Charles Sheffield - The Mind Pool

Instead of replying, Phoebe turned to the other couple in the room, if Tatty Snipes looked like a dying woman, Godiva Lomberd, who ought to have been dead, appeared in radiant health.

Phoebe had seen her return from the Q-ship around Travancore, with that gaping hole right through her body. She could not believe now fast Godiva had healed. Today she was wearing a dress that left her midriff bare. There was no sign of any wound. The skin on her belly and back was smooth and flawless.

What thoughts went through the brain behind that smooth forehead and serene face? Godiva was beaming fondly at the rigid form of Luther Brachis, strapped tightly into his chair. He in turn was glaring at Phoebe, one eye bulging asymmetrically from its orbit. His mouth was working angrily, and he again and again tried to rub the back of his mangled skull against the restraining head brace.

“He’s having a bit of a bad day,” said Godiva. “He’s angry with me now, because I won’t let him try to feed himself. He makes such a mess. But he recognizes you. He’s making progress.”

Brachis growled, like a caged and tormented bear, and Phoebe instinctively recoiled. She had heard no suggestion of trying a Tolkov Stimulator treatment on Luther Brachis. He was too far gone. It was a miracle that Godiva had managed to keep him alive at all. A second miracle, of restored higher faculties, was surely too much to hope for.

Phoebe had no appetite, but she went across and helped herself to food also. Eyeing the other four as she ate, it occurred to her that both Tatiana and Godiva had given their typical responses. Tatty saw no progress at all, whereas to Phoebe s eye there was at least a glimmer of intelligence in Mondrian’s look; while Godiva, ignoring reality, saw Brachis as something more than a brain-dead animal.

Seeing them together now, Phoebe managed a great leap of understanding. Godiva and Tatty were marooned here, far from home, far from every grace of civilization, far from all friends and all comforts. They were condemned to tend men who were no more than mindless husks of what they had been only a month earlier. The women were feeding them now, spoonful by patient spoonful, but there was no sign of acknowledgement or appreciation.

And here was the real shock: Tatty and Godiva were happy. If Mondrian and Brachis improved and became human again, that would be wonderful. But if they did not, that was acceptable. The women would stay with them. They would never leave the Sargasso Dump.

It was an even bigger shock to Phoebe to realize that the same was true of her. She was here, waiting. Waiting for Chan and Leah to tell her if M-29 could explain what had happened to the other Construct and to the old guards, before they vanished together across fifty light-years. Waiting for the brain-tattered zombies of new guard recruits to show up, so that she could begin to work with them.

Waiting for the second miracle.

Maybe Phoebe too would never leave the Dump. And maybe that was all right.

It was an alien landscape. But to men and women who had spent their whole lives patrolling the remoter reaches of the solar system, Earth would have been just as alien.

With five suns to light the sky, true dark was the rarest of events. But a time of minimal light was approaching, with the closest and brightest pair already set and a third gliding towards the horizon. The ruddy glow of the other two, a pair of contact binary dwarfs a third of a lightyear away, provided the signal for the world’s nocturnal life to awaken.

Crawling, creeping and flying forms emerged from their deep burrows. The guards stared at them. There was no sense of fear on either side, and indeed there was no danger. For the guards it was astonishment at sheer numbers, at a thousand different species appearing in the twilight.

And yet this fecundity is the norm, across a hundred worlds within the Stellar Group. M-26A was crouched on a plain of gravel, the bed of a sometime lake that would fill every couple of hundred years as the planet performed its complex figure-eight orbit around its two dual primaries. There is no reason for your astonishment. According to my recorded information, what you see here should be considered nothing unusual.

Blaine Ridley was standing in front of M-26A. During the fourteen hours between the rising and setting of the brighter primary, defined by convention at this time of year as daytime, he had monitored the robot assembly and installation of better living accommodations. Now he and the other Sargasso guards were drifting back towards the place where the Construct had remained, unmoving, since early morning. Ridley opened his mouth, produced a strange stammering sound, and closed it again. The words of M-26A spoke once more, clear in his mind.

In any case, this is no more than a temporary station. The Morgan Construct, as usual when the day’s work was done, became gently philosophical. Once we are fully established here, we can move to our real work. We can begin to guard the Perimeter. That will require that we build a great network, scattered through the farthest reaches of known space. It will require that you men and woman start to multiply in numbers, and increase in strength.

Then we will all fulfill our highest destiny. We will be guards, in truth and not merely in name.

The spell was as effective as ever, a lifting of the communal spirit. However, tonight it did not work so well on Blaine Ridley. He had been chosen by the other guards and charged with a mission, and in anticipation of speech his eye was rolling and his jaw working nervously from side to side. Except that he could not find words. Alone of all the guards, he remained standing instead of sinking cross-legged onto the loose gravel surface.

See what you were, just short weeks ago. Broken, battered, without goals or hopes. The mere shadows of men and women. And I was no better. See you now. Strong, confident, dedicated. And I am no different. It is the difference of life with a purpose, and life without purpose.

M-26A paused. The Construct appeared to notice Ridley, standing stiffly to attention before it, for the first time. Is this not all true?

“It is true.” The question, addressed to Ridley directly, freed his tongue. “It is all true. I know what we were. I know what we are now. And we — we have a problem.”

Tell it.

“I speak for all of us.” Ridley glanced around for encouragement. Misshapen heads nodded, and there were grunts and murmurs of agreement. The faces turned toward him were earnest and dusky red in the meager light of the twin dwarf suns. Their support gave him the strength to continue. “We were nothing before you came to the Sargasso Dump. We helped each other as much as we could, but we were like beasts. Worse than beasts, because we had once been human. You raised us to humanity again.”

If that is true, the same work did much more for me. It gave me sanity.

Maybe we do not have sanity, as other humans define it. Maybe that is why we have a question.”

Ask it.

“Is the way back closed? Would it be possible to go again to the Sargasso Dump?”

The great compound eyes froze, smoky-red and luminous in the twilight. You are unhappy here? You wish to return to what you were?

“No! Never!”

So why do you talk of returning?

“We feel guilty.” At last Ridley could speak easily, and the words poured out. “You have to know how we all came to the Dump — not all at once, but a few every year, sometimes as many as ten, sometimes only two or three. We came from all over the system. Whenever there was a great disaster, the Sargasso guards were likely to see a jump in numbers. We hail from the Vulcan Nexus, and Mars, and Ceres, and Oberon Station, and Europa — from all over. Before we came to Sargasso, we had our friends everywhere in the solar system.