She was definitely sitting up, not lying down, but she had no idea what the support might be. She was on something, some kind of device or prosthetic, since she could feel a rubbery form and seal that covered her crotch area and went back to near the top of her buttocks. It wasn’t the only support because it wasn’t wide enough, but it certainly had a utilitarian purpose. It caught, washed off, and flushed waste.
Angel began to chant softly, attempting to hum, and after some false tries she managed it. She was so pleased to get a steady tone, she tried shaping some words while still keeping the monotone hum, in effect singing or chanting them. “Hmmmm… Is anybody else here?” she managed, her voice sounding unnaturally low but giving a fair Gregorian chant sound.
Someone else was there! She was right! The other tried to respond, but had the same kind of gargling noise she’d tried. Slowly, Angel attempted to teach the other to hum from the diaphragm, then up and out, form the words, keep singing. She had no idea why this worked, but felt her voice growing stronger and her command of it returning the more she did it.
The other used a different sort of tonal scale but managed eventually to raise a steady tone, then a series of tones. The other’s voice, too, sounded unnaturally low, but was definitely another woman.
“Just answer me simply,” Angel chanted. “I am Angel. Who are you?”
“Ming,” the other managed to sing back, keeping the tone going, except for breathing in to help retrain the larynx.
Ming! “Can you see at all?” Angel sang to her.
“Light and dark. No shapes,” Ming came back, increasingly getting the hang of it.
“Better than I am,” Angel told her. “All is gray to me. Can you move at all?”
“No, I cannot,” the other sang back. “I cannot feel my arms and legs.”
There was the sound of a door opening at the other end of the room and of footsteps approaching. The person walked very close to them, then stopped.
“Well, I see you are both awake.” It was Ari’s voice. He sounded pleasant, even friendly, his old self. Ming hated him most for that, and Angel tried hard not to. To her, God had for some reason delivered her to the devil and was testing her. She did not know why, but it was still God’s will.
“I heard what sounded like singing. That’s actually a fair method of getting vocal chords working again after cryo paralysis, which is itself very common. The Kharkovs also had problems with it. Feel free to keep doing it as long as it is comfortable. I don’t mind. It’s actually kind of pleasant.”
“I cannot sing the words I have for you,” Ming responded, doing just enough of a chant as she could.
“Umph. I know how you must feel. I didn’t want this, Ming. You weren’t supposed to be here. You were supposed to be on the first lifeboat.”
“I did not know your depths,” Ming managed.
“Hey, I didn’t know you were a cop, either! All this time, and we find out we have our nasty secrets. You were more undercover than I was. All my standard work was for companies owned or controlled by Wallinchky, most of them legit. There is just this occasional job that requires me to get on the unpleasant side of his works. It’s not like I have much of a choice. I’m the third generation to work for him, and he’s been my patron, sponsor, and employer for all my life.”
“Where are we and what has happened to us?” Angel asked him, attempting a sentence without singing it and pleased to get it basically out.
He turned. “Well, hello! Bad luck for you, too, but you were born and raised to do what you do, too, right? By the way—the one or sometimes two octave drop in voices generally goes away over time.”
“Can you answer her question?” Ming managed.
“Okay. You’re in the Grabant System, on the fourth planet from the sun, a chilly ball of rock with an atmosphere so thin you’d asphyxiate before you’d freeze if you ran outside, but outside’s a real interesting place. It’s one of those ancient worlds with those weird remains of the Ancient Ones all over. You’re in the infirmary in Wallinchky’s getaway and museum here, which doesn’t impact the ruins. The infirmary is entirely computer run, including surgery, but it’s first rate. Right now you’ve both been—well, operated on and placed in recuperative mounts, but once things heal 1 think you’ll find that the intent is to regenerate.”
“Regenerate! Then—” Ming gasped.
