by Simon Hawke
Breck had once told me, with characteristic black humor, that psychos could not afford to doubt the reality of their perceptions. It was an involuted pun, one that grimly underscored the thin line between a Pyschodrome pro and a psychotic. The only difference between our sort of psycho and the real thing was that we were better able to handle alternate realities-at least until we crossed over that line. I could not consider that a possibility. That way, literally, lay madness.
That left one other explanation. If it wasn't Game Control, and if I wasn't going crazy, then it could only have been Tyla. We knew that shapechangers could read minds. And at least one of them-the ambimorph Coles had code named Chameleon-was learning how to use a biochip to send. Tyla could be an ambimorph.
Or maybe it was Higgins.
What did we really know about him, anyway? It occurred to me that this whole thing could be a trap. What if both Higgins and Tyla were shapechangers? What better way to divert suspicion from themselves than to have staged that confrontation in the Red Zone? The Purgatory settlements had to be infested with the creatures. And all we had to do was catch one. I felt as if I'd been given a speargun and told to bring home a fish for dinner-then dumped into the middle of a school of sharks.
I had to talk to Breck. I had to convince him that I hadn't simply fallen asleep on watch. But I had to have a chance to talk with him alone and that would be difficult with Tyla and Higgins around. Supposedly, Tyla didn't speak our language. However, we had only Higgins's word for that. And if she was a shapechanger, she wouldn't need to speak our language. She could simply read our minds. She could be reading my mind even now . . .
I stopped short, my heart pounding, my stomach suddenly in knots as paranoia washed over me in waves. It was insane. There was absolutely no defense. How could you hope to prevail over an enemy who knew what you were thinking?
"O'Toole?" said Higgins, looking at me strangely. "You all right?"
"Yeah . . . sure," I said, wondering if he could read my mind, if he was human or a creature that could assume any shape at will, leading Breck and me to some ungodly fate out in the wilds of Purgatory.
"You sure?" he said. "You look a little pale. You want to rest?"
"No. Let's go on."
Breck was watching me, the expression on his face unreadable. Did he know what I was thinking? Was he thinking the same thing? Or was he using his formidable .mental discipline to mask his thoughts in a way that I could not?
As I hurried to catch up with the others, I wondered what my audience at home was thinking. Their interface with me wasn't telepathic, after all, but telempathic, which meant that they could share perceptions with me and a great many of my feelings, too. As I had learned, some psychos "projected" far more strongly than did others and I was one of them. So even though my home audience did not know what I was thinking, they could undoubtedly infer a lot about my thoughts from the emotions that I projected through the interface. And in that sense, I wondered if I was not a two-edged sword for Coles, on one hand acting as his eyes and ears-the ultimate intelligence agent, a sort of remote, ambulatory sensor bank through which he could pick up information-and on the other, an unpredictable human link between a home audience that did not suspect how it was being manipulated and a secret agency that was hiding in plain sight, playing a deadly game within a game that was far more ominous than anybody realized.
The day grew late and the sun began to sink behind the hills, staining the sky incarnadine and violet. We made camp in a little valley created by a ridge, a rocky outcropping that rose up several hundred feet, curled around in a semicircular shape and leveled off gradually at either end. It was a spot protected from the mountain winds, which made our situation somewhat more comfortable. We stacked rocks to create improvised bunkers that were open on the top and we put our bags down inside these makeshift shelters, on top of beds made of piled scrub-tree branches. It wasn't until Higgins started to make a fire that I noticed Tyla had gone off again. She reappeared by the time Higgins had the fire going, threw down the freshly killed carcass of a creature that looked like a cross between a small antelope and a hairy mountain goat, and imperiously departed once again somewhere off into the darkness, where she wouldn't have to witness the distasteful spectacle of males eating, and ruining perfectly good flesh by roasting it. I was beginning to feel seriously inadequate.
"You want me to take the first watch?" Higgins said after we had eaten. "Or wouldn't you feel comfortable unless one of you. was awake and watching me?"
