The Paratwa (#3 in the Parawta Saga)
Page 15
"Maybe Theophrastus is here right now?” proposed Gillian. “We could have been led into a trap. Maybe there is no Jalka/Aristotle. Maybe we've entered Sappho's secret domain."
"An interesting supposition,” replied a male voice.
Gillian pirouetted—a 360-degree spin-crouch, finger snug against the trigger of the rifle. He saw no one. The chamber remained lifeless.
The voice continued. “I used to talk to my master too, back in the days when I was alive."
"Good for you,” said Gillian. The voice seemed to be directionless; reverberating tones emerged from the floor, from the ceiling, from the very walls. “Who are you? Where are you?"
"I am called Timmy. I'm right here."
A stalagmite directly in front of Gillian—one that ended in a smooth tabletop—ruptured. From the narrow slit, a holo took shape, emerging from the cracked surface like a flow of construction lava shooting from a freefaller's welding pak. The bubbling light rapidly melded into the contours of a full-sized man.
He was big, over six feet tall, with immense shoulders and a huge frame cloaked in a simple gray robe. Layers of fat encroached on the puffy round face. The eyes were unbalanced; the right one seemed to be more wide open, more alert than its counterpart.
Be extremely careful if we ever meet this creature in the flesh, warned Empedocles. That right eye appears to be an organic microprocessor.
Gillian acknowledged his monarch's perception. Such wetware, from the high-tech glory years of the twenty-first century, could disguise a hundred perils, from simple antiscan devices to fire control units, able to target and launch an intermixed concoction of body-mounted weaponry in the blink of an eye. And such wetware could cloak even more subtle dangers: neuronic “smackers"—optic pulses capable of distorting an opponent's natural balance; the deadly projected energies of the hypnotic needbreeder; the subliminal cadences able to trigger an opponent's implanted mnemonic cursor.
"Welcome to my home,” said the holo, smiling. “I'm glad that Lester Mon Dama's message reached you."
Gillian studied the projected figure, compared it to his own memories of what Aristotle's tway had looked like. There were definite similarities—this could be Jalka, with about a hundred extra pounds added to his frame. “What do you want?"
"Ah, Gillian—you were always the impetuous one. Now, Catharine—she was a bit less rash. Maybe that is why the two of you made such good lovers."
Gillian swallowed. Thinking of Catharine in that way cut to core of ancient pains.
Timmy continued. “When death took your tway and lover, when you were forced to lead a life of singularity, when you denied your own reality to escape the madness of being torn in half—it was then that your mutation truly began."
"Mutation?” Gillian challenged. “I don't know what you mean."
"Yes, you do. You can't lie to me, Gillian. I know what Empedocles wants. I know that he is pressuring you toward acceptance of the permanent whelm, tway and monarch fused forever. No more Gillian, no more Empedocles. Your monarch is driven by an unquenchable urge to gain complete physical control of the unbalanced creature you have become."
Utterly true, whispered Empedocles.
"Incest,” continued Timmy. “Do you know what it means?"
"Of course,” he snapped.
"Back in the days when you were whole, did you, Gillian, ever feel that you were engaging in an incestuous relationship with Catharine?"
He gave an honest shake of his head. “No. We were tways of a Paratwa, not brother and sister. As fetuses, we did not come from the same family group. The human-inspired taboos against incest, which are based primarily upon real genetic concerns against the dangers of inbreeding, did not apply to us."
"When you made love to Catharine, was Empedocles always there?"
Gillian acknowledged an extreme feeling of discomfort, an almost brutal twisting of the guts. He did not like where this Timmy's questions were leading. “What do you want?” he demanded. “Why have you brought me here? And just what is this place?"
Timmy chuckled. “I promise to answer all of your questions. In time. But for now, I expect you to respond to my questions. As children, you and Catharine were always excellent students, unafraid to venture into new, unexplored territory. I want you to be brave once again.
"I can help you in overcoming the turmoil of being two discrete consciousnesses perennially at war for control of the same body. But there is a price for my assistance. I demand your complete obedience.” Timmy's face assumed an asymmetrical pose; the wetware orb opened wide while his real eye narrowed to a fine slit. “You—and Empedocles—will become students once again, like you were for Aristotle, back in the days when he still lived."
