The Mind Pool

Chapter 34

Pulling information out of Vayvay was almost impossible. The Coromar seemed to have only two interests in life: finding food, and eating it. Chan had sat in on three weary hours of Angel’s careful questioning and re-questioning, then he had given up. He lacked Angel’s infinite patience. He wandered out to the lip of the tent, where S’greela and Shikari were basking in the mid-morning sunlight.

“How can Angel stand it?” he said. “Every question has to be repeated ten times, and still there’s nothing to show at the end.”

“Talking to Vayvay?” S’greela nudged Shikari with one hind-limb. As usual, the Tinker was trying to creep up into a lumpy heap around their legs. “I admit, Vayvay is not easily mistaken for a genius. In fact, I myself asked Angel the same question, how was it possible to be so patient with such an idiot?”

“But Angel did not answer you.”

“Indeed, yes. Angel indicated that communication with humans provided a sufficient base of prior experience.”

Chan glared, and decided not to react. He had noticed a strange phenomenon. S’greela, and even Angel, seemed to be picking up the Tinker’s perverse sense of humor. In fact, they were all beginning to sound more and more like each other. It was harder all the time to tell who made a remark simply from its content, or the way in which it was phrased. Was he starting to sound like the rest of them, too?

Chan thought not. In some ways, he was the outsider of the group. When he had rushed back yesterday to tell them what had happened to him in the tunnels, they had listened quietly enough; but he knew that they rejected what he said, almost without considering it.

That idea was full of disturbing possibilities. Angel insisted that the Construct had not moved from its original putative location, far from them. And Mondrian had told Chan that Nimrod’s powers for mental disturbance were short-range. Close contact would be needed for it to have any effect. So if Chan’s bewildering encounter had not been with Nimrod, there was only one other clear possibility: he was going crazy.

Chan had other evidence for that. After his arrival back at the camp the previous night, he had almost no memory of the rest of the evening. He recalled sitting in a close, compact group, listening to Angel talk to the Coromar. And that was all that he remembered, until he had awakened today under the outspread mantle of the Tinker Composite.

Suppose that fears and confusion were affecting his judgement? Then he had to discover the source of those delusions, before he put the others in danger. And that urgency made him want to proceed too fast with the hunt for Nimrod. Festina lente — hasten slowly. But it was hard to do, when the others were so in favor of rapid action.

This morning they were raring to go. Angel was now sure that the task of stalking Nimrod through Travancore’s vertical forest could be simplified. “There is, as you conjectured, a grid of horizontal tunnels.” Angel had finally emerged from the long dialogue with Vayvay. “It becomes denser and more continuous, down close to the true surface of the planet. But it is not so well maintained as the tunnels higher up. The Coromar look after the high tunnels much better, because they are their primary feeding grounds. However, the lower network will be adequate for our needs. We can use it to move close to Nimrod, and still minimize the chance of our detection.”

“It would be quicker and easier to come straight down from above,” objected S’greela.

“Easier, but not safer,” said Chan. “Nimrod will sense our presence if we try to move straight down through the vegetation. But the surface of the planet may confuse the return signal for the Construct’s sensors. We’ll use the horizontal tunnels. Is Vayvay willing to lead the way?”

“That is not clear.” Angel turned to the Coromar, who was slowly emerging from inside the tent. A few more seconds of squeaks produced a shake of Angel’s topmost fronds, and a human-sounding sigh. “Why even ask? The answer could have been predicted. Vayvay will take us to within a safe distance from Nimrod, provided that we guarantee plenty of food as payment. Vayvay asks, how close to Nimrod do we wish to approach?”

Chan thought about that, as the three others waited impatiently. “I really don’t know. For all I can say — and my experience yesterday supports it — Nimrod could be aware of us all the time. How else do you explain what happened to me down in the shaft?”

There was a non-committal silence, while Chan began to feel annoyed all over again. The others were being diplomatic, but still they didn’t believe him. When he had filed his report on the incident and sent it back to the Q-ship, the three of them had been annoyingly passive. They did not comment on or add to what he had sent — and that was unusual in such an opinionated group.

“All right.” Chan turned again to Angel. “Let’s take the problem from the other end. How close is Vayvay willing to approach to Nimrod?”

Another sequence of bat-squeaks from Angel’s communicator, dipping in and out of Chan’s audible range, led to a reply from the Coromar, and then another longer exchange between the two.

Angel turned at last to the others. “Apologies, for the time taken. The first answer was quickly given, but it was not in terms that are easily translated to your notations. Truly, there is no fixed reply. The answer is a nonlinear equation, a complicated balance of food offered against risks taken. And the distance unit that Vayvay employs is also not a constant. It is measured in browsing-distance-days, and is therefore location-dependent. In oversimplified terms, Vayvay will go as close as we want, provided that we always guarantee sufficient amounts of food.”

“Can’t you negotiate something a bit more specific?”

“That is already done. Primitive in some ways, Vayvay certainty seems to understand the barter principle. For three thousand kilos of synthesized high-protein vegetable matter, Vayvay will take us to within two kilometers of Nimrod’s most likely current position — for which a probability of 0.98 now seems appropriate.”

