20
Pilch was silent for some moments again, considering the wall-screen asif thinking about something connected with it. "Well, we'll drop thatfor now," she said finally. "Let me tell you what's been happening thesemonths, starting with that first amnesia-covered blankout on HarvestMoon. The Maccadon Colonial School has sound basic psychology courses,so there won't be much explaining to do. The connection between thoseincidents I mentioned and your earlier feeling of disliking plasmoids isobvious, isn't it?"
Trigger nodded.
"Good. When you got the first Service check-up at Commissioner Tate'sdemand, there was very little to go on. The amnesia didn't liftimmediately--not very unusual. The blankout might be interestingbecause of the circumstances. Otherwise the check showed you were in agood deal better than normal condition. Outside of total therapyprocesses--and I believe you know that's a long haul--there wasn't muchto be done for you, and no particular reason to do it. So anamnesia-resolving process was initiated and you were left alone for awhile.
"Actually something already was going on at the time, but it wasn'tspotted until your next check. What it's amounted to has been arelatively minor but extremely precise and apparently purposeful therapyprocess. Your unconscious memories of those groupings of incidents I wastalking about, along with various linked groupings, have gradually beencleared up. Emotion has been drained away, fixed evaluations have faded.Associative lines have shifted.
"Now that's nothing remarkable in itself. Any good therapist could havedone the same for you, and much more rapidly. Say in a few hours' hardwork, spread over several weeks to permit progressive assimilationwithout conscious disturbances. The _very_ interesting thing is that thisorderly little process appears to have been going on all by itself. Andthat just doesn't happen. You disturbed now?"
Trigger nodded. "A little. Mainly I'm wondering why somebody wants me tonot-dislike plasmoids."
"So am I wondering," said Pilch. "Somebody does, obviously. And a veryslick somebody it is. We'll find out by and by. Incidentally, thisparticular part of the business has been concluded. Apparently,somebody doesn't intend to make you wild for plasmoids. It's enough thatyou don't dislike them."
Trigger smiled. "I can't see anyone making me wild for the things,whatever they tried!"
Pilch nodded. "Could be done," she said. "Rather easily. You'd be bats,of course. But that's very different from a simple neutralizing processlike the one we've been discussing.... Now here's something else. Youwere pretty unhappy about this business for a while. That wasn'tsomebody's fault. That was us. I'll explain.
"Your investigators could have interfered with the little therapyprocess in a number of ways. That wouldn't have taught them a thing, sothey didn't. But on your third check they found something else. Again itwasn't in the least obtrusive; in someone else they mightn't have givenit a second look. But it didn't fit at all with your major personalitypatterns. You wanted to stay where you were."
"Stay where I was?"
"In the Manon System."
"Oh!" Trigger flushed a little. "Well--"
"I know. Let's go on a moment. We had this inharmonious inclination. Sowe told Commissioner Tate to bring you to the Hub and keep you there, tosee what would happen. And on Maccadon, in just a few weeks, you'd begunworking that moderate inclination to be back in the Manon System up to adandy first-rate compulsion."
Trigger licked her lips. "I--"
"Sure," said Pilch. "You had to have a good sensible reason. You gaveyourself one."
"Well!"
"Oh, you were fond of that young man, all right. Who wouldn't be?Wonderful-looking lug. I'd go for him myself--till I got him on thatcouch, that is. But that was the first time you hadn't been able tostand a couple of months away from him. It was also the first time you'dstarted worrying about competition. You now had your justification. Andwe," Pilch said darkly, "had a fine, solid compulsion with no doubt veryrevealing ramifications to it to work on. Just one thing went wrong withthat, Trigger. You don't have the compulsion any more."
"Oh?"
"You don't even," said Pilch, "have the original moderate inclination.Now one might have some suspicions there! But we'll let them ride forthe moment."
She did something on the desk. The huge wall-screen suddenly lit up. Asoft, amber-glowing plane of blankness, with a suggestion of recedingdepths within it.
