Muted light streamed down from a crimson stained-glass window set high in the wall before him. The air was cold, flat, and stale with chemical preservatives and dehumidifiers. The age, the ghosts, the shadows, and the cold made Asan think of a tomb.
His tomb?
Alarm clouded his rings. He snapped them out, seeking the danger, but he was too late.
A sharp click of the door shutting behind him made him whirl. He heard a hum, and with a lurch the room descended like a cage in a shaft with him trapped helplessly inside.
He blocked out panic and forced himself to stand still. His knees bent to cushion the vibrations as he counted off the seconds and measured the increasing rate of descent. His ears began to hurt from fluid pressure. His body struggled to compensate, but the need for adjustment was too rapid. Even a Tlar could die of the bends.
He refused to panic although he knew now he’d been a fool to believe Martok would even give him a chance to…
The brakes clutched, and he was sent sprawling. His shoulder thudded into the corner of the desk, bringing a burst of momentary pain. He lay there a moment, then scrambled to his feet. He nearly tripped over a pile of books that had fallen from their shelves. One of the ancient leather covers had ripped and lay there with pages falling loose and crumbling into brittle dust on the floor.
There was blood in his mouth. Asan spat and used his tongue to probe the spot where he’d bitten the lining of his cheek. It hurt.
He forgot his panic as anger came surging up. Martok liked theatrics, but Asan had a few tricks of his own.
With a click the door of his cage slid open, revealing Kor the Vyarian in full ceremonial dress.
In spite of himself, Asan took a step back. He’d been expecting Pared’s firing squad or a lethal dose of gas.
Kor’s chin claw had been painted scarlet; his hair tassels were braided up in tight knobs against his elbows; and the wide flare of his wedge-shaped skull threw weird shadows in the dim light creating a nimbus behind him. In his talons he held a tarnished silver bowl that was stained black inside.
The Vyarian blood bowl. A shiver passed through Asan.
“My meat,” said Kor, wheezing. “Martok give you to me.”
Asan’s temper snapped. “The hell I am, chielt. Choi-hana chi!”
Raising his force field, he struck with all the power of his rings, sending Kor staggering back. With a howl, Kor righted himself and came at Asan with flashing talons. The force field deflected them, however, and Asan struck again and again, sending the Vyarian staggering each time until Kor stood still, his feet spread apart and his head down. His sides heaved.
Asan gasped for breath. His eyes felt scorched in their sockets. He was beginning to feel the need for more oxygen. He let his field waver.
Kor looked up, and his yellow eyes lit with cunning. He sprang at Asan, who dodged him easily and struck again with all the force he’d held in reserve.
The Vyarian crumpled to the floor, and Asan stepped out of the trap into the low-ceilinged, damp-smelling cave that was Martok’s proper lair instead of the villa overhead.
“Martok!” he shouted, his voice reverberating like thunder through the cave. “Martok!”
The faint hum warned him of a protection drone’s approach. Asan stiffened in readiness, longing for a strifer in his hands. He heard accompanying footsteps but the light shone into his face so that it was hard to see.
“Martok?”
“Blaise?”
The voice was thin and clear but with an underlying flatness in its tones that betrayed the existence of an artificial larynx.
“I have a deal for you,” said Asan. “I have come to offer you a business partnership in precious minerals. Are you interested?”
The footsteps stopped. Asan saw a vague silhouette against the dim light. He squinted and concentrated on sorting out smells. He identified a trace of expensive wine, metal, and the cold sweat of hatred.
“Well, Martok? What do you say?”
As he spoke he heard another drone move into place somewhere to his left. Prickles of unease went through him. He’d gotten out of the room, but he was still in a trap.
“Ah, Blaise. The voice has changed, but it must be you. No one else would try to twist his execution into a money proposition. You sound like an investment advertisement from the local vid-cast.”
“I’ve come too far to die now,” said Asan, ignoring the mockery. “I have a deal to make.”
