Casting Shadows (The Passing of the Techno-Mages #1)

by Jeanne Cavelos

  “Why does he do it?” Galen asked, ending contact with the probe and picking up a conversation they’d begun earlier in the day.

  With a quick motion of her fingers, Isabelle broke contact as well, and she unfolded her legs and stretched. “He’s working with the Narns on the Khatkhata, and probably others like them, but he couldn’t be more different from them. No alcohol, no sex, no gourmet foods, no wild expenditures.”

  “He’s got over five million credits in his account. Brown draws a generous salary, but the Drakh doesn’t pay himself anything. As a middleman, he’s in a perfect position to capitalize on this.”

  “All he does is work, eat, and sleep,” Isabelle said.

  “You’re describing a monk,” Burell said, her face pressed to the viewer on the image processor. They both turned to her. “The behaviors and motivations are the same. He’s devoted to this work. It is his holy cause. No pleasures, no distractions. He’s acting just like a monk. Or Blaylock.”

  Galen wondered how he had failed to see it. All the signs were there.

  “How can helping the Shadows spread war and chaos across the galaxy be his holy cause?” Isabelle asked.

  “Because he is a Drakh. Because the Shadows are their lords.”

  Galen was astonished. “How do you know that?”

  Burell raised her head from the viewer. “To be a good techno-mage,” she said, “you have to know everything about everything.” She looked from Galen to Isabelle. “I just love the looks on your faces.”

  “What is your source?” Isabelle asked.

  “You know the mage Osiyrin?”

  “Was he a contemporary of Wierden?” Galen asked.

  “A little before her time, but yes, they did overlap. Osiyrin took an interest in the Drakh, who were figures of mystery even then. He studied them—surreptitiously, of course—and collected some fascinating data. His records are available.”

  “How did you come to know his work?” Isabelle asked.

  “Aside from my quest to know everything about everything?”

  “Aside from that,” said Isabelle, “which we accept without question.”

  “Late in life, he became the first mage ever to be reprimanded by the Circle, soon after it was formed by Wierden. There was a time, after my first reprimand that I was consumed with knowing who else had been so blessed, and for what reason. I didn’t quite make it through the whole long and ignominious list—to which I welcome Galen, our latest esteemed member—but I did get to Osiyrin, since he was first.

  “The records of the Circle’s proceedings are closed, though. When I couldn’t find the reason he was reprimanded I looked at some of his research, thinking perhaps that was it. The study of the Drakh seemed his most unusual piece of work. I don’t know why the Circle would reprimand him for it, but then I don’t know why the Circle does anything it does. I imagine they were afraid the Drakh would discover his work and call down the wrath of the Shadows upon the techno-mages.”

  “Can we read his work?” Galen asked. He realized he had a message.

  “There it is. And let that be a lesson to you. Know everything.” Isabelle said the last sentence with her, and Burell gave her a crooked smile.

  Burell returned to the experiment, yet Isabelle’s gaze lingered on her mother, her face falling into lines of worry. After a few seconds she seemed to become aware that Galen was watching her. “You take the first half of Osiyrin’s research and I’ll take the second,” she said. “Meet you at the end.”

  Galen nodded opening the document in his mind’s eye. It was written in the ancient runic language of the Taratimude, of which he had a basic understanding from studying the work of Wierden. It would take him far too long to read the work in that language, though, so he used his Taratimude program to translate it.

  He first scanned quickly through the text. It was short, only thirty-eight pages in length, but seemed to contain a wealth of information: images of Drakh, anatomical scans, descriptions of their language, their culture, their beliefs.

  “Let me do it!” Isabelle cried. “I’ve got you.”

  Isabelle had her arm around Burell’s shoulders. The yellow armchair was flashing between opacity and transparency, and Burell’s full-body illusion was flickering on and off, her figure alternating in a crazy strobe between red silk dress and black robe, elaborate coif and bare head youthful healthy face and... something else—a face that was off, that was not right....

  Galen stood, unsure how to help. Isabelle was trying to replace Burell’s conjured chair with one of her own.

  “Wait.” Burell’s face—healthy, distorted healthy, distorted a Jekyll and Hyde caught between its two identities—closed its eyes, concentrating. “I can get”—healthy—“it”—distorted—“back.”

  The yellow armchair faded toward transparency. The flickering slowed, black robe bare head lasting longer and longer with each cycle, red dress coiffed hair flashing ever more briefly, the cycle running down like the last spurts of a windup toy, or the final contractions of an exhausted heart. Finally the armchair dissolved, and Burell dropped an inch or so into the transparent chair created by Isabelle.

  “No!” Burell cried.

  Isabelle seized her in a fierce embrace. A sound came from Burell then, a sound Galen never wanted to hear again. A high, hollow cry, it was the sound of someone who had lost part of her body, part of herself; a person who was now partly dead and yet still partly alive.

  Galen stood with his hands at his sides. He had known Burell was weakening, worsening, but he had never dreamed she would lose her powers.

  He had felt at odds with the implants at first, yet already, he realized, he had begun to use them automatically, like he used his eyes or his hands. For someone who had lived with them and used them for twenty-five years, he couldn’t imagine what it would be like to lose them.

