Mindguard (25 page)

The mindguard must
be in complete control of his every thought, just like an acrobat needs to be
able to command every single muscle in his body. If this control is not
impeccable, a seemingly insignificant misstep can be of fatal consequence. For,
just like an acrobat soars above the heads of his mesmerized audience, so too
does the intellect of a mindguard soar high above the minds of other men. But
for a mindguard, the fall would be greater, because the distance is so much
more vast. While the audience can still perceive the acrobat and watch him in
awe as he performs his incredible feats of balance, the mind of a mindguard is
beyond the comprehension of the normal man. He is so far above, that he cannot
be observed as he performs
his
incredible feats of the mind. Only their
result becomes evident.

Samuel Weixman,
Strengths
and Limitations of the Mindguard

It had been
hours since either Sheldon or Sophie had said anything. The last time they had
spoken to each other was right after they left Ross.

“So, where to?”
Sophie had asked. “Shouldn’t we use the portable gateway generator and get the
hell off this planet?”

“I’d like to put
some distance between us and them first. Ideally find a cave and dial out from
there. Perhaps they won’t be able to detect the energy emission and figure out
our destination. We need to change the route.”

“You think they
know our route?”

“Maybe they
broke into the archives.”

“Isn’t that
illegal?”

“No more than
using neuralfield scanners. Anyway, they can’t track us now.”

“What do you
think happened to Mac?”

She had received
no answer to that question. Sheldon had remained silent for the rest of their
hike, and the girl had not disturbed him since. He figured she was probably
waiting for him to speak first, but his mind was distracted.

Many thoughts
preoccupied his extraordinary brain, all of them at the same time. The most
pressing, was the need to generate a new route from the stellar map he had
memorized. He was also trying to figure out what he was going to do once he
dropped her off and had to return to his own life, assuming there was even a
life left to which to return. He was essentially a fugitive, hounded by the
enforcers. The only thing that gave him the slightest chance to evade them, was
that he was a prototech. That made him hard to track down even if they used genetic
trackers. But it would only be a matter of time until they eventually caught
him.

Sheldon’s mind
was also distracted by the thick surrounding forest. The gloomy trees were
barely spread apart enough to allow them to pass through, and the innumerable
trunks and thick boughs overhead gave the impression that anyone could be
concealed behind them. He was acutely aware that he was now not only Sophie’s
mindguard, but her bodyguard as well.

They were tired
and the long night of Noriado 2 was starting to take a toll on their bodies.
Sheldon knew that they would soon have to either find a good place from which
to generate a Muench-Henriksen gateway or find shelter for a few hours. His
mind was in the midst of an exhausting whirlwind of activity, which was necessary
for Sophie’s protection and the completion of the mission.

The most
distracting element was his grandfather, Kinsey, who had materialized seated at
the foot of an old tree. He arose at Sheldon and Sophie’s approach, and walked
onward by their side. Well aware that Sophie could not see their third
companion, Sheldon remained silent and ignored him. He did not want to alarm
her more than she was already.  At first, the hallucination didn’t speak,
which made it easier for Sheldon to ignore it.

By now, he
noticed that the apparitions were brought about by stress or the absence of
external stimuli. The stress of the last few hours and the repetitive act of
walking through the woods, had left his mind free to race against itself. That
had summoned up the vision of his grandfather. When the old man started
speaking, Sheldon had to make a great effort to not get distracted. The man’s
voice was not the gentle and loving whisper that Sheldon remembered, but a
hoarse bark, filled with contempt, as if his grandfather’s ghost had itself
been possessed by an evil spirit.

“You are late,
Sheldon Ayers,” snarled the old man. “And it is dusk already. I always told you
to go to bed at dusk and no harm will come to you.”

Kinsey Ayers had
never said such a thing. Clearly, the mirage was not a faithful reproduction of
Sheldon’s grandfather, but a mocking parody of the great man. As if to
punctuate that thought, Kinsey Ayers tilted his head back and produced a laugh
that would have had the fiercest hyena trembling in fear.

