Gina stopped eating and stared across the table, interrogating Sandy’s face silently. “Experiment with it?” she repeated.
“Yes.”
“It depends what you mean.”
Sandy answered in a way that sounded as if she had been wanting to bring the subject up with somebody for a long time. “Do you have any idea of just how weird that thing is, once you get into it? You’re so right: the Thuriens must be a lot different from us up here.” She tapped the side of her head. “People don’t realize how different.”
Gina sat back in her seat and took in the tenseness that had come over Sandy suddenly. She knew now what Sandy was getting at, but she replied in a way that evaded the point. “Do you mean how they can live with that universal bugging system everywhere, and not be bothered by it? Yes, I agree that’s strange. It would bother me .
And all that pointless detail they have to go into. Maybe they have a different notion of reality.”
Sandy shook her head. “No. That wasn’t what I meant. I was talking about the way it puts information into your head. It’s not just that it can make you think you’re somewhere else and not know the difference. It can manufacture places—whole worlds, whatever— that don’t exist at all. And they’re just as real—I mean, there’s no way you can tell the difference. It can be anything you like.”
“Go on,” Gina said, not willing to commit herself just yet.
Sandy put down her fork and gestured briefly, then brushed her hair aside. Whatever recollections she was bringing to mind seemed to be troubling her. “But it goes a lot farther than just creating things that you tell it to. It can go right into your head and pull out things you didn’t even know were there-things about yourself that you didn’t know existed. Or maybe if you did, you buried them down deep somewhere because life has enough problems that you can do something about, without wasting time hassling yourself over things you’re not gonna change anyhow. But can you imagine what it’s like to find them staring you in the face?”
Gina held her eye and nodded slowly. “Yes, I know,” she confessed finally. “I fooled around with it, too. I know what you’re talking about.”
‘‘You did?’’
“Yes.’’
“And how did it Sandy left the question hanging and showed an empty hand.
“Terrifying,” Gina said. “I haven’t gone near it again, either.”
Sandy nodded. It was woman-to-woman now. They understood each other without need of secrets. She looked at Gina and pulled her zip-up sweater tighter around herself. “Want to know something? I can kill people.” Despite herself, Gina couldn’t prevent a startled look from crossing her face. Sandy nodded as if seeing Gina’s reaction provided a source of relief. “That’s something I found out. Want to know something else? I get a kick out of it. How’s that for finding that what you thought you were all your life isn’t you?”
Gina saw that Sandy had paled and was trembling. She leaned forward to lay a reassuring hand on her arm. “Don’t worry. Everyone has something. Look, if it’s any—”
Sandy pulled her arm away defensively. “It’s a psychic fucking Freud with a one-million IQ, for chrissakes. Maybe Thuriens don’t have things they’d rather not know, or maybe they can deal with them—I don’t know. But Her voice trailed off. She looked up at Gina and sighed. “I’m sorry. I guess I was looking for someone to dump on.”
“That’s okay.”
Sandy took a long swig of real Coke from a batch that had been ordered from Earth by PAC’s Terran contingent and arrived with the Vishnu. “Yet we were only out there a couple of days.” She set the can down and made a sweeping motion with her arm. “But outside there’s a whole planet that’s been junked on something like that for as long as anyone can remember. And everyone’s asking what drove them crazy? Are they kidding? It’s pretty clear to me what drove them crazy.”
Gina regarded her long and hard. Why she hadn’t said anything herself, when she had reached the same conclusion even before they left the ship, she didn’t know. Now that she had heard it from Sandy, it all seemed so obvious.