THERE WAS NOTHING WRONG WITH THE EYES OF SONG
Ching except that she who thought of herself as Chu Li received no
messages from them. It was a devastating blow to her, but she knew
she had to cope and put on a brave front for the other two. She
could not afford self-pity.
“I think there probably are no traps in there, after
all,” she told them. “I think, though, that there are
ones like this, used to subdue the worst and render them helpless
or impotent. This can be restored with a mindprinter. It is simply
an order to my brain not to process or pass the images it
receives.”
“But what can we do?” Chow Dai asked. Chu Li
thought it was Chow Dai, anyway: The two sounded exactly
alike. “You are the one who knows the magic of these
things.”
“We continue,” she told them. “And I continue,
since I have already paid a price. Do not blame yourselves. There
is no way to know in advance about these things. Get me back to the chair. We are almost half done, and we must
hit a key one soon.”
They helped her, and she was right. The next one, in fact, was
the one she had been hunting for all along. She knew it the moment
she awoke, and she knew, too, just how it worked. She could talk to
the ship, the pilot—anything. The language the ship used was
English. She had suspected something like that; most of the
computer controls from the old designs were in English, French, or
Russian. The problem had been finding the right cartridge for
communications. She immediately called a halt to further
experimentation, although she insisted that the Chow sisters also
take both the English program and the basics of the ship. They
wouldn’t be very proficient no matter what, but at least she
would have some backup.
She was ready to communicate. She knew the language, and she
knew what to ask. She put the headset back on. Now was the time to
risk it all.
“Captain to pilot,” she said in her adjusted male
voice, this time in English.
“Go ahead,” the computer responded in a
monotone.
“Number of human life forms aboard vessel at this time.
Monitor.”
“Monitoring. Four life forms.” Four! That meant that Sabatini was still alive
somewhere, although if he hadn’t shown himself by now, it was
probable that he was indeed trapped. “Location of human life
forms.”
“Three in central compartment. Fourth is in emergency
module.”
Just as she had thought. “Sealed orders have been opened
that necessitate emergency change of operational plan.”
“Go ahead.”
“Captain Sabatini has fallen under suspicion of treason
and has been relieved of his command. I am assuming command of this
vessel.”
“Identifier code?”
She swallowed hard, but she had thought this out. This was a
Presidium ship making China calls. It was unlikely that Song
Ching’s father would have overlooked it. “Code Lotus,
black, green, seven two three one one.”
There was a nervous pause, then the computer responded,
“Code acknowledged. Reason for interrupt?”
“Pawn takes king.”
“Details?” the pilot requested.
She decided that it was requesting a rationale since there was
obviously no king aboard.
“I am Song Ching, daughter of the chief administrator,
China District. Enemies of my father altered my voice and tried to
alter more of me, as well as doctoring my security records, to
abduct me and thereby gain leverage with my father. I was being
shipped to Melchior as a common prisoner, there to be handed over
to confederates. As I am registered as a male named Chu Li, who was
disposed of, nothing appears in the records, nor will
it.”
“Identification of enemies?”
“Unknown, but to do this and to use Melchior they must
certainly be on the Presidium.”
“Shall your father be notified?”
“Impossible. He is on Leave, which is why this was done
now. Extent of plotters unknown, but some must be in the China
Directorate.”
“Desired course of action?”
“I am assuming complete and total command of this vessel
from this point on. Captain Sabatini is relieved and will be
confined where he is until he can be properly interrogated. In the
meantime, I and my servant girls must get beyond the reach of
Presidium authority and Master System must not be notified, as I am
currently classified as prisoner Chu Li and will be returned.
Recommendations?”
“I am a system vessel. I cannot remove you to any place
where you would not be traced here. I could forge documentation
that would pass an interstellar pilot’s muster, but you would
be easy to trace. There is a clandestine network of interstellar
traders, but it is, like this ship, loosely affiliated with the
galactic presidiums. These people are quite rough and loyal only to
themselves in the end. If they knew who you were, they would turn
you over for reward to the highest bidder. If they do not know and
do not find out, then you might wish you were on Melchior. They are
men and women of the same sort of mind-set as Captain
Sabatini.”
She well understood what that meant, particularly now that she
was blind. Sabatini had broken her without drugs or computers in a
matter of days, and although she didn’t feel like she was
one, she was in fact a very desirable young woman. There was no
question now where Sabatini’s sex cartridges had come
from.
“There are no other alternatives?”
“None available. The only habitats fit for you without
severe and permanent alterations, which themselves would have to be
done under the aegis of Master System, are Earth, shipboard, and
Melchior. All others are under a Directorate. Mars, for example,
would require both Master System’s direct contact and also
artificial atmospheres, as you are not modified for the Martian
environment. Remaining with this ship for long is also not an
alternative. Once we miss traffic control at the Outer-belt Marker,
an alarm will be given and search initiated. Short of my
destruction, there is no way to avoid detection and apprehension
for long periods.”
She broke contact and decided to discuss things with the
sisters.
“The pirate warlords will be no gentle masters,”
Chow Dai noted. “They will be a race of foreign devils, all
Sabatinis, but with all the magic boxes in the world and the
protection of the warlords. They will make us the lowest of slaves
and make us love to be slaves. I would rather die than be like
that.”
“I agree, but we have come too far to die now,” Chu
Li responded. “Yet what you say is true, and if we go home
and try to sneak back down, and do so, we would have to become
peasants in some remote and foreign place. It would not be much
different than the other way, and we would always be looking over
our shoulders.”
“Of course,” Chow Dai said thoughtfully, “we
could just go on to Melchior.”
“Huh? What?”
“I do not understand these things, but did you not say
that this ship’s spirit could change our papers, make us
someone we are not, enough to fool those above us?”
“Yes, I did, but—” Suddenly she saw where Chow
Dai’s mind was going and reached for the headphones. “I
wish data on Melchior.”
“Melchior is a hollowed-out asteroid between Mars and
Jupiter maintained as a reserve by the Presidium,” the pilot
responded. “Just what do you wish to know about
it?”
“Is all of it a prison?”
“No. There are three parts. The prison itself, where all
who are sent there are kept. It is something of a community in and
of itself, but it is ugly and unpleasant. No one has ever escaped
from it. The center is the research complex. All staff there are
also there for life, and many of their experiments are on the
prisoners. A third area, however, is the staff complex itself. All
supplies and new people enter through it, and there is some
interaction with the outside world through the small spaceport that
connects there, as well as security personnel who may be rotated
and the independents who sneak in to do business. Presidium members
and staff also sometimes meet here, and the full Presidium always
does at some point or another every one to three years.”
“Details on this staff complex. What is it? A town? A city
like Center?”
“It has a town organization and is quite small, but it is
unique. There are dwelling units of increasing size and comfort
depending on position in three areas, surrounding a town center.
The center sells luxuries and dispenses necessities according to a
computer-controlled system of work credits. There is, however, much
human service work, all manual, usually performed by former
prisoners modified for that service.”
Blind, she could hardly pass herself off as someone new in
security, nor could the sisters, with their terrible scars. She had
to think as Song Ching would think—as Song Ching’s
father would think.
“You say there is much human experimentation and some
two-way traffic. Is this place never used to modify or repair Earth
people?”
“That is a primary function. Those whom the Presidium wish
to use but who cannot be allowed to continue to exist as they are,
for example, are sent there and changed radically. A death is
convincingly faked for them on Earth and recorded with Master
System. Also, there are enhancements and repairs of grave injuries
suffered doing things which cannot be registered with Master
System.”
