Charon: A Dragon at the Gate

by Jack L. Chalker

  “I’m not as naive as you think,” I told her. “But go on. This syndicate, then, bred you?”

  She nodded. “Bred me—and others.”

  That was interesting. “Others? Many others?”

  She shrugged. “Who knows? We were raised independently.”

  “Yeah—but why? For what purpose?”

  “The Confederacy has an elite force, bred to their jobs. They’re called assassins, although they don’t often kill. Did you know that?”

  “I know something about them, yes,” I admitted rather evasively.

  “Well, how do you think the Four Lords got stuck here? Or most of the rest of the people, for that matter? They— the assassins—got them. The assassins are bred for the job, as I said, so they’re almost impossible to corrupt. They love their work, and do nothing else. Their true identities aren’t even known to the bureaus that employ them, and any time one is contacted, that contact is brief. After the job is done, all memory of them is wiped from even Security’s minds and general records. Their anonymity is the one thing the Four Lords have never broken. Those men and women are the only people the high-ranking members of the Brethren, as the organization usually calls itself, are scared of. The only ones. Only one has ever been exposed and corrupted—and he’s one of the Four Lords!”

  “Marek Kreegan of Lilith,” I responded. “He’s dead, you know.”

  Her head shot up. “Dead! How?”

  “A Confederacy assassin got him, it seems.”

  “You see, then?”

  I shook my head. “No, I don’t see at all. What’s all this leading to?”

  “The Four Lords, the entire Brethren, need people who can identify and kill these assassins before they themselves are killed. They’ve tried every way in the universe to crack the system, and been frustrated every time. Even Kreegan couldn’t help them, for no assassin ever knows enough of the security system, which is changing anyway all the time, to break it So, the Brethren figured, if they couldn’t expose the system, they’d breed their own. Assassin killers, you might say.”

  I had to laugh. “You are an assassin killer?”

  She shook her head. “No, not me. Kira. She’s amazing, Park. Amazing. She learns almost anything from one lesson, and never forgets. She’s got total control of her—our—body. Total. She is an analytical killing machine, and brilliant” She was saying this admiringly, but as if she were talking about someone else entirely. It was eerie. And, of course, it raised more questions than it solved.

  If Zala were telling the truth, then Koril already knew what she was—he’d have to. And Korman probably would, too. Why didn’t they? Or if they did, why all the charade? Something definitely smelled funny now, and Zala was the first suspect. She hadn’t exactly proved reliable in the past

  “Zala, why two of you?” I asked. “Why both you and Kira?”

  “Oh, that’s supposed to be a safeguard if we were caught They couldn’t psych Kira, only me. They couldn’t wipe her—only me.”

  “That only makes sense if you don’t know about her yourself,” I pointed out. “And of course you had to know.”

  “Oh, sure. But she’s real strong. I don’t really understand it, but Kira says that there’s really only one of us, at least as far as memories and stuff is concerned. She can shut me off, and sometimes she does. One time I can remember a lot of things, then I can’t—and sometimes I don’t even know what I used to know until I know it again, if that makes any sense.”

  Oddly enough, it did, and it rang true. I had no idea of the biology of it—I certainly would have said two such personalities in one brain was impossible if an example wasn’t sitting in front of me. But somehow, those syndicate biologists had done it. A master assassin, at least as good as the Confederacy’s. Maybe better, I reflected sourly. There certainly was a mortality rate in my business, and sometimes it was impossible to explain. But if this dominant personality had all the keys to the memory core, a total understanding and command of what went on in there—which was more than anybody else did—it could literally reserve sections to itself. And add sections as needed too, I reflected. So you could get to know Zala, and hypno her, and put her under psych or mind control, and it wouldn’t make a damned bit of difference.

  “Kira seems to be satisfied to let you live your life, though,” I pointed out “Most of the time she just seems along for the ride.”

  Zala nodded. “That’s right. But she’s not asleep or anything like that. She’s right here with me. She says that’s the way we were—well, designed, although that makes us seem like some kind of creepy machine.”

  I nodded. “So when I talk to you I’m talking to her—but when you talk to me it can be just you.”

  “That’s about it,” she agreed.

  “And so how’d you wind up here, on Charon?”

  “Well, Kira says it looked like a flute, but not anymore. They never really told us. They just came in one day and arrested me, that’s all. Oh!” She suddenly started, and then I watched that strange transformation take place in her.

  Unlike my earlier perception, it really was more of a mental than a physical thing, yet you could see it clearly. What happened was more than a complete change of personality behind those big, brown eyes—Zala’s hidden attributes were clearly displayed. In the Zala persona she looked weak and ordinary, but as Kira the tremendous muscles and the strength in them, matching the new strength in the eyes, seemed to stand out. Although nothing really changed, the transformation was startling.

  “Hello, Kira,” I said.

  “Lacoch,” she responded, her voice lower and very cool, almost inhuman in its lack of tone. “I think it is time we talked directly.”

  I relaxed back on my tail. “I’ll agree to that. Uh—tell me. Does Zala know what’s going on when you are you?”

  “When I permit,” she replied. “I am permitting now. There seems no reason not to.”

