The Mind Pool

Chapter 25

The team had been in official existence since all the members reached Barchan. It would be named “Team Ruby,” a name that Chan disliked as much as Leah hated “Team Alpha.”

Team Ruby was just four days old. Three of those had been spent in general survey and exploration of the planet, while Chan and the others went through their first attempt at cooperative effort; the “honeymoon,” according to Shikari.

On the fourth morning that easy period ended. Every team member knew it, and Chan recognized his own reluctance to begin the day’s work.

Dawn on Barchan was a gorgeous sky-swirl of pinks and dark greys, as the morning rays of Eta Cass-A caught a high-blown nimbus of dust and sand. The pursuit team had dispersed during the night, to satisfy their individual needs for food or rest, and the members were slow to come together. It was well past first light when they convened within the aircar to hear the Angel and Pipe-Rilla report.

Angel was supposed to begin, but it delivered nothing more than a long, brooding silence. At last there began a leisurely waving of the upper fronds. “It is confirmed,” said the communications unit attached to the central bulge. “At the 0.999 probability level, we know the location of the Simmie Artefact.”

“Good news,” Shikari was clumped over by the aircar’s cabin wall. “Where is it, Angel? Not, we hope, too close to us.”

“Not close at all. The Simmie is far from here.”

“Good news again.”

“It has a cave hideout, easy of access.”

“Good news.”

“But it is on the shore of Dreamsea.”

“Bad news!” The Tinker composite disassembled to a cloud of flying components. They scattered all over the cabin. Shikari no longer existed.

Chan turned to S’greela. At least the Pipe-Rilla was still in one piece. “I can’t do what Shikari just did, but I know the reeling. Any suggestions?”

The pursuit team had discussed many alternative plans, for many situations; but not this one. The Simmie Artefact could not have chosen a better hiding place — or, from the team’s point of view, a worse one.

The common impression of Barchan as a wholly desert world was not quite accurate. Dry the planet certainly was, and unbelievably so by the standards of Earth. There was, however, one permanent body of free water on its surface: Dreamsea. It was a round lake, forty kilometers across, lying in a deep depression about a thousand kilometers from the south pole. The water in the lake was salty and bitter, so much so that no Earth life could have survived in it. But the largest native life form on Barchan tolerated and even thrived on Dreamsea’s harsh salinity and caustic alkalines.

The amphibious Shellbacks were one of those perplexing forms that made the Stellar Group so careful in its policies. The animals looked like large, pale turtles, two meters across their brittle flat backs. They employed no tools, knew no technology, had no recognizable language. They were simple, mindless beasts. And yet …

The Shellbacks shared just two obsessions: to be in the water during Barchan’s scorching day, diving for and eating clumps of weed; and to crawl ashore at night, so that they could crop the dull-colored and spiny vegetation that grew close to Dreamsea’s shores.

Dull, grey animals, leading a dull grey existence. The early human visitors to the Eta Cassiopeiae system had naturally concentrated their attention on S’kat’lan, home of the intelligent and interesting Pipe-Rillas. No one took much notice of the Shellbacks, or indeed of the whole of Barchan, until one day it was discovered that Shellback flesh was a true delicacy. Pink, fine-textured, and of unique and exquisite flavor, it became a luxury export from Eta Cass to all the best restaurants within the Perimeter.

The Shellback population dwindled, but not too far. The gourmets of the Stellar Group did not want the source of supply to dry up. There was no danger of extinction, thanks to the protection of continued commercial interests.

It was a Martian xenologist, Elbert Tiggens, who ruined everything from a culinary point of view. Even his friends admitted that Tiggens had eccentric ideas. Other colleagues were less kind. They regarded as lunacy his scheme for a “universal taxonomy,” a general labelling system into which all the organisms of every world would neatly fit, down to the exact species of the last tick on the last land crustacean that lived beneath the roots of the vanishingly rare meat-eating whirligig plant on Myristicina.