Angel was still leaving the most difficult decision to Chan. How close to Nimrod dare they go, before they descended to the solid surface of Travancore? Traveling above the vegetation could be done in the aircar, and swiftly, but surface travel would be on foot and slow.

Chan made the decision, probably quicker than he should have. “We’ll go down a shaft one full day’s march from the estimated location of the Morgan Construct. Say, twenty kilometers away from it.”

“The coordinates for such a shaft are already available. But of course,” Angel added, “these coordinates are time-dependent. When would we leave?”

“As soon as feasible. At once, if we can.”

But having made that decision, Chan began to worry about it. He had no faith in his own judgment. All morning he had been feeling feverish and light-headed. Was he actually getting sick? His immune system had been boosted at the beginning of pursuit team training, making it supposedly robust enough to handle any microorganisms on Barchan or Travancore. But that was just theory. Maybe yesterday’s hallucinations and today’s uneasiness were the result of a real physical ailment, nothing to do with Nimrod, nothing to do with mental instability.

Chan had little time for brooding. The aircar had already been recalled from its high, hovering orbit, and arrived within minutes. It took all their efforts to lift Vayvay aboard, but then they were off, heading around the great planetary curve of Travancore. The car skimmed over billowing waves of vegetation rising and falling below them like an endless turbulent sea.

They were at the chosen entry shaft in less than an hour. Before they entered the threatening black eye of the tunnel, S’greela sent the capsule back to orbit. If they returned safely, fine. It would be easy enough to recall it and use it to take them to the Q-ship. If they died …

Chan realized, with gloomy satisfaction, that from the Stellar Group’s point or view everything was safe enough. The capsule s current parking orbit was low, and atmospheric drag would bring it to re-entry and burn-up in only a couple of weeks. Whatever happened, Nimrod would not gain access to the Q-ship, and the Mattin Link that sat within it. Everyone except Vayvay became subdued when they entered the shaft. Chan felt particularly depressed. As they gradually lost the sunlight, his mood sank to match the shadowed gloom of Travancore’s lower forest. The spiraling path seemed to go on forever, down and down and down. The journey took longer than Chan had expected, because Vayvay always wanted to stop and nibble at any promising growth of leaves.

“As we were warned,” said Angel. “Browsing-distance-days.”

At last they persuaded the Coromar to keep going by additional bribes from the stores that they were carrying. The downward pace increased. Finally they came to the end of the vertical shaft. The drop to the surface took place in a close and dripping darkness. It felt to Chan like an irreversible and unwise step when he released his hold and fell lightly to the forest floor.

He was claustrophobic and filled with unnamed dread. The surface of Travancore would be an awful place to die; lightless, silent, stifling. The air pressed in on him like a shroud. He could not get Leah out of his mind. Had her fatal encounter with Nimrod taken place close to here? Had she died only a few kilometers from where they stood?

He could not remember. Somehow he could not bring himself to ask Angel to check the official record.

The floor of the jungle was flat, spongy, and damp. Nothing grew here except the immense boles of the megatrees, each one scores of meters across at the base. Long trailers of creeper depended from the upper levels and hung between the trunks. Faintly phosphorescent, their intertwined filaments hindered the path of any traveler moving on the natural surface.

After a few seconds of squeaking and searching, Vayvay set off across the forest floor, burrowing a way through the tangled creepers. Soon they came to one of the horizontal pathways. Two minutes more, and Vayvay had found the entrance. They walked into an arched structure, shining their lights around them on the orange and brown walls of a primitive roofed chamber.

“Home of the Maricore,” said Angel. “Apparently they do a poor job of maintenance. Vayvay says that we should not expect to meet the Maricore. They are nervous, and will keep out of our way.”

They set off along one of four tunnels that met at the entry chamber. It was only just wide enough for Vayvay, who led the way. The Coromar kept stopping, and not for food. S’greela, walking second, had to prod hard at Vayvay’s bolster-like rear end to start them moving again.

Chan walked last, in a foul mood. When they met Nimrod, they had to act at once to disable or destroy the Construct. He had warned the others. This time there could be none of the do-as-you-please behavior that had somehow worked on Barchan. They had all agreed — but how could he be sure that Shikari and Angel and S’greela would follow any instructions when the critical moment came?

It was a time for fears, memories, and introspection. No one spoke. Chan, hot and sweating, looked around him and observed their surroundings with the floating, feverish intensity of a bad nightmare. It was hard to plod along across soggy, decaying leaves and molds, and realize that only five kilometers away Travancore’s sun was still illuminating the emerald green grottoes of the upper forest. If the descent had seemed long, this march through the broken pathway on the surface was interminable.

More than three hours passed before Vayvay halted again, and finally. No amount of prodding would persuade the Coromar to move. They were at a branch point in the surface network, with enough room for Angel to glide forward and stand alongside Vayvay. There was a short conversation. To Chan, even the ultrasonics sounded damped and muffled by their dank surroundings.

