A. Warren Merkey

by Far Freedom

  Zakiya walked away. Koji released Alex.

  It was too complex: what she needed to do and how she felt. Keshona seemed to fade as a separate part of her. Ruby Reed, Fidelity Demba, even Zakiya Muenda, were merged into this confused person who was searching for something that was in pain. She was followed by a lost man she couldn’t find. She didn’t know why he wanted to follow her. She didn’t know why she should allow him. Hope refused to die. Heartbreak refused to stop. Her memories of the original Alex were too potent, yet she must give them up. Give him up.

  “Where do we go?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” she answered.

  “What will you do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want to be loved.”

  “Is that the right thing to want at this time?”

  “It’s always the right thing to want.”

  “And nothing else?”

  “Be careful what you want beyond love.”

  “I can’t give you that.”

  “As old as I am, I can still dream. Why do you follow me?”

  “What else could you suggest I do? You are my only hope.”

  She had no answer for him. Why did she tolerate his sad and flawed presence? She had no answer for herself. She concentrated on feeling the direction of Shorty, hopeful Alex would not try to take advantage of her distraction. They eventually reached an isolated part of the hospital where they entered a room with a wall containing several horizontal doors. Sugai Mai stood waiting for them.

  “This must be the morgue,” Alex said. “Good evening, Mai.”

  “Good evening, Alex. I thought Zakiya might need help finding Sammy’s body.”

  “His body?” Zakiya said. “I don’t think I could bear to see it. But this is where I feel Shorty must be.”

  “Shorty?” he asked. Alex remembered a description of the dangerous amorphous alien, the Gatekeeper. It would be fascinating to encounter a creature of such awe to the barbarians. He watched Zakiya edge along the wall of metal doors behind which he knew the corpses of three barbarians and a small boy lay in storage. She drew the fingers of one hand across the surfaces of the doors, stopping at the one at the far end.

  “That’s where Sammy is,” Mai said. “Shall I bring him out?”

  Zakiya placed her hand at various points around the door at the far end. She leaned against the cold metal as though fatigued by misery. Mai waited. Alex grew tense and impatient, yet he began to feel some of the pain his wife obviously felt.

  “Bring him out,” Zakiya finally said. She moved away and leaned against the adjacent wall.

  Mai activated the retrieval process. In a few moments the horizontal door opened silently and the body slid onto a table that extruded beneath the door. Alex looked at Sammy briefly, curious to see the child who so profoundly affected Zakiya. Except for the mixture of parentage, death removed any special physical quality he might have had. Alex stepped back, disappointed and vaguely upset. He saw many children in barbarian space and never failed to wonder at what dismal futures they might have - especially if they became members of the Black Fleet. This child had lost his future.

  “Please leave us, Mai,” Zakiya said.

  Mai departed the room slowly, glancing worriedly at Zakiya and with a different expression for Alex. The look wounded him unexpectedly. He knew Zakiya had asked her to leave so Mai would be safe and this also upset him. He would never have harmed the pregnant Sugai Mai. Zakiya didn’t move until Mai left. She edged toward the small body, not looking at it directly. She stood for several moments with her hand on the table but her eyes on the adjacent wall.

  “He’s quite intact. Don’t be afraid to look at him.”

  Zakiya turned and centered herself on the table, her eyes closed. She placed both hands on the table edge. She opened her eyes. She fought for control.

  “What is that?” he asked, seeing a small black pyramid appear between Zakiya’s hands.

  Zakiya blinked her eyes and stared at the sparkling dark shape. She felt behind her neck with one hand, then held that hand over the pyramid. A tiny red object fell from her hand and was attracted to the pyramid. The black pyramid enveloped the red piece then lost its geometry, appearing to melt into a small pool that no longer moved. “Shorty?” Zakiya said. “Is this you? Where is the rest of you?”

  “It looks dead,” Alex commented.

  “No! I don’t want that!” Zakiya placed her hands around the dark pool of matter and tried to gather it up. She cried out in pain but kept touching the dark material. In a few seconds it disappeared somewhere. He caught her hands as she turned around and he saw burn marks. She would soon have blisters.

  “You’re injured. The thing attacked you.”

