The Ganymede Takeover

Hiashi,” he said softly.

A knock sounded on the door. Rudolph Balkani glanced up from his notebook, frowning, then or­dered one of his robots to open the door. His superior, MajorRingdahl, stepped into the room, his eyes alert.

“Is she still in the tank?” Ringdahl inquired. Wordlessly Balkani gestured toward the dark pool in the floor. The major peered down and saw the top of Joan Hiashi’s helmet just breaking surface and her body, distorted by ripples, floating motionless under the water. “Not so loud,” Balkani whispered. “How long has she been in?”

Balkani examined his wristwatch. “About five and a half hours.”

“She’s so still; is she asleep, Doctor?”

“No.” Balkani removed the pair of headphones he had been wearing, detached one and handed it to Major Ringdahl.

“Sounds like she’s talking in her sleep,” Ringdahl said, after listening intently. “Can’t make out what she’s saying, though.”

“She’s not asleep,” Balkani repeated; he pointed to a rotating drum lodged within a bank of instru­ments; tiny pens traced irregular lines on graph paper. “Her brain wave pattern indicates excep­tional activity, almost at the satori level.

“The satori level?”

“That’s the state in which the barrier between the conscious and subconscious mind disappears; the focal point of consciousness opens out and grows tenuous and the entire mind functions as a unit, rather than being broken up into a multitude of sec­ondary functional entities.”

Ringdahl said, “Is she suffering?”

“Why do you ask that?” The question surprised him.

“I believe that Percy X is continually following her thoughts. If he sees that she’s going through a period of discomfort maybe it’ll put a little more pressure on him to listen to our side of the story.”

“I thought you wanted a cure,” Balkani snapped. “I’m a doctor, not a torturer!”

“Answer my question,” Ringdahl said. “Is she suffering or not?”

“She may have been for a while. In a certain sense she passed through the experience of losing the out­side world and then her body—an experience a great deal like death. Now, however, I would venture to say that she’s happy. Perhaps really happy for the first time in her life.”

Space did not exist.

Time did not exist.

Because Joan Hiashi had vanished; no infinitely small point where space and time could intersect remained. And yet the work of the mind continued. The memory still maintained itself. The near-perfect computers wandered over the problems which they

had been studying before, even though a great many of these problems had become phrased in such a way as to be unsolvable. The emotions came and de­parted, though the earlier dizzy pendulum-swing be­tween anguish and ecstasy had now ceased almost completely. Here and there a ghostly semi­personality half-formed, then faded out again. Her roles in life hung empty in the simplicity of her mind, like costumes in a deserted theater. It had become night on the stage of the world and only one bank of worklights remained on, dimly illuminating the canvas-and-stick flats that only a short time earlier had stood for reality.

Balkani had been right, or at least half right. Hap­piness did exist here, the greatest happiness possible for a human being.

Unfortunately, no one remained to enjoy it.

VIII

Robots lifted Joan gently from the pool and laid her with infinite care on a table nearby. Removing her helmet Balkani said, “Hello, Miss Hiashi.” “Hello, Doctor.” Her voice echoed as if far away and he recognized the sound; after the therapy this often came about, this dreamlike aspect of speech and mentation.

“Looks like she’s in a trance,” Ringdahl said pro­saically. “Let me see if she will react to a direct command.”

“If you must, go ahead,” Balkani said with irrita­tion; he felt irked that his unprofessional military superior had intervened at this crucial stage.

“Miss Hiashi,” Ringdahl said, in what he obvi­ously hoped constituted a properly hypnotic voice. “You are going to sleep, sleep, sleep. You’re falling into a deep trance.”

“Am I?” The girl’s voice lacked any trace of emo­tion.

Ringdahl said, “I am your friend. Do you under­stand that?”

“Every living being is my friend, Joan answered in the same far-distant voice.

“What’s she mean by that?” Ringdahl asked Bal­kani.

“They often come up out of extended sense- deprivation spouting nonsense,” Balkani answered. “And she won’t do anything you tell her to, either. So you might as well not waste your valuable time.” “But she’s hypnotized, isn’t she?” the major de­manded with exasperation; clearly he did not under­stand.

Before Balkani could reply Joan spoke again. “It is you who are hypnotized.”

“Snap her out of it,” Ringdahl growled. “She gives me the creeps.”

“I can’t snap her out of anything,” Balkani said with a slight ironic smile; he felt mildly amused. “She’s as wide awake as we are, if not more so.” “Are you just going to leave her like that?” “Don’t worry.” Balkani patted his military superior patronizingly on the shoulder. “She’ll re­turn to normal in a few hours all by herself, if she wants to.”

“If she wants to?” Clearly Ringdahl did not like the sound of that.

“She may decide she wants to stay this way.” Balkani turned and spoke softly to Joan. “Who are you, dear?”

“I am you,” she answered promptly.

Ringdahl cursed. “Kill her or cure her, Balkani, but don’t leave her like this.”

“There is no death,” Joan said, mostly to herself. She did not really seem inclined to communicate; she seemed, in fact, virtually unaware of the two of them. “Listen, Balkani,” Ringdahl said angrily. “I

thought you said you could cure her of political maladjustment. Now she’s worse than ever. Let me remind you that—”

“Major Ringdahl, allow me to remind you of three things. One, that I did not promise anything. Two, that the treatments have hardly begun. And three, that you are meddling where you lack the specialized training to know what you’re doing.”

Ringdahl had raised his finger skyward to make an angry pronouncement, but forgot what he intended to say when Joan sat up suddenly and said, in the same detached voice, “I’m hungry.”

“Would you like a meal served in your room?” Balkani asked her, feeling sudden sympathy for her.

“Oh yes,” she said expressionlessly, then reached back and unzipped her cellophane coveralls. She slipped out of them without the slightest trace of embarrassment, but Major Ringdahl turned a mot­tled red and glanced the other way. Balkani watched her dress, a strange pain in his chest; it was a new feeling to him, one which he had never in his life felt before. Her body seemed so small and childlike and helpless; he wanted to protect her, to help her stay in her waking dream where everyone was her friend and death did not exist.

Joan led the way out of the room, a slight smile on her face, like a Mona Lisa or a Buddha, and as she passed Balkani he reached out and touched her arm. As if she had become a saint.

After she had eaten, Joan Hiashi moved to the window of her cell and looked out. The sun had sunk low; evening lay ahead and very close. Autumn came

early here, and a leaf, its rusty red made all the more brilliant by the sun, hung from its branch a few feet from Joan’s barred window, twisting meagerly in the breeze. Joan studied the leaf.

The sun disappeared.

The leaf became a black silhouette against the fading sky, and stars appeared behind it, faint but distinct.