“Then we will go to Melchior with our records
modified,” she told it. “I will give you my story and
then cover stories for the other two. You will prepare supporting
documentation. We will be not prisoners but patients.”
“This is dangerous. I have no hypnotics or master
mindprinter aboard. You will have to give convincing performances,
at least until you can get clandestine access to a mindprinter
yourself. One curious hypno or security examination will expose all
three. One slip will expose all three.”
“We will have to risk it. Orders and paperwork and records
often supersede common sense. It is why I have gotten this far. I
have some codes and overrides, a knowledge of the equipment, and I
will not be a prisoner but a patient. Besides, no one ever breaks
in to Melchior.”
“You have no idea what they can do in there,” the
pilot warned. “It is said that if Master System knew, it
would blow the whole place to pieces.”
“It is the best of a bad set of alternatives,” she
responded, but inwardly she was excited. Change identities, change
personalities, change into whole new
people . . . You have no idea what they can
do in there. Might not even Chu Li perhaps live again? Might
not the Chows gain outer beauty to match their inner selves?
Considering how far she’d already come, nothing was beyond
reach.
“Uh—if we go to Melchior under those conditions,
what about Sabatini?”
“He is already past the normal preservation stage and has
been placed in a cryogenic condition. I can keep him there at least
until I return to Earth orbit. By that time, you should either be
away or exposed. In either case it will make no
difference.”
“Very well. Let’s do it.”
“Hawks!” The voice echoed through the subterranean
garden. “Where’s the heap big Hyiakutt chief now, eh?
Come talk to Raven!”
There was a rustle and the sound of a large body dropping to the
ground and coming toward the edge of the garden and its
forcefield.
Even though he’d been well briefed, Raven was still
shocked at Hawks’s appearance. The man was filthy, worse than
when the Crow had captured him, but, more, he had a wildness in his
face and eyes and a brutal, animal-like gait and carriage that was
somehow unnerving. Even though the Hyiakutt’s current
personality set was mere overprinting—that is, all of him was
there below it and could be used—the Crow knew that
he’d use tranquilizer darts before trusting himself with this
fellow now to redo the printing and preparations.
If Raven was surprised to see Hawks, then the reverse was even
more true. Hawks squinted. “Ray-ven,” he growled.
“Why are you still here?” It was obviously a labor to
speak, which was understandable.
“I’ve got a new job and a new boss, that’s
why. We’re not rid of each other yet. How have you liked it
the last few days?”
Hawks charged the forcefield with a roar and was thrown back. He
picked himself up but returned only a surly glare. “Bas-tard
Crow!”
Lazlo Chen had indeed taught Hawks the true meaning of
“primitive.” He had restored the two women, and after
having them fully mindprint recorded so they could be restored
later, he had wiped them basically clean and imprinted on them the
mindprints of female apes of some kind. They had no memories that
were not ape memories, no language except the guttural grunts and
shrill cries that amounted to about six basic
phrases—”danger,” “good food,” and
such. More, they were conditioned to see themselves as apes and
each other as apes of the same type and tribe—and to see
Hawks that way as well. They ate, preened each other, and slept,
and that was life. At least they had no idea that anything was
different. Hawks, however, did.
Chen had ordered him imprinted with the bull ape imprint but
otherwise left alone. He knew, and he had to watch those
he loved act as animals and react to them so, as well. It was the
most miserable, unhappy experience in his whole life.
“So you found out being a chief ain’t all romance
and glory,” Raven noted sardonically. “I don’t
know about you, but among the Crow, though bloodlines will get you
a real shot, a chief must prove himself and be elected—and he
can be canned if he doesn’t have it. That’s because the
job isn’t bravery, although it calls for that, or smarts,
although it calls for that. Lots of folks can be politicians and
generals. What a chief really means is responsibility.
Sending young men off to die. Making widows. Protecting those of
the tribe even at the cost of his own life or even his honor. Not
like Chen, either, because he doesn’t care about his people,
only himself. That’s because folks like that lack honor.
That’s why you don’t want to work for him, you know. No
honor.”
Hawks stared at the strange, ugly Crow. Raven had put his finger
exactly on the problem, the moral dilemma, and also had shamed him.
Men like Chen got where they were and stayed that way because they
had no honor and took no responsibility. Even now, Chen wanted
others to make him ruler of the universe, to take all the real
risks, then hand him the ultimate in power and profits. Chen
didn’t care how many were killed or even if his own people
were wiped out in doing it. He didn’t care about them; he
cared only for personal power while avoiding any real sense of
responsibility. And yet Chen understood the concept of honor, of
responsibility. Understood it and saw it as a weakness, something
to be exploited. That was why he had done this.
“Have you come to taunt me in my misery?”
“Naw,” the Crow responded. “I’ve come to
take you all away from all this. The heat for you is getting
tremendous for one thing, and also, old Chen wants his garden back
before it’s trampled flat. You can go as apes in cages or you
can give your solemn oath that you’ll be good, cooperative
passengers, and we’ll put you all back together. They
won’t even remember any of this. Only you.”
“You—you can put them back?”
“Good as new, except for bruises, scratches, hair tangles,
and that sort of thing. Your absolute bond is all I
need.”
“You have it.”
“Now you’re thinking like a chief. All
right, Chief. We’ll get this show on the road tonight. Put
you all to sleep, cart you over as cargo, stick you on, then bring
you back after we’re away.”
“You say we. You are going, too?”
“Yeah, me and Cuddles the Warlock. You remember her.
She’s attacked four people since you left. Chen thinks
she’s got potential if she can be redirected a bit.
Don’t know what he sees in me. I think my job’s to keep
her in line.”
“You are one to speak of honor!”
Raven shrugged. “You’ll never really know that, will
you? So don’t get too excited. This is a one-way trip to
Melchior, the nice little garden spot where folks go who have to
disappear or be disappeared. At least you won’t have to worry
about them making monkeys out of you, will you?”
The screen repelled a new attack.
The Melchior asteroid was small and irregularly shaped.
Resembling a monstrous, misshapen baked potato, it was ugly, dark,
and forbidding. Pockmarked with craters and pits, its one
distinguishing feature was a space dock at the smaller end, and
even that wasn’t visible from a distance.
The origins of the place were lost in antiquity or covered in
forbidden knowledge. Why this asteroid, out of all the other ones
around, was picked and developed was a mystery only Master System
could solve. The rumor was that when humanity was forced kicking
and screaming out into the universe, it required adaptation. Mars
had been the testing ground for the whole project, and for half the
year Melchior was not all that far from Mars as the spacecraft
flies. It was said that here the original Martian colonists were
tinkered with and reprocessed until they were just right, and
perhaps other prototypes were developed on Melchior later. Still,
the asteroid wasn’t very big, certainly not the sort of place
that could process the billions involved, and so it was more or
less abandoned by Master System in favor of new and improved mass
production models.
How the Presidium then got hold of Melchior was another lost
mystery, although it was certainly the Martian Directorate that saw
its uses first and somehow convinced Master System that there was a
need for a prison strictly for the most valuable prisoners, the
ones who could never again be allowed contact with normal society
but who had talents or bright ideas. After a few centuries with no
escapes and no real threats, Master System didn’t even care
anymore that the place wasn’t hooked into its all-seeing
monitors. Some thought its preoccupation with its enigmatic war was
the cause, but more likely it was that Master System understood
that the sort of men and women who would maintain its system on
Earth and Mars had to have some outlet. Better that outlet be a
little asteroid in the middle of nowhere and totally self-contained
than in the Centers and Councils of Earth and Mars. It didn’t
really care who or what went in there, or what went on there, so
long as they stayed there and so long as they never got out to
threaten the system.