  Zakiya couldn’t speak for several moments as she stood with eyes shut. Alex considered how vulnerable she was at this moment. He had dismissed any physical attack on her as giving no advantage. Also, she was too great an asset to waste. Now he knew he could be turned off - as Setek was - by her command via shiplink. Finally, he wanted her, simply wanted her, if only because he knew he could never have her.

  “No, it’s a gentle creature,” she finally said. “It sometimes needs to dissipate heat.”

  “It isn’t large enough to be a Gatekeeper.”

  “It’s a child. It’s the child of a Gatekeeper. It’s a machine. An AMI. That’s what Gatekeepers are.”

  “It isn’t Shorty?”

  “I think it’s Shorty’s child.”

  “What now?”

  “Now we say goodbye, Alex.”

  He was affected by her words, despite expecting them. It remained a mystery to him how he could exercise such exact perception of every human nuance of emotional reaction, yet feel nothing himself. He always attributed it to a survival trait that he and Setek learned or engineered. Yet, the rules for such insight must derive from somewhere - or from someone deep inside of him. He felt totally helpless, knowing that inner being was otherwise inaccessible, made that way to avoid all moral introspection.

  Alex went down on his knees. Perhaps he automatically chose a fake humility, adapting to the situation as if he were dealing with someone he needed to trick. He was desperate. Perhaps he did feel something real. Koji seemed to have won some of their trust. Did Koji have real feelings now? He envied him. How could she judge him to be of so little use, of so little respect? And what of the mission to rescue this person named Petros, who was another child to whom he was a worthless father? It would be worth his life to see the barbarian home world. And to plant a nuclear weapon at its center. “Put me back where you found me,” Alex said. He knew how much she wanted that locked-away part of him. He would try to steer a path around her will, carefully offering her hope that he could be salvaged.

  “Yes. That I will do.”

  He looked up at her and tried to perceive her mood and purpose, but

  perceived nothing. He did feel humility. She was so much greater than he was, he could almost worship her. She placed her injured hand gently on his temple and let it slide downward, across his ear and to the side of his neck. He knew how that soft touch should make him feel and he was almost angry that he could feel nothing, only the hope that she still cared enough to not eject him from her life, and from her magnificent ship.

  “Kiss me,” she said.

  He would have hesitated, being the ultimate paranoid. Desperation and simple physiology made him reckless. A kiss from her was like a life-line thrown out to a man drifting in space. She leaned over, hands on each side of his neck, and gently pressed her lips against his. He expected oblivion yet remained alive. He concentrated on the kiss, trying to find some way to fake passion, or at least to reciprocate satisfying pleasure. There was warmth, softness, moisture, pleasure beyond what he expected. He started, feeling a small prick of pain on one side of his neck. She clamped her hands around his neck and shoved. They toppled onto the floor, and even though he struggled, she was too stron
g at the critical moment. Before he could react with an effective combat strategy, his body went numb and he could no longer make himself move.

  [I’m sorry, but I must talk to you.] it thought.

  {Who?} he thought.

  [My name is Samson.]

  {The dead child? Sammy?}

  [I think I am, yes, mostly Sammy.]

  {How can you be? }

  [I can’t tell you and I’m scared. Mom wants me to hurry.]

  { What do you want? }

  [I want you to love her.]

  {I’m sorry, Sammy. I can’t! }

  [Let me try to help you.]

  {I’m lost! I don’t want you to find me! Go away!}

  [Please. I need a dad. You need Mom.]

  {NO! No! No. Oh, God in heaven! How can I leave her?}

  The last hatch sealed between them. The image of her face, dwelt upon by his hungry eyes until they blurred, would begin to fade now. The ache, the great ACHE, it carved away his heart and left a black hole for hope at his center. He would never see her again. He would never see her again!

  He turned to Setek-Ren, and must have appeared so stricken that Setek had to embrace him, comfort him. Setek-Ren: for whom this was not in his nature. “She’s an extraordinary person,” Setek said. “I wish you’d married her a long time ago, so that you wouldn’t be so cheated of time with her.”

  “How this must hurt her!” Alex cried, breaking his embrace with his old friend. “I hope she doesn’t love me as much as I love her, so her pain will be less. How can I survive this?”

  “With work. We have years, perhaps decades of work ahead of us. The harder we work, the sooner you will see her again.”

  “I don’t think I will ever see her again. I can’t help thinking that. I can’t see how I’ll be able to function, with Zakiya always on my mind. You have to help me. I must hide her away.”

