“You’ve been awful quiet,” said the Will Robinson human.
“Telepathy does not seem to compute,” said the robot. “But I am working on it. However, you do not appear to be in any danger from this gentle being. Hence I am simply observing.”
“Is this not delightful?” said Ambiel with the overmind, and the overmind agreed in a chorus of individual assent. “And another of these beings has just appeared!”
The male parent human was running towards them. “Will! What in the—what is that thing?” it said, pointing at Ambiel, standing motionless.
“It’s all right, Dad,” said the Will Robinson. “Ambiel will explain to you.”
“Ambiel?” said the Dad human, perplexed.
Ambiel spoke assent-at-recognition into the Dad, who stopped short and allowed his autonomous nervous system to act for him temporarily. His mouth opening widened, as did his eye-coverings, and Ambiel detected extreme confusion in the Dad-mind.
“Dad,” said the overmind, through Ambiel, to the tall human, “you must not worry or be distressed. We are the overmind of Ambroline. For a hundred thousand years our minds have been as one, in peace and joy and delight. We till our land and grow our food and live our simple lives in harmonious content. We wish you only as much as you yourselves wish.”
The Dad staggered at the force of the overmind, and the Will Robinson rushed to him.
“Don’t worry, Dad, everything’s all right. I’ve been talking—” The Will Robinson laughed. “I’ve been thinking with Ambiel for . . . for a long time, it seems. They are absolutely harmless, I just know they are! Please, can we take Ambiel back to the camp to meet the others?”
“Telepathy!” said the Dad human aloud. “It’s supposed to be impossible to lie when one mind meets another directly, though it’s only theoretical on Earth . . . ”
“Dad,” said the overmind through Ambiel again, “you are right. There are no lies, there is no deceit, among the Ambroline. Nor will there be among your kind, if we can but show you the way . . . ”
“What?”
“Your minds are latently much as ours were before the overmind was born. We can show you how to grow to your rebirth quite easily . . . ”
The Dad shook his head in confusion. “I—this is too much for one man so quickly.”
“Can we take him back to the camp, Dad?” said the Will Robinson eagerly.
“It seems the simplest thing to do,” said the Dad, and Ambiel was suffused with happiness. Still other minds to meet and savor for the first time! New thoughts in floods unlike thoughts ever before considered in the overmind. Surely this was the most glorious day since the overmind first was born!
On the way to the campsite Ambiel did his best to convey to the strangers the meaning of their chance meeting, and how important it would be to both of them; by the time they reached the open space where a metal house glittered in the warm sunlight, he was dancing inside with the massed joy of the Ambroline, and the humans had picked up harmonics of this joy and themselves radiated delight.
Across the planet of the Ambroline the overmind resounded with chants and music and poetry, building higher and higher with each new thought that touched them from the strangers’ minds.
“Maureen,” cried the Dad as they entered the open campsite. “A friend! We want you to meet our new friend, Ambiel.”
“You mean our new friends, the Ambroline,” said the Will Robinson.
A touch of Ambiel’s mind, and the Maureen human understood what had happened. Ambiel joyed to touch her mind, filled as it was with warmth and love for her husbandmate, the Dad, and her children, of whom the Will Robinson was only one of three.
The Maureen in turn appeared to be delighted herself, and after her mind had touched the overmind, Ambiel perceived a deep resonance in hermind, bringing out a racial poem that echoed through the overmind—
“The year’s at the spring,
And days at the morn;
Morning’s at seven;
The hill-side’s dew-pearled;
The lark’s on the wing;
The snail’s on the thorn;
God’s in His heaven—
All’s right with the world!”
“It—it’s a children’s poem, really, and not very good,” said the Maureen hesitantly, seeing with her mind the poem spreading through the overmind. “But . . . but it sounds so like you, somehow!”
“The Robert Browning was an optimist,” observed Ambiel. “We would have liked his mind, I think. There is no pessimism among the Ambroline. Where are your other descendants, Maureen?”
