Mindbridge (5 page)

Tania walked around the glittering floater, inspecting it. “I don’t know. The nozzles look clear.” It was powered by superheated steam from a fusion mirror; one main jet and eight steering ports. “But I don’t have any idea how critical it is. Maybe they could be packed full of mud and still work. Just blast clear.”

“Or a small obstruction could start an eddy in the exhaust plasma,” Ch’ing said. “Shaking the floater to pieces in one instant.”

“Does anybody know for sure?”

Nobody did. “One thing sure,” Jacque said. “I want to be someplace else when we start it up. If it goes it’ll make a hole big enough to-“

“Oh, the mirror will not blow up,” Ch’ing said. “It might break up, but not explode. It has safeguards.”

“Okay, you stay here and watch the goddam thing. I’m going to-“

“Look, it’s not worth arguing about-“

“Who’s arguing?”

“Turn down the volume, Jacque!”

Tania continued. “We have to make a preliminary ground survey, anyhow. When we get a few kilometers away, I’ll call the floater. If it explodes, we give Jacque a medal. If it homes in, we give Ch’ing a medal.”

For the ground survey, the five of them functioned simply as specimen collectors. There was a little box on the front of the GPEM suits that automatically evaluated a specimen as to appearance, density, tensile strength, crystal structure if any, melting and boiling points, chemical composition, presence of microorganisms, and so forth. The data were automatically transmitted to the personnel recorder on Tania’s suit.

(The recorder also etched on its data crystals a running record of everybody’s body temperature, blood pressure and chemistry, brain waves, respiration, urine and stool analysis, conductivity of skin and mucous membranes, Kirlian field, and hat size. This was not to protect their health-the nearest medical treatment was fourteen light-years away-but to record what had happened in case they were suddenly to die. Which, though the recruiting brochures failed to mention it, was the way most Tamers retired.)

They synchronized their compasses, inertial rather than magnetic, then spread out in a hundred-meter line, east and west, and started plodding north. Anything that looked interesting they picked up and put in the analysis box. Every hundred or so steps they tossed in a handful of dirt or, more often, mud. In this way they formed a fairly complete profile of the geologic and biological properties of a strip of Groom-bridge one-tenth of a kilometer wide by five long. It wasn’t too impressive in the biological department: various kinds of gray plants that were similar enough to known forms not to be exciting, and dissimilar enough from earth plants to cause geoformy headaches.

After about five kilometers, they found a river. The current was sluggish and the water held a fine suspension of light-colored mud. It looked like dirty milk. Along the bank was a jumble of sticky gossamer, pinkish, that turned out to be a form of plant life.

The other side of the river was lost in the fog; it must have been well over a hundred meters away. “Good time to call the floater,” Tania said. One thing you couldn’t do in a GPEM suit was swim.

A few seconds later she said, “Should be here any-“ and the noise of the explosion and the shock wave hit them at the same time. Jacque saw the milky water flying by under his feet-the stabilizer working overtime, buzzing loudly, to keep him upright-and then he touched the surface and skied backwards for a short distance before the water closed over him.

“See, Ch’ing?” he shouted. “What the fuck did I tell you?”

“What?” Ch’ing said. He had forgotten their difference of opinion about the floater. “What you say, please?”

“You, uh, never mind.” Jacque realized he’d been brooding, like a stubborn boy. And that sneaking spy tapping his bloodstream, ticking off hormones, recording every second of anger and, now, embarrassment.

“Is everybody underwater?” Tania said. There was a jumble of responses. “Wait. Is anybody not underwater?” Everybody was. “Well, let’s take a sample of the water and go back.”

“God. . . damned sample box is under the mud,” Jacque grumbled.

“Then take a sample of the mud,” someone said. Jacque did, tight-lipped, then turned on his headlamp and started working his way due south. He couldn’t see anything, but it was better to move through bright opaque soup than blackness.

His head broke out of the water and he waited for the lenses to clear. Ch’ing’s voice crackled in his ear-plugs, excited for once:

“I think I have found an animal.”

“An animal? How big?”

“Not very big. Fist-sized. It swam in front of me and I caught it.” He laughed. “I thought it was a plant, but it wiggles.”

Some plants wiggle, Jacque thought. Thanotropism.

Ch’ing surfaced a few meters away, the creature gently cradled in both hands. It looked like a sea urchin, or some such creature, black and spiny. Rippling.

The two of them were on the bank before any of the others came out. “Can I see it, Ch’ing?”

“Of course. Just be careful.”

“I’ll be careful.” Ch’ing handed it to him and there was perhaps one-twentieth of a second when the sensors in both of their suits’ “hands” were simultaneously in contact with the animal. During that instant, they heard:

 
CH’ING
                       
JACQUE

 
“-goddam Chinaman
            
“-everywhere life even

 
thinks I’ll break his toy,
   
here floating in filth

 
serve him right, if I
        
in sterile filth

 
crush, like in diving,
       
like crush? and feed,

 
crush and feed to the-“
      
is life, yes.”

