"She knows everything, Hammen. Don't you want to know everything?"
"No," Hammen said. "I'd never be able to remember it."
The girl was retreating from them. Had she been snagged by the
Mindsnake? No. Only drift. Hammen threw an anchor into her, braced
himself against his Familiar, and pulled. She came apart at the seams
and flew off in all directions, gibbering.
He raced after all the pieces of the woman at a practiced, steady
trot and gathered them all in. He made a rough boundary and
compartmentalized her.
For an instant, he looked through the jumble that was her mind.
Sensuality, sloth, greed, hate, envy, pride, hunger, death wish--it was
the usual human pattern well enough, but they were letters that spelled
out no words. It would be impossible to find any information in that
psychic junk heap.
Deftly, Hammen turned Gordus back on.
"... must know. You'll have to help me, Hammen."
"Why must I?"
"Simplicity. You must. We stay here until you do. You can't close the
transmission without me, and I will not do it until you help me pick
the woman's mind. We can wait forever until you decide to do as I
order. There is no time here."
Gordus was a blind old man stumbling in the dark. He hadn't seen Lad
join them inside the diagram. He probably wasn't even aware that Hammen
had the woman under tow.
"Listen to me, Gordus. That about there being 'no time' here is a
mathematical abstraction. _Practically_, it has its limitations. There
is some flow of some kind of duration here, otherwise our questions and
answers would come at the same time."
"What are you trying to teach me?" Gordus demanded. "I was a Companion
before you were born."
"But then the Mindsnake wasn't so active or so powerful. If the
'duration' of our transmission is too long, he'll get a clear fix on
us--and that will be that."
"I'll risk that. _Will you?_"
"No," Hammen said. "You're a fool out here in transmission. You don't
know what you're doing. What do you expect of me?"
"Link with me, Companion, as you should. Help me gain her knowledge."
* * * * *
Hammen knew that he was being asked to help gain access to information
intended for the Federation authorities on Earth. But he rarely thought
of himself as a Federal, and he knew very few worlds would allow
extradition of him on a Federal charge. At the moment, he was mainly
concerned with saving himself and his cargo from the Mindsnake. As
distasteful as it was, Gordus was a part of his cargo, and a man had to
have a few ideals. Gordus was not qualified to be a Companion after the
generations of growth of the Mindsnake. He was only a pitiful fool now.
(How long before the Snake gets so big I will not be qualified? How
long before _no one_ is qualified? How long before the Snake comes out
of null-space and stalks the planets?)
Hammen shrugged and joined Gordus.
They struck for the mind of the woman.
Her name, they warned, Isodel.
They found that out, and incredibly, more.
In some way Gordus' mind paralleled the girl's. There was much of a
kind about them, and Gordus could piece together the fragments of
her identity. But then he was reaching down for something, and he
prestidigitated it up and out of sight.
Hammen realized that Gordus had succeeded in getting what he wanted and
in keeping it from him. He was less of a doddering old fool than he
appeared.
"What was that?" Hammen demanded. "What did you take?"
He tried to shake it loose from the coordinator.
"Let go of me!" Gordus cried out in immaterial indignity.
Hammen released him.
Completely.
Gordus screamed soundlessly as he retreated toward infinity.
"Shall I catch you?" Hammen asked.
The scream changed in pitch.
The Witch brought him back.
"You stayed," Gordus said. "Somehow you stayed. That dog. Somehow
you've got your damned Familiar with you, haven't you, Witch?"
"No," Hammen lied fluently. "Only feeble minds like yours require a
contact. Shall I tell you something about Witches? The Familiars are a
deception. We don't need them at all. We are lone wolves."
"Wolves, are you? So now I know what your grandmother before you was."
Hammen laughed.
And sobered.
"What did you take, Gordus?" he demanded.
"What do you know about her?" asked Gordus.
"Her name is Isodel."
"Isodel Van Der Lies."
"I've heard of her. Somewhere," Hammen said hesitantly.
* * * * *
"A great theoretician," the coordinator explained sullenly. "Probably
the first authentic female genius of the race of man. On a par with
Plato, Shakespeare, Newton, Einstein."
"What theory of hers were you after?" Hammen pursued.
"A method of destroying the Mindsnake."
"You want to take the credit from her."
"I want only to take the theory from her, Hammen."
"You mean you don't want the Mindsnake to be destroyed. You are afraid
its destruction would mean the end of the Companion Corps which you
head."
