Margaret St. Clair (18 page)

“But when it comes to contacting Altair, the force must be instantaneous. Otherwise, it would take Amtor and you fifteen and a half years to get t here with your question, and fifteen and a half years to get back with the answer. Now, what is it that, over a space which light takes almost sixteen years to span, can be instantaneous? What is the nature of the force?”

“I don’t know,” Madelaine answered. “I wish you’d stop, Doctor.”

“Why? Am I making you nervous?”

“Yes. Uncomfortable. It’s like a surgeon discussing the technique of an operation with the patient he’s going to operate on. I —what was that?”

Something had struck the
Naomi’s hull a sharp blow. “I think somebody threw a rock at us,” Lawrence answered. “I’m going outside.”

There was nobody on the jetty, but he could see, dimly outlined against the sky, the shapes of men. “Hey!” he shouted in En glish into the darkness, “Who threw that rock?”

There was no answer, but, after a moment, another rock whizzed past his head.

Lawrence could see no point in staying longer at such a hostile anchorage; with what dignity he could muster, he untied the Na omi and started her motor.
“Buenas noches!”
He shouted ironically to the faceless men in the dark. The Naomi moved away from the jetty, to the accompaniment of a muttering from the men on the shore. She turned in the little bay and headed straight out to s ea.

We sea people followed, of course. It was a very dark night. When we were out of earshot of the village, Lawrence cut the little craft’s speed. “Amtor! Could one of you dolphins find out what the bottom’s like here? I’ll anchor if it’s suitable.”

“I’ll go,” Pettrus said from the water in his loud, gabbling voice. Pettrus had an acute pressure sense and was the best of us three when it came to gauging depth.

When he came back with the news that the bottom was quite suitable, Moonlight was standing by the rail, talking to me.

“Are you afraid, Amtor?” she asked. “Yes, Sosa.”

“What of? Or do you know?”

“Of—of the terrible gulf of space. Of bottomless space.”

“The inner space, or outer space?”

“Both,” I replied.

“But we’ll be together in outer space, won’t we?” she asked.

“Yes, of course. And we may not even perceive it as outer space.”

“So all we have to worry about is the inner space!” She laughed though she did not sound particularly amused. “Amtor, I’ve be en thinking that perhaps you ought to be kept warm, too, when we try to reach out.”

“I expect I should. But the water here is warm, much warmer than I’m used to, and Ivry and Pettrus will be beside me in case my body loses buoyancy. Don’t worry about it, Moonlight. As to the inner gulf that frightens us both —”

“Well?”

“I think there is a way to bridge it.”

“What?”

“Don’t you know, Sosa?”

“Yes, I think I do. Love is the bridge over the gulf.” She leaned far over the rail, so that her fingertips w ere in the water, and I nuzzled them. “You and I were in close contact that time before, when Dr. Lawrence thought he had to rouse me. What comes after that stage?”

“I expect we must lose all sense of our, separate identity.
Don’t be frightened, Sosa. Tr ust yourself to me. I’
ll do the reaching-out toward our home star.”

“All right.” She went into the cabin. Lawrence had put more charcoal in the brazier, a nd the cabin, though he had left the door ajar for ventilation, was very warm. He had her lie down and covered her with the serape he had bought. He took her pulse, listened to her heart, and read her temperature. “All OK,” he said. “You and Amtor can beg i n. He sat down beside her on the floor.

The first stages of contact were easier than they had been last time. The Naomi slewed about occasionally; she was more in motion than she would have been at the jetty in Bahia what-have-you. It did not disturb Mad elaine unduly, though once or twice she sighed. I think Lawrence found the loose motion more disturbing than she did.

Abruptly, her mind and mine were coterminous. Lawrence said a gray wisp came out of her mouth. And then she and I both felt, not a sense of gulfs and emptiness, but a dreadful sense of pressure.

For me, it was like making a very deep dive much too fast. That is a translation into physical terms, of course. Moonlight said she felt as if her mind, her personality, had become an exquisitely sensitive bladder, and the bladder were being insupportably compressed on all sides.

