The Mind Pool tmp-1

by Charles Sheffield

  “S’greela, you have to help Angel.” But before Chan’s command could be carried out, a blizzard of Tinker components appeared in the corridor. They crowded to lift and push Angel towards the control room.

  When Angel reached the threshold, part of the swarm at once flew across to cluster thickly on Mondrian. Another group flew to settle on Chan and S’greela.

  “Quickly!”

  Chan did not know who had cried out. Already the mentality was awakening, faster than ever before. Chan felt Almas reaching out toward Mondrian, and then the shock of contact. CAN YOU REACH HIM? It was Nimrod, faint and far-off, connecting in through the Ishmael/Shikari link.

  WE ARE TRYING. There was a long moment of probing, as the mentality sought to feel into a resisting mind. WE CANNOT.

  Chan felt the full impact of that surprise and alarm. Mondrian’s mind had risen powerfully against them, stronger than Almas had believed possible. The mind pool was recoiling from the intensity of the emotion that it had encountered.

  WE CANNOT BRING HIM TO UNION. The news flowed back to Nimrod. THERE IS A BLOCK. IMMOVABLE, PERMANENT, DEEP-SEATED.

  CAN YOU BYPASS IT, AND REACH THE ABORT PATTERN FOR Q-SHIP DESTRUCTION? Nimrod’s message carried its overtones. The other mentality was moving towards the control room, but in the united form its pace was too slow.

  IT WOULD DESTROY HIM. IT IS BURIED BENEATH ALL ACCESSIBLE LEVELS.

  Now S’greela and Chan had joined Shikari to hold Mondrian. He did not resist physically, but his mind boiled and burned, rejecting all contact with the mentality. Almas tried again along a new path. Chan felt the union’s repugnance as it came to the seething undercurrent of Mondrian’s mind.

  ONE MINUTE, said Nimrod. YOU MUST FIND THE ABORT PATTERN FOR Q-SHIP DESTRUCTION.

  WE ARE STILL TRYING. IT CANNOT BE REACHED.

  “Should we destroy Mondrian?” That was Chan, struggling to remain within the mentality, and yet provide an individual input to the mind pool. “His destruction might yield the abort pattern.”

  NO — NO — NO. The gale of disapproval almost swept Chan away. He felt the shocked reaction from the other team members, as he struggled to pull back farther from the mentality.

  He faced a terrible choice. He needed the mind pool to help him, at the same time as he needed to act independently from it. Chan channeled his energy and reached deeper, burrowing his way into a matrix of emotion that struggled furiously to resist him.

  He made no progress. Mondrian would not yield.

  Chan thrust about in uncontrolled surges, and at last felt the first random contact with the memory block. It was like a dark, confined presence in Mondrian’s brain, sealed off from everything around it. Chan pushed deeper, using the full power of the whole mind pool. He knew what he had to do. But could he bring himself to do it, against the resistance of all the others?

  Now. He used the edge of his own worst memories to cut into the naked, delicate fiber of Mondrian’s mind. The darkness resisted for one more moment, then shivered to pieces.

  The block was gone. But as Almas reached past Chan to pick up the abort command and Mattin Link sequence from Mondrian’s mind, Chan himself was caught in a mental explosion. Mondrian had been forced to look at the horror of his own distant past. The scream of pain and mental anguish blew Chan out of the tortured brain and far away into a sea of fading consciousness.

  The mentality caught Chan and cradled him. But Mondrian’s intellect was flickering and dimming, a quenched ember of mind that sank rapidly to nothing.

  “Safe. We are safe,” said Chan.

  “Death. We are Death,” said an echo. Then Chan was sinking into a maelstrom of bottomless terror, knowing it was his terror, knowing it was only the faintest shadow of what he had found inside Esro Mondrian.

  “Death. Death?” said the echo, closer and louder.

  But now it could not touch him. For at last Chan had let go, and been sucked all the way into the whirlpool.

  Chapter 40

  The transition came at the hundred and twentieth level of the warrens, and it came suddenly. Above that point were the signs of success: fashionable apartments, bright lights, beautiful people, high rents, and easy access to the link points. Below Level 120 a traveller found only dark hell-holes, fugitives, and failure.