I glanced at him sharply. He met my gaze with a wry smile.
"I don't have to be a mind reader to know what you're thinking," he said. "In your place, I'd be thinking the same thing. Is he or isn't he?"
"And what would you conclude?" said Breck, leaning back against a rock and lighting up a bang stick with a glowing twig from the campfire.
"I'd think that if I mm an ambimorph, then I probably wanted you alive, since I've had ample opportunity to kill you." His eyes glinted with amusement. "It wouldn't necessarily convince me that I wasn't an ambimorph, but it might at least keep me from losing any sleep over it."
Breck grinned. "There's a certain fatalistic logic to that," he said. "But to play the devil's advocate, what keeps you from losing sleep over the fact that O'Toole and I might not be what we seem?"
"The same reason," Higgins said, with a shrug. "If you wanted me dead, you'd hardly have needed to go to so much trouble. And if you were shapechangers who had successfully assumed the identities of a couple of government agents, I can't think what in hell you'd need me for."
"Good point," said Breck, nodding.
"Paranoia's a lot like a disease, isn't it?" said Higgins thoughtfully. "It's catching."
"It can be," Breck replied, inhaling deeply on his bang stick. "However, your wife seems to be immune to it."
"Her people don't worry about things the way we do," Higgins said. "Not so I've noticed, anyway. Their lives seem to have more immediacy than ours. They simply take things as they come."
"Such as these sudden manifestations of their gods?" said Breck.
Higgins was silent for a moment as he stared into the embers of the fire. "I'm not really sure what they think about that. Outside of what Tyla's told me, I haven't been able to get much of a reading on that situation."
"What do you mean?" I said, frowning. "I'd think you, of all people, would be in the best position to know how they felt about that."
Higgins shook his head and added some wood to the fire. "You're assuming they're as open with their feelings and opinions as we tend to be. They're not. In some ways, they're a lot more direct than we are, but in other ways, they're a great deal more private." He glanced at Breck. "Questions we might consider too personal, such as her questions about how you lost your arm, are perfectly acceptable among them. But questions that ask for value judgments, that's a different story. You won't get very far."
"You mean they don't think in abstract terms?" I said.
"No, I didn't say that," said Higgins. "I meant that abstract thoughts are highly personal to them. Different people-and different cultures-have different thresholds of privacy. Tyla's people are simply private about different things."
"So what are you saying, that Nomads keep their opinions to themselves?" I said.
"I guess you could put it that way," said Higgins, with a smile. "You could say that they call them as they see them, but they take great pains not to be judgmental. There's a very formal sort of courtliness about them, which admittedly sounds strange when you're talking about primitive hunter-gatherers, but I can't describe it any other way."
"I wonder what they think of us?" said Breck.
"They don't understand us," Higgins said sadly. "We just don't think the same." He sighed. "They don't realize what's going to happen to them." He suddenly changed the subject. "Well, so what's the deal? Do you want me to take a watch or should I just get a good night's sleep while you two soldiers take turns standing guard over me?"
"Take the first watch," Breck said. "I'll stand the second."
I glanced at him, but I didn't say anything. I just stayed awake until Higgins woke Breck to relieve him. I waited until Higgins had crawled back into his stacked rock shelter, then I quietly crawled out and joined Breck at the campfire.
"We need to talk," I said softly.
"You think I made a mistake, trusting him to stand watch?" said Breck.
"It's not like you," I said.
"No, it isn't, is it?" he said. And then he grinned. "I was awake all the time. Actually, I rather like him, but I still don't trust him."
"Well, that wasn't what I wanted to talk to you about anyway."
"I know. You were going to insist that you hadn't fallen asleep last night, that either Tyla or Higgins had somehow hypnotized you or something to that effect. Yes, I know. And I believe you."
I stared at him in the firelight. "Then why did you-"
"Discipline, O'Toole, discipline. I wanted to think that you had fallen asleep, in the event that anyone was eavesdropping, in a manner of speaking. Notice that Tyla still has not returned. Higgins doesn't seem to find that unusual. Perhaps she's out stalking or baying at the moon, but whatever she's doing, I feel somewhat safer with my thoughts when she is not around."
