The Mind Pool

Chapter 11

The rings were all of different sizes and colors; the cylinder tapered from a blunt point at the top down to a thick base. The rings would all fit onto it only if they were placed there in the correct sequence, largest to smallest.

Chan Dalton was sitting on the floor, hunched over the toy. His forehead, normally unlined, was wrinkled with effort. He was picking up the rings one after another, studying each, and after a few seconds putting it down between his splayed legs. The chamber he was sitting in was cheerfully decorated in pinks and blues, with paintings and drawings around the wall and a thick soft carpet on the floor.

Chan had positioned himself in the exact center of the room. Now after long deliberation he picked up the red ring and placed it on the cylinder. A few moments later he did the same thing with the orange one. Then the yellow.

“He’s getting them right!” Tatty was whispering, although there was no chance that Chan could hear her. She and Leah Rainbow were watching him through a one-way glass set into the nursery wall. “Could he ever have done that when he was with you?”

Leah shook her head. “Never — he wouldn’t have had the slightest idea.” Her voice echoed Tatty’s excitement. When she had first returned to Horus, she and Tatty had not found it easy to talk. Finally and simultaneously, they had realized why. They were like mothers to Chan — and both the old and the new mother were jealous. Tatty had resented it when Chan ran to hug Leah as soon as he saw her, with a great yell of pleasure and excitement; Leah hated the way that Tatty organized Chan’s day, telling him what to do next, where his clothes must go, and what he had to eat. Leah still saw that as her prerogative.

The daily session with the Tolkov Stimulator had been another cause of tension between them. Leah mistook for heartlessness Tatty’s insistence that Chan could not miss a treatment, whether there was a visitor or not. She would not help Tatty to catch him, or to strap him in. And the presence of both her own and Esro Mondrian’s picture, where Chan could see them when he was in the Stimulator, perplexed her. What did Tatty think she was doing?

But when the treatment began and Chan writhed in the padded seat, Leah could not ignore Tatty’s own anguish and misery. Tatty was suffering. And when Leah saw the bedroom and nursery that Tatty had made for Chan, she was finally won over. They were so thoughtfully done, and they showed so much evidence of love and caring.

Leah remembered Horus very well from her brief stay before she went off to begin her training. It had been horrible: gloomy, dirty and depressing, more like a detention barracks than any place to bring a child (and Chan was a child, in spite of his physical age and adult appearance).

Now Horus, or at least this part of it, was transformed.

“How did you possibly manage all this?” Leah had followed Tatty through room after room, elegantly decorated and furnished and designed to take advantage of the natural and manmade features of the interior of Horus.

Tatty laughed. She hadn’t done any of this to show off to other people, but it was wonderful to have someone else appreciate her efforts. Chan was indifferent, and Kubo Flammarion seemed more at home with the old dirt and mess.

“I got tired of living in a pit. Nobody could tell me how long I might be here, and all the old excavation and service robots were around because nobody thought it was worthwhile to haul them away. I taught myself how to re-program them.”

“But it must have taken ages.”

“It took time, but I had plenty of that. Then I set them to work, first to clear out the trash and then to make this place livable. I hooked one of them in with a synthesizer, and it produced pretty good carpets and wall hangings. Once I started, I guess I got a bit compulsive. Poor old Kubo.” Tatty smiled, at one of her rare pleasant memories of Horus. “He came out here a couple of weeks ago, and I wouldn’t even let him into Chan’s quarters until he’d taken a bath and had his uniform cleaned. He did it, but he didn’t like it. And Chan made it worse. ‘Kubo change,’ he said. ‘Not stink now — except hat.’ Then he stole it.”

“That same old hat — covered in grease and dandruff?”

