The Mind Pool (3 page)

“That is the mortal remains of Dr. Livia Morgan.” Mondrian’s voice was unnaturally calm. “Although neither she nor the guards were able to send distress signals from Cobweb Station, the monitors preserved a complete record of their last few hours. Based on that evidence, Morgan Constructs are cunning, and deadly, and utterly inimical to human life. I would like to express my admiration for the performance of the guards assigned to Cobweb Station by Commander Brachis. Although they had no warning when the Constructs ran wild, they did not give up or panic. There were seventeen Morgan Constructs on Cobweb Station, each at a different stage of development, and each designed with a different level of sophistication. The guards were able to destroy fourteen of them completely, inside or outside the station, but with great loss of life. Dr. Morgan and four surviving guards attempted to negotiate with the remaining three. She was seized and systematically dismembered. Unless you insist, I do not propose to show you details of those scenes.

“The remaining guards were hounded through the station interior. They managed to destroy two more Morgan Constructs before they were killed themselves. By the time that the bristle probes reached Cobweb Station, it was empty of all life.

“Seventeen Constructs.” The whistling voice of the Tinker Composite spoke at once. “Fourteen died, and later two more . . .”

“You are quite correct.” The images behind Mondrian were fading. “As Commander Brachis told you, the Mattin Link had been operated. That should have been impossible for a Construct which had received no assistance or training. It is a further proof of extraordinary intelligence. The seventeenth Morgan Construct—the most recently developed, and the most sophisticated—has disappeared. We are doing our best to trace it, but our working assumption must be a pessimistic one. Somewhere within the fifty-eight lightyear radius of the Known Sphere—close to the Perimeter, we hope, rather than near one of our home worlds—there is a formidable threat, of unknown magnitude. I do not believe that any of our races is in immediate danger, particularly since the Constructs were designed and trained to work out on the Perimeter, and it is likely that the escaped one will have chosen to flee there. But we cannot guarantee that, or that the Construct will stay in one place. The purpose of today’s meeting was to inform you of these unfortunate facts; and to hear your suggestions as to ways of dealing with the situation. That is the end of my official statement. Are there questions?”

Mondrian waited, glancing from one oval pool of light to the next. The Tinker, Angel, and Pipe-Rilla were too alien for him to be able to read their feelings. Dougal MacDougal merely seemed irritable and decidedly uneasy.

“Then, your Excellencies.” Mondrian took a step backwards, intending to align himself with Luther Brachis. “With your permission—”

“Questions!” The fourteen-foot figure of the Pipe-Rilla was unfolding, rising high on its stick-thin legs. The forelimbs were clutching the tubular trunk, and the long antennas were waving. “I have questions.”

Mondrian stepped forward again and waited, while the Pipe-Rilla went through a writhing of limbs and a preliminary buzzing.

“Tell us more about the
capability
of the Morgan Constructs. A being, designed for defense but turned against its makers, sounds unpleasant. But it does not sound like a great threat, or a cosmic issue. Presumably you designed these Constructs without major means of aggression?”

“They were designed that way, true enough.” Mondrian glanced around, to see if Luther Brachis wanted to make any comment. The other man seemed more than ready to stay in the background. “However, as I mentioned, the Constructs were all equipped with considerable powers of self-defense, to protect them from possible enemies of unknown strength. Remember, they were supposed to operate alone, far from any support, against any dangers. Unfortunately, their defensive powers can also be used offensively. Their power plants can produce small fusion weapons. Their power lasers and shearing cones are enough to destroy any ship. They contained the best detection equipment that we could produce, since we wanted them to be able to find other life forms at the longest possible range. I could give you full details, but perhaps a single example is more informative: any single Morgan Construct could destroy a city, or lay waste a fair-sized planetoid. The surviving Construct, unfortunately, was the best equipped of the seventeen that were made.”

Throughout Mondrian’s reply there had been a slow stirring within the Tinker Composite. As he ended there came a burst of speech, so fast that the computers cut in to decipher and re-translate it.

