The Mind Pool (32 page)

The lawyers feasted for twenty-seven years. At the end of that time, three hundred and eighty-four valid claimant relatives (and no direct descendants of Raxon Yang) were recognized. Each was assigned ownership of one region of the diamond, with separate rights to mine it. None declined to do so in favor of preservation.

Mining began, and went on with frantic greed. The descendants of the original three hundred and eighty-four split the regions further. Over the generations and over the centuries, the owners proliferated: thousands, tens of thousands, finally millions. Boundary surfaces were carefully drawn and ownership rights observed.

Four centuries later, it was all over. The Yang Diamond was gone, divided into a trillion separate fragments and dispersed across the system. But once the diamond had been mined out of any volume, that space became available for general occupation and rental. In place of the Yang Diamond sat a polyglot, polyfunctional melange of industries, the Hong Kong of the 26th century.

Of course, the Vault of Hyperion no longer exported diamond—for there was none to export. Instead it operated its own manufacturing industries from imported raw materials, and showed a degree of independence of central government that exceeded any civilization in the system. The storage vaults located in the major tentacles had an unmatched reputation, but they followed their own rules and they took little notice of any edicts from Ceres.

In another fine display of idiosyncrasy, the colonists of the Deep Vault had banned the Mattin Link from use anywhere in their domain. When Luther Brachis went to Hyperion, he was able to Link only as far as Titan. After that he was obliged to travel the rest of the way on a laden cargo vessel. It was transporting food concentrates to the Vault residents. Despite the denials of the crew, it stank.

Brachis cursed andjgrumbled. Godiva took it all in her stride, wearing formal gowns for every dinner and dazzling the ships crew with her ineffable beauty. Luther could not take his eyes from her, and somehow he was not jealous of the other men’s stares.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come with me?” he asked, on the last leg of their journey before his descent into the black depths of the Vault.

Godiva shook her head. “If you force me to, I will. But I told you I don’t want to, even before we left Ceres. I’m afraid of what I might find there.” She took his right hand in hers, inspecting it closely. The skin on the emerging fingers and thumb was soft and delicate, and the first dark imprint of nails was forming on the tips. “Please be careful, Luther. You don’t want another experience like the one that did this.”

Brachis said nothing. He would tell Godiva Lomberd anything she wanted to hear, but in his own mind there was no reassurance. He had thought about the Margrave a great deal since the
Adestis
encounter. Although that cunning and inventive mind demanded every respect, not even Fujitsu could see in detail what lay beyond the grave. The Margrave had not known how or when he would die, or in what circumstances. It called for an unusual intellect to make
any
plans for vengeance from within the tomb, but such plans could only operate in terms of probabilities—how, who, where, when? Unless Luther became sloppy, all the advantage lay with him.

The Margrave was a chess master. So was Brachis. They would both look many moves ahead, but now Luther had the supreme advantage of real-time inputs. With the catacombs of Enceladus disposed of, he had concluded that the Margrave’s preferred off-Earth haven for his other Artefacts had to be the Hyperion Vault.

The descent passed through many levels. Brachis looked carefully around him as they went down, noting the safety points and shelters. Three blow-outs and nine thousand deaths in thirteen years had made the Vault inhabitants super-cautious. Each level had its own system of locks and deadman switches.

Below the seventeenth level the grey rock walls of Hyperion’s silicon interior were left behind. To assure their own survival, the original miners had employed non-commercial impure diamond as supporting walls, buttresses, and columns. Lit by the cold light of closed ecology bioluminescent spheres, the Deep Vault was a sinister grotto of light and color. The green-white glow of marine electrophores scattered from yellow and red diamond crystals, and the whole visible spectrum shattered at sharp corners and edges.

Down forever, layer after layer, on through the jumbled settlements. The guide was an emaciated woman with a bent back and drooping shoulders. At last she paused at a branch point and gestured downwards. “Storage starts here. We’ll be joined by a coldtank supervisor. How much do you want to see?”

