A Soft Barren Aftershock

  Dalt turned toward the door. “Who’ll let me forget?” he remarked with a grim smile. “I’ll check in with you before I leave.”

  “Good enough,” Clarkson said with a curt nod, then turned to Barre. “Hold on a minute, Bane. I want to go over a few things with you.” Dalt gladly closed the door on the pair.

  “It’s almost lunch time,” said a feminine voice behind him. “How about it?”

  In a single motion, Dalt spun, leaned over Jean’s desk and gave her a peck on the lips. “Sorry, can’t. It may be noon to all of you on ship-time, but it’s some hellish hour of the morning to me. I’ve got to drop in on the doc, then I’ve just got to get some sleep.”

  But Jean wasn’t listening. Instead, she was staring fixedly at the bald spot on Dalt’s head. “Steve!” she cried. “What happened?”

  Dalt straightened up abruptly. “Nothing much. Something landed on it while I was below and the hair fell out. It’ll grow back, don’t worry.”

  “I’m not worried about that,” she said, standing up and trying to get another look. But Dalt kept his head high. “Did it hurt?”

  “Not at all. Look, I hate to run off like this, but I’ve got to get some sleep. I’m going back down tomorrow.”

  Her face fell. “So soon?”

  “I’m afraid so. Why don’t we make it for dinner tonight. I’ll drop by your room and we’ll go from there. The cafeteria isn’t exactly a restaurant but if we get there late, we can probably have a table all to ourselves.”

  “And after that?” she asked coyly.

  “I’ll be damned if we’re going to spend my last night on ship for who-knows-how-long in the vid theater!”

  Jean smiled. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

  (What odd physiological rumblings that female stirs in you!) the voice said as Dalt walked down the corridor to the medical offices. He momentarily broke stride at the sound of it. He’d almost forgotten that he had company.

  “That’s none of your business!” he muttered through tight lips.

  (I’m afraid much of what you do is my business. I’m not directly connected with you emotionally, but physically . . . what you feel, I feel; what you see, I see; what you taste—)

  “O.K .! O.K.!”

  (You’re holding up rather well, actually. Better than I would have expected.)

  “Probably my cultural survey training. They taught me how to keep my reactions under control when faced with an unusual situation.”

  (Glad to hear it. We may well have a long relationship ahead of us if you don’t go the way of most high-order intelligences and suicidally reject me. We can look on your body as a small business and the two of us as partners.)

  “Partners!” Dalt said, somewhat louder than he wished. Luckily, the halls were deserted. “This is my body!”

  (If it will make you happier, I’ll revise my analogy: you’re the founder of the company and I’ve just bought my way in. How’s that sound, Partner?)

  “Lousy!”

  (Get used to it,) the voice singsonged.

  “Why bother? You won’t be in there long. The doc’ll see to that!”

  (He won’t find a thing, Steve.)

  “We’ll see.”

  The door to the medical complex swished open when Dalt touched the operating plate and. he passed into a tiny waiting room.

  “What can we do for you, Mr. Dalt?” the nurse/receptionist said. Dalt was a well-known figure about the ship by now.

  He inclined his head toward the woman and pointed to the bald spot. “I want to see the doc about this. I’m going below tomorrow and I want to get this cleared up before I do. So if the doc’s got a moment, I’d like to see him.”

  The nurse smiled. “Right away.” At the moment, Dalt was a very important man. He was the only one aboard ship legally allowed on Kwashi. If he thought he needed a doctor, he’d have one.

  A man in the traditional white medical coat poked his head through one of the three doors leading from the waiting room in answer to the nurse’s buzz.

  “What is it, Lorraine?” he asked. “Mr. Dalt would like to see you, Doctor.”

  He glanced at Dalt. “Of course. Come in, Mr. Dalt. I’m Dr. Graves.” The doctor showed him into a small, book and microfilm-lined office. “Have a seat, will you? I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  Graves exited by another door and Dalt was alone . . . almost.

