The Communipaths
Author: Suzette Haden Elgin
Published: 1970 by Ace (Ace Doubles series)
Cover Artist: Josh Kirby (frontispiece by Jack Gaughan)
Publisher Blurb: FROM THE DIARY OF TESSA, MEMBER OF MAKLUNITE CLUSTER "CHRYSANTHEMUM BRIDGE," PLANET 34.922.107:
Gentle Thursday was not so gentle Anne-Charlotte or her baby. Four Fedrobots came and took the baby away. Later they charged Anne-Charlotte with high treason against humankind because the baby was needed as a Communipath.
Anne-Charlotte screamed foul and dreadful things, and her mind projected an obscene sticky blackness that tried to drown us. She flew over the ground like a low-flying bird, and then teleported herself in fits, popping up all over the landscape.
We don't know what to do about Anne-Charlotte. Patrick says she is insane and not responsible. But what if her baby is insane too? Now we won't know until the baby gets mad enough to rip apart the galaxy....
Notes: Published as an Ace double with The Noblest Experiment in the Galaxy by Louis Trimble on the reverse side.
The Communipaths is the first story in the Coyote Jones series, followed by Furthest (1971).
This is Elgin's first published novel (or novella). The writing and character development are uneven, and the plot is underdeveloped. Coyote Jones himself doesn't play much of a role in this novel and could easily have been left out. He's also the weakest of the main characters in terms of development.
Elgin was a researcher in experimental linguistics, so it's unsurprising that the most interesting and unique element of this book is the way she's laid out the mechanics of telepathy.
The story changes between the viewpoints of Tessa, a young child writing in a diary; Coyote Jones; Anne-Charlotte, a member of Tessa's community; and Anne-Charlotte's baby, separated from her mother.
Among the viewpoints presented, Anne-Charlotte's baby is the most interesting; her sections are surprisingly the most nuanced, where the tone of the writing combined with the baby's interactions with the world straddle an eery line between the normal and healthy self-focus of an infant and the baby's dawning awareness of her own immense power. In this novel where telepathy is commonplace, the baby is profoundly affected by the mental enmeshment of her mother. I think that would have made for a really interesting thread to follow in this novel, but we really only get a peek of it. For example, it's an interesting detail that in the Maklunite culture, children choose their own names, and Anne-Charlotte's baby chooses her name for herself while Anne-Charlotte is sedated and telepathically unavailable and therefore she's truly on her own as an individual. These passages from the baby's perspective are brief, but I think they highlight Elgin's potential as a character writer.
Summary: The child Tessa has set herself the task of recording the tragic events that have lately befallen her Maklunite commune, Chrysanthemum Bridge, on the moon Iris. One member of their commune, Anne-Charlotte, has recently had her baby taken away to be relocated to a Communipath creche-- a place Anne-Charlotte herself grew up in and was eventually released from after she was deemed unable to function as a Communipath. Communipaths, comprised of humankind's most potent telepaths, serve a vital function in communicating instantaneously over long distances-- a necessity, for example, for the safety of spaceships in travel, in which role Communipaths serve as sort of telepathic flight controllers. The government identifies individuals with high psychic potential via a genetic mutation called Factor Q at birth and immediately takes such children from their parents, raising them in a Tri-Galactic Federation creche where they can be trained and conditioned from their first moments for the difficult task ahead of them... a task which drastically shortens their life expectancy, and which they cannot voluntarily resign from. Anne-Charlotte, not wanting this future for her own baby, hides her child's uniquely high psychic potential. When the baby is discovered at several months old, Coyote Jones, a Tri-Galactic Intelligence Service agent, is sent to take her from her mother. Anne-Charlotte herself is charged with treason for hiding the baby.
Coyote Jones surrenders the baby to the Communipath creche, and meets with his friend and sometimes-lover Tzana, a fellow TGIS agent, to let off steam about this distasteful assignment.
Anne-Charlotte, grieving the abduction of her child, a loss which itself follows the death of the child's father, wanders away from Chrysanthemum Bridge to consider her next move. As a cast-off-- or escapee-- from Communipath training, she has exceptionally high Factor Q herself. Factor Q is responsible not only for telepathic skill, but also for telekinesis and teleportation, abilities that Anne-Charlotte excels at. Ranging from her playfully modified gait-- a gentle gliding over the ground-- to flinging herself or objects across great distances, Anne-Charlotte believes that with practice and honing of her own skills and with the aid of her powerful baby and her commune, she'll be able to transport the baby home. The baby, meanwhile, separated from her mother physically but deeply intertwined psychically, tries to cope with her unhappy situation.