"Are you saying she's a telepath?" I said. "She's one of them, an ambimorph?"
"It's possible," said Breck, "but somehow I don't think so. Earlier, I felt a sort of ... tug. Very hesitant and crude, but definitely probing. Even Coles is more subtle than that. And if it was an ambimorph, you can rest assured I wouldn't have felt anything at all. No, I'm inclined to accept Tyla at face value. However, there is no question that she's telepathic to some degree. Which raises some interesting questions. Is this something all the Nomads share or is she an anomaly? And why didn't Higgins tell us about it? Or does he even know?"
"I don't like the way she keeps wandering off," I said.
"I wouldn't complain about it too much," Breck said. "She's kept us fed."
"And that's another thing," I said.
Breck glanced at me and raised his eyebrows. "You'd prefer going hungry?"
I grimaced. "That's not it. It's just the way she does it. Shows up with some dead animal and throws it down on the ground before us like we're a bunch of dogs or something. Here, boys, have some meat. Here's some bones for you."
Breck-repressed a smile. "I see," he said, with mock solemnity. "You'd rather she prepared it properly, skinned it and cut it up into nice steaks and chops, asked you how you liked it done, and then served it to you on a plate with some potatoes on the side, so you could wolf it down, belch, and say, 'What's for dessert, dear?' "
"Christ, is that what I'm doing?" I said. "My male ego's being threatened?"
"Perhaps just little, eh?" said Breck.
"Perhaps," I said sourly.
"O'Toole, sometimes I have a hard time understanding you," said Breck. "That rather lethal young woman back in Tokyo is about as subservient as a shark and she could break you in half without even working up a sweat. We've both seen her kill with her bare hands, yet she doesn't threaten you and Tyla does?"
"Kami never threw my food down on the floor," I said.
Breck shook his head in exasperation. "Go to sleep, O'Toole. I have more important things to think about than your tender sensibilities. Get some rest. I'll wake you in about four hours."
I didn't remember falling asleep. In fact, I wasn't even sure I had fallen asleep. I remembered Breck waking me to take my turn on watch. I remembered adding some wood to the fire and settling back against a rock to chew on some of that roast hairball or whatever it was Tyla had brought us for our supper, and I remember sitting there and sort of drifting, resting and feeling unaccountably relaxed, my attention occupied with the utter impossibility of our situation and other cheery thoughts like that and then suddenly it was starting to get light and it couldn't possibly have been starting to get light because I knew damn well that dawn wouldn't come for about another three hours. Yet the sky was starting to get smoky gray and streaked with the silver aura of predawn light and the morning mist was thick upon the ground. I told myself that I couldn't have fallen asleep, I simply couldn't have, and I stared dumbfounded at the cold ashes of the fire, which had been burning brightly only moments ago-or what seemed like only moments ago- and then I saw them standing there like specters in the mist, motionless, like dead warriors descended from Valhalla.
I didn't move. I sat there, staring at them, ethereal barbarians wreathed in the chilly morning mist. Long, thick, silver-streaked black hair falling to just above their waists, framing bronze-colored faces with gaunt, chiseled features and prominent jaws; curved vampirelike fangs protruding slightly over their lower lips; eyes of gold that seemed to glow as if illuminated from behind by some hellish fire in the brain.
They were dressed in furs and skins, armed with long-shafted, stone-tipped spears and crude stone axes. I recalled what Higgins said about the matriarchal structure of the Nomad tribes.
Something about how once we'd seen a Nomad male, we'd never again think of them as being subservient. I saw them, and I understood.
I had no idea how long they had been standing there. For that matter, I had no idea how long I had been sitting there. I had once again experienced that peculiar time-compression, as if I'd been somehow frozen in a limbo while the rest of time went on without me. For a moment, no, longer than a moment, I wasn't sure if I was awake or if it was a dream. It was a moment stuck in time. I sat there, motionless, staring at them with wonder as they stood silently in the gently undulating mist, watching me. The scene must have resembled a Biblical engraving by Doré, a sleeping prophet visited by angels.