  “I’ll work on it. It may be useful for all of us. I’ll confess that, having seen Aylis again, I’m preoccupied with thoughts of her. If we are ever captured, our memories will endanger those we have left behind.”

  “It will be impossible to be a hero again, as in the old days, to right all the wrongs and come home to her in triumph. I’m just a soft old man who only wants a place to call home and a woman to love me. Zakiya.”

  She felt him relax and begin to breathe again. Sammy came back to her and went to sleep, feeling safe and tired. She sat on the deck next to Alex, holding him, gently caressing him. He opened his eyes. He smiled. She remembered that smile, half boyish, half roguish, and it thrilled her. Nervously she touched his face, seeking some confirmation that Sammy changed him permanently, that the heartless assassin of barbarians was dead or dying and Alexandros Gerakis lived again. She experienced his first retrieved memory with him, connected through Sammy, and could still feel his towering love for her and the despair that was a lethal catalyst for exiling his true self. Probably it was a memory exaggerated by later loneliness and introspection but she was deeply moved by the experience. She could only hope to be worthy of such affection.

  Mai returned and stepped around them to put Sammy’s body away. Aylis and Koji entered the hospital morgue. Koji knelt beside Alex and gripped his shoulder. Zakiya saw Alex wince in pain, but not from Koji’s grasp.

  “Oh, no!” Alex cried out in misery. “No. No. No!”

  He wept. Koji looked at Zakiya for explanation. “He remembers,” she said.

  “The old memories?” Koji asked her.

  “Yes. I think he realizes now the horror of what he has done.” She brushed Alex’s face with the back of her fingers. He tried to turn away from her.

  “He lost his honor and his righteousness,” Koji said. “Such loss is a disease spread by violence. I wish I could have my honor again. I wish I could remember!”

  “I think I may be able to help you,” Zakiya said. She got to her feet. Koji tried to raise Alex from the deck and finally succeeded.

  “Help me? How?”

  “I now have a key that may unlock your auxiliary memory.”

  “And Setek?”

  “I think we can soon find out. Take care of Alex, will you? Bring him along. I’ll help you as soon as I can.”

  “How did he find his memories?” Aylis asked as they walked back from the morgue.

  “I found Sammy,” she said.

  “You mean Shorty?”

  “Perhaps both. I can’t explain it yet. He’s inside me. He’s safe.” Aylis could only stare at her with grave concern. Zakiya was sure she sounded mentally impaired, or at best mystical. She saw the dark pool of sparkling matter spool itself into silk-fine thread as she tried to capture it in her hands. The thread entered her body through her hands and began to talk to her. She didn’t have time to ponder this miracle of sentience, but she guessed it was an intellect composed of microscopic machines. She tried to explain. “Sammy found the path to Alex’s auxiliary memory and completed the circuit,” she said, coming to the end of her explanation. “I’m calling it Sammy, but that may not be accurate. It may be both an independent entity and a copy of Sammy’s memory.”

  They returned to Iggy and Wingren, who waited for them in the hospital foyer. Koji sat down with Alex, who was lost in memories. Zakiya explained what happened in the morgue.

  Jon, Jamie, and Direk arrived in the hospital by transmat.

  “It’s here?” Zakiya asked.

  “Something is here!” Jon replied. “We’ve lost control of the ship.”

  In the middle of the hospital foyer a small golden object bloomed into existence and floated in the air near them. “That’s it!” Iggy declared.

  “But it’s so small!” Wingren said. “I thought it was huge.” As if in response to her words, the double spheroid began to grow. They backed away from it as it magically expanded to fill half of the foyer without disturbing anything. It grew until much of it passed through walls and chairs and ceiling. It seemed utterly real and completely impossible at the same time. Its two spheres were joined by a thick shaft that flowed between them with seamless curves. The eyes couldn’t focus on any detail of its golden surface, only the line of its bright silhouette and the reflections of objects in its perfect surface. It could not be determined if it destroyed any of the objects it swallowed or merged with, until Direk pulled a partly enveloped chair away from the golden object. The chair remained intact and was easy to move. Direk could not put the chair back into the alien intruder.