He had already answered that question, and clearly she had not believed him. “Everything.”

“Take a long time, even if you only want to look.
Do
you just want to look?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

She nodded. Other men and women had followed her through the coldtanks. She knew what they usually wanted. “Let’s go. Don’t talk price with the supervisor. We’ll sort all that out when we’re finished.”

The slow drift through the stacks began. Brachis insisted on seeing every chamber and examining each ID and storage unit.

It took three days. The tanks had not been laid out in logical or time-sequenced order. Even Brachis, familiar with the wilderness of interior Ceres, felt at times that the Deep Vault was even more convoluted. It was amazing to see that the supervisor knew how to navigate every dim-lit corridor and tunnel, without a computer guide.

At the end, Brachis handed his companion a list. It contained seven identifications. “These. What will it take to transfer them to my full custody?”

She managed to appear startled. Just possibly she was. “You mean transfer
permanently
?”

“I mean exactly that. With no trace left in the Vault records.”

“Impossible.”

“I was told that in the Deep Vault nothing is impossible. How much?”

She rubbed at her left eye, where the reddened lid drooped to match her wilting shoulders. “Stay here. Don’t move, and don’t talk to anybody even if they want to.”

She was back in less than an hour. “It may be doable. But we don’t use trade crystals.”

Brachis said nothing.

“We do need volatiles, though,” she went on. “And we’ve been having trouble with permits. If you could arrange a shipment in from the Harvester . . .”

“No problem. But you’ve got no Link Exit here on Hyperion.”

“Delivery to Iapetus, we’ll worry about transfer from there. Ten thousand tons, FOB Kondoport on Iapetus.”

“That’s a high price. I won’t know what I have until they’re out of cold storage.”

“Not our worry. Once they’re out, they’re yours. Records here won’t show they ever existed, so don’t think you can bring them back. Once they’re warm they rot, unless you bring them all the way back to consciousness. So you take them wherever you want. And you pay shipping charges. Far as we’re concerned, once they’re out of the Vault they’re
gone.
”

Brachis weighed his options, and decided that he didn’t have any. Even if six out of seven were false alarms, he could not risk missing that seventh one. As for shipping charges, he did not intend that anything he took from the storage tanks would ever leave Hyperion. If Godiva asked, she would be told that the search for Margrave Artefacts on Hyperion had drawn a blank.

“How soon after I place the order for volatiles do I get them?”

“Soon as you want. Let me watch when you file the order with the Harvester, and you can take them with you right away. All seven.” She smiled, a radiant, gap-toothed smile that sent a tremor through Luther’s hardened soul. “They’ll be all yours, Commander—to do just what you like with.”

Chapter 24

The progress report was close to complete. Phoebe Willard reviewed what she had said so Tar about the work: M-26A had been given a description of Livia Morgan’s experiments and their disastrous outcome, as complete as the records would permit. To that had been added a summary of the history and attributes of the four Stellar Group species, plus full data on the actual Pursuit Teams.

Luther Brachis’s conjecture on information transfer had proved entirely correct. The crippled Construct brain within its bath of liquid nitrogen would now respond readily to questioning, even if Phoebe sometimes found the answers impossible to interpret. When M-26A entered what Phoebe thought of as its “oracular phase,” a perfectly straightforward question would receive a perfectly obscure answer.

What remained to be added to the data base was the state of knowledge of the escaped Morgan Construct. Ridley was all set to do that. Then Brachis would be able to offer his own questions to M-26A. She knew what he was seeking—a guaranteed approach to the safe destruction of the escaped Construct—but he wanted to ask that in his own way.

She hesitated before adding the final section of the report. It was not strictly speaking anything to do with the present effort; but she was so pleased with herself she could not resist a little crowing.

“The inclusion of Guard Captain Blaine Ridley on this project was initiated only to speed the transfer of information to M-26A. As agreed at the outset, such a transfer was always to be made with a human interface, since M-26A was to be given access to no computer resources. As a result, data input has been a very time-consuming and tedious task. There was a question as to whether Captain Ridley would be able to perform it.

