The Mind Pool (40 page)

He was both worried and pleased by the horrified reaction, not just of Shikari but of Angel and S’greela. Their immediate acceptance stuck him with a job for which he felt unqualified. Now he had to get on with it.

He took the landing capsule down to Travancore. It hovered at one position on the planet’s daylight side, while the team unloaded and inflated their tent and fitted it into the upper layers of vegetation. As soon as all the equipment was unloaded, the landing capsule took off again under automatic control for synchronous orbit. It would hover above the planet, monitoring the location that Chan had picked out as a probable location for Nimrod. The Q-ship was stationed much farther out, far from any possible danger of Construct weapons.

Once they were settled in, Chan assigned S’greela to a solo mission. The Pipe-Rilla was easily the strongest of the team members. She was to descend the nearest shaft, seek a specimen of the long, snaky life form, and bring it back to the tent. According to Angel there should be considerable diurnal movement of Travancore’s mobile forms. Like ocean life on Earth, they would take advantage of daylight to feed and sun themselves in the upper levels, and return to the depths at night. Now it was close to midday, and S’greela had a good chance of finding what she wanted close to the surface.

She set off, unarmed at her insistence, on her mission. The others settled for a long, nervous wait.

It was close to sunset when S’greela returned, empty-handed and exasperated. The other three were sitting in the tent, Angel close to Chan and Shikari spread like a thick cloak over both of them. S’greela joined them, and waited for the Tinker components to envelop her also. She sighed.

“You couldn’t find one?” said Angel at last.

The Pipe-Rilla shook her head. “It was not as simple as that. A most frustrating experience!
Many
times I saw one of the forms, but each time it crawled away through a gap in the wall of the shaft. Finally, I decided to lie in wait in one place. At last one came along. I caught it—but I could not bring it here!”

“It was too strong for you?” asked Shikari. The voice funnel was down on the floor, next to Chan’s legs. These days the Tinker showed less and less interest in assuming any familiar form.

“Not at all. I was stronger. But I was
out-legged.
” S’greela held up three pairs of wiry limbs. “It is not often that I meet a creature with more legs than I have.”

“But I thought the animal you were after was
legless,
” said Shikari.

“So did I. Perhaps we need to define a leg. I found that its body is in thirteen separate segments. And on each one there are two gripping attachments—twenty-six in all. When I took hold of its body, each of the twenty-six held tight to the ribs on the wall of the tunnel. I could detach any one of them easily enough. But I could not detach
all
of them, and I dared not use too much force for fear of harming it.”

“Did it show signs of being intelligent?” asked Angel.

“More perhaps than I did. I am here, and it is there, uncaptured. But the whole episode was most annoying. All the time that I was holding the creature, it made sounds. Very high-pitched, so that although I could
hear
most of them, I had no way to reproduce them. I suspect that they were in fact some kind of language. Finally I had to release the animal and return here before dark. It wriggled away only a few paces, quite unharmed. And then, as though to mock me, it stopped and calmly began feeding! It seemed to be saying to me, ‘This is
my
territory, and here I stay.’ I suggest that tomorrow morning Angel and I return to the same place. Angel has our best language ability, and the computer communicator can synthesize anything up to a hundred thousand cycles a second.” S’greela turned to Chan. “But of course, that is your decision. You are the leader for these things.”

Called on for comment, Chan felt a sudden mood change. He had not spoken since S’greela’s return, but he had been following the conversation in a perplexing way, understanding almost without listening. He had been the one preaching the need for action by individuals. Now the proposal that Angel go off with S’greela made him feel uneasy. At his feet the Tinker stirred restlessly, as though Shikari could somehow sense his discomfort.

“I agree, Angel ought to take a look at the animal,” said Chan. “But I think when that happens, I ought to go also. I wanted you to try it alone at first, S’greela, because you are the strongest. But strength does not seem important for what we want to do.”

“Then we should
all
go?”