The place consisted of three large and countless small chambers,
all set apart by kilometers of interlocking tunnels and all blasted
with disintegrators out of the rock itself. The closed atmospheric
system necessitated a huge number of safety air locks, which also
served as security checkpoints; anyone who managed to sneak in
could be caught merely by ordering the surrounding air locks sealed
and then pumping out the air.
The prison cum prison town was in the larger of the two
sides and was interconnected to the laboratories and other research
facilities through deliberately confusing and well-monitored
tunnels and air locks. The odd design not only maximized use of
space but helped to disorient anyone who tried to figure the place
out. The labs were underneath the prison and, from the
prison’s point of view, upside down. Gravity, impossible to
create here by the spin method, which was cheapest and most
efficient, was provided by a complex electromagnetic system
designed by Master System. Over the centuries here, many scientists
had gone absolutely crazy trying to figure out just how it
worked.
To make matters worse, the center tunnels connecting the smaller
“east” and the larger “west” were not
equipped with the gravity system; one actually swam through them,
weightless. The maintenance tunnels and chambers were also all
weightless. Fortunately, the gravity in the habitation sections was
close to Earth normal.
And so, to this place came first Chu Li and the Chows under
false colors and then, within a week, Hawks, Cloud Dancer, Silent
Woman, Raven, and the strange Manka Warlock. The Chinese, however,
were treated a bit better, being listed as official patients, and
assigned at the start to the staff area. Because most spaceships
were entirely controlled by a computer pilot, the lack of any staff
save the three was not even considered unusual.
The psychogeneticist interviewer looked Chu Li over critically.
She was brisk and professional but not judgmental.
“So, you are here to become male,” the scientist
noted, looking at her screens. “A waste, considering your
looks. Is this voluntary? I mean, do you concur?”
Chu Li nodded. “I do. I was always supposed to be, but
Master System saw differently. I am a genetic construct.”
“I could see that by the cell samples,” the
psychogeneticist huffed. “There are limits to what can be
done short of a total remake, and that takes a lot of time. It says
here you must be back in a new identity with all possible speed.
That limits us.”
“I will be fully functioning? And feel it?”
“Oh, of course. However, the sperm would not be yours but
a—donor’s—and we could make only superficial
cosmetic changes. Your basic female body shape and bone structure
will remain, for example, although we’ll remove most of the
breasts and smooth out what is left and perhaps surgically adjust
the face to give it a more masculine cast. The strong male hormones
which we will distill from the minute quantities you produce now
but which will then be duplicated and produced by your new glands
and sacs will alter you far more as time goes on. I gather no
mental adjustment is required for this.”
“They want me just the way I am, mentally. That’s
why they did the first part of the adjustment back
there.”
“Now, then, you were blinded in a mindprinter
accident?”
“Not exactly an accident. I think I wasn’t supposed
to see something. It was understood that my sight would be restored
here.”
“Uh huh. Well, we’ll have to scan for damage, but if
it’s just a printer program, it should be simple. We’ll
send you in for tests now. If all prove out, we’ll get
started right away.”
Melchior was not at all what Chu Li had expected. True, it was
inside an asteroid, and there was a strange coldness and dryness to
the air, but everyone had been quite nice and quite professional
all the way. She didn’t really know what the place looked
like, of course, but at the moment it seemed more like a hospital
than a horrible prison. They were even going to attend to the
terrible scars of the Chow sisters. Of course, the fact that their
records now identified them as some other people and seemed to come
from the higher security levels of China Center didn’t hurt,
nor did the fact that such records could not be cross-checked with
Master System files here.
Melchior was an exciting and exotic place, one that she would
like to have seen. She hoped that they would restore her sight
quickly. But even if they did not, she would get a totally new
identity. A complete sex change, some cosmetic changes, even subtly
different fingerprints and a slightly altered eye pattern. She
could walk right into China Center and right up to Song
Ching’s miserable relatives, and they would never know.
Doctor Isaac Clayben looked over the data modules on the subject
and frowned. “You were right to come to me,” he told
the assistant. “You’re sure there’s no
mistake?”
“Absolutely, sir. We took the print when we suspected
something and checked it without her even knowing it.”
“And the other two?”
“Petty criminals sent here because Doctor Shasvik wanted
as many identical twins as he could get. You must admit, sir, that
she’s both brazen and brilliant even to have tried this. I
have no idea how she could have switched full identification
through Master System with this Chu Li boy. I would have sworn it
was impossible without coming through here to begin with. In fact,
her only mistake was that Melchior is not on Master
System, so our records aren’t updated when the master is.
With the systemwide alert, we naturally put them all through. Her
eye and prints matched up with Song Ching, and the other two are
former servants of some high-ranking security officer in China
Center. When we shot them back to Earth for a run-through, though,
Master System identified her absolutely as Chu Li, a natural male.
Fascinating.”
Clayben scratched his scruffy full beard. “Pity. They are
going to make this Song Ching into nothing more than breeding
stock. Anyone who could do this is a mind that shouldn’t be
lost to some culturally sexist attitudes. She could easily do the
one thing without sacrificing the other. No one at China Center has
been notified?”
“No, sir. Do you wish me to call them?”
“No. Not yet. Let me think about this. In the meantime,
continue with all the tests but do absolutely no surgery, psycho or
physical.”
“Very well. What about the blindness? It’s a simple
trap program from a portable mindprinter. We could remove it in
twenty or thirty minutes.”
“Leave it. Give her a fancy and convincing but meaningless
excuse. If she can get herself shipped here, change Master System
records, take control of a spaceship in midflight, and come up with
something so basic that only a lifetime of thinking about beating
Master System flawed her success, we don’t want her getting
oriented here. Imagine somebody like that running loose in this
place.”
It was a sobering thought.
“Come to think of it,” Clayben added,
“separate her from her two friends and place them all in the
Security Block in the prison. If she figures out where she is, tell
her it’s routine until everything is set so that no one will
know she is even due for a change.”
“I doubt she’ll buy that.”
“What’s the difference? And she might, which would
make life a lot easier for us. If she figures it out and causes
enough uproar, tell her the truth, which includes the fact that I
might decide to go through with it anyway and put her to work here.
Someone that young who’s that good at beating the best could
be very valuable.”
“Shall we encode her?”
The boss thought about it. “Yes, but slip her a mild
sedative first so that she doesn’t know it. Encode her as Chu
Li and adjust our records accordingly. If I decide not to send her
home, I don’t want her father coming in here some day and
finding out that she was ever here.”
When the aide left, Doctor Clayben sat back in his large padded
desk chair and sighed. He was a man of advancing middle age and
looked it; he had achieved the position of Director of the Medical
Section of Melchior, a dream assignment and one which involved
being able to poke into everybody’s ideas whenever he liked.
Although not a Presidium member himself, he worked for the body as
a whole and so had no loyalty or obligation to any one person. He
saw himself as a pure scientist, in the one position where he and
his colleagues were free from any concepts of forbidden knowledge
or political, moral, and religious restrictions. He had no
reservations about authorizing the most radical experiments on
human beings; he used only prisoners sent here by the Presidium,
people who would have otherwise been executed back on Earth. He
felt he gave their miserable lives meaning by allowing them to
contribute to the growth of human knowledge, knowledge which for
the most part remained right here, under his authority and under
his control.
