"But I don't want to... "
"You're still under contract. You agreed to perform whatever duties were assigned."
"Damn. All right. Right now?"
"Right now."
Moyshe reached Contact a half hour later. He found the same old man in charge. "You'll be working with Hans and Clara again, Mr. benRabi. Strictly basic contact exercises. I don't know which fish your rapport will be. They decide that for themselves."
"Why am I here? There's no point in this. I'm leaving the end of next week."
The man acted deaf. "You'll probably link with several fish during the coming week. They like to get different perspectives on a mind before they decide on a permanent partner. Hans. Clara. Mr. benRabi is here. Go ahead with the basic program."
"Now wait a goddamned minute... "
The old man walked away, pursuing a black-uniformed electrician whose repair work did not please him.
"Good morning, Moyshe," Clara said. "Good to have you back. How have you been?"
And the youth, Hans, said, "We'll be your regular support team. They've given us Number Fifty-one... "
"Who the hell does that guy think he is? When I speak to somebody I expect them to answer."
"Take it easy," Hans suggested. "He does that to everybody. You'll get used to him."
"He's a dreadful boss," Clara said. "Just dreadful. But we won't have him much longer. They're booting him upstairs. Why don't you show Moyshe our station, Hans. I'll get us all some coffee."
"What do you think is going on?" benRabi asked Hans. He sat on the end of the Contact couch. "I've got no business being here."
Hans shrugged. "I haven't the faintest. They just told us you'd be our new mindtech, that we should start breaking you in. Clara thought you'd decided to stay. Didn't you?"
"What's that?" Clara asked.
"Say that Mr. benRabi decided to stay with Danion."
"Yes. Hasn't he?" She handed Moyshe a cup of coffee. "Black?"
"That's fine. No, I'm not staying."
"I don't understand." She seemed confused.
"Neither do I. I tried to tell them somebody screwed up. Nobody would listen. You know how things go. When their minds are made up... "
"I'd better check," Clara said. "There's no point going ahead if it's all a mixup."
"Do that."
She returned fifteen minutes later looking more puzzled than ever. "They said go ahead."
"Dammit, why?"
"I don't know, Moyshe. That's what they told me."
"It just doesn't make sense."
"Thought you were a soldier," Hans said. "Thought you were used to taking orders you didn't understand."
"I knew they made sense to the man who gave them... "
Hans smiled.
Made sense to the man who gave them. He barely heard Clara when she said, "We'd better get started. We're behind schedule."
So Beckhartism existed here too. He must have that look of the born pawn.
Try as he might, he could see no way the Seiners could profit from training him as a mindtech. Not if he was going back.
"Ready, Moyshe. Same drill as the other day. It shouldn't bother you this time. We won't be drawing power. Just go out and float. Try to open to the fish and get the feel."
Hans slipped the helmet over benRabi's head. Clara's voice came through, warm and gentle.
"Remember, one click down on the right for TSD, Moyshe. Two for Contact. Up on the left to come back. Go when you're ready."
He pushed the right-hand switch without knowing why.
The womblike comfort of total sensory deprivation enveloped him. He let it take him, carrying off the aches and fears of reality. He ran through a mantra several times, trying to take his mind into the same nirvana his flesh occupied.
This was nice. A man could lower his guard here, could relax his vigil against the universe. Nothing could reach him...
Wrong. His hindbrain, the ancient brain that had crawled out of the sea of Old Earth a billion years ago, could not tolerate an extended absence of stimuli. It became claustrophobic.
"You're staying in TSD too long, Moyshe," Clara said from a thousand kilometers away. "That's not good for your mind."
He depressed the switch again.
Weirdly distorted and colored space formed around him.
He was falling toward a milky scar some cruel god had scratched on the face of darkness. Logic told him it was the galaxy, that it looked both solid and fuzzy because his brain was trying to translate something seen in hyper into conventionalized images.
What was he seeing? Tachyon scatter? Gravitation? The frenzied dance of the gluons that cement all matter? The scar was most intense toward the galactic core, which would have been concealed by dust clouds in norm space.
Long pink streaks, like the fire of ruby lasers, winked past him, arrowing to a point of convergence centered on the heart of the galaxy. A barrage of golden tracers skipped along inside the circle of pink lines. Sharks and starfish skipping along with the harvestfleet?
He extended his attention till he detected several egg-shapes of St. Elmo's fire, with cometary tails, that had to be harvestships in hyper transit. He searched, but could find no trace of Stars' End. The fortress world had been left behind. The Seiner gamble had failed. That episode had ended. Payne's Fleet was running for the Yards...
"Hello, Moyshe man-friend."
BenRabi felt a rush of elation as he recognized Chub. It became a feeling of, "I'm home! This is where I belong."
"You came back, Moyshe man-friend."
"Yes. I didn't think I would. You survived the battle. I'm glad." The starfish's mental fingers slithered into his mind, bringing comfort. He did not resist.
A feel of laughter accompanied, "Me too, Moyshe man-friend. You came to learn to be linker?"
"I guess."
"Good. I teach. Me, starfish Chub, best teacher ever. Make you best linker of all time. Show Old Ones. We begin. You study universe around, try to see, tell me what you see."
Moyshe did as he was told.
"No. No. See everything at once. Forget eyes. Forget senses of flesh entire, let universe soak in, be one. Forget self. Forget everything. Just be, like center of universe."
It was the prime lesson he had to learn, and the most difficult one for the beginning mindtech. He tried valiantly, hour after hour, but it was like forcing sleep. The more effort he invested, the more remote his goal became.
He heard a faint voice calling. "Moyshe? Moyshe? Time to come out now."
He did not want to go. This being outside, this being free, this made everything he had endured worthwhile. At Stars' End death had been leaning over his shoulder. Here, unthreatened, he found himself closer to heaven than anything else he could imagine. It was almost a religious experience, like a first space-walk EVA, or a first orgasm.
Reluctantly, he commanded his left hand to lift.
All the aches and pains of mortal flesh crept back into his consciousness, and for an instant he understood those people who sought the false nirvana promised by drugs and religion.
Something stung his arm as the helmet slid off his head.
"Just a precaution," Clara told him. "You shouldn't have much of a contact reaction, but we never know for sure."
The agonies of the flesh receded. His incipient migraine died unborn. "That was something," he said. "I didn't want to come back."
"You've got the true linker touch, then," Hans told him. "They never want to go and they never want to come back."
"Eat big and get a lot of sleep," Clara said. "Contact takes more out of you than you think."
He shared three more extended sessions with Chub, and they became solid friends—within the limits of two such alien backgrounds.
His fifth training link brought him in touch with a creature calling itself a Judge of the Old Ones. The Judge was nothing like Chub. It was completely and truly alien. It entered his mind as coldly as a serpent, digging, exploring, till he felt like a bug under a microscope. It made no effort to teach him, nor did it chat, nor conceal its task of determining if he was fit to link with starfish. Moyshe was glad to break that contact, real-world pains notwithstanding.