Charles Sheffield: The Mind Pool

Item five: Pursuit Teams, Restrictions. Candidates will be excluded if they have military associations, or if they fail standard psychological tests for interaction with aliens.

Item six: Training programs.

Flammarion did a double-take and his eyes skipped back to the previous item. Impossible. What was Mac-Dougal trying to do to him? He jammed his uniform cap onto his bald head and hurried next door to Esro Mondrian’s office. The door received a flat-palmed bang as he went through, but he did not wait for permission to enter.

“Did you see this, sir?” He slapped the sheet on the desk in front of his superior, with the assurance of long familiarity. “Come through less than an hour ago. See what it says about Pursuit Team candidates? That’s my job, but there’s so many conditions tied on to it I bet I won’t find one acceptable candidate in the whole system.”

The road map of wrinkles on his forehead disguised his worried look. A long stint of security service out near the Perimeter had produced three permanent results on Kubo Flammarion: premature aging, a total lack of interest in personal hygiene, and a permanent rage against bureaucratic procedures of all kinds. For the past four years he had been Esro Mondrian’s personal assistant. Others wondered why Mondrian tolerated the scruffy appearance, insubordinate manner, and periodic outbursts, but Mondrian had his reasons. Kubo Flammarion was totally dedicated to his work — and to Esro Mondrian. Best of all, he had a unique knowledge of where the bodies were buried. Flammarion kept no written records, but when Mondrian needed a lever to pry from Transportation a special permit, or force a fast response from Quarantine, Flammarion could invariably deliver the dirt.

Some deputy administrator would receive a quiet, damning call, and the permit magically appeared.

Mondrian sometimes wondered what facts about him were tucked away in Kubo Flammarion’s scurvy, straggly-haired skull. He was too wise to ask, and on the whole he preferred not to know.

“I saw this,” he said quietly. “Commander Brachis already ran a check. As it happens, it’s not MacDougal’s fault at all. Those conditions were imposed by the other Stellar Group members.”

“Yeah — but did MacDougal protest?” Flammarion jabbed at one point on the page. “There’s the killer. We’re supposed to find Pursuit Team members with no military training. That excludes everybody.”

“Everybody over sixteen years old, Captain.”

“All right. But before they’re sixteen, they’re all protected by parental statute.” Flammarion was angrier by the minute. “We’re scuppered. We can’t touch ’em before they’re sixteen. And at sixteen they go straight to military service. Those instructions make the whole damn thing impossible.”

“Well find the candidates. Trust me.” Mondrian was leaning back in his chair, staring across the room at a three-dimensional model of known space and the Perimeter. The display showed the location and identification of every star, color-coded as to spectral type. Colonies were magenta, stations of the security network highlighted as bright points of blue.

The Perimeter did not form the surface of a true sphere, but for most purposes it was close enough to be treated as one. Its bulges and indents showed where probes had been slowed down in their progress, or had managed to expand the frontier exceptionally fast. Beyond the Perimeter lay the unknown and the inaccessible. Within it, instantaneous transmission of messages and materials could be accomplished. The probes contained their own Mattin Links, and through them more equipment, including Links, could be transferred.

Every century the probes, creeping out at a fraction of light speed, extended the Perimeter by a few light-years. And somewhere near its extreme edge, in the three-lightyears-thick shell that comprised the little-explored Boundary Layer, lurked almost certainly the fugitive Morgan Construct.

“But where, for Shannon’s sake?” Flammarion had followed Mondrian’s look, and thought he understood it. “Maybe we’ll find the Construct out there — but where will we find the candidates? If you’re thinking, the Colonies, J don’t believe it. I’ve tried them before. They need every pair of hands they can get for their own projects.”

“Quite true. I don’t look for assistance from the Colonies.”

“There’s nowhere else.” Flammarion scratched his unshaven chin. “You’re saying what I thought when I read the directive — we’ll never staff the Pursuit Teams. It’s an impossible job.”

But Mondrian had turned to face another wall of his office, where a display showed a view from Ceres looking inward towards Sol. “Not impossible, Captain — just tricky. We tend to forget that one planet of the solar system still refuses to be part of the Federation. And people there seem ready for anything, including trading their offspring … if the price is right.” He pressed a control on his desk, and the display went into high speed zoom.

“Sir!” Kubo Flammarion knew that only one planet lay in that direction. “You don’t really mean it, do you?”

“Why don’t I? Have you ever been there, Captain?”

“Yessir. But it was a long time ago, before I was with the service. Everything I hear, it’s got even worse now than it was. And it was crazy then. You know what Commander Brachis says? He says it’s the world of madmen.”

“Indeed?” Mondrian smiled at Flammarion, but his voice took on a cold, bitter tone. “The world of madmen, eh? That’s the way the Stellar Group views all humans. To them every human world is a world of madmen. And what about you? Do you agree with Commander Brachis?”

“Well, I don’t know. From all I’ve seen — ”

“Of course you do. Don’t start being polite to me now, Captain — you never have before. Now listen closely. You have the memorandum from the Ambassador. I want you to review it in detail, and think about it hard. Then if you can bring me within forty-eight hours a proposal that will provide the necessary human members of the Pursuit Teams, I will consider it. But unless that happens, you will — within seventy-two hours — begin making arrangements for a visit. A visit to Earth. For you, me, and Commander Brachis. We’ll all see his ‘madworld’ at firsthand.”

He turned away, with a gesture of dismissal.

“Yes, sir. As you say, sir.” Kubo Flammarion rubbed his sleeve across his nose and tiptoed from the room. At the door he turned and took a long look at the display, now glowing with the cloudy blue-white ball of Earth at its center.

“Madworld,” he muttered to himself. “We’re going to madworld, are we? God help us all if it comes to that.”

“No. Phoebe Willard. That’s who I want. Not the inventory. See, I already looked at that. Phoebe Willard. Where is she? Can you take me to her?”

The guard stared, first at Luther Brachis and then at the screen showing a segment of the dump contents. His eyes were puzzled.

Brachis sighed, and waited again for a reply. Patiently, although through the solar system he was not known as a patient man; because if there was one place where patience was a necessity, it was the Dump. Brachis knew that he was the cause of his own problem. He, personally, had made all the Dump’s staff assignments.

And now here he was himself, in the Dump.

Sargasso Dump.

The Sun and planets are the deep gravity wells of the solar system. Once a spacecraft — or a piece of space junk — has been parked around a planet, it can remain in stable orbit as long as the human species endures.