“You cost me over thirteen million. Thirteen million plus a year of reprisals and backlash. The delivery of that security data was crucial to my operations against the Institute. I’m not interested in why you skipped on me, Blaise. All I care about is your death.”
Martok stepped closer so that at last Asan could see him clearly. Light glinted off the metal capping his skull and forming one half of his face. The other half was hideously scarred. He held his body at a stiff, unnatural angle, and both hands were artificial. A splinter of revulsion ran through Asan. No matter how many times he’d seen Martok, he never quite got over the involuntary human reaction to a cyborg. He could never hide it from Martok either, and Martok wore his hatred like an additional plate of armor against all who were whole.
No one knew Martok’s origins for sure, but it was said he started as a young scout pilot in the GSI fleet and won three medals for bravery before getting shot to pieces in a suicide assault ordered by an incompetent officer.
Instead of being court-martialed, the officer was promoted out of the field and the matter hushed up. Martok was one of two pilots who survived that mission. When he came out of rehabilitation, there was no hero’s accolade and nothing but aversion for his body pieced back together by machinery.
He turned on the Institute then and became a ruthless loner who operated on the fringes of the other crime lords’ territories. Now he was the biggest of them all and the most feared. He had power over millions. His influence reached into the Institute itself. But he remained a deformed creature hidden away. Something, ultimately, to be pitied.
Martok lifted his hand. The thwart meter blinked steadily, but he was staring at Asan with an astonishment he did not try to conceal.
“So,” he said. “Udge Enster did not exaggerate in his report. How is it done, Blaise? A generator-enhanced illusory field to make you look taller? Expensive, but effective, providing you watch where you step. You can turn it off now. The game is over.”
Asan shrugged. “What is the point of this, Martok? Do you want me to start sweating and begging for mercy? Do you want me to babble out explanations? What good will it do? You intend to kill me anyway. Why should I crawl first just to amuse you?”
Martok scowled and snapped his fingers. The drone behind him surged forward from its corner and fired. Asan had only a split-second glimpse of lethal intensity.
With a gasp he dodged, seizerted, and reappeared with his force field around him. Through its blue haze he saw Martok staring in astonishment, but his attention was on the second drone tracking his new position.
He attacked it, using his rings to explode its internal firing circuits. It crashed to the ground, but the first one fired and hit him.
His force field absorbed most of the blast, but still he took enough of it to stagger back into the wall. His heart stopped for an agonizing second. The world grayed around him.
He steadied himself, grimacing in an effort to hang onto consciousness. Using the last of his strength, he aimed his rings at the drone and exploded its circuits.
With a shrill whine, the drone crashed to the ground like the first and lay there smoking.
Asan slowly straightened himself away from the wall and faced Martok. The world looked skewed. Every beat of his heart sent a sharp burst of pain through his chest. His legs felt boneless as though they might fold under him at any moment.
He barely managed a crooked smile. “Bad move, Martok.”
Martok stared at him in horror. He took a step back. “What are you?”
&
nbsp; Asan’s smile broadened. “Tlartantlan. Have you never heard of the species?”
“Impossible. You’re just surgically altered. Fibula implants to make you taller. Skin repigmentation—”
“When I bleed, Martok, I bleed brown.”
Martok frowned and seemed unable to find words. Then he shook himself and drew a strifer.
“Impossible,” he said again. “You are BLZ-80-4163. One of the last full-human batches in growth cycle—”
“I am not a batch, and I didn’t come from a growth cycle! I was real born, damn you! I came from a womb, not a vat!”
The fear in Martok’s eyes changed to calculation. “How do you know that? Have you accessed records or—”
Asan turned his palm down. “Institute files wouldn’t keep records of illegal activities. No, Martok, I know I am real because body transference requires a soul. I wouldn’t have one if I’d come from a vat.”
“Fascinating,” whispered Martok. “Body transference. Who has produced such technology?”
“We have. Tlartantlans. It is an ancient process of regeneration.”
