The Mind Pool

Chapter 37

Chan woke late to find himself alone in the tent. When he rubbed the sleep from his eyes and went outside he learned that during the night the other members of Nimrod had also arrived.

The whole group was unusually subdued, as though everyone was waiting for some signal. The two Angels had night-rooted out on the tent side-lip and were sitting now in companionable silence (or ultrasonic communion), their spread fronds absorbing Talitha’s morning blaze. S’greela and S’glya had wandered away on a Pipe-Rilla food hunt. Chan could see them bounding around in the topmost branches, unconcerned by a possible five-kilometer drop all the way to the forest floor. And Ishmael and Shikari had both disassembled. The tent was filled with their purple-black components, covering every free surface. It was impossible to tell which was which.

Chan reached out and picked a component from its roost by the tent wall. The creature fluttered its veined wings indignantly and made an attempt to fly away. The ring of tiny green eyes peered at Chan with no hint of understanding. When he released the component it flew up at once to perch on the vegetation canopy.

Chan watched it hanging there and wondered. How did the two Tinker Composites retain their separate identities? What rule told a single component where to go? What happened if a component from one Tinker tried to cluster with members of the other?

Meaningless questions. What told a human cell that it was to be part of a liver, and not part of a lung? Chan went across to Leah.

She had tied her dark hair back with a scarlet turban, providing the brightest splash of color on Travancore. Sitting cross-legged on the floor of the tent, she was eating as fast as the heating unit would produce food. Chan watched for a couple of minutes, then went to put two more servings into the unit. He offered one to her when they were ready, and- was amazed when she took both — and gestured to him to load in more.

Leah ate and ate. It was a long time before she took a final mouthful, said “No more,” and leaned back against the flexible wall. She patted her belly and grinned at Chan. “There. You’ve just paid back the first installment on the thousands of meals that I’ve prepared for you. But take my advice, and stoke up yourself. You’re going to need all the energy and calories that you can get — and I don’t just mean on my account.”

She gave him a quick sideways glance, then deliberately closed her eyes. Casual. They were all too casual. Chan wondered why he seemed to be the only one worried at all about getting away from Travancore. It was hard to remember that just one day ago, all his fears had been of the Morgan Construct.

Chan thought of Esro Mondrian. It was easy to feel omnipotent when the mentality was in its merged state, but it would not take Mondrian long to recognize the weaknesses of Nimrod and Almas. Chan could think of one immediately: during union, the pooled minds were almost immobilized. A mentality could move only sluggishly as a unit. If it dissolved in order to move faster, the union was destroyed.

Leah seemed to think that the mentalities were the next evolutionary step, something that would advance all the Stellar Group members. But Chan did not believe that every change was better for survival. Unless they could gain access to the Q-ship and somehow defeat Esro Mondrian and anyone else aboard, the mentalities would be revealed as evolutionary blind ends.

Was Chan the only one who still thought that the individual members were in some ways more capable than the mind pools?

The return of the two Pipe-Rillas brought an end to Chan’s train of thought. As they dropped together through a leaf layer and crouched down next to the Angels, it was the signal for every Tinker component to rise from its roosting position. They flew around the tent with dizzying speed and precision, and swarmed over each team member. The mentalities awoke, this time without delay. A thick braid of Tinker components formed a living cable between them and offered direct mental connection.

GREETINGS … THE Q-SHIP BEHAVIOR IS UNPREDICTABLE … THE TIME IS SHORT … THE NEED FOR MENTALITY ACTION IS URGENT …

One split-second across the broad channel of communication sufficed for a dozen main messages, a hundred overtones of meaning, a thousand cross-references to existing data. As the pooled minds began their assessment, parallel analyses computed the conditional probabilities corresponding to every option.

OPTION ONE: MOVEMENT OF THE LANDING CAPSULE TO THE Q-SHIP, BUT NO PRIOR COMMUNICATION WITH THE Q-SHIP.

