The Mind Pool (50 page)

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.”

Chapter 38

Kubo Flammarion’s dedication to Esro Mondrian went beyond the requirements of his job. When Mondrian told him that the two of them would be going to Travancore, he dreaded the prospect. Fifty-six lightyears away from Sol; fifty-six lightyears away from Ceres; most of all, fifty-six lightyears away from all Paradox supplies.

But he had not argued.

When the change came, and Mondrian announced that he, Luther Brachis and Godiva Lomberd would go to the Q-ship around Travancore, while Flammarion would stay at Anabasis Headquarters, Kubo had been outwardly calm. But secretly he was overjoyed. His nightmare had been avoided.

Now he wished he were at Travancore—or
anywhere
far from Ceres. At least he would then have been spared the torment of seeing Earth on the display, no more than a quick Link away. If he sneaked away from his post, just for a few hours, he could go down to Earth’s surface, on into the basement warrens, take his Paradox fix, and be back again almost before anyone knew he had gone . . .

Except that he had been ordered, very directly by Esro Mondrian, not to leave the control room of Anabasis Headquarters. As long as the Construct was at large, and the Q-ship circled the planet of its refuge, Flammarion must guard his Headquarters’ post around the clock. He had to watch for any sign that something—something unfamiliar, something unauthorized, perhaps something monstrous—was trying to Link in to the solar system from Travancore. If that happened, he had to call on every security system shield to stop it.

Late in the evening he sat alone at his desk with the displays all around him, stared at the one screen showing Terra, and felt every beat of his heart. Each pulse flared withdrawal-symptom pain through him like a bad toothache, like hot spikes thrust into his open eyes, like fire along his spine, like electric drills grinding into his scurvy skull.

The image of Earth seemed more welcoming every minute. That the day would have come, when he yearned to be on Madworld! He knew better than to blame King Bester as the agent for his torment. It was not his first addiction; merely his worst one.

The abrupt appearance of Phoebe Willard at Anabasis Headquarters was almost relief, even though she seemed furious about something.

“What are you guys
doing
? You’re screwing up all the communications.” She was not allowed into headquarters, strictly speaking—no one was—but Flammarion had known her for a long time. He did not think of asking her to leave when he slowly turned his head in her direction, and felt the needles of flame run up the tendons of his neck and into his ears.

“We’re not touching communications,” he said hoarsely, “except if anybody wants to Link in or out to Travancore, I mean. But it’s all doing fine.” He was checking the board as he spoke. What he said was true. Nothing showed abnormal in any way.

“You certainly
are
affecting the network, whether you know it or not. According to the network controller, the Anabasis has an override on all communications to anywhere.”

“We do. But we’re not imposing it.”

“Then explain this. Move out of the way, and give me an access node.” Phoebe came to his side—she did not, thank God, touch him—and started banging in values on the board. “This is a direct call to the Sargasso Dump. Now watch what happens.”

The connection should have been instantaneous. Instead the access code blinked off for a second and then came back with the message:
No Destination.

“You’ve called an invalid network end point.”

“Rubbish. It’s the same one I’ve used over and over in the past to call to and from Sargasso. It’s your fault, you and the Anabasis. When you put in the circuit control on certain destinations, you must have messed up others.”

“Didn’t.” Flammarion made the mistake of shaking his head, and felt as if it would fall off his shoulders. “Enter the Sargasso access codes, and I’ll display that part of the net for you.”

“Done.”

She tapped her foot impatiently as one of the screens lit steadily with a branching multi-colored tracery of lines and nodes. It made Flammarion dizzy to look at it, but he could see one thing clearly: nothing went to the access code that Phoebe Willard had defined. He peered and puzzled, and checked for himself. Sure enough, the Sargasso Dump was not in the net. Somehow, the communications unit there did not exist. He stared and muttered, while Phoebe set to work to map the network onto the general geometry of the solar system.

Before she was half-done, a more urgent signal forced itself to Flammarion’s attention. Behind him, the steady beep of an anomalous situation began to sound. He turned and saw that the biggest display, the one that showed every Link access point and every major energy source in the solar system, was alive. It was providing warning of a coming energy overload. The Vulcan Nexus was already approaching power supply capacity, and the big reserve kernels of the outer system were coming online. The Link points themselves had already been ringed in electric blue.

Panic pumped adrenaline into Kubo, strong enough to overcome even Paradox withdrawal. He hit the emergency connect line to Dougal MacDougal’s office. Late though it was, Lotos Sheldrake answered at once.

“It’s happening.” Flammarion did not need to say what. “Get down here as soon as you can.”

Lotos nodded and vanished, while he turned back to the display.

“What is it?” cried Phoebe. She had caught the new and more urgent tension.

“Something’s building up an energy demand—a big one. The sort of overload that you only get for a major Link transfer.” Kubo gestured at the board, where the power drain was rising rapidly. “Something real big, across lots of distance. But where the devil is it?”

“What do you mean,
it
?”

“The Mattin Link. The access point that’s suckin’ out all the energy! It ought to show on the display.”

The sound signal all around them moved to a higher pitch, a signal of a new overload level.

“Where is it?” Flammarion’s head was spinning. “All the Link points still show as blue rings—but the one that’s pulling the power ought to show
orange.
It’s not there!”

Phoebe stared. The big screen showed not a spot of orange. He
had
to be wrong. But although Kubo Flammarion had many faults, this sort of inaccuracy was not usually one of them.

There was a clatter of built-up heels on the hard floor. Lotos Sheldrake came hurrying in. She looked as neat as Kubo was scruffy.

