Jacque was dreaming that they had inserted a long needle into his brain. They screwed a syringe onto it and sucked out yellow fluid.
“Darling! Jacque! Wake up.” Carol was shaking him hard.
Jacque shook his head and patted her on the shoulder. “Nightmare.” The sheet was twisted around him, soaked. He worried at it but only made the situation worse; swore, and jerked, tearing the fabric.
“Here, let me.” Carol got off the cot and unwound him, from the feet up. “Poor helpless creature.” She slid into bed next to him. Held him.
“Look, if you want to do that, let’s switch sides. This one’s all clammy.”
“Okay.” She rolled over onto her cot and Jacque followed. “Are we alone?” he asked.
“Far as I know. Nobody’s come in since I woke up.” He started caressing her. “Look, that, that’s not necessary. I’ve been waiting for you for an hour.”
He laughed softly and eased himself onto her. “We can go an easier way,” she said. “Long day ahead of you.”
He answered with a first slow thrust. “Call this work?”
The door to the billet slammed open. Sampson’s voice came through the privacy screen: “You up, Lefavre?”
“In a manner of speaking.” Carol giggled into his chest.
“Well, the last bunch of VIP’s came in. They’re about two hundred klicks away and homing.”
“All right. Give me five minutes.”
“Ten!” Carol said: “Jackrabbit,” she whispered.
“I’ll be outside in the truck.”
It wasn’t much of a conference room: a dissection table covered with homespun, surrounded by folding chairs and stools. Nobody sat. Pacing around the room were six of the most important people in the world:
Hilda Svenbjorg, pale, thin, chain-smoking; a touch of blonde in her ruff of white hair. World Order Council Majority Leader (C., Westinghouse).
Jakob Tshombe, light chocolate skin, expressionless features more Caucasian than Negroid, standing patiently. World Order Council Minority Leader (L, Xerox).
Pacing were Bill (“Hawkeye”) Simmons, leader of the Union of Independent Scientists; Reza Mossadegh, Coordinator of the World Petroleum Cartel; Fyodor Lomakin, Premier of the Eastern Grain Bloc; and Chris Silverman, leader of the World Council of Churches and Western Pope (her eyebrows shaved California-style).
They were ignoring Jacque and the other three Tamers. Carol and Vivian and Gus were in their GPEM suits, acting as bodyguards. Jacque sat on a stool in the middle of the room, next to a bowl of water that held the bridge.
A hissing sound from outside: the last arrivals. Jacque and Bahadur went out to greet them.
Tethered to the floater were three man-sized canisters, like overgrown oil drums: static life-support units. You can’t put an untrained person (or a pregnant woman, past a couple of months) into a GPEM suit; these LSU’s could keep a person alive, if immobile, for several weeks in any environment.
With the help of the floater pilot, they unscrewed the tops of the canisters; three undignified dignitaries came out. They limped into the conference room and Bahadur addressed all nine.
“I don’t know how much time we have, so I’ll give a brief summation of what we know. Which isn’t much. Then answer questions.
“You know that the L’vrai are an ancient race, and that they can assume virtually any shape, evidently by an exercise of will-“
“I’ll believe that when I see it,” Hawkeye Simmons muttered.
“You will see it, I believe.
“They appear to be telepathic with one another. Since the Sirius L’vrai are in possession of information that L’vrai on Achernar and Earth learned only months ago, then their telepathic messages must travel at greater speeds than that of light. Perhaps instantaneously.”
“Impossible by information theory,” Simmons said.
“How interesting. Their telepathy works only imperfectly with human beings; evidently they can read our minds only at some preconscious level.”
“Can you be sure of this?” Tshombe asked. “We will be at a considerable disadvantage in negotiating if our thoughts are open to him.”
“There is objective evidence of a sort. When the L’vrai first appeared in human form, they . . . their sexual parts were exaggerated in a way that suggested the totems of primitive peoples. And they were unblemished, handsome idealizations of the self-images of the people with whom they were in contact.
