Plague of Memory

by S. L. Viehl

  I did not know what to say. How could this Hsktskt father a Jorenian? Given that one was a reptilian life-form and the other humanoid, crossbreeding seemed unlikely even if he had used a female Jorenian captive.

  “Have you not guessed who I am? I am disappointed.” To PyrsVar, he said, “Go into the desert and gather up your men. The city will fall into anarchy now that the Hanar is no more. We have only to wait a few more days.”

  “What of the sickness?” PyrsVar demanded. “What if my men grow sick?”

  “I have told you that they will not.” He made an abrupt gesture, and the renegade Jorenian slowly turned and went to the lift.

  Part of me wanted to jump up and run after him. Of the two males, even as angry as PyrsVar was with me, he was definitely the less menacing.

  “Come inside,” the veiled Hsktskt said, gesturing as he might to a guest. “The air is warmer, and we have much to discuss.”

  The interior of the structure held a large, sophisticated laboratory, more massive than any I had yet seen on Vtaga. Twice the size of the scout, the main lab area served as a wide hub, ringed by many door panels and open corridors that twisted out of sight. It did not seem right that it was empty, barren of anyone but me and the disguised Hsktskt. There should have been an army of technicians and workers making use of the place.

  That the complex had been built into the mountain rather than on its surface also troubled me. On Akkabarr, the Toskald had made my people dig trenches deep in the ice to conceal and store massive armories of weapons, as well as the control crystals to command a thousand different armies.

  What was this Hsktskt trying to hide?

  “I see you are admiring my stronghold,” my captor said as he led me toward a comfortable-looking area set with chairs and other furnishings. “It took some years for me to gather the funds and means to return to Vtaga and build it.”

  “What purpose does it serve?” I asked. “Do you provide sanctuary for the outlaws?” That might explain the absence of others.

  “Please, sit down.” He gestured toward the furnishings. “I hardly ever entertain, but I have both Terran and Jorenian teas. My son is naturally fond of the latter.”

  He had PyrsVar abduct me, and yet he treated me as an honored guest—and competently ignored my questions. The latter frightened me more than if he had tossed me into a detainment cell or had me seized by interrogation drones and tortured.

  “I thank you.” Cautiously I sat down in one of the chairs closest to a door panel and looked about for something I could use as a weapon to defend myself. I saw nothing. “Why have you brought me here? Am I your hostage?”

  “I have no need of a hostage, Doctor.” He moved to a food unit and prepared a server. “But if it pleases you to think of yourself as such, you may do so. I doubt anyone will be coming to save you. This region is too cold for my kind to attempt it, and your kind has no idea where you are, do they?”

  “No.” I might have lied, but he had to know how effective PyrsVar had been in abducting me. “No one does.” I paused. “Yet.”

  He brought the server of steaming liquid to me, but I only warmed my hands with it. I was not ingesting anything until I knew why this male had gone to such lengths to bring me here.

  “I admit I am surprised that you have not guessed who I am.” The Hsktskt began slowly removing the dimsilk covering his head. “We spent so much quality time together on Catopsa. I think of all the slaves there, you proved to be my finest test subject. We might have discovered great things together, you and I.”

  I suddenly knew who he was, for I had read about him in Cherijo’s journals. “You are SrrokVar, the Hsktskt scientist who tortured Ch—me?”

  “I was.” He pulled back the last layer of dimsilk and revealed what sat on his shoulders in place of his head. “Now I am something quite a bit different.”

  The journal descriptions of the Hsktskt scientist and physician who had tortured Cherijo on Catopsa did not match the appearance of the creature before me. What had once been a Hsktskt male was no longer completely organic in form. The Hsktskt’s neck ended just above his shoulder line, disappearing under a wide alloy gasket affixed to what must have been an artificial skull made of transparent plas.

  The server of hot tea fell out of my hand onto the floor, splashing my right leg. I barely felt the scald, so horrified was I. “What happened to you?”

