Mother Lode

pply of basic biological building blocks. She could only assume that her long imprisonment had diminished her capacity for reason, at least temporarily. Now there were seven of the men at close range, not riches in way of material, but more than triple that which she had available aboard the Mother Lode. She willed. Her will was, of course, obeyed. «This is the Mother Lode, « a female voice said. «Miss Kenner?» Plough asked. «I am Erin Kenner.» «You know who I am.» «Yes.» The voice was without modulation, almost as flat and mechanical as that of a computer. «I know who you are.» «Good,» Plough said. «You heard me say I have two laser cannon on you.» «I heard.» «Not that I intend using them, of course,» Plough said, with a forced laugh. «It's just that I want to be sure I have your attention. Now listen. I sent a ship out here. I want to know what happened to it.» «It was annihilated in the nearest star,» the robotic voice said. «Holy—» Plough was stunned. «Repeat, please?» «We set the generator to blink the ship into the corona of the sun,» the voice said. «Gaaaaawd damn,» Plough said, then punched the sender. «And the people on her?» «They were dead before the ship went into the sun.» «Stand ready to fire,» Plough said. She was probing. She could feel the minds of the five men aboard the Plough, but once again she was frustrated. Once she could have enforced her slightest whim on such minds from far greater distances. Now she was unable to break past the red haze of anger that she felt emanating from the mind of Murdoch Plough. That there was danger was evident. She knew something about the weapon the men called a laser, for there had been lasers aboard to be used in mining. A quick probe of the mind of the female who was manning fire control on the Plough gave her an image of the Mother's hull with a sizable hole, quite large enough to send all of Mother's air blasting out into the vacuum. That would be quite damaging to the bio-masses she controlled, and quite inconvenient to her, for, since she was incapable of independent movement in space, she would, at best, be left floating. At worst, she would be tossed into the nuclear fire of the sun if she did not leave Mother before those who were approaching carried out their intentions. She caused the female voice to be sent to the man who threatened. «We need to talk, Plough.» «All I want to know is how you managed to kill my brother and four other people,» Plough said. One tendril of her extension crept past the barriers and she saw a mind filled with anger, knew that the man fully intended to lance holes in the hulls of the Mother Lode. And then she found the weakness and began to influence the entire entity through his memory of Erin Kenner's ash blonde hair, sea green eyes, and her very feminine body. «There is gold enough for both of us,» Erin Kenner's voice was saying, and there'd been a change in tone. Plough couldn't help but notice. The flatness was gone, replaced by a breathy quality. «We can work together. We would be very good together.» Plough felt himself stir inside. She wasn't talking about mining gold. One part of him was laughing at the clumsy attempt to change his mind about killing Kenner and Gale. But need was growing in him, a desire more powerful, more debilitating, than anything he'd ever experienced. He had to swallow to prevent the suddenly stimulated flow of saliva from overflowing. He sniffed, for the mucus membranes in his nasal passages were becoming engorged, too. «I will bring my ship alongside,» Erin Kenner said. «Boss, what the hell's going on?» one of Plough's crew asked. «I'll handle this,» Plough said. «I am ready,» said the woman at the weapons control panel. «Hold your fire,» Plough ordered. «Secure lasers.» He was the boss. He was obeyed, although the crew members exchanged looks with each other and one of the women whispered, «Who the hell does that broad think she's kidding?» For to those not being affected by the She, the female voice coming over the radio was a burlesque of seduction, a bit out of some comedy routine. «I must see you, quickly,» Erin said. «I am moving ship. My lock is, of course, X&A standard.» «Same here,» Plough said. He felt an urgency that caused his teeth to chatter. In his mind was a picture of Erin Kenner nude. He'd never seen her nude, of course, but the vision was as real as the Mule class ship that was fluxing slowly to come alongside the Plough. «Boss, I don't like this,» one of the crewmen said, as Erin Kenner's voice made suggestive remarks that would have made a horny teenager laugh. «Shut up,» Plough said. «Let's see what the broad's up to.» Plough punched orders to the air lock control. The two ship swam side by side. The members of the Plough's crew fingered weapons as the distance closed and the clang of contact echoed throughout the ship. Plough checked instruments. Pressure in both ships was equal, X&A standard. There was a hiss of air into the Plough's lock. «Just stay alert,» Plough ordered his crew. He left the bridge and ran to the lock. He saw Erin Kenner standing in the hatch of the Mother Lode. Her ash blonde hair brushed her shoulders, her sea green eyes gleamed in invitation. She was wearing Service shorts, tunic, and hose. Wings extended outward from her shoulders. «Wha—» The question was never finished. Murdoch Plough's mouth remained open. He froze as he stood, feet apart, arms hanging at his sides, and then slowly sank to the deck. Behind him, on the bridge of the Plough, the six members of the crew became vegetables, retaining only enough