  (He has quite an extensive library here, doesn’t he?) said the voice. Dalt glanced at the shelves and noticed printed texts that must have been holdovers from the doctor’s student days to microfilm spools of the latest clinical developments. (You would do me a great service by asking the doctor if you could borrow some of his more basic texts.)

  “What for? I thought you knew all about me.”

  (I know quite a bit now, it’s true, but I’m still learning and I’ll need a vocabulary to explain things to you now and then.)

  “Forget it. You’re not going to be around that long.”

  Dr. Graves entered then. “Now. What seems to be the problem, Mr. Dalt?”

  Dalt explained the incident in the cave. “Legend has it—and colonial experience seems to confirm it—that `of every thousand struck down, nine hundred and ninety-nine will die.’ I was floored by an alaret but I’m still kicking and I’d like to know why.”

  (I believe I’ve already explained that by luck of a random constitutional factor, your nervous system didn’t reject me.)

  Shut up! Dalt mentally snarled.

  The doctor shrugged. “I don’t see the problem. You’re alive and all you’ve got to show for your encounter is a bald spot, and even that will disappear—it’s bristly already. I can’t tell you why you’re alive because I don’t know how these alarets kill their victims. As far as I know, no one’s done any research on them. So why don’t you just forget about it and stay out of caves.”

  “It’s not that simple, Doc.” Dalt spoke carefully. He’d have to phrase things just right; if he came right out and told the truth, he’d sound like a flaming schiz. “I have this feeling that something seeped into my scalp, maybe even into my head. I feel this thickness there.” Dalt noticed the slightest narrowing of the doctor’s gaze. “I’m not crazy,” he said hurriedly. “You’ve got to admit that the alaret did something up there—the bald spot proves it. Couldn’t you make a few tests or something? Just to ease my mind.”

  The doctor nodded. He was satisfied that Dalt’s fears had sufficient basis in reality and the section-eight gleam left his eyes. He led Dalt into the adjoining room and placed a cubical helmet-like apparatus over his head. A click, a buzz and the helmet was removed. Dr. Graves pulled out two small transparencies and shoved them into a viewer. The screen came to life with two views of the inside of Dalt’s skull: a lateral and an anterior-posterior.

  “Nothing to worry about,” he said after a moment of study. “I ‘scoped you for your own peace of mind. Take a look.”

  Dalt looked, even though he didn’t know what he was looking for.

  (I told you so,) said the voice. (I’m thoroughly integrated with your nervous system.)

  “Well, thanks for your trouble, Doc. I guess I’ve really got nothing to worry about,” Dalt lied.

  “Nothing at all. Just consider yourself lucky to be alive if those alarets are as deadly as you say.” (Ask him for the books!) the voice said.

  I’m going to sleep as soon as I leave here. You won’t get a chance to read them, Dalt thought.

  (You let me worry about that. Just get the books for me.)

  Why should I do you any favors? Dalt asked.

  (Because I’ll see to it that you have one difficult time of getting to sleep. I’ll keep repeating “Get the books, get the books, get the books” until you finally do it.)

  I believe you would!

  (You can count on it.)

  “Doc,” Dalt said, “would you mind lending me a few of your books?”

  “Like what?”

  “Oh, anatomy and physio
logy to start.”

  Dr. Graves walked into the other room and took two large, frayed volumes from the shelves. “What do you want ‘em for?”

  “Nothing much,” Dalt said, taking the books and tucking them under his arm. “Just want to look up a few things.”

  “Well, just don’t forget where you got them. And don’t let that incident with the alaret become an obsession with you,” the doc said meaningfully.

  Dalt smiled. “I’ve already banished it from my mind.”

  (That’s a laugh!)

  Dalt wasted no time in reaching his quarters after leaving the medical offices. He was on the bed before the door could slide back into the closed position. Putting the medical books on the night table, he buried his face in the pillow and immediately dropped off to sleep.