  “Get off,” Burell said, pushing Isabelle away. “Get off.”

  Isabelle stepped back, revealing Burell’s slumped, twisted body.

  “There are things I must tell you,” Burell said, her face broken, misshapen, “if you will hear them.”

  — chapter 11 —

  Burell’s hands were emaciated, her skin yellow, almost translucent. Within her robe, her body was hunched, her left shoulder poking upward. Her face looked like it had been broken into pieces. Her lips cut across her face at an odd angle, no longer quite able to close. Her right eye was twisted, drooping down to the side. Her left eyebrow stretched high on her forehead. The skin of her cheeks hung flat and papery. Galen thought it looked almost like the results of a stroke. Was that the condition Burell had been hiding?

  “You should rest,” Isabelle said.

  “No, I can keep silent no longer.” Burell’s voice had lost its depth, its power. Yet she somehow managed to enunciate clearly through uneven lips. She rubbed one hand over the other, her head hanging. “I’ve kept my work from you these many years because I didn’t want for you the life that has come to me—a life of reprimand, condemnation, and isolation. But I have taught you too well—to question, to examine, and to continue until you find an answer. And I have, perhaps, told you bits of my work when I should have remained silent. It was hard for me not to tell you everything.

  “I know that you have managed to access some of my findings. I know that you have conducted experiments on your own. And I know now that your curiosity will not be turned to a safer subject, though this has been a bittersweet truth for me to accept.”

  Burell paused, her uneven shoulders rising and falling with her tired breaths. She raised her gaze to Isabelle, though her head remained hanging. “If you are to study the tech, then I must tell you everything I know. Then perhaps you can succeed where I have failed. Then I can save you from what has happened to me.”

  Isabelle took her hand. “We will carry on your work together.”

  Burell gave her a crooked smile. “I can’t pretend to understand it. All I can do is point to some pieces that seem similar to thin
gs I understand, and ignore the pieces that don’t.” Her uneven eyes flicked to Galen. “As my resourceful daughter has discovered, a large part of the tech is made up of stem cells. These stem cells develop into different types of cells, growing into an additional system within each of our bodies, like a second nervous system. It connects itself intricately with all our systems, and in part becomes almost a mirror of our brain, something that echoes our processes, yet also enhances them. Our DNA comprises about half of the genetic material within these cells. The other half, I can’t identify. It may be from species we don’t know, or it may be engineered.

  “The cells also carry what we would think of as nonbiological elements. Some very sophisticated microcircuitry is in the cytoplasm, and more is on the cell membrane itself. On the membrane, this microcircuitry looks almost like”—she lifted an emaciated hand and pointed over her shoulder, where the implants would have discolored the skin around her spine—“on a much smaller scale. The microcircuitry seems to direct the growth and functioning of the implants, to impose control on each cell.”

  Galen remembered his initial discomfort with the implants, his feeling that they had a will, that they had desires. Perhaps it was the microcircuitry he had been responding to.

  Burell’s research seemed important and valid yet Galen couldn’t imagine how she’d been able to obtain samples for study. “Burell,” Galen said, “how have you been able to examine the tech in such depth?”

  “Another mage used to live in the next system over. Do you remember Craiselnek? Sour old woman. She died about eight years ago. I arrived to pay my respects before any of the members of the Circle. By the time they arrived to oversee the burning and disposal of her remains, there were a few pieces missing.”

  “You flayed her?” Galen was appalled.

  “I took a few small samples. I wish now I’d taken more.” A spasm passed over her broken face, and her breath caught in her throat. Her hand squeezed tightly around Isabelle’s.

  After a few moments, the hand relaxed, her breathing resumed. She continued as if nothing had happened. “There are many other elements in the implants. Clumps of micro-circuitry, like ganglia, that are interconnected with the neurons. Transceivers, relays, capacitors. Biochips that work as sensors. Some of the stem cells develop into specialized cells that are actually tiny manufacturing plants, building our organelles. Others develop into types of cells I’ve never seen before. Cells whose purpose I can’t even guess.” Burell took her hand from Isabelle and pressed her palms flat against the arms of the chair, shifting her weight. They slipped off, too weak. She slumped to one side.

  Isabelle made the arms on the chair higher to hold Burell upright. “You can finish later,” Isabelle said. “Or just give us access to your files. You need to rest.”

  Burell’s head hung against her shoulder. She raised one eye to them. “There’s one more thing I have to tell you.” She clenched her teeth, and with great effort brought her head erect. As she continued, her voice was softer than before, but still clear, steady. “About the transceivers. The tech has several of them. They allow us to communicate with other mages, connect to our places of power, access signals. All of these transceivers are connected with the neuron-heavy areas of the tech, so they can respond to our directions. They’re in the brain, neck, shoulders, and upper spinal column. All but one.

  “This one transceiver seems the same as the others, but it sits near the base of the spinal column, away from the most developed areas of the tech. It’s still connected, but doesn’t seem to be in the best place to receive our directions. I wondered what sort of signals it might be set up to receive. One of the pieces I took from Craiselnek included this transceiver. I tried sending it signals from my place of power, from probes—various signals, but it didn’t pick up any of them. It seemed to be listening for one particular signal.