Gillian frowned. “Your monarch ... he's dead?"
"Yes, my monarch is dead. My tways are dead. I am a new consciousness, one that only came into existence when my last tway—Jalka—surrendered to the urges of his monarch, Aristotle. At the moment of their final merging, both of them ceased to exist. A fresh consciousness, possessing all of the memories of tway and monarch, was born.
"And I know, Empedocles, that this is what you want. But be forewarned—while it will grant you a coherence of the body by day, the emotions of memory will haunt your nights. There will be a price to pay that neither of you can remotely fathom. Timmy is a concoction from such a netherworld. He is a product of surrender, of defeat, and as such, can never truly savor the rewards of victory."
"And you offer an alternative?"
"I do. I can make you whole once again."
"How?” Gillian demanded.
"Answer my earlier question. When you and Catharine made love, was Empedocles always there?"
Gillian forced himself to recall an intimate occasion with Catharine. Pain-encrusted memories stroked awareness like sandpaper rubbing bare flesh.
He blurted out the answer, then quickly closed down what he knew to be a channel cutting into the deepest agonies of his life. “Yes, Empedocles was always there. You know that. The interlace binding Ash Ock tways never completely dissolves. It's merely weakened to the point where the two halves can operate independently. Most memories—but not all—are fully shared."
"Precisely,” said Timmy. “So even when you and Catharine made love—even when you entered that state of unrestrained passion which took you the furthest away from the primarily intellectualized consciousness of your monarch—even then, he was there."
I was there, admitted Empedocles.
Gillian nodded.
"So—no matter how repressed, your monarch has always existed within you. You—the tway Gillian—still exist. And the memory of your other tway, Catharine—even it survives."
"Yes."
The holo disappeared. Gillian heard a noise behind him.
He spun around. The real Timmy stood ten feet away. Gillian made eye contact before he could think not to.
"Kascht moniken keenish," uttered Timmy. "Kascht mulafwasbelj moniken shle-os."
Mnemonic cursors, warned Empedocles, but it was too late. The strange sounds poured through Gillian, instantly burrowing beneath the field of his awareness. He tried to raise the thruster rifle, but his arms refused to obey.
Timmy approached, chuckling. Gillian tried to turn away, and when that failed, tried to at least break eye contact. It was no use. Muscles refused to carry out his conscious commands. He may as well have been frozen in a block of stasis ice.
Timmy closed to within two feet. Gillian stared helplessly into the unblinking artificial eye, recalling that only weeks ago he had heard some of those same bizarre word/sounds. Kascht moniken keenish—that phrase had been spoken by Slasher, tway of the tripartite assassin.
Slasher must have known only the preamble, deduced Empedocles. "Kascht moniken keenish” probably opens a channel into our deepest chasms of body-thought. But this Timmy—he must know the entire root language. The Ash Ock scientists must have implanted control cursors when you and Catharine were children.
The mnemonic cursors obviously contain built-in safeguards against causing a complete shutdown, which would be fatal.
Gillian sensed that his monarch was fascinated by the entire process.
First, the wetware eye was utilized to arm the cursors. Then Timmy used the words themselves to take command of our musculature.
Is there anything we can do? asked Gillian.
Not at the present time. But if and when we escape, we must find a way to neutralize such a weapon.
Timmy grinned, as if he was fully aware of the internal dialogue taking place between Gillian and his monarch.
"Pretty good trick, huh? I'll bet that the two of you would like to take a shot at me right now. Maybe if you could move, you'd tear this little optic microprocessor right out of my eyeball. Maybe you'd tear my tongue out as well. No more nasty sounds from Timmy to make you into a vegetable whenever it suits him."
The smile vanished. “But Timmy knows of a better way. Timmy knows that even the deepest implanted mnemonic cursor can be overridden by a fully functioning monarchial consciousness. Timmy knows that when Empedocles is once again restored to his rightful place as a complete Ash Ock Paratwa, he will possess the power to neutralize any such attack.
