The Tenth Planet (9 page)

“Correct.”

“For some reason,” went on Idris, “you were denied the use of a Minervan brain—dead or alive.”

Manfrius de Skun shrugged. “At the time—many years ago, you understand—there were political and philosophical objections. Ethical objections, also. Though we could infer electronically from the pattern of monitored rhythms how a brain was reacting in total isolation, we could not have subjective verification, at least for some time. It could be argued—and was argued—that an isolated brain might be suffering terrible torments of which we could have no knowledge. There were social considerations, too. Our community, as you are aware, is very small by the standards of your era. Everyone has many relations who are naturally concerned about their welfare. The experimental use of a Minervan brain would have brought too many complications. But, thanks to the progress you have made, immortality is within our grasp.”

“So now you know that a brain can survive the terrors of
isolation without entirely losing its sanity. Bully for you. And now all decent law-abiding Minervans can look forward to the prospect of immortality. Bully for them. I, on the other hand, am not feeling unreservedly happy about my own condition … Also, I want to see my children, and their teacher.”

Manfrius de Skun raised an eyebrow. “
Your
children, Captain Hamilton?”

“Yes,
my
children. I am of Earth, they are of Earth. They were in my charge. They are my children. You may have restored them to life; but that does not give you any right to determine their future.”

“You believe that you have a stronger claim?”

“I believe that, since I am of their culture, born on the planet they were born on, I have not a claim but a duty. So let us stop swapping abstract nouns. I want to see the children. Don’t think that because I am just a brain in a tank that I have no bargaining position. I can wreck your immortality project any time I want.”

“And how do you propose to do that?”

Idris laughed. “Simple. By demonstrating that I am insane.”

Manfrius de Skun sighed. “You are more intelligent than we anticipated, Captain Hamilton. I am both delighted and alarmed. However, as the monitors have revealed, your stress factor is abnormally high. It is my decision that you should rest once more while we consider all the implications of your present condition.”

“I’m doing fine, Dr. de Skun. I don’t need to rest. All I want is—”

Abruptly sound and vision faded; and Idris was left alone momentarily with unexpressed thoughts. Then they, too, were engulfed by darkness. And there was nothing—not even dreams.

H
E WOKE UP
in his bunk. The cabin light was on. He looked at his hands. They were sweating, shaking.

There had been dreams. He remembered them. He remembered them vividly. Dreams! Such dreams!

Apprehensively, he felt his head. No scars, no wounds, no bandages. A normal head.

But in the dreams …

He did not want to think about them. He willed himself not to think about them.

Something was wrong. He did not want to think about that, either. But he had to think about it. The implications were enormous.

He should have been in a field of zero G.

He wasn’t.

He moved carefully. All his limbs ached, felt strange, felt as they might feel if he had been drinking too much yet remained illusively sober. They felt abnormally heavy, heavier than they should feel on either Mars or Earth. Perhaps he had been ill.

That could be it.

He remembered that he had been near to breakdown before lift-off from Earth. He remembered his conversation with Orlando, the written authorisation that would enable Orlando to place him under restraint if, in Orlando’s opinion, the captain had flipped.

Carefully, he got out of the bunk. The cabin seemed wrong. Something seemed wrong. But then probably something or everything would seem wrong if he really had fallen off his trolley.

His limbs ached abominably. Jesus Christ, why? Slowly, agonisingly, he made his way to the door. It was locked.

All very right and proper. It figured. If you have a mad captain on your hands, lock him up and throw away the key before he does something stupid, like wrecking the vessel. Especially if said captain had the wit to give you the necessary authority before he started picking daisies …

The last flowers of Earth …

Now why should that phrase come into his mind?

Idris Hamilton sat down on the chair by his desk, sweating, shaking. There was a whole heap of crazy notions tied up in a sack somewhere in a dark room in his head. He knew they were there, alive, struggling to get out. He didn’t want them to get out. Because if they did, nothing would make sense any more.

He decided to use the intercom, talk to somebody—Orlando, Leo, Suzy. Any damn fool who would listen. There was a lot to tell them. The bloody nightmares, the grotesque thoughts, were busy cutting a hole in the sack. He didn’t want to know about them. He really didn’t. Pride stopped him from using the intercom. He might say things he would never want anyone to hear.