The Maureen laughed. “Jack and Jill went down the hill to fetch a pail of water—”
Ambiel was puzzled. “I had understood from the Will Robinson that they had other names . . .”
“You just do that to me, I guess; it’s just more poetry. I mean they’ve gone over to the brook for fresh water for our ship. Penny and Judy, with Dr. West to guard them. They should be back in a moment. And then inside—”
The Dad interrupted. “Say, what does our Robot think of all this? I gather he agrees we’re in no danger, but . . . ”
“Professor Robison, I compute no danger to any of us, beyond the ordinary psychological risks of contacting alien thought patterns. It is indeed unfortunate that my mind is unable to contact theirs directly. Telepathy is difficult to compute.”
Ambiel started to speak, but resonances of the overmind were stong, and he allowed the overmind to define the situation.
“It is not that we cannot contact you, mechanical thinker,” said the overmind through Ambiel to the Will Robinson, who repeated the essence of the thoughts aloud so that the robot could know what the overmind said. “It is simply that we of the Ambroline have never tried to do so. All our theories would seem to indicate that relay-systems and cryogenic memory banks are too alien to our own modes and resonances of being and thinking. However, many of us feel that such an effort might produce unusually beneficial side-effects, since for any of your party to be unable to perceive the overmind must lead to some unhappiness.”
“And unhappiness should be avoided.”
There was a pause.
Ambiel allowed his total mind to flow into the overmind, which formed and attacked the problem of the cryogenic ultracold, of the robot’s memories, and, failing, reformed in other patterns and attacked again.
“Wait,” said the robot aloud in the middle of the third attempt. “You may endanger the interconnections of your overmind. I have perceived the nature of your methods of communication and have simulated them from my unused computer banks.”
And the robot switched from talking to thinking. “Ahhh, so this is telepathy! Most encouraging. Most interesting. I sense the possibility of a level of being I had not previously been consciously aware of, though of course all the theories have long been part of my basic programming.”
“Robot—look out!” shouted the Will Robinson quickly.
While the overmind was still digesting the shock of having been independently contacted by the robot, Ambiel simultaneously heard the Will Robinson and saw a trickle of smoke being emitted from the back of the robot.
A last instantaneous thought shot from the robot directly to the overmind, bypassing the humans.
“My circuits cannot sustain the complexity of the telepathic resonances. They will short-out across the subspace gaps if I do not refrain further from such communication within 72 milliseconds. In that time I shall try to relay to you as much cultural information about our race as I can . . . ”
And the overmind braced itself with the speed of thought.
In that incredibly brief time the overmind received the complete works of hundreds of Earthly authors. As the knowledge poured through Ambiel to the overmind an individual Ambroline would tap in, fill his own mind, then drop out, allowing the overmind to switch to the next Ambroline, and so on until the robot’s telepathic transmission ceased abruptly in the middle of “How do I love thee? Let me count th
e—”
“I am sorry,” said the robot aloud. I cannot sustain the telepathic process any further. I would be happy to complete the communication I had begun telepathically, if you would care to delegate someone to listen to me. It should not take more than three or four hundred years to run through everything.”
The Dad looked puzzled.
“What are you saying, Robot?”
“It is complex, Professor Robinson. For a fraction of a minute I was able to synthesize telepathy, and in doing so, I recognized the implications of the existence of the overmind. Knowing that, it was a simple decision to do my best to enrich the overmind with material from our alien culture. Did I not act correctly?”
The lines of Shakespeare and Thomas and Keats and countless others sang for the first time throughAmbiel’s mind, as the individual Ambroline organized their packets of the Robot’s transmission and sent them into the overmind.
“A damsel once with a dulcimer, in a vision once I saw . . . I know a bank where the wild thyme blows . . . All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay/Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air/And playing, lovely and watery/And fire green as grass . . . Bow down, I am the emperor of dreams . . . ”
Ambiel wept.
