The Mind Pool (29 page)

Another dozen still wore the Monitor sets—but three of them sat slumped forward in their restraining harnesses, their clothes drenched with blood. Brachis saw that their throats had been cut so deeply that the heads were almost severed.

He slapped at his release harness. Before he could rise to his feet a tall figure came looming over him. It was familiar. At the same time as his mind rejected recognition of that tall, cadaverous figure, a skinny arm brought something swinging in towards his unprotected neck. A bright ceremonial sword whistled through the air.

Brachis jerked his right arm upwards. There was a clean, meaty crunch. His hand, severed below the base of the thumb, flew out and fell on the floor on front of him.

His uniform reacted even before he had time to feel pain. The shirt sensors recorded the sudden drop in blood pressure and activated a web of fibers in his right sleeve. The knit material on his right forearm tightened to form a tourniquet.

The sword came swinging in again towards his neck and head. Brachis swayed forward, under the swing, and reached out and around with his left arm. He grasped the back of the narrow neck and pulled the body forward against his face. He closed his eyes and made a total, reflexive effort. Vertebrae snapped under his twisting fingers. The dropped sword passed over his back and slid harmlessly past his legs.

Still entwined, Brachis and his assailant tumbled together to the floor of the chamber. He landed underneath, gasping at the impact.

He opened his eyes, and gasped again. His first, incredulous impression had been correct. He was staring into the lifeless face of the Margrave of Fujitsu.

* * *

Even though Luther Brachis had done his best to persuade her, Godiva Lomberd refused to sit in the room where the
Adestis
attack would take place. She had listened quietly, smiled, shook her gorgeous blond head, and said: “Luther, my sweet, Nature designed some people for one thing, and some for others. Your life is Security—sabotage, weapons, skirmishes, and violence. Mine is Art. Music, dancing and poetry. I’m not saying my life is
better
than yours. But I am saying I won’t come and watch while Dougal MacDougal satisfies his blood lust trying to kill some poor harmless animal that is only doing what
its
nature programmed it to do. I don’t have to be there, even if you do.” She placed her fingertips on his lips. “No argument, Luther. I’m not coming—not even into the spectators’ gallery.”

In the end she had relented far enough to accompany Brachis to the main
Adestis
facility. She allowed him to settle her in the neighboring lounge and order refreshments for her while she waited. She seemed delighted when Esro Mondrian arrived at the same lounge a few minutes later.

“What brings you here, Commander? I can’t believe that you like
Adestis.
”

“I don’t.” Mondrian had with him a tiny, dark-haired woman. She was already staring curiously at Godiva. “We came because Luther is here, and we need to talk to him.”

“You can’t do it now. He’s involved in this safari, and they must be right in the middle of it.”

“That’s all right. We’ll wait.” Mondrian turned to the woman with him. “Lotos, this is Godiva Lomberd. Godiva, Lotos Sheldrake. If you two don’t mind I’m going to leave you here for a few minutes. If Luther comes out, don’t let him get away. He has to wait until I come back.”

Godiva nodded. “Where’s Tatty?”

“Down on Earth again.” Mondrian hesitated. Godiva was still looking at him expectantly. “She’s helping me. I needed images and recordings of a few places. She ought to be back here in a week or two.”

Godiva nodded. She seemed faintly puzzled, but she said nothing more as Mondrian left and Lotos settled down to sit opposite her. There was an awkward silence.

“Are you involved with
Adestis
?” said Lotos at last.

The other woman smiled and shook her head. “Just heard about it, enough to convince me I don’t want anything to do with it. How about you?”

“Once, and never again.” Lotos related the details of her experience at the termite nest. She underplayed the danger, but emphasized her own terror and discomfort. She did her best to be humorous and self-deprecating—and she watched closely for Godiva’s every reaction.

Since hearing of the contract with Luther Brachis, Lotos had put her own information service to work. Their efforts had been pathetically unproductive. Godiva Lomberd had popped into view a few years ago on Earth, officially as an “artistic performer.”
The peerless Godiva Bird, Model, Consort, and Exotic Dancer,
said the publicity. In fact, she was a rich man’s courtesan.

All the digging since then had turned up nothing more specific. Godiva was simply a woman, background and age uncertain, whom men found irresistible. She exploited that fact for money.