"Last night, shortly before you woke up," Pilch said, "you had a dream.Actually you had a series of eight dreams during the night which seempertinent here. But the earlier ones were rather vague preliminarystructures. In one way and another, their content is included in thisfinal symbol grouping. Let's see what we can make of them."
A shape appeared on the screen.
Trigger started, then laughed.
"What do you think of it?" Pilch asked.
"A little green man!" she said. "Well, it could be a sort of counterpartto the little yellow thing on the ship, couldn't it? The good littledwarf and the very bad little dwarf."
"Could be," said Pilch. "How do you feel about the notion?"
"Good plasmoids and bad plasmoids?" Trigger shook her head. "No. Itdoesn't feel right."
"What else feels right?" Pilch asked.
"The farmer. The little old man who owned the farm where the mud pondwas."
"Liked him, didn't you?"
"Very much! He knew a lot of fascinating things." She laughed again."You know, I'd hate to have him find out--but that little green man alsoreminds me quite a bit of Commissioner Tate."
"I don't think he'd mind hearing it," Pilch said. She paused a moment."All right--what's this?"
A second shape appeared.
"A sort of caricature of a wild, mean horse," Trigger said. She addedthoughtfully, "there was a horse like that on that farm, too. I supposeyou know that?"
"Yes. Any thoughts about it?"
"No-o-o. Well, one. The little farmer was the only one who could handlethat horse. It was mutated horse, actually--one of the Life Bank dealsthat didn't work out so well. Enormously strong. It could workforty-eight hours at a stretch without even noticing it. But it was justa plain mean animal."
"'Crazy-mean,'" observed Pilch, "was the dream feeling about it."
Trigger nodded. "I remember I used to think it was crazy for that horseto want to go around kicking and biting things to pieces. Which wasabout all it really wanted to do. I imagine it was crazy, at that."
"You weren't ever in any danger from it yourself, were you?"
Trigger laughed. "I couldn't have got anywhere near it! You should haveseen the kind of place the old farmer kept it when it wasn't working."
"I did," said Pilch. "Long, wide, straight-walled pit in the ground.Cover for shade, plenty of food, running water. He was a good farmer.Very high locked fence around it to keep little girls and anyone elsefrom getting too close to his useful monster."
"Right," said Trigger. She shook her head. "When you people look intosomebody's mind, you look!"
"We work at it," Pilch said. "Let's see what you can do with this one."
Trigger was silent for almost a minute before she said in a subduedvoice, "I just get what it shows. It doesn't seem to mean anything?"
"What does it show?"
"Laughing giants stamping on a farm. A tiny sort of farm. It looks likeit might be the little green man's farm. No, wait. It's not his! But itbelongs to other little green people."
"How do you feel about that?"
"Well--I hate those giants!" Trigger said. "They're cruel. And theylaugh about being cruel."
"Are you afraid of them?"
Trigger blinked at the screen for a few seconds. "No," she said in alow, sleepy voice. "Not yet."
Pilch was silent a moment. She said then, "One more."
Trigger looked and frowned. Presently she said, "I have a feeling thatdoes mean something. But all I get is that it's the faces of two clocks.On one of them the hands are going around very fast. And on the otherthey go around slowly."
"
Yes," Pilch said. She waited a little. "No other thought about thoseclocks? Just that they should mean something?"
Trigger shook her head. "That's all."
Pilch's hand moved on the desk again. The wall-screen went blank, andthe light in the little room brightened slowly. Pilch's face wasreflective.
"That will have to do for now," she said. "Trigger, this ship is workingon an urgent job somewhere else. We'll have to go back and finish thatjob. But I'll be able to return to Manon in about ten days, and thenwe'll have another session. And I think that will get this littlemystery cleared up."
"All of it?"
"All of it, I'd say. The whole pattern seems to be moving into view.More details will show up in the ten-day interval; and one more cautiousboost then should bring it out in full."
Trigger nodded. "That's good news. I've been getting a little fed upwith being a kind of walking enigma."
"Don't blame you at all," Pilch said, sounding almost exactly likeCommissioner Tate. "Incidentally, you're a busy lady at present, but ifyou do have half an hour to spare from time to time, you might just sitdown comfortably somewhere and listen to yourself thinking. The waythings are going, that should bring quite a bit of information to view."
