The Cyborg and the Sorcerers

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  The Cyborg

  And The Sorcerers

  Lawrence Watt-Evans

  Copyright © 1982

  eBook v1.1

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  About the Author

  Dedication

  Dedicated to my father, Gordon Goodwin Evans

  Chapter One

  HE LAY BACK ON THE ACCELERATION COUCH AND WONDERED idly whether he had been officially decommissioned, and whether anybody left alive had the authority to decommission him. He had no idea, and there was no way he could find out. He had been under total communications silence when the D-series destroyed Old Earth's military—and probably its civilization as well—and since then, of course, there had been no signal at all from his home base on Mars. There could be little doubt that his superiors were all long dead; if the war hadn't killed them, the passage of time would have. The fourteen years of subjective time he had spent in space worked out to about three hundred years of outside time, and he doubted very much that anyone on Old Earth had been making breakthroughs in geriatrics after the war was lost.

  In fact, it was entirely possible that there was no one at all left alive on Mars or Old Earth. Even if he chose not to believe the enemy propaganda broadcasts he had picked up all those years ago claiming total victory, he had overheard enough ordinary ship-to-ship chatter to know that his side had lost the war quite decisively. That didn't mean that the other side had won, but it did mean that the world he had grown up in was gone forever.

  None of this proved he hadn't been decommissioned; there might be enough odd survivors scattered about to have formed a successor government, and it was possible that some general somewhere, in a fit of tying up loose ends, had put an official stop to the IRU program.

  Of course, it didn't matter what anybody said or did, or what was legally or technically true. As long as he and his damned computer hadn't received their release code they were still an IRU, and as long as they hadn't received their recall code they would continue their current open-ended reconnaissance. It didn't matter in the slightest whether he had been decommissioned or not, because if he tried to do anything about it the computer would burn out his brain.

  If he had been left to his own devices he would have surrendered long ago, immediately after he learned that his side had lost and Old Earth's rebellious colonies had conquered the mother world. He had tried to convince the computer that that was the sensible thing to do, that there was no point in fighting on. He had tried to explain that there was no one left alive who knew their release code or recall code.

  The computer hadn't cared at all. Its programming was very explicit in forbidding anything resembling surrender, and it reminded him unnecessarily that it was programmed to kill him if he disobeyed that programming. The Command's method of ensuring the loyalty of its IRU cyborgs and making certain that none of them fell alive into enemy hands was very simple; any attempt at surrender, or any sign of cooperation if captured, and the thermite bomb at the base of his skull would go off. They had assured him that such a death would be quite slow and painful, and he had believed every word. At the time he even thought it a good and clever idea; since the D-series, he had cursed it at great length.

  It didn't matter at all whether he had been decommissioned or not, but it was something to think about, and after fourteen years alone with his ship that was a precious commodity.

  He hadn't been in space all that time, of course; there had been half a dozen planetfalls. Unfortunately, in accordance with his orders, they had all been on enemy worlds, with the computer rigorously enforcing the strictures against fraternization with the enemy. He had remained alone, regardless of how many people he encountered.

  It didn't bother him too much. He had been selected, after all, to be able to endure all the hardships that might befall an Independent Reconnaissance Unit cyborg, and loneliness was one of those hardships—perhaps the worst of them. Contrary to the popular myth, to the superman image the government press spread that attracted so many candidates, there was no need for an IRU pilot to be a perfect physical specimen with the build of the proverbial Greek god; in fact, such a physique would be a definite disadvantage in the undercover work an IRU might have to perform, as it would be far too likely to attract notice. It wasn't the body that was important, because regardless of what a candidate started with he would be rebuilt, his skeleton reinforced with steel, his muscles stripped and reconstructed, his nervous system rewired to inhuman speed and accuracy, all without changing his appearance.

  It was his mind that had to be special. Drugs and hypnotic conditioning could do only so much; modern neurosurgery and hormone regulation helped, but still, only certain rare individuals had the sort of mind that could adapt to the demands put upon it as an IRU. There was the loneliness, first and foremost, and the incredible boredom of piloting a one-man ship between the stars.

  It was known right from the start that an interstellar war would have to drag on for decades, while the ships from each side crossed the vast empty spaces between stars. The speed of light, as Einstein had long ago explained, was an absolute limit on starship velocity. Human technology still remained below that limit, so that journeys to even the nearest stars took years—and Old Earth had spread her colonies beyond the nearest stars. The contraction of time experienced at near-light velocities helped considerably, so that a human being could make a voyage of several light-years in a few subjective months, but still, those months added up. Ordinary craft carried a dozen people at the very least, who frequently came to hate each other—but who were not alone. IRU ships were strictly solo. The pilot of an IRU had to be able to survive those months and years alone without quite going mad.