“I don’t like that, either. Our communication equipment is here, and we need to be able to stay in contact with the landing capsule and the Q-ship. S’greela, do you feel confident that there was no trap? That the animals in the shafts have nothing to do with Nimrod?”

“I feel sure that they do not—but do not ask me to prove that.”

“Angel?”

“We concur. S’greela is almost certainly correct. The probability of a connection between today’s events and the Morgan Construct is very low.”

“And the animal seems harmless?”

“Despite its size, I judged it to be harmless. All it seemed to want to do was eat. Even when I was trying to dislodge it from the tunnel walls, it kept on chewing at them. It has substantial mandibles, but it never once tried to bite me.”

“Right.” Chan made his decision. “Tomorrow we will all go—except for Shikari.”

“We do not wish to be left alone here!” The Tinker was outraged.

“I know you don’t. Listen to me for a moment, Shikari, and see how this sounds. We must leave someone here, in case we need to communicate with the ship. So
half
of you goes with us. Half remains here. You’ll know which shaft we are in, and if you had to you could fly all your components down to join us in a couple of minutes. I know you don’t want to do this, but
can
you do it? Can you operate in two halves?”

The Tinker said nothing, but there was a sudden tremble through the whole mass of the composite. Hundreds of components flew away to cling to the side of the tent. The voice funnel closed abruptly.

“Come on, Shikari,” coaxed S’greela. “If you can do this, it will be wonderful. We can explore with you, and still know that you will have contact with the capsule if we need it. And it will only be for a little while.”

“Divide and conquer,”
added Angel. “You alone can do this.”

The voice funnel remained closed, but individual components slowly came back to join the assembly. Shikari gradually flattened to form a low and miserable heap around the other team members.

It was agreement; or at least, acceptance.

* * *

Angel had used the mobility pack during training, but only Tor a few minutes. S’greela fixed it now around Angel’s tubby blue-green middle section, and tightened the straps.

“All ready. If you would care to try it out . . .”

Angel made a few tentative back-and-forth movements along the lip of the tent. Then suddenly it was darting off on a complex three-dimensional pattern of zig-zags, racing back and forth over the uneven uppermost layer of the vegetation like a water skier.

“Stop playing around, Angel,” said Chan over his communications pack. “We have to be on our way.”

He was beginning to feel like the disciplinarian of the group, the one who always had to say no. The others didn’t seem to worry at all! Maybe that was the real difference between humans and the rest of the Stellar Group—if history was anything to go by, humans had always had plenty to worry about.

Angel came skimming and diving back to the side of the tent, executing a final mid-air roll and loop before landing. The others were ready and waiting. As they set out for the shaft one half of Shikari bade a solemn farewell to the part that would remain behind. Chan felt sure that the Tinker was doing it for his benefit. Shikari explained that although there were seldom more than a quarter of the total number of components clumped to form a single body at any one time, the point was that they were always
there,
always available to attach whenever they were needed. This physical separation into two major pieces would be a unique and unpleasant event.

“Imagine going off on a journey without
your
legs or your arms,” said Shikari. “Or imagine Angel being separated into the Chassel-Rose and the Singer. Well, it’s just as bad for
us
to be split like this.”

Chan was not persuaded, particularly since once they were on the way the Tinker seemed in excellent spirits. A steady two-way stream of individual components moved along the tunnel, providing a continuous link between the two halves of the composite. Chan began to wonder how long a connected chain of single components could be. With, say, ten thousand components, each ten centimeters long . . . that would stretch for a kilometer. But the neuronal inter-connections in such a linear array would be minimal. Chan doubted that a Tinker would actually be able to
think
much in such a mode.

Angel was leading the way, gliding silently along the curved tunnel with all sensors operating. After about twenty minutes the green bulk stopped and turned back to the others. “Something moves in the tunnel ahead,” said Angel softly. “We are very close to the location that S’greela described.”

