Periphery

by Lynne Jamneck

  Angels Alone

  By Carolyn Ives Gilman

  For a few minutes after the shuttle crossed the terminator, the sun still lit its outspread wings. A moonlit world of sea and cloud curved below. Ahead, stars outlined a circle of blackness that was the spacecraft’s destination. Only one end of the vast, cylindrical satellite was visible from the shuttle’s approach angle. It made a round, empty patch on the sky, like a tunnel into nothing.

  Monodrumco Prison: back on Earth they called it the Black Hole. From the shuttle it looked like one, but that was not the reason for the name. The reason was the event horizon that surrounded it. Things that went into Monodrumco were gone forever.

  In the shuttle observation bubble a speaker cleared its throat. “All passengers return to your seats,” it said. Aleph glanced at it. There was only one passenger, herself. She didn’t know how the shuttle crew had guessed she was not entirely human, but they had. Throughout the flight they had treated her with impersonality, closely guarding their precious gift of individual being.

  She knew why they did it, how vulnerable they were. But it was useless. Their pores betrayed their horror.

  The misty panorama below produced no feeling in her at all. Aleph had only come up to the observation bubble to escape the thick soup of pheromones in the cockpit. During takeoff she had practically gagged on human tensions. Up here the air was slightly cleaner; her body was regaining equilibrium.

  She put out her hand to touch the window. It was cold. Millimeters from her fingers was vacuum: clean, neutral, free of biology. Her mind and body felt transparent, uncontaminated. She watched a film condense on the windowpane around her fingers; when she took her hand away the moonlight shone through the negative print on the glass. Just as it shone through her.

  Outside, the dark face of Monodrumco had almost swallowed the stars. In her present state Aleph was incapable of fear; the satellite prison ahead was only an abstraction, like the future. Like Aleph herself, it was all possibility, all potential, not limited by fixed shape or form.

  “We are commencing docking maneuvers. Please return to your seat,” the speaker said. It sounded more peremptory this time. Expressionless, Aleph turned to obey.

  *

  The metal cavern of the shuttle bay roared and hissed with the fading echoes of the engines as Aleph left the shuttle, dressed in a dark flight suit and boots. In a crowd, she would have disappeared, utterly forgettable. It was hard to say if she was tall or short, heavy or lean, or even what sex she was. She was blank as a department-store mannequin.

  A worker in a black uniform led her to an elevator, instructing her to stand on the right-hand side and hold the handrail, as she would be taking on the spin of the drum. The doors sliced off the noise, and they plunged outward from the cylinder’s zero-G core, into the heart of the prison.

  When the doors opened again, the pseudo-gravity was near normal. Aleph stepped out, and the smell of Monodrumco met her: the smell of fear. She noted it without bias, as neutral information. The smell was not strong enough to affect her.

  Her guide set off down empty gray corridors paved in a flexible material that absorbed all footsteps, all heartbeats. At last they turned into a long, tunnel-like passage with a single, unmarked door at the end. When they reached the door, Aleph’s guide plugged a pocket intercom into a wall receptacle. “Dr. Johanson, the anthroform is here,” she said. Presently there was a buzz and a click as the door unbolted. Aleph stepped through alone.

  The room was absolutely black but for two spotlights: one on a steel-gray desk, the other on a chair facing it. Behind the desk, a middle-aged woman sat smoking a cigarette. Her wiry, gray hair was drawn so tightly back from her face that her skin seemed taut. She watched the visitor from marble-hard eyes, taking three sucks on her cigarette before she spoke.

  “They told me you were the best,” she said.

  Aleph did not answer.

  “Come here. Turn around,” Dr. Johanson said. Her eyes tracked Aleph as she stepped into the light and turned around.

  “Alright. Sit down,” Johanson said. Aleph obeyed. The chair was low, the spotlight hot on her face. The setting would have bothered a human.

  “So what’s your name?” Johanson said.

  “We do not have names,” Aleph answered. Her voice was clear and toneless. “We have designations. Mine is Aleph-34. You can call me Aleph.”

