by Victor Koman
Baker grabbed her throat and squeezed. She stared at him, her eyes drifting and refocusing every few instants. “You won’t trick me again, Dee. I’ll tear you apart and rebuild you.”
I’ll be careful to kill you just enough so the boxdoc can save you, bitch. I won’t choke you to death death Death Angel make him let go!
She breaths deep and pulls closer, murmuring and stroking me. I smell her hair against me, wet with her. Nightsheet’s mistress huddles against me and wants me and takes me as I take her and and and I’ll punch her enough to make her think twice twice twice I’ve blacked out and she’s changed toward me. The dead man’s hurting her. Get him back. Get him down. Move faster. Ride away from him on the wings of Death Angel. Wrap me in your wings and take me away from dying and dying and dying dying dying, die die die die!
“Die die die die!” Every word was an angry thrust inside her. She gasped and whimpered.
Die die don’t die don’t Die Die don’t die don’t don’t-
“Don’t,” cried Virgil. “Don’t-” You make me die inside, Death Angel pretty Death Angel lovely Death Angel goddess of darkness and freedom from hurt and care and want and death most of all from death my life goddess my-mine, made you mine and I’m yours all yours my goddess.
Virgil shuddered and stopped moving. Delia held him close and let her tears wet his neck.
Chapter Fourteen
A Time Beyond
Circus Galacticus orbited the dark object. Four hundred million kilometers in diameter, it occulted a good portion of stars from the sky. In the infrared range of the spectrum, though, it glowed dazzlingly bright. The computer launched a flashby probe; an answer returned hours later in the sudden appearance of a kilometers-long spaceship.
The craft transferred in alongside Circus Galacticus and emitted a hailing message on all frequencies. The computer returned the greeting and worked with the other ship on deriving a common language. Only then did it attempt to notify Delia and Virgil. One was unconscious, the other catatonic.
As a plenipotentiary of the Brennen Trust, the computer initiated trade negotiations with the other ship.
Jord Baker opened his eyes to behold Delia huddled sleeping in his arms.
“You… slut!” he hissed.
She opened her eyes, her expression changing from restfulness to fear.
“Hide,” she whispered.
Baker smiled. “It won’t work. I know about it and I’ve been through enough that your post-hypnotics have worn off.”
She tried to push away from him but he wrestled her into the chair and strapped her in.
Something clanked amidships.
Baker picked up the hypogun and filled it with five milliliters of DuoHypno Type II.
“However,” he said, turning toward her. “Maybe I can use your trick to make you cure me.”
She regained enough composure to say, “What was that sound?”
“What?” He held the hypodermic gun to her shoulder.
“That sliding sound.”
“Robots.”
“Computer!” she called. “Status of all ship robots.”
No answer. Baker put the gun back and looked at her. She’s tied up. And something’s going on out there. I’d better check… He went to the hatch and listened. Something scraped across it, then made a chittering noise that receded in the distance.
“Stay right there,” he said to her, listening with his ear against the hatch.
“I can’t go anywhere, you son of a bitch.”
“Shh.” He opened the hatchway and slipped out.
The air smelled of some faint, musky sweet odor. The corridor lights glowed at a far lower level than that to which he was accustomed. Something moved past a hatchway to his right. Something teardrop-shaped and translucent.
White and pale like a ghost. I saw right through it! It just floated-
He employed the handholds to move cautiously down the corridor. He snuck a look around the edge of the hatch and pulled back immediately.
Five of them. What are they?
He drifted silently back to the other corridor and switched on a computer console.
WHAT IS GOING ON? he typed.
PLEASE RESTATE QUESTION came the reply.
“You know what I mean,” he whispered angrily. “What are those things floating around the hall?”
SYSTEMS OPERATING AT MAXIMUM CAPACITY. YOUR QUESTION WILL BE ANSWERED WHEN TIME IS AVAILABLE.
