by Far Freedom
“A robot is a slave. Are you a slave, Percival? Or are you a person? Please stand back a few paces. Thanks for your help.”
Fred and the Gatekeeper disappeared from the street. Percival was left with new thoughts, new questions. He felt changed by the experience, but he remained a skeptic. Too many people he loved had died badly in this terrible world far from the idyllic Union. The One True God might be a god and might be a good god, but She was a weakling in the face of She Who Must Not Be Named.
People jumped at the sudden appearance of Fred and the Gatekeeper. Fred strode to a reception desk and placed a weapon on the counter suggestively. Freddy had viewed several hundred old movies stored in Fred’s memory, and he thought he would use them as a guide for his impending heroics.
Two female medical persons, perhaps nurses, approached the counter hesitantly, a grim set to their expressions, apparently accustomed to the threat of violence.
“I seek a certain Rhyan patient of yours named Daidaunkh,” Freddy said, looking one of them in the eyes.
“What do you want with him?” the grimmer nurse asked. “You have a lot of weapons.”
“Yes, I have many weapons. I wish to accompany the Rhyan out of here, if he’s able to leave.”
“We don’t allow weapons in the hospital,” she said, meeting his gaze and not blinking.
She was tougher than Freddy expected. He reviewed a few dozen old action movies. He picked up the weapon from the counter and casually discharged it, precisely breaking a chair someone was sitting in. “Oops.”
“Would you quit playing around!” the Gatekeeper demanded, moving across the floor toward the reception desk. Everybody behind the counter stood up and backed away.
“We’re just here to pick up a friend,” Freddy said pleasantly. “Please direct me to Daidaunkh or have him delivered here to me.”
One of the nurses consulted a display device, then turned and smiled at Fred. Fred smiled back. They didn’t seem to object to direct eye contact. A few minutes later, Daidaunkh appeared down a corridor, walking quickly but with a slight limp.
“Fred!” Daidaunkh stopped to regard him with surprise. “Why are you here?”
“I’m retrieving you! Please choose weapons with which to arm yourself. I must warn you that I can’t allow you to harm Admiral Demba or the others.”
“Where is the admiral? She left me here with these primitive physicians.”
“I’ll try to discover the location of the admiral if you’ll stand guard for a moment.”
Daidaunkh took a weapon and checked it. He scanned the vicinity for potential trouble. He looked at the Gatekeeper with puzzlement.
Fred jumped over the counter. Pushing hospital workers aside, he searched among the various data displays. He found a spot on a panel and plugged a finger into it. After a few moments Fred unplugged and jumped back over the counter. “Amazing! Hardly any security. That was informative.”
Fred led Daidaunkh over to the Gatekeeper, and Daidaunkh, seeing the alien shift slightly, jumped back. “It’s a Gatekeeper,” Fred explained. “An unknown species and very intelligent. Also dangerous, but I think it’s our friend. Please stand close to us and continue to be vigilant.” Fred talked to the alien rapidly, the words thick with mathematics. In a moment the hospital disappeared.
“Jeepers! No way out!”
“And the bad guys have arrived,” Fidelity said.
A dozen armed soldiers invaded the upper level lounge where Fidelity viewed the outside of Oz. Several dozen warehouse workers had escorted her and Samson and Rafael to the observation point. The wide, lounge-like room was crowded with the Broken Ones and furniture. The Broken Ones quietly shoved tables and chairs aside, arraying themselves in closed ranks, forming a gray barrier against the black-uniformed soldiers. Olivier pushed through to confront the leader of the soldiers.
“Explain,” the ranking officer ordered.
“They’re special guests,” Olivier answered, indicating Fidelity’s group with a wave. “They wanted to see from that window.”
“I know nothing about special guests. Get out! Leave them!”
“They were sent by The Lady in the Mirror,” Olivier said loudly.
“Are you ready to die?” The Black Fleet officer looked left and right, as though expecting something.
“And she witnessed the Titanic Raid two centuries ago!”
“What have you been drinking?”