  Chan approached the apartment cautiously, walking light-footed along the trash-filled corridor with its grimy walls and solid grey doors. Reaching his destination, he placed his hand on the ID unit and pressed. The light glowed. He was allowed through into the coffin-like outer nail and stood there, patiently waiting.

  It took a long time. The woman who opened the inner door was tall and stooped, with long, unkempt hair. She peered out into the tiny dim-lit hall and stared at Chan with tired, bleary eyes.

  He nodded. “It’s me, Tatty. May I come in?”

  She did not speak, but she turned and shuffled through into the apartment. Following her, Chan saw the purple of Paradox shots along both of her arms. They went into a tiny living-room, where Chan sat down uninvited on a hard chair and stared around him. The place was a clutter of clothes, dishes, and papers, the result of many weeks of casual living with no attempt to clean.

  She sat down opposite him on a ragged hassock and stared up at his face. She nodded slowly. “You’ve changed, Chan. Just like they said.”

  “We’ve all changed.” He sat stiffly, hands on knees.

  “I heard the rumors. The Gallimaufries are full of them. How you and Leah went out to the far stars, with Esro Mondrian and Luther Brachis and the aliens. How you were changed, and caught a super-being, and it killed to save itself. They say it will make everything different, out there and back here, too.” She rubbed at her eyes.

  “We’re not sure of that, Tatty. At first it seemed we were dealing with something superior, something that had us beat in every way. Now, we’re not so sure. We can sometimes do things, us humans, that the super-beings don’t seem able to do.”

  It was equally true, whether he was talking of the mentalities or the Morgan Constructs. And not only humans. The Pipe-Rillas and the Angels had their own special powers, their own reservations about the mind pool mentalities. Only the Tinkers, advocates of all forms of Composites, were unreservedly in favor.

  “Any way,” he went on, “the Stellar Group ambassadors have laid down the rules. There will be no risks taken. The new beings will be kept in a protected environment, along with the captured Construct, until they are completely understood.’

  “Are they dangerous?”

  “I don’t know. There were casualties on Travancore, but I’m not sure who was to blame.”

  “I heard.” Her eyes were glassy. She was bottoming out after a Paradox high. “Esro, and Luther Brachis, and Godiva.”

  “You heard the … other thing about her?”

  “Oh, yes. So sad.” Turning to hide it from Chan, Tatty pressed a tiny bulb against her forearm. “I should have guessed, long ago. She came from nowhere, and she was too good to be true. Poor, poor Godiva. The perfect woman, the perfect partner … and one of Fujitsu’s Artefacts. What made you suspect it?”

  “I didn’t. About her. But I wondered for a while after the Stimulator treatment if I might be an Artefact myself. I was twenty years old, with an undamaged brain. And I had been a moron. I had to wonder if I was really human.”

  “Mondrian never told you?” She was frowning at him, suddenly more alert. “He wanted to know where you came from as much as you did yourself. When I came back to Earth he asked me to find out everything I could about you. But I guess he didn’t tell you.’

  “Not a word.”

  “You’re not a moron, Chan, you never were. And you’re not an Artefact. But you are an experiment. One of the Needler labs — not the Margrave’s, he would never have tolerated such incompetence — was trying to make a superman, a physically and mentally perfect person. They failed, but only because they messed up and didn’t provide a final set of neural linkages. They didn’t rea
lize that, and they dumped the result down in the warrens.” Tatty gave Chan a sad but fond smile. “Welcome to the cast-offs’ club. But you’re one hundred percent human. Like me. Isn’t it a rotten group to belong to?”

  She leaned back on the hassock and closed her eyes. Her face was lively now, but grey and bony, no more than an aging specter of the woman Chan had known so well on Horus.

  “I can’t believe he is gone,” she said at last. “Were you there when it happened?”

  “Right to the very end. I saw his mind, in the last few moments. He was never at peace, you know.”

  “Better than you ever will.” Tatty turned her head away. “I would have helped him. Once, I would have done anything for him. But he would never tell me what it was that gnawed away inside him.”