Looking at her now, Lotos could see why Godiva had been so successful. She moved like a dancer, every gesture natural, easy, and flowing. She had the clear eyes and skin of perfect health. She laughed easily, throwing her head back open-mouthed to reveal perfect teeth and a pink, fleshy tongue. Most of all, she listened to Lotos with total, focused attention, as though what the other woman was saying was the most interesting thing in the solar system.

And still Lotos was uneasy. Godiva had never formed more than a temporary and commercial relationship with any man—until she met Luther Brachis. And then she had formed a
permanent
contract with him.

True love? That was not in Lotos Sheldrake’s vocabulary of the possible. Her intuition told her that something strange was going on between Godiva Lomberd and Luther Brachis. She lacked Mondrian’s previous acquaintance with Godiva, but she trusted his instincts, too. “She is
changed
,” he had said, as they whipped through the Ceres transportation system on their way to the
Adestis
Headquarters. “Different. She wasn’t like that when she was on Earth.”

“Changed
how
?”

Mondrian had looked angry—with himself. Lotos knew how much he valued his ability to read out the motivations and secret desires of others. “She’s ...
focused
,” he said at last. “You would have to have met the old Godiva to understand what I mean. It used to be that Godiva always paid close attention to the man who was buying her time, and she certainly gave him his money’s-worth. But at the same time she was aware of other men, and somehow she made them aware of
her.
It was like a magnetic field around her, one that said, ‘I’m busy right now. But I won’t always be busy. Sometime in the future, I could be yours.’ Of course, in practice there were conditions. Everyone wanted her, but not everyone could pay the price. But there was always that possibility, if a man were lucky enough to get rich. Now ... now she pays attention to Luther.
Only
to Luther. The other men around her are hardly there. That’s what I mean by
different.
”

“Maybe it’s love,” suggested Lotos. She gave Mondrian a quick sideways look from her dark eyes.

He had not bothered to reply. Mondrian’s opinion of true love as the agent for a profound change of personality was perhaps even more cynical than Lotos Sheldrake’s.

Lotos watched now, as other men and women wandered through the lounge. Mondrian had been exactly right. Godiva would look up, as though to check that each arrival was not Luther Brachis. Then at once she returned her attention to Lotos. There was no eye contact, no trace of coquetry. Godiva flirted no more than Lotos herself did.

So. Lotos leaned back and puzzled over the evidence before her eyes. Earth’s most famous and expensive courtesan ought to be much more
aware
of men. Even if she no longer thought of them as prospective customers, surely the habit of speculative evaluation and subliminal come-ons would by now be built in?

Lotos had paid well for this meeting with Godiva. And it was producing more questions than answers.

* * *

Mondrian had promised Lotos a clear half-hour with Godiva. She was getting that and more, because on the way back to the lounge he stopped at the spectators’ lounge for a look at the battle area.

He stayed longer than he had originally intended. Luther Brachis and Dougal MacDougal were both in the control room, wearing their Monitor sets. Or was it more accurate to say that they were really down on the battlefield, where each of them controlled the body of a simulacrum?

The field of encounter was a small hemispherical chamber about ten feet across. A camera set into the domed roof revealed all the action to any interested observers. The usual audience would be mostly prospective players, following the whole procedure with huge interest.

When Mondrian arrived, the assault on the trapdoor spider’s lair had been in its preparatory stages. The spectators’ gallery was almost empty. There was one young woman wearing the blue worker’s uniform of a Pentecost colonist, and a tall, thin man with a full beard. He seemed more interested in the players themselves than in the quarry, the battlefield, or the simulacra.

The first close-up of the spider was daunting, even to one who never intended to play
Adestis.
It sat motionless at the bottom of its trap, holding in its front limbs the drained husk of a millipede. It was easy to imagine that the multiple eyes on its curved back were aware of the watchers, far above.

Mondrian stared down thoughtfully at the spider.
Adestis
led to real deaths, through pain and stress. If his arrangement with Skrynol for the Anabasis did not work out, and Dougal MacDougal became an impossible problem—could
Adestis
provide a convenient solution? How many times had it been used in the past, to get rid of a troublesome official?

