by Simon Hawke
For all their theoretical knowledge, the xenobiologists had a hard time understanding that. They kept apologizing to me for keeping my wife in protective quarantine until they could determine if it was safe for her to wander abroad in our highly infectious society. They were frustrated because she wouldn't let them simply poke and prod at will and she demanded explanations for everything they did. Her being telepathic also made them nervous. It led to some amusing incidents.
One young xenobiologist became so taken with her feral beauty that he could not keep from having sexual fantasies about her and despite Tali's respect for other people's mental privacy, he was so "loud" a thinker that she could not help picking up his thoughts. I had explained to her that it would not be considered improper for her to use telepathy to assist them in their scientific research, because it wasn't really personal, but I hadn't quite anticipated anything like what happened. Since the human proclivity for sexual fantasizing was something Nomads didn't share, under the circumstances, Tali interpreted the young xenobiologist's erotic fantasies as scientific interest. And since he was so intent on contemplating what it would be like to mate with her, she decided to satisfy his curiosity. She gave him a telepathic mating experience, non-physical and nonemotional, but complete with all the sense impressions and sensations, which allowed him to vividly remember doing something he had never actually done. The poor guy was thrown for such a loop, he didn't come in to work for two days and when he finally returned, he couldn't even look at her without blushing and breaking into a frightful stutter.
When they were satisfied that Tali could survive living on Earth-and that she had not brought any nasty organisms with her that we did not have here-they released her from protective quarantine and she moved in with me. She was just as curious about the way we lived as the xenobiologists were curious about her. We divided our time between long sessions with the scientists and occasional outings in the city. There were some minor problems, such as her outright refusal to eat cooked meat in restaurants and her dismay at realizing that there wasn't anywhere she could go to kill her own fresh game. We had a bad moment with someone's pet poodle in a park once, but after that, Tali resigned herself to eating the raw meat I brought home from the market. She liked the better cuts of steak, although she missed lapping up the warm blood.
What disturbed her most was the cacophony of human thought, especially in a crowded city like New York. She didn't understand the crowding, either. She failed to comprehend why anyone would want to live in such close quarters or in such a noisy, filthy environment. And human social interaction was a constant fascination and a puzzle to her. Our communications systems were a source of endless wonder to her and one of the first things that she had me do was put through a call to Kami at The Pyramid Club in Tokyo.
The two of them hit it off at once and they talked for about an hour, which astonished me because Kami was the least talkative person I had ever known. She wanted us to fly out to Tokyo and visit her on the Ginza Strip, but we couldn't get away from Coles and his researchers and Kami couldn't leave her gambling empire with the Yakuza still trying to wrest control back from the bandit gangs. I wondered if the day would ever come when we all stopped fighting battles.
As fascinated as the scientists were with Tali, they were simply blown away by the two young ambimorphs that Breck had captured. They had built a special maximum security lab for observing them, complete with a sealed clean room with a sophisticated environmental system in which the creatures were kept. Microporous double airlocks were used for introducing food and other things into the chamber and every fail-safe system that anyone could think of had-been built into the lab. They showed it off to Breck and me and were proudly telling us how impossible it would be for the creatures to get out when they looked inside and saw to their horror that in spite of all the elaborate precautions they had taken, the shapechangers had somehow managed to escape!
Alarms went off all over the place and sealed doors came down and everything was pandemonium until Breck asked them if the ambimorphs had ever left their food uneaten. And, of course, they had eaten their food. They had merely assumed its shape in an attempt to fool their captors, which they very nearly succeeded in doing. It shook the smart boys up a bit, but it taught them that all the fail-safe systems and security precautions in the world were only as good as the guy who controlled the on-and-off switch.
One of the first things they learned about the creatures was that they did not leave the sluglike slime trails in their natural form. The slime, which the lab boys were extremely curious about since they'd never seen it firsthand, was thought to be part of the creatures' reproductive process. The xenobiologists were all anxiously looking forward to the day when the shapechangers would mature and divide into more shapechangers, slime and all. Their worst fear was that the ambimorphs would not reproduce in captivity. I had to laugh. Here we were, trying to find ways to kill the creatures off, and the xenobiologists were anxious to breed more of them. I hoped to hell they knew what they were doing. They had all the requisite degrees, but I was always more impressed by street smarts than by sheepskins. For now, they had their hands full with the creatures and the ambimorphs weren't even fully grown yet. Eventually, they'd tire of changing into laboratory mice and rats and rubber balls and wooden blocks and they'd grow large enough to take on human form. And then the scientists would really get an education.
Higgins and Coles despised each other at first sight, though each had a grudging respect for the abilities of the other. Coles wanted Higgins on the research staff and Higgins wanted badly to accept, but there was an obstacle to their negotiations that at first seemed insurmountable. Higgins categorically refused to be implanted with a biochip and Coles would not have anyone around who could not be monitored. He was-not unreasonably, I suppose-terrified that shapechangers would infiltrate his nerve center. They finally found a way to reach a compromise. Permanent residential quarters would be set up for Higgins inside the maximum security Game Control nerve center-and Higgins would never set foot outside. It astonished me, but he actually agreed to those conditions.