Trigger looked doubtful. "Listen to myself thinking?"
"You'll find yourself getting the knack of it rather quickly," Pilchsaid. She smiled. "Just head off in that general direction whenever youfind the time, and don't work too hard at it. Are there any questionsnow before we start back to Manon?"
Trigger studied her a moment. "There's one thing I'd like to be sureabout," she said. "But I suppose you people have your problems withSecurity too."
"Who doesn't?" said Pilch. "You're secure enough for me. Fire away."
"All right," Trigger said. "Commissioner Tate told me people like youdon't work much with individuals."
"Not as much as we'd like to. That's true."
"So you wouldn't have been working with me if whatever has been going onweren't somehow connected with the plasmoids."
"Oh, yes, I would," said Pilch. "Or old Cranadon. Someone like that. Wedo give service as required when somebody has the good sense to ask forit. But obviously, we couldn't have dropped that other job just now andcome to Manon to clear up some individual difficulty."
"So I am involved with the plasmoid mess?"
"You're right in the middle of it, Trigger. That's definite. In justwhat way is something we should be able to determine next session."
Pilch turned off the desk light and stood up. "I always hate to run offand leave something half finished like this," she admitted, "but I'llhave to run anyway. The plasmoids are nowhere near the head of theFederation's problem list at present. They're just coming up mightyfast."
When Trigger reached her office next morning, she learned that thePsychology Service ship had moved out of the Manon area within an hourafter she'd been returned to the Headquarters dome the night before.
None of the members of the plasmoid team were around. The Commissioner,who had a poor opinion of sleep, had been up for the past three hours;he'd left word Trigger could reach him, if necessary, in the larger ofhis two ships, parked next to the dome in Precol Port. Presumably he hadthe ship sealed up and was sitting in the transmitter cabinet, swappingmessages with the I-Fleets in the Vishni area. He was likely to be atthat for hours more. Professor Mantelish hadn't yet got back from hislatest field trip, and Major Heslet Quillan just wasn't there.
It looked, Trigger decided, not at all reluctantly, like a good day tolean into her Precol job a bit. She told the staff to pitch everythingnot utterly routine her way, and leaned.
A set of vitally important reports from Precol's Giant Planet SurveySquad had been mislaid somewhere around Headquarters during yesterday'sconferences. She soothed down the G P Squad and instituted a checksearch. A team of Hub ecologists, who had decided for themselves thatoutworld booster shots weren't required on Manon, called in nervouslyfrom a polar station to report that their hair was falling out. Triggertapped the "Manon Fever" button on her desk, and suggested toupees.
The ecologists were displeased. A medical emergency skip-boat zoomed outof the dome to go to their rescue; and Trigger gave it its directionswhile dialing for the medical checker who'd allowed the visitors toavoid their shots. She had a brief chat with the young man, and left himtwitching as the G P Squad came back on to inquire whether the reportshad been found yet. Trigger began to get a comfortable feeling of beingback in the good old groove.
Then a message from the Medical Department popped out on her desk. Itwas addressed to Commissioner Tate and stated that Brule Inger was nowable to speak again.
Trigger frowned, sighed, bit her lip and thought a moment. She dialedfor Doctor Leehaven. "Got your message," she said. "How's he doing?"
"All right," the old medic said.
"Has he said anything?"
"No. He's scared. If he could get up the courage, he'd ask for apersonnel lawyer."
"Yes, I imagine. Tell him this then--from the Commissioner; not fromme--there'll be no charges, but Precol expects his resignation, end ofthe month."
"That on the level?" Doctor Leehaven demanded incredulously.
"Of course."
The doctor snorted. "You people are getting soft-headed! But I'll tellhim."
The morning went on. Trigger was suspiciously studying a traffic controlnote stating that a Devagas missionary ship had checked in and berthedat the spaceport when the G C Center's management called in to report,with some nervousness, that the Center's much advertisedmeteor-repellent roof had just flipped several dozen tons of fallingMoon Belt material into the spaceport area. Most of it, unfortunately,had dropped around and upon a Devagas missionary ship.