“But they are dead,” he said aloud in a matter-of-fact voice. He had a sudden, dreadful vision of Orlando, choking, sucked out of the navigation deck into a wilderness of stars. “I am dead also.”

Now he knew he was mad because, demonstrably, he was alive.

The mad can make their own laws. He decided to explore his madness.

“I am dead, and the
Dag Hammarskjold
was destroyed by sabotage. Also, I am alive and locked in the master’s cabin. Also the
Dag
has touched down because I experience G.”

The sack was torn open. Zylonia, Manfrius de Skun, the
planet Minerva, a brain in a life-support tank.

Not realities. Sick imaginings only. He bit his finger, felt the pain, saw the blood come.

No brain in a tank. The brain in Spain can’t feel much pain …

And then he heard the cuckoo clock. He had been trying not to see it all the time. He had succeeded. He had not felt it was necessary to avoid hearing it. Even madness has its limitations.

But the cuckoo—lost bird of Earth—popped out twelve times and said “Cuckoo!”

And the bulkhead clock showed that it was indeed twelve o’clock.

Idris remembered his calculations—remembered everything—and screamed.

The cabin door opened. Zylonia came in.

Idris Hamilton fell backwards out of his chair, hit the bond-fuzz, curled up in the womb position and began to suck his thumb.

“C
ATATONIC SHOCK
,”
SAID
Manfrius de Skun. “It was our fault entirely. I must apologise. A miscalculation. I judged that you would probably adjust to the new situation better if you were allowed to be alone for a while. It was a bad mistake. I hope you will forgive me.”

Idris lay in his bunk, not looking at Dr. de Skun, staring at the ceiling.

“I don’t feel a thing,” he said calmly. “I suppose you shot me full of happy juice.”

“You are under sedation, yes. You will not need it much longer. You have a very resilient personality, Captain Hamilton. Or, if I may put it in a less clinical way, you are a brave man.”

“Yes.” Idris gave a weak laugh. “I screamed. I cried like a baby. That is a sign of courage?”

“Captain Hamilton, courage manifests itself in peculiar and divers ways. You have passed through the trauma of death, you endured a twilight existence as a brain in a life-support system, and your sanity has survived the transference of that brain to a new body. By any standards, a man who can survive multiple trauma of such magnitude is exceptionally courageous. If we had a hundred such as you on Minerva we would …” He stopped, confused.

“What would you do?”

“Nothing. Forgive me. I am tired. I talk stupidly. Since
your crisis, I have had little sleep.”

Idris was silent for a while. Then he said: “It was the clock—the damned clock. It said ‘Cuckoo!’ twelve times, and the bulkhead clock showed the same time. And I blew my main circuits … Do you know what a cuckoo is?”

“A mythical bird of Mars,” said Manfrius de Skun.

Idris laughed. “Wrong. A real bird of Earth.”

Zylonia spoke. He had not been aware of her presence.

“I am sorry about the clock, Idris. I left it in the cabin because I thought—”

“Because you thought it would remind me of a girl who took off her clothes for a brain in a tank. It did.” He was still staring at the ceiling.

“Soon you will be well enough to meet people, to explore the Five Cities,” she said brightly. “It must be wonderful to live normally again, to breathe and eat and—”

Again he cut her short. “Dr. de Skun, what happened to the previous tenant?”

“The previous tenant? Who are you talking about, captain?”

Idris tapped his head. “The guy who used to live between these ears. Have we simply exchanged apartments? Is he now stuck in my tank, trying to figure out what it is all about? Or did you just scoop him out of his skull and drop him in the trash can?” He laughed. “I have a more than passing interest. I understand we are closely related.”

Manfrius de Skun sighed. “He is not in your tank, nor is he in the trash can. We are not murderers. As I have already told you, the brain in your cloned body was not allowed to mature or to achieve integrated self-consciousness.”

“So, the poor bastard was still-born. But he is my brother. So you will understand that I am mildly curious as to his present whereabouts.”