  “You happened to me, my dear doctor,” SrrokVar said through the bubble’s com unit, shaped and moving like a mouth to imitate speech. “You remember how cleverly you manipulated the safety controls on the bonesetters that you clamped to my head. I could not remove them before they crushed my skull.”

  I wanted to deny that I had done such a thing, for Cherijo had not written of inflicting mutilation so severe as to make it necessary for this male’s brain to be transferred to a plas bubble. But here was the proof in front of me: a drone’s head atop of a living body.

  “I could not immediately remove the bonesetters, and by the time I did the damage was done.” His artificial mouth stretched wide. “I barely escaped Catopsa alive. I put myself into cryostasis and set the escape ship on course for a colony of mercenaries who would give me sanctuary. By the time they recovered and revived me, necrosis had taken hold and the tissue damage had become irreversible. Happily, these mercenaries also specialized in creating new identities for fugitives through reconstruct technology.”

  The thing atop his shoulders was not quite a drone’s head. The artificial skull appeared to work just as a drone’s did, with audiovisual sensors that fed data to its contents. Yet instead of a central processor and data-storage banks, SrrokVar’s control center was his intact, living brain, floating in cloudy green fluid and connected to a web of input leads.

  I had to say something. To apologize seemed obscene. I could not believe Cherijo had done this deliberately to another living being, if she were indeed responsible. Desperately I searched for some neutral response.

  “How is it that you are PyrsVar’s sire?” I asked quickly. “Whatever was done to your head, you are still biologically Hsktskt. He is Jorenian.”

  “As unlikely as it seems, PyrsVar is my son, as much as you were Joseph Grey Veil’s daughter.” He sat down across from me and laced his clawed hands together. “The reconstruction I underwent originally gave me the idea, and then alterform technology became available. What reconstruct surgeons did for me by grafting drone components onto my body could suddenly be done with living cells.”

  Now I understood. “You made him in a machine, as I was made.”

  “How charming your speech is. I remember it being primitive, but not quite to this degree. Yes, PyrsVar is a bioengineered construct, cloned from my cells and others. In fact, your father’s research proved as valuable to me when I was creating my son as the alterforming data my people stole from the League.” He waited, as if he expected me to say something.

  I spotted a piece of broken plas near my ankle, and bent over as if to check my scalded leg, “Why use Jorenian cells if you meant to re-create yourself? Where did you get them?”

  “You mistake my purpose. My son’s genetic frame had to be a biomatch to that of the Hsktskt, but humanoid in appearance. The Jorenians are one of the few species comparable in size to us. Your adopted people are so admired that they are welcomed on virtually every world; thus, appearing Jorenian gives my son an instant passport to the rest of the galaxy.” He leaned back as if enjoying himself. “As for the cells, harvesting the DNA was simple, once I had obtained the cadaver that I wanted.”

  “Jorenians do not preserve the bodies of their dead,” I said, pulling down the leg of my trousers and palming the jagged bit of plas in the process.

  “This is the amusing part of my tale.” He made one of the Hsktskt’s sweeping gestures. “Shortly before you and I met, I had purchased a number of Jorenian cadavers from a solar salvage operation. The Jorenians hurtle the bodies of their dead through space toward stars as a form of celestial cremati
on, but do you know, sometimes the dead do not arrive. Often they are whisked away by magnetic fields and solar winds, and end up orbiting a nearby planet.”

  As he spoke, SrrokVar kept pausing now and then, watching me intently as if expecting a reaction. Clearly he had no idea that Cherijo’s memories were lost to me, or of the scant amount of actual information I had about him. I saw no merit in revealing this.

  “I harvested DNA from a Jorenian cadaver that had died of blood poisoning, and used it to alterform a young adult Hsktskt outlaw,” SrrokVar continued. “It required me to perform a complete cerebral memory wipe, of course, so that the unwelcome memories of the Hsktskt’s former life would not interfere. The result is PyrsVar.”

  If he had had a mouth, and had been humanoid, he would have been smiling. I could tell this from the smugness of his tone, even filtered by the drone tech delivering it.

  “That is why he seems so young sometimes,” I murmured, fascinated and appalled. “How old is he?”

