by Lucia Ashta
“Of course,” I interrupted, but she went on.
“And you do understand that he has nearly unlimited wealth and influence?” I waited for her to complete her monologue of rhetorical questions before saying anything else.
“No matter how careful Lord Brachius has been in making his splicing process and facility impervious to outside influence, the people of Origins are corrupt if they’re anything. Not even your father’s lab is immune to a well-funded bribe or a particularly loaded blackmail situation. There’s no one you can think of at Lord Brachius’ lab that might be open to the King’s influence, especially when we all, theoretically, owe him allegiance and are obligated to do as he orders?”
“You?” I hedged.
“No, not me, though I probably would have done it if it meant that I’d never have to work for someone else again for the rest of my life. But no, I wasn’t asked.”
“Then who was it?”
A coy look flitted across her face before she let it pass. We’d come too far together to withhold pertinent information from one another now. Perhaps she was beginning to understand this.
“I can’t be entirely sure. Whoever it was is even more careful than your father, assuming it wasn’t your father, and I think we can assume that it would be senseless for the King to approach Lord Brachius. I think it was Aletox, but all I received was a request, labeled top secret, hidden among my personal effects, with a few significant incentives to keep the order for lab work confidential, even from the other lab workers.”
Aletox. I would bet she was right that it was he who bypassed my father to deal with the King, even though I still had no understanding of why he would do that. I’d believed him loyal to my father to a fault. After his revelation of my dubious parentage, I certainly couldn’t be sure of his allegiance to my father any longer. “And when the King came into the lab, you kept a few samples for yourself.”
“Something like that, although the King didn’t come to the lab. I had to go to him, in the palace.”
“So the King spliced himself?”
“He did. More than once.” And according to Lila, splicing was evil. The King’s hidden enthusiasm for the process didn’t bode well for the people of O. To have a king with tyrannical authority deteriorating into evil with each occasion that he commissioned his eternality to be spliced was a foreboding prospect.
“Were you the one doing the splicing every time?”
“Yes.”
“Giving you plenty of opportunity to gather whatever biological information from the King you wanted.”
“Basically.”
“What do the King’s memories have to do with splicing? Or were the memories your own personal experiment?”
“Oh, no. We collect the memories of every single one of the splicing clients. It’s one of the first things we do, before we even attempt a splice.”
“Really?” This was Dolpheus, and I was with him. I didn’t understand what they could need a person’s memories for either. “Why do you need the memories?”
Again, the voice used to explain something simple to a child that was still learning the adult ways of interpreting life, the voice that assumed its way was better than any other way, even if it wasn’t. “Because the splicing process wouldn’t be effective without them. Look, this is how splicing works, abbreviated, obviously. The process is actually quite involved and sophisticated. Not just any monkey can do it.” From the look she gave us, it was obvious that she placed us in the simian category.
“I’ve already explained much of this to you. First, I extract the person’s complete image of him or herself. This includes the body image information and the memories. In other words, the complete personality and everything that identifies the person as who he or she is. I slow down the body mechanics so that I can extract the eternality without harming it. With the eternality outside of the body, I separate a very small fragment of it. Are you following?”
“Of course we are,” Dolpheus and I said at once, equally annoyed to be treated in such an infantile fashion, but also fully aware that we were still largely ignorant of the details of this all-important process.
“Good. The whole point of splicing is to have a backup body, identical to the current one, the same in personality and life experiences. If something were to happen to a client, and he or she were in need of a duplicate of him or herself, then we would provide it.” She paused but didn’t make us ask how. “We would take the extraction of the eternality that we have and implant it into a viable receptacle. Then we would hook the body up to a system similar to that used for a mind merge—almost exactly like it, actually—and then we would implant the memories and personality idiosyncrasies. By the time we’re finished, the new person, the splice, is identical to our original client.”
“What exactly do you implant the eternality, memories, and personality into?” Kai had a good question. What did they implant this fragment of a living, breathing person into? Was this where the process crossed over into the zone of evil?
But Lila didn’t seem bothered by Kai’s question, or her answer. “That depends. If the client has lost a limb or suffered some kind of other physical damage, then we can use his body. We don’t have to get another. We can just readjust his mental image of his body to its previous state, tamper with his memories to remove the injury, and that’s usually enough. Sometimes we need to bolster the body with the addition of a fragment of the eternality that we previously removed, but it’s not usually necessary.”
“Have you had a lot of these situations where severe physical injury takes place?” I asked.
“Enough. O is a dangerous place.” She didn’t have to tell me that. “And it seems that clients get more reckless in their behavior and choices once they know we can fix them if something happens.”
“And if the person dies? Then what?” Kai pressed.
“Usually, we insert the dead client’s eternality into another body, into a healthy, youthful, well-functioning body. Then we transfer over the memories, personality, and body imagery. By the time we’re finished, our creation is a nearly identical replica of the original client.”
