The Creatures of Man (44 page)

"But killing isn't necessary when the persons being culled are sane," he said impatiently. "A loser in the Commonality, or the Federation, knows who he is, and so does everybody else. A loser is far less likely than a winner to find a desirable mate, and he's less likely to reproduce. That keeps the freakish types down to a minimum."

"I don't see that," she objected, "sane or insane, a person's strongest motivation is concerned with himself, the individual. After that, his second strongest drive is to have a family. The needs of his society to keep down the number of freaks runs a poor third."

"Yes, and it is to keep that third from being so poor that the econo-war is being fought!" yelled Renson, jumping to his feet and pacing the floor, more excited than he could recall ever being before. "It all fits together, Estine! The econo-war culls, and it provides unification of motivation for economic and technological advancement! I suppose I had to see your society with my own eyes before I could really understand that. Sometimes I think I'm not very bright."

After a long silence, she asked softly, "What are you going to do?"

"I'm not sure. I'm thinking of going back. I'd like to work on my emo-monitor idea with some company like Sol-Veg, and perhaps write up my ideas about the econo-war, now that they're becoming clear. I had such a hard time understanding it, maybe I would know how to explain it to people who are as dense as I've been." He turned to her suddenly. "Do you think you would like living in the Commonality, Estine?"

"No," she said flatly.

"I'm sorry. You know how I feel about you. Besides, you're too intelligent and capable not to have several children. Stay here if you must, Estine, but I do hope you'll marry again, and have lots of kids next time. Don't let this noncompetitive society cull you, girl!"

"Like the Commonality has almost culled you?" she asked thoughtfully.

Renson looked startled, then angry. "Damned if it didn't!" he said in wonder. "As if idealism was the sign of a loser! Well, I won't stand for that! I'm going home, Estine."

"O.K. It's been fun, Grap." She walked outside with him as he fingered the food pill pouch on his belt to make sure he had an ample supply.

"And for me," he said. "But the war will be fun, too. A good fight always is."

He kissed her, stepped back, and soared off into the black sky.

"Mind invasion!"

Hage Borat snapped out the alarm as quickly as he could tongue his toothmike. And at almost the same instant, the other nineteen members of Lontastan Exploration Squad 4710Z were shouting the same words.

Their voices rang a ragged chorus in Borat's right ear.

"Does everybody feel that?" he asked. "Sound off if you don't!"

The squad was silent. Then Danta spoke. "I feel it, but I retract the word 'invasion'. Something's looking at my thoughts as I think them, but that's all."

"Same here," several chorused.

"O.K.," responded Borat, "does that hold for everybody? Good. Now, does anybody have a fix on whatever it is? Who can locate it?"

Again silence from the squad. Borat rotated his body slowly in space as his eyes scanned the planetary system in which they had broken out of warp less than fifteen seconds ago. It definitely
was
a system, not a planetless star. He could see two inners plus three more out at gas-giant range.

"Intelligent life, you suppose, after all these centuries?" grunted Orrson.

"It's a weirdy, whatever it is," piped up Baune in her whimsical little-girl voice. "A sure-nuff telepath! I'm not sure I believe in it!"

"It's a telepath all right," Borat said, "and it has quite a range." The squad members had come out of warp with an average separation of over three million miles, as was usual in approaching a previously unvisited star, which spread them over quite an area of interplanetary space. And the telepath was watching them . . . had
started
watching them, judging from their reactions, at practically the same instant.

"What I wonder," Baune was saying, "is, does a telepath have to think?
We
think but don't telepath. Maybe
it
doesn't think, but
does."

Borat grinned. "Cagoline," he snapped, "report this to headquarters, and keep it terse."

"Right," replied the communications man.

"My guess," said Sherris, "is that anything alive in this system is on the outer of those two visible inners. It could be Earth-type."

Borat had been thinking the same thing. Should he order part of the squad to approach the planet, or should he . . .