What the hell? “Don’t ignore me, damn you! I’m the human!” When no answer came, he maneuvered down the corridor to the armory and slipped on a laser glove. He headed toward the prow ellipsoid-quietly, carefully.
The same musky smell hung thickly around the ellipsoid. Silver-white strands thinner than silk drifted through the air. They clung at his skin and hair like cobwebs. Charging the laser, he pulled slowly down the passageway to the hold containing the life support system. No ghosts there, either.
He moved on to the next level and the compartments storing the Valliardi transfer equipment. Something hissed. Baker pulled into the crook of a support beam juncture and waited. The hissing grew louder, rising to the level of a stage whisper.
The white form undulated by less than a meter from him. The smell overpowered him when the creature passed; he almost gagged.
Just like a ghost. Balloon head up front and a rippling body behind. Only ghosts don’t stink like oxen or leave spider webs behind them. Aliens, damn it, and I’m the first to see one, but… The transfer!
He moved as fast as he could toward the compartment, took a deep breath, and peered through the open hatchway.
Throughout the room, pale figures floated and darted like jellyfish; a hissing occurred every time one of the creatures started, stopped, or changed direction. Once in motion, though, they were as silent as phantoms. Some grasped large pieces of equipment securely with their snaking bodies. Others gripped tools and incomprehensible devices in hands that were little more than translucent tentacles ending in a burst of fingers, thumbs and smaller tentacles. Their heads, the most opaque part of them, possessed two black dots that must have been eyes, and various slits and openings that roughly corresponded to a nose, ears, and mouth. Openings in the backs of their heads served a purpose of which Baker had no idea.
They worked at a furious pace. They were dismantling the Valliardi Transfer.
Baker raised his hand to point the laser at the most industrious alien. “Sorry, balloonhead,” he whispered. “Diplomacy aside, I can’t let you strand me-”
Some of the creatures turned to look when they heard the crack of steel against Baker’s skull. The others worked on, not interested in the limp, totally opaque body being dragged away by one of the ship’s robots.
“I cannot have either one of you interfere while you are in unstable emotional conditions,” the computer stated flatly.
Baker listened while straining with futile effort at the straps holding him to the bed. Delia sat where he had left her. A robot, cylindrical with a dozen specialized arms, floated between them, on guard. Baker said nothing, merely choosing to stare at the red light below the computer’s vidcam.
“I made contact,” it explained, “with the People of the Sphere shortly after our final transfer, which delivered us to this system. ‘This system’ comprising an aged K-type star surrounded by a Dyson shell and not much else.
“It turns out that I have nothing of value to offer them in the name of the Brennen Trust. Nothing, that is, except two rather flawed examples of living anthro-history. They are keenly interested in anthro-history, and I have agreed to show them Earth. In this regard, they have offered to redesign our transfer device to incorporate improvements from their own devices.”
“You’re showing them to Earth? Just like that? Don’t you know what sort of danger that might put us in?”
“This,” Delia said. “from one who was ready to kill the only human being who could handle the transfer.”
He turned his head toward hers. �
�I can handle it well enough.” He looked at the computer. “You may be dooming all mankind!”
“You almost did by trying to submerge Virgil.”
“Shut up, Dee!”
The computer said, “I have no emotional attachment to the human race. The People of the Sphere seem quite accustomed to preserving endangered species. No destructive race can create something as vast as a Dyson-type structure. No dictatorship or empire could last long enough to finish such a cooperative effort.”
“In your opinion, programmed by human beings as you were.”
“In my opinion based on the history cores they have been feeding my memory over the past several hours. This is the first opportunity I have had to use even a small amount of random access for anything other than filing new information.”
“Get us out of these things so we can stop them.”
“I regret any trauma I may be causing you, tovar Baker, but I do possess the relevant facts in this matter.” The computer said nothing more.
“I hate you, Jord,” Delia said, quietly.
“I know. Now shut up and let me think of how to save us.”