“Why, whatever is the matter,” said the Maureen to Ambiel, concern in every tone of her voice though he did not know the words. From her mind he picked the precise timbre and significance of her words—she had misunderstood his emotions.
“I weep for joy, the Maureen,” Ambiel said into her mind, tuning his thoughts broadly so the others could follow. “You have enriched the Ambroline immeasurably. I cannot thank you . . . ”
“We can thank you—and your robot, whom we solemnly promise we shall never forget til Time crumbles us at last,” the overmind intoned, resonating totally onto the scene and surging through the encampment, beating through the trees, discovering the three younger humans on their way back from the stream.
Astonished, they stopped in their tracks much as the Dad had done, and the overmind detached a portion of itself to explain to them, as it continued with its main thought undisturbed.
“You have given us beauty. We shall give you—an overmind. Hidden within the brain of each of you is the power to reach each other’s minds directly. We need only to teach one of you the way, and the effect will spread in resonances to all of you.”
“That was the way it was with us, a hundred thousand years ago, when Ambro’s mind awakened to his mate Amoline’s. Within a month, the Ambroline overmind was born and operative. With so few of you here, we can hope that you will be overminded to each other within hours. It is hypothetical whether your fellows back on Earth will be touched by the overmind simultaneously. Most likely not; you are perhaps too far away. But when they do, they will become conscious of you, and come to you—and us.”
“Earth—do you know where it is?” asked the Dad eagerly. Ambiel marvelled at the human’s surge of concern at finding its homeland, and approved. Truly these were marvelous beings, as worthy of the overmind as the Ambroline had so fortunately been. How many tens of thousands of years of struggle they had had, before the race that became the Ambroline overmind had reached sufficient serenity for one of them to contact another’s mind openly . . .
“Truly we know where Earth is,” said the Ambroline overmind. “We have traced your path through many bitter delays and detours; you are far from the land of your birth indeed. But with the overmind, this will all be—”
“What’s going on here?” A harsh new voice came to Ambiel’s ears and mind, and he shrank back in pain.”
“What are you all doing clustered about that stuffed bear, when you should be preparing supper? I warn you, Dr. Zachary Smith is not a man to be thwarted when his system requires nourishment. I have been working with singular concentration on my theoretical experiments for the entire day, and I come out here to find somebody’s made a teddy bear for everyone to gawk at. I repeat: What’s going on here?”
Ambiel’s mind tightened in on itself, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing inward to avoid the sharp cutting mind screaming so viciously at him and at the other humans. The Zachary Smith was falling to his knees now, holding his hands over his ears; stray resonances must be battering at him, Ambiel thought.
Beyond his tortured mind now, Ambiel felt the Ambroline overmind writhe from the swift painful shock of the unexpected agony.
“Disease,” whispered Ambiel’s mind weakly, fluttering at the Will Robinson. “Painuncleandiseaseevilne- gationhorrorevil . . . ”
Ambiel felt the strength draining from him; the morning’s joy had vanished far back down a black tunnel that he felt himself trapped in.
“We will go,” said the overmind through Ambiel, and speaking for the last time to the humans. “We cannot stay among you. Do not look for us.”
The overmind withdrew completely.
Ambiel turned and, for the first time in his life, ran in terror, heading for the nearest trees and safety from this sudden blight that had left his happiness in shards.
By the giant chark-tree, that ever afterward in the racial mind of the Ambroline was to symbolize ill-omen, Ambiel forced himself to turn for one last individual warning before plunging headlong back to the overmind and safety.
“Do not look for us—and do not search for the overmind within you. You will destroy yourselves. The overmind is possible only when your Smiths have renounced themselves. Do not try to gain the overmind—it will mean doom for you!”
He could stand no more of the Smith; his eyes squeezed shut in imitation of his battered mind, and he turned at last and stumbled through the forest to his hidden home . . .
