The Mind Pool Read Online Free PDF Page B

waxy left ear again, this time with the point of a writing stylus, and read on.

    Item three: Pursuit Teams, General Requirements for Human candidates. Candidates must be unaltered homo sapiens, male or female. Synthetic forms, pan sapiens, delphinus sapiens, and Capman modulations are excluded.

Item four: Pursuit Teams, Selection of Human candidates. Candidates must be less than twenty-four Earth years of age, in excellent physical condition, and unbound by contract commitments. Candidates must also have at least a Class Four education (which may be achieved during training with Anabasis approval).

Item five: Pursuit Teams, Restrictions. Candidates will be excluded if they have military associations, or if they fail standard psychological tests for interaction with aliens.

Item six: Training programs.

    Flammarion did a double-take and his eyes skipped back to the previous item. Impossible. What was MacDougal trying to do to him? He jammed his uniform cap onto his bald head and hurried next door to Esro Mondrian’s office. The door received a flat-palmed bang as he went through, but he did not wait for permission to enter.
    “Did you see this, sir?” He slapped the sheet on the desk in front of his superior, with the assurance of long familiarity. “Come through less than an hour ago. See what it says about Pursuit Team candidates? That’s my job, but there’s so many conditions tied on to it I bet I won’t find one acceptable candidate in the whole system.”
    The road map of wrinkles on his forehead disguised his worried look. A long stint of security service out near the Perimeter had produced three permanent results on Kubo Flammarion: premature aging, a total lack of interest in personal hygiene, and a permanent rage against bureaucratic procedures of all kinds. For the past four years he had been Esro Mondrian’s personal assistant. Others wondered why Mondrian tolerated the scruffy appearance, insubordinate manner, and periodic outbursts, but Mondrian had his reasons. Kubo Flammarion was totally dedicated to his work—and to Esro Mondrian. Best of all, he had a unique knowledge of where the bodies were buried. Flammarion kept no written records, but when Mondrian needed a lever to pry from Transportation a special permit, or force a fast response from Quarantine, Flammarion could invariably deliver the dirt. Some deputy administrator would receive a quiet, damning call, and the permit magically appeared.
    Mondrian sometimes wondered what facts about him were tucked away in Kubo Flammarion’s scurvy, straggly-haired skull. He was too wise to ask, and on the whole he preferred not to know.
    “I saw this,” he said quietly. “Commander Brachis already ran a check. As it happens, it’s not MacDougal’s fault at all. Those conditions were imposed by the other Stellar Group members.”
    “Yeah—but did MacDougal protest ?” Flammarion jabbed at one point on the page. “There’s the killer. We’re supposed to find Pursuit Team members with no military training. That excludes everybody. ”
    “Everybody over sixteen years old. Captain.”
    “All right. But before they’re sixteen, they’re all protected by parental statute.” Flammarion was angrier by the minute. “We’re scuppered. We can’t touch ‘em before they’re sixteen. And at sixteen they go straight to military service. Those instructions make the whole damn thing impossible.”
    “We’ll find the candidates. Trust me.” Mondrian was leaning back in his chair, staring across the room at a three-dimensional model of known space and the Perimeter. The display showed the location and identification of every star, color-coded as to spectral type. Colonies were magenta, stations of the security network highlighted as bright points of blue.
    The Perimeter did not form the surface of a true sphere, but for most purposes it was close enough to be treated as one. Its bulges and indents showed where probes had been slowed down in their