“That’s right. Don’t panic, though. There’s nothing here that can’t be restored. Still, at the moment, you both are basically just heads and torsos. Really great-looking torsos, I might add, but that’s about it. Wallinchky will be in to see you sometime today or tomorrow. When he does, he’ll— well, outline the options. Believe me, though—I’ve seen worse than you in here, and they looked fine when all was said and done.”
“You mean like Wallinchky’s two lethal airheads?” Ming asked.
“No, only some here-and-there stuff had to be done to them. Hell, I’ve had an arm replaced here, and another time a toe.”
There was a buzzing sound from Ari’s direction. Then they heard a clicking, and a moment later he said, “Yes, sir?”
The muffled rush of conversation was too scrambled to be overheard, obviously through a communicator, and Ari responded, “Yes, sir. Right away. Yes, they’re both awake. Yes, I’ll be right there.”
A moment later he was speaking to them again: “I’ll have the medlab give you whatever functions you may feel better having, but I have to go.”
“Yes, don’t forget to wag your tail when you lick your master’s ass,” Ming responded acidly. “As to what we want, how about a nice, big bomb?”
Ari sighed, and they could hear him walking out.
Almost immediately robotics within the infirmary started to click and whir into action. Angel felt something come over her head, a helmet, it seemed, with clicking and whirring sounds inside. A membrane that came across her face briefly, let up before it caused any real discomfort, then rose back up again, freeing her.
“What was that?” Ming wanted to know, but in a short while the same thing happened to her. After it was over, they could only compare notes and some feelings about Citizen Martinez. Ming was far less charitable; she’d never been all that religious.
It didn’t take long to discover what was happening. The machinery snapped back into action again, and Angel felt something being placed over her eyes and held by a band on her head. They were more like goggles than glasses, and extended out a bit, but after a bit of disorientation they snapped on, and for the first time since coming to she could more or less see. Her vision was limited to straight ahead, and it had little color, but the detail was quite sharp. She was able to look over and see Ming for the first time, and watch a similar but not identical procedure, employing artificial hands and thin prehensile tendrils from above. Ming’s eyewear resembled a rectangular dark piece of plastic or glass in a welder’s frame, with an elastic strap to hold it to her head.
Ming was set in a metallic box about a meter square, and appeared to emerge from it about at the navel. Her naked form was apparent the rest of the way, but her arms had been cleanly amputated just below the shoulders and even tapered in. Her face was fine, but as hairless as Angel’s, and she didn’t seem to have eyebrows.
Angel realized that she must look essentially the same, and in the same kind of outfit. She had a long enough neck to be able to get at least some sense of herself.
“So, we’re talking heads,” Angel said.
Ming gave a dry chuckle. “Well, at least we can feel assured that nobody is going to rape us, although I wouldn’t be surprised if Mister Big didn’t try and ensure that we felt entirely helpless and victimized. He gets off on that.” She sighed. “I’m sorry you got sucked into this. I’m sorry I didn’t get on that boat myself. I don’t know what I thought I was going to do, but I just never expected Ari to blow me away like that. I’ve known him since university, for Heaven’s sake! Of all the people I might have thought would be my enemy, he would be just a bit hi
gher than my own family.”
“I know how it must hurt,” Angel told her. “Still, I sense the conflict in him. Who knows how he might be if he were ever outside of that evil man’s influence?”
“Fat lot of good that’s going to do us,” Ming noted. “He didn’t need to do this to us. We weren’t going anywhere. He did it deliberately, not only to leave us helpless, but also because he knows how people like me are trained, and he saw the video of you outmaneuvering Tann Nakitt—who, I must tell you, is in trouble himself here someplace because he decided to cast his lot with you, although I think he might have in any event. I wonder what happened to him?”
“Probably being defanged and declawed,” Angel guessed.
“Do not underestimate him. Still, what can any of us do here? Where would we go?”
Angel thought about that. “What do you think they will do with us?”