Not even the Presidium guessed the amount of power, knowledge,
and abilities contained within Melchior’s small confines. The
girl had wanted to become a fully functioning male. Child’s
play. Clayben knew, as most did not, what the bulk of humanity had
become out there among the vast stars. It had become alien to its
birth species and alien to all in many ways, although curiously
still human in the mind. Humanity had always been adaptable; that
was its key to survival. It could learn to live permanently with
little or no modern technology in arctic wastes or steaming, acidic
tropical jungles. Moving five billion people to a thousand worlds
was no easy task in the old days, particularly since no two planets
were alike and the supply of those tolerable even to adapted humans
was rather low.
Humanity, without technological support, was actually very
fragile. Earth had been just right, just exactly right, and what
evolved there evolved to match it. Within Earth tolerances,
humanity was supreme, but Earth tolerances, while not unique, were
very rare indeed. Master System had been in a hurry, and Master
System developed the means—possibly right here, on
Melchior—to get the job done expeditiously. Clayben knew the
means and the methods. That knowledge often made him feel like a
god.
Certainly it was better than being a tinpot Presidium dictator
always doing the System’s bidding and feeling, every time a
minor victory was scored, like the little boy who steals pie
cooling in the window and gets away with it. Isaac Clayben feared
only one thing about Master System, but he could not allow himself
to dwell on it: Some day Master System would tire of this
sufferance of its loyal servants, or become too suspicious, or not
need its Presidium anymore, and then blast this rock into
atoms.
Although they remembered nothing of their existence from the
time of the hypno treatment along the banks of the Mississippi to
the moment they woke up aboard a spaceship, both Cloud Dancer and
Silent Woman were somewhat traumatized by their sudden propulsion
from a nontechnological culture to one so advanced that it seemed
only magical. Magical but cold, Cloud Dancer decided. There was no
fresh air, or warm sun, or cold winter’s night, or the smell
of trees and flowers here. No sense of freedom or of the vastness
of a starry sky or an endless horizon. There were only sterile
walls, sterile seats and furnishings, and unnatural things. The
toilet had taken her days to understand, and the shower seemed
somehow a violator of her body. Food, both hot and cold, appeared
magically on large trays, yet it all tasted like week-old lard.
Still, both women were committed to Hawks, wherever he might
lead. They had already followed him to hell; there could be no
place left to go but up.
Manka Warlock was as cool, aloof, and condescending as ever, but
if she fell into any more fits of madness, they didn’t see
it. Raven seemed far more relaxed and always the pragmatist. Hawks
suspected that Chen had given Warlock a bit of enforced calming
with a mindprinter, changing only her irrational extremes and not
her basic self. Such calm wouldn’t hold; no one except
Warlock would be surprised if she were due for something more than
a job when she got to Melchior.
Hawks himself was trying to decide whether he had won a reprieve
or was now condemned to the circles of hell. The only thing known
about Melchior was that it was a prison from which there had never
been an escape, though obviously people did—if
rarely—come and go from there. He began to wonder how much of
a fool he had been in not taking Chen’s offer at the start.
Certainly they could make him accept and love anything once they
had him on Melchior; they could convince him that the sky was
purple and he was Lazlo Chen’s identical twin brother. He
consoled himself in the rather certain hunch that even if he had
accepted, he’d still be aboard this ship. Raven and Warlock
had accepted, and here they were. Chen was not about to accept
promises of fidelity no matter what the oath.
They disembarked directly into a high-security area, with armed
security guards and automatic security devices everywhere, and were
then printed and processed. The women understood only that they
were to be imprisoned in a strange cave; their views of creation
did not yet encompass a sufficient cosmology to understand just
where they were or the nature of Melchior. It was a place in the
Inner Dark, a spiritual realm ruled by spirits of evil. That was
enough.
They were stripped, decontaminated, bound, then blindfolded and
linked together for the final part of their journey. Silent Woman
particularly protested the treatment, and Cloud Dancer was none too
happy, but Hawks managed to calm them, convincing them that nothing
could be done until they were settled and could get information, so
there was no purpose to any resistance at this point. Privately he
wondered if there was any possibility of successful resistance even
later. Like Dante, he had been forced by his enemies into entering
hell alive; unlike Dante, he had no spirit guides to get him safely
through and out again.
At the end of the nightmarish and disorienting journey, in which
they seemed almost to float or fly in places, they were brought to
a small, unfurnished room watched by security monitors all around
the ceiling. Their blindfolds removed, they saw that Raven and
Warlock were no longer with them, and none wished for a reunion.
Those two had been replaced with an officious woman who looked as
if she had been carved from some massive stone block, dull gray
uniform and all. She had a small clipboard in her hand and glanced
at it, then up at them.
“You three have been consigned to the Melchior Penal
Colony,” she told them unnecessarily. “These walls and
tunnels are incredibly thick and solid; the only way out is the way
you came in. From this point back, there is no place at which you
are not under constant monitoring and observation. Ahead of this
point is a large chamber divided into two sections. The red block
of flats off to your right as you enter is Maximum Security. The
dwellings there are comfortable and self-contained but soundproof
and allow only one inmate to a dwelling. Those inside must stay
there. Inside, there is not a single point, not a square
millimeter, that is not constantly under both visual and audio
observation by humans and computers. Nothing, not even human waste,
goes out without inspection and analysis, and nothing comes in
except through totally computer-controlled access ports. You will
be able to see inside every one, for the open walls are
forcefields, all individual, but so firm that not even sound can
pass through, and visual is one-way only. Anyone can see in, but
you see a blank wall. You do not want to be in Maximum
Security.”
They accepted that at face value.
“The rest of the area is more communal. In a sense, it is
a small town, although with rigid rules. We monitor the whole but
not every specific thing. Rest assured, though, that we could pick
you out of a crowd and eliminate you even in the most hidden
corners, should we choose to do so. The dwellings there are larger
and shared. Because we always know where you are when we want you,
we have no limitations. You will be assigned a communal unit. If
one or more of you moves elsewhere, it is not our problem.
Everything used there is designed to degrade and is disposable.
Clothing is not permitted. It is difficult to conceal a weapon or
anything else if all are naked. You will draw everything that you
need from the automated stores in the center area, as well as
getting fed there. You may draw three meals a day that are coded to
you, no more. These cannot be saved up. Eat when you like within
this limitation. Cold water is always available from the central
fountain. Questions so far?”
There were none.
“All right, then,” she continued. “We run on a
twenty-five-hour schedule, which we have found more conducive to
routine in this enclosed place. Everyone sleeps the same eight
hours, marked by a bell sounding and then the lights going dim. You
will be in a dwelling within ten minutes of that bell and before
the lights go down permanently. Anyone out after that or making
excessive noise after that will be severely punished. Anyone ill or
injured should report or be reported to the medical kiosk. Someone
will come and tend to you. Those are the only major rules. You will
learn the rest down there from your fellow inmates. When we want
you, we will come and get you. Violence, resistance to our
authority, or anything we determine as troublemaking will get you
into Maximum Security and move you up to the head of the list for
laboratory experimentation. Many inmates are already veterans of
experimentation. Look at them and remember the price. Now, there is
just one more process, and you will enter. This will be your home
from now until you die, so adjust to it and accept it. Go through
that door now, one at a time. You may wait for your companions on
the other side.”