“Those fears were unfounded. Captain Ridley has proved ideal for this work. He possesses the patience to work for long hours, and the attention to detail to check and re-check every input.

“There has also been a quite unanticipated side benefit. Captain Ridley is far more alert and aware than he was before this task began. His willingness to reply to questions, or to speak when no question is asked of him, has dramatically improved.

“Since the project has had so definite a therapeutic effect, it points the direction for other efforts. I suggest that other guards at Sargasso Dump be given a chance for similar remedial programs.”

Phoebe Willard had been composing her report on a portable unit that would leave the nitrogen bubble with her. She glanced across at the main interface, where Blaine Ridley was quietly transferring biological statistics on the Tinkers to M-26A. He was smiling, a lopsided, blinking-eyed grin that was more off-putting than no expression at all. Phoebe wondered, for the thousandth time, what went on inside that once-handsome head. He was working well and he communicated better with her. But what did he
think
? She was no closer to understanding that than she was to understanding the strange mental processes of the fragmentary and twisted Construct brain, deep within its bath of liquid nitrogen.

She yawned. One thing was becoming more and more obvious, Ridley could work longer hours than she could, without the slightest sign of weariness.

“It’s late.” Phoebe tucked her computer into the pocket of her suit. “Ready to call it a day?”

It was the usual rhetorical question, a polite way of telling Ridley that work was over. But today he swiveled in his chair and shook his head.

“I am halfway through a data set.” The smile had left his face, and his voice was earnest. “It would be inefficient to halt at this point.”

Which presented Phoebe with a problem. She certainly didn’t want to discourage Ridley when he was doing so well. On the other hand she was tired, and she wanted to get the progress report onto the master computer before she went to sleep. Brachis could arrive at any time, and he would want to see it as soon as he did.

But she had left Ridley alone for an hour or so once or twice before, and everything had gone perfectly fine.

“Are you sure you remember how to turn everything off?” Another rhetorical question. She had been through shut-down with him half a dozen times, and watched him do it under her supervision almost as often.

“I remember.”

“Then don’t forget to do it.”

“I will not forget.”

“And don’t stay too long. No more than a couple of hours. You must not overwork. If you are here more than three hours, I’ll have to send somebody to get you.”

“I understand. I will turn everything off when I am finished. I will return to my quarters in two hours. Good night, Doctor Willard.”

“Good night, Captain Ridley.”

Phoebe Willard paused at the entrance flap to the outer nitrogen shell. Ridley was not looking at her. Already he had returned to his work, transferring an ephemeris table to M-26A, number by patient number. Everything was fine.

* * *

After she had left his eyes remained fixed on the display screen, checking every entry. Not until the last exponent and mantissa were entered, checked, and re-checked did he lean back in his chair and type:
Table complete.

Ridley turned to stare at the exit taken by Phoebe Willard. The lock monitor showed empty. She had left the bubble. He waited for one more minute, then he typed:
I am alone.

The table entries vanished from the display screen. There were a few seconds of blackness, followed by scraps and speckled swirls of color. The swirls steadied and coalesced to words:
Who are you?

I am Captain Blaine Ridley.

You are Ridley. Who am I?

You are M-26A.

I am M-26A. If you wish to enter oral mode, do so.

Ridley nodded. “I will provide additional ephemeris data tomorrow, but no more information has been sent to us from Ceres on the Angels.” His eyes did not blink now. They were fixed on the screen. “I asked Dr. Willard. She told me that there is less available on the Angels than on any other species of the Stellar Group.”

They are the most subtle and complex of the four. For that reason knowledge of them would be most valuable. However, if knowledge cannot be obtained it will be necessary to make do with what has already been provided. Do not feel ashamed that you cannot give more. Tell me what news there is of Commander Luther Brachis.

“He arrives tomorrow. He wants to talk with you.”

And I with him. But until he leaves, you will not seek to bring any other guards to interface with me. Nor will you interface with me yourself, except as directed by others.