“She made us all crazy, Captain! She made us all love her. She sang for us. She sang for us!”
The Black Fleet captain paused to think about what Olivier said but quickly dismissed it all. “Get out. Take the Broken with you. You don’t belong here.”
“We’re not leaving! We don’t want you accidentally hurting them.”
“Why so gallant, Olivier?”
“I like that word! I’m surprised you know my name. She made us happy for awhile, really happy. I guess we’ve all found our Un Bel Di. Like the Fleet says, the day we die is a beautiful day. This is the day!”
“Olivier, wait!” Fidelity was alarmed at the meaning of his words. She pushed to the front to stand beside him. Why was there so much violence in her life? Why was Samson always being exposed to it? She failed miserably to imagine the consequences of any of her decisions in this place. Olivier was smiling as seemed normal for him, even as he calmly accepted death as his immediate future. “I can’t allow you to lay down your lives for me!”
“It isn’t just for you!” Olivier argued. “What’s life if it’s empty? You just
filled it for me! From this point on, it’s all glory!”
“Glory is highly overrated! Please, take your people and leave.”
“We can’t! You don’t understand! They won’t let any of us live! We knew that when we brought you here! Use us! We’re not worth much except for right now!”
Fidelity was devastated to see the truth of Olivier’s words. She could sense from her brief experience of this world that its rulers used death as the standard punishment to control everyone. Even before she sang for them, she sensed the doom of the Broken Ones. In so short a time she found herself liking Olivier and his fellow workers. It hurt her profoundly to know they were about to die. “Olivier, please do what you can to protect Samson and Rafael. Don’t worry about me. Don’t do anything until I’ve spoken to the captain.”
Olivier stepped back one pace, leaving Fidelity by herself with the Black Fleet captain. The other Black Fleet soldiers stood at regular intervals, almost in formation, each with a hand on the butt of a holstered weapon. None of them appeared much concerned about the confrontation, or else they would already have drawn their weapons. The captain stood with practiced combat alertness, a measured distance from Fidelity, hand on weapon.
“A woman in a yellow dress killed two Fleet officers,” the captain said. “Was it you?”
She waited a few moments to respond. She required the time to survey the squad of Fleet officers. A program was running in an augment she never knew she had, measuring vectors, increasing her metabolism, heating her muscles. The hammering of her heart signaled both fear and preparation. “Yes,” she finally answered, speaking calmly above the effort of her lungs to increase her oxygen intake. “They gave me no choice. What were their names?”
“Names? I don’t know. Why?”
She was not so heavily prepared for combat in any of her previous situations. Clearly whatever special augment she possessed for the purpose of survival was readying her for a great assault on the dozen soldiers near her. She couldn’t believe she would survive the fight. She could believe she would kill most of them. Strategies were unfolding for her that were complex, involving scores of bodies in motion, multiple chains of cause and effect. It took a supreme force of will to brake the imperative to launch an attack. So conscious of the explosion about to occur in her body, Fidelity could still strain to keep a conversation going, to stall for time in a forlorn hope for some miracle that would stop the violence. “I know t
he names of most of the people I’ve killed. They were compiled from public records. What is your name? What are the names of your squad?”
“Are you trying to frighten me?”
“Not at all. I’ve only realized recently that I’ve collected the names of my victims. I’m not happy about it. I don’t like to kill.”
“You want me think you killed a lot of people! How many?”
“You only need to know about the two boys who tried to kill me.”
“You make me curious,” the Black Fleet captain said. “You killed two kids barely qualified to wear The Black. My squad are all veterans, all crew members. In case you don’t know, it means each has killed six or more in the games. How many have you killed?”
“Too many. I’m a Union Navy officer.”
“Navy? Good. We can make a deal.”
“What kind of deal?”
“Instead of shooting you here, we’ll put you in the next games. It’s how we dispose of Navy officers. You’ll fight until you die. We’ll even tell you their names.”
“And my child and friend?”
The captain shrugged and smiled.
“And Olivier and the Broken Ones?”
He shrugged again.
