The Creatures of Man (50 page)

Mergly nodded slowly, and Tosen felt a calm elation.

"Of course," Mergly said, not quite willing to be convinced, "what you have here is a purely suppositional structure."

"Yes, but one that, if I'm right, could straighten out the entire econo-war mess and get everybody back in competition. But I agree it would help if we had more dependable data to go on."

"Such as what?"

"Such as an agent might get during a very close—though necessarily quite brief—approach to Orrbaune. For a moment our man would be in the thick of the telepathic communications network that Monte provides the personnel on the planet, not merely within range of telepathic detection. He might get a surprise reaction from Monte, especially if it is a living creature. And he might pick up thoughts from the local humans who have first-hand knowledge of the telepath."

Mergly was radiating impatience. "Who's dealing with extreme improbabilities now?" he snorted. "But never mind that for a moment, since I can see from your emo that you think you know how such a close approach could be made. If you're asking me to assign a Bureau agent to that mission, the answer is NO. For the very good reason that we no longer have an agent fit for that type of job."

"No agent?" murmured Tosen.

"They've all turned noncompetitive," grunted Mergly. "Which makes sense from their viewpoint. Agents are among the few people who actually risk their lives in the conduct of the econo-war. That takes strong motivation, which present conditions don't provide."

"But if it was explained to one that this mission might revitalize the econo-war . . ." Tosen began.

"He would laugh at you," Mergly responded. "Have you tried to explain your scheme to a noncompetitor?"

"Well, yes. To my wife."

"What did she think of it?"

"She laughed," Tosen admitted lamely.

Mergly's smile was sour. "So there you are. You have a suppositional structure, which you need more data to substantiate sufficiently to impress someone who has turned noncompetitive. But to get that data, you have to impress a noncompetitive agent with your suppositions. Quite a dilemma."

After a silence, Tosen said, "There's one answer to it: I can make the jaunt to Orrbaune myself if you'll agree."

"That's a deadly game for an amateur," replied Mergly.

"I know," said Tosen.

Four light-days away from Orrbaune's sun Tosen came out of warp, well outside telepathic detection range.

For an instant he felt a purely subjective chill, so distant from a sun's warmth and clad only in the shorts, sleeveless shirt and low boots normally worn by space travelers. However, the tiny implanted devices of his life-support system were keeping him warm while they protected him from the vacuum, and from the high-energy particles of interstellar space. And embedded in the tissues of his throat and nasal passages were gas-converting macromolecules to permit normal breathing.

He torqued his repulsor field to start himself spinning slowly, blinked tightly to turn on his ampli-sight, and peered about for the equipment pod which had been set to follow three seconds behind him through warp. This was an uncertainty-filled point in his mission—finding his equipment—because warping over a two-hundred-light-year jump was not totally precise. His pod might emerge on top of him or fifty thousand miles away. And it could not make any blatant announcement of its location so near the Lontastan capital system . . . it had a powerful red blinker for Tosen to look for, and that was all.

Without the equipment in the pod, he might as well warp for home immediately. He had to have it, and it could not have made the trip through warp with him. A man-sized mass was about the maximum that could move at warp velocities without stirring up mind-wrecking turbulence in prime-field.

So Tosen spun slowly in space, straining for a glimpse of the red blinker.

He almost missed it. It was a dim flicker in his peripheral vision that vanished when he tried to look directly at it. But he had its direction spotted. He activated his propulsor field and zoomed toward it on semi-inert mode.

Within fifty yards of the pod he went full-inert and drifted in slowly. The pod was a slender torpedo of dull red, and the color went black when he reached and killed the blinker. After activating the automatic setup system, he drifted a few feet away while he watched the pod unfold, extend a framework of slender lattices, and fan out a thin pie-slice of silver into a six-meter telescope mirror. When the components clamped together and motion stopped, he drifted to the eyepiece and swung the instrument to point in the direction of Orrbaune.