“What?” He almost did drop it.

“Did you say something, please?”

“Hmn.” He turned the animal over in his hands. In visible light it was shiny purple, and what had looked like spines were neither stiff nor sharp. They waved with an eery grace that did not suggest panic. “Cilia,” Jacque said. “Some kind of cilia. It probably swims with them.”

“Perhaps,” Ch’ing said. “It does not seem very practical, for locomotion.”

“Maybe it’s not actually a water animal. It doesn’t seem to mind being out of the water.”

“You may be right.” He took the creature back and when they touched they heard:

 
CH’ING
                       
JACQUE

 
“-but it could be dying
      
“-but maybe it dies

 
now wiggling like this,
      
this way, graceful

 
like the caterpillar in
      
slow poem of death like

 
the fire,
                    
caterpillar? wiggle in

 
Mum said, Jacque, you
        
fire? Bad picture,

 
get-are you reading my
       
splitting, yes, I see

 
mind, you are my God
         
your thoughts and-“

reading my mind-“

They stared at each other.

The Groombridge “bridge”:

A Preliminary Statistical Analysis

30 Aug 51

One remarkable property of the ESP-inducing creature Tania Jeeves’s team brought back from Groom-bridge 1618 is that the creature “tunes” itself to individuals. It seems to be most sensitive, or most efficient, with the first person who comes into contact with it, and less sensitive with each subsequent contact.

Further, the sensitivity does not seem to decrease with time.

The effect seems to be the same whether the subject contacts the animal on Groombridge itself, or on Earth. The effect seems to pass through the tactile sensors of the General Purpose Exploration Module without attenuation.

Statistical analysis was done with a standard Rhine test: a deck of fifty cards, ten each of five easily visualized symbols. Each subject “read” the deck ten times through, on three different occasions. The statistical expectation of correct answers, out of 500 trials, would be 100. As the following table shows, the results were compelling:

26 August
    
27 August
  
28 August

Subject
partner
    
Trial
partner
    
Trial
partner
    
Trial
Control

1. Lefavre
         
2
    
397
  
3
    
412
  
7
    
388
  
98

2. Wachal
          
1
    
295
  
3
    
302
  
8
    
270
  
113

3. Jeeves
          
1
    
243
  
2
    
257
  
7
    
219
  
104

4. Herrick
         
1
    
207
  
3
    
228
  
8
    
195
  
133

5. Simone
          
1
    
182
  
2
    
189
  
7
    
170
  
90

6. Chandler1
       
161
  
3
    
167
  
8
    
156
  
105

7. Tobias
          
1
    
143
  
2
    
135
  
8
    
140
  
76

8. Fong
1
          
131
  
3
    
135
  
7
    
119
  
115

The control figure is the individual’s score without the Groombridge “bridge,” administered by Dr. Chandler or Dr. Fong.

Unfortunately the Tamer who first contacted the bridge (Tamer 1 Hsi Ch’ing) did not survive the mission. The surviving subjects are of the opinion that Ch’ing would have consistently scored 500, as he could literally read their thoughts, word for word.

There seems to be little or no relation between Rhine scores and the identity of the passive partner, the “reader.” Lefavre says that he occasionally notices a feedback condition with Wachal: in reading her mind he often “hears” his own thoughts, as interpreted by Wachal. This effect was even stronger with Ch’ing, but Lefavre hasn’t noticed it with any of the other Tamers.

Further testing, some of it in a more subjective vein, is being done, mostly on subjects Lefavre and Wachal.

This committee recommends most strongly that another mission be translated to Groombridge 1618, as soon as possible and for as long as possible.

(signed)

Lewis Chandler, Ph.D.

For the Mathematics Committee

General Research Group

AED Colorado Springs

Carol Wachal came out of the muddy water to an unusual sight: Jacque and Ch’ing holding hands.

“What about this animal, Ch’ing. . .” Neither man said anything as she approached them. Then Ch’ing took her hand and gave her the animal, holding on:

 
CH’ING
                       
CAROL

 
“-what’s the big
             
“Mind to mind

 
mystery, why don’t
           
yes. . . hear

 
they? Funny
                  
thoughts.

 
little thing, what is...
     
Hear

 
Ch’ing? Is that you?
         
thoughts.

 
Are we really talking to
     
Yes.”

each other like this?”

“Telepathy,” Jacque said. “Pure and simple. Let’s try it three ways.” He reached out and also touched the creature.

Nothing.

Ch’ing withdrew:

 
JACQUE
                       
CAROL