“That’s the one. Kubo hadn’t bothered to clean that when he cleaned his uniform. I suppose he thought we’d never notice. But Chan noticed, and he threw it into the garbage disposal. Kubo was devastated. He said, ‘Princess, that hat has been with me all over the solar system. It’s like a part of me.’ But I said to him, ‘Not any more, Captain Flammarion. When even Chan objects to it, it’s time for a new one’ — and Chan did object. He is improving, isn’t he?” Tatty looked to Leah for encouragement. “I always wonder if I’m imagining a change, because I’ve been wishing for it so hard. But you can see it, too, can’t you? Isn’t he a bit smarter?”

“He certainly is. Look at him.”

Chan had carefully and slowly assembled the complete stack of rings. Now he was just as painstakingly taking them off again. The women watched until he had finished, then applauded. Next Chan picked up a set of red Elastic blocks. They were of complex individual shapes, but they could fit together to make a perfect cube. He fiddled with them for a while, then hurled them in frustration across the room.

“That’s still too hard for him,” said Leah.

“No need to apologize for him to me.”

“I wasn’t. I was just thinking, he is progressing but it’s terribly slow. At this rate it will take years.”

“That’s what scared me,” said Tatty. “But Kubo Flammarion says it’s not at all linear. If it really works you expect to see very little progress at first. Then everything comes in one big rush, maybe in a single session on the Stimulator.”

“How much improvement does Flammarion expect?”

“He says he has no idea. He doesn’t know when it might happen, or how far Chan will go. Do you know what was wrong with his brain in the first place?”

“Down in the Gallimaufries? Nobody there could afford any tests. People said Chan was a dummy, and left it at that.”

“He could finish up still slow. Or he could be average, or even super-smart. But Kubo says the chances of that are pretty small. All we can do is wait and see.” Tatty stared in at Chan through the one-way panel. “But that s all just theory, and I try not to think about it. There are more important things to worry about — like his dinner.”

“Can I help you feed him?’

“Sure. But there’s not much need to help him any more. He’s a bit messy, but he’s no worse than Captain Flammarion. You should have seen the two of them, last time Kubo was here. It was disgusting.”

“At least I can help cook. I know Chan’s favorites.”

“You can teach them to me. And I want to hear more about your training program. If things work out, Chan will be doing one, too.”

“I’ll bore you to death with it. It’s strange, when Bozzie sold us and we had to leave Earth, I thought it was the worst thing that could possibly happen. I hated the idea of space, and I was terrified at the thought of a training program. Now I’m in the middle of it — and I love it]

“I thought you were almost done.”

“No, we’ve just finished the first phase. That’s why I was allowed a short break. But I have to leave Horns the day after tomorrow, and head farther out. I’ll be meeting the alien partners, and we’ll see how we fit as a real team.”

Scary.

“Not as much as I thought. I already met a Tinker. It wasn’t as weird as people say. Ours even made jokes — in standard Solar! And none of us has been able to make any headway at all with their language. It doesn’t seem to have verbs or nouns or adjectives or anything — -just buzzing sounds. And according to the Tinker, the language of the Angels is a lot harder for humans than Tinkertalk.”

“So how are you supposed to talk to each other?”

“We’ll probably have to rely on computers to translate what the Angels say. But they can all understand us. It’s disturbing. During our training, the human instructors told me that we are the smartest species. But I’m beginning to have an awful lot of doubts.”

“I know what you mean. If I’m so smart, how come I’m here?” Chan’s performance with the rings had put both women in a good mood. They went on chatting happily as they left the nursery area for the kitchen. Chan remained sitting on the floor of the playroom. For a couple of minutes after they had gone he stayed there, not moving. Then he stood, ran rapidly to the door, and hurried up the narrow ramp that led to the one-way mirror. He made sure that no one was standing behind it and hurried back to the playroom.

First he set out to pick up all the plastic blocks that he had thrown across the room. Next he went to the smiling photograph of Esro Mondrian, pinned to the wall by Tatty among the drawings of plants, animals, people, and planets. Chan took Mondrian’s picture, frowned at it, and carried it back to the middle of the playroom. He propped it up in front of him. All the blocks were carefully laid before it.

