Mindbridge Read online

  It had been some time since I’d gone anyplace more foreign than Denver, at least on earth. Nassau was full of strange sights and sounds and smells, and it was crowded. God, was it crowded. A half-million people on a tiny speck of land.

  I’m as cynical as any Tamer about the highflown rhetoric the AED uses to justify its colonization program. Anyone with basic macroeconomics knows the real story. But the comparison was inevitable between this packed island and the bucolic village I’d left a few hours before. Maybe things will fall apart again; maybe this time will be the last time. One rash person in the right place and the earth could be a sterile cinder in seconds, but that’s been more-or-less true for a century.

  Still, I was glad that all those babies were up there in the sky. And comforted that one of them would be partly me.

  When we got inside the cottage Carol asked whether I had successfully “carried the seed.” I told her that it had been very much the other way around-and offered to demonstrate. The effects of the last pill hadn’t quite worn off, and I still had two of them left. She thought it sounded interesting.

  Two days later I was so exhausted she had to go swimming without me. Mark Twain once wrote to the effect that there wasn’t a woman alive who couldn’t defeat any ten men at the ultimate battleground between the sexes. When I first read that I thought he was exaggerating. (And I probably would’ve envied the seven male captives of Starbase.)

  We did other things while we were in the Islands: went to a festival, sailed in an ancient windjammer, swam and skindived all the time. Sunned and rested and read some good books. Will write more tomorrow morning. Can’t put off this stack of reports any longer.

  I was glad to hear that Dr. Jameson lived. Vivian says he claims the bridge made him do it. Maybe it’s in this stack somewhere.

  27 - Touch Me Not

  Text of postoperative interview between Dr. Raymond Sweeney (Chief, Psych Group) and Dr. Philip Jameson, 2 September 2051.

  (Thirty seconds of introductory politeness)

  JAMESON: Are you recording this, Ray?

  SWEENEY: What makes you-

  J: Come off it, Ray. I’m not being paranoid. We’ve worked together for over ten years, and I’ve never seen you wear a coat. You needed it to carry the recorder . . . because one shirt pocket has your cigarettes, and the other—

  S: All right, Sherlock, I’m recording. You mind?

  J: Why should I? It’s like I told the orderly-you talked with the orderly?

  S: He didn’t understand what you said.

  J: You mean he thought it was crazy.

  S: Well...

  J: Sounds crazy to me, too. But it is true. I didn’t try to commit suicide. That god-damned creature, that bridge, had control of me, made me cut my throat.

  S: It did an expert job.

  J: (Fingering scar) That it did. Right under the ear and then straight across the carotid, deep. Lucky I can talk.

  S: The work of a skilled surgeon...

  J: Bullshit, Sweeney. It obviously had access to my mind. (Pause) If I were going to commit suicide, I could do it more successfully, a thousand different ways. Not by opening an artery in a roomful of doctors, next door to a hospital.

  S: Phil, most suicides don’t want to die. They want to be saved.

  J: All right, I know that. But don’t you think it’s quite a coincidence? With what happened to poor Willard?

  S: But Willard didn’t attempt suicide; he-

  J: Had a heart attack, sure. Path of least resistance. (Pause) The creature tried for my heart, too, Ray. Just before I blanked out, I felt this tightness, squeezing in my chest. But my heart’s strong. It was easier for the creature to control my arm.

  S: Blanked out?

  J: That’s right. Just as I went to make the first incision. I felt dizzy and . . . thick, I don’t know. Then every thing went white and I woke up being prepped for surgery.

  (Pause) Have they done an autopsy on Willard?

  S: Yes.

  J: Well?

  S: It was inconclusive. We’re having specialists-

  J: In other words, his heart stopped and nobody knows why.

  S: We have to wait-

  J: I rest my case, damn it! Ask your cardiac specialists what sort of heart ailment would cause a robust man to sit down and die quietly in seconds. That thing had control of him. It found the weakest part of his body and squeezed the life out of him.

  S: That’s awfully dramatic.