"It's the work that matters, O'Toole," he told me, philosophically. "It's all right. I'll be comfortable here."
"But, Jesus, Grover," I said, looking at his rugged outdoor complexion, "you'll never be able to go outside! You don't know Coles. He wasn't kidding. If you so much as set foot below the maximum security levels of this building, you're out. Finished. You'll never get back in again. He's so paranoid, he won't even accept it if Tali clears you."
"Actually, he knows damn well that if Tali vouched for me, I'd be okay," said Higgins. "No ambimorph could fool a Nomad. That's not what this is all about. This is an issue of control. He thinks I'll break down and accept a biochip implant, but I simply will not allow anyone access to my mind."
"But that means you'll have to play by his rules," I said.
"Are they his rules?" said Higgins, smiling. "So long as I've got something he wants, he plays by my rules. Otherwise I just take the tube down to the lobby and I'm out of here. I'm not a prisoner; I'm free to go if I choose. But what's on the outside for me? City streets? Residential towers? Pollution, traffic, people?" He shook his head. "There's nothing out there I want to see, O'Toole. Coles and I have cut a deal. When I'm fed up with this place, he buys me a one-way ticket to anywhere there's mountains and the animals haven't learned to run away from people yet. Meanwhile, he picks up room and board and provides me with the greatest scientific opportunity of my entire career. Believe me, it's not such a bad deal."
As for Purgatory, Coles kept his part of the bargain. The factories and waste dumps were closed down and the human settlements were evacuated under military supervision. Purgatory Station became a military garrison manned by the hybreed soldiers of the Special Service and the Nomads worked with the commandos to keep any shapechangers from leaving Purgatory in human form. Those in charge of the evacuation were shocked at the number of ambimorphs among the workers on Pur
gatory. The Nomads were able to pick them out as they went through and a lot of them were killed, but many of the shapechangers managed to escape into the desert. Several SS units remained on the surface of the planet, taking over the largest of the residential complexes and establishing a permanent military ground base, so that they could work closely with the Nomads in an attempt to clean out all the ambimorphs. It was going to be one hell of a big job, one that would undoubtedly take years to complete-assuming that it could ever be completed-but if they succeeded, it would be the first indication that we could accomplish the same thing on Earth and in the colonies. Perhaps it wasn't much, but at least it was a start. Now, for the first time, thanks to the Nomads, we had a chance. The sad part of it all was that the lifeway of the Nomad tribes would be irrevocably changed. Civilization had arrived, with all of its complexities, and Purgatory would never again be the savage, unspoiled, primitive world it was when I had first arrived there. I never thought I'd say it, but I'm not sure the change is for the better.
The people who had lived and worked on Purgatory were a problem. They were far from thrilled at the prospect of losing their jobs and homes and once the evacuation got started, it became impossible to keep them from finding out the reason for it. When the person who's in front of you in the line waiting to get aboard the ship suddenly turns into a swarm of bugs and gets incinerated by a plasma blast on wide dispersal that passes by so close you get a tan, it's a little hard to accept being told, "It's nothing, don't worry, just keep the line moving." The only way to keep things under control was to declare martial law on Purgatory and brainwash everyone who'd been there.
They each received a biochip implant and some programming to qualify them for positions elsewhere. And while the programmers were at it, they "installed" some artificial memories which suppressed the real memories of what had occurred on Purgatory. So far as any of the workers knew, the consortium had simply decided that the Purgatory plants were no longer cost effective and the ambimorph invasion was merely one of Psychodrome's adventures. And so the game continued.
But cracks were starting to appear. It was inevitable. There was no way they could keep such a momentous secret and it was all about to bust wide open. There were only two ways to infallibly suppress a memory-murder or total mind wipe, which amounted to the same thing. Every one of the people who had been on Purgatory was a potential risk. Any one of them could break through the installed artificial memories and remember what had really happened, but there was nothing to be done. Coles knew it. From the start, it had been a waiting game. Sooner or later, it was bound to hit the fan and all that Coles was hoping for was that the truth disguised as media adventures would have enough desensitizing impact on the public that when the whole thing blew wide open, they wouldn't all go bugfuck. I wasn't sure if it would work or not. I knew that some people had a tendency to confuse media reality with real reality, but actually using real reality disguised as media reality to condition the public was a new one on me. Maybe it would work. Maybe not. But the news media was already beginning to smell the cover-up.
The broadcasts were beginning to have a strange effect on the home audience. A lot of them were starting to believe it and buy into the mindset. There had always been those who believed what they experienced on Psychodrome. We called them the "borderliners." They were the ones who always came up to us in public and greeted us like old comrades in arms, wanting to slap our backs and reminisce about the last adventure they had shared with us. We always tried to humor them. You'd be surprised how often you can have a friendly conversation with someone without letting on that you don't know their name. But I had always more or less assumed that most people were capable of differentiating between reality and fantasy. Now, I wasn't even sure that I could do it. Psychodrome was erasing all the borders.