  “And when you don’t—permit?”

  “Then it’s like she is asleep.”

  “Fair enough. You’re willing to answer the rest of my questions?”

  “We’ll see. There is no penalty in asking.”

  I had this odd feeling that I was trapped in the room, not her. She had an unsettling effect on me from the start “First of all, did Zala tell the truth?”

  “She told no falsehoods,” Kira responded, which was not really answering the question. I took note of that fact and went on.

  “This breeding of special agents like yourself—it was entirely on Takanna?”

  She nodded. “Spread the project and you spread the risk of detection. There is no need to cover up now, since the project was discovered and has probably been obliterated by now anyway.”

  That was interesting. “Do you know how it was finally penetrated?”

  She shook her head negatively. “I suspect that it was not. I believe it was leaked—closed down by the Four Lords themselves. Zala was not penetrated. We were betrayed. A very few of us have been taken and sent here before by the Confederacy. But the Confederacy should not have known about me. The project was ended and totally destroyed years before I was caught. Ended by the Four Lords themselves. I have no direct evidence, but I believe that I am here also at the Lords’ direction. Perhaps all remaining of my kind are.”’

  I thought about that. “Then in effect you were called in to the boss in the only way they could call you in.”

  “It is the only possible explanation.”

  “All right, then, tell me—if that’s true, why didn’t the current or former Lord of Charon know anything about you? Korman thought you were a Confederacy assassin. Koril says he didn’t even know of you until I drew attention your way. And Koril’s staff says they were very curious about you—but also had no idea as to your true nature. Why didn’t they know, Za … Kira?”

  “At the moment, only three possibilities come to mind,” she replied. “Either Koril or Matuze didn’t know, and only one was pretending, or both do not kno
w and this project was either not passed on to the new Lords who took over since for some reason, or they had some purpose in keeping this information from them.”

  “Nobody contacted you?”

  “Yes, I was contacted. In Bourget.”

  “By who?”

  “Yatek Morah.”

  I felt the old blood flowing again. Now we were getting somewhere.

  “When was this?”

  “Less than two days after we arrived.”

  “Less than two days! But we were there five months before he showed himself!”

  She nodded. “He instructed me in the use of the —while you were working mostly. He’d come almost every day at the start, then less often as the lessons became less instruction and more practice, as you should understand.”

  Yeah, I sure did. “Did you ask him what all this was for?”

  “I asked him if he had a mission for me. He told me that the mission would come later, that I was now only to practice.”

  “And you never pressed him?”

  “I do not question the orders of my superiors.” It wasn’t a brag, just a fact stated in that same fiat, emotionless tone as the rest.

  “So you were still without instructions that morning at Bourget?”

  “I was. I expected to be contacted, and even made an effort to contact Morah, but he brushed me aside. I am still without orders.”

  “You were never in the cult?”

  “No. I tried, certainly—but I was not permitted. None would even admit its existence, and it was well hidden. Of course, it was no trick to determine who was involved and where those meetings were, but since I was still learning the powers myself I had no desire to meet a superior challenge in them until I felt I was ready.”

  I nodded idly, mostly to myself. It all made a crazy kind of sense, but all the pieces didn’t fit. Damn it, did Koril know, or didn’t he? And, regardless, had Korman known, at least at the start? Morah certainly had. I needed more information—and fast.

  “Tell me, Kira, who do you work for now? Whose instructions will you, must you take?”

  She immediately saw the point of the question. “It is not so simple on Charon, which is why I wait and live through Zala. Here, as back home, there are factions in the Brethren, but there I was clearly on one side. Here are two coequal forces, it seems to me. Matuze ousted Koril, who was one of my Lords. Matuze has control now, but may or may not maintain it. Morah has helped me, for Matuze’s faction. But realistically, I must serve Lord Koril. I am here. I have no orders, no instructions, from Morah, and I am not likely to get any. If I do not ally myself with Lord Koril against Lord Matuze, I will be killed. Logic, therefore, dictates that I serve Lord Koril. I am at his service.”

  The statement was so cold and emotionless I could hardly suppress a shudder. Here was someone without any sense of morality, scruples, even loyalty. It made absolutely no difference to her who she worked for.

  It was time to talk to Koril.

  “You’ve seen the recording,” I said. “Any reaction?”

  Koril sat back and looked thoughtful. “I vaguely remember the project,” he responded after a long pause. “Very vaguely. It was started long before I was sent here, of course. But it was never considered successful. I swear to you I thought the whole operation was shut down and abandoned years ago. And this double mind thing—hell, it’s unbelievable to me.”

  He sounded sincere, and I wanted to believe him. Very much.

  “Still, somebody knew,” I pointed out. “She—and others—have been working for the Brethren for years. Who knows how many and over how long? And somebody ordered it shut down. Turned her in, in fact, and arranged somehow to send her here.”