“Why?” gabbled the Tinker. “Why, why,
why
? In the name of Security, you humans have produced a danger to yourselves and to all the other species of the Stellar Group. Why does anyone
need
a Morgan Construct? Consider yourselves. You have been exploring the region around vour Sun for six hundred of your years. We have watched that exploration for more than three centuries, ever since humans discovered our world and offered us space travel. And what have we seen? The Perimeter now encloses a region one hundred and sixteen lightyears in diameter, with more than two thousand star systems and a hundred and forty-three life-supporting planets. And
nowhere,
at any place within that vast region, has any species been found that is in any way murderous or aggressive—except your own. You humans are lifting a mirror to the universe, seeing your own faces within it, and declaring the cosmos terrifying. We, the Tinkers, say two things: first, until you
created
your Morgan Constructs there was no danger anywhere. Second, tell us why you continue this insane rush to expand the Perimeter. It now ends fifty-eight lightyears away from Sol. Will you humans be satisfied when it has reached eighty lightyears? Or one hundred lightyears? Will you stop
then?
When
will
you stop?”

Esro Mondrian looked to MacDougal. He saw no support there. “I cannot answer your general questions, Ambassador. However, I can make a relevant point. I have long suggested that the Perimeter be frozen, or at least the expansion slowed. You say that the region within the Perimeter has no dangers to any of us—”

“
Had
none.” The Tinker was a blizzard of components, flying furiously about the central cluster. “Had none until your species created one.”

“—but the region
outside
the Perimeter may contain absolutely anything. Who knows how dangerous it might be, to all of us?” Mondrian turned to face the Terran area of the atrium. “With all respect, Ambassador MacDougal, I must say that I agree completely with the Tinker Ambassador. I know that such decisions are made at levels well above mine, but as long as expansion
does
proceed, something like the Morgan Constructs is essential. We must take measures to protect ourselves against whatever lies—”

“That’s enough.” Dougal MacDougal moved one hand, and the lights illuminating Esro Mondrian were instantly extinguished. “Commander, you are removed from the witness stand. You were brought here to present a statement of a situation, not to offer your personal—and unsound—views on human exploration.” MacDougal moved out of the atrium, and turned so that he could be seen by the other three ambassadors of the Stellar Group. “Fellow Ambassadors, my apologies to all of you. As you have heard, both these men bear fault in permitting this serious problem to arise. Their own words convict them of error and of negligence. As soon as this meeting is over, you have my word that I will move at once to have them removed from office. They will never again be in a position to—”

“No-o-o.” The word came rolling from the Angel, delivered slowly and heavily through its computer link. “We will not permit such action.”

Rarely for nim, MacDougal was caught off balance. “You mean—you do not want me to dismiss Commander Mondrian and Commander Brachis?”

“No indeed.” The topmost frond of the Angel went into slow but wide-ranging oscillation. “That cannot be.
The punishment must fit the crime.
We, the Angels of Sellora, request a move at once to Closed Hearing. We request full closure, without staff. There should be no one but Ambassadors present.”

“But then the record—”

“There must be no record. The subject for discussion is a question so serious that it can be pursued only in full closed hearing. For this, we invoke our ultimate Ambassadorial privilege.”

Even as the Angel spoke, an opaque screen was flickering into existence around the atrium. The lighted areas around the four Ambassadors were visible for a few seconds more, then there was nothing in the center of the Star Chamber but a ball of scintillating darkness.

Luther Brachis stepped forward to stand next to Esro Mondrian. The two men were alone, outside the dark sphere. Within it sat the four Ambassadors of the Stellar Group. Their earlier meeting had been the first full audio and visual meeting in twenty-two years. Now came the first Closed Hearing in more than a century.

Chapter 2

Mondrian and Brachis had clearly been excluded from the Ambassadorial meeting. Just as clearly, they had not been given permission to leave the Star Chamber. There was nowhere to go, nothing to do.

That should have been no problem. With overlapping areas of jurisdiction, the two men had a thousand points of shared responsibility and a hundred disputes to settle.

But not today. They remained speechless, Brachis pacing and Mondrian sitting in brooding silence, until after two long hours the opaque screen shivered away. The atrium that it revealed had only two places occupied. The Pipe-Rilla and Dougal MacDougal were still in position, but the Angel and the Tinker Composite had vanished. Even MacDougal’s presence was debatable. He sat crumpled in his seat, like an empty bag of clothes from which the occupant had been spirited away.