Section 026 The Lady in the Mirror
“You ‘re not old!”
“I feel old! Is this a marriage proposal? After all these years together, what does it matter? “
“I feel like we ‘re still just friends, Ruby. I love you. I’ve always loved you.”
“Why didn’t you ever say so?”
“I thought I did, perhaps not with words but…”
“Men! I’ve known how you felt about me for years. I could have made you confess, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”
“Becauseyou didn’t really love me?”
“Because I did really love you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I.”
“Is something wrong?”
“Something was always wrong with me! Something was always missing! I’m incomplete. I’ve lost something.”
“I still don’t understand.”
“I’m beginning to remember things, Harry, but it’s difficult to put them together. I think I lived another life before this one, one in which I had a husband, and a daughter named Jamie. But I don’t know why I should have even received rejuvenation, because I don’t remember ever paying my debt to the Mnro Clinic. And why do I suddenly remember important things, things I should never have forgot, things that, if I chose to forget them, I shouldn’t ever remember?”
“I knew you would eventually remember him.”
“Who? What are you saying?”
“I’m saying you belonged to someone that no one should ever forget.”
“You know who he was? Why? How long have you known?”
“Always, Ruby. I’ve always been your guardian angel, protecting you until his return. For most of that time I’ve been in love with his wife, so I couldn’t tell you I loved you. But we’ve grown old together, shared an entire lifetime, and I don’t believe he’s alive anymore. I never doubted he would return, but it’s been too long! So, I now put in my bid for you, my last small chance for happiness, my last chance to make you happy.”
“Butyou know who he was? Tell me! Tell me, Harry! I can’t remember! I’ve spent months trying to hold onto these images and snippets of dialog leaking out of my brain, and he’s always there, just out of sight, and I can’t see his face or hear his name!”
“Ican’t, Ruby!”
“Can’t, or won’t? Harry, you’re hurting me! This is tearing me apart! I think it was always there, just under my conscious thought, driving me to sing, keeping me from staying sober.”
“I’ll lose you if I tell you, Ruby!”
“You’ve already lost me, Harry!”
“Ruby, you don’t understand! It isn’t just me! If I give him back to you, she’ll just take him away again. Ruby? Where are you going? “
“Away! Don’t try to follow me!”
He opened his eyes and saw her as a blur. He blinked his eyes and tears rolled down his dark face. Before he could clearly see her, she walked up to him and put her arms around him. Her hat fell off. A man picked it off the floor and held it, and Pan saw him clearer as the tears abated in his eyes. The man was R.K. Pan looked down on the pale bald head of the woman holding tightly to his body. “Who are you?”
She leaned away from him without releasing him and looked up at him. She raised a hand and touched his face, touched the dampness, brought her hand to her mouth, tasted the wetness on her fingertips. She released him, took a step backward, stumbled and sat down hard on the floor. She sat there for several moments, eyes closed, breathing hard.
Pan looked over at Ramadhal, questioning. “Pan, this lady is Aylis Mnro. At least, I think she is! I don’t understand what she does.”
Pan knelt down in front of the bald-headed woman and waited for her to talk to him. He would be astonished to meet the famous woman at this moment of his life, if greater internal events did not prevent astonishment. He could not even form the ideas that should make him ask questions. He could only wait for the answers to make themselves apparent.
” She says she’s the first wife of your father,” Ramadhal offered.
“My father?”
“Setek-Ren!” Aylis Mnro cried, the name exploding from her. “Setek-Ren! Your father was Setek-Ren! My husband was Setek-Ren!”
“They’re not coming back,” Mai said. “Let’s go. It’s been too long and I’m hungry.”
“You go,” Horss said. “Send me some food.” She was still with him. He didn’t know why she stayed with him but it pleased him. It was not something his ego required; he simply enjoyed her presence, even if she did try to treat him as a youth. It was hard to believe she was almost a century older than he was.
“Why would they come back here?” she asked.
“Just a hunch. It’s damned hard to compute different transmat addresses and this other device must be at least as difficult.”
“Earth does move through space. The address will always change.”