“Your sudden protective impulse for a planet that died in the Earth-Belt war is simply a rationalization of your senseless urge to kill these innocents!”
“You can stop being a psychoanalyst now.”
“Hide.”
“I told you, bitch, it doesn’t work.” He strained at the straps until the blood thundered in the wound on his bandaged scalp. Relaxing his efforts, he glared at her. “You didn’t see them, Dee. They’re like cartoon spirits, like glass fish. You can see their guts, for God’s sake!”
“Xenophobe.”
“What’s that? That scraping?”
Delia smiled. “Neither of us is in control at the moment, Jord. You could always get up and stop me if I tried the wrong thing on you. How does it feel to be the helpless captive?”
“Shut up! I think they’re going away.”
“Now, why do you want to kill the one man that can open humanity’s path to the stars?”
“He’s not the only one. You heard. They can handle the Valliardi Transfer and they’ve even got modifications.”
“So? Maybe theirs doesn’t impart the death illusion and you can use it happily ever after.”
“Shut up! I still want to die, don’t you see? Crys was waiting for me. My father, too. They want me there. They called to me so many times and I tried to go with them but I kept getting pulled back and I want to die in a way I’ll be sure I can be aware enough to-to-” He began to cry.
“Hide,” Delia said, watching his face for a clue to any change. “Hide.”
“No.”
“Hide, Jord. You are now Virgil Grissom Kin-”
“No!”
“Prepare to transfer,” a disembodied voice said.
“Virgil. It’s me, Delia.” She swallowed and forced a grin. “Death Angel, Virgil.”
“I’ll kill you, Dee, when I get out of this. I’ll make you feel every bit of it as I grind you up-”
Up. Up. I’m being lifted by something. Out of the bed. Up. Something pushing me up faster and faster and faster till the walls blur into white and my body smears into a rainbow streak and I stretch across a plain so vast its horizons red shift away. I rush across it to see someone at the far end approach me like a reflection. Kinney!
Jord speeds toward me and we stop, watching each other. I move. He moves. A mimetic standoff. He stands back. As do I. His body looks like mine, but also his. My own flickers. Him. Me. Him. Me. Himmy.
We’re one.
I refuse.
Mixed up together like water and air make fog.
Never.
Soon! Inseparable. You can’t leech a soul away from itself.
It’s not fair. I sit down. He sits down.
He sits down. I sit down.
I sit down.
What did you just do?
Me? What did-
I just do?
The flickering speeds up-
And I can’t tell-
Where I end-
And I-
Begin.
I feel both aspects, now. The plain contracts at the speed of white and bends to a cone, a tube, a cocoon. Tighter it shrinks, forcing me inward at mind-searing speeds. All white around me, blinding eyes I don’t have. A roar that fills ears I don’t possess wraps me in its strange sound. Something pushes the body no longer part of me and I feel the awful crush-
And release. Suns explode around me. Planets cascade. Races crawl out of seas of water or bromine or ammonia, rise to great heights, and tumble back in. Thoughts caress my mind, cat’s paw soft, and they are gentle. Galaxies swirl into a pattern from which rises a mighty city greater than any eyes have seen. A shimmering city of metal and more, where all the dead live as one nation. The dead from all the worlds, from all of time, from all of all.
I see them and know I’m one. Then grains of black appear on the towers, darkening them. Black dust tars my death’s tin nation like cinders from nowhere. The blackness spreads and a voice like every voice combined wishes me the gift of peace for my souls and it all begins, on two tracks.
I am born. I grow. I die.
Yet Virgil Grissom Kinney lives on.
With Jordan Baker inside.
And we become as one.
And return.
Chapter Fifteen
The God in the Machine
He opened his eyes and observed the robot for a few moments, a tranquil expression on his face.
“Computer. This is Virgil Baker. Please release both tovar Trine and me. I would like to meet whoever built this crazy roller coaster.”