“I myself saw this L’vrai take the form of his communicant’s-“ nodding at Jacque-“father. Evidently to inspire trust. It was the image of his father when the Tamer was a small, vulnerable boy.
“The L’vrai, the one who spoke with us, only used the first person singular pronoun-even when referring to his entire race. This means either that the race literally has only one consciousness-“
“Patently—“
“-or that his syntax reflects a philosophy that subordinates the individual’s worth to the idea of his membership in some larger group, or his relationship to a spiritually higher-“
A golden snake slithered through the open door.
The blood drained from Simmons’s face.
Silverman crossed herself.
Mossadegh clutched his throat.
Svenbjorg put out her cigarette and Tshombe raised one eyebrow.
The serpent’s head weaved at their level for a few moments. Then it continued drifting toward Jacque. Its scales hissed on the rough concrete.
Musky smell of nervous sweat.
“Is it . . .” Silverman began.
“Is it what?” Bahadur said.
“Is it going to hurt him?”
“Not physically. I don’t think. If it does we know how to kill it.”
The L’vrai raised itself as if to strike, towering over Jacque. Jacque bared his teeth and started to rise.
Then the snake blurred and melted and reformed as a bent old man clad in a white toga. His face was full of benevolent wrinkles and he had only a few strands of white hair. He could have been any race: his skin was the color of age and his features the’ shape of a saint’s.
The illusion would have been perfect except that the toga showed a barely perceptible network of yellow veins.
It reached into the bowl and took out the bridge, then offered it to Jacque. Jacque touched it and snapped to his feet, galvanized, face and body rigid with pain. Then he slumped back onto the stool and began to speak.
“You are curious about me. Ask anything.”
Tshombe’s voice was flat and authoritative: “Why are you here? What do you want with us?”
“That depends on what you mean by ‘here.’ I am in this region of space because I am expanding my sphere of influence, as you are. I am in this room for your convenience. To explain your situation.”
“And what do you mean by ‘I’?” Svenbjorg said. “Is there only one of you, or many?”
“In your sense there are many, there are billions. But really there is only one. Only L’vrai.”
“Which brings us back to where we started,” Bahadur said. “Do you mean this in a literal sense? If we killed half your billions you would not be diminished?”
“Only in the potential for exploring and manipulating the volume of space that surrounds me. If only one of me was left it would still be completely me, L’vrai.
“This could be true of humans as well. In a sense, it is true. You blind yourselves to it.”
“Theology,” Hawkeye Simmons muttered.
“No,” the L’vrai said, “it’s a simple fact. I am many but I am one. All identical.”
“What you mean is that you’re clones. All stamped out of the same mold.”
Jacque was silent while the creature searched his brain for the term. “In no sense. I am only one and have always been only one. Only L’vrai.”
“Each of your parts is aware of every other one?” Svenbjorg asked. “They act with common purpose?”
“You are asking the same question over and over. The answer, again, is ‘yes.’ Please ask something-“
“He could well be lying,” Mossadegh said.
“There would be no reason for it. I have absolute power over you. The ones in this room and the billions on Earth as well. And on the other planets, if they were worth destroying.”
“I don’t believe you,” Tshombe said. “From this room you can-“
“Did you listen to me? I am not only in this room.”
“Even so-“
“I will explain in detail, then. Yes, I could kill all or most of you in this room by creating what this one calls a ‘feedback’ condition in your brains. This body of mine would also die.
“Killing your other billions will take longer. That’s what the ships at the near blue star . . . Sirius, are for. With a relatively simple maneuver they can upset the harmony of forces inside your sun, and make it explode.”
“Why?” Silverman broke the silence, her voice quavering. “Why in the holy name of God would you want to do that?”
“Is that a serious question?” No one replied. “It seems so obvious. You are expanding through my volume of space. I must either destroy you or arrive at a compromise as to. . . the use of this region.”