It was not only psychologically painful, but it frightened us besides. We both realized it was because, though our minds were coterminous, they were not really united y et. We exerted pressure on each other because we were still separate. There was an embrace yet to be made that we both shrank from; and only our affection for each other could make us brave enough to dare the gulf.

The pressure increased. Painful as it w as, we hesitated an instant longer. But we were committed, and the love between the woman and the dolphin was perfectly real. The union could, and must, be made.

We dared it. It gave immediate relief from the pressure, but we had barely enough time to re alize that our minds were truly joined before the whirling began. We went whirling over and over like a patchwork pinwheel, a hand-standing harlequin, a gaudy double tumbler. There was something joyous in our intoxicated mental motion, and if I was a tumb l er doing cartwheels, Madelaine was a dolphin leaping in the sun. Actually, we both were each other.

The giddy whirling stopped. No time to waste. The duad of Sosa and Amtor must reach out. It knew its goal.

It must have been about this time that Lawren ce, in the well-heated little cabin, took Madelaine’s body temperature. It was below normal, but not dangerously so, and he felt that the “reaching-out-to-Altair bit” could be allowed to go on. Ivry and Pettrus, who floated beside me during the whole expe r iment, said that my breathing had become noticeably slow.

To “reach out” meant that the Sosa-Amtor duad had to extricate itself from the grip, of which people are ordinarily quite unconscious, of all the billions of minds on our one earth. Usually dolphi ns and men are stuck in a sort of psychic glue. That is what the duad now experienced.

We churned helplessly in the grip of this mental adhesive until we —the duad —realized it must draw in on itself, become hard and smooth and small. It must encapsulate i tself, like a seed. Then it would be out, and free.

I don’t know why this was easy, but it was. As soon as we thought of it, it happened. The duad was on its way.

It takes light almost sixteen years to reach the earth from Altair, The duad would have b een there instantly, without regard for the distance —space is nothing —but there were interstellar magnetic fields in the way. I do not mean to give the impression that there was any visual awareness of this. That was not how the duad knew of the existence of the fields. But our progress was slowed.

Slowed and stopped. This was the isolation Sosa and I had feared, the terrible gulf of outer space. We were mere points, the duad was one point. But its duality comforted itself.

The fields must be overleaped somehow. Here, I think, the duad drew without knowing it on the same force that powers the ahln. But here it was volitional and personal.

Other stars’ clutched at us. The duad might, even now, have been deflected. But our old home star was reaching out its hands to help; there are billions of minds on that sun’s planet. They are different from the minds of dolphins or men, of course. The million years between have made much difference. But the Sosa-Amtor duad could not only communicate with the minds of Altair’s planet, it was also expected there and welcome. Those minds had had something to do with Madelaine before, when she slept so long.

Now those minds impressed our single consciousness as a wavering, patterned brightness. It seemed to advance and w ithdraw continually. When Madelaine and I discussed this later, we agreed that the minds of Altair’s planet had been afraid of distressing their duad visitor, and that they had hidden from it something of what they were, under this image of fire.

What were the people of that planet like physically? (They weren ‘t, of course, disembodied intelligences.) Here Madelaine and I disagree, she thinking them to be like Splits, and I like the sea people. Perhaps some day we shall really find out.

At any rate, the duad could communicate with them. They knew why it had come. There was no need to argue or beg. Someone —they —many people —the wavering brightness —told the duad what it wanted to know: the secret of powering the ahln.

It was simple, a thing to be learned instantly and remembered easily. And now that it was learned, the Sosa-Amtor duad wanted to get back. Bodies cannot last long without their psychic tenants; our bodies, back on earth, drew us powerfully. And earth herself, with all the kindred minds, call e d like a familiar voice.

Once more the duad had to overleap the magnetic fields. It must make haste. But the way back was easier. Earth pulled her exiles as the planet of Altair had not.

Sosa’s mind and mine fell away from each other suddenly. The duad was two separate beings now. The strange identity was over. We were back on earth.