"Not damaged, is it?" she asked.
The Center said no, but the Missionary Captain insisted on speaking tothe person in charge here. To whom should they refer him?
"Refer him to me," Trigger said expectantly. She switched on the visionscreen.
The Missionary Captain was a tall, gray-haired, gray-eyed, square-jawedman in uniform. After confirming to his satisfaction that Trigger wasindeed in charge, he informed her in chilled tones that the DevagasUnion would hold her personally responsible for the unprovoked outrageunless an apology was promptly forthcoming.
Trigger apologized promptly. He acknowledged with a curt nod.
"The ship will now require new spacepaint," he pointed out, unmollified.
Trigger nodded. "We'll send a work squad out immediately."
"We," the Missionary Captain said, "shall supervise the work. Only thebest grade of paint will be acceptable!"
"The very best only," Trigger agreed.
He gave her another curt nod, and switched off.
"Ass," she said. She cut in the don't-disturb barrier and dialedHolati's ship.
It took a while to get through; he was probably busy somewhere in thecrate. Like Belchik Pluly, the Commissioner, while still a very wealthyman, would have been a very much wealthier one if it weren't for hishobby. In his case, the hobby was ships, of which he now owned two. Whatmade them expensive was that they had been tailor-made to theCommissioner's specifications, and his specifications had provided himwith two rather exact duplicates of the two types of Scout fightingships in which Squadron Commander Tate had made space hideous forevildoers in the good old days. Nobody as yet had got up the nerve topoint out to him that private battlecraft definitely were not allowablein the Manon System.
He came on finally. Trigger told him about the Devagas. "Did you knowthose characters were in the area?" she asked.
The Commissioner knew. They'd stopped in at the system check stationthree days before. The ship was clean. "Their missionaries all go armed,of course; but that's their privilege by treaty. They've been browsingaround and going hither and yon in skiffs. The ship's been in orbit tillthis morning."
"Think they're here in connection with whatever Balmordan is up to?"Trigger inquired.
"We'll tak
e that for granted. Balmordan, by the way, attended a bigshindig on the Pluly yacht yesterday. Unless his tail goofed, he's stillup there, apparently staying on as a guest."
"Are you having these other Devagas watched?"
"Not individually. Too many of them, and they're scattered all over theplace. Mantelish got back. He checked in an hour ago."
"You mean he's upstairs in his quarters now?" she asked.
"Right. He had a few more crates hauled into the lab, and he's lockedhimself in with them and spy-blocked the place. May have got somethingimportant, and may just be going through one of his secrecy periodsagain. We'll find out by and by. Oh, and here's a social note. The FirstLady of Tranest is shopping in the Grand Commerce Center this morning."
"Well, that should boost business," said Trigger. "Are you going to beback in the dome by lunchtime?"
"I think so. Might have some interesting news, too, incidentally."
"Fine," she said. "See you then."
Twenty minutes later the desk transmitter gave her the "to be shielded"signal. Up went the barrier again.
Major Quillan's face looked out at her from the screen. He was, Triggersaw, in Mantelish's lab. Mantelish stood at a work bench behind him.
"Hi!" he said.
"Hi, yourself. When did you get in?"
"Just now. Could you pick up the whoosis-and-whichis and bring it uphere?"
"Right now?"
"If you can," Quillan said. "The professor's got something new, hethinks."
"I'm on my way," said Trigger. "Take about five minutes."
She hurried down to her quarters, summoned Repulsive's container intothe room and slung the strap over her shoulder.
Then she stood still a moment, frowning slightly. Something--somethinglike a wisp of memory, something she _should_ be remembering--wasstirring in the back of her mind. Then it was gone.
Trigger shook her head. It would keep. She opened the door and steppedout into the hall.
She fell down.
As she fell, she tried to give the bag the send-off squeeze, but shecouldn't move her fingers. She couldn't move anything.
There were people around her. They were doing things swiftly. She wasturned over on her back and, for a few moments then, she saw her ownface smiling down at her from just a few feet away.