“That’s why you’re here, then?” Simmons said. “To negotiate over who gets what?”
“You do not listen either. As I said, I am here to explain your situation. There will be no negotiating.” It paused. “Would you negotiate with an ant over the rights to a piece of sugar? The rights to your house?”
“You called this meeting to gloat, then?” Simmons was almost shouting. “Why not just sneak up and blow us to hell without any warning?”
The L’vrai smiled. “That might have been the most humane course.”
“Humane,” Silverman scoffed. “You enjoy killing people. Don’t deny it, I’ve seen the cubes. You just want to prolong-“
Jacque made a noise between a laugh and a death rattle. “You poor . . . ignorant creatures. I should explain-have explained.
“I did enjoy, yes, killing those people. Insofar as it was my duty to them.” He waited for them to quiet down. “Exactly that, my duty.
“I am an ethical and . . . the closest you say is ‘courteous’ . . . organism. My first act when I meet a new organism is to do what it expects me to do. As well as I can divine its wishes.”
“I can not believe this,” said Chin (L., Bellcomm). “These people, you claim, wanted you to kill them?”
“Not precisely. They expected me to try. Physically. Simply to kill them, with no danger to my own parts, would have been easy enough.”
“I believe him.” It was Gustav Hasenfel, the first Tamer to speak. His amplified voice rang off the metal walls. “We’re always ready for trouble; always expect the worst.”
“Thank you,” it said. “This one understands, too.” The wise old face looked down at Jacque with something like affection. “But he knew from the first time he touched my mind, on Earth. Though he didn’t know how to say it.
“This one is different from most of you. He has brought the animal part of his nature into harmony with the . . . angel part. He does not attempt to separate them. Because of this, he and I can talk. I can sense that no one else in this room possesses this kind of, this kind of integration. You keep your animals and angels separate: you would have the angel prevail. It never can.
“For this reason, we can’t waste time. This one dies, and without him I can no longer speak.”
The table of people was between Carol and the L’vrai. She shuffled sideways to take aim.
“Tamer!” Bahadur shouted. “Don’t”-drowned out by Hasenfel’s booming voice: “Look away I’ll kill you first.”
Carol’s helmet swiveled toward her teammate, crystal clusters of optical sensors below the terrible red eye. “You would,” she said.
“And then myself,” he said. “I’m sorry, Carol.”
“Then have the L’vrai do it.” She turned up her vocals and her cracked whisper filled the room. “Do you hear me, monster?”
“I will kill you if you turn your weapon on me.” Jacque’s strained voice said. “Not otherwise. Now that I know how you believe you can individually die.”
“He won’t have the chance,” Gus said. “I’ll kill you the instant you take your eyes off me.”
“All right. I’ll save you that. But-“ She sobbed and her vocals clicked off.
“Let me explain further,” it said. “You’re wrong to see me as a monster, though I admit to having been partly at fault.
“I’ve never met another spacefaring race that believed itself to have individual consciousnesses. Individual wills for each part, certainly; otherwise it could hardly be mobile. I assumed . . .
“You see, sometimes my own parts wish to die in interesting ways. I approve; it adds to what I am. I assumed this is what you were doing. Nothing more.”
“To business,” Simmons said. “This is all very interesting. But immaterial, if you’re just going to blow us to—“
“This was never the totality of my plans; for one thing, it will be a long time before you present any real threat to me, or to any other civilized race. I will not destroy you, not immediately.”
“What do you mean by that?” Tshombe said.
Jacque’s voice was getting weak; they strained to hear. “Consider me an observer, a monitor. A teacher, if you will learn.”
“An executioner, if we won’t,” Svenbjorg said.
“Yes, but not in the sense of punishing you for wrongdoing.” It paused. “I struggle with the limitations of your language, and with speaking through this one’s pain.