There was a small chamber, dimly lit by a greenish glow, beyond
the door. A technician’s voice said, “Step onto the
little platform there and lean your whole face and body into the
fabric stretched in front of it. Remain that way until I tell you
differently.”
It was like a spidery thin but incredibly dense mesh. Hawks
pressed into it as directed and felt a similar substance close
behind him. A sudden very bright light flared all around him, and
he closed his eyes, the afterimage remaining. He felt a sudden,
intense, burning pain across his back and on his face as well. He
almost cried out but controlled himself. He would show no
weakness.
It was over quickly. The mesh fell away, and the technician
ordered him to go forward and out the security door. Still a bit
stunned and feeling some residual pain on his back and face, he
looked around and saw his first glimpse of the true heart of the
Middle Dark.
In the Hyiakutt religion there were many spirits and many levels
of magic and mysticism. There was but one god, all-seeing,
all-knowing, and all-powerful, the Creator, the Father Spirit in
whose image humanity had been created. Below the Creator were two
levels of spirits set to do His will and protect His domain: the
spirits of nature, and then the least of spirits, those of His most
complex creation, humanity.
There was, of course, an opposite force, which the Creator
allowed because He had created man as an experiment, perhaps as a
game, to amuse and interest Him but also to be more complex
companions. The human spirit was the least, yet it could rise
higher than the fixed spirits if it worshiped the Creator,
respected His creations, understood that the Creator made and alone
owned all things, and showed himself worthy in courage and honor to
rise above the middle spirits. Without evil, without pain and
temptation, humans would be as the middle spirits; defeating those
things could make them worthy of the Creator’s company. For
this reason the Dark had been formed and allowed to reign where it
could. Humans were born into the Outer Darkness, subject to the
forces of evil as well as good. By making their spirits shine with
deeds, they could dispel it.
Against this were the spirits of the Middle Dark, those that
corrupted both human spirits and nature, and below it the Inner
Dark, the place from which all evil came and where One lived whose
Hyiakutt name translated out roughly to Corruption. It was a
formidable enemy, for it had to be, in order to test humans.
Without a worthy foe, the struggle, too, was worthless.
Hawks felt he was in the domain of the Middle Dark, although he
had little religious faith or feeling. Now he knew it was real, for
here it was. If such diverse and disconnected cultures as those of
the Hyiakutt and Dante could feel the same contest and see the same
visions through their individual cultural filters, then it did
exist. Now he understood the odd, subconscious bond he’d
always felt between that ancient foreign poet and himself. Culture
masked truth—but there could be only one truth.
When Cloud Dancer emerged, he saw on her what they had done to
him. Her pretty face and coppery skin had been marked on the cheeks
with a bright silvery design, a line that began pencil-thin under
the eyes and broadened out into a solid curve that bent back in on
itself and ended as tiny little tendrils or even flowers. The
design seemed to drink in light; he was certain it would retain
some and glow in the dark, perhaps for a very long time. When she
touched his face, and he hers, their fingers felt only skin, yet
the design seemed inset, permanent, almost like a nameplate set
into a piece of furniture or machinery. It was actually rather
pretty and not at all disfiguring in the usual sense, but both had
the feeling that the thing would not wear off. Silent Woman’s
identical markings were the most natural looking, although the
shiny silver clashed with her muted reds, greens, blues, and
oranges.
Hawks understood what it was for. One might impersonate someone
in authority, perhaps steal clothing or the proper uniform; one
might try all sorts of tricks, but one would never hide his or her
face routinely without drawing attention. In the darkness of some
of the tunnels, you would even glow in the dark, making a perfect
target. He wouldn’t be at all surprised, he thought, if the
tattoo contained some synthetic mineral that could be automatically
tracked by sensors, probably specific and unique to each
individual. That was how they could pick out and shoot a
troublemaker even in a crowd. On their backs, between their
shoulder blades, was a bar of the same silvery material, going
almost from shoulder to shoulder and about five centimeters thick.
Within it, in black, was embedded a long string of characters in a
language even Hawks did not know, but it was clearly a prison file
number and identifier. It looked somehow superfluous on the back of
Silent Woman.
“These are the demon brands so that we shall be known
everywhere,” Cloud Dancer noted. “Even should we leave
here, we would carry their mark for all to see.”
He nodded. “That’s about it.” He turned and
looked over the interior of the prison complex. “It is a
grayer underworld than I had imagined.”
Cloud Dancer nodded grimly. “It is the worst of things. A
place where all beauty and nature had been banished, all joy and
all hope. A place without colors.”
The entire semicircle could be viewed from the entrance. Walls,
floor, and ceiling were all gray. The natural rock was gray, and
all else had been painted or manufactured to match it so that it
all blended into a plain nothingness. The cells, or dwellings, or
whatever they might be called, were along three sides from floor to
ceiling, rising up at least four stories in a stepped design. They,
too, were gray, although dull lights shone from each doorway. The
only color was the flat and dull red of one block set off from the
others to their right. The cells there had no doorways, just
three-sided frames looking to the interiors, which were brightly
lit, the very walls glowing with illumination. Each was a single
room with cot, toilet, sink, and nothing else except, in most of
them, a lone occupant either sitting silently or pacing.
Below the dwellings, the area continued to be stepped; the lower
levels were broad and somewhat rough-hewn and were basically
featureless. The concentric rings formed an eerie rock amphitheater
without seats or ornamentation. In the center was a broad oval in
which a number of cube-like buildings sat, all equally dull and
gray.
There were people about; a rather large number, it seemed, some
in the area of the central cubes but most just along the broad
steps or wandering aimlessly about. The lighting was indirect, its
source the rocky ceiling of the chamber, and though little could be
made out of individual humans from where the newcomers stood,
little reflective glints off backs and faces told them that
everyone here had the mark.
A man approached them. It was impossible to guess his age, but
he was thin and light of build. He was so fair of skin that the two
women, who had never seen humans from northern Europe, at first
thought he was a walking dead man. He had incredibly thick light
blond hair flowing down almost to his waist but no facial hair as
Hawks might have expected from one of this man’s race. His
complexion was fairer than a baby’s, although in a number of
places he had some ugly bruises that showed up particularly well on
his light skin. His cheeks bore the same silver design as theirs;
the bar on his back was masked by his hair.
“Hello,” the stranger said in a gentle low tenor.
“My name is Hendrik van Dam, although most here just call me
Blondy, particularly the Englishers and the others who
speak it.” He had a mild but pleasant north European accent.
“I was told to meet you and get you settled.” He paused
for a moment. “English is all right, is it not? I
was told—”
“No, English is fine,” Hawks responded. “It is
the only common tongue we have. I am called Jonquathar,
which means Runs With the Night Hawks. Mostly I am just called
Hawks, although in some circles where English is required, I am
also called Jon Nighthawk. These are my wives, Chaudipatu,
or Cloud Dancer in English, and the painted one we call
Masituchi, or Silent Woman, since she has no tongue to
tell us how she was truly called.”
“You are of the Americas, I believe,” van Dam noted.
“We get very few of your people here, although some
are sent.” He sighed. “I would bid you
welcome, only that seems a bit out of place.”
Hawks nodded understandingly. “That is very
true.”
