The Mind Pool (7 page)

Tatty glanced at King Bester. “More your stamping-grounds than mine. Think we might get him today?”

“You’ll have to hurry. Never find Bozzie there after dark—he’ll be topside with his Scavvies, scouting the surface.”

Luther Brachis was looking at his watch. “Then we’re too late. It’s already dark up on the surface.”

But Tatty was shaking her head. “It’s dark now where you landed, in Africa, but we came a long way west through the Links. We picked up six hours. Local time is only two in the afternoon.”

“Sorry.” Brachis sounded annoyed—with himself. “I’ll keep my mouth shut until I know what I’m talking about.”

“You’re not so far wrong as you think,” replied Tatty. “We’re in the northern hemisphere, and it’s winter. It gets dark early—something else you’re not used to.” She paused for a moment, calculating. “I think we can do it—just. Provided that we take the fastest routes. Hold onto your hats, and let’s go.”

Tatty lived on the sixtieth under-level. It was prime real estate, minutes from the surface and within easy reach of a Link entry point. But
because
it was prime, it by design had no direct drop connection with the deeper and poorer levels of the Gallimaufries. To descend, the group had to travel far north, then double back. Led by Tatty, they travelled half a continent horizontally in order to descend five thousand meters vertically. They did it in thirty minutes. For the off-Earth visitors it was a confused race along networks of high-speed slideways, a plunge along vertiginous corkscrews of spiraling ramps, and finally a series of long dives through the black depths of vertical drop-shafts.

“First time I’ve felt comfortable since I got here,” said Flammarion, savoring the long moments of free-fall.

The last drop was a long one, down a curving chute that expelled them into a vaulted chamber, hundreds of meters across. The smoothed rocky roof was studded with powerful sun-simulators that lit the whole enclosure. The chamber’s volume was enormous, and crammed full. The newcomers were surrounded by a baffling jumble of stalls, corridors, partitions, tents, and guy-ropes. And development was not confined to two dimensions. Slender support columns ran from floor to roof at twenty meter intervals. Their steel pylons supported shish kebabs of ramshackle multi-level platforms, many of them open-sided, with rope ladders hanging down to the ground beneath.

The floor of the chamber was not rock, but rich black earth. Bright-blossomed flowers thrived everywhere, growing profusely along the zigzagging walkways and festooning every wall and column.

“Bozzie’s imperial court,” said Tatty. “As you can see, he’s a flower buff. Stick close to the King, now. If you get lost down here I don’t know if you’d ever find your own way back.”

The human population of the Gallimaufries was packed as densely as the plant life, and no less colorful. Gaudy jackets of saffron, purple and vermillion were favored, trimmed with sequins and piped with blue, silver, and gold. The clothes were all dirty, and the smell—to a spacer’s nose—appalling. King Bester’s costume, garish and grubby-seeming when they had first seen it, now appeared clean, modest, and conservative.

The first impression was of continuous noise and clashing color. And then the submerged second element of the Gallimaufries slowly emerged, in quiet counterpoint to the vivid brawl. Mingled in with the eye-catching bright clothes and bustling movement, and almost invisible among them, were the others. Like pale lilies hidden among orchids, people sat in small groups on benches, or walked slowly through the alleys. Their clothes were simple, monochrome tunics of white or grey. They did not seem to speak, even to each other.

“Commoners,” said Tatty. She had followed Luther Brachis’ look, to a group of three women dressed in plain ivory tunics. “The raw material for your Pursuit Teams, if you can make the deal. Bozzie has contract rights over almost everyone here in grey or white, like those women.”

“But they get nothing out of it? They’ll never agree to go.”

“They can’t say no. Bozzie owns their contracts. Anyway, some of them might be glad to get out of here, no matter how bad your deal sounds. Take a look. I’ll go find Bozzie and bring him back to you.”

She ducked under a guy rope, rounded a tent, and headed for the edge of the chamber. Her height allowed them to follow her progress for the first thirty meters, then she was lost in the tangle of people and buildings.

Brachis turned to Esro Mondrian.

“Want to change your mind about that wager? If not, I’m ready to go ahead with it.”

“I don’t know. It depends if I can find someone suitable here.”

“Hey, you’re weaseling out. Come off it, Esro. You know you’ll
never
find someone suitable, not when nothing good has come out from Earth in three hundred years. They’re
all
losers, every one of them too decadent and spineless to do anything right. You didn’t talk about ‘someone suitable’ before—you said you could train
anyone
to be acceptable as a Pursuit Team member.”

