“A thought,” said Amber. “If you can essentially take over one computer, why not all of them? That would pretty much solve our problems then. We wouldn’t have to lift a hand. You could just shut down operations on this ‘bomb’ that Ort Eath has concocted.”
—I wish that were possible, replied Cog. I have the faculties, of course. I am fully capable of connecting myself with the circuits and relays. However, our friend has foreseen the possibility of someone placing a controlling device within his controlling computers. It has, after all, been accomplished before to commandeer and hijack other starships. There are, within the network of all the other computers, defense systems. Should I have attempted to take over those systems as well, no doubt even as I made the connections, a foreign body would immediately be detected and I would be cindered away from my present corporeal form, and thus be of absolutely no further help in this mission.
“Then the real-fie computer is not a part of that network?” asked Todd. “Why is this?”
—Because it has no essential function aboard the ship. Ort Eath foresaw no threat that could be posed by its control; he lacked, evidently, the foresight and imagination to realize that if properly used it could be a tool against him. Witness the poor security about its controlling branches, which made it so easy for Todd to smuggle me to the point where I could implant myself. Quite simply, Ort Eath discounts the importance of the function and purpose of what the meaning of this mechanism is. A definite underestimation ... he has no concept—of what he’s planted on this ship, what it represents.
“So,” said Angharad, “What have you come up with?”
—I have calculated that the optimum time for implementation of the total plan is two hours before the Star Fall assumes orbit around Earth.
“Hey,” said Amber. Todd could almost feel the man’s uneasiness. “That’s cutting it awfully close, isn’t it?”
—There are several reasons for my decision, responded Cog patiently. —To begin with, that is the point of time in which outside aid on hand will best be able to board the Star Fall. Secondly, by cutting it close as you say, quite simply Ort Eath will not get a chance to rearm the antimatter device. Thirdly, this will give us the greatest number of allies in our effort. Most passengers will be having a last-minute fling with real-fics before reaching Earth.
“At which point you can contact them all simultaneously,” said Amber.
—Not just contact. Envelop. Invest them with the personality and chore necessary for the success in assuming control of the Star Fall, and defeating the many security forces that no doubt Ort Eath will immediately deploy.
“I don’t know,” said Todd. “That makes me sort of uneasy. —/ mean, people are probably going to be hurt. If we’re successful there will, of course, be time to revive them ... but nevertheless ... isn’t it immoral to make them do something against their will?”
— As to that, you may rest assured that their freedom of choice will remain intact, said Cog. —However, I strongly suspect that once each person wearing a Disbelief Suspender device is fully informed to the situation, the majority of them will decide to go along with our plans. One simply does not stand around if he knows that a few billion people are going to die. Especially when they have the personality characteristics I bestow upon them.
“Well, I don’t know about you,” said Angharad, “but free choice or no free choice, I’d make them do it, with the fate of Earth and the human universe in the balance.”
* * *
Very close to the scheduled time, the space-liner Star Fall slipped out of Underspace, some one thousand kilometers from the orbit of Pluto, in an area relatively free of the gravitational influence of Sol.
Waiting for them was a gaily regaled flotilla of Terran ships, dispatched from the multitude of space colonies, asteroids, and Martian moons to greet the arriving vessel that heralded what was thought to be true peaceful coexistence and cooperation between the peoples Terran and aliens Morapn.
Quickly, the Star Fall was bracketed by escorting ships. Clearances were extended. The great ship, holding in its belly Terra’s destruction, began the last hours of its successful voyage.
By Ort Eath’s calculations, with the highly advanced engines pushing them quickly across the Sol system’s plane of the elliptic, it would take them less than a standard day to reach the point where the antimatter bomb would be effective,
He adjusted the device,
Once he was sure that all was running smoothly he called Russell Dennison to his bio-computer facilities.
The harried looking real-fic computer controller arrived shortly after the order had been dispatched. Ort Eath admitted him into the labs.
Ort Eath said, “You told no one you intended to come here?” He sat beside the main computer outlet. The controls and indicators below him winked their lights almost hypnotically. Blue. Green. White. All the systems were on. A palpable hum pervaded the air.
Dennison removed the cigar from his mouth to speak. “I told them I just had to get away from it all and not to expect to see me again until the final ceremonies once we entered our parking orbit.” He stared at the alien wearily. “What’s up?”
“Mr. Dennison.” Ort Eath pronounced the words with a trace of uncharacteristic enthusiasm. In the empty days of waiting after he considered all operations running smoothly and Earth’s fate sealed, he had striven to perfect the emotive qualities of the orgabox’s voice. He was quite pleased with the results. “You have served me quite well. I am most pleased with the systems you have developed…and handled so well. I want to express my thanks and my appreciation of the fine job that you have done. Also, I would like to inquire as to your willingness to serve me further. Alas, my capabilities are limited ...you have much that I do not. Your ability of imagination ...I crave its use highly.”
“Thank you,” Dennison said, genuinely complimented, his guarded expression softening. His stiff posture relaxed somewhat; obviously he expected orders or complaints rather than commendations, “I’m truly flattered. I must say, it has been most interesting these past years, developing the real-fic system.”