"Welcome, thinkers!"
came the powerful—but definitely pleasant—roar of thought. "Yes, I'm on the world you have in mind, Captain Borat, and any, or all, of you may come down if you like. Also, forgive the delay in my response to your presence. I had to learn your word-thought-symbols before I could address you."

"Who . . . What . . . Who are you?" asked Borat.

"I have no identity symbol," the telepath replied. "Presumably there must be two intelligent entities in association in order for the name-making process to begin."

"There's just you, in this whole system?"

"Yes, although my world has ample plant and lower animal life. Unfortunately, it never occurred to me to allow an intelligent animal species to develop here. Your existence, humans, is a lesson to me in enlightened self-interest. But without cognating the possibility of such beings as yourselves, how could I cognate their desirability?"

"In what manner do you find us desirable?" Borat asked cautiously.

"As fellow thinkers, as companions, as, perhaps, playmates," came the thought. "No, Baune, this is not a spider-and-the-fly ruse. From your thoughts concerning the chemical composition of your bodies, I do not think I would find you digestible. In actuality, Baune, the man called Orrson finds you far more appetizing than do I."

Baune giggled. "Naughty-minded Orry!" she chided. But her thoughts—suddenly perceptible to all—were wondering
Why didn't old Tall-and-Tough tell me?

"I'm omnivorous," Orrson said with discomfited lightness while his thoughts ran:
Old is right! Too old to rate with that delightful little bundle of youth.

From Baune: He means I'm too young for him. And he probably thinks I'm too silly, too.

From Orrson: No! She's not too young for me. I'm too old for her! Why's she saying things like that with the whole squad listening? I don't mind being kidded by her, but . . . 

From Baune: Oh, damn, if I only were brazen enough to tell him! But he says I'm not too young, so maybe . . . I'm not saying anything! . . . Or kidding him, either! "Hey! What's happening to me?"

From Orrson: Thoughts! Our thoughts are communicating! That creature down on the planet . . . Glowing Baune! Could you possibly mean it?

From Baune: Oh, you big mighty monstrous marvelous old supermale . . . WOW!

From Orrson: Tremendous! But . . . nine nines are eighty-one, nine elevens are ninety-nine, nine thirteens are . . . 

Suddenly the thoughts of Orrson and Baune were no longer perceptible to the others.

"You humans view mental communication as desirable," the telepath apologized, "but with certain limitations. I believe I have the hang of it now."

Borat's mind was working furiously. Occasional humans had shown vague telepathic abilities, but nothing like this! The creature had inspected the thoughts of Orrson and Baune, decided to put them in close communication, and then, after belatedly discovering that such communion sought privacy, had closed off their thoughts from the rest of the squad!

What other capabilities the creature had—and how it might decide to use them—could not be guessed. Certainly the squad faced dangerous unknowns here.

But also unknown rewards. Functional telepathy! The Lontastan Federation needed something like that very badly in its econo-war with the Primgran Commonality.

And in any event, the being was apparently friendly and well-intentioned. The squad's primary task, he decided, was to learn as much as possible about the creature and its telepathic ability.

He began by asking: "Are Orrson and Baune in permanent communication, or are you acting as a transceiver?"

"A difficult question," commented the telepath. "I am not consciously transceiving for them now, but when I establish a linkage, such as theirs, it continues unless I break it intentionally. Perhaps my awareness of their presence has something to do with it."

"You've linked minds before?" asked Borat.

"Not intelligent minds like yours, but life-flows of various types. That is one method of controlling the ecology of my world."

Borat considered this. "What would happen," he asked, "if Orrson and Baune traveled out of range of your awareness?"

"I have no idea," the creature responded.

"All right, we'll find out. Orrson! Baune!"

"Yes?"

"Warp away from this system in short jumps of increasing length. Start with light-minutes, and lengthen from there. If your telepathic linkage breaks down, report back, and in any case come back after you've gone out two lightyears."

"Right."

"Cagoline," Borat continued, "are you through to Nexal?"

"Sure am! My report's raising a stir in headquarters!"

