The Mind Pool

Chapter 10

“No!” The scream boomed through the rocky chambers, resonating on and on. “No, no, no, NO!”

“Chan! Wait for me.” Tatty was running as fast as she could, but the screams ahead of her were fading. Somehow he had escaped again, racing off through the maze of interior tunnels.

She slowed her pace. He could not get away for long, not with the Tracker to reveal his distance and direction. Even so, the folded corridors of Horus made the search a tedious business. And it was not only the corridors themselves. Ten generations of burrowing and excavating had left behind an astonishing legacy of debris: broken tunneling equipment, old food synthesizers, obsolete communicators, mounds of broken supply containers. When the last members of the sect left Horus, they had found few things worth hauling back for use elsewhere. Now the whole mess formed an obstacle course, to be climbed over, moved aside, or burrowed through.

Tatty plowed on. Chan had been crying when he ran, and with the hardest part still to come she felt close to tears herself. When she caught Chan she would have to give him his medication and drag him back for a session with the Stimulator. More and more, that seemed like a pointless exercise.

She forced herself on, grimy and tired. Even before Kubo Flammarion left Horus, Chan had been getting hard to handle. He was bigger, faster, and much stronger than Tatty. Sometimes she could manage him only by using a Stunner, slowing and weakening him enough for her to catch and overpower him.

“Cha-an!” Her cracking voice echoed off rocky walls. “Chan, come on. Come back home.”

Silence. Had he found a new hiding-place? Maybe he was becoming more intelligent, just a little; or maybe it was her wishful thinking. Every day she stared into those bright blue eyes, willing them to show more understanding; every day, she was disappointed. The innocence of a two-year-old gazed back at her, unable to comprehend why the woman who fed him, dressed him, and put him to bed was the same woman who tortured him.

Tatty kept going. Most of the burrows on Horus terminated in dead ends, and after a while Chan, no matter how he tried to escape, would finish in one of them. Usually the same ones. He lacked the memory and intelligence to learn the pattern of the paths. Tatty peered at the Tracker. She was getting close. He had to be somewhere in the next chamber. She saw a pile of plastic sheets draped over powdered rock. He would be behind that, cowering brainlessly with his face pressed to the dirt. Tatty lifted the stunner and crept forward the last few yards.

He was there. Weeping.

It broke her heart to take him back to the training center. She knew she would not need the Stunner, for once she took hold of him his resistance disappeared. He allowed himself to be led along by the hand, passive and hopeless.

When he saw the Stimulator he began to cry again. She sat him in the padded seat, grimly fitted the headset and the arm attachments, and turned away as the power came on. The screams of pain when full intensity was reached were awful, but she had learned to stand those. It was later, when the treatment was over and she released Chan and tried to feed him, that Tatty always felt ready to faint. He would crouch in his chair, sweaty and panting, and look up at her pleadingly. The face was that of a tormented animal, exhausted and uncomprehending. She felt she was torturing a helpless beast, punishing it pointlessly again and again for a reason it did not understand — would never be able to understand.

She worried, always, that she was not using the Stimulator correctly. Kubo Flammarion had instructed her in the use of it before he left, and told her that Mondrian would give more detailed advice when he came to Horus.

He had never come. There had been not even a message. Day after day, Tatty did her best to follow Flammarion’s instructions, in his three-fold way of Machine, Medication, Motivation.

“The Stimulator won’t work by itself,” he said. “You have to follow the right drug protocol, night and morning. But more important than that, you have to be involved. You have to bond with Chan, link to him and somehow make him want to learn.”

“And how am I supposed to do that, when he doesn’t understand even the idea of learning?”

Flammarion had scratched his scurvy head. “Beats me. All I can tell you is what they told me. If he doesn’t have motivation, he’ll never develop. But where there is motivation, the Stimulator can work what looks like a miracle. Here, how about using Leah’s picture?”

Flammarion had produced from a packet of papers a grimy image of Leah, part of her official identification when she was inducted for Pursuit Team training. “Chan loves her more than anything in the world,” he said. “If you show him this every time you use the Stimulator, and tell him that Leah wants him to learn — maybe that will help. And tell him that when the treatments are over, he’ll be able to go and see Leah,”

Tatty took the picture. Every day, after the injections and after the stimulator session, she made her speech. “Look at Leah, Chan. She wants you to learn. And you’ve got to want to be more intelligent, too. Just a little bit more, every day. And soon you’ll be able to go and see Leah, and she’ll come and see you.”