At last Chan was ready. He scanned the blocks, picked up four of them, and quickly and economically fitted them together. He reached for four more, then another pair. In less than thirty seconds he had assembled the whole cube. He stared at it for a few moments, then just as quickly took it apart again and laid the pieces on the carpeted floor.

Finally Chan lifted his eyes, and stared at Mondrian’s picture. He smiled. It was, as nearly as he could make it, a perfect copy of the smile on the face of Esro Mondrian.

Four hundred kilometers away, that face was not smiling. It was beaded with perspiration. Mondrian lay in darkness on a hard couch, breathing hard and loudly through clenched teeth.

He could see nothing, smell nothing, hear nothing, feel nothing — even the electrodes on his body no longer produced sensation. He could not move. The heat and total darkness had drained all his energy. In any case there was nowhere to go. He was alone, far from anything in the universe.

The endless questions did not change that. They seemed to rise from within, from some deep and secret hiding place inside him. He knew that the questions would end only when he gave answers. But that was impossible. The answers stuck, tearing at the delicate fabric of his brain. He groaned.

“You are resisting again.” Skrynol’s gentle voice came as a shock. “Every time we reach this area, evasion begins. I think we must stop for today.”

Soft touches on Mondrian’s sweating body told him that electrodes were being removed.

“We’re getting nowhere,” he said hoarsely. “I’m wasting your time and my own.”

“On the contrary,” said the voice in the darkness. “We are progressing. Your remark is merely another attempt by a part of you to end that progress. But it is doomed to fail. As we define the area to which you will not allow me access, I am able to infer its nature more and more accurately. Already we possess certain definite facts. For example, I know mat you are suffering the consequences of a very early experience — something that happened to you before you were three years old, something that has never been expressed in verbal form. You have spent your whole life since then, fortifying the mental walls around what happened. That is why they are so hard to break down.”

“You are killing me.”

“I think not.” Skrynol was raising Mondrian to a sitting position. “You are a strong man. Is it obvious to you, by the way, that your recurring dreams are all related to that one early experience? There is a pattern to them. They are always either a re-creation of your trauma, or a flight from it. Think of them, although I know you prefer not to. The vision is always the same, of a central figure — you — surrounded by a warm, safe, light region. And outside it, the dark.”

“That is not a new insight. Other Froppers have told me the same thing. They say that the safe region is symbolic of the womb, that I hate the fact of my birth.’

“That is the simple-minded conclusion.” Skrynol’s voice sharpened. “And of course, it is wrong.”

“How do you know?”

“Because if it were right, any Fropper could treat you successfully. I am able to recognize womb symbolism as well as anyone, although I myself never went through the birth process. Your case is quite different. You feel that you control everything in the safe region — but you also feel that the region is shrinking. Outside lies the dark, and every day the dark comes a little closer. You sense devils in that dark. You would like to flee. But you cannot, because you are always at the center of the lighted region. If you run away, in any direction, the danger may be closer yet. You cannot flee. You dare not stay. That is the source of your nightmares.”

“Suppose that you are right. How does that help me?”

“It does not. Not yet. We must go back — farther, deeper. And you must help me to do it.”

Mondrian shook his head.

“You are afraid?” went on Skrynol. “Naturally. Our most secret fears are always sacred. You can be helped — but only if you agree to being helped. You must trust me more, allow me to probe deeper, and accept that I will feel with you and for you.” There was a high-pitched laugh in the darkness. “You are horrified at the idea. Of course you are. But let me reassure you. Our secrets are never as well-kept as we would like to imagine them. I am going to tell you one of your own secrets, because until it is out of the way we will have trouble reaching back as far as we need to.”

“Why do you think I have secrets?”

“You tell me. According to your official record, you were born on Oberon, the son of a mining engineer who was pregnant when she went there. Correct?