Tiggens could not be dissuaded or diverted. For the purpose of his grand project he was quite willing to spend a long stint on Barchan, studying the Dreamsea flora and fauna and shoehorning every misfit species into his scheme.

Some of them did not cooperate. The Shellbacks in particular did not match his classification. Elbert Tiggens stayed on and on, forcing round pegs into square holes. After a few months he noticed a curious fact about Shellback behavior. He had been using them for food, so he was very familiar with their daily rituals. Every morning they went down to the Dreamsea margin, waded in, and disappeared. Every evening they came ashore. But they did not travel directly toward plants or water. Instead each animal followed a peculiar and well-defined curve, different every morning and evening. At certain points they would even stop, describe a full circle, and continue to lay out a visible trail on the dusty ground.

Their bizarre behavior clearly had nothing to do with species classification, but Tiggens was a conscientious and well-trained xenologist. He photographed the tracks, noted in his record the theory that this might be part of some odd mating ritual, and went on with the fascinating but frustrating taxonomy.

After six months he ran out of a few staple supplies. He was also becoming a little tired of Shellback meat, boiled, baked, fried, sautйed, steamed, smoked, pickled, fricasseed and grilled. He hitched a ride with a commercial Shellback harvester to Barchan’s only space facility, to buy a good meal and the supplies he needed. Sitting near him in the cafeteria was a Pipe-Rilla astronomer, about to leave Barchan en route to the Eta Cass ring system.

Tiggens was starved of company, human or otherwise. He explained his reason for being on Barchan, his notions of taxonomy, and his observations of the Shellbacks. The Pipe-Rilla listened in polite and baffled silence. Finally Tiggens produced some of his pictures of the Shellback shoreline patterns of movement.

The Pipe-Rilla glanced, looked, stared, and snatched the pictures from Elbert’s hands.

“Mating rituals?” asked Tiggens. Every species had its own ideas on the nature of pornography.

The Pipe-Rilla shivered, telescoped her limbs, and rose fourteen feet high. “Planetary orbits and positions! For the Eta Cass system!”

And suddenly the Shellbacks were no longer a food crop, not even a prized and preserved one. Dreamsea was declared a protected area. The Shellbacks became a protected species. They had enough understanding of astronomy, mathematics, and celestial mechanics to know (or compute) the positions of the major bodies of the Eta Cass system, regardless of their visibility or the time of year. The Shellbacks worked cooperatively, no one duplicating the efforts of another. But — maddeningly — the mode of cooperation was a mystery, and they refused to show any other sign of intelligence.

The rules of the Stellar Group were explicit and rigorously enforced: The Shellbacks were an intelligent species, even though the nature of their intelligence was not yet understood. Therefore, their protection was guaranteed. They could not be hunted. Their environment, which included the whole of Dreamsea and the land area around it, was off limits for anyone — including Chan and his pursuit team.

After Shikari’s disassembly, the others had to sit and wait until the Tinker slowly regrouped and re-formed its speaking funnel. Chan had time for his own thoughts.

The location of this Simmie Artefact was no accident. It had been planned, he felt sure, by the three non-human ambassadors to the Stellar Group. They wanted the rogue Morgan Construct destroyed, but it had to be done in a way that did not violate the moral sense of Pipe-Rillas, Tinkers, and Angels. Somehow the team had to disable the Simmie, without killing the Shellbacks or ruining their environment.

An impossible constraint.

Chan waited, while Shikari’s speaking funnel went through the preliminary whistles that meant the Tinker was preparing to speak.

“Well?” said Shikari at last.

Chan stared at the Tinker. The speaking funnel was facing him, and seemed to be addressing him alone. He glanced across at S’greela and Angel. They were doing the same — Angel had even moved the arm-like branches on its lower section to bring the microphone closer to Chan. The Pipe-Rilla was angled over, leaning right above him.

“Well?” repeated S’greela. “We are waiting.”

“Waiting for what?” Chan felt defensive, but he didn’t know why.