  Zakiya moved to the middle of the shaft connecting the spheres and waited. She was tempted to touch the perfect liquid surface of the alien artifact. “Who are you?” she asked. The surface of the alien vessel rippled as she spoke, a localized surface distortion that quickly dissipated in the following silence. “Speak to us.” The golden interface rippled and became still. Zakiya put out her hand to touch the object. Her fingers sank into the gold. She felt nothing but still gained an impression of something… alive.

  A portal opened as the golden liquid surface dimpled into a passageway. A tiny human figure staggered toward the opening, which extruded to form a ramp to the hospital floor. The little man stood at the top of the ramp and blinked as though unaccustomed to bright light. Each blink squeezed out tears from his eyes. He swayed slightly as he looked at Zakiya and the others with an expression of disbelief. Perspiration coated his face and dampened his simple clothing. His hair was long and wild. When he wiped the sweat from his brow he left smears of red. His hands were covered with dried blood.

  The man started to take a step backward, to retreat.

  “Wait,” Zakiya said. She reached for him and saw her hand and arm taper in size to match scale with the man. Aylis gasped in shock and grabbed Zakiya protectively from behind. Zakiya felt nothing unusual in her arm even though the view was extremely disturbing. Her fingers contacted the miniature reality of the man and reflexively clutched at his clothing. The little man reacted by stumbling and taking a few steps down the ramp. With each step he and the ramp grew in size, and with each of
his steps Zakiya felt impelled to pull him forward. He tried to resist but seemed to have no strength for it. In a few seconds he was standing on the hospital floor, grown to normal size, and owning an indisputable reality of being. The ramp retracted like a golden liquid spilling back into its container. The alien ship shrank to a point of golden light and disappeared.

  “That’s impossible!” Aylis declared in a shaky voice.

  Zakiya and everyone else were stunned by the magic. She held the stranger by his cloth shirt with her trembling hand while her mind tried to accommodate what she experienced. Then she took a close look at the man. She feared for his health. He appeared dangerously thin and weak. The man stood wavering and stared at her with eyes that haunted her.

  She knew who he was! “Let us help you,” she said in Twenglish.

  Section 038 Parting Gift

  Day after day we studied the simulation on the computer. Day after day the Advisory Committee refused to permit a vacuum test of the Big Circuits. I kept the vacuum in the apertures hard, in ever fainter hope of doing the tests.

  The delay in testing the Big Circuits was caused by the first experiment the Air Force let me perform at an abandoned facility in the desert - a test that had reached legendary status. The facility - a cluster of dilapidated buildings dating to the late 1940s - no longer existed. Colonel Duncan and three other people were still alive because I insisted we position ourselves twenty miles away on the other side of a ridge. They thought I was being overly cautious. They had thoroughly inspected the concentrator component and the jury-rigged current-pulse device two of my colleagues at Princeton had helped me build. Except for the stick of dynamite, there was nothing to suggest that even standing a hundred meters away wouldn’t be safe. The flash beyond the ridge was a great surprise to Duncan and the others, and even to me. I never really expected such a large explosion, and although I was elated as the ground shook, I was upset I didn’t have the equipment to measure what happened. Seismographs did suggest an impressive force, and the blast crater reinforced it. That test was followed by two more with similar results and extensive measurements.

  The Small Circuit was the next reason for fearing the Big Circuits. The Small Circuit was designed to study the process of breaking quantum circuits in a controlled way - without destroying the equipment in the process. The Small Circuit was, in effect, the first practical fusion power plant. It wasn’t fusion in the sense that atomic particles were being forced together. Quantum circuits were being broken and the released energy was warming a heat sink which I decided may as well do some useful work. The Small Circuit now provided electricity for the Hole. If the Small Circuit could make enough electricity for the entire Hole (an old salt mine with hundreds of acres needing lighting), then the Big Circuits were overkill. Each of the two Big Circuits were a hundred times the size of the Small Circuit, more than a thousand times the size of the first test circuit. The Big Circuits were potentially the doom of the world in the eyes of all the personnel in the Hole who knew the history of their development. I was eloquent enough to cause their construction, promising they wouldn’t explode or even produce more power than they used. They were ostensibly intended for research in the geometry needed to concentrate quantum circuits. That was only part of their purpose. Unfortunately, I no longer felt comfortable with the attitudes of the other scientists and engineers and wouldn’t reveal to them what I hoped to prove with the Big Circuits.