  The drugs and hypnosis helped. After fourteen years, though, they didn't help much.

  Besides handling the loneliness, an IRU cyborg had to be capable of doing his job; he had to be a starship pilot, an interstellar navigator, an assassin, a spy, a saboteur, a soldier. The IRU fleet was the elite of Old Earth's military, and was expected to do everything too complex or too subtle to be handled by brute force—not that the Command had been stinting of brute force; an IRU ship carried as much armament as could be crammed into it.

  He had gone over all this more often than he could count; whenever an entertaining train of thought petered out, he found himself reviewing once again why he needed to be entertained in the first place. He was an isolated survivor of a defeated military force, one of Old Earth's elite; he was IRU 205, code-named Slant.

  It occurred to him, as it sometimes did, that he hadn't always thought of himself in those terms; there had been a time, long ago, when he had been a civilian. His name had been … oh, what was it? He had forgotten again. His hypnotic conditioning was supposed to blank out any memories of civilian life that might interfere with his efficient functioning, which generally meant everything relating to him as a specific individual. They had left all his
impersonal knowledge of events and behavior on the grounds that it could be useful. They had erased his old identity—but the conditioning had been done fourteen years ago, fourteen years without reinforcement, far longer than it was meant to last, and he could sometimes remember his old name. He had been Samuel Turner, a nondescript North American sort of name, and he knew in an abstract way that he had grown up in North America, mostly in the northeastern area. He remembered streets, schools, parks, and a few years of college—but no names, no individual faces, no family life.

  Trying to remember his name was an interesting diversion; enough of a block lingered to ensure that he never retained it for more than a few minutes. Once, several years earlier, he had developed an irrational fear that he might forget it permanently. This had been shortly after he had first managed to recall it at all, and he had had some idea that it might someday matter to know it. He had written it down somewhere, and had not looked at it since; it was comforting, in a minor way, to know that it was safely recorded. It kept the game of trying to remember it from becoming too frustrating; he could always reassure himself, when the name was reluctant to come forth, that he could dig out the note he had stuck in one of his books and read it. Knowing that made frustration bearable, and sooner or later the name would always come to him; he had never yet had to try and find the note, the exact location of which he had long since forgotten.

  Having remembered his old name, he lost interest in it, and as his attention turned to other things he promptly forgot it again, as swiftly as ever.

  He looked at the glass-fronted bookcase he had bolted to the forward bulkhead, which looked incredibly out of place in the sleek control cabin. It was jammed full of old bound books, mostly paperback novels and art histories, many of which held notes he had written to himself—one such note consisting simply of his name, whatever it was. He had spent his entire enlistment bonus on furnishing the ship, and most of the money had gone for the archaic cabinet and old-fashioned printed volumes. He derived a certain special enjoyment from handling the books that a computer library printout didn't provide; the action of turning the pages gave him a feeling of progress that the steady crawl of words on a screen or a calm recitation by the computer didn't, a feeling that he had accomplished something when he finished reading the book. He also found it easier to flip back pages by hand when he wanted to check back for something than to locate it in the computer.

  And of course the art books had those lovely old flat, glossy photographs, far more appealing than any images the computer could conjure up. His computer had been designed for military use; it could pilot a ship, plan tactics, target and fire its weapons, analyze enemy ships or installations—but the fidelity in its video and holographies left something to be desired, except when he used the direct-control linkage, which he found uncomfortable and used as little as possible.

  Therefore, despite the jokes his compatriots had made about his reading habits, he had stocked the bookcase and brought it along, and there it was. He had read every book in it at least twice, studied every photograph over and over. He had similarly exhausted the computer's library, both text and video—at least, he thought he had; it was hard to be certain. He had definitely gone through every title that sounded the least bit interesting. There was little else to do while the computer was piloting.

  It occurred to him that he had spent all his time lately in the control cabin or the galley or the shower; perhaps he could find something to interest him in one of the other compartments. Perhaps it was time to rotate the decor in the control cabin.

  He looked around the ovoid room. The thick chameleon fur carpeting that lined all the walls—and the floor and ceiling, which were indistinguishable from the walls—was a rich golden yellow, and had been for weeks. Three bright nylon tapestries were hooked into the carpet, one on either side and one directly opposite the bookcase; cylindrical lightbars were extruded from various points around the room, providing a pleasantly diffuse illumination. Fur carpet, bookcase, tapestries, lightbars—that was the entire room, except for the acceleration couch he lay on and the direct-control cable that was attached to it. He wondered if perhaps he could have spent his money better.