"Do both of you have the courage to take the hard road? Do you truly possess the strength of will necessary to become a complete entity once again? Can you accept Catharine's replacement—the new tway that I have chosen for you?"
A ravenous fever soared through Gillian's body; anticipation infused with delicate tremors of fear, the wondrous dread of rediscovering that an ancient fantasy might yet be made real. Can it really be? he wondered. Can this Timmy truly provide another tway for us?
"You will make love again,” whispered Timmy. “It will be like it once was with Catharine. You will again experience that density of feeling, which nothing human can hope to rival. You will be whole. You will be Paratwa."
I will be whole, thought Gillian, caught up in the thrill of the dream even while a more cynical part of him insisted that such a thing could never be.
Perhaps it is possible, suggested Empedocles, and Gillian knew that his monarch also had been enraptured.
Timmy stepped back. "Kascht moniken keenish. Kascht kataz fal ruosh."
Gillian's muscles unlocked. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and lunged forward. The robed figure did not even try to escape. One of Gillian's heavy suit gloves fastened on Timmy's neck while the other slammed across the wetware orb, blocking any further optic contact.
Gillian opened his own eyes, observed his prisoner's thick jowls part into a leering smile.
"Go ahead,” said Timmy. “Kill me. My death should be easy, especially for a tway of Empedocles. A snap of your wrist should accomplish the task, breaking the spine and pinching the aortic trunk—"
"Shut up."
Timmy laughed. “Are you afraid?"
He may truly wish to die, said Empedocles.
Gillian shook his head. “I don't think so.” He released Timmy.
The creature that had once been Jalka/Aristotle looked disappointed. “Since you have chosen to spare my life, I suppose that I'm bound to help you spare yours. Are you prepared to become a Paratwa once again?"
"Yes, I am."
* * *
"No,” whispered Susan, roaring to her feet, pushing off against the monitor bench as if it were a live enemy, deserving of anger. “You're crazy! You're completely out of your mind!"
She had observed Timmy's encounter with Gillian, as her proctor had requested. She had sat in this weird little com chamber, becoming totally intrigued by their strange visitor—an event Timmy had intimated might occur. In fact, the entire experience had been oddly pleasurable up until the moment Susan realized that Timmy somehow intended using her as a replacement for Gillian's lost tway.
"You're mad!” she hissed, whipping the flash daggers from the flakjak's pockets, slashing the multihued beams down across the face of the monitor. The screen imploded; gray-green sparks, traveling in clusters, etched tiny trails across the bench top.
I'm to become the tway of a Paratwa! The idea was so utterly preposterous that, in another time and place it would have been barely worth consideration. But here, on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, inside this massive thing Timmy cryptically referred to as a “cell of the Os/Ka/Loq,” Susan knew that all occurrences were to be taken seriously.
The tway of a Paratwa! That's why I possess a fetally modified neuromuscular system, why I'm a genejob! That's why you brought me here! That's why you've been manipulating my entire life!
Susan and Gillian. Two halves of a restored Paratwa.
Madness!
She shook her head. No. I won't permit it to happen. She felt a sense of control returning to her. Deactivating the flash daggers, she nested them back in their pockets.
"I won't allow it,” she announced, knowing that he could somehow hear her words. “You brought me back to life, Timmy. I thank you for that. But now that you have done so, I won't permit you to rob me of my true consciousness."
She wondered if she had any choice in the matter.
O}o{O
"The massive jaws of cold steel fear! The heart-wrenching throbs of torsos crushed in the grip of relentless terror!"
FL-Sixteen freelancer Karl Zork delivered his lines with the impassioned grimace of a man accustomed to shouting for attention. Ghandi leaned back in his chair and lowered the volume. He was alone in the windowless CPG boardroom—a long narrow rectangle coated in soft blue velvet, its crystal chandeliers bursting from the ceiling like a sextet of engorged penises.
"Black Wednesday is almost upon us!” yelled Zork, his ruddy face filling the wafer screen. The monitor hung suspended above the center of the imitation mahogany table by a pair of energized threads attached to opposite walls.