He turned his head. “It’s not there, Lotos. That means it must be coming from
outside.
It has to be something coming from the Q-ship—and we have to shield against it.”

“Calm down, Captain.” Lotos slowed her pace as she approached the control board. She leaned back and surveyed its complexity. “Overload on the way, no doubt about that. Enough to shunt lots of mass, over lots of lightyears. But where’s the draw point?”

“Travancore! It has to be. The damned Construct, it must have learned the Q-ship Link access codes. It’s coming! Where’s Ambassador MacDougal?”

“Asleep. Be thankful for small mercies.” Lotos was at the input unit and busy with her own inquiry there. “Captain Flammarion, I don’t know what’s happening, but I know what’s
not
happening. This energy drain isn’t coming from the Q-ship.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because that ship has its own power kernel. You know how much energy a Q-ship has to be able to generate. Enough to destroy a solar system. If anyone or anything was trying to Link in from Travancore, there’s ample power to do it right there. It’s more likely—Great Mother of God, look at that!”

Lotos was finally losing her calm. The energy for a Link transfer was normally an impulse, a single moment of giant power drain. But all around them in the Anabasis control room, the lights were fading. Something was calling on huge power resources, not for a split-second but for minutes. A Link had been opened, and it was being
held
open. All over the solar system, heating and lighting systems would be fading and failing.

The lights dimmed further. In the apocalyptic gloom of the control room, Lotos at last completed her own data request. With no indication of an active Link access point in the system, she had set up her own program to start from the energy supply points, and track where it was being sent.

“This is crazy. The power is going
nowhere.
” She was staring at the general 3-D plan of the solar system. All the supply vectors converged to a single point—but not to any place showing the blue circle of a Mattin Link unit. “There’s nothing there.”

It was Phoebe Willard’s turn to cry out. “There is, there is!” She pointed to the system map that she had been creating, comparing it with Lotos Sheldrake’s display. “That’s
my
people—the Sargasso Dump. What are they sending into the Dump?”

“Not a thing. Except energy.” Lotos Sheldrake was still at the console. “It’s something Linking
out
—and a long way out. Over fifty lightyears for a guess—maybe all the way to the Perimeter.”

“To Travancore?” croaked Flammarion.

“Not to Travancore. Just as far, but in a different direction. And the transfer is still going on!”

“But it
can’t
be.” Flammarion’s adrenalin level had been fading with the lights, and with it all the pain was flooding back in on him. He sat bowed-headed, in a darkness lit only by the computer displays with their own emergency power systems.

“It can’t be, Lotos,” he mumbled. “There’s no stellar Link point in the Sargasso Dump. There isn’t now—and there never has been.”

Chapter 39

The ascent was anything but comforting. Even from far away, the size of the Q-ship was overwhelming. Chan stared up to the enormous ellipsoidal mass, and then around him at the puny landing capsule.

The contrast was alarming, but it was not surprising. A Q-ship was designed for quarantine. It must be able to bottle up the inhabitants of full-sized space colonies, or even whole planets—populations who had their own weapons, and as often as not did not want to cooperate. Each quarantine ship was shielded and armored, bristling with offensive and defensive weapons. Even ignoring the mass of their power kernels, they were million-ton behemoths.

They had to be. In extreme cases, a Q-ship might be called on to purge an entire world. That extreme had never yet been necessary, but there had been close calls. The discovery of a natural organism, a native brain-burrowing
gnathostome
affecting all the inhabitants of Pentecost and causing their planet-wide blood-lust, had been made only at the eleventh hour. A Q-ship had been in position, ready to carry out planetary sterilization.

And the landing capsule? Chan stared around him at the flimsy, thin-walled shell, vulnerable even to a mild stellar flare. A Q-ship could vaporize it with an accidental puff from secondary exhausts.

They crept closer, on their unpowered approach trajectory. The Q-ship was taking no chances. The designated entry port was protected by a gleaming array of projectile and radiation weapons. After docking, the members of Team Ruby had been instructed to enter the Q-ship one by one. Chan would go first, and the others would not leave the capsule until they had been given permission to do so. Even within the docking area, Esro Mondrian could order the instant destruction of the capsule and all its contents.

That would include Team Alpha. The pursuit team, already pooled to form Nimrod, was hidden away in the capsule’s primitive cargo compartment.

Chan was terribly conscious of their presence a few feet away from him. It had been his idea, with support from Leah, to bring the Alpha team onto the landing capsule. Neither Nimrod nor Almas could estimate the effect of that on the overall survival probabilities, and the other team members had all argued against it. Why endanger
both
teams, they said, when it was only necessary to place one in immediate peril?

Chan had insisted, without being able to justify it. As another consequence, the journey up to the Q-ship was a one-way trip. With Team Alpha aboard, all spare supplies and fuel had been left behind on Travancore to avoid a mass anomaly. The Q-ship would detect any excess of total mass when the capsule was caught for docking. Even a suspicion of Team Alpha’s presence on board would be enough to encourage violent action.

As they neared the Q-ship, Chan heard a whisper in his ear. Nimrod’s analysis was passing from the cargo hold through a single-link chain of Tinker components, and instantly being converted by Angel to a form that Chan could comprehend.

“We are twelve hundred meters from docking,” said Angel. “Nimrod regards that as a good sign. If the Q-ship intended to destroy us before we docked, the best time to do so has already passed. The current probability estimate for success of Q-ship rendezvous is 0.255,
up
from the last estimate of 0.23. Nimrod also believes that Tatiana Snipes is not on board the Q-ship. That reduces the probability of finding a sympathetic contact with whom we can work to 0.13, down from 0.19. The overall probability estimate of mission success is thus reduced to 0.12.”