garbage disposal. Kubo was devastated. He said, ‘Princess, that hat has been with me all over the solar system. It’s like a part of me.’ But I said to him, ‘Not any more, Captain Flammarion. When even Chan objects to it, it’s time for a new one’ — and Chan did object. He is improving, isn’t he?” Tatty looked to Leah for encouragement. “I always wonder if I’m imagining a change, because I’ve been wishing for it so hard. But you can see it, too, can’t you? Isn’t he a bit smarter?”

  “He certainly is. Look at him.”

  Chan had carefully and slowly assembled the complete stack of rings. Now he was just as painstakingly taking them off again. The women watched until he had finished, then applauded. Next Chan picked up a set of red Elastic blocks. They were of complex individual shapes, but they could fit together to make a perfect cube. He fiddled with them for a while, then hurled them in frustration across the room.

  “That’s still too hard for him,” said Leah.

  “No need to apologize for him to me.”

  “I wasn’t. I was just thinking, he is progressing but it’s terribly slow. At this rate it will take years.”

  “That’s what scared me,” said Tatty. “But Kubo Flammarion says it’s not at all linear. If it really works you expect to see very little progress at first. Then everything comes in one big rush, maybe in a single session on the Stimulator.”

  “How much improvement does Flammarion expect?”

  “He says he has no idea. He doesn’t know when it might happen, or how far Chan will go. Do you know what was wrong with his brain in the first place?”

  “Down in the Gallimaufries? Nobody there could afford any tests. People said Chan was a dummy, and left it at that.”

  “He could finish up still slow. Or he could be average, or even super-smart. But Kubo says the chances of that are pretty small. All we can do is wait and see.” Tatty stared in at Chan through the one-way panel. “But that s all just theory, and I try not to think about it. There are more important things to worry about — like his dinner.”

  “Can I help you feed him?’

  “Sure. But there’s not much need to help him any more. He’s a bit messy, but he’s no worse than Captain Flammarion. You should have seen the two of them, last time Kubo was here. It was disgusting.”

  “At least I can help cook. I know Chan’s favorites.”

  “You can teach them to me. And I want to hear more about your training program. If things work out, Chan will be doing one, too.”

  “I’ll bore you to death with it. It’s strange, when Bozzie sold us and we had to leave Earth, I thought
it was the worst thing that could possibly happen. I hated the idea of space, and I was terrified at the thought of a training program. Now I’m in the middle of it — and I love it]

  “I thought you were almost done.”

  “No, we’ve just finished the first phase. That’s why I was allowed a short break. But I have to leave Horns the day after tomorrow, and head farther out. I’ll be meeting the alien partners, and we’ll see how we fit as a real team.”

  Scary.

  “Not as much as I thought. I already met a Tinker. It wasn’t as weird as people say. Ours even made jokes — in standard Solar! And none of us has been able to make any headway at all with their language. It doesn’t seem to have verbs or nouns or adjectives or anything — -just buzzing sounds. And according to the Tinker, the language of the Angels is a lot harder for humans than Tinkertalk.”

  “So how are you supposed to talk to each other?”

  “We’ll probably have to rely on computers to translate what the Angels say. But they can all understand us. It’s disturbing. During our training, the human instructors told me that we are the smartest species. But I’m beginning to have an awful lot of doubts.”

  “I know what you mean. If I’m so smart, how come I’m here?” Chan’s performance with the rings had put both women in a good mood. They went on chatting happily as they left the nursery area for the kitchen. Chan remained sitting on the floor of the playroom. For a couple of minutes after they had gone he stayed there, not moving. Then he stood, ran rapidly to the door, and hurried up the narrow ramp that led to the one-way mirror. He made sure that no one was standing behind it and hurried back to the playroom.

  First he set out to pick up all the plastic blocks that he had thrown across the room. Next he went to the smiling photograph of Esro Mondrian, pinned to the wall by Tatty among the drawings of plants, animals, people, and planets. Chan took Mondrian’s picture, frowned at it, and carried it back to the middle of the playroom. He propped it up in front of him. All the blocks were carefully laid before it.