The people of that town gathered around and laughed at her nakedness, and a man claimed that she was eating his food. She tried to run then, for she feared he would beat her, but he only laughed and said that he would trade her for the food, give her something good, then he took her into an alley and beat her and savagely mated with her.
When he finished, he threw coins on her, and other men from the inn also came and mated with her, too, ignoring her cries but leaving more coins, until at last when the men had all finished, a wench from the inn came and explained to Doovenach how to use the coins.
Doovenach had never owned anything. It seemed to her that her very bones whispered that the root of all evil came from lusting after the possessions of another. And her very bones told her that the earth and all of its riches belonged to all. And because Doovenach had never possessed something to call her own, she had never learned the great secrets of exchange.
But once she learned this great secret, Doovenach returned to her people with money and sought to teach them. She told them that their lives would not be so harsh in the winter if they took money into town and bought food, and she explained that they could mate for money, but her people could never seem to comprehend her words. Or perhaps they never believed them.
So Doovenach returned to the city and rented a comer in a stable where she could sleep in warm straw, close to the sweet smell of horses. She made money by breeding with any man who would have her, and she learned to both take and give great joy in the act. Many were the men who would suck at her hairy breasts and cry out in ecstasy as they made love. And though she never bore children, she helped care for children of the streets who had no homes. For many years she studied other races and learned their ways.
Often in the winter, younger Roamers would come in off the plains and Doovenach would share her food with them, let them sit under her shelter, but the others never learned her ways. They respected her and knew she was wise, but she was wise in ways that they could not comprehend.
And so, when Doovenach began to grow old and ugly and could no longer earn much money, she journeyed to Northland with a friend and sought rebirth, hoping to be young again, hoping to become a teacher for her people.
The human judges in the City of Life recorded her memories and took her skin sample, and Doovenach’s memories ended there. But she gave money to her friend, and her friend’s memories were also recorded. After many days the humans passed judgment on Doovenach, saying, “Although you claim to be a devotee of human ways, you have never understood anything but the most surface concepts of capitalism. You have rented the barest shelter in a stable, and sometimes bought food, but beyond that, you have never gained any possessions, never sought to obtain the virtues that would assure rebirth.”
“But I have advanced the cause of mankind,” Doovenach protested. “I gave joy to many men.”
The human judges said: “You sold them pleasure. You were only a whore, catering to their most basic instincts.” And they sent her away.
Doovenach shrugged, and she was not angry. She had lived her life, and she reasoned that if the humans had given her another, then perhaps on some cosmic scale the universe would have been thrown out of balance, and someone else would have had to go without being born.
But after that, the Roamers did not go to the human lands seeking rebirth, for even the wisest and most human among them had been found unworthy.
And the colors swirled, and Gallen began to recall the life of Entreak d’Suluuth of the bird tribe. And just as suddenly, he was in the night again.
There was a searing moment of pain, and Gallen found himself lying on the ground. He could smell grass and mud. There was a familiar weight of his mantle on his head and shoulders.
The night felt so strange, so cold. Gallen struggled up, until he could see Maggie squatting over him, her dark red hair limned by moonlight. She was holding his hands.
“Oh, Gallen, are you all right?” she asked. Gallen’s mantle heightened his vision, and he could easily see the lines of worry in her face. In the darkness the pupils of her eyes dilated to a seemingly unnatural width.
Gallen struggled to his feet. It was well past midnight, and silver-lined clouds rolled across the night sky. Two minutes. He had been under for two minutes, and in those moments, he somehow felt the weight and pain of two lifetimes. He’d tasted the flavor of those lives, of people’s feelings, in a way that he’d never imagined. “We are our bodies,” the Bock had said. And Gallen wondered if that creature really understood the depth of those words—understood the sense of peace the Roamers felt in traveling the wide earth, or the passion the Makers felt while kneading mud for the potter’s wheel.
Gallen recalled dozens of experiences, all whirling like butterflies in his head—Doovenach tasting wild anise for the first time; an old man of her tribe dying of hunger. Koti as a young man, painting a tin glaze over a pot before it went into a kiln.
Gallen felt as if he were tumbling, tumbling; his emotions were still jangled. He felt exultation that was somehow displaced, without a reference to any experience he could imagine. Right now, he thought he should be feeling relief at getting free of the Inhuman, or disgust at his own humanity … or something. But the Inhuman:” probe seemed to be stimulating his emotions directly.
“I … can’t think. I can’t think!” Gallen said.
“Why not? What are they doing to you?”
“Memories—” Gallen said. “I’m remembering lives.”
“The dronon made the Inhuman, and they don’t want you to think!” Maggie said, squeezing his hands. “Whatever the dronon show you, they don’t want you to think. Gallen, I know how memories are recorded. They can be edited. They can be misremembered. It’s easy to fake them. But even if these are genuine, the dronon don’t want you to think: you might disagree with them, and the dronon don’t tolerate that.”