Chan stared at the image and smiled. He certainly knew who it was. But that was the only response. The days wore on, all the same, and at last Tatty gave up hope. She should stop trying, stop torturing. Chan would never learn.

She brooded on her own situation. No visit from Esro Mondrian. No calls, not even a message. He had talked her into leaving Earth, duped her into doing what he wanted, as he could always do — and then forgotten about her until the next time she might come in useful.

She took the initiative, placing calls to him and to Kubo Flammarion. She could never get through to either of them. But one day, after many attempts, she managed to pass the shielding layers of guard and assistants and found herself talking to Mondrian’s private office on Ceres.

“I’m sorry.” One of Mondrian’s personal guards took the call. “Captain Flammarion is in a meeting, and Commander Mondrian himself is not here.”

“Then where the devil is he?” To get so far, and have her hopes dashed again …

There was a pause, while the woman consulted a display. “According to the itinerary, Commander Mondrian is on Earth. He will be there for two days.”

“He is where!”

Tatty disconnected the communicator in a cold, clean rage. To drag her all the way to Horus to do his dirty work. To use her, and neglect her, while she passed through the agonies of Paradox withdrawal. And then to go back to Earth himself, without even telling her.

Tatty felt bitterness consuming her body, burning in her stomach. She went through to the other room, where Chan was connected to the Stimulator. The session was almost over. He was sweating prodigiously, banging his head from side to side in the neck brace and headset. Tatty went to stand next to him.

“Chan. Can you hear me?”

His eyes opened a slit. They were bloodshot and slightly bulging. There was inflammation and some excess pressure inside the skull case, but he was listening. She put her arms around him.

“He’s using us, Chan. Both of us.”

Tears rolled down her cheeks. Chan’s eyes widened, and he reached out a wondering finger to touch the drops of moisture.

“Tatty crying.”

“Oh, Chan, I’d have done anything for him, anything in the world. I thought he was wonderful. I even let myself be marooned out here, because I thought I’d be helping him. But it’s no use. He doesn’t care about us — about anything, except himself. He’s a devil, Chan, crazy and heartless. He’ll destroy you, too, if you let him, the way he’s destroying me. Don’t let him do it.”

“Him?” He was staring at her in stony incomprehension. Tatty fumbled in the overall pocket above her left breast. She took out a thin wallet, removed from it a small holograph, and held the image for Chan to see.

“Him. Look at it, Chan. This is the man who brought us away from home. This is the one who took Leah away from you. See him? This is the person who makes you go into the Stimulator. If you learn your lessons you can get away from here. You can go and find him.”

The bloodshot eyes stared in silence, until at last Chan took a deep, shuddering breath. He reached out to take the hologram, with its smiling face of Esro Mondrian.

Was it imagination, or wishful thinking?

Tatty could not be sure, but she thought that a faint spark of understanding had glowed for a moment behind those innocent, tormented eyes.

The Margrave of Fujitsu paused and lifted his ugly head from the stereo-microscope. “And what, if I might ask, did you expect to see?”

Luther Brachis shrugged. “That’s a hard question. But a lot more than this.” His sweeping gesture took in the whole room, from the grimy skylight window that looked out onto Earth’s surface, to the huge display system that covered a whole wall. “I mean, apart from those special microscopes almost everything here looks like part of a standard computer facility. If you hadn’t told me, I wouldn’t know this is a Needler lab at all.”

“I see.” The Margrave bent again over the microscope and” made a minute adjustment to the setting. He laughed, without looking up. “Of course. You expected to see Needlers, didn’t you — men in white coats, sticking pins into cells. I’m sorry, but you are seven hundred years too late.”

He at last straightened, turned, and lifted a great pile of listings from the desk at his side. “In the earliest days, yes. A strange set of methods was used at one time to stimulate parthenogenetic egg development. Ultraviolet radiation, acid and alkaline solutions, neat, cold, needle puncture, radioactivity — almost everything was tried, and a surprising number of them worked — after a fashion.

“But all those methods produce only exact copies of a parent organism, rather than interesting variations. And even when mutations arise as a side effect of stimulation, they are quite random. As a way of producing an art form it would be quite hopeless, like dropping a block of marble off a cliff, and hoping to find a masterpiece of sculpture when you got to the bottom. Today, everything is planned.” He held out the pile of listings. “With these.”

