Hidden Variables (37 page)

My heart began to pound urgently and my mouth was as dry as Ceres. Strange, how the absence of something can produce such a powerful effect on the body.

"Where are they?" I said at last. "The Council. You said they are in this room."

She looked at me in comical disbelief. "Well, you didn't expect to find them sitting out in the open, did you? Take a look through the hatch at the end there."

We walked forward together and peered through a transparent panel at the far end of the room. It led through to another, smaller chamber, this one dimly lit by a soft green glow.

My eyes took a few seconds to adapt. The big, translucent tank in the center of the room slowly came into definition. All around it, equally spaced, were twelve smaller sections, all inter-connected through a massive set of branching cables and optic bundles.

"Well, there they are," said the servicewoman. "Doesn't look right, does it, with one of them missing like this? It doesn't work, either. The information linkages are all built for a set of exactly twelve units, with a twelve-by-twelve transfer matrix."

Now I could see that one of the small tanks was empty. In each of the eleven others, coupled to a set of thin plastic tubes and contact wires, was a complex shape, a dark-grey ovoid swimming in a bath of green fluid. The surfaces were folded and convoluted, glistening with the sticky sheen of animal tissues. At the lower end, each human brain thinned away past the brain stem to the spinal cord.

I remember asking her just one question: "What would happen if the twelfth member of the Council of Intellects were not connected in today?"

"It would be bad." She looked shocked. "Very bad. I don't know the details, but I think all the potentials would run wild in a day or two, and destroy the other eleven. It has never happened. There have always been twelve members of the Council, since Massingham created it. He is the one over there, on the far right."

We must have spoken further, but already my mind was winging its way back to the dining area. I was to meet McAndrew one hour before the big ceremony.
Incorporation
, that was what Kleeman had called it, incorporation into the Council. De-corporation would be a better name for the process. But the Council of Intellects was well-named. After someone has been pared down, flesh, bone and organs, to a brain and a spinal column, intellect is all that can remain. Perhaps the thing that upset me more than anything in that inner room was their decision to leave the eyes intact. They were there, attached to each brain by the protruding stalks of their optic nerves. They looked like the horns of a snail, blue, grey or brown balls projecting from the frontal lobes. Since there were no muscles left to change the focal length of the eye lenses, they were directed to display screens set at fixed distances from the tanks.

The wait in the dining area was a terrible period. I had been all right on the way back from the Council Chamber, there had been movement to make the tension tolerable, but when McAndrew finally appeared my nerves had become awfully ragged. He was all set to burble on about his physics discussions. I cut him off before he could get out one word.

"Mac, don't speak and don't make any quick move. We have to leave the Ark. Now."

"Jeanie!" Then he saw my face. "What about Sven Wicklund? We've talked again and he wants to go with us—but he's not ready."

I shook my head and looked down at the table top. It was the worst possible complication. We had to move through the Ark and transfer across to the
Hoatzin
, without being noticed. If Kleeman sensed our intentions, Mac might still make it to the Council. My fate was less certain but probably even worse—if a worse fate is imaginable. It would be hard enough doing what we had to do without the addition of a nervous and inexperienced young physicist. But I knew McAndrew.

"Go get him," I said at last. "Remember the lock we came in by?"

He nodded. "I can get us there. When?"

"Half an hour. Don't let him bring anything with him—we'll be working with a narrow margin."

He stood up and walked away without another word. He probably wouldn't have agreed to go without Wicklund; but he hadn't asked me for any explanation, hadn't insisted on a reason why we had to leave. That sort of trust isn't built up overnight. I was scared shitless as I stood up and left the dining area, but in an obscure way I was feeling that warm glow you only feel when two people touch deeply. McAndrew had sensed a life-or-death issue, and trusted me without question.

Back at our sleeping quarters I picked up the com-link that gave me coded access to the computer on the
Hoatzin
. We had to make sure the ship was still in the same position. I followed my own directive and took nothing else. Kal Massingham Kleeman was a lady whose anger was best experienced from a distance. I had in mind a light-year or two, but at the moment I was concerned only with the first couple of kilometers. I wanted to move out of the Ark in a hurry.