None of us said a word. Clearly, Lila wasn’t disturbed by this. But we were. Kai didn’t follow up with the question of where the splicing industry got these bodies from. We all knew. The aristocracy of Origins made it abundantly plain that there were some lives—essentially, any that fit within the lower classes—that held much less value than their own. Previously, Lila had said that my father experimented on the rebels from the wilds. However, the highbrowed clientele of my father’s splicing program would have no problem with taking the life of anyone they considered beneath them.
After a moment of silence in honor of all the innocent dead, victims of the splicing industry and of O’s most infectious disease, greed, I asked, “Can you splice a person that has already been… recreated, or whatever you would call it? Or can you only do so when the person is in his original body?” What bizarre questions this bizarre situation was forcing upon me.
“It’s only at first, when the person’s still the same one he was born as. That’s why so many clients splice themselves repeatedly. They know it’s their only chance. However many times they splice themselves before they become maimed or die, those are all the chances at prolonging their lives they’ll ever get.” Until the splicing technology advances even more, I thought, finding the way to sustain this undead, evil segment of high society. I shuddered.
It was too much to dwell on just now, especially when it seemed that both potential fathers in my life were at the core of such a destructive practice. I forced my thoughts onward, onto Ilara, to whom they always returned. “I can access the King’s memories through whatever substance is within this vial then, avoiding the necessity of entry into the palace entirely.”
“That’s right. You should be able to explore all the same information as you could if you were performing a mind merge with the person of the King himself. You might even
be able to get more this way, depending on how severe his head injury is. If it’s been enough to cause trauma to that part of the brain responsible for housing memory, then this”—she held the vial by its stopper, up to the sun so we could see through it—“is your best option.”
“All right. Let’s do it. What do I need to do?” I asked. If the opportunity for discovering Ilara’s whereabouts was truly finally within my grasp, I didn’t want to delay a moment longer.
“Lay down somewhere comfortable, somewhere you won’t be disturbed. And then we’ll start the mind merge.”
“We don’t need any of those crystalline mind merge cables?”
For the first time since Lila pulled out her treasure trove of dark mysteries, her composure slipped. “No. We do need them. And I don’t have any on me.”
“So we do need to break into the palace after all?” Kai asked, doing a decent job of connecting all the dots, especially since he’d come into the situation late.
“It looks like it.” There was enough disappointment in Lila’s voice to find hope that she might be learning to care for us, or at the very least not wish us dead.
“At least we don’t have to hook the King up to the mind merge machinery anymore though, right?” Dolpheus said with a forced upbeat tone. “It’ll be much easier to break into the palace and go to the infirmary, assuming that’s where the mind merge hookup still is, than to steal into the King’s private chambers.”
“Except for that the King isn’t in his private chambers. He’s in the royal infirmary,” Kai said.
“And the royal infirmary is where I last saw the mind merge cables,” I said, with far too little surprise that when things seemed as if they might finally get easier, they didn’t. “They might still be in the royal infirmary, or they might have been moved. No one would have any need of them just yet.” Apparently they would, however, if the King died and Lila were called to bring him back to life, even if in the body of some poor disposable wretch.
“So either way we have to break into the most heavily guarded area of the palace. And we can’t even guarantee that we’ll find the mind merge cables once we do,” I said, trying very hard to keep the fatigue and defeat of the day from my voice. “Kai, do you know where the mind merge cables might ordinarily be kept when they’re not in the royal infirmary? Or Lila, do you?”
Kai shook his head. Lila said, “I don’t. It was always assumed that if I were called in to assist the King in transitioning into another body that I’d have people such as his royal physician there to help me with whatever I might need.”
I think the idea hit me first. However, it didn’t take long until we all arrived at the same thought. I could identify the precise moment when it happened on the other three faces that surrounded me. Even Lord Dingaling’s beady little eyes widened when Dolpheus realized what I had. Lila had been right. We didn’t need to steal back into the palace, where I was the most wanted man on all of O.
She could walk into the palace, past the guards, straight through one of its official doors, to check on her most prestigious and secretive client in the entire splicing industry, which catered only to the elite of Origins. And she could walk straight out of the palace, with the mind merge cables concealed in one of the many pockets of her lab suit, which was looking sexier by the moment.
Fifteen
Lila put on a good show of cocky confidence. However, there were signs that entering the palace in a way that she had several times before, yet with such a different purpose, made her nervous. As Dolpheus and I reviewed the exact steps she’d need to take, she giggled often, laughing at things that weren’t meant to be funny. Neither Dolpheus nor I mentioned it. He and I were used to taking risks with our lives. We were asking a lot of Lila even if her job was simple and involved a minimal chance of discovery.
She was almost ready to go. There was no reason to delay, even if she was dragging her feet, a typical response of amateurs to what could be loosely labeled criminal activity. She was no stickler for rule breaking when it came to science and morality; she’d made that clear early on. But “borrowing” from a royal palace, when she would need to walk out with the evidence of thievery on her person, was quite another thing.
“It’s best just to get it over with,” Dolpheus said. “Then you don’t have to think about it anymore.”
“He’s right,” I added. “It’ll be over before you know it. It’ll be easy enough. Remember, there’s nothing suspicious about you coming to check on the King, given the state he’s in. It might even be expected.”