“I figure the change is easier to compute than a completely new address.”
“Fine! Stay! I’ve got work to do! The sun is up on the morning of the Mother Earth Opera and tonight the place will be a riot! Thank God, it’s the last one of these I ever put myself through!” Mai stepped back, pushed by the arrival warning field of a transmat. Pan appeared in the living room of Daidaunkh’s dark apartment.
“Doctor Mnro was successful,” Pan announced.
“Welcome back, sir,” Horss said.
Pan seemed less than happy to be away from Etrhnk. “Captain. Mai. Have you camped here for long?”
“Long enough for Mai,” Horss answered. “Do you know anything about the admiral?”
“All I know is that she’s beyond Etrhnk’s reach.”
“Dead?” Horss was unhappy at the possibility. “And Samson?”
“You can stop waiting for them here. Why don’t both of you come back with me?”
“Let me show you something in the floor here,” Horss said.
“I’ve seen it.”
“You know what it means?”
“I don’t know the status of security in Daidaunkh’s apartment. We shouldn’t say more. Let’s go.”
“I’m staying,” Horss said.
The woman who wore a straw hat stood up as Mai and Pan entered the main room of Pan’s apartment. That she left Jon Horss alone in Daidaunkh’s apartment bothered Mai, worried her, aggravated her! She was thus preoccupied in thought when she needed to understand who the woman was who now approached her with such a warm smile. Mai accepted the woman’s hands into hers, feeling she had no choice in the matter. She then realized who the woman was, even though she looked too young. “Doctor Mnro?”
“Sugai Mai! Please call me Aylis! What’s this about you taking a maternity leave? In this part of the Union yo
u need a husband for that, or else the math doesn’t fit the law.”
“I’ll be looking for a husband.”
“So, it isn’t maternity leave. It’s a hunting trip. What about the Navy captain? Did he escape?”
“You’re embarrassing me!” Mai wouldn’t have tolerated such treatment from anyone else, but Aylis Mnro always treated her like a… a daughter? Mai shook her head, as if that would throw Jon Horss out of her mind and clear her mental machinery to defend herself against Aylis Mnro. Mnro seemed to sense her disquiet and she restrained herself.
“I’m sorry, Mai! I’ve just made a visit to Admiral Etrhnk. Then I’m reunited with Pan. My adopted son. Then I remembered my husband’s name. Oh, and did I mention I’ve been asleep for two centuries and have just awakened, only to be inducted into the Navy? I’m on special leave until my personal affairs are put in order.”
Mai studied Aylis Mnro, saw the wildness in her eyes, noted the strain in her voice, felt the slight tremor in the too-tight grip of her hands. What medical information she could detect with the probes built into her fingertips reinforced the overall impression of stress and agitation. It didn’t help that Mai was feeling much the same. Mnro’s last statement finally registered and left Mai dumbfounded.
“I think that was too much to throw at you at once.” Mnro grimaced. “I probably should not be telling you anything. I want to tell you everything, but that would be dangerous for you. Yet, you already know too much to be safe. I wish I could be sure of not being overheard by Etrhnk.”
“This is Earth, where crazy people live,” Mai was able to say. “Entertainment miners constantly spy on us. We have very effective privacy systems, those of us who want them. Pan is your adopted son? That’s why you were so interested in him all these years?”
“I never officially adopted him. He was a grown man by the time I first met him. The memories, the memories!” Mnro stopped talking, closed her eyes.
“What’s wrong?” Mai asked again.
“The person who managed the development of the Mnro Clinics wasn’t me,” Mnro said, breaking away with great effort from what drew her inward. “She looked like me, she had my memories, and she had my genes, but she wasn’t me. I slept while she did the hardest work and made the hardest decisions. Now it’s my turn again. All that the other Aylis Mnro did was but a prelude to what comes next. I will reap what she has sown, and that may be something very great, or it may be the end of me. I’m trying to take things one at a time. I have Pan back from Etrhnk. Now I wait to see if I get Demba back. If she doesn’t come back, all is for nothing.”