A process that did not always work. A process that required the catalyst to die. But Martok did not need to know that Blaise Omari’s transference survival had been a fluke. Asan hid his satisfaction and watched Martok swallowing the bait.
“Tell me more about it,” said Martok. “Blaise, you have brought me something worth far more than the Security-breach information you owed me. I am pleased and intrigued. Please sit down. Let us discuss this in more detail.”
Asan stared at him coldly. “First you answer my questions. Why was I raised as a vat boy?”
Martok shrugged. “I have no idea. Your particular circumstances were never of any import—”
He broke off as Asan’s clenched fist acquired a blue aura. Asan opened his palm, and blue fire flashed across the cave at Martok, who froze, his face locked in a grimace. Asan stopped the fire mere inches from Martok’s throat and let it hang in the air. He could hear Martok’s breathing, harsh and ragged, in the silence.
“Why,” said Asan quietly, “was I raised as a vat boy?”
The flesh side of Martok’s face shone with perspiration. He could not take his eyes off the fire hanging in the air before him. It moved closer, and Martok flinched. He raised the strifer, but Asan’s rings knocked it from his hand.
“I can explode your circuits just as I did the drones’,” said Asan. “Answer!”
“Laboratory 80 operates as a GSI facility, but it really belongs to me. I pay them well to neglect their assigned research and conduct experiments for me instead. However, because their principal function is the production of laborers, they have a certain quota to meet. They presumably filled the gaps with real children taken from the border slums where illegal pregnancies abound. I know nothing about you personally.”
“Lie!”
Martok blinked. “Why should I lie? What answer do you expect from me?”
Asan let the fire die away, leaving only a trace of smoke in the air. He dropped his hand to his side and walked over to the drones to kick them into a pile of separate parts.
So much for his hopes for a real past, a real heritage of some kind, however small. Instead, he was only an illegal slum pregnancy that slipped past the abortionists. One more statistic in a civil records file. Had his mother sold him to the lab? Had she born him and abandoned him in an alley the way reptiles leave their young? Had she been rounded up by GSI civil patrollers, placed in detention rehab, and her baby impounded? He would never know the answer. He felt angry and cheated once again.
“Now about this transference process,” said Martok. “Explain to me exactly how it works. You must have been driven to ground pretty hard by the GSI to make such a drastic identity change.”
He walked past Asan into the study and poured himself a glass of wine from the decanter on the desk. He glanced only once at Kor lying on the floor, then ignored him to lift his glass in a salute to Asan, who stood at the doorway but did not enter.
“My little chameleon. Grown into a giant. And what exactly is a Tlar leiil?”
“Supreme ruler.” Asan took the glass Martok handed to him.
Martok blinked, and his hand shook a little. He lifted it to his lips and licked the spilled wine from his gloved fingers. His green eyes stared at Asan in fascination.
“Clever. Very clever. I confess, Blaise, I never expected you to come this far. My congratulations. But Blaise is no longer applicable, is it? Would you rather be called Tobei? Or another of your many names?”
“I am Asan.”
“Very well.” Martok glanced down at Kor, who was still out cold. “Why didn’t you kill him?”
“There has been too much killing lately.”
Asan sniffed his wine, decided it was repugnant to his Tlar taste buds, and set the untouched glass on the floor.
“I am tired of death.”
“When you lose your indifference to death, you become soft. You’re washed up as a raider.”
Asan shrugged. “I am Tlar now.”
“Yes, Tlar.” Martok’s scarred lips twisted into a grotesque half smile, but his eyes remained cold. “Let us adjourn to the lab. There is a scientist on my staff who should hear about your transformation.”
“No,” said Asan firmly. “No labs.”
Martok’s shrill laughter rang out. “Beneath that splendid exterior you are still the suspicious street rat, aren’t you? Do you expect me to have you dissected? I am not so crude. Come, Asan, be generous. You came seeking a business partnership, did you not? Then—”
“Ruantl is composed almost entirely of precious and utilitarian metals,” said Asan. He held up his forefinger to show off the carbyx ring. “Diamonds, rubies, black carbyxes, and other jewels are as common as pebbles. Even the nomads carry knives of corybdium.”