“That s right.”

“So tell me about your mother. How old was she, what did she look like, what sort of woman was she?”

“I have told you several times. I have no memory of her. She was killed in an accident soon after I was born.”

“You have indeed told me that. And you have been lying to me.” Skrynol’s fleshy flipper came out to grip Mondrian by the shoulder. “Your mother is dead. That is true. But you remember exactly what she looked like. And you were not born on Oberon. You were born on Earth. And as a child, you were sold on Earth.”

“It wasn’t like — ”

“Do not try to deny it. I know. You were born on Earth, and as an infant you were sold on Earth, and you lived on Earth for the first eighteen years of your life. As a commoner, existing in misery and poverty until you found a chance to escape.”

“How can you know that?”

“How do you think? Today you are an educated and sophisticated man. You appreciate beauty, ideas, literature, great art, and great music. You love fine food and drink. But part of you was still shaped on Earth. Part of you is still locked into the dirt, ignorance, and violence of where you began. You nightmare began here, on this planet. And if it is to end, it must end here.”

Mondrian writhed in Skrynol’s grip. “You didn’t learn any of that from me. And you could search the solar system, and never find my background in any record. Only one other person knew. How did you ever make Tatty tell you?”

“Princess Tatiana did not tell me. You told me, in answer to my questions. Your self-control is phenomenal, Commander Mondrian, but it cannot be perfect. Every time the subject of Earth, or of people born on Earth, arose, half a dozen physical variables in your system changed. They did not run wild, but even a point or two of difference is enough for me. I deliberately added other questions, and integrated the answers. The conclusion was clear.”

“Who have you told this to?”

“No one.”

“Then let me give you an incentive for continued silence.” Mondrian was fumbling in the darkness for the shirt pocket of his uniform. He pulled out a thin packet and thrust it blindly in front of him. “Take a look at that.”

The packet was taken gently from his hands. There was a long silence. At the end of it came a soft clicking noise, and light slowly brightened in the chamber.

“Darkness will still be essential during questioning,” said Skrynol. “But it no longer serves a useful purpose at other times. Behold your tormentor — and helper.’

Crouched before Mondrian was a giant tubular shape. The pale lemon on the body bifurcation showed that Skrynol was a female Pipe-Rilla, but she was not of the usual form. Changes had been made to the long thorax, and one pair of forelimbs was augmented by fleshy appendages resembling human hands and arms.

Skrynol held out the package that Mondrian had given her. “To satisfy my curiosity, tell me when and how you managed to obtain these pictures.”

“On my first visit.” Mondrian touched the fire opal at his collar. “This holds a multiple-wavelength imaging device. I tried it in many spectral regions. Thermal infrared and microwave both proved satisfactory.”

“Ah.” Skrynol crouched nodding on her long, orange-black hind legs. “That was a failure on my part. I observed your apparently nervous manipulation of that gemstone, and thought it was oddly at variance with your general extraordinary control. But I was too naive to draw the conclusion. Mondrian, your strength of mind is astonishing, to think of such a test in the first session. But for our purposes, that strength is not good. We have a very tough struggle ahead. Will you tell me why you thought it necessary to make images?”

“You suggested that you were of a shape too hideous to be seen. I could not imagine such a form — I have seen almost every type of organism within the Perimeter, and some of those are strange indeed. It occurred to me to wonder, perhaps you were not too strange to be seen, but too familiar.”

“And when you saw the results of the imaging?” Skrynol stood upright, towering towards the root Dark compound eyes peered down at Mondrian. “Would it not have been more in keeping with your job to report your findings, rather than bringing those pictures here with you?”

“Report to whom?” Mondrian shrugged. “To myself, as head of Security? To Luther Brachis, so he could use it against me? Anyway, I had too many unanswerable questions. You resembled a Pipe-Rilla, but there were differences. You said that you were an Artefact, the product of a Needler lab. That could have been true.”

