Your inhibitor tells another story.
How long would its disablement take? Jasper asked. The inhibitor is a complex piece of equipment.
A few seconds once I’m linked with you. But I must remind you, I would leave a small power source intact so your masters would not realize you are free.
Jasper hesitated. Surely, he could expel the alien presence if it attempted mind control. Yet there was a risk. He needed to recognize that. Am I thinking logically? Part of Jasper, a deep suspicious part, screamed a warning. This was too fast. How did the alien know so much already? How could he trust this being? Yet he wanted to be rid of the inhibitor. The Normals thought he was a freak, a mutant to use and control. But he was Jasper, the new breed, a god compared to the Normals. One tiny risk now would free him of the hateful inhibitor.
Yes, Jasper told the alien. We must do it quickly before the shift crew turns off the tele-ring.
Lower your mind shield.
I am.
Yes, Jasper, I see that you have. Now I will probe…
Jasper lost sense of time, and it felt as if another controlled his thoughts.
This one named Venice, the alien said, she will never trust us.
No, probably not, Jasper agreed.
A subtle form of violation occurred. Jasper winced mentally. Had he made a mistake in lowering his mind shield to such a degree?
No, Jasper, you did well to let me in. Look, I want to show you a few important concepts.
I’m ready, Jasper said.
The alien modified a few thoughts and heightened others, and in a second of time, the alien showed Jasper how to bypass the inhibitor. It was easy, and Jasper did it right away.
You will forget most of this, the alien said, but you must remember to do your part.
Oh, I will, Jasper said, with a different lilt in his mind, at once more subdued than before and with greater vehemence.
Excellent. We await your coming to the Fenris System.
The alien mind departed. Seconds later, the tele-ring snapped off and Jasper’s far-ranging abilities cycled down, returning to their regular levels.
He’d done it. His alien friend had shown him how to defeat the inhibitor. The clairvoyant back on Earth had been correct. Did that mean Venice’s precognitive dream might also come true? Jasper shrugged. The critical point was that he was a whole telepath again and no one knew about it. This would be excellent indeed.
3
Dr. Wexx stood at her post in the tele-chamber. She was the technician in charge of the Special in the shift tube. The last shift had occurred yesterday with Jasper. Today, Venice would bring them 8.3 light years closer to New Eden.
The tele-chamber was the third largest room in Discovery. Only the docking and cargo bays were bigger. In the exact center of the circular chamber lay a Plexiglas cylinder. Special First Class Venice drifted in the blue solution. She wore an induction helmet, linking her to AI Socrates and to the tele-ring outside the ship. Venice wore a mask over her mouth and nose so she could breathe. A hose connected the mask to oxygen tanks outside the cylinder. Goggles protected her closed eyes, while a red slick-suit covered her shapely form.
Dr. Wexx monitored the medical panel, aided by two nurses. Wexx wore a lab coat to hide her full figure and she kept her long, silver dyed hair in a bun. Around the chamber at their posts, the AI team—three level-eight techs—kept a close watch on Socrates. The shift crew of four sat at their screens: serious-faced, psi-rated warrant officers.
A shift was always a tense time. Too many things could go wrong. Wexx had little technical training in that area, but she’d witnessed the procedure enough these past five months to know how it should go. Her task was to ensure full physical and particularly mental health of the Special in the cylinder.
The first month out from Sol had been hard on everyone, including the Specials. The second month had been much easier and the third through fifth months routine.
Dr. Wexx watched her screen. A red symbol beat in rhythm with Venice’s heart. Beside it, numbers flashed to show the Special’s blood pressure.
Before the historic voyage, Wexx had been a teacher at the institute on Crete. She didn’t think of herself as a Normal, but as a near Special. She belonged to Psi Force as a consultant. She’d taken advanced training at the institute and she knew the theory behind a mind shield. There were several methods, and she employed the one technique Normals could perform: concentration on a specific thought. She did it because the green light appeared, showing the inhibitor now allowed Venice to use her powers.