brain function to power the basic life functions of their bodies. * * * The She had no use for the life force of the seven men. She wanted only the basic bio-matter. She was tired of being limited to the mass of the two men of the Mother Lode. She directed the female body to carry her on a tour of the converted destroyer. She was unimpressed by the luxury of the living quarters, but was pleased to find that the ship had additional generators to power her weapons system. She would be able to use that power when the time came to undo the disaster that had happened in a time so remote that not even she knew how to date the event. Satisfied with the new source of working materials, she went back to the gym aboard the Mother Lode and picked up the skull that the female man called Old Smiley. Old Smiley was a male. His bulk had been great when he was whole and alive. It would take more than two units of her new bio-material to form him. She concentrated and a glow of light seemed to emanate from the skull. Aside from that, there was nothing. The only force detectable came from her own resources. Hope that had grown failed and in a moment of pique she shattered Old Smiley into dust. The ship's filter system, detecting the source of the air pollution, caused her further irritation by closing off the gym and starting noisy suction to clean the air. She looked at the fossil skeleton on the deck. Although it was large, there was a delicacy about it. The wing bones, perfectly preserved, formed a graceful curve. She had been exceedingly beautiful. The suddenly realized knowledge of how much she had lost brought rage and sent a surge of fever through the human body, causing muscles to jerk spasmodically. She felt her limitations as lances of pain, knew a hate that threatened to damage the delicate brain cells of the human female. She sensed fear and pain, controlled her emotion, took out her frustration by destroying the fossilized reminders of her shame. The life-support system of the Mother Lode felt the electronic equivalent of panic and called in all of the mechanical reserves to combat the huge dust cloud that filled the gym. The She watched the miasma being absorbed and filtered. She was calm again. She sent her extensions searching outward, sensed, at some distance, a feeble, comatose presence locked away as she, herself, had been bound. Perhaps, soon, she would no longer be alone. In the meantime there was work to be done. CHAPTER SIXTEEN «I know, I know,» Erin said. «I know. I know.» There was a feeling of misty sadness. Her eyes would not work properly. She was looking at a very limited monochromatic world from the height of her ankles. There was a layer of fuzzy obstruction that obscured even that view. She lifted her eyes and saw a vaguely humanoid thing of nightmare proportions. There was something familiar about the face. Naked flesh had embarrassing but eerily distorted shapes. She was aware of fear, of dread. «Ohhh,» she moaned in sympathy, but there was no sound. There was no pain. There was no feeling. The impressions she registered seemed not to come from her own senses. There was a smell. Distinctive smells. Not long ago Denton had walked past the captain's chair in his stocking feet, leaving his own particular scent. From her place she saw herself walk past. Was that actually the way she smelled? Musk and perfume? «It's all right,» she said, not knowing why, but with a soothing tone to her voice, a tone heard by no one, for there was no sound. Eons or seconds later she seemed to be more aware. «Hey,» she said, and this time she knew that she was talking to a frightened little dog cowering under the console. «It's all right, little buddy.» She said the words, but they did not issue forth from her lips. She did not understand how she knew that Mop was hiding, and that he was sad. It wasn't because she was seeing him. She knew that eons or seconds before she'd been feeling sympathy for Mop. He had been so frightened. And the hair that fell down in front of his eyes interfered with his vision. She would, next time she gave him a bath, trim his bangs. It was bad enough to see the world in shades of one color without having part of it dimmed by a curtain of hair in front of one's eyes. «Mop?» The word was a scream of shock and pain, for she was looking upward through the fringes of hair, seeing herself and Denton moving about woodenly. She was looking out onto a limited world through the eyes of the dog, knowing his sadness, his fright. He was so lonely. Madness. One part of her was screaming mindlessly as she parroted words dictated to her by someone else, knowing on one level that Murdoch Plough was cheating her, paying her much less than her load of gold ore was worth, but unable to break the bonds that held her so tightly, her every action controlled, only the deep, deep down part of her mind free to voice protest and shock. Everything was blended into one jigsaw mosaic. There were moment of clarity, but most of the time she was floating mindlessly in a sea of confused images and thoughts and feelings. She was bending over a work table constructing a circuit board of impossible intricacy, working with a glue gun, the tip of which had been attenuated to incredible smallness. The opening was too minute to allow passage of the material, but the glue itself had been altered into smaller molecules. She had no sense of time or continuity. Mixed in with the work that she did not comprehend were seven dead people, including Murdoch Plough. She was so alone, no contact, no Denton, only memories of their