Mondrian took that thought with him when he went back to Lotos Sheldrake and Godiva Lomberd. He sat down to evaluate its potential, and listened to the women’s conversation with half an ear. He had been there only a few minutes when the uproar began in the adjoining control room.

Godiva came instantly to her feet. “Luther! In there!” she cried, and dashed to the chamber door. By the time that Mondrian and Sheldrake had followed her inside she was at Luther Brachis’s side. She was supporting him and staring horrified at the scene around her.

Brachis was standing, white-faced but erect. His right forearm ended just beyond the wrist in a bloody stump.

Mondrian glanced at the pools of blood and the bodies surrounding Brachis. They were beyond help. He went across to the other commander, lifted his arm, and checked the tourniquet. “No blood loss now. I don’t think much of that on the floor is yours. Take it easy. We’ll have you to the hospital in a few minutes.”

“Thanks. Sorry about the mess in here.” Brachis nodded at the wounded arm. “Injuries getting to be a bit of a habit, don’t you think?”

“It’ll grow back.”

“Yeah. Teach me not to bite my nails.” Brachis gave Godiva a death’s-head smile. “It’s all right, Goddy. Just me and Mondrian playing word games, to make sure I’m not going to pass out. Blood supply to the brain, you see.”

“Your arm—”

“—will be all right. Don’t worry about it. I’ll just have to sign my name left-handed for a while.”

MEMORANDUM FROM: Luther Brachis, Commander of Solar System Security.
To: All security posts.
SUBJECT: Countermeasures for terrorist activities.
Effective immediately, the following special security measures will go into effect throughout the Inner System:
1) All travellers leaving Earth will be required to travel via Link Exit facilities. All other travel will be prohibited until further notice.
2) All travellers leaving Earth will be subjected to chromosome ID checks. ID’s will be compared with reference ID (attached). In the event of a correlation exceeding 0.95, the traveller must be detained for questioning by Central Security.
3) All off-Earth awakenings from storage facilities will be subject to direct supervision. Wakers will be subject to chromosome ID checks against reference ID. In the event of a correlation exceeding 0.95, the waker must be detained for questioning by Central Security.
4) Any traveller using Link facilities and whose appearance resembles the MARGRAVE OF FUJITSU (image attached) must be detained for questioning by Central Security.
5) Any off-Earth disposition of assets from the estate of the Margrave of Fujitsu must be reported to Central Security.

Luther Brachis stared at the stump of his hand. The nubs of new fingers were already beginning to bulge under synthetic skin. He wiggled them experimentally.

“Itches like the plague.” He tapped the sheet in front of him with his left hand. “Think this will do it? I don’t think so. I’m willing to wager we
don’t
catch him.”

Mondrian shook his head. “No takers. Not if he was as smart as you seem to think. He must have planned this for years, ever since he created his first facsimile Artefact. The next one could look like anything.”

“I know. That’s why I’m worried.”

“You’ll be all right. Stay well-armed. You’ve got the training to handle any number of Margraves, one-handed or two.”

“You don’t understand.” Brachis placed his hand on the gun that sat on the table in front of him. “I’m not worried for myself, I’ll blow ‘em away before they get near me. But suppose that bastard takes a shot at
Godiva
?”

Chapter 22

Dear Chan,

This is a letter that I never expected to write, a message I never dreamed I would send, especially (don’t misunderstand this) to you. But it’s our first night down on Travancore, and I’m flat out
scared.
Tonight I wish you and I were still down in the Gallimaufries, watching Bozzie preach self-denial while he gobbled down a dozen waffles with honey.

If we can’t be together, at least let me babble at you for a while. We—the team, I mean, they gave us a rotten name,
Team Alpha,
but I hope we’ll come up with something better for ourselves—anyway, my team, Team Alpha or whatever, we weren’t allowed to bring a Mattin Link ship anywhere near Travancore. No matter what happens here, Commander Mondrian won’t risk the Morgan Construct having access to a Link again. So this message will be fired off to the ship, a million kilometers away, then through a Link back to Sol, then through the Censor’s office, and
then,
if everything works out right, you’ll get it before you leave Barchan. Good luck down there. The last word I had, you have the hottest Pursuit Team they’ve seen since training began. I hope so—and I hope you will never have to visit Travancore. Because if you do, it will mean that we have failed.