Mindbridge (23 page)

“Not precisely. They expected me to try. Physically. Simply to kill them, with no danger to my own parts, would have been easy enough.”

“I believe him.” It was Gustav Hasenfel, the first Tamer to speak. His amplified voice rang off the metal walls. “We’re always ready for trouble; always expect the worst.”

“Thank you,” it said. “This one understands, too.” The wise old face looked down at Jacque with something like affection. “But he knew from the first time he touched my mind, on Earth. Though he didn’t know how to say it.

“This one is different from most of you. He has brought the animal part of his nature into harmony with the . . . angel part. He does not attempt to separate them. Because of this, he and I can talk. I can sense that no one else in this room possesses this kind of, this kind of integration. You keep your animals and angels separate: you would have the angel prevail. It never can.

“For this reason, we can’t waste time. This one dies, and without him I can no longer speak.”

The table of people was between Carol and the L’vrai. She shuffled sideways to take aim.

“Tamer!” Bahadur shouted. “Don’t”-drowned out by Hasenfel’s booming voice: “Look away I’ll kill you first.”

Carol’s helmet swiveled toward her teammate, crystal clusters of optical sensors below the terrible red eye. “You would,” she said.

“And then myself,” he said. “I’m sorry, Carol.”

“Then have the L’vrai do it.” She turned up her vocals and her cracked whisper filled the room. “Do you hear me, monster?”

“I will kill you if you turn your weapon on me.” Jacque’s strained voice said. “Not otherwise. Now that I know how you believe you can individually die.”

“He won’t have the chance,” Gus said. “I’ll kill you the instant you take your eyes off me.”

“All right. I’ll save you that. But-“ She sobbed and her vocals clicked off.

“Let me explain further,” it said. “You’re wrong to see me as a monster, though I admit to having been partly at fault.

“I’ve never met another spacefaring race that believed itself to have individual consciousnesses. Individual wills for each part, certainly; otherwise it could hardly be mobile. I assumed . . .

“You see, sometimes my own parts wish to die in interesting ways. I approve; it adds to what I am. I assumed this is what you were doing. Nothing more.”

“To business,” Simmons said. “This is all very interesting. But immaterial, if you’re just going to blow us to—“

“This was never the totality of my plans; for one thing, it will be a long time before you present any real threat to me, or to any other civilized race. I will not destroy you, not immediately.”

“What do you mean by that?” Tshombe said.

Jacque’s voice was getting weak; they strained to hear. “Consider me an observer, a monitor. A teacher, if you will learn.”

“An executioner, if we won’t,” Svenbjorg said.

“Yes, but not in the sense of punishing you for wrongdoing.” It paused. “I struggle with the limitations of your language, and with speaking through this one’s pain.

“I have what you would call an obligation. To a sort of family, which includes organisms who would appear much stranger to you than I do-some of whom you wouldn’t even recognize as life. And some so . . . sensitive that your mere presence would destroy them.”

“You will guide us away from them?”

“Not necessary, yet. Those are still much too far away. Possibly, by the time you can reach them, your own sensitivity will have evolved to where you are no longer a threat.”

“If not, you’ll warn us? Or them?”

“If not, I’ll exterminate you. Which is the only way I can . . . legitimately interfere with your expansion. One day the logic of this will be clear to you.”

“But what about the space we share?” Svenbjorg said. “Do we partition it? Share planets?”

“This is no real problem. You could not survive unprotected on worlds where I thrive. And I would stagnate on yours. I need a great deal of hard radiation to properly reproduce my parts-constant mutation and winnowing-that I may continue to evolve at a proper rate. You reproduce too slowly to take advantage of this. Otherwise you might.. We would have to...

“This one dies. I sympathize with his pain. But his fear of death amuses me. He-“ A loud rattle choked off the last word. The L’vrai released the bridge and Jacque’s body pitched forward to the floor.

Carol spun and her laser glared green. The L’vrai’s head split at eye level and it toppled over, changing as it fell.

“Woman you might have-“

“Shut up!” Gus shouted. “She waited.” Softer.

Carol glided to where her man lay and picked him up. She stood immobile, silent.

Simmons approached her. “Woman? Listen to me. I used to be a doctor. Let me see that man.” Her crystal eyes stared down at him.

“Ah, hell-“ He grabbed Jacque’s dangling arm and pulled. Carol let go and he eased Jacque to the floor.

He ripped open Jacque’s tunic and listened to his chest. Then he straddled Jacque and started pounding on his sternum, putting all his weight behind it.

“He’s young . . . and healthy . . . get it . . . going here . . .” The others gathered around, watching. He kept it up for a while and put his ear down again.

“All right.” He turned Jacque’s head sideways, pinched shut his nose, and began breathing into his mouth.
 
In a few minutes, still unconscious, Jacque was breathing under his own power.

Simmons sat back and panted.
 
He glared up at Carol.
 
“Goddam it, don’t just stand there.
 
Get a real doctor.”

GPEM suits are fast, but you have to watch out where you’re going. She narrowly missed trampling the Western Pope, and widened their door by half a meter.

Interspecies Communications With the Groombridge Bridge: A Summary

1. Invertebrates

The most interesting invertebrate tested in conjunction with the Groombridge bridge (also the first one) was another bridge.

Communicating with a bridge, via bridge, was not the immediate object of the experiment.
 
The research team, in 2052, was trying to enhance the Groombridge effect by using more than one bridge per rapport-pair. If the two bridges touch, it turns out, the effect is diminished, not increased (though if the bridges are “in parallel”—one in each hand—the effect is the same as with one bridge).