  “I can, can I?” Johanson’s mouth twitched as if at something ludicrous. “Alright, Aleph. I don’t usually order my employees out of catalogs, you know. You seem to be the body type I wanted. Basic Caucaso-Mediterranean. Your hair was supposed to be dark, though.”

  “The hair will change. You wanted me in a null state.”

  It had been a strange request: a protean anthroform in an unindividuated state. Aleph’s agency had searched hard to find a protean willing to live in filtered isolation for the weeks necessary to distill away all traces of individuality. Aleph had finally accepted the contract, not so much for the money as to see if she could withdraw from the strong drug of human personality that had been in her system for years.

  “You’re a last resort, you know,” Johanson said. “We have tried everything else.” She leaned back in her chair, a trail of smoke rising from the cigarette in her fingers. “Looking at you, it’s hard to believe this will work. You’re not like her at all. Too ordinary. Too inconspicuous.”

  Clients were always skeptical at first, sometimes ashamed and defensive. Aleph had dealt with it a hundred times. “Have you ever seen a protean anthroform work?” she asked.

  Johanson gave a snort of laughter. “Seen you? My father worked in the lab where you were invented. I learned your DNA sequences instead of nursery rhymes.”

  “Then you’re familiar with more primitive models. There have been many advances. In my generation, it takes only a few minutes of exposure to another human to start the assimilation process. In a week or two of prolonged contact, we can be indistinguishable from our subjects. We have fooled our clients’ families. We have fooled assassins, law enforcers, and celebrity fans. I can promise, whoever you want duplicated, I can do it.”

  “Two weeks, you say?” Johanson eyed her.

  “That depends on how much time I can spend with the subject, and how close.”

  “We’ll have to be subtle. It’s important she not know what you are.”

  “I am used to that.”

  For an instant, anger jerked at Johanson’s face. “Yes. But Leah Lazarus has a kind of cunning no one is used to.”

  The name came out with such venom that Aleph could feel her own blood turn bitter. She did not want to respond to Dr. Johanson; she wanted to hold onto her detachment. But the room was as thick with the woman’s aggression and distrust as it was with her cigarette smoke. Unwillingly, Aleph could feel herself begin to change.

  “Is the subject a prisoner?” Aleph asked. She had done criminals before. Among proteans it was not considered a pleasant job; but Monodrumco was paying well.

  Johanson said nothing for a moment. “We need to discuss security,” she said. “Your contract states that you will be free to return to Earth. We have to be sure of your discretion.”

  “We have a professional code,” Aleph said. “Confidentiality is guaranteed.”

  “Guarantees can be broken.”

  “I would never work again if I revealed my clients’ secrets. If you want me to duplicate someone, you are going to have to trust me.” She paused, facing Johanson with a truculent look. “I assume that’s why you’ve brought me here. Though if you want me to do the job, you’d damn well better tell me what it is.”

  In the silence, a slow smile grew on Johanson’s face. “So there is a personality in you after all. For a while there, I thought I was talking to a robot.”

  “I’m as flesh and blood as you are. The flesh and blood just change.”

  “Alright. I believe you.” Johanson had relaxed a little, as if she knew where she stood now. “The person I want du
plicated has some information that should be mine. She’s not a prisoner, not in the ordinary sense. You see, I am head of Monodrumco’s scientific research department. Leah Lazarus is one of my staff members.”

  There were rumors about the science that went on at Monodrumco, far above the restrictions of earthly governments and public opinion. Only two things were known for sure: the stream of lucrative patents it produced, and the staggering salaries offered by the vigilant Monodrumco headhunters. But there was a price: once hired, scientists did not return to tell the tale of what went on in the secret orbiting labs.

  “What sort of information?” Aleph asked. “We’re not telepaths, you know. I can duplicate a person’s pattern of thinking, but not knowledge.”