“Play with us. Terrorize and victimize us if we give them any satisfaction. And then they’ll try and break you. Me, I think, they’ll just go directly for a mindscrub.”
“You mean like the Rehabilitation Centers?” Angel was aghast.
“Yes, the ones for the worst offenders and those who cannot be let back into civilized company. They wire up your brain, send in their signals and probes, download what they find in your thinking parts, and then they erase. Then you get reprogrammed by uploading a very simple routine, after which you’ll be happy and smiling and totally obedient and do and think and believe everything your trainer tells you. You’ll have no memory of who or what you were, and no curiosity about it, either. If you have anything valuable and unique, or might be useful as your old self, they might take the download and create a virtual mind in the computer, then catalog, categorize, rearrange, pick and choose. It is tricky to do, but it’s done all the time. It’s known as a ‘turnaround’ in the psychiatric trade. I doubt if they’ll try it with me, though. We’re regularly tested each time the passwords and authorities are changed, which is often, and it has never been undetectable.”
“It sounds like killing the soul but leaving the body intact. It is the most immoral thing I have ever heard,” Angel told her. “How can we stop this?”
“Honey,” Ming said sadly, “look at the two of us, look around, and remember what that son of a dung dealer Ari said about where we are. There is no way to avoid what will happen. None. The only hope I have is that, somehow, I can either kill myself or at least take some of them with me before I disappear.”
It was impossible to tell the passage of time in the infirmary, with just the two of them there. They spoke almost nonstop, until it seemed to Angel that she’d told Ming everything about herself, and that Ming had told her much the same. The closeness they felt at the end of it belied their radically different backgrounds, traditions, and experiences; they felt a bond closer than sisters.
The medical cubes, or whatever they were, provided all they required; neither felt hungry, nor, after being awake for a while, was there any sense of thirst, let alone dehydration.
There were long gaps, though. When the medical computer wanted them to sleep, it simply injected something and they went to sleep, often in mid-sentence. Awakening later, there was clear evidence that work was being done on both of them, although it was difficult to tell what, save in the eyes. Ming’s vision was clearing, so that enhancement was no longer needed, but she found it impossible to focus. In fact, her vision was excellent, but she seemed locked in to a fixed focal length of infinity. Things far away to about two meters were fairly clear; closer was a blur.
Angel had a different treatment. Although damaged eyes could be replaced or regenerated easily, one of the things they took for granted, hers were replaced with artificial eyes that appeared normal, but retained the fish-eye vision and poor peripheral vision. She could focus, but it was like focusing a telephoto lens by willing it, rather than the natural sort of focus she’d had.
“They probably are cameras,” Ming guessed. “Transmitting type as well. Somebody will be able to see anything you do. They’re common in dangerous undercover work, but I don’t think that’s the purpose here. It shows he has different plans for you than for me, that’s for sure.”
Ari showed up now and again, but didn’t speak to them much and got out as quickly as possible. Ming’s bile was far too nasty to be taken for long, but Angel could see that his reaction did prove he was something of a wimp, as Ming had said. A Jules Wallinchky would have slapped the hell out of her for what she was saying, as she was held there helplessly.
Finally, the big man himself appeared. He’d trimmed his hair and beard and looked distinguished, even dapper, although, like most little men who’d risen higher than they dreamed, he was overfestooned with expensive rings and jewelry. He wore pure satin lounging pajamas, not the synthetic kind.
“So, my living statues, I am so pleased we’ve been able to get you back up to strength so quickly,” he greeted them, sounding like a genuine humanitarian.
“Yeah, we’re so pretty you should plate us and put us in your study,” Ming responded acidly.