Gallen looked up at her, knew that she was speaking what she believed was the truth, yet dangerous thoughts kept flooding through his mind, welcome snatches of memory. He felt far more experienced in life, far wiser than ever before. He reveled in his new memories, as if they were a new great cloak that weighed heavily on his shoulders, but was yet new and comforting. The memories that the Inhuman offered were sweet and exotic and tinged with pain, and he hungered for more.
Maggie was human, and she accepted the human agenda without question. But neither she nor Gallen had ever looked beyond the human agenda. Neither of them had really considered whether the benevolent Tharrin were running the universe in the best possible way. Gallen remembered the deadly rose, left as a warning on Fale. And now, Gallen recalled the lives of the people of Babel, saw how their lives were thrown away, how their needs were ignored. They suffered. They suffered. Ignorance, poverty, lawlessness, death. The humans of Tremonthin could protect the people of Babel, sweep all of these ills away, but they did not.
“Maggie,” he whispered. “I need to go under again. I need to know more!”
“Not right now,” Maggie said, squeezing his hand. Her eyes were frightened, and he knew that she didn’t want him to ever go under again. “Give your head some time to clear. Rest.”
“Soon, then,” Gallen said. “I want to go under soon.”
Maggie’s eyes were large and frightened, but Gallen suddenly knew that there was nothing to fear. The Inhuman had never sought to kill them, had never sought to harm them. Gallen felt dazed, as if he were whirling, and he knew he was too tired to stay awake much longer.
“Promise me,” Maggie said, her voice tight, “that you won’t go under again without telling me. Promise me that!” She took him by the collar, held him, her lips just inches away from his.
Gallen gazed into Maggie’s wide eyes, and wondered how he would tell her of the things he’d seen, the things he was beginning to guess—about the Inhuman’s beautiful plans.…
* * *
Chapter 18
When Maggie woke at dawn, Gallen was gone. She hoped that he had not t
ried to wrestle with the Inhuman once again. Whatever he’d felt the night before, she had seen in his face that the Inhuman was more dangerous than she’d imagined. It had seduced him in only a moment, and she feared that he had wakened hungering for its touch.
She stalked around the camp all morning, wondering if she should tell the others, wondering if Gallen would come back at all. She retrieved the broken Word from the bushes where she’d thrown it the night before, then went outside of camp, put her mantle on, and Maggie silently asked her mantle to feed her information on the creature—its probable functionality.
Immediately, the mantle showed her a schematic for the creature, detailing the known hinges in its joints, its sensory apparatus, its own brain and system of energy storage. The body of the Word was just a simple machine designed for invasion. It was too small to be self-aware, and therefore would try to complete its only task rather doggedly, and stupidly, at times.
But the information she needed most was not available. Once the creature invaded its host, the nanoware inside was extruded into the host’s brain, and that nanoware could not be studied without microscopic sensors that Maggie’s mantle did not have.
So Maggie asked it to make a guess about the most logical functionality of the thing based on current technology. The mantle suggested that the system required several components: an antenna system to receive signals; an amplifier to boost the signal; a power system to power the amplifier; and a neural interface that would let the Inhuman’s message be sent directly to the brain.
Beyond those four systems, Maggie didn’t know what else the Word might have incorporated into it. But Maggie considered each of these systems, wondering how to sabotage them.
The antenna was first on her list. Her mantle said that since the human body already worked as an antenna, receiving radio signals due to the electromagnetic field created by ionized salts within the body, the Word would need to do very little to actually receive the signals. The body already could receive signals, it just wouldn’t recognize them. But solar interference during the day might distort signals, weakening them to the point that they would be worthless. And beings living underground might not receive the signals at all. And the dronon may have taken these factors into account.
Her mantle whispered that the human body could be greatly enhanced as an antenna by temporarily introducing small amounts of metallic salts, and Maggie suspected that such metallic salts would disperse evenly throughout the body.
But the main thing that the Word needed was not a better antenna, but a good amplifier, and that amplifier would be powered by converting body heat into electrical energy.
Maggie noted that the servants of the Inhuman had kept the Word close to their bodies, kept them warm, and she suspected that the biogenerator was concealed in the body of the creature, probably with the amplifier. If she could get that biogenerator to cool, the Word would die.
But the Word had burrowed to the base of Gallen’s skull and had actually inserted itself inside the skull, making it almost impossible to remove.
Gallen had said that he felt it “moving in his skull,” and Maggie had the very disturbing notion that he might have been right. Once the creature made its entrance at the base of the skull, it might well have moved higher into the brain to protect itself.
Once there, it had little difficulty sending a chain of nanoware devices into the brain and spinal column, forming new neural pathways so that it could send its message to its host.
Once there, the Word had only to receive its signals from the Inhuman, then convey the information to Gallen. He recalled two lifetimes in only two minutes, which suggested to Maggie that an incredible amount of information was being downloaded rapidly.
But those possessed by the Inhuman were not being controlled individually, of that she was sure. If they were all connected through a transmission network, they would have been able to send and receive information instantly, coordinating their attacks without even voicing commands.
But back in town, the hunting packs of the Inhuman had relied upon their scouts to convey verbal communications. Which meant that the Inhuman, once it fed its propaganda to a host, released the host, expecting it to act at its own discretion.