  J: What happened to me was pretty god-damned dramatic. I was there, Sweeney; I felt the thing take over. It just didn’t do as good a job on me as it did on Bob. And that first Tamer, the Chinese boy. . . . Has anyone talked to the two Tamers who were in contact when we tried to dissect it?

  S: One of them’s on a mission. The other said that the bridge functioned normally up to the time when Willard or you touched it. Then it didn’t function at all.

  (Pause) That’s what they expected, though. It’s never worked with three people.

  J: I see. . . . Listen, Sweeney. I’ll make a deal with you. You can shrink my head all you want; I’ll cooperate a hundred per cent. If you conclude that I have suicidal tendencies, I’ll take an indefinite leave of absence.

  S: I don’t think-

  J: But. . . in the meantime, I teach you everything I know about invertebrate anatomy. And the next time they bring one of those creatures back...

  S: I get to cut it up.

  J: That’s right.

  S: Fair enough. Unless you can convince me. I don’t think I have suicidal tendencies, either.

  28 – CHAPTER EIGHT

  John Thomas Riley usually liked his job: Director of Personnel and Operations Chief for AED, Colorado Springs. Sometimes it was not so pleasant.

  He went into the briefing room and the talking stopped abruptly. He sat down at the end of the seminar table and began without preamble.

  “I know there’s been talk.” The ten Tamers stared at him. He wished he’d brought some papers to fiddle with. “People have called this a suicide mission. But it definitely is not.”

  Three of them nodded, good. “It’s pretty well established that the Groombridge bridge killed two people, and almost a third, by telepathic control of their bodies. And we’re asking you to go collect as many of the creatures as you can find.

  “But this bridge was handled by a total of 38 people, and did no harm to 35 of them. We know that in two out of three cases the creature killed in self-defense. Or attempted to kill. And we aren’t asking you to harm them. Lefavre?”

  Jacque put down his hand. “That’s the main thing that’s bothering us. Ch’ing wouldn’t have harmed the bridge. Not intentionally, anyhow.”

  “Maybe there was some kind of accident,” Carol said. “He squeezed it too hard, or something.”

  “We’ll never know, of course,” Riley said. “But we have to go on the assumption that they can somehow sense when an organism is threatening them, and take action.

  “How they could do this is a mystery. Physiologically, they seem barely more sophisticated than a sponge. But there is other compelling evidence that they can do this, besides the violence done to the men who attempted dissecting it. Jeeves, you’re preparing a report . .

  “That’s right,” Tania said. “I’ve talked to my team about this, but not Manuel’s.

  “One clue is in the geophysical analysis. We picked up several fossils that appear to be remnants of large carnivores, aquatic ones. The bridges would be obvious sources of food for these creatures.

  “But the only place we found any other form of animal life was in the Crater Sea. Completely isolated from the rest of the ecosystem.

  “It could be that the bridges came along after some natural disaster that killed off the planet’s animal life. Or the bridges themselves might be that natural disaster: once they evolved their telepathic facility, they proceeded to kill off all of their rivals. They wouldn’t have to kill every single individual; just reduce the population density to wh
ere there weren’t enough mating opportunities for each species to survive. This happened to some species of whales, on Earth in the last century.

  “We’ll have a clearer picture after this trip, of course.”

  “It still doesn’t explain Ch’ing,” Jacque said. “Maybe the creature makes mistakes, kills when it’s not really threatened. Maybe it kills at random, to keep in practice.”

  Carol nodded. “We can theorize forever, but we really don’t know anything about it.”

  “We’re inferring from an absence of data,” Jacque said. “That’s lousy science.”

  Riley shrugged elaborately. “Would either or both of you like to be taken off the mission?” Which would mean a review board and probably dismissal-then a lifetime of debt, reimbursing the AED for your expensive training.

  They shook their heads no.

  “Would anybody else? It’s just a matter of filling out a couple of forms.”

  No response.

  “Good.

  “At any rate, you’re not likely to come in contact, in bridge rapport, with any of the bridges you catch. The main thrust of this mission is to bring untouched bridges back to Earth, so that they can be studied under controlled conditions.

  “Jameson suggests that we screen the world’s population for people with phenomenally high Rhine potential; let them make first contact with the bridges. Sounds like a good idea.