  He awoke five hours later feeling completely refreshed except for his eyes. They felt hot, burning.

  (You may return those books any time you wish,) the voice said.

  “Lost interest already?” Dalt yawned, stretching as he lay on the bed.

  (In a way, yes. I read them while you were asleep.)

  “How the hell did you do that?”

  (Quite simple, really. While your mind was sleeping, I used your eyes and your hands to read. I digested the information and stored it away in your brain. By the way, there’s an awful lot of wasted space in the human brain. You’re not living up to anywhere near your potential, Steve. Neither is any other member of your race, I gather.)

  “What right have you got to pull something like that with my body?” Dalt said angrily. He sat up and rubbed his eyes.

  (Our body, you mean.)

  Dalt ignored that. “No wonder my eyes are burning! I’ve been reading when I could have been—should have been—sleeping!”

  (Don’t get excited. You got your sleep and I built up my vocabulary. You’re fully rested so what’s your complaint? By the way, I can now tell you how I entered your head. I seeped into your pores and then into your scalp capillaries which I followed into your parietal emissary veins. These flow through the parietal foramina in your skull and empty into the superior sagittal sinus. From there it was easy to infiltrate your central nervous system.)

  Dalt opened his mouth to say that he really didn’t care when he realized that he understood exactly what the voice was saying. He had a clear picture of the described path floating through his mind.

  “How come I know what you’re talking about? I seem to understand but I don’t remember ever hearing those terms before . . . and then again, I do. It’s weird.”

  (It must seem rather odd,) the voice concurred. (What has happened is that I’ve made my new knowledge available to you. The result is you experience the fruits of the learning process without having gone through it. You know facts without remembering having learned them.)

  “Well,” Dalt said, rising to his feet, “at least you’re not a complete parasite.”

  (I resent that! We’re partners . . . a symbiosis!)

  “I suppose you may come in handy now and then,” Dalt sighed. (I already have.)

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  (I found a small neoplasm in your lung—middle lobe on the right. It might well have become malignant.)

  “Then let’s get back to the doc before it metastasizes!” Dalt said and idly realized that a few hours ago he would have been worrying about “spread” rather than “metastasis.”

  (There’s no need to worry, Steve. I killed it off)

  “How’d you do that?”

  (I just worked through your sympathetic nervous system and selectively cut off the blood supply to that particular group of cells.)

  “Well, thanks, Partner.”

  (No thanks necessary, I assure you. I did it for my own good as well as yours—I don’t relish the idea of walking around in a cancer-ridden body any more than you do!)

  Dalt removed his serf clothing in silence. The enormity of what had happened in that cave on Kwashi struck him now with full force. He had a built-in medical watchdog who would keep everything running smoothly. He smiled grimly as he donned ship clothes and suspended from his neck the glowing prismatic gem that he had first worn as Racso and had continued to wear after his cultural survey assignment on Kwashi had been terminated. He’d have his health but he’d lost his privacy forever. He wondered if it was worth it.

  (One other thing, Steve,) said the voice. (I’ve accelerated the growth of your hair in the bald spot to maximum.)

  Dalt put up a hand and felt a thick fuzz where before there had been only bare scalp. “Hey! You’re right! It’s really coming in!” He went to the mirror to take a look. “Oh, no!”

  (Sorry about that, Steve. I couldn’t see it so I wasn’t aware there had been a color change. I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do about that.)

  Dalt stared in dismay at the patch of silvery gray in the center of his otherwise inky hair. “I look like a freak!”

  (You can always dye it.)

  Dalt made a disgusted noise.

  (I have a few questions, Steve,) the voice said in a hasty attempt to change the subject.

  “What about?”

  (About why you’re going down to that planet tomorrow.)

  “I’m going because I was once a member of the Federation cultural survey team on Kwashi and because the Star Ways Corporation lost an experimental pilot brain down there. They got permission from the Federation to retrieve the brain only on the condition that a cultural survey man do the actual retrieving.”

