“The others did not know a thing until you came crashing down on them.”
“Then why… why not stop me? Why allow me to hear about elder Dhrussius living on Oberion?”
“Last we met I learned better than to interfere with your path, Gahre. Rather, I hope to facilitate it. That is why I brought you here, away from the prying ears of the lodge. Gahre, you must never repeat the things I’ve told you tonight, or I will be disgraced and stripped of my office.”
“I swear to you!”
“You will never make it to Arath. The Order will pursue you.”
“I will evade them. I will travel by trail, not road, and stick to the smaller villages.”
“The Sea of Sand cannot be crossed.”
“I will earn coin and buy a camel.”
“Then it shall die too. And, Gahre, even if you do somehow get across, there is a wall.”
“A wall? I shall climb it.”
“It is too high!”
“Then I shall tunnel beneath it!”
“The wall has eyes, Gahre, it will see you.”
“The wall has eyes? That’s impossible.”
“No it isn’t. Gahre, there is Forbidden Knowledge, but then there is also knowledge that transcends Forbidden Knowledge, so I would like to propose another course for you, and it does not involve any farming.”
“I don’t follow you, Honored One.”
“There is an order beyond The Order. A Truth above the truth. As you know, The Order is secular and accepts all religions, but I am a Dharmaist, and I find myself in conflict with my worldly duties.”
“How so, Honored One?”
“Gahre, when I was just older than you, I became determined, like you are, to find the truth of things. I want you to know that you are essentially right. Forbidden Knowledge requires a vast amount of deception upon society. Ultimately, we compel the people to believe many lies. But Gahre, even were you to acquire all Forbidden Knowledge, one such as yourself would come to realize that you still know nothing of that truth, but are just wandering in yet another, even deeper layer of deception.”
“I will remember and contemplate those words, Honored One.”
Indulu rested his hands on the rickety wooden bridge rail beneath the magnificent red glow of Oberion. “Let me ask you, being of Tulan, if you’ve heard of the Mountain Sage?”
“Yes, of course. I’ve heard the legend. It’s existed for many hundreds of years. I even recall a man six or seven years ago who came through the village to head off into the Mountains of Immutability in search of him. He came stumbling back out of those mountains sixteen days later, half dead from hunger and exposure, babbling and ranting. I guess that’s what one gets for believing legends.”
“I believe it to be more than a legend, blessed one. My journey was 12 days and I too returned ragged and half mad. Those mountains are treacherous, and what’s more, they cloud the mind.”
“Honored One! I’d never heard your tale. You entered those mountains on a matter of faith?”
“I burned for the Truth, Gahre, burned for it. But I didn’t burn for it enough. In the end, neither Jokhon nor I proved worthy.”
“Jokhon? Jokhon! The ascetic I met in the wood? He was the same man I saw all that time ago. That’s right!”
“Yes, Gahre, that’s correct. But my point is, we both made it back to the village. We both turned back, both gave up when it became apparent we would not survive otherwise. To find the Mountain Sage, one must be truly willing to die in search of him.”
Awakenings
Mei was at once awed by the singing angelic vision, but something about his face, it was vacant and wide-eyed and appeared so helpless as he floated there before them.
“Mei, let’s get the isopod into position.”
“Aye, Captain.”
They hoisted the isolation pod up into the interior of the sphere and stabilized it in place so it was readied for their target to be guided into it. She gestured to the man and then to the pod hoping for some acknowledgement, but he just hovered there open mouthed and unresponsive. She gently synched her ascent with Aru's and they each took an arm of the target. The target did not resist but slowly cocked his head to either side to look on them. His body was limp, but she could feel his arm was surprisingly muscular. She smiled as reassuringly as she knew how, and on Aru's mark, they thrust down in unison, turning to match the angle of the pod opening in a piece of zero-g ballet. He neither resisted nor aided their efforts as they stuffed him into the casket shaped pod one limb at time and closed the cover.
“I want to get a recording of the interior,” she commed to Aru. It would be their last chance to see it.
“Go ahead,” he commed back.
She unhooked the video-recorder from her belt and began thrusting up and down and back and forth to cover the entirety of the interior. There were many odd device panels built into the walls, some churning with florescent liquids, others were clearly fans and environmental controls. There was some kind of human sized chamber on the floor attached to an assortment of tubes running into the wall systems. She traced the track of the centrifuge along the equatorial region where there had been gravity when the sphere rotated, and thus his plane of movement in here.
“This all looks pretty weird Aru. How could this place maintain his biological functions in such a small enclosed system?”
“It must recycle everything and transmute it down to the last molecule.”
“Ok, I've got enough. Let's get down.”
“Roger that.”
They descended with the pod back down to the spoke hall upper platform, and waited for the inverted drill array to enter the sphere and pull the cutting back into the hole. Once it was in they applied dampening putty along the hairline circle and torched it to insure it was transmission-proofed.
She took a moment to check on the target. He was mouthing something that could not be heard through the window of the isolation pod.
“It looks like he's trying to say something.”
“You mean singing?”
“No. This looks more like speech. Are we set to break down the muting field?”