  “So we don’t want you to touch them, not if you can help it. . . . You know that the Groombridge Effect is blocked by certain dielectrics-ceramic quasi-metals, for instance. We’ve built extensions, waldos, for your suits, made entirely of these ceramics. Hopefully, this is what you’ll be using to pick up the bridges.”

  “Nobody told us about that,” Jeeves said.

  “We weren’t sure we’d have them made in time. Krupp’s been working night and day. We do have them now, though; that’s why I called this meeting. You and your team are going to go train with them today.

  “Team B, Ubico, you’re free to go, unless there are questions.” There were none. “Team A, questions?” None. He stood up. “Well, then. Go on down to the ready room and get suited up. There’s a floater on pad C that’ll take you out to a place on the Colorado River; it has the extension waldos and the nets you’ll be using. Do it right and you’re free until the eleventh.”

  The apparatus worked well. The two nets were semi-rigid, articulated so as to conform precisely to the river bottom. It took two people to operate a net, one on each bank. The nets would block off a section of river several kilometers long, and then slowly be brought together. They would trap any floating or swimming object more than a centimeter wide.

  In the Colorado they wound up with a swarm of thousands of confused fish. They tested their retrieval waldos by picking a few of the best trout. It took a half hour to get three fish, but trout are faster and slipperier than the Groombridge bridge. Then they rolled up the nets and had a picnic.

  GROOMBRIDGE 1618 MISSION,

  11 OCTOBER 2051

  A TEAM

  PERSONNEL:

  1. TAMER 5 TANIA JEEVES. FEMALE, 31. 9TH MISSION. SUPERVISOR.

  2. TAMER 3 GUSTAV HASENFEL. MALE, 26. 6TH MISSION.

  3. TAMER 2 (PROB) JACQUE LEFAVRE. MALE, 26. 3RD MISSION.

  4. TAMER 1 VIVIAN HERRICK. FEMALE, 24. 2ND MISSION.

  5. TAMER 1 CAROL WACHAL. FEMALE, 24. 2ND MISSION.

  EQUIPMENT:

  5 GPEM MODULES W/GROOMBRIDGE 1618 MOD

  1 PERSONNEL RECORDER

  1 HOMING FLOATER W/GROOMBRIDGE 1618 MOD (SECOND SHOT)

  2 SERVO NETS (THIRD SHOT)

  1 MASS SPECTROGRAPH, WESTINGHOUSE MOD 17 (FOURTH SHOT)

  1 COLLECTING TANK (FOURTH SHOT)

  POWER REQUIREMENT:

  3 SHOTS 17.89688370924 SU, TUNING

  @ LOCAL TIME

  10:24:38.37677BDK399057

  10:32:29.66498BDK399059

  10:36:46.00983BDK399060

  1 SHOT 17.89688370930 SU, TUNING

  @ LOCAL TIME

  10:42:05.83997BDK399062

  MISSION PRIORITY 1.

  FUNDING #733092 PSYCH 40%

  #483776 EXOB 20

  #000101 PR 20

  #000100 GENEX 20

  They came out of the LMT near Groombridge’s southern pole. The floater that followed eight minutes later had been modified to approach and then hover nearby, awaiting Tania’s command (to prevent the kind of accident that had left them grounded on the first mission).

  They got aboard the floater and homed in on the two nets. That, and taking the nets to the river where they’d found the first bridge, totaled over three hours’ flying time. They unloaded and Tania asked for a volunteer.

  “The collecting tank and the MS are a couple of hundred kilometers away. Who wants to go get them?” Silence. “Less than a two-hour job.”

  “We should have arranged for B Team to pick them up,” Gus said. “It’s really their job.”

  “Too late to change things now,” Jacque said. “Let’s draw straws.”

  Tania had everyone pick a number between one and a hundred. Carol lost.

  The other four immediately set up the nets, isolating a kilometer-long stretch of the river. The intent was to surprise a number of the creatures, not allowing one to warn the others away.

  Of course, there was always the chance that there had been only one bridge on the planet, and it had sought them out. If so, they would spend forty-seven days in fruitless wading.