“I
can.
I’ll make the bet. Just name the terms.”

Even though Brachis had been pushing Mondrian again, he was surprised by the rapid acceptance. But he was too experienced to let it show.

“All right, then. Let’s keep it simple. You select any pair of candidates that you like. You do it
today,
and you do it down here. You train them any way you want to. In a reasonable time—say, six months?—you get them accepted as Pursuit Team members. You do it, you win. You fail to do it, for anything short of candidate death, you lose. Simple enough?”

“Simple enough.” Mondrian paused. “What about stakes?”

“I’ll stake my personnel monitoring system against yours. Don’t pretend you haven’t got one. You’ve been tracking my people for years, same as I’ve been tracking yours.”

“Right. Accepted. In front of witnesses.” Mondrian turned to Bester and Kubo Flammarion. “I will select two people. Here, today. I will train them. When their training is complete, they will be accepted—”

“
Both
be accepted. One won’t do.”

“—both
be accepted as Pursuit Team members. Commander Brachis has my hand on it.”

Brachis shook Mondrian’s hand for only a split-second, then turned to examine the bustling court around him. He made a big point of holding his nose. “There they are. Take your pick. White or grey, Princess Tatiana said, and I’m glad you’ll be doing the training, not me—I couldn’t stand the smell.”

The courtiers were all grubby energy and extravagance. By contrast, the commoners were listless and subdued. A team of three was passing Brachis as he spoke, leading an odd-looking beast on a steel chain. Its muzzle was blunt and its forehead low, but the animal stared around with sparkling hazel eyes, and showed more interest in the scene than its keepers did. It paused by Flammarion and sniffed at him inquiringly.

“No danger,” said King Bester—Flammarion seemed ready to dive away into the crowd. “It’s quite harmless. I’ve seen things like that a hundred times.”

“What is it?” Flammarion flinched away as the creature turned its head toward him, opened a mouth full of jagged teeth, and offered him a spiky smile.

“No name, squire. Just an Artefact, something from the Needler labs.” Bester snapped his fingers. “Hey, like to visit one? I can arrange it easy.”

Flammarion shook his head, but Bester was too experienced a salesman to miss the sudden strong interest shown by Luther Brachis. He was interrupted before he could follow up on it. Running along the path, dodging in and out of the bustling courtiers, sped a young man. He was about twenty years old and carrying a garland of flowers. He was closely followed by a young girl. “Not fair, Chan,” she was crying. “No fair. That was cheating. Give it back.”

The man paused close to Mondrian, turning to shake the flower posy teasingly at her. She was slight, thin, and olive-skinned. Moderately attractive—but nothing compared with the man. He was an Adonis: golden haired and tall, with a loose, agile build and sculptured good looks. If the people he was running among were aristocrats, his face pronounced him their undisputed emperor. Both the man and the woman were dressed in the plain ivory tunics of commoners.

Unworried by the presence of the Security men in their dark uniforms, he dodged behind them to escape. Mondrian took one look, then moved forward to grab the man by the arm. The youth stared at him, mouth open. The woman moved to their side, and put her own hand in turn on Mondrian’s. The courtiers stopped their promenading to stare at what was happening.

“You.” Mondrian moved forward, tightening his grip as the woman tried to pull his hand free. “Both of you. Are you under contract to Bozzie?”

The man stared back impassively, but the woman thrust herself between him and Mondrian. “No business of yours! Let go!”

“No, listen for a moment. There might be a position for you—something good. If you’re contracted to Bozzie, I’ll make sure you get a good offer—”

She batted Mondrian’s hand away from the youth’s arm, screamed
“Chan! Follow me—right now!”
and threw herself away into the crowd. The youth gave one wide-eyed glance at Mondrian and went after her. In a few seconds they were twenty yards away, heading for the shelter of a covered arcade.

“Those two,” cried Mondrian. “Stop them—there’s a reward for anyone who does.”

The courtiers did not even move. Flammarion began a half-hearted pursuit, but found they were running away at a speed that he had not even attempted in a quarter of a century. They were ducking into the arcade when Luther Brachis acted. He pulled a palm-sized cylinder from his pocket and pointed it at the pair.

“Don’t shoot!” cried King Bester.

