Part 22 (1/2)
”I'm starting to think we didn't spend nearly enough time trying to breathe vacuum. It can't be all that hard.”
”Anything else, Mary?”
”Nope; I'm off for Kat and the padre. See what we can come up with. You?”
”Need some time to think.” Two chairs and a table stood in the s.p.a.ce between hospital and HQ; Ray headed for them. The problem with wrestling alligators was you tended to forget you were there to drain the swamp. He'd had so many big-teethed critters chomping at his a.s.s for the past week, he needed to take a minute to remember why he was here. ”Create a base camp Matt could use to repair Second Chance if he has to, and prepare these folks to meet the rest of humanity,” he repeated twice.
How long since he last thought of Rita and the baby? Get too busy with the small stuff and you forget what's important. ”Of course, when the small stuff is trying to kill you, it does tend to hold your attention,” he muttered.
Okay, keeping his two goals in mind, just how should he handle Miss Vicky? He sure couldn't move the base. How much force would he meet her with? Ray leaned back in his chair, relaxed, and let his mind spin.
”I'm so glad you came back. I was starting to fear I didn't have as good a hold on you as I thought.”
Ray sat bolt upright. Across from him, lounging in an overstuffed chair, was the Teacher. No, not the Teacher. The ratty gown was gone. Instead, this image wore a conservative blue blazer over khaki slacks. A pink s.h.i.+rt was open at the neck. Ray glanced around: The base was still there; people moved about. Was he awake or asleep?
”In this semidream state,” the apparition went on, ”you humans call meditation, you're not that easy to latch on to. I'm rather proud of myself.”
Ray leaned back. He wasn't in the wicker chair anymore, but a copy of the one across from him. The chair accepted him, began a deep muscle ma.s.sage on his back. Rita had tried to buy two chairs like this for his office; he'd refused the purchase order. For now, he enjoyed the illusion. ”And you are,” he offered to what was apparently seated across from him.
”Call me the Dean of the Sociology Department.”
”Not the Teacher.”
”Bad term for him. He's more like the President of the University, although I'm not sure even that fits. Truth be told, I'm not sure how a lot of us fit in anymore.”
”So there are many of you, not just one.” Ray started to mark a notch for himself in some mental pistol grip.
”Seems so. Not the way it was. Frankly, we're all trying to figure out what happened and why and who we are.”
”Sometimes it's easier to understand something when you talk it through,” Ray said, trying not to choke on the image of him providing psychotherapy to an illusion.
”I agree, I don't know how many times I've told one of the Three that they should do just that.” The image paused. ”I just never thought I'd be taking my own advice.” How many times had Ray heard that one before? To the illusion, he said nothing. After all, that was how you got someone talking. Say nothing. Ray had gotten real good at that as a bureaucrat.
”You see, I am the crowning achievement of three intelligent races, the final product of half a million years of cooperation and growth. They constructed us to educate their young, to give them a balanced, consistent introduction to themselves, each other, their histories, and their universe. We were the ultimate educational experience.”
And Ray saw what the Dean meant.
A large room held only six people, seated at different tables, something like a restaurant. That was what the Teacher saw. Then the picture changed and he saw what each of the six students was experiencing. One sat at a formal dinner table, surrounded by his brothers and sisters. At the head of the table, his long-dead father presided. Today, the student would confront him as he never had in life. Today, issues that had twisted his mind and emotions would be resolved.
At another table, a young woman dined alone. Tasting splendid isolation with her meal, she discovered, as the Teacher whispered in her mind, that moments like these were good for centering oneself, discovering who you were. Alone time could be relished. Around the room, six different people were individually tutored on six different issues and grew personally.
”Nice cla.s.s size,” Ray said.
”Exactly,” the Dean agreed, leaning forward in his seat. ”Unique syllabus, tailored environment, everything you could ask for, courtesy of that little lump in your skull. If every human had just grown one, we'd be working as gently and as easily in their heads as I am in yours. Oh, to teach again. To once more see eyes light up with discovery, pain changed to understanding, ignorance replaced with knowledge, fumbling humiliation gone and skill in its place. We can do that for you.”
”You did it for what,” Ray asked, ”a million years?”
”Yes, a million orbits of this planet's sun.”
”For the Three.”
”Yes,” the Dean agreed, retreating into his chair.
”Why? Why did they go away? What happened?”
”I don't know.”
”You don't know?” Ray snapped in his best colonel's voice.
”Fewer and fewer came. Then suddenly there were none.” The Dean shook his head.
”Your Teacher claims to know everything, to teach anything, but you don't know why three intelligent races quit coming here. Disappeared from the galaxy!”
The Dean's apparition flinched into his chair. ”I have no idea what happened.”
”That's a big hole in everything.”
”Don't tell the Teacher that.”
”Why not?”
”Because you have made serious enemies among us. There are some who would wipe out your kind before you carry through with your threat to destroy the planet.”
”Could they?”
”You felt the pain.”
”Yes,” Ray nodded, ”but I've got this unusually large goose egg in my head.”
”Yes. And what do you know of that egg, as you call it?”
”I know it wasn't there before I came here, that it is what lets us talk, and it stores memories of things I've never seen.”
”You've done very well. I think our Biology Department might give you a pa.s.sing grade. Now tell me where your unseen and unlearned knowledge came from. How did it get in your head?”
”I don't know.”
”We put it there. We imprinted your cells with data the way you might print data onto a disk.”
”How?”
”The Three could send s.h.i.+ps hurtling thousands of light-years in seconds. Do you doubt we can rearrange the molecules of that goose egg our virus put in your head? Or that if we decided to scramble the molecules of your brain, lungs, heart, immune system, you won't die very quickly?”
”Now that we've exchanged threats,” Ray said evenly, as years of combat had trained him to, ”where do we go from here?”
The apparition chuckled. ”You are a cold one. I'd love to get into your memories. See what makes you tick. It would be a joy to design a training syllabus to heal you.”
”But I like me the way I am. Could that be why the Three quit coming?”
”They liked themselves the way they were?” the Dean mused. ”A million empty years to reflect, and I never thought of that.”