“I have what you would call an obligation. To a sort of family, which includes organisms who would appear much stranger to you than I do-some of whom you wouldn’t even recognize as life. And some so . . . sensitive that your mere presence would destroy them.”
“You will guide us away from them?”
“Not necessary, yet. Those are still much too far away. Possibly, by the time you can reach them, your own sensitivity will have evolved to where you are no longer a threat.”
“If not, you’ll warn us? Or them?”
“If not, I’ll exterminate you. Which is the only way I can . . . legitimately interfere with your expansion. One day the logic of this will be clear to you.”
“But what about the space we share?” Svenbjorg said. “Do we partition it? Share planets?”
“This is no real problem. You could not survive unprotected on worlds where I thrive. And I would stagnate on yours. I need a great deal of hard radiation to properly reproduce my parts-constant mutation and winnowing-that I may continue to evolve at a proper rate. You reproduce too slowly to take advantage of this. Otherwise you might.. We would have to...
“This one dies. I sympathize with his pain. But his fear of death amuses me. He-“ A loud rattle choked off the last word. The L’vrai released the bridge and Jacque’s body pitched forward to the floor.
Carol spun and her laser glared green. The L’vrai’s head split at eye level and it toppled over, changing as it fell.
“Woman you might have-“
“Shut up!” Gus shouted. “She waited.” Softer.
Carol glided to where her man lay and picked him up. She stood immobile, silent.
Simmons approached her. “Woman? Listen to me. I used to be a doctor. Let me see that man.” Her crystal eyes stared down at him.
“Ah, hell-“ He grabbed Jacque’s dangling arm and pulled. Carol let go and he eased Jacque to the floor.
He ripped open Jacque’s tunic and listened to his chest. Then he straddled Jacque and started pounding on his sternum, putting all his weight behind it.
“He’s young . . . and healthy . . . get it . . . going here . . .” The others gathered around, watching. He kept it up for a while and put his ear down again.
“All right.” He turned Jacque’s head sideways, pinched shut his nose, and began breathing into his mouth. In a few minutes, still unconscious, Jacque was breathing under his own power.
Simmons sat back and panted. He glared up at Carol. “Goddam it, don’t just stand there. Get a real doctor.”
GPEM suits are fast, but you have to watch out where you’re going. She narrowly missed trampling the Western Pope, and widened their door by half a meter.
Interspecies Communications With the Groombridge Bridge: A Summary
1. Invertebrates
The most interesting invertebrate tested in conjunction with the Groombridge bridge (also the first one) was another bridge.
Communicating with a bridge, via bridge, was not the immediate object of the experiment. The research team, in 2052, was trying to enhance the Groombridge effect by using more than one bridge per rapport-pair. If the two bridges touch, it turns out, the effect is diminished, not increased (though if the bridges are “in parallel”—one in each hand—the effect is the same as with one bridge).
Some of the investigators reported vague feelings of “apprehension” or “uneasiness” when one bridge touched another, though others reported no sensation. There was no apparent correlation between this subjective response and the investigator’s Rhine potential.
That the sensation is real was repeatedly verified by blind testing: the two bridges connected by a conducting circuit that could be opened and closed at random intervals by an unseen observer.
This same apparatus was used in experiments with terrestrial animals. Only a few invertebrates (such as the tarantula and the spiny lobster) produced repeatable responses. In no case could experimenters identify the response with any discrete human thought or emotion: in the words of one, it was “like the feeling you might get when some barely audible sound stops. You probably wouldn’t notice it if you weren’t concentrating.”
2. Vertebrates
All vertebrates give some response; with few exceptions, the strength and complexity of the response is a direct function of brain size. Best results, predictably, came from experiments with simians and cetaceans.
(One researcher, Robert Graham of Charleville, claimed to have established communication on a verbal, conversational level with a pair of dolphins. His investigations have recently been discredited, as detailed in Section H.)