The interior of the Ark was a great warren of connecting tunnels, so there were a hundred ways between any two points. That was just as well. I changed my path whenever I saw anyone else approaching, but I was still able to move steadily in the direction of our entry lock.

Twenty minutes since McAndrew had left. Now the speaker system crackled and came to life.

"Everyone will assemble in Main Hall Five."

The ceremony was ready to begin. Kleeman was going to produce Hamlet without the Prince. I stepped up my pace. The trip through the interior of the Ark was taking longer than I had expected, and I was going to be late.

Thirty minutes, and I was still one corridor away. The monitors in the passage ceiling suddenly came to life, their red lenses glowing. All I could do was keep moving. There was no way of avoiding those monitors, they extended through the whole interior of the Ark.

"McAndrew and Roker." It was Kleeman's voice, calm and superior. "We are waiting for you. There will be punishment unless you come at once to Main Hall Five. Your presence in the outer section has been noted. A collection detail will arrive there at any moment. McAndrew, do not forget that the Council awaits you. You are abusing a great honor by your actions."

I was at last at the lock. McAndrew stood there listening to Kleeman's voice. The young man by his side—as Mac had said, so blond, so young—had to be Sven Wicklund. Behind those soft blue eyes lay a brain that even McAndrew found impressive. Wicklund was frowning now, his expression indecisive. All his ideas on life had been turned upside down in the past days, and Kleeman's latest words must be giving him second thoughts about our escape.

Without speaking, McAndrew turned and pointed towards the wall of the lock. I looked, and felt a sudden sickness. The wall where the line of suits should be hanging was empty.

"No suits?" I said stupidly.

He nodded. "Kleeman has been thinking a move ahead of you."

"You know what joining the Council would imply?"

He nodded again. His face was grey. "Sven told me as we came over here. I couldn't believe it at first. I asked him, what about the children Kleeman wanted me to sire? They would drain me for the sperm bank before they . . ." He swallowed.

There was a long and terrible pause. "I looked out," he said at last. "Through the viewport there. The capsule is still where we left it."

"You're willing to chance it?" I looked at Wicklund, who stood there not following our conversation at all.

Mac nodded. "I am. But what about him? There's no Sturm Invocation for people here on the Ark."

As I had feared, Wicklund was a major complication.

I walked forward and stood in front of him. "Do you still want to go with us?"

He licked his lips, then nodded.

"Into the lock." We moved forward together and I closed the inner door.

"Do not be foolish." It was Kleeman's voice again, this time with a new expression of alarm. "There is nothing to be served by sacrificing yourselves to space. McAndrew, you are a rational man. Come back, and we will discuss this together. Do not waste your potential by a pointless death."

I took a quick look through the port of the outer lock. The capsule was there all right, it looked just the same as when we left it. Wicklund was staring out in horror. Until Kleeman had spoken, it did not seem to have occurred to him that we were facing death in the void.

"Mac!" I said urgently.

He nodded, and gently took Wicklund by the shoulders, swinging him around. I stepped up behind Wicklund and dug hard into the nerve centers at the base of his neck. He was unconscious in two seconds.

"Ready, Mac?"

Another quick nod. I checked that Wicklund's eyelids were closed, and that his breathing was shallow. He would be unconscious for another couple of minutes, pulse rate low and oxygen need reduced.

McAndrew stood at the outer lock, ready to open it. I pulled the whistle from the lapel of my jacket and blew hard. The varying triple tone sounded through the lock. Penalty for improper use of any Sturm Invocation was severe, whether you used spoken, whistled, or electronic methods. I had never invoked it before, but anyone who goes into space, even if it is just a short trip from Earth to Moon, must receive Sturm vacuum survival programming. One person in a million uses it. I stood in the lock, waiting to see what would happen to me.