  “As I failed to get any response, I fed more and more exotic signals into it. One day, the transceiver finally responded. The signal I had sent was an elaborate and intense one, in the radio band. Craiselnek’s transceiver responded by sending out a complex answer. But the tech itself didn’t seem to do anything or be affected in any way. If that had been a normal signal, like one sent from Craiselnek’s place of power to her, then the signal would have traveled into her brain, to pass information to her.

  “I sent the radio signal again, but the transceiver didn’t respond the second time. And after that, Craiselnek’s implants refused to work consistently. Some of the pieces had become inert, while others worked fine. I thought perhaps it was the long-term effects of having implants outside the body. I’d had the tech about three years by then.

  “I fought my curiosity for as long as I could. I think I lasted almost a year. Then I had to try it. I sent the radio signal to my own transceiver.”

  Isabelle’s head turned slightly back and forth.

  “The rest, as they say, is stupidity. The first time I sent the signal, my implants sent the answering signal. The second time—and I held off a month before trying it again—about a third of my implants went inert. That’s when I sent you off on that silly research project. I was a bit panicked. I couldn’t use any of the implants for a while. Although some were still active, I had to relearn how to access them.

  “The control has not come naturally, though. And it is not without cost. Some of my own systems have had to carry signals meant for the tech. My body isn’t equipped to do that. It’s been getting harder and harder to make the tech respond.”

  Galen realized his first impression of her condition had not been far off. Like a stroke patient, she’d been partially paralyzed, and had regained some ability only by relearning how to use her body, how to bypass those pathways that had become inert.

  He remembered the sickening feeling of paralysis when Elric overrode his control of the chrysalis. That must reflect only a small hint of what Burell suffered. “There must be some way to undo the effect of the signal,” he said.

  Burell’s head rose and fell with each breath. “I’ve experimented with Craiselnek’s implants for the past four years. Nothing works. I must have overloaded the transceiver with that signal. It froze up the system. There’s no way now to unfreeze it.”

  “Will you give us access to your work?” Galen asked. “Perhaps we can find some way to help.”

  “Get me a screen.” The last word was slurred. Burell was exhausted. Her body had slumped further in the chair. She no longer tried to look up at them. “I will give you the key to all my work. Which I keep in my place of power. But I do not give it for you to help me. I am beyond help. I give it to aid in your own work.”

  Isabelle laid a screen in her lap and pressed a stylus into her hand. Burell jerked it onto the screen, so she could draw the diagram that was the key to her most secret places. Her emaciated hand shook as she labored to form the symbols precisely. Her breath sounded heavily in the silence.

  At the top she rendered a simple drawing of a solar system, and below wrote several lines of text. Galen recognized the letters from the alphabet of the native Wychad.

  As Burell finished, Isabelle expelled a short breath.

  “What does it mean?” he asked.

  Isabelle recited the words. “‘I do not believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.’”

  Galen recognized the quote. It was Galileo.

  Isabelle took the screen and stylus from her, and as she turned to put them down, Burell began to crumble forward. Galen rushed up and grabbed her shoulders, holding her upright.

  “I’m all right,” Burell said.

  “That’s it! I don’t care what you say.” Isabelle snatched something from her pocket and grabbed Burell’s head in her hands. A crystal on a chain dangled from between her fingers.

  “I have to try to heal you.” Isabelle closed her eyes, and her fingers moved slightly against Burell’s skin.

  “Galen, stop her!” Burell batted an arm at I
sabelle. “If she connects with my implants, hers may become inert too.” Burell’s uneven green eyes pleaded with him.

  Panic welling up, Galen grabbed Isabelle, driving her back into a table covered with equipment. “Wait!” he said. “Stop!”

  “We have to try it! I have to try!” Isabelle ripped her arms free. The blue tinge of a defensive shield snapped over her body. With a flash of her fingers she conjured a fireball in one hand. Her eyes shone with reflected flames, and her lips articulated with fierce precision. “Don’t stand in my way.”

  Galen’s body raced with the instinctive need to defend itself, just as it had with Elizar. He had no talent for shields. The only defense was a counterattack. Galen fought the urge, the sudden surge of energy driving through him like a cataract.

  “You would invade me against my wishes?” Burell said.

  “I can’t let you die. I have to heal you. I’ve waited too long already.” Isabelle’s face was flushed.

  The fireball’s heat burned into Galen’s skin. He held tightly to the racing energy searching for outlet. He must keep control.

  Anger rose within him, anger that she would dare to threaten him. She knew what he could do. Her shield would be no defense against it. Why would she tempt him?

  “You can’t heal me, Isabelle. This is no disease of the body. If you try to heal my implants, if your tech connects to mine, yours will become inert as well.”

  “You don’t know that,” Isabelle pleaded. “You have to let me try.”

  “I can’t. I couldn’t stand to lose you. You are the one beautiful thing that has come out of my life. The one thing that tells me why I was here at all. I’m so proud of you.