Mindship v1 0, p.23
Mindship (v1.0),
p.23
“Even the death of my parents.
“For two weeks while we waited for the rescue ships to reach us, I tortured my brother and that other poor survivor of our city with my memories of the plague. They couldn’t sleep, but for waking with my dreams in their minds, my nightmares in their brains. I drove them insane, Kilgarin, like a child ceaselessly crying for its mother— and finally my brother killed himself and that other man, thinking the man was me. I wish it had been.
“Can you imagine the pain of that, Kilgarin? To drive your own flesh to madness and death? Even at four, I knew what I’d done. I couldn’t accept it, so I shut it out. I shut it out so efficiently no psychic probe ever revealed any trace of latent Sensitivity. The power was tied to pain, Kilgarin, and by bringing the power back, you’ve brought back my nightmare as well.”
“You were the one who brought your power back, Captain. To save the ship. Maybe to save me. You did it before, to an extent—that time we were hunting with Wells.”
“That was subconscious; it never threatened the block, Kilgarin. Your presence was the catalyst. I could sense your desire to know why “I’d brought your brother to his death, and it sparked a similar curiosity in me. I know now—we both know—I let your brother die because he was a substitute for my younger self, for the innocent boy I’d been when I—” The Captain broke off. “We’ve been through that. There’s no point in letting this conversation continue.”
He drank off the rest of his beer and absinthe, set the glass down, and got unsteadily to his feet. He started toward the gate, and Kilgarin stopped him before the older man had taken three paces.
“Captain, you’re not seeing this properly at all,” Kilgarin said. “Let me—”
“Get away from me, Kilgarin,” the Captain said, jerking free of the ex-Cork’s grip. He continued toward the door.
A moment passed while Kilgarin debated with himself. Then he made his decision and plunged into the Captain’s mind. He found the core of the man’s anger and self-loathing, the hatred consuming his soul. Deftly, Kilgarin’s mental fingers plucked the pain away. He located the despair he’d seen reflected in the Captain’s eyes, and he dissolved it with a touch of compassion. He moved through the older man’s mind, shifting and rearranging perceptions and memories, putting them in order and perspective. Gradually the Captain’s fires of self-hate dimmed, shrank, went out With an almost audible mental sigh, the Captain stumbled and fell to the patio floor.
Kilgarin waved away the Sensitives who came to the Captain’s aid, and bending over the elder man, he helped the Captain to his feet and guided bim to a nearby table, where they could sit and talk in private.
“Most men have Sensitives to relieve them all their lives,” Kilgarin said. “You had your guilt come on you all at once. You couldn’t stand it. No man could.” He watched the Captain from within and without, maintaining the mindlink he’d established with his former superior officer for the older man’s safety.
“You should despise me,” the Captain said.
“If you were better trained in your Sensitivity, you could look into my mind and see that I never could. Not anymore. Something changed inside me the same instant your block was dissolved. I realized something about myself, perhaps about the whole mindship system. I can’t hate you for helping me see that.”
“See what?” the older man asked. He watched as Kilgarin ordered them more drinks.
“I used people,” Kilgarin said. “Part of it was because of the kind of colony I came from, a frontier world, a hard world where people have to be independent—or they die. A man on Wellington was considered weak if be needed people. I’m afraid I’ve suffered from that all my life. Whenever I began to think I needed someone, I’d break away from them and try to hurt them in some way. But it went deeper than that. This way of life, mind-shipping…it trains you to think of people as objects, things to use for your own ends, just as we use them as fuel to power our ships.”
“And I showed you this?” The Captain was clearly incredulous. His face, still pale and drawn from the shock of what he’d learned about himself, was creased with lines of confusion. Kilgarin smiled and pressed his hand on the other man’s.
“Not directly. You just released me from the ship’s pressures so that I could see it. For the past few weeks I’ve been coming closer and closer to understanding what’s been wrong with my life. Did you know I used to own a brothel? What better way to use someone, how can you better show your disrespect for someone as a person— than by using her body to earn credit? And the way I tried to use Ty’ger and Raymond to learn about you, or the way I wanted to use Marka—or even those revolutionaries, I used them to get revenge on the Company—“ Kilgarin stopped speaking and shook his head. “That’s all over,” he said. “I’m finished as a Cork. I’m going to have to learn to live as a human being.”
“We both are,” the Captain said thoughtfully.
As the bartender brought them their steins, Kilgarin remembered the revolution, and another thought crossed his mind. “We all are,” he said.
Something occurred between the Captain and the Cork at that moment. Their common realization brought them suddenly together, and their minds completed the link Kilgarin had begun. With a start Kilgarin realized that he was dependent on this man now, who knew him better than any other human had; and the Captain in turn was dependent on him. Each of them had a great deal to learn from the other. Each of them had something to give. And for the first time in his life Kilgarin found he could completely trust the other mind linked to his own.
Teach me, each man said, I have to grow.
Kilgarin raised his glass as the Captain raised his. The motions of each man were in counterpoint to the motions of the other. The mindlock was complete: total symbiosis.
Smiling, they drank.
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THE MINDSHIP
Was the breakthrough to the stars. In spite of work on Faster Than Light, hyperdrives, and such, it was the power of the mind that turned out to be the most certain directing force between the worlds. So the mindships came into being, driven forward by the lines of mental energy, directed by trained crews—and held together not by the navigator or the captain but by the man they called the cork.
He was just another man but he had the ability to siphon out the discords which could wreck a ship, to create the harmony without which starflight would be disastrous.
Kilgarin was such a “cork,” but he had deliberately grounded himself until they forced him to take up the mental reins again. It was their risk and they should have known better—because Kilgarin had ulterior motives no ship’s cork had a right to harbor.
Mindship is a brilliant new concept by one of the young rising lights of the science fiction cosmos
Unknown Author, Mindship (v1.0)