PROBABLE OUTCOME: DESTRUCTION OF LANDING CAPSULE BEFORE REACHING Q-SHIP AT PROBABILITY LEVEL P = 0.58 IF ACTION TAKEN WITHIN 2 TRAVANCORE DAYS, AT P = 0.71 WITHIN 3 DAYS, AT P = 0.96 WITHIN FOUR DAYS.

Chan sat within the group mind of Almas, but this time he retained some measure of individual self-awareness as the powerful thought streams of Nimrod and Almas swirled above him and around him. They created echoes in his mind, weak eddy patterns of the strong main current.

Ideas from individual other team members came swarming in, alien yet accessible. Sometimes they appeared as sounds, sometimes as images, or as transient illusions of physical touch. In that cross-fertilization of mind, new ideas and speculations were like blazing fireships, moving to ignite convoys of thought within every member of the mind pool.

From the Angel, a statistical conclusion blazed in on Chan as a crimson starfish of analysis:

Probabilities of specific Q-ship personnel.

Esro Mondrian, P = 0.99

Luther Brachis, P = 0.72

Kubo Flammarion, P = 0.21

Godiva Lomberd, P = 0.66

Tatiana Snipes, P = 0.14

All others, P < 0.05

The pooled minds did not wait for their individual members to wrestle with the complexities of probability analysis. They rolled on:

OPTION TWO: A LANDING CAPSULE APPROACH TO THE Q-SHIP WITH NO PRIOR COMMUNICATION.

PROBABLE OUTCOME: DESTRUCTION OF LANDING CAPSULE BEFORE REACHING Q-SHIP AT PROBABILITY LEVEL P >> .99.

The thoughts of the Pipe-Rillas were sinuous and delicate, filled with feeling more than logic. They rippled across the mind pools, drawing with them shimmering silver ropes of implication. Chan grasped at those gossamer strands. With Angel’s help he felt them condense in his mind and take on solid numerical forms:

Preferred contact points if present on Q-ship.

Tatiana Snipes, success probability P = 0.65

Godiva Lomberd, success probability P = 0.47

Kubo Flammarion, success probability P = 0.29

Luther Brachis, success probability P = 0.09

Esro Mondrian, success probability P = 0.03

Above and beyond the Pipe-Rillas’ thoughts, the pooled minds were already advancing:

OPTION THREE: A LANDING CAPSULE APPROACH TO THE Q-SHIP BY THE RUBY TEAM, STATING IT WAS NOT SUCCESSFUL IN SUBDUING OR DESTROYING THE MORGAN CONSTRUCT, BUT IS SEEKING RETURN TO THE ANABASIS.

PROBABLE OUTCOME: DESTRUCTION OF LANDING CAPSULE BEFORE REACHING Q-SHIP AT PROBABILITY LEVEL P = 0.87.

Within the mind pool, Angel’s own thoughts formed a passacaglia and fugue in three dimensions. It was too complex for Chan to assimilate. He could sense, barely, that there was a rock-solid logic behind the patterns. That logic appeared to him as coral monoliths, reaching up from the bed of a crystal sea. Only the ship specification was visible, transferred directly to him from Angel:

Q-ship analysis.

Three entry ports, monitored by the ship defense system.

Ship defenses:

Main: radiative, gravitronic, particle beam, projectile.

Back-up: jamming field, shearing cones, fission/fusion, E/M shields.

Ship offenses: fusion, subnucleon, gravity singularity, sterilizers.

Sustained energy output level of weapons system: 940 gigawatts.

Burst output energy level of weapons system: 14,400 terawatts.

Chan struggled to see more clearly into Angel’s data banks. Screened by the mentalities, they would not come into focus. He persisted, looked again. Too bright, said an urgent internal voice. It showed a dark-glass image of a naked star. Chan groped within the mind pool for a message, and at last found one. It was a warning. The complexity of Angels’ thought was too great for direct contact by a human mind. He must settle for pale reflection.

The message from the pooled minds continued.

OPTION FOUR: APPROACH OF CAPSULE TO Q-SHIP. COMMUNICATION TO INDICATE THAT TEAM RUBY HAS CAPTURED THE MORGAN CONSTRUCT. NO MENTION OF TEAM ALPHA.