“I have a number for your assigned quarters, although we
should go down to the shops first. You should eat something and
relax a bit, then draw your bedding and supplies there before going
up. I am afraid that seniority reigns here, so you are up top and
off to the side. They are all really the same inside, so otherwise
it does not matter. When you have nothing, the most trivial things
become important, as you will see.”
Cloud Dancer looked over to her left as they descended a rough
rock staircase and gasped. “That couple over there—are
they making love right there?”
“Oh, yes,” van Dam replied casually. “You will
see a lot of it, some of it quite passionate and some extremely
nontraditional—some would say aberrant or
abnormal.”
“But—everyone is just ignoring
them!”
“We are given nothing here. We can possess nothing. There
is no reading matter, nothing to use for art or to record, not even
things for sport. You spend much time talking here, but eventually
you get talked out. It looks big, but the community is actually
quite small, although there’s some small turnover. There is
some intimidation by the rougher sorts, but it is relatively mild
here since they have no way of enforcing their will except through
violence, and violence in here is strictly and severely punished.
So you do what you can. You quickly lose all the usual social
inhibitions here, and there are only so many footraces,
wrist-wrestling contests, and the like you can do before you run
dry. So you eat, you sleep, and you have whatever sort of sex you
wish here. You cannot get pregnant, and if you were when you came
in, you are not now. There is nothing here but eternal boredom, and
even that pales after a while. Then you just sit and wait until you
are called.”
“Called?” Hawks echoed. “By whom? For
what?”
“Called by the Institute. Your mind, emotions, body,
will—they play with all of them as they wish. We are their
toys, you see. You will see some of their games here. At first you
might be upset with seeing them or lose your appetite, but after a
while it becomes just like that couple back there. You simply
don’t think of them as odd or even unusual anymore. Even when
you know they play with mind and body, cripple and contort, after a
while you look forward to being called. Anything to relieve this.
You will see.”
“How long have you been here?” Cloud Dancer asked
the blond man.
“I truthfully do not know. You start to count the sleeps
when you get here, but you lose count sooner or later, and after a
while you don’t try to start again. Hair grows about
six-tenths of a centimeter a month, and I have not cut mine. It was
rather short when I arrived. Still, I have had a few
sessions—brief, I think—at the Institute, so it is hard
to say for sure.”
“At some point,” Cloud Dancer noted grimly,
“we will all go mad.”
“Oh, even that is not permitted. They look for signs of it
and pick it up quite well. They then pick you up, treat you, and
you are not insane anymore. They make few slips. They catch it
early on, when we haven’t even seen it ourselves.”
Hawks shivered. “And no one—tries to
escape?”
“How? Through fifteen meters of solid rock with our
fingernails and our teeth? Then what? To the vacuum of space? The
only other way out is through that door you came in, then through a
maze of tunnels with countless air locks, all monitored. Even if
you got all the way, which no one ever has, there is an average of
two ships a month in here, and they stay only long enough to do
their business and go. A few hours at best. Access to the ships is
strictly controlled. I heard once that someone did get loose in the
Institute and took some important hostages. The computer security
system ignored the hostages and got the inmate anyway. No, I know
of only three ways out.”
“One, I suppose, is death,” Cloud Dancer said,
making it sound not at all an unattractive idea.
“Yes. Another is when they finish with you or can no
longer use you. Then they might turn you into a slave, an obedient
slave for them in their own quarters. They have robots and all the
comforts, but these are the kind of people who get a thrill out of
having slaves to boss around and pamper their every whim. You
can’t fake it, though. They make very sure of you
over here before they recode you over there.”
“You said three ways,” Hawks noted.
“Yes. The rulers here are in many ways just like the ones
we grew up under. If they decide you have something, some talent,
some brilliance, that will enhance their own power and position,
they may employ you at the Institute. It’s just as much a
prison as here, but it is not boring.”
They approached the boxlike buildings in the center. A number of
people were there, eating off plasticlike trays with a variety of
utensils, all rather soft and pliant. All the buildings were
automated and computer-controlled. One put one’s face into a
depression to be scanned and identified. The food building
delivered the food and whatever was needed to eat it, in portions
matched to an individual’s physical needs. The tray and
utensils were encoded with the user’s identification and were
to be dropped in a waste disposal box available on the bottom three
levels. No one could get any more of anything from the stores until
everything was accounted for from last time. If a prisoner
stubbornly kept an item, it began to decompose and give off a
deliberately awful scent within a few hours.
Bedding was two sheets and a pillowcase, turned in daily before
breakfast could be dispensed and replaced any time after the third
meal. Some basic toiletries in very small amounts could also be
picked up, and a new kit could be issued by turning in what was
left of the old one. The newcomers ate, finding the food filling
though even more tasteless than shipboard meals, then drew their
meager supplies and followed van Dam all the way up to the top
dwelling level. They would, Hawks thought, not lack for
exercise.
The apartment, or cell, was spartan but functional. There were
two bunk beds on either side of a rectangular room measuring about
three by four meters. In the rear was a bare toilet, a sink with
hot and cold water faucets and a small basin, a rack to hang the
towels and washcloths, a small shelf for the lesser toiletries, and
that was that. Van Dam told them that showers, with real water,
were twice-weekly affairs and that they would be told when they
were printed for a meal to go take one and then return to eat. The
showers, in a chamber under Maximum Security, were fully monitored
and could not be accessed except when ordered there. Anyone who
refused to shower was denied food.
There was no door, although a forcefield came down during sleep
period. Prisoners were always monitored and recorded while inside
their rooms, van Dam warned, which was why everybody stayed outside
as much as possible. Cloud Dancer went to the door and looked out
at the grim chamber.
“I am surprised,” she said, “that no one has
hurled themselves from here. It would be impossible to
stop.”
“Easy,” the blond man responded. “Computers
think a million times faster than people. They would snap on a
forcefield that would catch you and hold you—in extreme pain,
I might add—until somebody came and got you. Then you’d
rate a trip to the hospital, and when you got back you’d be
just the same, but you’d never think of doing that
again. Believe me. I’ve seen it tried.” He sighed.
“Well, that’s about it. The rest you’ll catch on
to in the days ahead. I’ll show you how to make the bed and
use the toilet, and that will be that. We’re never full, so
this level isn’t very crowded. If you want to use any of the
unoccupied rooms until they’re assigned, feel free. The only
other assigned ones are some other newcomers. Been here about two
weeks. They’re three down in apartment forty-two. Two
sisters. Chinese, I believe. You might like them. They’re an
interesting pair. Real bad scars, though, so be prepared. Not from
here—they already had them.”
The blond man left and made his way slowly back down toward the
center. The two women watched him go, wondering why he was in such
a hurry to get anywhere in this place.
Hawks walked up between the two women and put his arms around
them. “I’m very sorry I got you into this. This was all
my own stupid fault.”
“We chose to keep the marriage and to follow you,”
Cloud Dancer replied. “Now we will do as any Hyiakutt would
do. We will survive, and we will wait.”
He gave a dry, humorless chuckle. “Wait? For
what?”
“For opportunity. For whatever comes. Perhaps, even, for
five golden rings.”
THERE WAS NOTHING WRONG WITH THE EYES OF SONG
Ching except that she who thought of herself as Chu Li received no
messages from them. It was a devastating blow to her, but she knew
she had to cope and put on a brave front for the other two. She
could not afford self-pity.
“I think there probably are no traps in there, after
all,” she told them. “I think, though, that there are
ones like this, used to subdue the worst and render them helpless
or impotent. This can be restored with a mindprinter. It is simply
an order to my brain not to process or pass the images it
receives.”