As Wexx watched the screen, the pulse rate changed dramatically. Then pain struck her head and Wexx screamed. She clamped her hands over her head as if she could keep her skull, her mind, from exploding. That dislodged her heavy duty sunglasses, the ones protecting her light-sensitive eyes. A new hurt pulsed against her sensitive eyes. Because she’d dislodged her sunglasses, the chamber’s lights seem to bloom like miniature exploding suns.
Others in the chamber screamed, the volume and intensity rising. Something heavy thudded onto the floor, possibly a body.
It seemed then as if a jagged line cracked along Wexx’s skull. If she took her hands away it felt as if she would die hideously, leaking brain fluid. In an act of will almost as impossible as stepping off a hundred-story building, Wexx removed a hand from her head and shoved the sunglasses back into place. With a thump, she slapped her hand back onto her head, pressing harder than ever.
Protected by the sunglasses, she opened her eyes and wished she had kept them closed. In the cylinder, Venice tore off the induction helmet. Her long dark hair drifted in the blue solution, making the Special look like a crazy Medusa on Dust. Worse, the Teleship’s strongest Special’s eyes were open, staring and metallic-colored. Like a demon, Venice willed pain and death on those around her. Unfortunately, she had the psionic ability to enforce her thoughts.
Wexx saw Warrant Officer Decker. He lay perfectly still on the deck plates with blood leaking out of his ear. Nurse Kress’s eyes had rolled up into her skull. The nurse shivered like an epileptic, with foam bubbling from her mouth. Tech-Eight Curtis thrashed his head back and forth as the muscles of his throat stood up like cables.
Venice was killing the tele-chamber’s shift crew.
By concentrating on her father—a vicious animal who’d paid for his secret crimes—Dr. Wexx was able to shield herself to a degree. She concentrated on the decisive moment with him, the night she’d sneaked up behind her father with a hammer clenched in her fist. She kept thinking how the hammer had fallen, breaking his skull and mashing…
In the cylinder’s blue solution, Venice’s head shifted minutely. Wexx thought that the Special noticed something. The metallic color in her eyes darkened even as they shined with greater intensity.
“Socrates!” Wexx shouted hoarsely.
Misery slammed against her mind, shattering the image of her father meeting his end. From on the deck plates the doctor howled and her hands formed vises, clamping harder and harder against her head.
“Socrates, activate three-five-nine-eight emergency procedure!” Wexx screamed, arching back, with her muscles straining. A simple concentration shield couldn’t help her now. The Special used her telekinesis in a brutal fashion, unique to Venice’s mental strength and ability.
Wexx needed time. She needed to distract Venice. “Why are you killing us?” the doctor asked in a croaking voice.
The pressure decreased for a moment. Then Dr. Wexx slumped onto the deck plates as her knotted muscles began to relax and quiver at the extended strain. Her head hurt and she found it impossible to see. Headache splotches made everything a blur.
I’m alive. I think…
“Venice?” Wexx asked tentatively.
“She is asleep,” Socrates said. The AI spoke through speakers with an assured male voice.
With her eyes closed, Wexx asked, “Did you sedate her?”
“You used the emergency code.”
That
was an odd response, she thought. Wexx wondered if any of the AI team was still alive. They could explain to her why an artificial intelligence answered obliquely.
“Is Venice asleep?” Wexx asked.
“Yes.”
“For how long?” the doctor asked.
“The present dosage will last an hour.”
Wexx opened her eyes. Her vision was still splotchy, but by concentrating on one object at a time, she could begin to make things out. With a groan, she rolled onto her side and carefully worked up to her knees.
It surprised her that the captain or the chief monitor hadn’t called yet. She could ask Socrates about that, but it wouldn’t know. Ship protocols made sure of that. After the Cyborg War, no one wanted to give AIs too much authority or unneeded data.
Using the medical station for support, Wexx eased up to a standing position. No one else moved in the tele-chamber.
Did Venice kill all of them?
“Lengthen Venice’s sedation time,” Wexx said.