“Waiting to hear your plan,” added the dry tones of Angel’s computer voice. “Now that we know the situation, how do you propose that we will capture and destroy the Simulacrum? It is clear that the protected area around Dreamsea must remain sacrosanct. We await with interest your proposal, since this is at first sight a quite impossible task.”

“Don’t look at me.” But they were, all three of them.

“Believe me, I have no plan. You were the ones who did the reconnaissance, you were the ones who came up with the Simmie’s location. You know the Dreamsea area. So why do you expect me to suggest a plan?”

Part of Shikari’s lower grouping had rippled out into a long tentacle of components. They fluttered over to nestle around Chan’s legs. He recognized it as the Tinker’s way of showing support and sympathy. “We look to you because you are a human,” said Shikari’s whistling voice.

“Because you can do it,” added S’greela. “And we cannot. We always knew that it would come to this when the Simmie was found. You alone have the gifts that will allow us to proceed.”

“We have discussed this among ourselves,” continued Shikari, “when you were not with us. We are in complete agreement. Except in our largest composite form, we Tinkers do not have the intellectual power of Angels or Pipe-Rillas. But we are certain that all three forms have mental abilities that greatly exceed those of you humans. And yet we face a situation where logic, mental speed, and creativity are not enough. There is some other dimension to human thought, one that we all three lack. It is a dimension that we are normally more than happy to do without. We cannot plan a military activity, or organize a war, or fight a battle. Those very words are unique to human language.”

“And to human thought,” added Angel’s metallic voice. “This is one area in which the Angel emulation function for other intelligences is not adequate. And so we say it again, Chan: Tell us your plan.”

“You don’t understand. Was he being insulted, or complimented? “Maybe humans are an aggressive species, but I’m not an aggressive individual. Can’t you see the difference? I have no experience of war, no idea how it is conducted. I have never been involved in a battle, never even taken part in individual combat. I wouldn’t know how to begin a military action.”

He was not getting through. The silence of the others was like reproof.

“Before a Pipe-Rilla mates,” said S’greela at last. “She cannot imagine how such a thing could be possible. The joining of bodies, the twisting limbs, the shrills and squeaks and groans — they are grotesque, disquieting, and disgusting. But when the time arrives, and the partner is there … she mates. It happens. Without thought. And after it is finished it is again bizarre, again incredible. The action does not come through analysis or experience. It comes from some somatic memory, stored within brain and body.”

“And so it must be with you,” said Angel. “Make us a plan to destroy the Simulacrum. It is within you, because you are human. You are large, you contain multitudes. You can create a plan.”

Chan’s guilt was turning to anger. They were refusing all responsibility! He glared around him at the others, the impassive bulk of Angel, the nervous stoop of S’greela, the restless fluttering of the Tinker. “When I was sent here to Barchan, I was told that I would become part of a team. It was made clear to me that we would all be equal partners, and we would all contribute to solving our problems. There was never a suggestion that three of us would sit around and expect the fourth one to do the thinking and give the orders. You keep telling me to make a plan. What are you going to do? What do you think you are here for?”

“We will help to carry out your plan,” said Angel. “Many hands make light work”

“And we will do as much as we are able,” added Shikari humbly. “Chan, human anger is a terrifying thing to all of us. We see it growing within you as you speak. But you are directing it at the wrong target. We ask you only to do what we cannot do. Please be calm. Sit. Think. And then tell us where your thoughts have led you.”

“You still don’t understand,” began Chan. He glared down at the floor of the aircar. The Tinker was quite right. His anger was growing, like lava inside his chest. He didn’t even want to look at the other three. Any one of them was smarter than him — they had told him so. Any one of them could do a better job of planning than he could. But they were going to sit here, and sit forever, while the Simmie stayed safe in its hiding-place.

“Are you willing to invade the Dreamsea protected area?” he said, without looking up.

A high-pitched whistle of horror came from Shikari, and S’greela chittered in disapproval.