Section I following deals with the well-known perception and learning experiments conducted by Theodore Staupe of Colorado on chimpanzees and great apes. Section II details related work done with cetaceans by this author.
The response of other mammals is interesting but wildly variable, depending on the tester and the individual animal. Domesticated animals give the most complex responses; wild ones react mainly with fear. Section III following is a tabular assessment of all vertebrate data.
3. The L’vrai
A total of eleven people have attempted bridge rapport with the L’vrai. Four recorded no meaningful responses, but six suffered (apparently instantaneous) cardiac arrest. One died; the other five are now confined to mental institutions, mute and apparently oblivious to external stimuli. Autopsy revealed only a slight lesion on the rhinencephalon, which might have predated rapport.
Of course there is one individual, Jacque Lefavre, who has repeatedly communicated with the L’vrai via bridge rapport. His highly subjective account of the experience is appended in Section VI following, through the courtesy of his publishers.
4. Apologia
Although this summary is profusely decorated with charts, graphs, statistics, and so forth, readers are warned to interpret our results with the skepticism they deserve. The data herein are for the most part subjective and nonrepeatable; where the data are quantified, the numbers are highly suspect. The summary is prepared in the spirit of a “state of the art” report, primarily to indicate directions for further research.
Hugo Van der Walls, Ph.D.
14 July 2062
AED Charleville
Contents:
I. The Groombridge Effect in Simians: Some Preliminary Observations (Staupe, Theodore; AED Colorado Springs).
II. Bridge Rapport Between Humans and Cetaceans (Van der Walls, Hugo, and staff; AED Charlevile).
III. A Statistical Survey of the Groombridge Effect (Van der Walls, Hugo, and staff; AED Charleville).
IV. Toward a Psychic Taxonomy (Van der Walls, Hugo; AED Colorado Springs).
V. Human/L’vrai Contact: Three Views (Jameson, Philip; Lefavre, Jacque; Chandler, Lewis; AED Colorado Springs).
VI. Mindbridge (Lefavre, Jacque; copyright © St. Martin’s TFX, 2060).
By 2090 people were getting nervous. Nobody but Jacque Lefavre had been able to maintain bridge rapport with the L’vrai, and Jacque was 75 years old. He probably had another quarter-century, but then what?
The L’vrai suggested a way that people could be tested for bridge potential without being turned into vegetables if they were unsuitable.
First, Lefavre was subjected to an exhaustive battery of psychological tests, that reduced his psyche to a computer full of numbers. People who roughly matched his profile were given the same battery of tests. The ones who came closest to “being” Lefavre were given a final test: sent to a remote corner of Groombridge, where the L’vrai waited. Isolated from the psychic pollution that random human sensibilities caused, the L’vrai didn’t have to touch a candidate to tell whether he or she were suitable.
Candidate after candidate was rejected. Perhaps Jacque was unique. If so, humanity would be in a sorry state when he died-at the mercy of a creature whose nature was still a mystery, with whom communication was impossible. The L’vrai refused to read, write, or speak, claiming that expressing truth was impossible through the muddy filter of human language.
Jacque was 105, still hale, when his successor was found. Then two more, over the next few years.
A century later, there were several hundred who could communicate with the L’vrai; in a thousand years, every human could.
The L’vrai said it had not influenced human evolution directly; indeed, humans hadn’t really changed in any basic way. They had only begun to see in their own nature the literal embodiment of e pluribus unum that described the L’vrai.
It withdrew its fleet from Sirius and allowed humankind the stars.
(From Peacemaker: The Diaries of Jacque Lefavre, copyright © St. Martin’s TFX 2151:)
EDITOR’S NOTE: Jacque Lefavre never made another entry in his diary after his beloved Carol died in 2112. But he continued service to humanity as emissary/translator to the L’vrai for another thirty years, until failing health forced him to retire.