Basically it was an ancient device that would have been readily recognized for what it was back in Earth-Only times—an astronomical reflector telescope. It was rendered more effective by an ampli-sight attachment and tight-line tracking, but its mirror optics differed little from those used by men to peer into space even before man himself could leave old Earth's atmosphere.

Tosen grinned at the sheer size of the instrument. Who would imagine a spy using such a big, cumbersome gadget?

And that was the whole point. Nobody had imagined it, and that was why it had never been tried. People were used to thinking of space equipment in pill-sized packages . . . devices small enough to place in the various available nooks and crannies of the human body without making noticeable bulges. Like ampli-sight, for example, for which a specialized field phenomenon was produced by speck-like transmitters located within the eyeballs.

Being sane, Tosen mused as he busied himself with the telescope, only gave individuals access to such abilities as they inherently possessed. It was no guarantee of great wisdom, or of creative imagination. He felt himself fortunate to possess the latter of these.

He spent fifteen hours working with the telescope and its computer attachment, getting the data he needed. When his series of observations was complete, he knew his position and motion relative to Orrbaune with more exactitude than any earlier Commonality agent. He figured on a maximum margin of error of ten miles.

Satisfied at last, he activated the breakdown system and watched the telescope collapse back into the compact pod configuration. When the process was complete, he switched on the systems of the pod's record-and-home automatic sequence.

Then he drifted away from the pod, carefully set up his approach vector, and warped toward Orrbaune.

He exited into norm space almost sitting on the planet. His altitude was only two hundred miles, and his inert momentum in relation to the surface was near zero.

But he had no time to congratulate himself on this success. He was too busy observing with every implant-augmented sense he could bring to bear. He had a lot to try to learn in the two seconds he had allowed himself.

At that, he nearly overstayed. The Lontastans were skittish indeed about unheralded visitors—and especially one appearing almost on top of their heads. Tosen realized as he automatically went into warp and zipped away that he had felt the first few milliseconds of a zerburst flare that had blossomed within a few hundred meters of where he had been. He could feel the burn all across his back, and could detect his medicircuits going to work on the damage.

What had he learned?

He wasn't sure, but he hadn't expected to be at this stage. The important information, he hoped, was that which had been gathered by his special sensing devices and transmitted to the pod, to be recorded and transported home.

But at any rate, his memory of those two seconds held nothing to indicate Monte was not a device.

There
had
been telepathic contact. It had come so swiftly after his exit from warp that he had noticed no time lag.

But the . . . the
feel
of that contact was, at first, impersonal, without even mild emotion. Would a living telepath have such a feel? Tosen had never experienced telepathy before, but he doubted it.

Then, a split-second later, that impersonal feel was lost in a welter of obviously human thought-patterns as alerted Guardsmen came storming into the telepathic linkage with the expected reactions of alarm and anger, and harsh demands that the intruder identify himself instantly.

All in all, Tosen considered his mission to Orrbaune a complete success.

He left a confused flurry of exchanges behind him.

Who was that?
demanded Frikason of the Lontastan High Board.

Monte replied: His identity was not revealed as his attention was so totally on receiving data that he transmitted very little. However, he was from the Commonality, and his purpose came through clearly.

Oh? What was it?

To obtain information to verify his belief that I'm a machine, not a living being. Monte's thought was obviously amused. If I were a machine, it would be possible for the Commonality to build my counterpart. That was his intention.

Frikason along with several others present shared Monte's amusement.

Then from Frikason: In a way it's too bad he's so completely off the track.

True, agreed Monte. The deterioration of the econo-war game is regrettable, and my equivalent on the Primgranese team would be the ideal way to restore the balance. But extensive studies by myself in collaboration with a number of your scientists has produced the unavoidable conclusion: a telepathic device, or machine, lies totally beyond all present skills and knowledge, and may, in fact, be an impossibility. Whereas certain of the reasoning capabilities of the mind can be duplicated by computing devices, telepathy lends itself to no such mechanical production. It is too purely a life-function for that.