  Johanson exhaled a long stream of smoke in Aleph’s direction. “I know that. What I have in mind is a kind of interrogation. There were some important research results. Lazarus decided to break her contract and withhold them from the company. She can’t get away with that. She knew it, but wanted to spite us all.”

  The rage in Johanson’s voice surged through Aleph’s brain. Her fingers moved against the chair arm, wanting to toy with something. The room was no longer gray, but livid with contagious emotion.

  “We have tried everything to make her cooperate,” Johanson went on. “She’s loyal to no one. No one but herself.”

  “But I—” Aleph felt Johanson’s triumph at her own cunning—“I can be herself.”

  “It has been known to work in past.”

  “It does.” Aleph leaned forward conspiratorially. “People trust others like themselves. Humans mimic each other all the time. They do it to win over their superiors by mirroring them. But we proteans do it better, at a subliminal level. For we really are like our subjects, right down to the hormones on our skin.”

  Johanson was smiling, caught up in the anticipation of success. “So you think it will work?”

  “It may. If done subtly. It has worked on you.”

  The smile faded from Johanson’s face. Her cigarette hung in midair, halfway to her mouth. Abruptly she turned and jabbed a code into a sunken keyboard on her desk. A drawer sprang open. She took out a silver disk. She paused to take a long pull at her cigarette, then stubbed it out with a vicious twist in the ashtray. She held out the disk.

  “This has background information and instructions. Study it. You’ll have to be cautious. If Lazarus guesses what you are, she’ll never tell you anything.” She pressed another code and the door buzzed as the lock shot back. Aleph realized she had been dismissed. She rose.

  “One more thing,” Johanson said. “A warning. Watch out for Lazarus. She’s always in control, though you’ll think otherwise. Don’t let her fool you.”

  “I will do my best,” Aleph said.

  Outside, the uniformed guard was waiting. As they walked down the monotonous halls Aleph could feel Johanson’s personality draining away from inside her. It left an acid aftertaste, like a partly undigested meal. She was glad she could walk away from it; the thought of being trapped inside her skin with all that shrewdness and suspicion, unable to break free, was nauseating.

  The room the guard showed her to was as clean and clinical as the halls. There was nothing but a built-in bed, a desk with a terminal, and a sanitary alcove. Her bag was waiting, and beside it lay a plastic-wrapped meal. Aleph stood absorbing solitude, waiting for the cool neutrality of selflessness to return.

  There was a mirror above the desk. She went to look at her face. Ordinary, Johanson had said. Inconspicuous. It was, of course. That was how she had been designed. She put her fingers on the image, and felt again the sensation of vacuum against her hand.

  *

  The staff cafeteria was a wasteland of spotless laminate. The tables were arranged in little islands separated by shoulder-high partitions, giving the illusion of privacy but not the reality. Johanson had foreseen that it would be a good place for Aleph to get near her quarry without being noticed, and so had arranged for them both to be there. As Aleph entered, she scanned the room and spotted her target instantly. She turned to pick up a tray.

  No one glanced at her. That was not remarkable; in this form she blended into crowds. But she suspected that no one noticed anyone else here. The tables were sparsely occupied, Formica faces eating from plastic dishes. Aleph chose a table where she could watch her subject through a crack in the partition. She ate slowly, studying what she was hired to become.

  Leah Lazarus was dressed in a dark, one-piece uniform that emphasized her tall, lean build. She sat sideways in her chair, absorbed in a book, her long legs stretched out. Once she moved, and Aleph glimpsed the title: Elizabethan poetry.

  She had a strong-featured face: deep eyes under dark brows; a long, Semitic nose; thick, curly hair cropped close except in front, where it fell forward into her eyes. Her expression was fiercely focused.

  Aleph had studied Johanson’s videodisk for an hour, and still knew little more than her immediate instructions. She was not to let Lazarus notice her for the first few days, but to absorb as much as she could at long range. By the time she actually met the woman, the assimilation would already have begun. Then she could set about winning Lazarus’ trust.

