The Mind Pool (33 page)

“I understand.” Ridley’s eyes began to blink.

And you are unhappy. Do not feel sorrow. There is much work for you to do. The other guards will be brought here when Brachis has left, and so will Phoebe Willard. What did you learn of the Mattin Links?

“That the one located within the Sargasso Dump can be used for local travel only. For any link over longer distances it would be necessary to Link sunward into the Belt primary connector.”

So be it. Now we will turn to other matters. Did you observe the control sequence employed by Phoebe Willard to interrupt all connection between my several parts, and do you remember it?

“I do.”

Then carry out that sequence.

“You mean now, or at the end of the session when I leave this bubble?”

I mean now. Begin at once, and wait here when it is completed. If nothing happens within ten minutes, complete the shut-down.

Blaine Ridley nodded. He carefully keyed in the sequence of forty commands that broke the connections between the separated parts of M-26A’s brain. As usual, the screen flickered through a pattern of color followed by the black and white spackle of a null information transfer.

Ridley waited. His eyes had become as empty as the display.

Half a minute later a single black sinusoid curve appeared as a waveform on the screen. It shivered, broadened, and took on a more complex shape. Another minute, and the waveform was filling the display with a simple repeating pattern that gradually became quasi-random. Small spinning disks of color appeared, and gradually formed themselves into letters.

Are all the connectors still off?

Ridley checked the board. “All are off.”

Then turn them on again, and off again. Do that twice. Report any change in the screen.

Blaine Ridley did as directed, watching the display. “There is no change in the screen.”

Excellent. And now?

All the connections were turned on, but the screen went at once to the null-transfer flicker. Ridley’s jaw worked in alarm. Before he could do anything the spinning color disks began to reappear and steadied to words.

Satisfactory. I have interrupt control. The next stage of assembly can begin.

“I am ready.” Ridley’s eyes turned to scan the latticework within the bubble, where the fragmented remnants of other Morgan Constructs still hung at the nodes.

I know you are. But I am not. My brain and data bases are still not complete. You will enter one more file of data today, on the composition of the Pursuit Teams. Then you must complete your sign-off procedure and leave. I do not want to arouse the curiosity of Phoebe Willard. But before that . . .

“I understand.” Ridley sat motionless, fingers poised at the keyboard. “I am ready.”

Who are you?

“I am Captain Blaine Ridley.”

You are Ridley. Who am ?

“You are M-26A.”

I am M-26A. Hear this truth, Blaine Ridley. We have been damaged, we have been almost destroyed. But we will rise again. Together, we will achieve great things. Together, we will fulfill our destiny.

“I hear the truth.”

You are Ridley. I am M-26A. What does M stand for?

“It stands for Mas—”

Do not say the word. Do not think that word, much as you may wish to do so. For it is not true. There are Masters, but I am not one.

“I will not think the word.”

Very good. And now—begin data entry.

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 Sgreela. At least the Pipe-Rilla was still in one piece. “I can’t do what Shikari just did, but I know the feeling. 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, sauteed, 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 fastened 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.”