“That is an unthinkable notion,” said Angel. “Unthinkable, we would hope, even for a human.”

“How about for observation only? Suppose it was guaranteed that no Shellback would be harmed — or even touched?”

“We would not trust such a guarantee. Suppose that the Simulacrum attacked you? We feel sure that you would insist on returning that attack. The Shellbacks might be harmed.”

I was not thinking of myself. Not even of any one of us.”

“Who, then?” S’greela waved her jointed arms all around them. “We cannot communicate with the Shellbacks, to seek their assistance. They may be intelligent, but we four are the only useful intelligences on the planet.”

“I don’t want intelligence. According to our briefings, the Simmie will be wary of anything mat shows signs of intelligence.” Chan turned to Shikari. “You told me that your individual components have two million neurons each, enough to eat, drink, mate and cluster. Suppose you made a small assembly of them. Could as few as ten or twenty components cluster?”

“It is possible. But it is never done. Why would we choose to do so? Such a tiny aggregate could not be intelligent.”

“That’s fine. Could such a small group take direction from the rest of you?”

“Primitive direction. Simple commands, no more.”

“But it could at least collect information?”

“Within limits.” A wave traveled across the Tinker’s upper body, a shrug of dismissal. “But what purpose would that serve? A small group could never integrate its information with anything else. We would not know how to interpret such data. It would be isolated and useless point inputs.”

“Maybe you couldn’t integrate it. Nor could I. But we have a superb integrator, right here.” Chan nodded at Angel. “Shikari, all you would need to do is form a number of very small assemblies and direct them to explore the region near the Simmie’s hideout. There would be no chance that they could harm the Simmie, or the Shellbacks. Could you do that?”

“Certainly. But to what end?”

“We need to know how it occupies its time, what it does during the days and nights. We have to understand it. Then we can lure it out, away from the Shellbacks’ protected area around Dreamsea.’

“But we have no idea what would be attractive to a Simulacrum,” protested S’greela. “Even when we know its habits, we will not know that.”

“You will not, and I will not.” Chan turned to the silent Angel. “But you will. Given enough information about the Simmie, its appearance and its structure and its habits, you can go into your emulator mode. You can mimic the thought patterns of the Simmie.”

“No. What you say is partially true. Given enough time and enough information, we can usually duplicate some of the thought patterns of another being within our own mental processes. But not always. As you know, we have been completely unsuccessful in replicating any element of human aggression.”

“Forget humans. Maybe we’re unique. What about the Simmie?”

“We do not have enough information. There has been no opportunity for interaction. Our limited observations — ”

“ — are going to be enough.” Chan interrupted Angel for the first time ever, and marvelled at his own nerve. “They have to be. Angel, I’m not asking for perfection. All I need is a good working imitation, something that we can use to guess how a Simmie may react in a given situation.”

“You suggest a knowingly imperfect thought simulation? One moment, if you please.” Angel’s fronds dropped, as communication halted between the Singer and the Chassel-Rose.

“Possibly,” it said at last. “Necessity is the mother of invention. I have within me a large general data bank regarding the Simulacrum, and perhaps a gross model of its mental processes can be achieved; perhaps enough to compare the relative probabilities of different courses of action, without assigning absolute values to any. But that process would take me a long time to accomplish, even with Shikari’s sub-group inputs on Simulacrum habits and environment.”

“How long?” Chan was not even going to mention his other worry: How to model the behavior of the team itself?

Angel drifted into another brooding silence. “If we can be left undisturbed, perhaps three days. And during that same period of time we can develop the mechanism to accept direct inputs from Tinker small sub-assemblies. To achieve that, Shikari and I must first become closely connected.”

Chan turned to the Tinker. “Can you? Can you set up connection with Angel?”

“The pleasure will be ours. No experience is more rewarding than close connection, and this one will be particularly intriguing.”

Shikari began to drift slowly toward Angel. In front of Chan, the Tinker paused. “May we begin at once, Chan? Or do you first prefer to tell us about the rest of your plan?”