Madelaine stirred on the little couch in the Naomi’s cabin, and then sat up. She was shivering violently. Lawrence, who was hovering over her, was rubbing her arms and ha nds. “Did you do it?” he asked eagerly. “Your heart was so slow I was afraid you weren’t all right.”

She yawned and smoothed her hair. “Yes, we’ve been there,” she answered soberly. “We got what we went for. It’s easy to use. It frightens me that they tr usted us with it.

“We. learned other things too, I think. There may be at least one useful side product. But the chief thing is, we know how to power the ahln,”

-

Cha p ter 14

DR. SOUTHGATE’S NARRATIVE

The contractions of the synthi-womb had begun. My patient, Sven Erickson, was dimly visible through its clouded plastic walls, lying curled up naked in the fetal position. His respiration, somewhat depressed by drugs, was cared for by an oxygen-poor mixtu r e of oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide, and an array of tubes and pumps handled the excretory and nutritive phases of his metabolism. He had been in the synthi-womb for almost two weeks now. It was time for him to be born.

I didn’t know too much about Erickson’s history. I had heard that he had been picked up on one of the Farallons, in the company of a group of spies and saboteurs, and had been brought to headquarters for questioning. They had interrogated him for several days under the influence of s o dium pentathol, but his answers had been so contradictory and confused that it had been decided to attempt a more fundamental treatment. At this point he had been handed over to me, and I was now at my usual job of monitoring the process of artificial bir t h.

It had been found that a preliminary processing by drugs, followed by a simulation of human fetal growth and birth, was extraordinarily effective in making possible a radical change of personality in patients subjected to it. People who had been throu gh it were like young babies, but young babies who were exceptionally apt and teachable. They learned to walk in ten days, they learned to talk in two weeks. And they could be made into whatever the processes wanted, broadly speaking. I suppose, though I d on’t know for certain, that my superiors were going to condition Erickson to act as a spy, a perfectly docile and committed spy, on the faction with which he had been connected formerly.

I looked at the gauges. Erickson’s pulse, respiration and temperatu re were normal for the stage of intrauterine development he was currently at. The contractions were coming about every twenty minutes. It was time to step them up a bit.

My hand went out to the dial that controlled the frequency of the synthi-womb’s contractions. And somehow —I don’t understand what happened, even now —my fingers turned the valve that determined the oxygen-content of the air my patient was breathing as he f loated in the simulated amniotic fluid. It was as if some other will than my own had taken charge of my hand.

Oh, dear. This would never do. Too much oxygen at this stage would make Erickson restless and promote premature cerebral activity. He wasn’t sup posed to have any real consciousness of his surroundings until after he had been born.

Hastily I turned the valve back to normal, but I felt shaken. Slowly and carefully I reached out to the contraction dial and moved it forward. The frequency of the con tractions increased.

I drew a deep breath. Perhaps it was going to be all right. After all, the events of a simulated labor, like those of a real one, cannot be perfectly standardized.

I have heard physicians argue that simulated gestation and delivery are effective with patients subjected to them, for purely symbolic reasons. I don’t think this is true. The patient actually relives, though in a much shorter space of time, the original events of intrauterine life, and when he is born, he is literally r e born.

I looked critically at Erickson. His head was beginning to come down forcefully against the big dilatable plastic cervix. The impact was carefully cushioned, of course —his was not the relatively compressible skull of an infant, and I had no desire to cause damage to Erickson’s brain.

Suddenly he began to move his arms strongly and kick out with his legs. The plastic womb rocked from side to side with the violence of his struggles. The extra oxygen must have made him restless. But if he kept on lik e this, he’d either rupture the tough material of the synthi-womb, or break an arm or leg.

Hurriedly I touched the jet that would let a little nitrous oxide into my patient’s air supply. The anesthetic was almost immediately effective. Erickson’s threshi ng ceased, his limbs relaxed, and he lay quietly in the fetal position again.

The simulated labor continued. The contractions of the synthi-womb were much more frequent and forcible now. Dr. Aidans, my superior, came in to check Erickson’s condition, and left the laboratory again. It was time for the second stage of labor to begin.