  Jacque thought they would probably catch dozens, maybe hundreds, on each sweep. Spend most of the seven weeks playing with the mass spectrometer.

  The actual results fell somewhere in between. When Carol came back with the floater, they were just about through with the first sweep. It was quite a contrast to their practice session: no activity, just a coalescing mat of floating weed. The nets joined at the bottom and they hauled them in.

  After an hour of picking through the mess, they found one bridge.

  They hurried downstream fifty kilometers and repeated the process. Nothing. They did it again: nothing again.

  On the fourth try they came up with another bridge. B Team showed up, homed in on the MS, and started mining the mud.

  That first day was the only day Tania’s team caught two bridges. At the end of the seven weeks they had a total of eight bridges. B Team fared better. They had built a small town of airtight, interconnected A-frame huts: rigid silvery tents of aluminum-silicon alloy. They were in high spirits.

  Tania’s team was bored and frustrated. Jacque had exploded several times and even snapped at Carol. When they huddled together for the translation back to Earth, it was with desperate relief.

  29 - They Also Serve

  Arnold Bates spends half his life sleeping or taking drugs. Most of the drugs are to help him get to sleep. He is a millionaire several times over, but spends little: rent and food and drugs. He has no hobbies.

  When he is awake he is more awake than most people. He must be; he is Senior Controller of the LMT chamber at Colorado Springs. Its 120-centimeter crystal is the largest that AED has, and the busiest.

  Bates is a short, wiry man with a shock of white hair framing Amerind features. His skin is pale for an Amerind. He looks fifty but is thirty-two years old. He has been a Controller for ten years, twice the time it normally takes to wear a person down. He has the kind of nerveless self-control that would make an ideal Tamer, but he carries too many bad genes for the job.

  His stomach is made of plastic and his liver is a machine. He has an IQ of 189 and gunslinger reflexes.

  His main job is to prevent another Los Alamos disaster. Two human bodies trying to occupy the same place at the same time turned a mountain into a deep valley and spread heavy fallout from Albuquerque to Mexico City.

  He is looking at the first page of his schedule for today, 27 November 2051:

  Jumps Returns Slack Mission Comments

  06:09:14 12:38 Tau Ceti Breeding(3)

  17:20r />
  06:26:34 61 Cyg B Samples for Agr Grp

  09:40

  06:36:14 Procyon A Tamers (5)

  06:31

  06:42:45 Procyon A Floater

  22:14

  07:04:59 70 Ophiuchi A Tamers (6)

  07:34

  07:12:33 70 Ophiuchi A Floater

  05:11

  07:17:44 Tau Ceti Food (hurry crew)

  17:43

  07:35:27 Groombridge 1618 Tamers (5)

  07:51

  07:43:18 Groombridge 1618 Floater

  04:18

  07:47: 37 Groombridge 1618 Misc equipment

  05:19

  07:52:56 Groombridge 1618 Samples for Bio Grp,

  Psy Grp (both on standby)

  11:05

  08:04:01 E Indi Tamers(5)

  16:38 Training

  He will be on today from six to ten AM and from two to six PM. The clock in the controller lounge says 05:58.

  The door to the control room opens and a young man steps out. Bates has seen him off and on for almost a year, but doesn’t know his name.

  “Bates,” he nods; Arnold nods back. “It’s clear now; you’ve got better’n ten minutes’ slack.” Arnold knows this, of course: ten minutes and forty-some seconds. When he opens his eyes in the morning he knows what time it is, to the minute.

  The young man is pale, mopping his forehead.

  “Trouble?”

  “Yeah, bad one last hour. Geoformy team with three injuries, one deader. Slingshot deader.”

  “Tamers,” Arnold says. “Can’t learn to keep their arms in.”

  “Yeah.” He shuffles out the door and Arnold goes into the control room. His partner is Mavis Eisenstein, overlapping him on the four-to-eight shift. He’s known her for four years.

  “Morning, Mavis.” She nods and sighs, gets up from the prime chair and moves over to the other one, the backup.

  Arnold sits down and opens a fresh pack of cigarettes. He puts that and his old pack on the table in front of him, lights up.