Trigger and Friends by James H. Schmitz

This time, it was like a jarring dark explosion all around him. Dazed, Duffold seemed to hang suspended for a moment over a black pit, and then he was dropping towards it. It was, he sensed suddenly, like dropping into a living volcano. Its terrors, stench, and fury boiled up horribly to engulf him.

4

The office seemed stuffy. Duffold reached back and turned the refresher up a few notches, simultaneously switching the window view to the spaceport section where the shuttles and transports stood ramped. Since he’d got back, that was the only available outside view he’d cared to look at. Except for that guide of Wintan’s—Albemarl or whatever his name was—four days ago, no Palayatan ever had been allowed into that area. They hadn’t sense enough to insure they would remain un-cindered there.

He noticed the Service transport had landed at Ramp Thirteen. They were punctual, as usual. A few figures moved about it, too far off to be recognized. Duffold picked up the sheaf of Service reports from a corner of the desk, flicked through them, and hauled out a sheet. There were some points he wanted to refresh his mind on before the coming interview with—well, with whomever it was they’d decided to send down. He hadn’t specified Pilch, though he imagined it was the kind of job she would be likely to take on.

He read hurriedly, skipping sections here and there. ” . . . Originally, then, it was the class of creatures of which the present-day keff is the only surviving species that forced the divergence in mental development on the proto-humanoids. Their evolutionary response was a shift of the primary center of awareness from the level of sensory interpretation to that of organic control, which has remained a semiautomatic, unconscious area of mind in any similar species. The telepathic bands on which the keff-like carnivores operated could stimulate only the sensory-response areas of the brain. The controlling central mind of the humanoid was no longer affected by them. The continuing inflow of keff-impulses on the upper telepathic bands became a meaningless irritation, and the brain eventually sealed off its receptors to them . . .

“To an observer of the period, it might have seemed that the Palayatan humanoid species now had trapped itself in an evolutionary pocket. Animal intelligence must isolate itself from the full effect of the primitive emotional storms of the unconscious if it is to develop rationality and the ability of abstract thought. In doing this, it reduces its awareness of the semiautomatic levels of mind which remain largely in the area of the unconscious. In this case, however, it was losing contact with the level of sensory interpretation which normally is the indicated area of intellectual development . . . For many hundreds of thousands of years, the Palayatan humanoid remained superficially an animal. His brain was, in fact, continuing to evolve at a rate comparable to the proto-human one; but the increase in consciousness and potential of organization was being absorbed almost entirely by the internal mind to which he as a personality had retreated . . .”

Duffold put that sheet down, shook his head, and selected another one. ” . . . The fairly well-developed civilization we now find on Palayata . . . of comparatively recent date . . . The humanoid being with whom we have become familiar conveniently might be regarded as a secondary personality, subordinate to the internal one. However, the term is hardly more justified than if it were applied to the human sympathetic nervous system . . .

“The Palayatan superficial mind has become an increasingly complex structure because the details of its required activities are complex. It has awareness of its motivations, but is not aware that an internal mind is the source of those motivations. It has no understanding of the fact that its individual desires and actions are a considered factor in the maintenance of the planetary civilization which it takes for granted.

“On the other hand, the internal personality, at this stage of its development, is still capable of only a generalized comprehension of the material reality in which it exists as an organism. It employs its superficial mind as an agent which can be motivated to act towards material goals that will be beneficial to itself and its species. By human standards, the goals have remained limited ones since the possibility of achieving them depends on the actual degree of intelligence developed at present by the superficial minds. They are limited again by the internal minds’ imperfect concept of the nature of material reality. As an example, the fact that space might extend beyond the surface of their planet has had no meaning to them, though it has been presented as a theoretical possibility by some abstract thinkers . . .”

Duffold shoved the sheets back into the stack. He couldn’t argue with the reports or with the Service’s official conclusion regarding Palayata, and he didn’t doubt that the Hub Departments would accept them happily. So we’re dealing with a native race of split personalities this time—no matter, so long as the Service guarantees they’re harmless! The emotional disturbance they caused human beings couldn’t be changed, unfortunately; but any required close contacts could be handled by drug-fortified personnel.

Everybody was going to feel satisfied with the outcome—except Duffold. He was reaching for another section of the reports when the desk communicator murmured softly up at him.

“Oh!” he said. “Why, yes. Send her right in.”

He studied Pilch curiously after she was seated. Objectively, she looked as attractive as ever, with her long, clean lines and a profile almost too precisely perfect. Otherwise, she stirred no feeling in him this time; and he was a little relieved about that.

“I understand,” she said, “that you weren’t entirely pleased with our reports?”

“I did have a few questions,” Duffold said. “It was very good of you to come. The original reports, of course, have been transmitted to my headquarters.”

She nodded briefly.

“Personally,” Duffold said hesitantly, “I find all this a little difficult to believe. Of course, I blacked out before the investigation was concluded. The reports simply state what you found, not how you got the information.”

“That’s right,” said Pilch. “How we got it wouldn’t mean much to someone who wasn’t familiar with our methods of operation. What part can’t you believe? That the real Palayatan is so far inside himself that he hardly knows we’re around when we meet him?”

“Oh, I’ll accept that that’s the way it is,” Duffold said irritably. “But how did you find out?”

“One of those inner minds told us,” said Pilch. “Not the one inside Yunnan—he was scared to death by the time we got done with him and yelled for help. So another one reached out far enough from the planet to see what was wrong—a colleague of ours, so to speak. At least, he regards himself as a psychologist—a specialist in mental problems.”

Duffold shook his head helplessly.

“Well, it’s an odd sort of existence, by our standards,” Pilch said. “I don’t think I’d go for it myself. But they like it well enough.” She thought a moment and added, “The feeling I had was as if you were a deep-sea animal, intensely aware of yourself and of everything else in a big, dark ocean all around you. Actually, there was a sort of richness in the feeling. I’d say their life-experience is at least as varied as the average human one.”

“What scared Yunnan?” Duffold asked.

“He knew something was wrong. He didn’t realize he’d been removed bodily from the planet, but to use our terms, he felt as if he had suddenly grown almost deaf—and invisible. He couldn’t understand the other Palayatans very well anymore, and they didn’t seem to be too aware of him. And then our investigators suddenly were talking to him! Do you know what human beings seem like to those inside Palayatans? Something like small sleepy animals that have mysteriously turned up in their world. I imagine our degree of organic intelligence can’t be too impressive at that! So when two of those animals began to address him—conscious minds like himself, but not his kind of mind—Yunnan panicked.”

“So he killed Buchele,” Duffold said.

Pilch said impassively, “It would be correct to say that Buchele killed himself. There were sections of his mind that he had never been able to accept as part of himself. Buchele was an idealist in his opinion of himself, and in Service work that’s a risk. Of course, he had a right to insist on taking that risk if he chose.”

“Exactly what did happen to him?” Duffold said carefully.

“The Palayatan jolted a sealed-off section of Buchele’s mind into activity, and Buchele met its impact in full consciousness. It killed him.”

“No matter how you phrase it,” Duffold said, “it seems that one human being, at least, has been murdered by a Palayatan!”

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