"Not at all. I only want the theory so I can reverse it. Once you know
how to destroy the Mindsnake, you also know how to create one. You
see, I intend to become another Mindsnake, one who knows too much of
destruction to ever be destroyed."
"Listen carefully, Gordus," Hammen said with infinite care. "You're
ill. You don't know what you're talking about. It can't be done."
"The ultimate dream--ultimate power."
"That's pure psychosis, Gordus!"
"Is it? Watch how easily I begin to grow. I have the woman's mind now."
It was true.
The poor, mad genius woman was gone.
"Stop it, Coordinator. You don't know what you're doing!"
Hammen tried to reach him.
"That's it, that's it. Come ahead, my boy. I'm becoming a Mindsnake.
Now I am a Mindsnake. Come ahead. Let me swallow you next."
"You fool," Hammen broadcast. "You are _the_ Mindsnake now. Don't
you think anyone's ever wanted power before? Won't you let yourself
remember how it was when you were a Companion? This is how it _always_
happens. You've let yourself be swallowed by the Snake. You ran right
into its jaws."
"No." Gordus thought furiously. "I--"
And the Snake digested the tiny egg in its gullet and "I" blurred and
was washed over by "All."
Hammen struck at it in anger and humiliation and terror and it
retreated with frictionless speed.
The Snake took something with it.
It took Gordus, and it left that part of the woman, Isodel, that he had
been able to capture. But the part of Isodel matched by Gordus' mind
was jerked free.
She was freed of hate, anger, lust....
She was left an impossibly ideal woman--all Mother, Sister, Lover....
Against his will, by immutable laws of nature, Hammen fell monstrously
in love with her.
* * * * *
Hammen was among the first of Companions or Witches to join the Suicide
Squadron.
He did it to protect Isodel and her descendants for all time to come,
and he did it in impotent fury at his reason for doing it.
The Companions transmitted in droves to abolish their profession. They
transmitted against the Mindsnake.
The Federation on Earth had made use of Isodel's theories. They
were only a formal mathematical statement of what had always been
known--destruction reaches a critical mass and destroys itself by
turning against itself.
Where Hammen had refused to join one human mind, he joined countless
ones in a huge drive against the Snake.
They became one with each other and they became one with the Snake,
and the Snake turned on itself and destroyed itself and them, and they
turned on themselves--and stopped.
They hung together for an unmeasurable time--and broke apart.
They were a super-entity like the Snake. But where the Snake had been
mad, they were sane.
They drifted through the haze of twilight and broke apart, their hands
gliding away into the shadows.
Hammen was gloriously happy. He had never been happy before and he was
not at all sure he liked it.
"Jobs are so hard to find these days," Isodel said, her lovely face
brightly sane. "What will you take up, darling?"
"There's still need for Companions--and Witches," he explained. "There
seems more of a tendency for members of the cargo to drift away than
ever. The Mindsnake at least gave them something to resist, a foothold
of friction. Now there is nothing--nothing to do but drift, drift,
drift. People in transmission will need Companions for a long time to
come."
"I need a Companion," lovely Isodel said.
His heart leaped ridiculously.
"But not a Witch," said gorgeous Isodel.
Pain, very great physical pain.
"I love you," priceless Isodel went on. "How could I help it? I am a
woman and I love the father image. You are my father--symbolically,
fortunately, not biologically. You held the sane part of me while
Gordus dragged off the unsane part. You gave me--_this_ me--birth. I
love you. But I don't love your dog."
"My dog?" said Hammen.
"No woman can marry a man _and_ his dog."
"I see," said Hammen, seeing it all, and living.
* * * * *
You could see everything about yourself and live. It wasn't easy, but
you could do it. Especially if you had the training and experience of
being a Companion. Or a Witch.
"It would kill Lad to separate him from me for long, you know," Hammen
said.
Isodel's beautiful eyes misted. And she said in all her infuriating
gentleness, "Then it is impossible for us, if we have to destroy a
living--"
"He's just a dog," he pointed out. "I would wring his neck cheerfully
if it would do any good. But it wouldn't."
Isodel looked sad, and brave, and wonderful.
"Don't you see, Isodel? It's _impossible_ for me to do the _right_
thing. If it wasn't Lad, it would be another dog, and if it wasn't a
Familiar to make me a Witch, it would be something else to make me
different, because I am different. I have to live with that. Among the
right people, I am the left man."
So he left her, and walked out of the Floating Gardens onto the walkway
and Lad fell in at his side, and he listened without anger to the
hushings and keenings of the crowd.
"Witch! Witch!"