The “ecstasy death” associated with primary contact in the Groombridge Effect had long been well-established. Lefavre desired it, and the AED was honored to comply.
They brought an untouched bridge to his bedside in upstate New York and, for his secondary contact, jumped in his great-granddaughter Tania Celarion. Of the twenty-eight great-grandchildren descended from the two children he and Carol had had, Tania was the one with the greatest Rhine potential, 458.
No meaningful number could be ascribed to Lefavre’s potential, of course. Eighty years of association with the L’vrai had made him by far more sensitive than any other human being. He knew, therefore, that he wouldn’t live long after he had touched the bridge.
In fact he lasted less than twenty seconds. But his great-granddaughter revealed in great detail, under contact hypnosis, what went through his mind in that short time.
Although this transcript has been reprinted often, it does seem a fitting way to end this collection.
I came in and sat down by his bed. He looked so old, I’d never seen anybody looked so old. I thought he was asleep but he wasn’t. He just had trouble opening his eyes all the way. He smiled at me and said “Tania, you make me wish I was a century younger,” but the nurses told me he says that to any woman not in a wheelchair. And maybe he means it. He seems so good and pure, it’s the Power he got from the Creepies, the L’vrai. It made him a little like a Creepy himself. He asked me how my mother was and all that relative drik, but I could see he couldn’t keep his eyes off my box. The box I had the Groombridge Creepy in. Finally he asked me if we otta go ahead and do it, and I had to ask him did he really know he was going to die if he did? He said, “Child, I died thirty-seven years ago, and some months. Once I could tell you to the day, she was that much.” Well, the nurses had warned me about that, too; all he ever talks about is my great-grandmother. Talked. Anyhow, he warned me not to touch the thing first, just open the box and let him touch it, and then get right in there with him because he didn’t know how long it’d last.
Do you have that recorder on? Now most of this is what he said, but some of it’s me bouncing off him. It’s so important. You just listen and you can tell.
There you are child. O your mind is so clean so new, may you never grow old and crowded. This is fun, I hope it doesn’t give me a goddamn stroke; I’ve been inside woman’s body Carol’s, but never a little girl, so strange to feel the bones wanting to grow. You were little once too it’s not so much fun when you’re caught I know child in it, nothing ever fits once you get used to it I know I had a daughter why didn’t you ever bridge her then. Well it seemed like a sexual thing and I guess it is but I don’t really know what you’re talking about but I don’t feel shame, just that glow-say don’t call me Jacque I’m as old as a goddamn planet call me Pop or Grandpop or I didn’t call you Jacque or anything even, hey, you can’t lie in bridge-there you did it again I DIDN’T CALL YOU NOTHING Jacque. No? . . . . . . I’m just a senile old fool Jacque I know that sound anywhere you have a special voice in bridge O shit it’s sad to Jacque get so old you start Jacque kidding yourself Grandpop I hear it too don’t humor me child angel bitch Jacque Jacque O God could they be right
Now I know that I’m just a little child and he was just an old man so nobody’s gonna believe either of us. But I was there and I’ll swear on anything you want that the voice was there, a woman’s voice, soft, and if he said it was my great-grandmother then it was. Now I know you said that nobody else ever heard nothing like that but I don’t care, I heard it, and if you don’t want to believe me you can just go do yourself. Mom will believe me.
In 2281 there was founded a planet (and splinter sect of Catholicism) named Nuovo Vaticano. They wanted to start their hagiographic calendar over clean: keeping such old saints as still had appeal, naming new ones as they saw fit.
The planet had to have a patron saint, and of course they didn’t want it to be one of the old ones. Someone suggested Jacque Lefavre. All anybody knew was that he’d done good works in connection with the New Saviors, and that on his deathbed he’d offered some highly disputed proof of an afterlife.
Their small, practical library didn’t have a copy of peacemaker, so they had one sent on the next jump.
After reading the book thoroughly they decided Lefavre would be a bad example for their children.