While Patrick, one of the commune members, stays in the wilderness with Anne-Charlotte, who is becoming increasingly erratic and dangerous with grief, Tessa writes in her diary of a woman named Ledyce who arrives at the commune hoping to be admitted. Ultimately, Ledyce seems to miss the point of joining a Maklunite commune, and Tessa notes that in better circumstances they might take her on for trial and help her heal but as it is the commune's hands are full with Anne-Charlotte. Ledyce is rejected after the Choosing Meeting. Anne-Charlotte, returning with Patrick, uses her telepathic skill to torment her commune-mates, causing Tessa to faint.
The story switches over to a series of archival reports, beginning with Anne-Charlotte's time in the Tri-Galactic Federation Communipath creche. The report covers her refusal to be conditioned to her life as a Communipath and her discharge from the creche as a result. Following that is the report for Anne-Charlotte's romantic partner, Drijn, who is also deemed aberrant and discharged from the Communipath creche. Finally, a report is provided on Anne-Charlotte and Drijn's baby, as yet unnamed as Maklunite children choose their own names when they are old enough, whose psychic ratings appear to be the highest ever recorded; some values cannot even be ranked. The baby may well represent a 'new' kind of psychic. As well, the baby's recalcitrance and 'naughtiness' are noted.
Anne-Charlotte reveals her plan to retrieve her baby to her commune-mates then, asking for their support in transporting her baby from the creche. The commune refuses, fearing both for Anne-Charlotte's mental health and what fate might befall her if she attempts any such thing, as she's already been charged with treason. The hope is that the charge will result in leniency as is; if she attempts to take back the baby, it could escalate to the Federation's greatest punishment: the brain, severed from the body, is preserved alive until it can serve society in some function, and then the individual is allowed to die. Patrick points out that he does not believe this is the fate Anne-Charlotte faces, as her behavior has deteriorated so significantly that she must be considered mentally ill and therefore in need of medical intervention.
Meanwhile, Coyote Jones and Tzana are interrupted in bed by a call from their superior, who summons them for assignment: Coyote will be under cover as a folk musician, and Tzana as a translator.
Tessa continues to record developments in her diary. Lacking the commune's support in retrieving her baby, Anne-Charlotte attempts to flee the safety of the commune by teleporting herself in jumps into the desert wilderness of Iris, where she cannot possibly survive. The commune discusses the situation and accepts that Anne-Charlotte is not in a place psychologically where she can care for herself anymore, and they decide they must go after her and suspend her personal freedom long enough to get her the help she needs. The psychically strongest among the remaining commune members thus decide to pursue Anne-Charlotte until they wear her down, and then they bring her home, where they keep her sedated so that she cannot hurt herself or other members of the commune as she has begun threatening to do.
While Anne-Charlotte is sedated, her baby chooses a name for herself: Susannah. She exercises her psychic powers from her nursery room by altering the colored lights of a toy. She wonders why she can't hear her mother's voice in her mind. She knows her mother is sleeping, but it's different than usual.
But Anne-Charlotte is just sleeping. She is sleeping, but somehow she has turned off her mindvoice. How can that be?
The woman is here now. If I could make the words I would ask her how that can be. She is touching me. I could make her hand burn where she touched me but I won't do that because she is good to me. But I don't want her to call me BABY. I am not BABY. I am SUSANNAH.
Suzette Haden Elgin, The Communipaths
Coyote Jones, arriving at his summons, is assigned the task of retrieving Charlotte-Anne to stand trial. Surprised that the charges are being taken seriously, he balks at doing even greater harm than he already has. Not only is he to retrieve Anne-Charlotte, but based on the reports from Chrysanthemum Bridge, she must be kept sedated for the entire journey.
The story switches over to a report on Anne-Charlotte's status after her arrival at a hospital in a Galcentral station, where she remains under sedation despite the objections of the medical staff.
The next chapter then records a series of communications between Coyote Jones and his superior as Coyote Jones attempts to resign as an intelligence agent. At his superior's refusal, he threatens to join a Maklunite cluster himself, at which point the agency would not be able to force him to continue his career.
Anne-Charlotte is finally allowed to be awakened. The situation is explained to her, and through conversations with the staff and observations of her surroundings she is able to determine precisely where she is, and, elated, realizes she's not far at all from her baby Susannah. She begins the attempt to rescue both herself and Susannah, but miscalculates a telekinetic jump and kills herself crashing into a freighter. The baby is sedated in time to prevent her from realizing what has happened.
Tzana gets her first and only point of view chapter, where she is disappointed by Coyote Jones' departure for a far-off planet where he is making good on his promise to join a Maklunite commune by entering a trial period with the Fog River cluster on the planet Calfinna.
The story finishes with Tessa's final diary entry on these events, where she reports on Susannah's development following Anne-Charlotte's death. Susannah understands that her mother's death was an accident, and furthermore she seems to be free of all of her mother's mental illness. Susannah is also so psychically strong that she represents a brighter, fairer telepathic future, a future without children being taken from their parents and indoctrinated to a service they cannot escape.