In his life,
Kinsey had smiled a lot, but it had been only a handful of times that Sheldon
had heard his grandfather laugh out loud. When he did laugh, it was always a
mere silent chuckle. He usually covered his mouth with the palm of his hand, as
if trying to hide his amusement. For a split second, Sheldon was sure Sophie
must have also heard the laughter. He gazed sideways but the girl seemed lost
in her own thoughts, looking downward so as to not trip over a branch or a
large exposed root.

“Here you are in
the woods, heading forward. Very diligent, but where to? To complete the
mission perhaps? Are you now supposed to be both a bodyguard and a mindguard,
like your friend, Ross?” The voice carried a reproachful sarcasm that the real
Kinsey’s voice had never possessed. The demon looked at Sheldon, to study his
reaction, but Sheldon did not look back. Still, from the corner of his eye, he
could see his grandfather’s figure.

Kinsey had died
an old man, his face decorated with countless lines - a testament to his age
and wisdom, but also his status as a prototech. Instead, the demon appeared
middle-aged. He was wearing the brown leather jacket, which had been given to
Sheldon, and which now rested in the house where they had left their
belongings. Only now did Sheldon realize that he would never see that old
rickety jacket again. The thought produced a sharp pain in his chest, as if he
had lost a human being and not merely a very valued piece of clothing. On
Kinsey, the jacket appeared brand new, with the wear-and-tear of the original
missing like the soul from a machine.

“Ah, right,
Ross... Maclaine Ross, a man of strength and valor, a great warrior. The name
resonates. Maclaine Ross!” The old man yelled out Mac’s name with a thunderous
voice that would have had the leaves rattling, had it come from a real living
throat.  He burst out with a bone-chilling laugh. “What is a name but an
amalgam of letters, syllables, tones… perhaps visual images, if you write it
down somewhere. Sheldon Ayers, that’s a beautiful name right there, isn’t it?
Isn’t it?” Sheldon didn’t answer.

“Sophie Gaumont,
just slides off the tip of the tongue, doesn’t it? I wonder what she likes to
slide off the tip of
her
tongue, if you know what I mean.” He made a
gesture with his own ghostly tongue that, on the kind and gentle features of
his cherished face, looked downright macabre. Seeing the disgusted reaction of
his once-grandson, the diabolical creature left out another crazy laugh.

“Maclaine Ross.
Sounds powerful and strong… just like your friend himself. And yet, it’s just a
name. What is a name? A symbol… perishable. I can write it down on a piece of
paper and then burn it or wipe my ass with it. Kinsey Ayers… do you think I
give a dirty fuck about
my
name? Maclaine Ross,
your
best friend,
the devout Christian, the believer, sent you all to meet your maker… all for
the survival of
his name
. The life of his name has more value to him
than any human life, including yours, Sheldon.”

The mindguard
just walked on, refusing to let himself be distracted by what was merely his
own mind playing a most vile trick on him. This hallucination creature that
looked like his grandfather but behaved like the mythical devil from Mac’s
religion, was not going to stop. The only way to defeat it, was to outlast it,
show no emotion, not get caught up in its web of craziness. He couldn’t get
angry at a being that wasn’t real. Instead, he got angry at himself, at his own
mind. It was a mind that he had cultivated with the purpose of forming the
greatest intellect in the world. Yet, it was the same mind which created this
obscene and perverted phantom of the man who meant more to him than anyone else
in his life.

As Sheldon
walked on, fighting hard to keep his composure in spite of the venom spewed by
the satanic mirage, he saw another apparition. Off into the distance, only
vaguely distinguishable, were the shapes of Maclaine Ross and Kriss White. The
closer Sheldon got and the more he tried to fight off the influence of the
Kinsey hallucination, the more substantial the vision became.

Mac and Kriss
seemed to be engaged in conversation. From their posture and their body
language, Sheldon could tell that the shapes were whispering. There was a
secretive air about their exchange. When he passed them, they both slowly
turned to look at him. Their eyes were not human. They were eyes of serpents,
reptilian and deceitful. When Sheldon looked into their eyes, the figures
smirked malevolently and dispersed into the air like a dying breath. Sheldon
looked again at Sophie, the agent of reality. He was set on ignoring the old
man, but Kinsey spoke again.