The sensation was strange. I still had full command of my movements, but a new set of involuntary activities came into play. Without any conscious decision to do so I found that I was breathing hard, hyper-ventilating in great gulps. My eye-blinking pattern had reversed. Instead of open eyes with rapid blinks to moisten and clean the eyeball, my lids were closed except for brief instants. I saw the lock and the space outside as quick snapshots.

The Sturm Invocation had the same effect an McAndrew, as his own deep programming took over for vacuum exposure. When I nodded, he swung open the outer lock door. The air was gone in a puff of ice vapor. As my eyes flicked open I saw the capsule at the top of the landing tower. To reach it we had to traverse sixty meters of the interstellar vacuum. And we had to carry Sven Wicklund's unconscious body between us.

For some reason I had imagined that the Sturm vacuum programming would make me insensitive to all pain. Quite illogical, since you could permanently damage your body all too easily in that situation. I felt the agony of expansion through my intestines, as the air rushed out of all my body cavities. My mouth was performing an automatic yawning and gasping, emptying the Eustachian tube to protect my ear drums and delicate inner ear. My eyes were closed to protect the eyeballs from freezing, and open just often enough to guide my body movements.

Holding Wicklund between us, McAndrew and I pushed off into the open depths of space. Ten seconds later, we intersected the landing tower about twenty meters up. Sturm couldn't make a human comfortable in space, but he had provided a set of natural movements that corresponded to a zero-gee environment. They were needed. If we missed the tower there was no other landing point within light-years.

The metal of the landing tower was at a temperature several hundred degrees below freezing. Our hands were unprotected, and I could feel the ripping of skin at each contact. That was perhaps the worst pain. The feeling that I was a ball, over-inflated and ready to burst, was not a pain. What was it? That calls for the same sort of skills as describing sight to a blind man. All I can say is that once in a lifetime is more than enough.

Thirty seconds in the vacuum, and we were still fifteen meters from the capsule. I was getting the first feeling of anoxia, the first moment of panic. As we dropped into the capsule and tugged shut the hatch I could feel the black clouds moving around me, dark nebulae that blanked out the bright star field.

The transfer capsule had no real air lock. When I hit the air supply, the whole interior began to fill with warm oxygen. As the concentration grew to a perceptible fraction of an atmosphere, I felt something turn off abruptly within me. My eye blinking went back to the usual pattern, my mouth closed instead of gaping and gasping, and the black patches started to dwindle and fragment.

I turned on the drive of the transfer vessel to take us on our fifty kilometer trip to the
Hoatzin
and glanced quickly at the other two. Wicklund was still unconscious, eyes closed but breathing normally. He had come through well. McAndrew was something else. There was blood flowing from the corner of his mouth and he was barely conscious. He must have been much closer to collapse than I when we dropped into the capsule, but he had not loosened his grip on Wicklund.

I felt a moment of irritation. Damn that man. He had assured me that he would replace that damaged lung lobe after our last trip but I was pretty sure he had done nothing about it. This time I would see he had the operation, if I had to take him there myself.

He began to cough weakly and his eyes opened. When he saw that we were in the capsule and Wicklund was between us, he smiled a little and let his eyes close again. I put the drive on maximum and noticed for the first time the blood that was running from my left hand. The palm and fingers were raw flesh, skin ripped off by the hellish cold of the landing tower. I reached behind me and pulled out the capsule's small medical kit. Major fix-ups would have to wait until we were on the
Hoatzin
. The surrogate flesh was bright yellow, like a thick mustard, but it took away the pain. I smeared it over my own hand, then reached across and did the same for McAndrew. His face was beginning to blaze with the bright red of broken capillaries, and I was sure that I looked just the same. That was nothing. It was the bright blood dribbling down his blue tunic that I didn't like.

Wicklund was awake. He winced and held his hands up to his ears. There might be a burst eardrum there, something else we would have to take care of when we got to the
Hoatzin
.

"How did I get here?" he said wonderingly.

"Across the vacuum. Sorry we had to put you out like that, but I didn't think you could have faced a vacuum passage when you were conscious."