Again Dr. de Skun sighed. “You should not anthropomorphize. We are discussing not a personality but a brain that was never alive beyond the stimulation of its motor activities … However, it has been preserved in suspended animation.”

“Liquid helium?”

“Yes, liquid helium.”

“Why preserve it if it was never alive?”

“Captain Hamilton, there are several valid reasons why we should wish to preserve this brain. It is of immense historical, scientific and social value. The entire project, I believe, marks a turning point in our history and in our entire social structure.” He smiled. “At this time, you are probably the most important person on the planet.”

“I am glad you are preserving what is left of my brother,” said Idris evenly. “Sometime, perhaps, you will be able to give him another body and lift him out of the mental twilight you had to keep him in.”

“That is certainly not beyond the bounds of possibility,” said Manfrius de Skun confidently.

“But then the process is infinite,” went on Idris. “No matter how many times you pull the rabbit out of the hat, you are left with one brain minus a body.”

Dr. de Skun was confused. “What does this mean—the rabbit out of the hat?”

“Sorry. An ancient metaphor. Traditionally, the classic trick for
a conjuror—an illusionist—of Earth was to produce a living rabbit, a small furry quadruped, from a top hat.” He saw the look of blankness on Manfrius de Skun’s face and tried to explain further. “A top hat is—was—a kind of formal covering for the head. It was made of stiff cloth and looked like an inverted cooking pan with a wide brim and no handle.”

“So?” Dr. de Skun still did not understand. “What is the significance of this furry terrestrial quadruped when we are discussing the question of cloned bodies?”

“Forget it. The meaning will become apparent in the course of time.” Suddenly, Idris felt alive, very much alive. He felt like making use of the body that had been given him by Minervan science. He swung himself out of the bunk and faced Dr. de Skun and Zylonia. “Meanwhile, I am going to explore this world into which you have resurrected me.”

“I do not think it is wise,” said Dr. de Skun. “At the
moment, I do not think it is wise. Be patient. You have only just recovered from the transfer.”

“Dr. de Skun, I have been waiting a long time. And I have run out of patience. Until you gave me this body, I depended on you totally. Now, I am relatively independent. I am in a position to make decisions.”

“For the time being,” said Manfrius de Skun, “I recommend—I forbid you to leave this room. We must be sure that you are fully recovered from the transplant before you enter the next phase.”

Idris laughed. “Dr. de Skun, you are not now in a position to dictate. You presumed to play the role of Frankenstein, and you have created a monster capable of independent action. Don’t ask me about Frankenstein, it would take too long … Do you have an army on this planet? Do you have men who are trained to kill?”

Manfrius de Skun threw up his hands in horror. “Captain Hamilton, we have lived in peace for thousands of years. Violence is abhorrent to us.”

“Good. I win. I am not only a trained spaceman, Dr. de Skun, I have also been trained to kill—if necessary—with my bare hands. And violence is not totally abhorrent to me. So I am going out of this cabin—and
I
recommend that neither of you try to stop me. My brother’s muscles seem almost as good as those I used to have.”

His legs felt good. His body felt good. He felt good all over. He was alive again.

Zylonia said: “Please don’t do anything stupid, Idris.”

He ignored her. With sudden speed, he darted past her and Manfrius de Skun to the door. It opened easily.

He passed through the doorway and found himself in a large, bright room that looked vaguely like the traffic control centre of some large space-port. He took it all in at a glance. There were banks of monitor screens, a computer console, and a large number of young men and women. The Peeping Toms and Thomasinas who had doubtless monitored his existence in the tank and his reactions after being transferred to the cloned body. Clearly, also, they had witnessed
his recent exchange with Manfrius de Skun.

Five rather solid-looking young men formed a semi-circle round the doorway.

“Please, Captain Hamilton,” said one. “Dr. de Skun knows best. Please return to your cabin, and have patience.”

He straightened the fingers of both hands, and imagined each hand to be made of steel, as he had been taught to do, long, long ago. He crouched into the attack position. “Gentlemen, it is my intention to pass,” he said calmly.

Two of the young men came forward as if to crowd him back into the cabin. He chopped at the throat of one of them and almost simultaneously kicked the other in the stomach. They fell coughing, retching, groaning.