He smiled. “You know, I know people who did things like that. Among the drug lords there’s almost a mania for it. They trim down and freeze up their enemies, captives they’ve gotten the best of, and sometimes people they hold for blackmail purposes, and they actually make living statuary out of them. The idea is mostly a reminder to would-be competitors and their own ambitious underlings, of course. I consider the practice rather tacky and low-class myself. If you need a lamp, buy a good one, I say.” He sighed. “Well, I heard you’re both well enough for us to get you out of there, and that the unfortunate eye damage is repaired. Putting you in regeneration tanks for long periods, while eventually the goal, would keep you out of circulation too long, and I have other business elsewhere. So, first we’ll rig you as temporaries, and then perhaps we’ll be able to give you some semblance of humanity again. It won’t take much practice, they tell me. I’ll see you in a couple of days.”
And then he left, leaving Ming amazed at how little he’d lorded it over them.
“He almost sounded human,” Angel commented.
“Don’t worry. He won’t disappoint us. I know him too well,” Ming promised her.
What the “temporaries” were was revealed the next day, when both of them awoke for the first time not inside cubes but on real hospital beds.
Angel was astonished to wake up in a reclining position, and it was a few seconds before she realized that she had stretched her arms. Arms!
Well, not quite.
The blend was seamless; there was nothing of the bloody stump, only a blur where her flesh met a tough rubbery skin that extended down to an elbow, out to a wrist, then to hands. They weren’t her hands, nor models of them—the fingers were much longer, for one thing—but they were very human hands.
Except that the whole thing was semitransparent, as if the arm and hand had been made in some kind of machine from a mold and then attached to her nerve endings and nervous system somehow. It was odd to almost see through your arm and hand. It also didn’t feel like real flesh. Oh, it bent and manipulated quite naturally, but aside from a real concentration of feeling in the fingertips, it felt kind of dead. She drew a transparent nail across her right arm and could follow its progress, but did not have the sensitivity she expected.
Pulling off the covers, she saw that her legs and feet were the same, extending down from an area that covered the lower part of her buttocks. There was a nearly full-length mirror on a bulkhead near the bed, and she slowly rose, gingerly put her feet to the floor, then got up and stood for the first time in a long time. It took a little practice; she was unsteady, and used a table to remain standing, but it wasn’t all that hard to do. Then, again slowly, taking tiny steps, she managed to cross the two meters or so to the mirror.
Her eyes looked odd, as if they had tiny reddish-brown lights centered in them. Her face, and body, were entirely hairless—no eyebrows, no pubic hair—but sh
e did have unnatural-looking black lashes.
The overall effect was of a kind of android, a very human-looking robot, with clear, soft, plasticlike limbs and an eerie cast to the eyes. It wasn’t her, but a kind of artistic approximation.
She looked around, found some kind of pastries on a large dish and a glass of what appeared to be grape juice. She saw no reason not to eat it, and felt an urge to do so anyway, and it tasted very, very good. She could feel every bite, every gulp of liquid go down, at least until it hit her stomach. If I had this stuff for my chest as well, I’d be a living anatomy exhibit, she thought with a trace of silliness. The more she stood, the more she used her arms and legs, the more comfortable they were. It wasn’t that they became normal; she always knew that these were artificial. It was becoming easy, though, to tune out that feeling and simply use the limbs in a natural fashion. The arms, lacking true muscles, also had little lifting ability; there was enough strength to do anything basic, but hardly enough force to really smash a cream puff. The legs were more reinforced; she could feel a kind of stiff bonelike presence there even though it wasn’t visible. Still, she suspected that while she could walk all over and stand almost indefinitely, she couldn’t run or kick much, if at all.
She wondered where Ming was. She looked around for some kind of robe or cloak, but found none. She tried the door, which to her surprise slid back to reveal the main infirmary, and went to the next door and opened it.
It was clear from the look of it that Ming had been there, and that Ming had already undergone what she just had, but she wasn’t there now. It seemed ridiculous to wait, and she was concerned about whether they were already erasing her friend.
She turned and walked toward the infirmary exit doors, trying to pick up her pace. She discovered then that she could walk so fast and no faster; the legs simply wouldn’t respond beyond a normal gait.
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