“You have done a marvelous job both in setting up the operations and in running them; I’ve had nothing but compliments from the passengers. I truly would hate to let you go.” Slowly but firmly his hand tightened into a possessive fist.
“I’m sorry,” Dennison said firmly, puffing on the cigar. “But now I’ve got enough money to settle down and write. Thanks anyway, Ort Eath. You have been all in all, a most cooperative employer.”
“And you a most pleasant employee,” said Ort Eath, this time in almost unctuous tones. “However, I’m afraid that I truly will have to insist that you stay on.”
Dennison blinked. He spoke around the base of the cigar, his voice abrupt, terser. “Hey. Our contract is explicit. We get to Earth, and that’s the end of my service. I get my bonus and I vamoose. No options for further time, Ort Eath. No way.”
“I thought you said you enjoyed working for me?” Ort Eath casually drummed fingers between lighted display buttons.
“Yes—for the most part. Although I must admit I didn’t care for some of the things you had me do.” Tenseness began to show in his face; wrinkles deepened. Dennison coughed raspingly.
“Mr. Dennison. I have no choice but to retain your services willingly or unwillingly. For my future plans, you may well come quite in handy.”
“You can’t make me, surely!” the man blurted nervously.
“Oh no?” returned Ort Eath. “I would have preferred your cooperation. But I suppose that, with my intended methods, you would have objected anyway.” Ort Eath stabbed a finger down onto a console button.
Like a striking adder, a hypodermic needle on the tip of one of the medical arms streaked down, striking deep into Dennison’s forearm, and then darting back to its former place.
Dennison’s eyes bugg
ed as he stared down at the stricken arm. His smoldering cigar dropped from his mouth, rolling glowing ashes along the floor. He turned to Ort Eath, shock clear on his expression. “What the—” he yelped. Then he dropped like a dead man to the floor, eyes glassy.
The alien/ human swiveled his chair to address himself to the controls arrayed before him. A dial nudge brought down scooping devices, roughly digging under the limp body and steam-shoveling it up into midair. A switch-push and Dennison was hauled over and dumped unceremoniously upon the operating table. A series of crystal-button pushes, and laser scalpels arose above the clamped head, nozzles glowing cherry-red.
Ort Eath examined the readings carefully, then put the auto-computer on. The rest of the operation would be routine. He had only to make his orgabox ready.
He rose, directing the orgabox to rise also. It scuttled along behind him like an obedient child holding its father’s hand and situated itself immediately behind the sprawled-out Russell Dennison.
I will now be complete, thought Ort Eath. I will now be totally the being I want to be. Perfect in every way. Immaculate. Self-created. The ultimate. And I shall lead them all to the fulfillment that I know and will always know.
With the orgabox in position, the auto-computer commenced the operation. Dennison’s shaggy shock of hair was fully shaved. The skull cap was removed. Waldo arms then turned the body over, so that it laid sprawled face down, the moist brain glimmering softly, vulnerably. The clothes were slashed off. Molecular lasers burned up the length of the spinal column, selectively freeing the numerous neuron connections to the spinal cord. Softly, delicately, the remaining connections were severed.
Meanwhile, other instruments busied themselves over the top of the orgabox. Like the lid of a box, the top cover was eased back on its hinges. Convoluted circuits and wires showed.
Nestled inside the machine, bathed in oxygen-rich amniotic fluid, twined with wires and other attachments were four naked brains.
One empty position remained.
Watching the procedure dispassionately, Ort Eath stood beyond and above it all like some god of surgery, triumphant.
One more addition to the collective. He fully controlled them all. Absorbing and conquering, subjugating these personalities of human genius. He’d worked long and hard to select and finally collect these, the missing pieces to his intellect, the additions to his mental powers that would render his the most brilliant of minds—an intelligence truly worthy of godhood, with these consciousnesses absorbed into his, feeding it, complementing.
With deft sureness, the arms separated the gray matter and the length of the spinal cord from the crimson and white of the cleaved body. Even as the essential physical stuff that had been Russell Dennison was hoisted and moved, suspended a moment above the orgabox, the stronger of the surgical grappling arms slipped under the now useless body, cradled it upward, and carried it to a disposal unit. No sense saving it. Too much danger in that. And it would be destroyed anyway in the final cataclysm, the Armageddon and Gotterdammerung that Ort Eath had worked toward for so long.
He regarded the dripping stuff of Russell Dennison, being lowered into place as the molecular bonders were brought into play to graft it into the orgabox, and thought: this is as close to true spirit as living things should be… to attempt to go further would be madness.
It was for life he fought, not death—although he would use death as ... as an immunization. Yes ... a good analogy! For the good of life in this universe did he strive ... for its fruitful development, its ultimate perfection.
Streaks of light, pale as ghost fingers, bright as sun hearts colored of spectrum wash, scented of the blood like evaporating nutrient fluid. Painless and quick came the new addition, this new fleshly collection of neurons and ganglia. As it was finally connected, Ort Eath distinguished the familiar surge of expansion in his being. Quickly, the rebel consciousness was quashed and absorbed into the totality ... and immediately Ort Eath felt his mind ranging over new vistas.