  (That’s not what I meant. I want to know what’s so important about the brain, just how much of a brain it actually is, and so on.)

  “There’s an easy way to find out,” Dalt said, heading for the door. “We’ll just go to the ship’s library.”

  The library was near the hub of the ship and completely computer operated. Dalt closed himself away in one of the tiny viewer booths and pushed his I.D. card into the awaiting slot.

  The flat, dull tones of the computer’s voice came from a hidden speaker.

  “What do you wish, Mr. Dalt?”

  “I might as well go the route: let me see everything on the brain project.”

  Four micro spools slid down a tiny chute and landed in the receptacle in front of Dalt. “I’m sorry, Mr. Dalt,” said the computer, “but this is all your present status allows.”

  (That should be enough, Steve. Feed them into the viewer.)

  The story that unraveled from the spools was one of biological and economic daring. Star Ways was fast achieving what amounted to a monopoly of the interstellar warp unit market and from there was expanding to peristellar drive. But unlike the typical established corporation, Star Ways was pouring money into basic research. One of the prime areas of research was the development of a use for cultured human neural tissue. And James Barre had found a use that held great economic potential.

  The prime expense of interstellar commercial travel, whether freight or passenger, was the crew. Good spacers were a select lot and hard to come by; running a ship took a lot of them. There had been many attempts to replace crews with computers, but these had invariably failed due either to mass/volume problems or overwhelming maintenance costs. Barre’s development of an “artificial” brain—by that he meant structured in vitro—seemed to hold an answer, at least for cargo ships.

  After much trial and error with life-support systems and control linkages, a working prototype had finally been developed. A few short hops had been tried with a full crew standing by and the results had been more than anyone had hoped for. So the prototype was prepared for a long interstellar journey with five scheduled stops—with cargo holds empty, of course. The run had gone quite well until the ship got into the Kwashi area. A single technician had been sent along to insure that nothing went too far awry and, according to his story, he had been sitting in the ship’s library when it suddenly came out of warp with the emergency/abandon ship signals blaring. He wasted no time in getting to a lifeboat and ejecting. T
he ship made a beeline for Kwashi and disappeared, presumably in a crash. That had been eight months ago.

  No more information was available without special clearance.

  “Well, that was a waste of time,” Dalt said.

  “Are you addressing me, Mr. Dalt?” the computer asked.

  “No.”

  (There certainly wasn’t much new information there,) the voice agreed.

  Dalt pulled his card from the slot, thereby cutting the computer off from this particular viewer booth, before answering. Otherwise it would keep butting in.

  “The theories now stand at either malfunction or foul play.”

  (Why foul play?)

  “The spacers’ guild, for one,” Dalt said, standing. “Competing companies for another. But since it crashed on a restricted splinter world, I favor the malfunction theory.” As he stepped from the booth he glanced at the chronometer on the wall: 1900 hours ship-time. Jean would be waiting.

  The cafeteria was nearly deserted when he arrived with Jean and the pair found an isolated table in a far corner.

  “I really don’t think you should dye your hair at all,” Jean was saying as they placed their trays on the table and sat down. “I think that gray patch looks cute in a distinguished sort of way . . . or do I mean distinguished in a cute sort of way?”

  Dalt took the ribbing in good-natured silence.

  “Steve!” she said suddenly. “How come you’re eating with your left hand? I’ve never seen you do that before.”

  Dalt looked down. His fork was firmly grasped in his left hand. “That’s strange,” he said. “I didn’t even realize it.”

  (I integrated a few circuits, so to speak, while you were asleep,) the voice said. (It seemed rather ridiculous to favor one limb over another. You’re now ambidextrous.)

  Thanks for telling me, Partner!

  (Sorry. I forgot.)

  Dalt switched the fork to his right hand and Jean switched the topic of conversation.

  “You know, Steve,” she said, “you’ve never told me why you quit the cultural survey group.”