  “He could not tell. But I know.”

  Chan paused. He did know, in dreadful detail. And he could not speak of what he had found in Mondrian’s mind. Even at second-hand, the terror was too strong.

  He felt the impact of that dark memory taking him again, as it took him every day …

  The grass was three times as high as his head. It grew all the way around, like the walls of a big circular room, with the blue sky above as a domed ceiling that held in the heat. It was much too hot, and he was sweating.

  He bent down, staring curiously at the little bugs running fast and squiggly among the stems of the dusty grey plants.

  “Come on. We don’t have time for you to dawdle around.”

  He straightened at the shouted words and hurried after the others. Mummy was still walking next to Uncle Darren, holding his hand and not looking back. He came up behind them and impulsively reached out to clutch her around the knees. He could smell her sweat and see the beads of perspiration on her legs.

  Was she still mad?

  “Mummy, pick me up.” He peered up and around her body, trying to see her face. It had been a long time since she held him without being asked. “Mummy?”

  She did not look down. “We’ve no time for that now. Can’t you see we’re in a big hurry?”

  The man laughed, but it was not like a real laugh. “Damn right, we’re in a hurry. But maybe this is as good as any place. Let’s get on with it.”

  Mummy stopped, and finally glanced down at him. “All right, Essy. Uncle Darren and I are going to be busy for a little while. I want you to sit down right here, and wait quietly until we come back.”

  “I want to go with you.” He held her tighter around the legs. “I don’t want to stay here.”

  “Sorry, Big-boy, but we can’t do it that way.” Uncle Darren crouched down. He was smiling. “We won’t be long. You just wait here until me and your Mom get back. Look, if you’re good you can have this to play with while we’re gone. See?”

  Uncle Darren was holding up the little electric lamp, the one they had used in camp the previous night. It had been a fun time, the three of them all safe and cozy in the tent, and Mummy laughing a lot. She wouldn’t let him crawl in with her, but she sounded all warm and giggly and happy, especially when she was snuggled under a blanket and Uncle Darren was telling a bedtime story.

  He reached out his hand for the little lamp.

  “Wait a minute, watch me do it.” Uncle Darren worked the control. “See? Switch on — switch off. Switch on — switch off Think you can do it by yourself?”

  He nodded, took the lamp, and set it down on the hard earth. He squatted beside it, and turned it on. “That’s my Big-boy.” Uncle Darren stood up and began to walk away. “Come on, Lucy, he’s settled. He’ll be fine now.”

  He stared after them as they moved into the long grass. They had their heads together, and they were talking quietly again as they had talked the previous night. He bent down to the lamp, wanting to please Mummy by doing whatever would make her happy with him.

  The little light flickered on and off as he pressed the switch. It seemed brighter than when Uncle Darren had worked it.

  He looked up and all around. The sky was a darker blue, and he could see a few stars. They were creeping out, one by one. They were just like tiny lamps themselves, but they did not give any real light.

  He felt the urge to run after Mummy and Uncle Darren. But he must not do that. Mummy would get mad. He would get another beating, from her or from Uncle Darren.

  He stared the way that they had gone. Darker now. If only the tent were here, to crawl inside. Last night he had felt so safe and snug, even when the light was turned way low. He could hear them, whispering in the darkness. It made him so warm and contented.

  “Are you absolutely sure?” That was Mummy, in the same slurry voice. “I have to be absolutely sure.”

  “Course I am. I checked the whole thing with the game authorities. I pretended to be scared.”

  “I thought all the animals were controlled.”

  “That’s what the advertisements say, but the controls go off when it’s really dark. That’s why they always tell you to keep a light on all night in the tent.

  “What do you think is out there? Right now.”

  “Hey, how would I know? Get your mind off that sort of stuff”

  There was a rustle from where Mummy lay, and she giggled. “You! You’re all hands. But what might be out there?”

  “Lions, maybe. Leopards. Rhinos.” (That made him listen harder. He had seen pictures of those animals.) “And jackals and hyenas and vultures. That’s why we don’t go outside in the dark. Make a noise out there, or go running around, and there’d be nothing tomorrow to collect and take back. Hey, why the questions all of a sudden? I thought we had it agreed.”