Something was getting through to the home audience, something that was feeding the little paranoias that we all have deep inside us, even those of us who like to think we're well adjusted. The ratings on the alien invasion "game" were skyrocketing. As of the last scenario, Breck and I had become the number one rated psycho stars. What we were going through was scaring the hell out of people. And they kept coming back for more. The news media had started paying attention.
They began reporting on what they called "the terror broadcasts," cases of home viewers who had tuned in on the game and shortly thereafter committed suicide or gone out and done some violent act. The old argument of violent entertainment engendering violent behavior was trotted out again and the question of whether or not we were desensitizing our home audience to violence and death was hotly debated in one forum after another. Coles paid very close attention.
Something was getting through to them. And the more the news media talked about the "potential dangers" in "the latest ultra-violent offering from Psychodrome," the more people tuned in.
Breck finally understood now.
"I tell you, O'Toole," he told me over drinks, his eyes blazing from the bang smoke, "it was the most significant experience of my entire life. I'll never forget it. I don't mean to sound insensitive or morbid; I grieve for Tyla, but I'll always cherish the memory of her terror as she died." He looked down into his drink. "I suppose that sounds a bit sick, doesn't it?"
I pursed my lips and shook my head. "No. Not to me. Not coming from you. I understand, you see. But I wouldn't talk about it to anybody else if I were you."
Breck smiled wryly. "There are times, O'Toole, when I feel as if we've known each other all our lives." He gazed off into the distance. "For the first time," he said softly, "I understand what was taken from us hybreeds when our genetic template was designed. Perhaps 'taken' isn't the right word, since we never had it to begin with, but, nevertheless, we were egregiously deprived."
He inhaled deeply on his bang stick and his eyes flared. He held the smoke in his lungs for a long moment and then exhaled heavily.
"It's astonishing to me how most people fail to understand the compelling attraction of violence," he said. "How they are ignorant of the pathology of fear. Perhaps it's because many of them don't really think. They merely react. The fact is that humans are a savage species. They had to be in order to survive. Other animals were bigger, stronger, faster, more resilient. . .humans were afraid of them, and so they became smarter and more vicious. Man is nature's most successful predator. Modern citizens don't like to hear that, though. We are all nonviolent and civilized these days. And yet children still tear the legs off spiders and adults dismember one another in the boardrooms."
He smiled. It was a sad smile. The smile of an outsider who understood the rest of us only too well.
And then, of course, there was Chameleon.
After his long-distance attempt against us while we were on Purgatory, the most dangerous shapechanger of them all seemed to have gone back underground. For a while, with Tali occupying all of my attention, I had almost forgotten all about him. Until the night I woke up screaming.
It was a nightmare that refused to go away when I woke up. There were hundreds of snakes writhing on the floor around our bed. Sandstriders were scrambling out of the walls by the dozens, their multijointed, hairy legs wriggling through and pulling their fist-sized, hairy black bodies after them. They dropped down onto the floor and climbed up on the bed, scuttling like crabs across the bedsheets, their bone-crushing jaws snapping, and I could feel them crawling over me. The ceiling started to tremble and buckle. It had turned into the ceiling of the cavern back on Purgatory and shards of rock rained down upon me, bruising me and lacerating my skin.
I felt something grabbing me and pulling me down and I kept screaming and fighting until I realized that it was Tali holding me, pushing me back down onto the bed, entering my mind and soothing me, alarmed at the terrors that she saw there. The nightmare visions faded and then we both heard it in our minds, as cold and ominous as an echo in a tomb.
"Nomad . . . you cannot protect him. Your help will not avail. There's no place to hide, O'Toole. Th
ere's nowhere to run. I can reach out and find you anytime. I want you to give your Mr. Coles a message. Tell him that I have not even begun yet. And there is nothing he can do to stop me!"
The voice seemed to fill the room and suddenly he was standing there, at the foot of our bed, looking exactly as he had appeared when he had taken the form of the crystal hunter.
Nikolai Razin. The massive muscular frame was dressed all in black, the head was shaved, the eyes were cold and hard. As I stared at him, knowing it was an induced hallucination, I still felt sweat breaking out all over me. His form blurred and long jet-black hair sprouted from his skull. The proportions of his body shifted, the features changed into the lovely contours of Stone Winters's face and, for a moment, she stood naked at the foot of our bed, beautiful and incredibly seductive. Then her facial features melted and she leaped, turning into a snarling sandcat in midair. The image faded as Tali forced it from my mind and we heard the haunting, far-off echo of Chameleon's laughter.
"This is only the beginning, O'Toole," the ghostly voice promised as it seemed to recede into the distance. "Only the beginning ..."