  “In Terran terms? A child yet. Much younger than Kao Torin, the donor of the Jorenian cells.”

  So PyrsVar was a Torin, in a roundabout sense. “The Torins have no idea you took cells from their dead kin.”

  “Neither did you.” SrrokVar rose to his feet. “I expected more of an emotional reaction from you, my dear doctor. I chose Kao Torin with such care, not only for the Jorenian DNA that would allow my alterformed progeny to travel throughout the galaxy unhindered, but in hopes that he would find you someday. I imagined how you would squirm every time you looked at him, the living ghost of the lover you killed.”

  “I have no memory of Kao Torin, or of any feelings we shared between us,” I took pleasure in telling him. Perhaps it was unwise, but the outrage I felt on Cherijo’s behalf would allow me to remain silent no longer. “Two years ago I was shot twice in the head. I healed, but in the process I lost all of Cherijo’s persona.”

  He went still and some of the things on his head whirred faster. “Are you saying that you suffered brain damage? That your memory center was compromised?”

  “I have no memory center. All of Cherijo’s memories were destroyed. I do not remember you, or Catopsa.” I gripped the broken piece of plas tightly. “I do not remember this Kao Torin, or that he was my lover, or that I killed him. I cannot feel the pain you wished to inflict upon her.”

  “You will. You will remember everything, and feel it down to your bones.” SrrokVar seized me and dragged me out of the chair. “Let us see to that now.”

  I used the broken piece of plas like a dagger and drove it into the side of SrrokVar’s neck, hoping to sever one of the power cables enabling his visual emitters. It would have been the same as blinding him.

  It did not work. I misjudged the shielding of the cable, and only cut it partway before he snatched the plas from my hand and threw it across the lab.

  “Reviving the past is my specialty now, Doctor,” he told me as he pinned my arms to my sides and carried me effortlessly toward a small chamber with a large view panel. He did not seem in the least upset that I had attempted to kill him. “I have devoted all of my intellect to bringing what was back to life. Very soon this plague you came here to cure will return my people to the glory of what we were before we allowed civilization to tame us, and clever humanoids to pollute our thinking.”

  “You are responsible for the plague?” I writhed, trying to free myself. “How can this help the Hsktskt? You’re killing your own people.”

  “What I do will free them.” He shoved me into the chamber and sealed me inside. I rushed at the door panel, but the seam was too tight for me to force open. I whirled around, looking for the means with which he meant to hurt me. There were only a few round nozzles set into the smooth walls.

  “This is meaningless,” I called out. “Whatever you do to me will not bring back my former self, or yours. Others will find a cure to the plague.”

  “Nothing can stop it now.” SrrokVar tapped his claws against the front of the plas bubble. “I will never be what I was—Dr. Grey Veil—but the damage done to you can be repaired.” He disappeared from view, but his voice kept speaking. “It must be, if you are to witness the restoration of my people and give me the secrets to immortality.”

  SrrokVar appeared at the console on the other side of the viewer panel. He input some command, and a white powder as fine as dust began pouring from all of the nozzles into the chamber.

  “What you are about to breathe in is the pulverized bone dust of a shape-shifting species called the Odnallak,” he said over the audio panel. “Their primary survival mechanism is to acquire an image of their enemy’s deepest fear and assume that form, both made possible by a unique chromatophoric organism in their bloodstream. That organism remains dormant in their skeletal structure even after the host body dies. Inhalation by a sentient being activates its ability to attack, only without a host it does it through brain chemistry.”

  As it must have for all the people of this planet. “When Hsktskt breathe it in, they remember the old ones like the rogur. Ancient terrors so horrifying that they would rather kill everyone around them than think.”

  SrrokVar inclined his drone head. “The perfect soldiers, wouldn’t you say?”

  “They will be driven to suicide before you can use them in battle. As will I, if you use this dust on me.” I moved to the center of the chamber to avoid the growing piles of dusty powder on the floor.