The Word … Maggie recalled how her attacker in Northland had talked about it almost reverently, as something to enjoy. And Gallen had been seduced by its touch, and now craved to hear more. When she’d first looked at his face, he had been filled with joy and peace and loss. His eyes had been shining with an emotion she hesitated to name—ecstasy.
And Maggie realized that the entire process, rather than being dark and frightening, had been designed to be something far more palatable for its victim—perhaps even something desirable. Perhaps that was why the Tekkar were converted so quickly; instead of running from the Inhuman, they embraced it joyously.
Maggie considered the Word, as she walked up a steep incline, wondered how to combat it.
If she were a surgeon and had the proper equipment, perhaps she could have destroyed the neural network. But she wasn’t prepared to perform brain surgery out here in the woods. Likewise, she couldn’t risk trying to open Gallen’s brain to get to the Word’s amplifier or biogenerators.
She wondered if it might be possible to damage the Word, corrode the nanoware with chemicals—but her mantle whispered that such an attempt would be dangerous. The nanoware would be more resistant to most chemical attacks than Gallen’s own body would. Doubtlessly, with the many human subspecies on Tremonthin, the dronon would have created the Word to be suitable to a broad spectrum of creatures.
“The nanodocs in Ceravanne’s body form an artificial immune system; designed in part to rid the body of excess metals,” her mantle whispered, and Maggie considered. It was possible that the nanodocs could—over several days—corrode the Word, but her mantle also whispered that it would take the nanodocs from a liter of Ceravanne’s blood three days to have much effect. It was hardly a workable solution.
Which meant that Maggie had to figure out how to disable the antenna. Her mantle had suggested that metallic salts would stay in the body for only a few days. And she realized with a start that this was all the Inhuman would need: it was probably designed to download its information in a matter of hours, then never be used again. In fact, Maggie realized that it probably couldn’t be used at long distances after a few days, not if the antenna system were only temporary.
Her mouth became dry, and she grew more excited.
Is there a way to get rid of these metallic salts? she wondered.
“You cannot attempt to deprive him of them,” the mantle whispered, “for he needs some to live. But if you feed him small amounts of potassium chloride and large amounts of water, his body should flush out any of these metallic salts quickly, within a few days.”
Beyond that, Maggie could guess what to do. In the daytime, the natural solar activity would help Gallen’s mantle block the radio waves. In fact, Maggie suddenly realized why the Inhuman attacked after dark—so that their victims would be converted immediately, instead of having to wait for the night.
And after dark, it would help if Gallen could get underground, where the Inhuman could not communicate.
So Maggie realized that she would have to begin flushing the excess salts from Gallen’s system. Until that was completed—a task that her mantle suggested would take a week—Maggie would have to do what she could to lower Gallen’s susceptibility. They could probably travel during the day, but at night they would have to seek shelter underground.
And still, given all of that, the Inhuman’s Word would still be lying dormant within him. Once Gallen got close to the Inhuman, or close to one of its transmitters, the Word would no longer require a strong signal, and it would be able to overwhelm him.
“One battle at a time,” Maggie told herself. “I must fight one battle at a time.”
At noon, Gallen returned to camp with food—a plump goose, a burlap bag filled with apples, plums, pears, squas
h, new potatoes, and a pouch of cherry wine.
Gallen passed the food out, then told the others, “There is a road just south of here, with a farmhouse. The master of the house was good enough to sell us some stores, but no wagon. We’re twenty kilometers east of a fair-sized town. I’ll buy a wagon there, and drive back to you tonight. Keep your heads low. We’ve no way of knowing these folks around here, whether their intentions toward us would be foul or fair.”
Maggie watched his eyes as he spoke, and she could detect no change in his features, no change in how he acted toward them. If he’d been seduced by the Inhuman’s Word, she could not tell. She could sense no struggle.
Maggie told Gallen that she would come with him to town. Orick said he also wished he could be off with them, but he looked around camp and decided that his greater duty lay here, to guard Ceravanne and Tallea in case an armed mob came searching for them.
Maggie was getting ready to leave, eating a brief lunch of plums and raw corn, and Ceravanne was caring for Tallea. Orick began plucking the goose with his teeth—a thankless job that he complained would leave down stuck between his teeth for days.
When Maggie finished eating, she and Gallen climbed the hillsides through the thick woods until they reached a dirt road wending through forests at the foot of the mountains.
Gallen seemed somber, distracted.
“Tell me more about what happened last night?” Maggie asked, hoping that he would at least acknowledge that something had changed.
He said, “It doesn’t matter. They were just someone else’s memories, someone else’s thoughts. I’m over it now.”
He hurried his pace, as if he were angry, and looked about. She could tell that he was still deep in thought, deeply troubled, trying to work things out.
She told him then of her own studies, and the things that the mantle had revealed, how they would need to travel during the day and go underground at night, how he could reduce his own reception of the Inhuman’s signal by drinking heavily to rid his body of any metallic salts that the Word introduced.
Beyond the Gate (The Golden Queen) (Volume 2) Page 23