"O.K. Remain in space, Cagoline, and inform headquarters of developments as they occur. Danta, take charge of Orrson's crew and make a prelim of all planetary objects except the telepath's. My crew will go there. Questions?"

There were none.

"Start, then!" he commanded.

The squad—minus Cagoline, Orrson and Baune—went through a sequence of microwarps to gather into crew clusters. When in formation, Borat's crew warped once more to achieve entry position twenty thousand miles above the telepath's world. At that point the crew went full-inert and plummeted downward.

"Your mobility is delightful to watch, and most educational," observed the telepath. "But I catch thought fragments to the effect that humans were once confined, as am I, to a single planet. Now, however, you identify yourselves with space itself, rather than as creatures of your planets of origin."

"Yes," said Borat. "We could not fly through space until we devised equipment—tiny machines—for propulsion and protection outside our ancestral planet's atmosphere."

"Please continue," requested the telepath. "Your thoughts on a subject become more ordered and complete when you speak of it."

"Very well. For propulsion we need devices for inertial control, which amounts to gravitational control, and a device to insert ourselves into warp vectors which take us out of normal space. For protection we need shielding and pressor fields surrounding us. And a variety of macromolecules have to be imbedded into our body tissues. For example, our nasal and throat passages are lined with molecules that absorb, convert and release gases, to recycle the air from our lungs while we're out of breathable atmosphere. Then we have a power unit, implanted in our bodies along with the other life-support packages, to provide the energy for all these processes."

"I catch the thought," commented the telepath, "that these devices were first used in large vessels rather than in your bodies. Why were ships abandoned?"

"Because of prime-field turbulence. We still use small, unmanned ships for freight transport. Space isn't empty. There's a little gas almost everywhere in the galaxy, and in places the gas is relatively dense. Also, there are scattered clouds of dust particles.

"We . . . or our earlier ships . . . don't collide with this material when we travel in warp at superlight velocities. The warp removes us from normal space-time. But there is a reality underlying every particle of matter, a reality we call prime-field, and we don't get away from that when we go into warp. Our own prime-fields are subjected to turbulence by the fields of every atom of gas, or dust that we warp through.

"Now, the more mass an object in warp has, the worse the turbulence. The prime-field of a hydrogen ion, passing through my body in warp, might displace the prime-fields of half a dozen of my atoms, and they in turn might displace to a lesser degree the fields of two dozen more atoms before the shockwave passed through my skin and dispersed. Very quickly, the prime-fields would snap back to their appropriate particles and no damage would be done.

"But if I had the size and mass of a ship, my field would collide with more particle fields, and the resulting turbulences would have more mass to work on. The turbulence would be violent and continuous if my mass were great enough.

"This would do no visible physical damage to me. An atom's prime-field can be disassociated from it without causing the atom to break down.

"But a mind is a prime-field phenomenon, as our first ship-warpers discovered. The turbulence in a large ship could push a man's mind . . . his identity . . . completely out of his body, perhaps to distances of billions of miles. Of course the ego-field as we term it would snap back at the first opportunity, but if that opportunity were delayed for several seconds the man's reality would be permanently impaired. He would, in short, be insane.

"So, we miniaturized the basic components of our spaceships to a point where they could be implanted in our bodies," Borat concluded, "and ceased flying in ships entirely. Also, we wear no more clothes, and carry no more massive equipment on our persons, than we consider necessary."

"Are you not now about to collide with the fields of this planet's atmospheric gases?" inquired the telepath.

"Yes, but field turbulence is noticeable only at superlight velocity. Our entry into your atmosphere is a purely physical problem and is handled by one of our protective force-screens which shields us from frictional heat and extends, like wings or a parachute, to brake our fall."

The other members of the crew were exclaiming to each other about the appearance of the planet below, and Borat noted that it was, without doubt, the
healthiest
looking world he had ever seen. Not a swath of dead vegetation was visible anywhere on the land mass below, and only a few high-elevation outcrops of raw stone stood bare of plant life.