“Affirmative.”
They powered down the field and descended with the pod down into the inner ring, hopped on the tram and straight back to the zero-com chamber. She had cleared it of all weapons and the bulk of gadgets. There was only a bed there and a small table with chairs. The water and air systems would have to be manually maintained by special protocol from the adjoining utility room.
They set the isolation pod upright once both zero-com room doors were sealed.
“Should we cuff him?” she asked.
“Let's not. He doesn't appear to be an immediate physical threat -but be ready just in case. If we do have to take him down, let's do it without going overboard, ok?”
“Sheesh, give me some credit. I'm sure the two of us can manage to restrain him without resorting to lethal measures. Ok, I'm opening it.”
The pod opened with the slight hiss of releasing air pressure. The target was very poised as he took his first step out, holding one arm across his body with his hand upturned at his abdomen and the other bent at the elbow pointing palm first at his shoulder, like an opera performer.
“Please put your arms by your side,” she instructed him.
He looked slowly and curiously at one arm, then the other. Then he looked at her arms, lowered both of his and changed his posture in a manner that mimicked hers.
“Can you speak?” asked Aru.
“Uuu..I.........c-c-can spe...ak. I can.. I can speak. I... have.. learned to.. to speak,” he said in a choppy clumsy voice.
“When we contacted you earlier, you sang for us. We thought perhaps you could not speak?”
It took some time for him to process the question and even longer to answer. “I could not speak then, but I have learned.”
“When did you learn to speak?”
“I learned to speak... in this pod as you broug
ht me here. I saw you. Then I saw you speaking. Though I could not hear, I saw. I saw the Commander speak. Then I learned to speak as well.”
Mei didn't know what to make of that, but it was clear that he could now indeed speak, and seemed to be getting radically better at it with every utterance.
“This is Captain Psyron, and I am Commander Li.”
He stared blankly for a bit then said, “I am pleased to make both your acquaintances.” He attempted to bow, but immediately fell forward face first toward the floor. Aru and Mei both reached in and caught him in time to prevent impact. They lifted him upright. He looked again at Mei's posture and again mimicked it. He did not thank them. He did nothing but stand still and stare with his mouth open and that completely oblivious look on his face.
“Yeah, keep still like that,” Mei told him and ran an analog mediscanner over his body. The reading showed several strange pulse points and inhumanly high levels of electrical activity. “Are you human?”
“I am... cyborg.” He answered. No surprise there, as he had already demonstrated impressive extrahuman machine capabilities.
“What is your name?” she asked.
He cocked his head and put on a curious visage which seemed to indicate he was thinking. He moved his head and eyes around several times in a mechanical looping pattern. Then he answered.
“My name is Logos.”
Mei and Aru exchanged quizzical looks. How could that be true?
Aru challenged him directly. “I do not believe you are Logos. You appear to be a younger man. Logos is over three centuries old. Logos knows human language, whereas you have just learned it. Logos is enthroned within The Stones. You were found deep inside Ignis Rubeli in a golden sphere. We think you are a creation of Logos, but certainly not Logos himself.”
He seemed to consider this for a while, then made his reply. “You are correct Captain. I was in error. I am not Logos.”
“So what's your name?” Mei tried again.
“My name is... Ming Hongxing,” he answered with a term in her tongue for the Red Star, Ignis Rubeli.
“The Red Star is where we found you. That does not make it your name.”
“What name would you find acceptable for me?” he asked.
“We'll just stick with Ming for now.”
Looking at Mei’s body, he spoke uncued to do so for the first time. “You are female,” he observed. Then he turned to Aru and examined him. “You are male. I am also male.”
The fundamentally absent depths of what they were dealing with started to dawn on Mei. This guy, he was a like an newborn infant, but one with an enormous computerized autistic brain. He literally knew nothing, not even the most rudimentary facts of existence. He was just picking it all up as he went along!
“Yes, you've correctly established all our genders.” She smiled encouragingly. “Ming, how long were you in that sphere?”
“I had always been in that sphere until you extracted me from it.”
“And you knew nothing from outside of the sphere? Male and female? Words? Stars?”
“I knew nothing but the sphere and the numbers that came into the sphere. I did not know male and female. I did not know words. I did not know stars. But now I know of all these things!”
“Oh my God, Aru. This is too much. What was Logos trying to accomplish here?” said Mei. It was shocking beyond anything she had ever heard of! Why anyone would do this to another human being? Or to whatever extent human this entity was. According to the mediscan readings he must be a very fully integrated cyborg despite his entirely convincing outward human appearance. But, borg or no, this was just exceedingly cruel.
“We wish to help you,” she told him, considering his bare feet and indicating the chair. “Please sit, I will fetch you some slippers.”
He walked smoothly to the chair, but he bungled his first attempt to rest himself on it, knocking the chair over and falling ass first onto the floor.