The Pipe-Rilla gestured to Brachis and Mondrian to step forward. “We have reached agreement.” The high-pitched voice was as cheerful as ever, but that was no more than an accident of the production mechanism. The Pipe-Rillas always sounded cheerful. The nervous rubbing of forelimbs told a different story. “And since the others are gone, and your own Ambassador appears to be indisposed, it is left to me to tell you the results of our discussions.” The Pipe-Rilla gestured around her, at the two empty places and then at the shrunken, miserable figure of Dougal MacDougal.

“What happened to him?” asked Brachis.

“There was a point of dispute between your Ambassador and the Ambassador for the Angels. The Angel has forceful means of persuasion, even from a distance of many lightyears. I do not understand them, but Ambassador MacDougal will—I trust—recover in just a few of your hours.” The Pipe-Rilla waved a clawed forelimb to dismiss the subject. “Commanders Brachis and Mondrian, please give me your closest attention. I must summarize our deliberations, and our conclusions. First, on the subject of your own blame . . .”

Mondrian and Brachis froze while the Pipe-Rilla stood, head bowed, for an interminable period. It a human had done such a thing, it would have been by design. But with a Pipe-Rilla . . .

“All the Ambassadors agree,” said the Pipe-Rilla at last. “You are
both
responsible in this matter. Commander Mondrian for initiating a project with such enormous potential for danger. Commander Brachis, for failing to make sure that the monitoring for which he had responsibility was suitably carried out. You, and Livia Morgan herself, are culpable in high degree. The willingness of both of you to accept responsibility does you credit, but it is not ultimately relevant. You are guilty. The suggestion of your own Ambassador was that you should be relieved of all duties, dismissed from security service, and stripped of all privileges.”

Brachis glanced at Mondrian.
Their
Ambassador! He held up his hand, palm outward. “If I could be permitted a comment—”

“No.”
There was a barely discernible tremor in the Pipe-Rilla’s voice. “I must proceed, and as rapidly as p-possible. If this discussion was
impossible
for the others, can you not see that it is far from easy for me? Ambassador MacDougal’s proposal was of course unacceptable. As the Angel Ambassador pointed out to him, we hold you, Commander Mondrian, more to blame than Commander Brachis, since you initiated the project, but it would be preposterous to dismiss either of you, or relieve either of you of your duties. In any civilized society, it is the individual or group who
creates
a problem that must have responsibility for solving it.
The cause must become the cure.
The creation of the Morgan Constructs, and the subsequent escape of one of them, came from your actions and inactions. Livia Morgan, who made the Constructs, is d-dead. And therefore the seeking out and d-disposal of that escaped Morgan Construct must be in your hands. We recognize that humans follow codes of behavior quite different from the rest of the Stellar Group, but in this case there is n-nothing to d-discuss. We are . . .
adamant.
”

There had been a shift in the Pipe-Rilla’s posture, and its voice reflected the change. It was too gabbling and jerky to be understood without translation, and
Dominus
lad cut in to provide computer support.

“Ambassador MacDougal has agreed,” went on the Pipe-Rilla. “B-beginning at once, there will be created a new group within the department of Human System Security. It will be of a form peculiar to human history . . . a
military expedition
. . . what your species knows as”—there was an infinitesimal pause, while
Dominus
selected and offered for Pipe-Rilla approval a variety of words—“as an Anabasis.”

“As a
what
?” The grunted question from Brachis to Mondrian was nothing like a whisper. “What’s she mean?”

“Anabasis,” said Mondrian softly. “We need to review our translation boxes. I don’t know what she means, but I’ll bet that’s not it—the original Anabasis was a military expedition, one that turned into defeat and retreat. Not a good omen.”

The Pipe-Rilla took no notice of their exchange. She was in serious trouble of her own, limbs moving spastically and her narrow thorax fluttering. “The Anabasis,” she whistled, on a rising note. “It will be headed by Commander Mondrian, who has principal responsibility for the problem, assisted by Commander Brachis. Your t-task will be simple. You will s-select and t-train Pursuit Teams, to find the—location of—the Morgan Construct. You will follow it to—wherever it is hi—ding.” Now even
Dominus
could not help. The speech pattern of the Pipe-Rilla was becoming more and more disorganized as its voice rose past the range of human ears. It became a great, shivering whistle, matching the shake of the giant body. “Each pursuit team must contain one—trained— member of—each intelligent species. Tinker—Angel—Human—and . . . and
Pipe-Rilla.
” The voice became a supersonic shriek.
“The Pursuit Teams will find the Morgan Construct and—they will—destroy it. DESTROY IT!”