He was too late. A green spiral of light flashed from the cylinder, corkscrewing a tignt helical path that glowed in the air. It touched the escaping pair, first the man and then the woman. The backs of their jackets smoked, and threw off a shower of sparks. Then they were wriggling away out of sight behind a long curtain of golden beads.

“They’re not hurt,” said Brachis to King Bester. And then to Mondrian, “You’re going to lose your bet anyway, so I’ll give you a look at the monitor system you’ll never get.” He pulled a flat disk from his belt. “It’s never had a test before in a crowded environment like this. Let’s see how well it does.”

He held the disk horizontal. At its center a double arrow of light moved and turned. As they watched, it lengthened perceptibly and changed direction.

“A Tracker?”

Brachis nodded at Mondrian’s question. “But a lot fancier than usual. Direction and distance. Once anything’s tagged with the signature beam this can follow them for at least twenty-four hours. It’s also designed to be able to track five people at once. It must be confusing if they all go separate ways—five separate arrows to deal with—but with two it ought to be easy.
And
they’re keeping close together.” He handed it to Mondrian, who in turn held it out at once to Flammarion.

“Go follow them, bring them back here. I have to stay here and wait for Bozzie.”

Flammarion stared at him pop-eyed, then glanced in turn at the Tracker and the bewildering complexity of the chamber.

“Not by yourself, Captain,” went on Mondrian. “I realize you don’t know the place.” He gestured at King Bester, who was pointedly looking elsewhere. “He’ll help you—and he’ll be very well rewarded if he does.”

“Right you are, squire.” Bester slapped his hands together and grabbed the Tracker from Flammarion. “Now we’re cooking. The arrow’s not moving, they must have stopped. Come on, Captain. We’ll have ‘em in a jiffy-o.”

With Flammarion trailing along behind he set out alone the path defined by the arrow. Mondrian glanced mildly at Brachis, and actually came close to smiling. “Big mistake, Luther. You didn’t think when you set the Tracker on them. Now I’m going to win that bet—with those handsome two you were kind enough to tag for me. Want to concede right now?”

“The bet stands, Esro. Nothing good comes out of Earth.” His thought ran on:
That irritates you mightily, doesn’t it, every time I say it?

And Mondrian was making his own useful observation.
Nothing good comes out of Earth, you say. But some things on Earth certainly interest you. Icaught that look, when King Bester was talking about visiting a Needler lab.

He had no time to pursue that thought. A blare of trumpets came from the direction opposite to the vanished Bester. The crowd was parting, pushed aside by a dozen hulking ruffians. Behind them came a flower-bedecked sedan chair carried by eight men, with Princess Tatiana walking at its side.

The Duke of Bosny, Viscount Roosevelt, Count Mellon, Baron Rockwell, Earl of Potomac—all five hundred and seventy pounds of him—was arriving to begin negotiation.

Twelve hours later, Tatty and Mondrian were at last alone. She was sitting by his side, reviewing a handwritten document.

“It looks all right, Essy,” she said, frowning in the dim light. “This transfers title, effective two hours ago. They’re all yours now.”

Mondrian nodded. He did not look up. In front of him on the table was an open flagon of ancient brandy. He was staring into the depths of a balloon glass holding half an inch of amber liquid.

“You have no idea how much effort it took to find that for you,” complained Tatty. “I started looking for it right after your last visit to Earth—and you haven’t even smelled it.”

Mondrian roused himself, brought the glass close to his nose, and gave it a dutiful sniff. “I’m sorry. You know me, Princess, most of the time I’d kill for a brandy like this.”

“So what’s wrong? Bozzie signed over the contracts, you’ve got your two candidates, and Captain Flammarion ought to have them away from Earth in a few more hours. Why aren’t you smiling?”

“I wish I knew. I can’t help feeling something’s wrong with the deal.”

“You think you paid too much?”

“No. Too little. Your friend Bozzie didn’t ask enough money for those two.”

“But you told me you had no idea how much it ought to cost to buy those contracts.”

“I didn’t. But King Bester knew, and I was watching his face when Bozzie accepted our first offer. Bester gawped and gasped.” Mondrian picked up the glass, breathed in the delicate centuries-old bouquet, and took a tiny sip. “Well, we’re committed now, even if I don’t feel comfortable with it. I told Flammarion to get them into the Link system and up as soon as he could, before Quarantine had a chance to change their mind. Now I wish I’d taken a look at them myself.”