Mei moved to aid him but Aru stopped her with a hand gesture and a slight shake of the head to indicate that he wanted to let Ming do it for himself. Ming did manage to pick himself up from the floor and stand once again erect. In slow methodical steps he bent first his knees, then his torso, grasped the chair and set it upright. He stood beside the chair looking down at it for a while then bent his knees up and down to practice the action of sitting. Once it seemed proficiency was attained, he executed it reasonably well and was seated.
Mei knelt and gently placed the slippers on his feet and then poured him a cup of water. Ming fixated his gaze upon the water, sitting still and silent.
“Raise the cup to your mouth and sip it,” she instructed him.
He grasped the cup and lifted it, spilling a bit of water then steadying the cup again. Ming froze in that position and looked at Mei. “Yes, that's ok. Keep going.”
He proceeded in a squaring fashion to raise the cup and draw it to his lips. He tilted his head back slightly, then the cup. Water spilled all over his chin and down the front of him. He then placed the empty cup back down precisely at its original location on the table.
“Please stay right there,” she told Ming and pulled Aru out into the foyer. She closed the inner zero-com room door keeping an eye on Ming through the view panel, who sat unmoving.
“He may require around the clock care,” she told Aru.
“We need to get more information out of him.”
“I don't think he has any information. I think all the information he possesses, the entire extent of it, is what he learned from Kinny during the hack.”
Aru thought about this. “You could be right. If that's true, we must be vigilant, because it would require an extremely high level of potential intelligence to process all that so quickly. Think about that: one hour not knowing what a word is, and the next composing and voicing complete sentences. So maybe this isn't about what he knows but about who he is -and what he's capable of.”
Through the glass they saw Ming return to motion. He lifted the carafe and poured the water shakily but accurately into the cup without overfilling it. Then he lifted the glass to his mouth, adroitly took a sip, and set it back down.
“You see, he always gets it on the second try. I can't imagine Aru. His mind must be in shock, overwhelmed by this sudden deluge of information, the full scope of reality suddenly thrust upon him.”
“It's beyond anything we can relate to. At this stage he is docile and cooperative, but he may turn as this awakening continues. We can't let him come into contact with Kinny, and we can't leave him alone for long. One of us stays in the room with him at all times, caring for him and garnering whatever information they can interacting with him. The other stands on deck, checking into this window every half hour. We switch off between the two in shifts.”
That made sense. It was imprudent for both of them to remain in the zero-com room. Short of shaking the entire ship, Kinny would have no way to notify them if anything came up on deck.
“We'll need to sleep at some point.”
“We sleep when he sleeps. I'll haul in the bed from the other zero-com and bunk in here with him if that's what's required. I'll authorize you to full command, and you can camp yourself right on the bridge.”
“Ok. Let me take the first shift in here. I'm guessing I'm better with small children than you are. Would you go rustle up some food and clothes for him? Heaven knows how he's been eating in that sphere, so bring a selection of bland, soft foodstuffs. Make sure you transfer the food to analog foodware and EMP everything thoroughly in this foyer before this door opens.”
“Aye, Commander,” Aru nodded and set off on his errands.
She returned to Ming, still seated and well on the way to mastering the skill of water drinking. He was handsome, she thought, or would be if he learned to carry himself like a man. She touched his arm lightly. He looked at her hand but was not otherwise responsive to the gesture.
“Do you have any idea why Logos created you?” she asked.
“Ye
s. I have a... theory.”
“Go on.”
“My body is the vessel through which he intends to… reincarnate himself. If that is the proper term.”
Mei was not expecting such a grandiose reply, but went on to consider it. It made a certain sense at the outset, but it also begged many more questions. “From my Dharmic understanding, that is not how reincarnation works. You would have to be conceived after he has died, and his soul would be born into you. Unless that is all true, that Logos is dead, and you are already his reincarnation.”
“Reincarnation in the Dharmic sense is a dubious principle which is scientifically unverifiable. I mean that I have been designed to accommodate a transfer of his aethereal essence and neural network unto myself. Now that I have been corrupted, however, this may not be feasible.”
“Aethereal essence is soul,” she pointed out. Reds even knew how to detect and quantify it, track its movement from its base in the hypothalamus to its dispersion upon death, but in typical anti-spiritualist Rubelian fashion they refused to equate it to “soul” and defined it as a “requisite energy component of life, that dissipated on death never to reform or return.” Because Reds were die-hard atheists, by and large. So she should not be surprised to find that quality hard-wired into the man-child seated before her. Being Blue or Red had nothing to do with heredity; it was entirely determined by which star's electric field you were born under. Considering Ming's proximity within Ignis Rubeli, and assuming he had been conceived and matured there, that would by literal definition make him the reddest Red in existence.
“It is only a theory,” he said. “I do not know the mind of my creator in any definitive sense, but I may have insight into it that others do not.”
“What insight?”
Ming looked suddenly suspicious. “How did you and Captain Psyron know where to find me?”
“I'm sorry I cannot reveal information proprietary to this mission to you.”
“I understand. Secrecy. Deception. These are necessary when groups of humans come into competition,” he said as though another lightbulb was going on in his head. Then he added, “I am your prisoner. That is why you have me in here where I cannot communicate with your ship's network.”
DUALITY: The World of Lies Page 18