A handful of Tinker components separated and winged their way down the tunnel past Angel. They returned a few seconds later, and attached to form a chain between Angel and Shikari.

“It is the form,” said Angel. “The same form that S’greela saw. A long body and no real legs, feeding at the tunnel wall.”

“Allow me,” said S’greela. The Pipe-Rilla eased past Angel and went bounding forward down the spiral tunnel. The others heard a thresh of limbs and a high-pitched squeak. Chan led the way down the shaft, pointing his light ahead. He found S’greela holding something firmly around its middle section, while all the rest of the animal clung firmly to the tunnel wall.

Chan walked forward along the full length of the body. It was enormous, a straw-colored multi-segment monster over a meter across and better than ten meters long. No wonder S’greela had not been able to bring it back to the tent!

Despite its size the animal made no attempt to attack, or even to defend itself. The head was eyeless and dark-red, equipped with a broad slash of a mouth big enough to bite Chan in two. It was still eating steadily, chomping on vegetation that it clipped from sprouting sections of the tunnel walls. As Chan came close to it the big head turned slowly towards him. He heard a shrill series of squeaks and whistles, so high and loud that they hurt his ears. They came from a second broad slit set a few inches above the mouth.

Angel advanced to Chan’s side, and the communicator attached to its mid-section gave out an experimental series of similar squawks and squeaks.

“We are only imitating at the moment,” said Angel. “But we think that it is a language, even if a primitive one. We assume that it arises as a modulation of ultrasonic navigation signals employed within the deep tunnel—a natural development for creatures that live mostly in darkness. But before we can be sure we must have more samples of its sounds. Hold it tightly, S’greela. This may take some time.”

Angel moved closer to the head, reached out a lower frond, and poked the creature gently. The monstrous caterpillar body struggled harder, and the head turned to face Angel. There was a longer series of squeaks, this time with a different emphasis and cadence. Angel responded with a succession of similar sounds. They gradually ascended in pitch until they were inaudible to Chan’s ears. The great body ceased to squirm in S’greela’s grasp, and the Pipe-Rilla leaned closer to follow the interaction.

Chan knew that both Angel and S’greela could hear frequencies well outside the human range. He would have to let them work in peace now, and receive his briefing when the initial communication attempt was finished. He stepped away from the others and stared around him at the tunnel walls.

They were close to a branch point where the descending shaft split and continued down as two separate paths. He had not seen that before, nor heard of it in any of the records left by Team Alpha. It suggested a possible system of pathways through Travancore’s jungle more complicated than they had realized.

Chan glanced back at Shikari and S’greela. He was tempted to call to them, but they were both engrossed in Angel’s efforts at talking with the giant native animal. He walked a little farther down the sloping tunnel, and shone his light along each branch in turn.

They were obviously quite different. One continued steadily down toward the distant surface of Travancore, five kilometers below. The other was narrower and less steep. It curved off slowly to the left with hardly any gradient at all. If it went on like that, it would form a horizontal road through the high forest.

Chan went that way and took a few paces along it. He had no intention of losing sight or sound of the other team members.

After only three steps he paused. It was very confusing. There seemed to be something like a dark mist obscuring the more distant parts of the corridor. When he shone his light that way there was no answering reflection.

He hesitated, but after a moment or two he turned to start back the way that he had come. Whatever that might be in front of him, he was not going to face it alone. He had weapons on him, but more than that he wanted the support of the other team members—S’greela’s strength, Shikari’s mobility, and Angel’s cool reasoning.

As he was turning he heard a whisper behind him.

“Chan!”

He looked back. Something had stepped forward from the dark mist, and was standing now in the middle of the narrow pathway.

It had the shape of a human. Chan took another step back toward the other team members as he shone his light at the figure in the tunnel.

And then he could not move at all.

It was Leah.

Chan was ready to call out to her when he remembered Mondrian’s warning. Leah was dead, and what Chan had to be seeing was an illusion—something created in his mind by the Morgan Construct.