The top of the orgabox was lowered and secured.
It was finished.
As the machines cleaned up after themselves, wiping the odd splash of gore, Ort Eath left his bio-computer room. Walking toward the door, he stepped on the abandoned; smoldering cigar, crushing out its feeble glow.
THREE HOURS short of slipping into Earth’s orbit, Councilman Morphul Hee was hunting dinosaurs.
He supposed he might as well take advantage once more of these marvelous systems before he had to report back to his dreary job on Earth. Since he’d never quite gotten around to this particular scenario and type of fictional adventure, it was natural that he should wish to try it.
Ninety percent of him was now the Disbelief Suspender-construct Aloysius Cavendish, Hunter Extraordinaire, on a quest through steamy jungle to save his lovely wife, Carolyn, from crazed cannibals and bag the odd tyrannosaurus along the way.
The sun beat down, burning in the sky like a hole punched into hell. With the khaki cloth of his free arm, he wiped off the sweat that trickled down his brow freely below his domelike hat. In his other arm, its safety off and ready for action, was his laser rifle, its energy nodes glowing and murmuring, ready to spill forth concentrated fire.
Suddenly a rustling of the ubiquitous leaves and branches of the plants along the trail ... Cavendish swung his weapon around toward the crashing sound, finger on firing stud. Something emerged from the shaking green, something big and brownish-green. Cavendish instinctively aimed and spurted off a slash of laser light. The energy caught the beast full force on its chest. With a high-pitched squeal, it lurched into a clearing and plopped, quite dead, upon rich loam. A hypsilophodon, the veritable gazelle of the dinosaurian world, shaped more or less like a kangaroo. Not dangerous ... but you have to always be on the ready, here in this primeval world of long ago, thought Cavendish.
Even as he stared at his kill, it seemed to mist away.
He blinked with surprise. In the time it took for that blink, he changed.
The vision was so strong, he dropped to his knees.
Earth. Jade and amethyst in the black velvet of space. Majestic mother of the human race ...
Bursting apart, consumed by flames.
Brief mental images: His contract wives (past, present, and perhaps future) engulfed by storm and cataclysm, being swallowed up by the vast darkness he knew was death, sure, simple, irreversible—
And finally, mental pictures of his own death, his disassociated atoms floating freely in space.
And as sure as he knew that all this was going to happen, he also was immediately cognizant of the possibility of mankind under the yoke of an alien conqueror, and instinctual species survival joined his desire for self-preservation.
Morphul Hee, however, had never been a man famed for his personal courage. But then, this was not exactly Morphul Hee anymore. He found himself imbued with memories of valiant battles well-fought and won on distant planets. He had recollections of medals won, women impressed by his daring-do.
Before he could even ask himself what he could do to prevent the coming holocaust, the strong conviction of the truth of these visions seemed to dictate his only possible choice. He stared down at his laser rife. Actually, only a modified laser, harmless. Morphul Hee had no idea how to render it a deadly weapon.
But, suddenly, he did know.
With his Swiss knife hanging on his hunting belt, he unscrewed the shielding encasement, revealing a slew of odd-shaped components. Before, he hadn’t the faintest idea of how they worked much less of how they could be altered. But now he knew. Expertly, with a speed and nimbleness that almost surprised him, he made the necessary adjustments, then slid the shielding neatly back on, turned on the generator.
What next?
But of course! Join the others! The answer seemed foolishly obvious. Naturally there would be others.
He made his way towa
rd the exit tube from this particular biosphere, knowing viscerally that he must immediately form with the group that was to take over the communications room, since he had diplomatic access to that section of the ship.
Over the Star Fall, the two hundred and thirty-four people who had been using Disbelief Suspenders at the same time as Morphul Hee suddenly had the exact same personality, the same conviction.
Weapons were appropriated, altered expertly. Those who did not have rifles or pistols wielded newly sharpened swords and electric prods. Before Security had any idea of what was happening, the plan was in effect.
Two and a half hours remained to them before the antimatter device detonated,
* * *
—We have fallen upon some luck, said Cog in Amber’s mind and simultaneously in those of others in a different section. —One of our recruits, Morphul Hee, has access to the communication room. There is no sign as yet that Security has been alerted to what is taking place. We should immediately deploy the advance assault upon the communications section in the person of the Councilman. Do not attack the laboratories until I order it.
“Gotcha,” thought Amber, sitting in one of the several amphitheater lounges ... the one not far from the site of the labs. Already people wearing Disbelief Suspenders and carrying various weapons under cloaks and coats had gathered. They were the battle party assigned by Cog to Philip Amber’s command. They still wore the unusual costumes they had been dressed in when Cog had summoned them from their participatory fictions. One woman wore the robes of an African Queen; a man wore early twentieth-century garb—dark suit, white tie, and spats—and carried a violin case.
So far thirty had gathered ... and more were trickling in.
Fortunately, this was not an unusual sight aboard the Star Fall.
Amber sipped at his highly carbonated beer, barely noticing its tingle on his palate, its chill slide down his throat.
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