“Vayvay will go no farther,” said Angel. “Not even for abundant food. We are within two kilometers of Nimrod’s presumed location. Vayvay says, if we continue along the broader branch here, and ignore any narrow side branches, we will come to the location that we specified.”

“What will Vayvay do now?”

“If we desire the Coromar to do so, it will wait here — with the supplies.”

“Say that he is to wait here for two days, if Vayvay knows what a day is,” said Chan. “If we are not back by then, everything is his.”

“Vayvay is not he,” corrected Angel. “But a Coromar possesses a sense of time. The message will be delivered.” While that was being done, Chan insisted on a final check of equipment. Each team member carried weapons, but after the training on Barchan, Chan was sure that for Angel and Shikari it was a total waste of effort. It took forever for each of them to train and fire. He wondered again about the way that pursuit teams were being used by the Anabasis. Now that he had met Brachis and Mondrian, it seemed more in keeping with their natures to lob a bomb in from orbit. They might blow away a few cubic miles of Travancore along with the Morgan Construct, but it would be a no-risk operation.

He suspected that they had thought about it long ago — and known it would be vetoed in horror by the rest of the Stellar Group.

The most dangerous time was approaching. Chan moved to lead the way. S’greela came next, holding a pencil light high above Chan to cast a narrow, bobbing beam along the roofed corridor. Behind them Vayvay gave a squeak of farewell, answered by Angel, and then everything was silent. The loudest sound in the tunnel was Chan s breathing, and the whispering flutter of the Tinker’s many wings.

Earlier progress had been glacier slow. Now they seemed to be rushing forward. Soon they had less than one kilometer to go. Chan found himself staring hard at the darkness, trying somehow to see beyond the farthest point illuminated by S’greela’s ghostly light beam. There was nothing. Nothing but silent walls of orange-brown, stretching out forever in front of them.

And then, suddenly, it ended. The rounded tunnel walls stopped. S’greela’s light beam met a tangled mess of creeper, ten feet above the ground. Below that, nothing. The group moved forward cautiously to stand on an open area of jungle floor.

According to Angel, Nimrod should be less than fifty meters ahead. So what now?

Before Chan could give any command, three things happened at once. An insane burst of metallic clicking came from Angel’s communicator, and rose to a supersonic scream of activity that hurt Chan’s ears. Shikari burst apart, filling the air in the clearing with a whirling swarm of components. At the same moment S’greela’s light jerked high into the air, then abruptly went out.

Chan froze. Angel went suddenly silent. The darkness around them was absolute. Chan turned to move closer to the others. Before he could take a step he was gripped tightly around the waist and whipped off his feet. Something immensely strong and wiry spun him dizzily end-over-end, then violently threw him, outward and upward.

He flew on for ages. Chan curled into a ball and protected his skull with his arms. At any moment he might smash into one of the huge and solid tree trunks. The impact would be fatal at this speed.

The feared collision never came. Instead his wild flight was ended by a soft material that stretched and stretched to absorb his momentum. He was slowed to a halt, then dropped headfirst. He prepared for collision with the spongy jungle surface, but that too never came. Instead he found himself suspended in mid-air, wriggling in the restraining hold of a rubbery, fine-meshed net.

Chan had never felt so helpless. He had lost his weapon. He could not see. The net offered no resistance, nothing tangible to struggle against. Even if somehow he were able to escape from its hold, he would have no idea what to do next.

That problem was solved in a moment. The whole net was suddenly moving, carrying him along at high speed in a horizontal direction. Something big was clearing the way in front of him. He could hear the thresh of its rapid passage through soft, hanging creepers.

It was another short trip. Within a minute they stopped, and Chan was lowered gently to the ground. The net loosened and rolled him out of it. He came to rest on the fibrous damp floor of the forest, facedown and breathing in the stale-sweet aroma of mold.

He sat up, dizzy and still in darkness. It was a few more seconds before he was able to clamber to his feet and take a few hesitant steps forward. He held his arms out in front of him. His groping fingers finally met the furry bole of one of the giant megatrees. It was at least something familiar. He moved forward gratefully to rest against it. After a few seconds he turned, sat down, and leaned his back on the trunk.

What could he do now? And where were the other team members?

A faint whisper of movement came from in front of him. Something was there, something drifting towards him and almost silent on the spongy surface. Chan felt a new horror. A warm, dry grip closed on his outstretched hands and secured his wrists. He struggled, and tried to force his way to his feet. It was impossible. More fastenings came to curl around his ankles and waist. They pulled him, gently but irresistibly, until he was lying flat on his back on the soft carpet of the jungle. Thick, velvety bonds pinioned him there, holding him securely at wrist and ankles.

He waited. And finally came the event that told him he was doomed. Either Nimrod had taken him, or he had crossed the border into total madness.

“Chan,” whispered a soft voice, no more than a couple of feet away from his face. “Ah, my Chan.”

It was a voice that he knew well, a voice that he had known forever. It was the unmistakable voice of Leah Rainbow.