Some of the investigators reported vague feelings of “apprehension” or “uneasiness” when one bridge touched another, though others reported no sensation. There was no apparent correlation between this subjective response and the investigator’s Rhine potential.

That the sensation is real was repeatedly verified by blind testing: the two bridges connected by a conducting circuit that could be opened and closed at random intervals by an unseen observer.

This same apparatus was used in experiments with terrestrial animals. Only a few invertebrates (such as the tarantula and the spiny lobster) produced repeatable responses. In no case could experimenters identify the response with any discrete human thought or emotion: in the words of one, it was “like the feeling you might get when some barely audible sound stops. You probably wouldn’t notice it if you weren’t concentrating.”

2. Vertebrates

All vertebrates give some response; with few exceptions, the strength and complexity of the response is a direct function of brain size. Best results, predictably, came from experiments with simians and cetaceans.

(One researcher, Robert Graham of Charleville, claimed to have established communication on a verbal, conversational level with a pair of dolphins. His investigations have recently been discredited, as detailed in Section H.)

Section I following deals with the well-known perception and learning experiments conducted by Theodore Staupe of Colorado on chimpanzees and great apes. Section II details related work done with cetaceans by this author.

The response of other mammals is interesting but wildly variable, depending on the tester and the individual animal. Domesticated animals give the most complex responses; wild ones react mainly with fear. Section III following is a tabular assessment of all vertebrate data.

3. The L’vrai

A total of eleven people have attempted bridge rapport with the L’vrai. Four recorded no meaningful responses, but six suffered (apparently instantaneous) cardiac arrest. One died; the other five are now confined to mental institutions, mute and apparently oblivious to external stimuli. Autopsy revealed only a slight lesion on the rhinencephalon, which might have predated rapport.

Of course there is one individual, Jacque Lefavre, who has repeatedly communicated with the L’vrai via bridge rapport. His highly subjective account of the experience is appended in Section VI following, through the courtesy of his publishers.

4. Apologia

Although this summary is profusely decorated with charts, graphs, statistics, and so forth, readers are warned to interpret our results with the skepticism they deserve. The data herein are for the most part subjective and nonrepeatable; where the data are quantified, the numbers are highly suspect. The summary is prepared in the spirit of a “state of the art” report, primarily to indicate directions for further research.

Hugo Van der Walls, Ph.D.

14 July 2062

AED Charleville

Contents:

I. The Groombridge Effect in Simians: Some Preliminary Observations (Staupe, Theodore; AED Colorado Springs).

II. Bridge Rapport Between Humans and Cetaceans (Van der Walls, Hugo, and staff; AED Charlevile).

III. A Statistical Survey of the Groombridge Effect (Van der Walls, Hugo, and staff; AED Charleville).

IV. Toward a Psychic Taxonomy (Van der Walls, Hugo; AED Colorado Springs).

V. Human/L’vrai Contact: Three Views (Jameson, Philip; Lefavre, Jacque; Chandler, Lewis; AED Colorado Springs).

VI. Mindbridge (Lefavre, Jacque; copyright © St. Martin’s TFX, 2060).

By 2090 people were getting nervous. Nobody but Jacque Lefavre had been able to maintain bridge rapport with the L’vrai, and Jacque was 75 years old. He probably had another quarter-century, but then what?

The L’vrai suggested a way that people could be tested for bridge potential without being turned into vegetables if they were unsuitable.

First, Lefavre was subjected to an exhaustive battery of psychological tests, that reduced his psyche to a computer full of numbers. People who roughly matched his profile were given the same battery of tests. The ones who came closest to “being” Lefavre were given a final test: sent to a remote corner of Groombridge, where the L’vrai waited. Isolated from the psychic pollution that random human sensibilities caused, the L’vrai didn’t have to touch a candidate to tell whether he or she were suitable.

Candidate after candidate was rejected. Perhaps Jacque was unique. If so, humanity would be in a sorry state when he died-at the mercy of a creature whose nature was still a mystery, with whom communication was impossible. The L’vrai refused to read, write, or speak, claiming that expressing truth was impossible through the muddy filter of human language.

Jacque was 105, still hale, when his successor was found. Then two more, over the next few years.

A century later, there were several hundred who could communicate with the L’vrai; in a thousand years, every human could.

The L’vrai said it had not influenced human evolution directly; indeed, humans hadn’t really changed in any basic way. They had only begun to see in their own nature the literal embodiment of e pluribus unum that described the L’vrai.

It withdrew its fleet from Sirius and allowed humankind the stars.

(From Peacemaker: The Diaries of Jacque Lefavre, copyright © St. Martin’s TFX 2151:)

EDITOR’S NOTE: Jacque Lefavre never made another entry in his diary after his beloved Carol died in 2112. But he continued service to humanity as emissary/translator to the L’vrai for another thirty years, until failing health forced him to retire.

The “ecstasy death” associated with primary contact in the Groombridge Effect had long been well-established. Lefavre desired it, and the AED was honored to comply.

They brought an untouched bridge to his bedside in upstate New York and, for his secondary contact, jumped in his great-granddaughter Tania Celarion. Of the twenty-eight great-grandchildren descended from the two children he and Carol had had, Tania was the one with the greatest Rhine potential, 458.

No meaningful number could be ascribed to Lefavre’s potential, of course. Eighty years of association with the L’vrai had made him by far more sensitive than any other human being. He knew, therefore, that he wouldn’t live long after he had touched the bridge.

In fact he lasted less than twenty seconds. But his great-granddaughter revealed in great detail, under contact hypnosis, what went through his mind in that short time.