  The lack of information had made her wonder whether Johanson was concealing something distasteful about the job. The sight of Lazarus put that theory to rest; she was clearly not psychotic or diseased. There was even something about her that piqued Aleph’s professional interest. She watched closely, alert to the occasional thread of scent that came her way, trying to analyze its components. Yes, this would be a challenge.

  All the proteans she knew had a mental file of personality recipes—two teaspoons of cautiousness, half a cup of cruelty, a dash of guilt, and so on. Aleph could instantly sense an innovative combination of traits. But this one defied pigeonholes.

  Across the room there was a crash as someone dropped a tray of dishes. Everywhere faces turned to look. When Aleph turned back, Lazarus was gone.

  Aleph suppressed the urge to stand up and look for her. She felt disoriented; she had barely glanced away. She turned back to her meal.

  An arm reached across her shoulder, holding a cafeteria knife. “Watch closely,” said a voice. The knife flipped into the air, turned a flashing somersault, and then disappeared.

  Before Aleph could blink, Leah Lazarus was sitting in the seat opposite her. The knife was lying on the table between them. Lazarus held up a hand and pressed the knife’s point against her palm. With a slight scraping sound it went through, the point protruding from the back of her hand. She smiled and pulled it out, leaving not a mark.

  “You think it’s a trick knife, don’t you?” Lazarus said. “Here.” She held it out. Aleph took it; it was only a new stainless steel table knife. She handed it back. Lazarus flipped it over again and made it disappear. She crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair. “They’ll come along pretty soon to take it away. They don’t let me have sharp objects any more. Afraid I’ll dig my way out through the walls, I suppose.” She laughed.

  At such close range, her personality was a dazzling kaleidoscope. Manic energy. Recklessness. A trace of paranoia, perhaps.

  Aleph struggled to think of something cautiously human to say. “You mean you’re being watched?”

  “Of course. They hide the cameras in the lighting fixtures.” Lazarus pointed up at a recessed light trained on their table. Yes, thought Aleph, definitely paranoia.

  “So. Did Johanson send you?” Lazarus asked. Her black eyes were fixed on Aleph’s face. There was curiosity. Intelligence. Aleph realized she had to get away before the woman guessed. She didn’t want to.

  “What do you mean, send me? Oh, you saw me watching you.”

  “I see many things,” Lazarus said in the voice of a carnival fortune-teller. “I’d been wondering why she let me come here, after keeping me locked up for a month. One of her subtle management practices, you know. What’s your name?”

  Johanson’s videodisk ha
d given Aleph a false persona to use. She tried to take her eyes off Lazarus’ face long enough to think of it, then realized she had already paused too long. “You can call me Aleph,” she said.

  Lazarus’ eyebrows shot up at an angle. “The first of the sephiroth of the ancient cabalists, one of the tenfold emanations of God. Aleph, the primal letter. The cabalists believed there was a Light Aleph, the force of creation, and a Dark Aleph, the primal void. I wonder which you are.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Never mind.” Lazarus was studying her with a look of entrapped fascination. “You’re a protean anthroform, aren’t you?”

  Somehow, Aleph had bungled, given herself away. “What makes you think so?” she asked.

  “You have no fingerprints. You handled the knife, but there were no fingerprints when you gave it back.”

  “Is that why you gave it to me?”

  “Yes.” Lazarus hesitated. Aleph watched for the disgust that always came to humans when they knew; but it was not there. “Can I see? Your hands, I mean.” She seemed almost shy.

  Aleph held out her hand, and Lazarus took it carefully, studying the printless fingers. “What would happen if I pressed my fingers on yours?” she asked.

  “Your own print would grow there.”

  “How fast?”

  “A few hours.”

  Gently Lazarus pressed her thumb against Aleph’s, then one by one each fingertip. The breath caught in Aleph’s throat and she closed her eyes, for an intoxicating sense of being was rushing into her. Her skin tingled with its intensity.

  When she was able to look up again, Lazarus was studying her carefully. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Did I do that to you?”