After a moment of relative telepathic silence, a thought came from Garsanne of the High Board: Surely even the Primgranese should have figured that out. Why did this spy think otherwise? Did he have an unsane motivator?

No, replied Monte. My impression was that he bases his belief on a logical—if thoroughly wishful—interpretation of such data concerning myself as the Commonality has obtained.

Wishful indeed, remarked Frikason. By the way, did he warp out safely?

Yes, barely. He escaped with the equivalent of a bad case of sunburn.

Sadder but wiser, huh?

No, not wiser, Monte informed them. As you know, there is practically nothing of what may be called personality in any one of my billions of telepathic attention units. Each is simply a circuit. The spy would not be able to distinguish the attention unit that detected his presence and revealed him to the nearest Guardsmen as the product of a living mind. As for the Guardsmen with whom he was in mental contact, able though they are for their assignments they are genetic barbarians of meager intellectual curiosity. Their knowledge of me is only of the hearsay type the spy discountenances.

So he's going home, still thinking you're a machine he can duplicate. observed Garsanne. Look, Tedaboyd, you'd better dispatch a couple of agents to learn his identity and see what he comes up with, just in case.

The Lontastan Intelligence chief's thought was annoyed: What couple of agents? I told the High Board months ago that I haven't got a decent agent left! They've all become slack-outs! And I can't say I blame them. Why should they stick their necks out for a war that is already won?

Yes, I'm afraid we non-slack-outs are a vanishingly small minority, agreed Frikason. Never mind trying to track down that spy. He can't possibly succeed, as Monte's told us. Let's get back to the task at hand of devising the least disastrous means of bringing the econo-war to an official close.

Monte observed: The Commonality of Primgran, though defeated, still has one strength we lack.

Oh? What's that? Frikason asked.

One highly-motivated agent, still on the job.

Tosen soon found himself needing all his high motivation.

"Why," demanded Mergly, glowering across Tosen's desk, "didn't you tell me you didn't have even the backing of your own research man?"

Tosen glanced sideways at Clarn Rogers, who was emoting offended surprise, then replied, "Because I didn't know." He grinned wryly and added, "I didn't bother to check with him."

"Why not?"

"Because I suspected what his answer would be."

Mergly growled, "So you got me to go to bat for you before the Council to get you an R-and-D contract, with my neck way out—not that I give a damn about my neck, but wasting what competitive push we've got left is another matter!"

"I don't think it's a waste," Tosen returned. "I think Rogers is wrong."

"But, Rof," Rogers complained, "a telepathic machine just doesn't make sense. Every piece of substantial research on the subject indicates that telepathy is a function of the ego-field, or the spirit, or soul, or whatever you want to call it. Definitely, telepathy is
not
a function of the physiological nervous system. Or at any rate, not basically. A proper nervous system, such as that of the creature Monte, doubtless is essential machinery to facilitate an ego-field's telepathic abilities—otherwise all humans would have it. But you certainly can't produce telepathy with a mere machine!"

"Psionic devices have been around for several centuries," Tosen remarked softly.

"Certainly," Rogers said, showing impatience, "but they function as accessories of the users' nervous systems, as relatively simple additional nerve-ends, so to speak. Very useful as controls for our life-support implants and what not."

"But it's the ego-field that makes a psionic device work, isn't it?" said Tosen.

Rogers wriggled. "Well, of course. But as a
small
added part of the nervous system under the ego-field's control! What you're proposing wouldn't be small. It would be several orders of magnitude more complex than the human brain itself, according to my understanding of what Monte is. You couldn't merely focus your attention on such a thing and make it work. You don't have that much . . . that much
attention!
Certainly not that much to spare."

Mergly asked Rogers, "Then what would you expect to be the result of the project if we carried it out?"