closeness that had come—astonishing storms of regret—too late, too late. And poor Mop, as alone as she, able to see his humans but not being given a word, a touch. Like her, Mop was unable to understand what had happened, and his drooping tail seemed more lamentable to her than her own feeling of hazy unreality until she saw with her own eyes but with another's vision the brain dead bodies of Murdoch Plough and his crew and then was looking into the empty eye sockets of Old Smiley only to face a storm of fire that threatened to consume her. The helpless rage that she felt, she who controlled where Erin's eyes looked, what Erin's hands did, burned away some of the mist from Erin's mind. She had been dead. She remembered the instant of terrible pain. She remembered how it had felt—dull, incomplete, somnolent—to be a prisoner inside the tiny skull of Mop the dog. «Denton?» She saw the skeleton burst into dust motes, just as she and Denton had shattered into oblivion. The violence of it cleared her mind for a moment. «Who are you?» She was heard. Just as the thing that was in command of her eyes saw Mop's pathetic little efforts to gain the attention of his Erin, so did it hear her question. And just as Mop was ignored, she was ignored. «Damn you, who are you?» She was beneath notice, nothing more than a tool. «I am not something to be used and discarded,» she screamed with righteous anger. She had the attention of the thing. She felt a slight twisting of her mind that was something more than pain. Once again she was looking at the world from Mop's eyes. After the shock of adjustment she felt good, for she knew that she had annoyed it, whatever it was. She was banished. She was coiled in a very small place. Her nose-no, Mop's nose—brought to her the scent of a molecular bonding machine at work. She, or her body, was working side by side with Denton. She was getting used to seeing a one color world with a myopic lack of clarity. The mining equipment had been removed. The room that had housed the controls and Denton's quarters was almost filled with an electronic constructions of amazing complexity. «Mop,» she whispered, the word existing only in awareness, «let's go have a look.» Mop stayed as he was, curled into a ball, his nose tucked into the hair on his hind leg. She could feel his melancholy, but he could not be made aware that she—or some part of her—was closer than he knew. She called out. She talked to him softly. She sent waves of love toward him in an effort to get his attention, to make contact, but he merely lifted his head, looking up at the two humans bent over the workbench, and sighed. When she was allowed into her body, she had a sense that she was being told, «There, now behave yourself.» «You and the horse you rode in on,» she said, but the words didn't reach her lips. Erin knew, somehow, that the work was finished. There was no direct communication from the thing that held her prisoner in her own body, but she knew that the creature had accomplished whatever needed to be done. The order was to activate Mother's sensors. The instruments were set to search for heavy metal. Erin readjusted for the mineral content of fossilized bone. Mother was still attached, lock to lock, to Murdoch Plough's yacht. That made maneuvering a bit more difficult as Erin, under orders, searched the belt with all sensors on high, moving the two ships forward along the vector of the orbiting belt until, days later, there was a signal indicating a mass of fossilized material of a bulk surpassing the skeleton that Erin and Dent had found. To land Mother required disengaging from the Plough. The yacht was parked a few hundred yards away from the asteroid onto which Mother settled. «We have no mining equipment,» Erin said. But they had hand weapons, saffers. Once again Erin was in a flexsuit alone in the big empty, but her mind was not her own to be used in philosophical musings. She did not give way to the usual awe, but moved purposefully toward the spot indicated by Mother's sensors. She directed the saffer toward the rock and began to blast it away. It didn't matter if the embedded fossils were damaged. It was only necessary to remove the burden of rock from them. Gradually she exposed the gray stone that had once been living bone. And there was something else. She reached down a gloved hand and shook it loose from the shattered small bones of a hand. It was the only item she'd seen in the belt that indicated the work of intelligence. It was a beautifully cut yellow diamond of perhaps ten carats. She tucked it away in a pocket on the outside of her flexsuit and realized with a thrill that she had taken an independent action, had made movements that were not dictated by the thing that controlled her. She turned to face the ship, lifted the saffer. Yes, she could use the weapon, if she chose, against the ship. It was only a hand weapon, and it would have taken quite some time for the beam to cut through Mother's hull, and all she would have accomplished was death for herself and for Mop and Denton. As if to make up for the lapse, she was dominated so thoroughly that thought became a haze and she worked mechanically to free the skeleton from the rock and to move it as she and Dent had moved the first one, the bones still attached to a thin slab of rock, into Mother's air lock. The She blasted away the remaining matrix rock, causing the filtering system to panic again and leaving the broken skeleton lying in disarray on the deck of the gym. Her attention was diverted from the intelligence that she dominated. Eri