  “I just want to be absolutely sure it will work. Otherwise we’d have been better off with a straight sale. There’s good money for a healthy one, down in the warrens.”

  “Not a hundredth as much as we’ll get. They’ll pay just to keep us quiet. Here, Miss Fidgety, you need a bit more of this.”

  There was a clink of glass, and the gurgling sound of pouring liquid. Uncle Darren laughed. “They’ll pay, of course they will. What sort of publicity would it give the game reserve if we wanted to play it for news? Wandered away for a few minutes, frantic mother, desperate search. Maybe even a mental breakdown afterwards. That would be news.”

  “Sshh. Watch what you’re saying.”

  “So what, for Christ’s sake? At his age.”

  “He’s very smart. He could be listening, and he remembers everything.”

  “Naw, he’s asleep. Very smart, eh? How did he pick you for a mother?’

  “Don’t start that again. It was the biggest mistake of my life. Don’t you pretend to be so smart, either. If you’re so clever, how did you get hooked into that idiot marriage contract, you and the bitch?”

  “Come off it, Lucy. That’s all over, I don’t even think about her any more. Look, once we get some money there’ll be no more false starts. You and me, right? And . … you know …”

  “What are you doing/ You’re awful.” But Mummy did not sound angry. “You said I was all hands. I just want to prove that’s not all I am.”

  “Again?” Mummy giggled. “You. You’re a monomaniac.”

  The light from the lamp in the tent dwindled to an even lower level. There was a rustling, and something like a soft groan from Mummy. Uncle Darren began a soft, regular grunting sound that was not his usual snoring …

  And now it was nearly night again. Over beyond the top of the high grass he could see the big hill, as far away as ever. It always seemed to be the same distance, and when they walked it moved along with them. When it was close to dark he could see the smoke on top of it. It was there now, with the red sun behind it.

  He stepped a little way in that direction, then came back. The grass was too tall, too frightening.

  The sun seemed to be dropping down into the top of the grass, melting into it. Suddenly he could not see the grass itself. The sky was almost black, with stars scattered bright across it.

  “Mummy.” He shouted as loud as he could
into the swallowing dark, and started to run in the direction in which they had gone. Then he thought of the lamp, left behind him on the ground. He hurried back for it and turned it on. It threw a bright circle all around him, except behind his back. When he turned his head to look he saw a wedge of darkness, a long shadow cast by his own body. He moved backwards with the lamp, and the circle of light moved with him.

  That lighted circle had become the whole world. Beyond its edge he began to hear the night noises. There were mutterings and growls in the darkness, the chuckling of madmen just out of sight. He struggled to see anything beyond the shadowed perimeter. (“Lions and leopards and rhinos, jackals and hyenas and vultures …” Uncle Darren’s words were clear in his head. “Make a noise out there, or go running around, and there’d be nothing tomorrow to collect and take back…”)

  He shouldn’t have shouted like that. He mustn’t shout. Where could Mummy be? He had never been alone before.

  He began to weep, slow, silent tears that trickled down his cheeks and into his mouth. He could taste their salt.

  He wanted to scream for Mummy, but he knew that he must not. Behind him there was a slithering noise, and the soft rustle of moving grass. (Lions and leopards and rhinos, jackals and hyenas and vultures.) He held the lamp tight, and started forward across the clearing away from the noises. The edge of darkness pursued him. He thought that he heard new noises coming from in front.

  He stopped and crouched close to the ground. The light from the tamp in his hand seemed to be weakening, the boundary of the safe circle smaller and more poorly defined. He bit on his fingers, and stared out into the night.

  Were those eyes there, flashing glints of green and yellow? As the lamp faded, they became brighter. Soon the eyes were staring in on him from all sides. He pushed with his hands at the dark boundary, hating it, wishing it farther away.

  Suddenly he could not stand it any longer. He did not run, but he dropped to the ground and flattened his body. He scrabbled with his fingers at the hard dirt and glared upward. Far away on the horizon, the top of the big hill was glowing with its own smoky red light. He fixed his eyes on it, afraid to look again at the narrowing circle.