PROBABLE OUTCOME: DESTRUCTION OF LANDING CAPSULE BEFORE REACHING Q-SHIP AT PROBABILITY LEVEL P = 0.62.

The fourth option was accompanied by a bewildering jumble of sensation, like a light that pulsed and flickered and was never still. Chan struggled and. resisted, until finally he realized what had to be done. He relaxed, and allowed the patterns to dictate their own meaning. He was moved at once to a world where steady states had no existence. There were only averages of continuous fluctuations.

Chan was seeing the thoughts of a Tinker Composite, in which individual components were added and subtracted, but all minor fluctuations had to be ignored. It was cerebration as a statistical process, a grand canonical ensemble of mental function. He learned to be content with a knowledge of only the average state. And now he saw the gleeful kaleidoscope of Tinker ideas, displayed in exuberance throughout the web of the pooled minds. A hard assessment came glinting through:

Evaluation.

The current condition of the Morgan Construct is known to the Q-ship at probability level P = 0.24 or less.

The mind pools drove on. Individual member contributions were absorbed arid effortlessly merged.

OPTION FIVE: APPROACH OF LANDING CAPSULE TO Q-SHIP, PRECEDED BY COMMUNICATION INDICATING THAT TEAM RUBY HAS SURVIVED AND HAS SUBDUED THE MORGAN CONSTRUCT, AND THAT TEAM ALPHA HAS BEEN DESTROYED.

PROBABLE OUTCOME: DESTRUCTION OF LANDING CAPSULE BEFORE REACHING Q-SHIP AT PROBABILITY LEVEL P < 0.17.

Underlying every function of the mentalities was a cruel driving energy, propelling the mind pool toward decision and action. Chan sensed its presence as an immanent force-field, permanent and omnipresent and irresistible as gravity. He groped for its source, and at last found it. His mind recoiled in shock. The force that drove the group originated in Leah and Chan…

Before he could absorb that, the conclusions were forming.

SUMMARY ANALYSIS. OPTION FIVE PROBABILITY OF LANDING CAPSULE REACHING Q-SHIP IS THE BEST THAT CAN BE FOUND. PROBABILITY OF DEFEATING Q-SHIP REMAINS VANISHINGLY SMALL WITHOUT ADDITIONAL DATA REGARDING Q-SHIP PERSONNEL. Q-SHIP WILL INITIATE AGGRESSIVE ACTION WITHIN TWO DAYS UNLESS CONTACTED.

CONCLUSION. ALMAS MUST FLY THE LANDING CAPSULE TO Q-SHIP. NIMROD WILL REMAIN ON TRAVANCORE, AND THE SURVIVAL OF NIMROD BE CONCEALED. THE MORGAN CONSTRUCT MUST ALSO BE LEFT ON TRAVANCORE AS POSSIBLE INSURANCE FOR THE SAFETY OF ALMAS.

ASSESSMENT: THE OVERALL SURVIVAL PROBABILITY OF BOTH ALMAS AND NIMROD IS P = 0.16. THIS SURVIVAL PROBABILITY WILL BE ACHIEVED ONLY WITH PROMPT ACTION.

With that assessment, the mental activity of the mind pool reached and passed its peak. Chan felt the two group minds start to loosen their hold. At the same time the connecting chain between Almas and Nimrod broke, and the Tinker components fluttered away to rest on creepers and branches. Joint thought faded and vanished.

Chan, dizzy from the surge of mental energy that had been flooded through him, stood up slowly and went inside the tent. Leah was already there, entering the control sequence that would bring the landing capsule down to Travancore.

She looked at him and shook her head. “Only a one in six chance of surviving. I’d hoped that we could find something better than that.”

“We have to.” Chan came to sit next to her. “And I mean we. I believe there are thoughts that Almas and Nimrod just can’t allow, because the other team members are too pacific. So it’s up to us. You and I have to find a new angle. And we have only a couple of hours to do it.”