  Of course, he had other furnishings in the aft storage compartments. There were several statuettes and small sculptures, and an assortment of hangings for the walls—everything from simple watercolors to tuned crystal-and-wire matrices that droned eerie music when blown on, either by Slant or by the ship's air circulation system.

  It probably was time to rotate furnishings; the tapestries had had their turn. He could mount a few statuettes on lightbars; there were some electrostatic adhesive disks somewhere on board that would keep them secure on such makeshift pedestals.

  It might, he thought, be a welcome change just to have different colors; he thought a command to the computer, and the golden chameleon fur turned glossy black. That was certainly more dramatic, with the extruded lightbars in bright contrast to the walls; the tapestries stood out vividly, red and blue and gold. The bookcase, haphazardly packed with multicolored bindings, stood out too clearly against the dark background; it looked sloppy. He turned the fur white.

  That was better. The lightbars were scarcely visible, and although the bookcase still stood out, it seemed quietly dark now instead of bright and rowdy.

  As usual, playing with the chameleon fur aroused his artistic interests. He had studied art history in college mostly because the courses happened to fit his schedule neatly—a detail of civilian life that he had, oddly, been allowed to remember—but he did have a genuine interest in color, form, and composition. That was why he had all the books and art objects; he had, he recalled, fancied himself something of a scholar in the artistic area, back when he was young and naïve. He had thought that when the war was over he could retire honorably and spend his days studying mankind's attempts to create beauty.

  Instead he was still out in space, crawling his way across the galaxy, playing out the role of spy and saboteur on behalf of an extinct nation, studying each world's capacity to destroy other worlds.

  It could be worse; at least he was primarily interested in military targets. His mission was to determine of each world he came across whether it was capable of launching an attack on Old Earth, and where such capability existed, to destroy it if possible. He was to capture any new weapons he came across, so that they could be duplicated by his side back on Mars. It was not a particularly bad job, if one had to be an IRU. He had heard that some of his compatriots had been assigned terror missions, with instructions to destroy whatever they found and slaughter whoever they could; that was the sort of assignment he could not have handled. He wondered whether any of those IRUs were still, like himself, wandering about, unable to surrender. He hoped that there were none, that any such that might have existed were all long dead. He could justify his actions to some extent on the grounds that he was destroying war machinery, and therefore promoting peace, but there could be no justification for simply wreaking as much havoc as possible.

  Of course, he knew his own justification was just a rationalization; he fought on because he had to, to survive, and probably a terrorist IRU would do the same.

  That line of thought was depressing, leading back again to the prospect of having his brain burned out if he tried to surrender; he dropped it and looked about at the white walls. The tapestries stood out in dark contrast, and he decided white was too harsh. He was considering light blue, trying to envision it before he actually tried it, when a chime sounded, the computer's warning signal.

  He started. It had been months since he had heard anything—really heard, through his ears—except the steady, quiet hum of the ship going about its business, and the little rustles and mumps he made in going about his own.

  "What's up?" he asked the computer. He spoke aloud, unnecessarily, and his voice sounded strange in his ears.

  "Ship is now entering a star system. Standard procedure calls for cyborg unit to assume control," it re
plied silently through the telepathic device in his skull.

  Slant grunted and reached for the direct-control cable at the head of the couch. He had been disconnected for months, maybe years, letting the computer run the ship since they had left the last system, and his hair had grown down over the socket in the back of his neck; he pulled the hair aside and plugged the cable in. It took a moment's effort; he was out of practice and had to work entirely by feel, not having eyes in the back of his head. He suspected that the long disconnection had let his body's natural growth and healing processes twist the socket a bit out of line, as well. Eventually, though, the thousands of phi-contacts slid home, and he was in control of the ship, hooked directly into the main computer as well as in telepathic radio contact with it through the terminal in his brain.

  It took two or three seconds before his piloting skills came back; for a moment the data came through as a jumbled mass of sensation. Then his conditioning took over, unscrambling the signals, and he felt the ship as his body, felt the gravity-well of the star-sun ahead, knew exactly the ship's relative velocity, knew what radiation, electromagnetic or otherwise, was reaching the ship. The interstellar hydrogen that served as some of the fuel for the fusion drive was much thicker here; that was usual in the neighborhood of a star.

  He was decelerating steadily; the near-light velocities that were necessary for interstellar travel were downright dangerous within a system, where meteors, asteroids, or even small uncharted moons or planets might get in one's way. Although the computer had, of course, been slowing the ship for weeks, his speed still seemed uncomfortably great; an outer planet slipped by too quickly to examine properly, though he noted it was an ordinary gas giant of unimpressive size.

  This system, the computer informed him, was listed as enemy-held and heavily populated. An attack force of conventional warships had been sent to this area, but there was no record of what had become of it, no indication whether or not it had reached this system.