Martok looked bored and impatient. “So you are rich as well as supreme. What—”
“I want off-world distribution. I want a link to your freighters and shipping lines. I want mining equipment and engineers who can both supervise and train my Bban metallurgists. I want protection from the GSI, either in the form of defense satellites or ships. The Institute is on my planet now. I want them off. And I want political lobbying to keep Ruantl from being claimed as a GSI protectorate.”
Martok sneered. “Is that all?”
“It is a start toward self-sufficiency and independence. I will also need to import food and industrial-grade water until we can improve the planet’s own fragile agrarian systems.”
“You’re insane. You’re asking me to split my empire in half, share my resources, my ships, my armed forces, and squander political favors bought at expensive prices for you. Why should I?”
“Because you hate the Institute, and if they get Ruantl they’ll be that much richer. They’ve reached into the Uncharted Zone. If they continue to expand in that direction, their territory will grow.” Asan paused, reaching for knowledge from the deeper memories. “There are more planets out there as rich as Ruantl. Some are even more valuable. You could have a base at the Institute’s back. Would that help you?
“And if we take a fifty/fifty split, then you will have almost unlimited wealth. Your resources will expand even more. You will have more power.”
“I have enough,” said Martok, yawning.
“No one ever has enough.”
“Fallacy. All your life you have been a wretch groveling for survival. Like all poor people you believe that money will solve your problems and reduce your inadequacies. You also believe that money will make you safe. It doesn’t. It increases your danger. I am beyond the reach of the law, but I have other enemies far more powerful. I can have every wish gratified. I enjoy every comfort. I live exactly as I please. My operations run smoothly, providing I don’t put too much trust in runners such as you.”
Asan grinned and cocked his head to one side. “I was the best you had, Martok.”
“Perhaps. I always knew tha
t one day you’d betray me. But I misjudged when.” Martok stared into the bottom of his glass. “I don’t like failure, and I don’t like humiliation. You have to die, otherwise someone else will try to cheat me.”
“I didn’t betray you. I got caught.”
Martok glanced up. “In the end, the results are the same. I don’t need anything you have to offer.”
Desperation filled Asan’s throat. “Except Tlar technology.”
Martok laughed. “Hardly. It is interesting, yes, but it isn’t worth all you are asking for.”
“Isn’t it? You’ve been a cyborg for many years now. How long until those drugs you take in your wine cease to be effective and you get metal poisoning? No alloy, no matter how many times they experiment, ever really remains compatible with living tissue. How long until you can no longer control the unpleasant side effects? Who are you going to leave your empire to when you finally die, Martok? Lin Ranje?”
Martok’s glass shattered on the floor. “Damn you! I shall outlive you!”
“Really?” Asan walked up to him and extended his arm.
“This body is centuries old. Feel how firm the skin and muscles are.”
Martok stared at him in revulsion and resentment, but after a moment he grasped Asan’s forearm. His gloved fingers were made of hull steel. Asan could feel the ribs of their framework as they tightened on his arm. The pressure increased. Martok’s eyes glinted. Covering a wince, Asan realized Martok intended to crush his arm. But Tlar bones were stronger than human bones. Asan felt pity for a man who despite his wealth and power still had to play such petty games. Asan’s rings focused around his arm. He frowned slightly, concentrating, and the rings loosened Martok’s grip, then forced it away.
Martok’s eyes widened. He snatched his hand back and held it rigidly at his side.
“Whatever you are, I don’t want to become one. Even a cyborg is more human than you!”
“Do you think body transference requires becoming an alien?” Asan asked. “Select one of your supple vat boys from Lab 80 if you like. Just make sure you select someone with a weaker personality than your own.”
Requiem for Anthi: Anthi - Book Two Page 16