She nodded, only half listening to what I was saying. “I’ve never gone to the palace in my lab suit before. I always dress in my finest to see the King.”
“No one’ll be paying attention to those details now. Don’t worry. The King might be dying. Lord Drakos has declared a state of emergency,” said Dolpheus.
Lila stared off into the trees behind us. I put a gentle hand on her arm. “It’s time to go, Lila. We need you to do this. It’s more important than ever to access the King’s memories. You have an important part to play in the stability of Origins.” I assumed I would end up having to tell Kai that Ilara lived and that I needed to bring her back to the planet so the rule of Origins wouldn’t deteriorate into a more blatant form of tyranny, but the necessity of it hadn’t yet arrived.
Lila nodded, far away. “Wait,” she said. “I can’t go yet. I have to transform Dolpheus back before I go.”
“It can’t wait until you return? I thought we’d already settled the matter of Dolpheus for now,” I said, fed up with all the delays. I’d waited for more than three years already to restore Ilara to her home. After an eternal day with no sleep and an abundance of complications, each additional suggestion of delay grated on my nerves like a toothache that wound down to its roots, where it festered.
“No.” Lila’s eyes were wide with feigned innocence, as if I wouldn’t realize that she was suggesting it now, at the last moment, to put off having to do what she didn’t want to do. “It’s no longer an advantage to have Dolpheus in the body of a courtier. I’m to go alone into the palace. And what if something were to happen to me and I wasn’t able to return to you? Then Dolpheus would be stuck in this body until I could help him. Or what if something unexpected happens and Dolpheus needs to be able to defend himself? I can’t imagine he’d be able to fight very competently in his current body.”
Something unexpected always happened. I sighed. It was a grumpy, ungenerous, unpleasant kind of one. I couldn’t take the chance of leaving my best friend in this body in which he couldn’t even see whatever puny kind of dick a man like Lord Dingaling had. “Fine. Let’s do it. But do it as quickly as you can. Please.”
“Oh what a relief,” Dolpheus said, already drawing closer to Lila, eagerness taking over every one of his features. “I can’t wait to get out of this… body, if you can call it a body. What do I need to do?”
Trying to hide her sense of victory that she’d succeeded in prolonging what I didn’t want to put off, she took command, no longer the frightened woman but the impartial scientist. “Find a place where you’ll be comfortable and undisturbed. You can sit or lie down, whichever position is more conducive to finding that stillness you require for transporting.”
Dolpheus was more compliant than I’d ever seen him. Already, he was taking a seat with his back against a tree trunk. He tried to crisscross his legs over his lap as I’d seen him do perhaps a thousand times when he sat to still himself. However, Lord Dingaling’s stubby legs weren’t Dolpheus’ long, limber ones. He grunted defeat and plopped the round, short calves and chubby feet that were stuffed into ridiculous high-heeled boots straight out in front of him. “Should I begin accessing that space of stillness?”
“Yes. You may begin,” Lila said.
“Will you direct me once I’m there? Or will I be doing this on my own?”
Lila’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Do you think you can do it on your own?”
Dolpheus
had already closed his eyes. He shrugged. “Sure. Why not? You already gave me an idea of how the process works.”
“I told you perhaps a sentence about it, no more. I think it would be better if I guide you through it.”
Dolpheus didn’t say anything. I didn’t think he cared how they did it as long as they did it.
“Will you be able to pay attention to my guidance, or will it distract you from your stillness too much?”
“I don’t know. Whenever I transport or do anything else like it”—like attempt to disrupt force fields, I thought—“I have no interruptions. But we can try it your way and see what happens if you like.”
I grinned; Dolpheus was unusually amenable. I watched Lila and Kai watch Dolpheus a.k.a. Lord Dingaling for a long moment. “Get on with it then.”
“Right,” Lila said. “Okay. Dolpheus, go ahead and enter that place of stillness. We won’t speak so that we don’t disrupt you. Then once it seems as if you’re in the necessary space, I’ll guide you through the steps.” Ah, so she was saying that she wouldn’t disrupt him now, she would disrupt him later. But I didn’t say a thing. I could dominate my impatience, at least for a while longer.
All of us were silent. Lila and Kai trained their gazes on Dolpheus’ lumpy form on the ground. I, aware of how much more difficult it was to access the space where material things lost their form when I could sense the attention of others, purposefully looked elsewhere. I studied the trees, the stream, the sky. The Suxle Sun was about to set again, the bright colors that pertained only to sunsets and artists’ palettes were beginning to creep across the lower portions of the sky. I was missing my appointment with the executioner.
When I returned my attention to Dolpheus, his breathing was deep and steady, as if he were napping. Despite the intent gazes upon him, he’d left them far behind.
I caught Lila’s eye and nodded. Dolpheus had said that Lila could transport, so she must be able to access some kind of tranquility where she could let go of the concreteness of her body. Nevertheless, I didn’t know how she did it, because she didn’t seem to be recognizing that Dolpheus had arrived. I, however, recognized where he was right away. I almost felt like I was there with him, or maybe it was just that I wanted also to be in that familiar place where everything distilled itself into simpler terms.