"The steam heaters are cranked to max—the boiler is ready to explode—"
"—And we all face death by scalding,” interjected Zork's telecast partner. Theandra Morgan, a tall stunning blonde, appeared in close-up. Today, her long tresses had been shaped into delicately waffled tails.
The shot cut back to Zork, who was bobbing his head and scrunching his zigzag red beard beneath an apelike fist. “Hell to pay in a day! Yessirree, tomorrow's the big one. Tway Meridian, servant of our Enemy, arrives in the Colonies. Tway Meridian, assassin of the Jeek Elementals, comes waltzing into the chamber of the Council of Irrya. Naturally, our brave little councilors will roll out the red carpet, set up the champagne glasses—"
"Kiss ass,” added Theandra. “That's what they used to call it back in Century Twenty."
"A long political tradition.” Zork hunched forward across his desk, gazed passionately into the camera. “Don't like such shenanigans, good people of the Colonies? Piss you off when your so-called leaders get ready to sell your feet out from under you?” He wagged an angry finger. “I'm so mad I could belch fire!"
"Light one for me, Karl,” added Theandra. “But the truth is, we don't know exactly how the Council is going to react to Meridian's arrival. However, certain elements of intercolonial society are letting their views be known."
She glanced down at her desk, pretended she was reading from a file. It was an affected mannerism, designed to match the style of the old-time freelancers who shunned all unnecessary technology, including prompters. Public opinion polls widely hailed Theandra Morgan for her close attention to historic detail.
"This morning, Karl, in the area surrounding the Irryan Capitol building, an estimated eighty thousand citizens gathered to protest the arrival of the Paratwa envoy. This huge demonstration, organized by the Order of the Birch, was intended to voice the feelings of what many experts now believe is a majority of intercolonial citizenry."
&nb
sp; "Damn straight,” muttered Zork, appearing beside her in a two-shot.
Theandra continued. “The murderous spree of this Paratwa assassin has produced a confluence of opinion. The latest outrages—the brutal massacre at the Lion of Alexander's retreat and the killing of Doyle Blumhaven—have certainly added fuel to the fire."
"Hell to pay!” promised Zork.
"Although the Irryan Council is not in session until tomorrow, these eighty thousand demonstrators left no doubt as to what they expect of our leaders."
The Zork-Morgan two-shot dissolved into an image of the main street in front of the Capitol building. The camera angle, high above, probably taken from one of the adjacent stilted skyscrapers, revealed a swollen mass of people. Fists were raised, berating the sky. Even before the audio cut in, the palpable fury of the crowd was obvious.
"Never forget what they did to our Earth! Never forget that they're forever cursed!"
"No deals today! No deals tomorrow!"
"Long live the Order of the Birch!"
Ghandi watched closely, fascinated by the shouting crowd, by the visceral images of collective rage. He imagined himself standing before them, announcing that he was the human responsible for paving the way for the return of the Paratwa.
Insane thoughts.
The screen returned to a tight shot of Zork, his head wagging in sympathetic fury. “No more Mister Nice Guy, Theandra! It's time to stop kissing ass and time to start kicking it! You know I'm not one for patriotic bullshit, but just the idea of these Paratwa scumheads being allowed back into the Colonies almost makes me want to resign from FL-Sixteen and join the Guardians!"
Ghandi had been watching the Zork-Morgan report for a number of years now—a faithful addict. He recalled several other occasions when Karl Zork had allowed his zeal to threaten resignation. Naturally, he had never carried out any of his caveats.
"Go for it, Karl."
"I damn well might!"
Once, Ghandi had viewed his obsession with the FL-Sixteen freelancers as simply a guilty pleasure. These days, however, he knew the compulsion bore deeper roots. His own inner fury—the waltz of the microbes—achieved a kind of temporary satiation under the nightly spells of the raging Zork. Whatever Karl Zork proclaimed, whether his reports carried fragments of truth or remained complete prevarications, was not important to Ghandi. The freelancer's manifested rage was the primary attraction. That rage provided Ghandi, and probably many other Zork-Morgan fans, with a cathartic outlet for his own emotional ferocities.