  “My people are suicidal only when not provided with an outlet for their fear. You saw that yourself at the medical facility in the city. As for you, I have been told you are almost impossible to kill, and I am more than willing to risk your death to revive your memories.” He pressed more keys, and a vid unit appeared in the viewer. “You shouldn’t have forgotten what you most feared, Doctor. You should never have forgotten me.”

  The ceiling opened, and large fans began blasting air into the chamber, stirring up the Odnallak dust to swirl around me. I held my breath as I tore a strip from my tunic and covered my mouth and nose with it, but my efforts proved useless. The fine particles in the air went straight through the cloth and into my chest and head.

  I coughed and choked as a deep burning sensation spread through me. Then the chamber and SrrokVar and the floor vanished, leaving me alone in the dark and unable to breathe.

  SIXTEEN

  “You can breathe all right, Joey. Just suck it in and blow it out.”

  A fist struck the center of my chest, and I breathed in reflexively. I was not choking, the air was clear again, and the unbearable burning sensation inflicted by the dust had disappeared.

  I am dead, I thought. He smothered me with that filth and this is death.

  “You’re not dead,” the female voice said.

  I opened my eyes and discovered the voice was correct. I was not smothered or dead or in the dark anymore. I lay in a narrow place enclosed in clear, jagged airstone shot through with thin veins of darker stuff. An older, red-haired Terran female sat cross-legged beside me. She was dressed in an Iisleg woman’s robes, but had removed the proper head covering. In her hands was the head wrap, which she was slowly ripping into smaller pieces.

  I recognized the voice if not the face. This was the one who had been speaking to me when no one else could hear. I did not know how I knew that; only that I did.

  Green eyes flashed as she looked up at me briefly. “You know because I’ve given you back that memory.”

  I sat up and looked up and down. There was no beginning or end to the crystal prison, no ceiling or floor. We were floating on a column of air.

  “This is what I fear?” I asked no one in particular. “Being stuck in a plas tube with a Terran who dislikes covering her face and meddles with my brain?”

  “I’m not Terran. I only look like one for context purposes,” she said. “This is a mental construct, which is a fancy way of saying you’re just imagining things. Well, except me. I’m Maggie. Chief brain meddler.”

  “Maggie.” The name was
painfully familiar on my tongue. Was it as she said? Had she given me my memory of her? I did not want it.

  “Your mother. Sort of. Yes, I gave you the memory. It took damn near forever, too. You’ll take whatever I give you, Joey.”

  I curled my hand into a fist. “You will stay out of my head, alien.”

  She laughed. “I’m not an alien.”

  I studied her. She did look Terran, but Reever had told me she was not. “You are a machine?” Had Cherijo’s father constructed her as some sort of bizarre incubator device, to simulate Terran gestation?

  “No.” She tossed aside the shreds of her head covering and sighed. “I was, am, and will be Jxin, and no, I’m not going to explain all that over again. You didn’t believe me the last time I did anyway.”

  She spoke to me as if I were still Cherijo. Perhaps she meant to somehow erase me and bring back my former self. I could not let that happen, so I stood and looked up, reaching to touch the crystalline surface of the wall. It felt as smooth and slippery as ice after a windless freeze.

  “You can’t get out of here unless I change the construct, and we don’t have time for that,” Maggie told me.

  I turned to stare down at her. Bits of weave from the head wrap made her hands appear furry. She had an unpleasant amount of amusement in her green eyes. “Release me from this.”

  “I didn’t bring you here. Domehead did.” She threw a wad of fabric over her shoulder. “I did try to reach you several times while you were on Akkabarr, but when that skela bitch on the iceball tried to kill you, she damaged the implants and ruined the connections. I never planned for you to get shot in the head, which, I might add, was stupid of you to let happen.”

  “What implants?” I demanded. “What connections?”

  “They’re what I placed inside your thick skull so that I could continue to guide you after I transitioned from physical form to something a little like controlled energy.” She sighed heavily. “I shed my body too soon, or I could have gone there and rewired you before the old pathways degraded. Not possible anymore; I can’t cross distance except as light and thought.”