Brachis took the top few sheets and inspected them. “These don’t mean a thing to me, Margrave.”

“Not Margrave. I am to be called simply Fujitsu. Mine was an Imperial line when most of your under-level braggarts were wearing animal skins and eating their food raw.

“Sorry, Fujitsu. But I don’t see much here. Just page after page of random letters.”

“Ah, yes. Random.” The Margrave stabbed at the top page with a bony index finger. This is random in very much the same way as we are random, you and I, since what you are holding is the complete DNA sequence of a living organism, in its precise and correct order. This output simply indicates the nucleotide bases in each of the chromosomes, letter-coded of course for convenience: A for adenine, C for cytosine, G for guanine, and T for thymine. The whole listing is built up — as we are — from those four letters. Taken together, they constitute the exact blueprint for production of an animal.” He shook his head and stared at Luther Brachis. “I am sorry. You are no innocent and no fool, though you sometimes choose to pretend to be. I will be more specific. This is the blueprint for production of a special animal — a human being.”

“I thought DNA had a coiled spiral structure. There’s no spiral here. And I don’t want to produce a human being.”

“A coiled spiral is topologically equivalent to a straight line, and a straight-line presentation of data is far easier to comprehend and analyze. As for the fact that this is presently a human encoding, do not worry about it. This is only my starting point, the theme from which we will construct sublime variations. Any one of the nucleotides can be changed to any other. We have full chemical control of the whole sequence. The chains can be split, lengthened, shortened, inverted, and modified in any way that I wish.” He tapped the stack, with its endless and apparently random jumble of letters. “You asked me earlier, what is my job? What is it that I actually do. After all, since I am merely evaluating the effects of inserting different DNA fractional chains into this coding, what can I do that is not done better and faster by a computer? “I have been asked that question many times, and still I can answer only by analogy. Do you play chess?”

“Some. It’s required for Level Six education.” Brachis saw no reason to mention that he had once been close to Grand Master level. It was hard to see how that slight misdirection could have future value, but the habit was ingrained.

“Then you probably know that, despite many centuries of work, the best chess-playing programs still fail to beat the best human players. Now, how can that be? The computers can store a million times as many games in memory. They can evaluate all possible moves, far ahead, to see which one is the best. They are tireless, and they never make the foolish errors of fatigue.

“And yet the best humans still win. How? Because they can somehow grasp within the slow, quirky, organic computer of the human brain an overall sense of board and position, in a holistic way that transcends individual moves. The computers play better every year — but so do the humans! The greatest chess players can feel the board, in its entirety, in a way that has never been caught in any computer program.”

The Margrave turned to the display screen, where a long sequence of coded letters was shown. “The same ability is possessed by the best Needlers. In a string of a hundred billion nucleotide bases, random substitution, exchange, or deletions could prove totally disastrous for the organism that it represents. No viable plant or animal would result. But it is my special talent — and I assure you, Commander, that in my field I admit no peers — to sense the final and total impact of changes in the sequences. To grasp the pattern, whole, and more than that, to estimate how different changes will interact with each other. For instance, suppose that I were to invert the order of the section on the middle of the screen, and make no other change of any kind. What would it do? I am not absolutely sure — I have never thought of that variation before, and what I do is more an art than a science — but I believe that it would produce a perfectly formed individual, able to function as usual, but a little more hirsute than the norm. In the large scale of things, that is an amazingly small change. It happens that way because we are all of amazingly robust genetic stock. There is much redundancy in the DNA chain, and it stabilizes against minor copying errors in the genetic codes.”

“So just who is that on the screen?” Brachis was not at ease with Fujitsu. The man had the cold, clear-eyed enthusiasm of a true fanatic. To the Margrave, Luther Brachis suspected he was nothing more than a section of interesting genetic code.

Fujitsu smiled for the first time, showing stained and crooked teeth. “No one that you know, Commander. And even if it were, this is no more than a starting point. When I am finished, and you see your Artefact, you will recognize nothing of what lies behind it. In fact, the listing in front of you already contains part of my general design. King Bester delivered your specification a week ago, and it provides such an intriguing challenge that since then I have worked on nothing else.”

“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.