“The robot will remain at your side to prevent any aberrant behavior on your part toward Delia Trine or the People.”
“Do what you will. It’s unnecessary, but I see how you’d expect me still to be insane.”
“You are not, now?”
“I told you. I am Virgil Baker.” The robot unstrapped his arms. Massaging his wrists, he said, “Our psyches have fully integrated thanks to the improved manner in which the People’s Transfer works. Didn’t you notice anything different?”
“No,” the computer said. “As I informed one of you, I have succeeded in making my neural net insensitive to such effects.”
The robot finished unstrapping him, and he pushed toward Delia. “You felt it, Delia, didn’t you? Something different? Something good and liberating?”
“Stay back!” she cried. “I did. Maybe. You said you’d kill me, though, and if Jord is still there in there, awake, scheming…”
“It doesn’t matter, Dee. I saw it all. Death isn’t the end even if we go all the way. It’s actually a trivial waypoint in our development. You saw that. The marker of death should not be the tombstone, but the milestone.”
“Stay away!” The robot had finished untying her and she kicked backward. “I know what I went through, and I know what it means, and we obviously didn’t see the same thing. I somehow lost the memory of the first clone sometime after I was put into the second. I was alone out there. Scared.”
“You shouldn’t have been.”
“Get back, Jord!”
She maneuvered between the robot and Virgil Baker. The robot blocked the computer’s view of the scene, she blocked the robot’s. Using that hidden instant, she grabbed a scalpel and slashed at his throat. At the crooks of his arms. Under his groin. He stared uncomprehendingly at her through the roiling lifeblood that whorled around him like a tornado.
“Virgil!” she screamed, watching his life pulse away in quivering droplets. “Forgive-!” She laid the scalpel to her own carotid artery.
Spattered by her blood, the robot closed in to stun her with an electrical jolt, then carried the two bodies to the medical bay. It followed the silent commands of the computer, lowering the draining corpses into the boxdoc and actuating the RNA leeching process. The grinding disc descended.
Delia clutched at her head.
“Ooh.” She floated in a sleeping quarters decorated completely in light shades of blue. The air smelled of horses, she thought, and summer morning dew. Everything seemed slightly out of kilter. The room, spare and functional, appeared to turn in slow, dizzying quarter circles that stopped with unnerving suddenness and then repeated. Sounds coming through the walls seemed to rise and fall with her breathing. The taste of fresh wintergreen tingled in her mouth. The colors and smells and tastes, she knew, were snatches of memory from her childhood, idealized and concentrated by the filters of nostalgia.
She tried to reach for a handhold, but she had been purposely suspended in the center of the chamber, out of reach of anything to grasp or kick. With the slow effort of hand movements and exhalations, she was able gradually to propel toward a bulkhead. Her head ached from the effort. Unsteady fingers punched the computer pager. “This is Trine. Where the hell am I?”
“You are in Ring One, Level Two, Section Six O’Clock. Please proceed to Prow Four Center to meet the People.”
“What people?”
“The People of the Sphere, whom we have led to Earth. I think you will find them most interesting.”
Delia rubbed the itchy bump on her skull. “Earth?” Her eyes brightened. “We’re back?”
“In a manner of speaking. Please proceed to the chart room.”
She stood in front of the hatch for a moment before opening it. Why, she thought, did she feel as if there was a constant undercurrent of chatter going on? Is it the same schizophrenic roar described by… by…? She frowned, trying to remember something about a blond man with green eyes. Something about angels, and poor, dead Jord.
She shook her head wearily and opened the hatch.
At the far end of the room, the surface of Earth moved across the viewing port. She recognized Africa, though something appeared to be dreadfully wrong with the continent. A slash through it marked a new ocean, and the northern edge of the continent was rimmed with sheets of ice. She wondered if there could possibly have been that much damage during the Earth-Belt war. Then her eyes focused on the two dozen wraiths within the room.