“But what can we do?” Chow Dai asked. Chu Li
thought it was Chow Dai, anyway: The two sounded exactly
alike. “You are the one who knows the magic of these
things.”
“We continue,” she told them. “And I continue,
since I have already paid a price. Do not blame yourselves. There
is no way to know in advance about these things. Get me back to the chair. We are almost half done, and we must
hit a key one soon.”
They helped her, and she was right. The next one, in fact, was
the one she had been hunting for all along. She knew it the moment
she awoke, and she knew, too, just how it worked. She could talk to
the ship, the pilot—anything. The language the ship used was
English. She had suspected something like that; most of the
computer controls from the old designs were in English, French, or
Russian. The problem had been finding the right cartridge for
communications. She immediately called a halt to further
experimentation, although she insisted that the Chow sisters also
take both the English program and the basics of the ship. They
wouldn’t be very proficient no matter what, but at least she
would have some backup.
She was ready to communicate. She knew the language, and she
knew what to ask. She put the headset back on. Now was the time to
risk it all.
“Captain to pilot,” she said in her adjusted male
voice, this time in English.
“Go ahead,” the computer responded in a
monotone.
“Number of human life forms aboard vessel at this time.
Monitor.”
“Monitoring. Four life forms.” Four! That meant that Sabatini was still alive
somewhere, although if he hadn’t shown himself by now, it was
probable that he was indeed trapped. “Location of human life
forms.”
“Three in central compartment. Fourth is in emergency
module.”
Just as she had thought. “Sealed orders have been opened
that necessitate emergency change of operational plan.”
“Go ahead.”
“Captain Sabatini has fallen under suspicion of treason
and has been relieved of his command. I am assuming command of this
vessel.”
“Identifier code?”
She swallowed hard, but she had thought this out. This was a
Presidium ship making China calls. It was unlikely that Song
Ching’s father would have overlooked it. “Code Lotus,
black, green, seven two three one one.”
There was a nervous pause, then the computer responded,
“Code acknowledged. Reason for interrupt?”
“Pawn takes king.”
“Details?” the pilot requested.
She decided that it was requesting a rationale since there was
obviously no king aboard.
“I am Song Ching, daughter of the chief administrator,
China District. Enemies of my father altered my voice and tried to
alter more of me, as well as doctoring my security records, to
abduct me and thereby gain leverage with my father. I was being
shipped to Melchior as a common prisoner, there to be handed over
to confederates. As I am registered as a male named Chu Li, who was
disposed of, nothing appears in the records, nor will
it.”
“Identification of enemies?”
“Unknown, but to do this and to use Melchior they must
certainly be on the Presidium.”
“Shall your father be notified?”
“Impossible. He is on Leave, which is why this was done
now. Extent of plotters unknown, but some must be in the China
Directorate.”
“Desired course of action?”
“I am assuming complete and total command of this vessel
from this point on. Captain Sabatini is relieved and will be
confined where he is until he can be properly interrogated. In the
meantime, I and my servant girls must get beyond the reach of
Presidium authority and Master System must not be notified, as I am
currently classified as prisoner Chu Li and will be returned.
Recommendations?”
“I am a system vessel. I cannot remove you to any place
where you would not be traced here. I could forge documentation
that would pass an interstellar pilot’s muster, but you would
be easy to trace. There is a clandestine network of interstellar
traders, but it is, like this ship, loosely affiliated with the
galactic presidiums. These people are quite rough and loyal only to
themselves in the end. If they knew who you were, they would turn
you over for reward to the highest bidder. If they do not know and
do not find out, then you might wish you were on Melchior. They are
men and women of the same sort of mind-set as Captain
Sabatini.”
She well understood what that meant, particularly now that she
was blind. Sabatini had broken her without drugs or computers in a
matter of days, and although she didn’t feel like she was
one, she was in fact a very desirable young woman. There was no
question now where Sabatini’s sex cartridges had come
from.
“There are no other alternatives?”
“None available. The only habitats fit for you without
severe and permanent alterations, which themselves would have to be
done under the aegis of Master System, are Earth, shipboard, and
Melchior. All others are under a Directorate. Mars, for example,
would require both Master System’s direct contact and also
artificial atmospheres, as you are not modified for the Martian
environment. Remaining with this ship for long is also not an
alternative. Once we miss traffic control at the Outer-belt Marker,
an alarm will be given and search initiated. Short of my
destruction, there is no way to avoid detection and apprehension
for long periods.”
She broke contact and decided to discuss things with the
sisters.
“The pirate warlords will be no gentle masters,”
Chow Dai noted. “They will be a race of foreign devils, all
Sabatinis, but with all the magic boxes in the world and the
protection of the warlords. They will make us the lowest of slaves
and make us love to be slaves. I would rather die than be like
that.”
“I agree, but we have come too far to die now,” Chu
Li responded. “Yet what you say is true, and if we go home
and try to sneak back down, and do so, we would have to become
peasants in some remote and foreign place. It would not be much
different than the other way, and we would always be looking over
our shoulders.”
“Of course,” Chow Dai said thoughtfully, “we
could just go on to Melchior.”
“Huh? What?”
“I do not understand these things, but did you not say
that this ship’s spirit could change our papers, make us
someone we are not, enough to fool those above us?”
“Yes, I did, but—” Suddenly she saw where Chow
Dai’s mind was going and reached for the headphones. “I
wish data on Melchior.”
“Melchior is a hollowed-out asteroid between Mars and
Jupiter maintained as a reserve by the Presidium,” the pilot
responded. “Just what do you wish to know about
it?”
“Is all of it a prison?”
“No. There are three parts. The prison itself, where all
who are sent there are kept. It is something of a community in and
of itself, but it is ugly and unpleasant. No one has ever escaped
from it. The center is the research complex. All staff there are
also there for life, and many of their experiments are on the
prisoners. A third area, however, is the staff complex itself. All
supplies and new people enter through it, and there is some
interaction with the outside world through the small spaceport that
connects there, as well as security personnel who may be rotated
and the independents who sneak in to do business. Presidium members
and staff also sometimes meet here, and the full Presidium always
does at some point or another every one to three years.”
“Details on this staff complex. What is it? A town? A city
like Center?”
“It has a town organization and is quite small, but it is
unique. There are dwelling units of increasing size and comfort
depending on position in three areas, surrounding a town center.
The center sells luxuries and dispenses necessities according to a
computer-controlled system of work credits. There is, however, much
human service work, all manual, usually performed by former
prisoners modified for that service.”
Blind, she could hardly pass herself off as someone new in
security, nor could the sisters, with their terrible scars. She had
to think as Song Ching would think—as Song Ching’s
father would think.
“You say there is much human experimentation and some
two-way traffic. Is this place never used to modify or repair Earth
people?”
“That is a primary function. Those whom the Presidium wish
to use but who cannot be allowed to continue to exist as they are,
for example, are sent there and changed radically. A death is
convincingly faked for them on Earth and recorded with Master
System. Also, there are enhancements and repairs of grave injuries
suffered doing things which cannot be registered with Master
System.”
“Then we will go to Melchior with our records
modified,” she told it. “I will give you my story and
then cover stories for the other two. You will prepare supporting
documentation. We will be not prisoners but patients.”
“This is dangerous. I have no hypnotics or master
mindprinter aboard. You will have to give convincing performances,
at least until you can get clandestine access to a mindprinter
yourself. One curious hypno or security examination will expose all
three. One slip will expose all three.”