  Koril seemed deep in thought and only half talking to me. “The more I think about it, the more I can see a possible scenario. The project was closed down, if I remember, because its products scared the hell out of the Four Lords—particularly their top people back home. Killing machines … What the Zala persona said rang a bell. No loyalty. No emotions. The bottom line was, no controls. Anything that—inhuman—could be used not only against the Confederacy but also against other power centers of the Brethren. Hell, it was supposedly shut down about the time I got sent here. I only got told about it when I was on the Synod by an old planetary boss who liked to reminisce.”

  “But that was forty or more years ago,” I noted. “She’s not nearly two-thirds that old.”

  He nodded. “And that, my friend, means that somebody has kept the thing going after it was ordered closed. Somebody who kept the secret from just about everybody except his own immediate family. It would give that person a tremendous edge.”

  “She said something about the Triana family,” I said.

  He shrugged. “I don’t know them, but it might be a real family and not a Brethren one. Still, you see what this means? A fifth Lord, a secret one, in the game for maybe forty years.”

  “Morah. It has to be Morah.”

  “I agree. And yet Morah closed down the thing and exposed at least one, maybe all, the remaining ones. Why?”

  “Well, I can think of one reason,” I told him.

  ‘“Huh?”

  “With organic super-robots and an alien force behind him he didn’t need them anymore. Not there, anyway.”

  “Perhaps. But why did he need them here! And why, once here, didn’t he use her?”

  He thought a moment. “Maybe he wasn’t ready to use her yet.”

  It was my turn. “Huh?”

  “Suppose there aren’t many of these—people. Suppose there are only, maybe, four of them. You remember Morah’s getaway in the square at Bourget?”

  “The four-headed hydra.”

  “And now Kreegan’s dead. Remember—Dumonia said it •wasn’t the assassin who got him. A fluke, he called it.” He looked straight at me. “And Morah’s seen, met with, talked with those aliens face to face.”

  I finally saw where he was going. “So Korman might not have known. Or Aeolia Matuze either.”

  He nodded. “The Confederacy might not be the only ones trying to knock off the Four Lords. In fact, the Confederacy might just be doing Yatek Morah a favor.

  “Not Four Lords of the Diamond—but one.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Forced Decisions

  “That girl—Zala or Kira or whoever she is—worries you, doesn’t she?” Darva asked. -

  I nodded. “Not the Zala part There’s something even likable about Zala. But ever since Korman told me about the other part of her I’ve wanted to meet that part—and now that I have, I’m not sure I should have forced it.”

  “I guess I’ll never understand you,” she sighed. “You force her out, then get really unhappy about it. Why? Isn’t Kira more or less the same type as you?”

  I whirled and felt my blood pressure go up. I paused a moment to try and get control of myself. I was going to make a nasty remark and strong denial, but Darva had really hit the nail on the head. Admitting that to myself calmed me down.

  “All right. Yes, in a way. Never that cold, that unemotional, but, yes, she is a lot like I used to be. The way I still really think of myself. But she’s me stripped down to the least common denominator. No morality, no cause, no feelings of any sort. That’s what those biotechs managed with that two-mind technique. She’s able to shift all her emotions, morals, feelings into Zala. It gives Kira the mind of a computer, unencumbered by any traces of—well, humanity. Zala may be dumb, shallow, and not good for much, but she’s all that’s human in that body and brain. And, still, when I look at Kara, talk to her, I see—me.” I see a man I used to be, sitting up there, a third of a light-year off the Warden system, I added to myself.

  And, in fact, just how different was Kira from that man up there? Outside of assignments, psych blocked and mostly wiped, he was really nothing more than a Zala with money. A playboy in the haunts of the rich and powerful, contributing little and totally hedonistic. The only difference between Kira and me, deep
down, was that when I got all that information back before a mission, like now, I still had at my base that other man, that playboy lover of fun. Kira, on the other hand, experienced everything vicariously and never felt that her cover was anything more than that—certainly not a part of her.

  The technique by which Zala/Kira had been formed remained a mystery. The medics here had poked and probed and found nothing. Her brain, aside from the Warden organisms’ odd grouping, appeared normal. Nothing in medical science could pinpoint the difference in any way. And yet it was not a psych technique, or some mental aberration—the wa showed clearly a true biological division there somewhere.

  To look into a mirror, to see such a personality—the perfect assassin—and see in all its ugliness the perfection of those qualities you always prided yourself on, this was the problem. Nor did I have the faith, the moral certitude, any more that I was on the side of right, justice, and good. Charon and its viewpoints and my own experiences here had killed that certainty, and even though I was still, for now, on the same side, I was there because the opposition repelled me, not out of any lingering loyalty to the Confederacy ideal. Had this, I wondered, happened to the others, my counterparts on Lilith, Cerberus, and Medusa? I knew this—I was more completely human now than ever before, and both the weaker for it and yet, somehow, whole as Kira was not and might never be.

  Explaining all this to Darva wasn’t easy. Although it helped to share it and talk it out, the fact was she could never fully understand. She hadn’t been raised to believe.

  And that, in the end, was the bottom line of difference between Kira and me. I had been a believer who lost his faith but found his humanity. She had never believed in anything, and, because of that, could never find or even fully comprehend her own humanity. I had been literally reduced to the animal on Charon and been reborn a human. Kira was reduced to the machine and locked there for all time.