“Forget Ross, he
is a serpent!”

Seeing that his
flesh-and-blood grandson would not reply, he continued talking: “Let us walk on
nevertheless, reasoning as we go. After all, we are mindguards, men of reason,
of dignity and wisdom. We are superior beings, creatures of the mind we are,
not of the simple and fallible body.”

As he said that,
Sheldon’s gaze fell on the specter of Isabel Mensah. She was standing near the
trunk of a dead tree, which had been struck by lightning and now resembled an
erect penis. She was naked, ostentatiously rubbing her bare breasts with one
hand and her vagina with the other. Every stroke of her hands produced cuts on
her skin, as if she were touching herself not with fingers but with sharpened
blades.

She did not
stop. She continued the motion smearing blood all over herself. She looked
straight at Sheldon, her gaze part lascivious, part derisive. She was as
grotesque in specter as she was noble and dignified in real life. Behind her,
the dead phallic tree seemed to pulsate with life, as if underneath its bark
lay not wood, but erectile tissue. Seeing that Sheldon was just absently
looking at the naked ghost of one of his dearest friends, with no discernable
reaction on his face, his grandfather decided to react instead, making the same
gesture of the tongue he had made when talking about Sophie. Then he made a
gesture of the hand that seemed to say ’ah, forget it’ and the Mensah wraith
instantly disappeared.

“Unwelcome
distractions,” he said, in a tone that was suddenly serious, like a drunkard
trying to convince everyone else that he was, in fact, sober. “Onward,
Sheldon,” he commanded. For a second, Sheldon thought of stopping at his
grandfather’s command of going forward, just to spite the evil entity. He
realized at the last second how ridiculous that would be and so he went
forward.

It wasn’t long
before the third chimerical character appeared. This time it was Horatio
Miller, the man who had sent them all on this mission and, implicitly, to their
doom. Contrary to the spotless and well-groomed man of culture that Sheldon had
met on Terra Nova, this Horatio Miller was dirty and unshaven.  His
clothes, initially an expensive suit of exquisite craftsmanship, were now
tattered, hanging off of his body like rags off a scarecrow. He was breathing
heavily and staring at Sheldon with great scorn. His right hand was hidden
behind his back. When he revealed it, the hand was holding the severed, bleeding
head of Kinsey Ayers. A trick of the mind, as evanescent as the hateful ghost
that walked beside him.

“The Devil,”
screamed Kinsey Ayers, the Kinsey that still possessed his body, ethereal as it
was. But his voice was not his own. It sounded like the terrified voice of a
pious old lady.

“Then you know
your old friend,” responded the severed head, this time in Kinsey’s voice.

As Sheldon and
Sophie walked past him, only one of them aware of his presence, Horatio Miller held
Kinsey’s head high in the air. He held it above his own head, as if it were a
talisman that could protect him from Sheldon, the very man whose mind had
summoned him up in the first
place.         

“You pay them no
mind, my son,” Kinsey said. “Mere hops along the way. They are nothing, just
like you’ve known all along. You’re better than everyone else, they can’t be
trusted, isn’t that right, son?”

The man’s
inexistent taunts fell on deaf ears. Sheldon just marched forward through the
almost impenetrable darkness.

“You’re better
than them, right Sheldon? That’s why you chose not to tell them that you’re
going insane, like me. They don’t deserve to know, they wouldn’t understand
anyway. You know I always taught you to be exceptional Sheldon, and I’ll be
damned if you aren’t just that: exceptional. And you know it too, you arrogant
little piece of shit. Well, very good. The time and energy people waste on
modesty can be put to much better use, like furthering your knowledge,
strengthening your mind. Your mind is strong! It’s so strong it’s… it’s… coming
apart at the seams.” Again the haunting laughter. “You’ve done good work, my
son, blessed be your mind! I bless you! I, Sheldon Ayers, bless you!” Laughter.

There was so
much laughter that the ghost almost choked. Sheldon stopped walking,
suddenly,  as if he had reached an unseen wall. He slowly turned towards
his grandfather. Instead of Kinsey Ayers, he found himself,  his mirror
image, identical but for the look in its eyes and the smirk on its face.