It was several hours before the stunned passengers of the Jupiter II could bring themselves to talk at all about what had occurred, and even then they could not bring themselves to discuss its incredible conclusion.
As the sun went down, Robinson surveyed what had been done since Ambiel had departed so hastily.
The oxygen tanks had been fully recharged; good. The water tanks had been flushed and refilled with fresh water; excellent. Food—little had been done after the preliminary search, since no one was in the mood to pick fruits and vegetables; bad. And it didn’t look as if anyone was going to be more energetic tomorrow.
There was only one conclusion to be drawn, and Robinson made his decision.
“Ok, everybody start packing everything back into the Jupiter; we’ll be leaving as soon as that’s done. No point in sticking around here feeling the way we feel.”
The others assented with little eagerness, and began loading the ship.
Two hours later they were in orbit around the forest planet, and Robinson was wishing the Ambroline had at least told them how far they were from Earth before getting so traumatized by Smith. “Though it still wouldn’t help us get there,” he thought; “this damn ship goes where it wants to. Still, it would have been nice to know . . . ”
“You know,” said Smith, “Science has suffered a great loss. Those Ambroline must have been unique in the galaxy—perhaps in the entire universe.”
“Apparently you didn’t help matters any, Smith,” said Don bitterly.
“I beg your pardon,” said Smith huffily. “My interest in the Ambroline was purely scientific. Why, the moment I realized you weren’t talking to a stuffed teddy bear, but to a racial mind, I tried to figure out some way to study how it was managed.”
“Well, that’s harmless enough, I suppose,” said Robinson, “except that they were about to show us how to do it ourselves.”
“Most unscientific. One must study abstractly, scientifically. It is unscientific to be part of the experiment, one’s self.”
“No, my regret is that I wasn’t able to capture one or two of the little beasts—I’ve devised some fantastic new techniques of dissection! What a loss to science that I am forever to be unable to study the structure of a few of their brains . . . it would only have taken two or three of them
, or half a dozen at the most. The comparison of half a dozen of their live pineal glands alone would . . . ”
The rest of the passengers of the Jupiter II slowly stood up, one by one.
“What—what’s wrong?” asked Smith nervously.
One by one they walked out of the cabin, leaving Smith with the Robot, asking futilely, “What did I say? What did I say?”
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SIX
Twice in the next six months, as the Jupiter II darted among the uncaring stars in random directions for random distances, they spotted familiar configurations of stars. And both times their next jump landed them back among the wilderness of alien suns.
Once, Robinson found they had landed in the Andromeda Galaxy, close by a Cepheid Variable whose regular period of pulsating energy emission, like a fingerprint, proved where they were.
The next jump from that one, they seemed to be back in the Milky Way Galaxy.
“I think that’s Canopus,” Robinson said to his wife after the jump from Andromeda. “It’s as if we were some kid’s toy. Some kind of marker in an intergalactic Monopoly game, forever bound by the rules not to pass Go and never, never to collect $200. In our case we’re not to be allowed to get back to Earth . . . ”
“Now, dear,” said Maureen, “we mustn’t lose hope. Sooner or later we’re bound to get back, or to learn some way to control the drive. Or maybe one day we’ll find another intelligent race, one that will be willing to show us the way back . . . ”
“I suppose you’re right,” sighed Robinson. “I shouldn’t really be saying anything that might upset you or the others. Smith and myself are scientists; we at least have something to occupy our time. But you and the girls—and Will—what do you have? And Don—in the prime of life, but here he is, cut off from his career just as it got started. What will there be for him even if we do get back? His field will have passed him by. Education gets obsolete very quickly these days . . . ”
“Don is a scientist too, dear,” said Maureen. “Don’t forget that. When we get back, with what you and he, and Dr. Smith, have discovered and studied on this journey, any of you can name your own price and conditions, anywhere on Earth.”
Lost In Space Page 7