"Breck . . ."I said, not very loudly, and then I cleared my throat and said his name again, a little louder, though I was suddenly afraid to raise my voice. "Breck!"
I heard a sound behind me and I turned to see Breck sitting up behind his stacked rock shelter, his plasma pistol in his hand, and then Higgins was beside him, saying, "Don't!"
Tyla walked out past me toward her tribesmen and stopped before them. I had no idea when she had returned. She came up to the male who stood closest to me-there were about fifteen of them in all-and she flowed into his arms, pressing up against him, her hands running up and down his flanks, and for a moment, I thought that they were kissing, but they weren't. They were sniffing. Not like animals investigating one another with short, quick inhalations, but more like oenophiles languorously smelling the bouquet of an exquisite vintage wine. He closed his eyes as she rubbed her cheek against his, and with his lips slightly parted, his sharp fangs gleaming, he gently inhaled her natural, musky scent while she buried her face in his long mane. It was the most erotically sensual display I'd ever seen and I simply had to look away.
"Her senior husband," Higgins said, beside me. "His name is Garr. I'll greet him first, but don't do what I do. The proper greeting between unrelated males is right hand held up, palm out, as if you were taking an oath. Wait for him to touch your fingertips, then maintain contact until he takes his hand away. It's important that you look directly into his eyes, nowhere else. If this were his camp, you would go to him, but since it's our camp, wait till he approaches you."
I waited until Tyla brought Garr over to where we stood. The others all remained standing where they were. None of them had moved so much as a muscle. They looked like statues. Higgins stepped forward and placed his hand flat against Garr's chest, over his heart. Garr performed the same gesture and they stood there for a moment, hands on each other's chests, and then Tyla brought Garr to stand in front of me. She glanced quickly at Higgins and he nodded-I guess to let her know that I'd been instructed properly-and I held up my right hand, as if I were about to swear to tell the truth and nothing but, so help me God.
Garr raised his own right hand and gently touched fingertips with me. The directness of that golden gaze was disconcerting, but I managed to maintain eye contact. I'd known
some champion deep gazers in my time, such as Hakim Saqqara, who could literally make shivers run up and down your spine with just one look, and my friend Kami, who could lock eyes with you and stare right down to the bottom of your soul. If it hadn't been for that kind of practice in the past, I don't think I'd have been able to meet Garr's golden gaze without looking away. But it was Garr whose concentration wavered when he went to touch fingertips with Breck.
Breck had taken off his glove and he kept his face perfectly expressionless as he held up his hand for Garr to touch. It was interesting to watch. Apparently, Tyla hadn't briefed her senior husband, as if she wanted to see how he'd react. He was a trooper. I had no idea how, but he was able to tell at once that Breck was somehow different from Higgins and me. Perhaps there was a subtle difference in our scent or something, but he knew somehow that Breck was a different breed. Or hybreed, to be more precise. I could see the flicker of uncertainty as, for a split second, he hesitated, then he stretched out his hand . . . and absolutely froze when he realized that Breck's hand wasn't flesh and blood.
For a moment, he was thoroughly at sea. He had no idea what to do. He wasn't human, but the expression on his face was unmistakably one of complete dismay. Breck remained utterly motionless, his face deadpan. I could see that Garr was dying to ask Tyla what the hell was going on, but it seemed that form prevented it. It was fascinating. Tyla had no compunctions whatsoever about asking Breck what the deal with his hand was and Higgins had warned us that the Nomads were direct, but here, quite clearly, something else was happening. I held my breath. Then Garr slowly touched Breck's nysteel fingers, very gently, and the expression on his face was one of profound sorrow. Then he took his hand away.
I heard Higgins exhale heavily beside me. "Fool," he whispered savagely. "I'm a complete and utter fool! Would you believe I forgot all about his hand?"