“You are no longer authorized to issue such instructions,” Socrates said. “The emergency has ended.”
Wexx breathed deeply through her nostrils. Many of her muscles continued to quiver. She pushed herself to the nearest AI station, floating the distance in the absence of acceleration. She opened a channel to the bridge.
“Dr. Wexx,” Captain Nagasaki said in hurt voice. “What just happened in there?”
“Are you all right, sir?”
“No. I have a splitting headache and most of my bridge crew is unconscious. Does this have anything to do—”
“Captain,” Wexx said, “I think we’d better discuss this in private.”
There was a pause. “Have you secured the Special?”
“I suggest you send the chief monitor to the tele-chamber,” Wexx said.
“Yes. Remain there until he arrives.”
As Captain Nagasaki cut the connection, Wexx shuddered. This was a disaster.
4
After days of ship-wide interrogations, heightened suspicion, and most of the crew’s confinement to quarters, Cyrus floated along a steel-colored corridor, using the hand rungs on the walls to propel himself. A fiber carpet covered the deck plates.
Vents blew cool air on him as he floated past. There was an oil taint to the atmosphere and it was too lifeless. It wasn’t anything like the aroma-rich air of Level 40 Milan. Millions of sweating, inhaling, exhaling humans did something to canned air. So did the slime pits and the ground surrounding them. Ship air was metallic tasting and made him feel cramped.
Cyrus shuddered. He felt like a rat floating along a maze of corridors, an animal gnawing to get out of confinement. Is that why Venice had gone crazy? Or had it something to do with her clairvoyant dream?
He came to Venice’s old quarters, the very best on Discovery. She wouldn’t need these now as Argon had put her in stasis. The quarters were bigger than the captain’s and the chief monitor’s combined. Venice had been the queen; all hail the greatest shifter in history. Cyrus knew Jasper had moved into her empty quarters.
Fastening Velcro-soled shoes onto his socks, Cyrus planted himself on the carpet. Jasper hated floaters because he himself was clumsy and did it poorly. Cyrus rapped on the portal.
A muffled “open” came from the other side. The portal slid aside and Cyrus walked in.
The size struck him as it always did. He’d been in here a few times when Venice had wanted company. The room had a double bed, a desk, an exercise machine, and surround-virtual reality with sound. Right now, an Appalachian Sector forest scene circled the room. Birds sang, a raccoon climbed a tree and a breeze caused birch leaves to rustle audibly. It was amazing. If you looked at it right, it felt as if you were in a forest back on Earth.
Cyrus could get used to this. He spied Jasper crouched along the wall, bending over as he fiddled with something down by a tree root.
“About time you’re here,” Jasper said, with his head down by the floor. “The imager won’t accept my chip.”
Cyrus scowled. Something was wrong here. Jasper seemed off to act like this.
“Do you want me to look at it?” Cyrus asked.
Jasper bolted upright, turning around. It took a heartbeat before the telepath grinned.
“Who let you in here?”
“Uh… you did.”
“I was expecting—”
“A tech?” Cyrus asked.
Jasper climbed to his feet, and he slipped whatever he held into a pocket. “What do you think of the room?”
Cyrus Velcro-walked with a rip-rip sound as he moved to the exercise machine. He tore his feet off the carpet and sat in the seat, fitting his shoes into a leg extension apparatus. He used to work out here as Venice watched. She liked seeing hard muscles bunching and flexing. With a flick of his hand, he set the leg extension for a three hundred pound press and pushed.
“This feels good,” Cyrus said, doing several reps. “I wouldn’t mind working out and using the shower later. I hear this room has its own hot water. Is that true?”
“I know you visited Venice. Did she let you use the shower?”
“Everyone else just uses the buffers and air jets to keep clean,” Cyrus said. “Now you have water. You’re moving up in the world.”
“They should install water showers for each of us.”
Cyrus did another leg extension. That didn’t sound like Jasper. “Yeah, we should all get water showers, but we won’t. No one in any Teleship has hot water showers except for Venice. She was so good she could make demands for privileges.”