“Could have. Why do you reject that notion?”

“At first I didn’t. You could have been an Artefact of a type I had never before encountered, something new out of the Needler labs. Or you could be a Pipe-Rilla, surgically modified for an Earth environment and for more efficient human speech. It even occurred to me that perhaps you were some kind of renegade Pipe-Rilla, hiding here from her fellows.”

The hissing laugh came eight feet above Mondrian’s head. “A ‘criminal,’ as you call it, taking refuge on this world? Come now, Commander. What crime could a Pipe-Rilla commit, which required a punishment worse than banishment to this planet? What hideous act could match the surgical inflicting of these disfigurements?” Skrynol held out her fleshy forelimbs. “As your poet says, “Why, this is Hell, nor am I out of it.”

“Let me tell you about Hell. But I also came to that conclusion. A Pipe-Rilla would only suffer such changes, and such exile, voluntarily. And that led me to another. You were modified and sent here with the knowledge and approval of your fellows and your government. You are a spy and observer for the Pipe-Rillas.”

Skrynol lowered herself with a cantilevering of long, multi-jointed limbs, until she was face to face with Mondrian. “It is not just Pipe-Rillas. All other members of the Stellar Group feel the same need to observe humans. You are too violent, too unpredictable, to be left unwatched. But if you are right, then why are you not now in danger? Presumably I must protect my secret.”

“You have been physically modified, but mentally you are still a Pipe-Rilla. You are not capable of violence. Whereas I …”

“… Accept and even relish it? A shrewd observation and one that I cannot dispute. But I am not without other means of persuasion. You still have your own needs. You could announce my presence here, true; but if you did, your own treatment with me would end. And we are making progress, approaching the heart of your problem. Do you realize that?”

“I am sure of it. Why else would I so dread these sessions with you, yet keep on coming?”

“In that case you must make your own evaluation. Am I a danger to humans so great that you must now reveal my existence, or does your personal need dominate the situation?”

“It is not so simple as that. I am convinced that you intended that I should discover your identity, even if not so quickly.”

“Most perceptive.” Skrynol laughed, that same high, twittering laugh. “So I have my own agenda. And there is your dilemma. You must balance your personal needs against the possible danger to humanity of my presence. This is, you realize, something unique to your species. As, indeed, is your term for it. You call it a ‘conflict of interest.’ A conflict — again, always you speak in terms of war, battle, fighting.”

“What would a Pipe-Rilla call it?”

“The situation could never arise. We possess group altruism. The good of the many always takes priority in us over the needs of the individual.”

“I admire your nobility.”

“There is no need for sarcasm. And we can take no credit for our nature. It is built into us, from first meiosis. It is the very reason that I am here, alone and deformed, many lightyears from home and mates. But humans are not so. You are dominated by individual desires and urges. Even you.” Skrynol began to flex her legs, lifting her body higher. “So which is it to be, Esro Mondrian? Do you expose me now, or do we continue your treatment.”

Mondrian stood up also. “What is your name? Your Pipe-Rilla name?”

“I will say it to you. It is no secret. But you will not be able to say it, unless you propose to learn to stridulate.” The Pipe-Rilla rubbed two of her legs together briefly, to produce the wobbly, singing tone of a vibrating saw blade. “There. I think you must still call me Skrynol. That is similar to a word in our speech that means, ‘the insane one.’ A mad Pipe-Rilla, living deep in Madworld.”

“Giving Fropper treatment to a mad human.”

“What could be more appropriate? Commander Mondrian, we have a stalemate. You know my secret — ”

“One of them.”

“One of them. And I know one of yours. What now?”

“I will keep your secret, and you will continue my treatment. And one other thing.”

“Always something new.”

“Not really. I intended this when I came here today for treatment. Why else would I bring those pictures? We agree that we both have needs?”

“We agree.”

“Very well. Then let us … negotiate.”