“She wasn’t that good,” Jasper said.
“She killed the shift crew and twenty other people besides. What happened, Jasper? Why did she go crazy?”
The telepath moved to his bed, sitting down, staring at the deck plates. He scowled. It put lines in his forehead. He glanced at Cyrus.
The monitors might figure out we’re communicating, Jasper told him.
Cyrus did another two reps, and that was probably the only thing that hid his shock from the cameras and watching monitors.
I don’t get it, Cyrus thought, wondering if Jasper could pick up his words.
I can hear you just fine.
How are you able to use telepathy? Did Wexx forget to turn you off?
Listen. I’ve done it. I’ve shorted—well, I’ve deactivated the inhibitor but without their knowledge that it’s off. I’m always on, as I used to be.
There’s no way you could do that unless you had help.
I had help, Jasper admitted.
Are you talking about the alien that Venice felt earlier?
Yes.
Jasper, what did they do to her?
Nothing.
She didn’t just go crazy by herself.
I think she did. They must have offered her the same thing they offered me. It must have frightened her and she lashed out. But I’m here to tell you that the aliens are friends.
They’re not friends. They’re aliens with their own agendas.
I can show you how to bypass your inhibitor, Jasper said.
Great, show me.
First, I have to go in deep. Even though your inhibitor is off, you’ll feel me and resist.
No way, Cyrus told him. No one goes in deep without a fight.
Cyrus kept a hidden knife on his person, a small blade but very sharp. The prick of the point would bring a dot of blood if he tested it on his thumb. He didn’t need a lot of knife to make a critical cut. Most people didn’t understand knives. They thought it was like boxing. One had to swing and hit hard, stabbing into a man. That was wrong. You only needed to touch and skin would magically part and blood would begin to pour. You stepped away and soon your enemy’s strength bled onto the floor. If Jasper probed deep, Cyrus would be out of the exercise machine with his knife in seconds.
Jasper licked his lips. You don’t want me to go deep, not even to get rid of the inhibitor?
Cyrus moved his hand to the knife. Is that what the
alien did to you: go in deep?
There was a moment’s hesitation before Jasper thought, No, of course not.
The two of them stared at each other.
Bah. This is taking too long. Jasper scowled and bent his head.
Cyrus noticed the changing color of Jasper’s eyes. And in a second, the inhibitor no longer suppressed his psi-abilities. Cyrus raised a mind shield, shutting out Jasper’s telepathy.
“What did you do that for?” Jasper asked. “I just… gave you what you wanted.”
Cyrus got out of the exercise machine and put on his Velcro-soled shoes. “I like the new room, but it’s really too bad about Venice. When are they going to talk to her?”
“I think her inhibitor is broken,” Jasper said. “I think Argon is too afraid to wake her.”
“Why don’t they use you to shield them against Venice? With your help, they could talk to her and find out what happened.”
Jasper looked up at a camera and then at Cyrus. “She’s too powerful for anyone to handle. I don’t think I could shield anyone.”
“Yeah, right, like you believe that.” Cyrus looked up at a camera. “I’d use Jasper to help me get to the bottom of this.”
Jasper fidgeted, and it seemed as if he wanted to say more. He scratched his head and raised an eyebrow.
Cyrus lowered his mind shield a little.
What are you doing? Jasper asked.
I’m glad to get rid of the inhibitor, but we need to know more about these aliens. No one helps anyone for free. There’s always a cost. I want to know more about these aliens before we reach New Eden. I want to know what has Venice going crazy. By the way, why don’t our telescopes show any high-tech life in the New Eden system? That doesn’t make sense.
I think the aliens have a tech that hides them from our telescopes, Jasper said.
That’s impossible.
It’s like a false picture that they radiate outward, and that’s what our telescopes pick up.
Cyrus thought about that. Could it really work like that? He didn’t know, and Jasper was acting weird. He needed to do some hard thinking.
“Okay then,” he told Jasper. “I’ll see you later.”
Alien Honor (A Fenris Novel) Page 7