“We will have to risk it. Orders and paperwork and records
often supersede common sense. It is why I have gotten this far. I
have some codes and overrides, a knowledge of the equipment, and I
will not be a prisoner but a patient. Besides, no one ever breaks
in to Melchior.”
“You have no idea what they can do in there,” the
pilot warned. “It is said that if Master System knew, it
would blow the whole place to pieces.”
“It is the best of a bad set of alternatives,” she
responded, but inwardly she was excited. Change identities, change
personalities, change into whole new
people . . . You have no idea what they can
do in there. Might not even Chu Li perhaps live again? Might
not the Chows gain outer beauty to match their inner selves?
Considering how far she’d already come, nothing was beyond
reach.
“Uh—if we go to Melchior under those conditions,
what about Sabatini?”
“He is already past the normal preservation stage and has
been placed in a cryogenic condition. I can keep him there at least
until I return to Earth orbit. By that time, you should either be
away or exposed. In either case it will make no
difference.”
“Very well. Let’s do it.”
“Hawks!” The voice echoed through the subterranean
garden. “Where’s the heap big Hyiakutt chief now, eh?
Come talk to Raven!”
There was a rustle and the sound of a large body dropping to the
ground and coming toward the edge of the garden and its
forcefield.
Even though he’d been well briefed, Raven was still
shocked at Hawks’s appearance. The man was filthy, worse than
when the Crow had captured him, but, more, he had a wildness in his
face and eyes and a brutal, animal-like gait and carriage that was
somehow unnerving. Even though the Hyiakutt’s current
personality set was mere overprinting—that is, all of him was
there below it and could be used—the Crow knew that
he’d use tranquilizer darts before trusting himself with this
fellow now to redo the printing and preparations.
If Raven was surprised to see Hawks, then the reverse was even
more true. Hawks squinted. “Ray-ven,” he growled.
“Why are you still here?” It was obviously a labor to
speak, which was understandable.
“I’ve got a new job and a new boss, that’s
why. We’re not rid of each other yet. How have you liked it
the last few days?”
Hawks charged the forcefield with a roar and was thrown back. He
picked himself up but returned only a surly glare. “Bas-tard
Crow!”
Lazlo Chen had indeed taught Hawks the true meaning of
“primitive.” He had restored the two women, and after
having them fully mindprint recorded so they could be restored
later, he had wiped them basically clean and imprinted on them the
mindprints of female apes of some kind. They had no memories that
were not ape memories, no language except the guttural grunts and
shrill cries that amounted to about six basic
phrases—”danger,” “good food,” and
such. More, they were conditioned to see themselves as apes and
each other as apes of the same type and tribe—and to see
Hawks that way as well. They ate, preened each other, and slept,
and that was life. At least they had no idea that anything was
different. Hawks, however, did.
Chen had ordered him imprinted with the bull ape imprint but
otherwise left alone. He knew, and he had to watch those
he loved act as animals and react to them so, as well. It was the
most miserable, unhappy experience in his whole life.
“So you found out being a chief ain’t all romance
and glory,” Raven noted sardonically. “I don’t
know about you, but among the Crow, though bloodlines will get you
a real shot, a chief must prove himself and be elected—and he
can be canned if he doesn’t have it. That’s because the
job isn’t bravery, although it calls for that, or smarts,
although it calls for that. Lots of folks can be politicians and
generals. What a chief really means is responsibility.
Sending young men off to die. Making widows. Protecting those of
the tribe even at the cost of his own life or even his honor. Not
like Chen, either, because he doesn’t care about his people,
only himself. That’s because folks like that lack honor.
That’s why you don’t want to work for him, you know. No
honor.”
Hawks stared at the strange, ugly Crow. Raven had put his finger
exactly on the problem, the moral dilemma, and also had shamed him.
Men like Chen got where they were and stayed that way because they
had no honor and took no responsibility. Even now, Chen wanted
others to make him ruler of the universe, to take all the real
risks, then hand him the ultimate in power and profits. Chen
didn’t care how many were killed or even if his own people
were wiped out in doing it. He didn’t care about them; he
cared only for personal power while avoiding any real sense of
responsibility. And yet Chen understood the concept of honor, of
responsibility. Understood it and saw it as a weakness, something
to be exploited. That was why he had done this.
“Have you come to taunt me in my misery?”
“Naw,” the Crow responded. “I’ve come to
take you all away from all this. The heat for you is getting
tremendous for one thing, and also, old Chen wants his garden back
before it’s trampled flat. You can go as apes in cages or you
can give your solemn oath that you’ll be good, cooperative
passengers, and we’ll put you all back together. They
won’t even remember any of this. Only you.”
“You—you can put them back?”
“Good as new, except for bruises, scratches, hair tangles,
and that sort of thing. Your absolute bond is all I
need.”
“You have it.”
“Now you’re thinking like a chief. All
right, Chief. We’ll get this show on the road tonight. Put
you all to sleep, cart you over as cargo, stick you on, then bring
you back after we’re away.”
“You say we. You are going, too?”
“Yeah, me and Cuddles the Warlock. You remember her.
She’s attacked four people since you left. Chen thinks
she’s got potential if she can be redirected a bit.
Don’t know what he sees in me. I think my job’s to keep
her in line.”
“You are one to speak of honor!”
Raven shrugged. “You’ll never really know that, will
you? So don’t get too excited. This is a one-way trip to
Melchior, the nice little garden spot where folks go who have to
disappear or be disappeared. At least you won’t have to worry
about them making monkeys out of you, will you?”
The screen repelled a new attack.
The Melchior asteroid was small and irregularly shaped.
Resembling a monstrous, misshapen baked potato, it was ugly, dark,
and forbidding. Pockmarked with craters and pits, its one
distinguishing feature was a space dock at the smaller end, and
even that wasn’t visible from a distance.
The origins of the place were lost in antiquity or covered in
forbidden knowledge. Why this asteroid, out of all the other ones
around, was picked and developed was a mystery only Master System
could solve. The rumor was that when humanity was forced kicking
and screaming out into the universe, it required adaptation. Mars
had been the testing ground for the whole project, and for half the
year Melchior was not all that far from Mars as the spacecraft
flies. It was said that here the original Martian colonists were
tinkered with and reprocessed until they were just right, and
perhaps other prototypes were developed on Melchior later. Still,
the asteroid wasn’t very big, certainly not the sort of place
that could process the billions involved, and so it was more or
less abandoned by Master System in favor of new and improved mass
production models.
How the Presidium then got hold of Melchior was another lost
mystery, although it was certainly the Martian Directorate that saw
its uses first and somehow convinced Master System that there was a
need for a prison strictly for the most valuable prisoners, the
ones who could never again be allowed contact with normal society
but who had talents or bright ideas. After a few centuries with no
escapes and no real threats, Master System didn’t even care
anymore that the place wasn’t hooked into its all-seeing
monitors. Some thought its preoccupation with its enigmatic war was
the cause, but more likely it was that Master System understood
that the sort of men and women who would maintain its system on
Earth and Mars had to have some outlet. Better that outlet be a
little asteroid in the middle of nowhere and totally self-contained
than in the Centers and Councils of Earth and Mars. It didn’t
really care who or what went in there, or what went on there, so
long as they stayed there and so long as they never got out to
threaten the system.
The place consisted of three large and countless small chambers,
all set apart by kilometers of interlocking tunnels and all blasted
with disintegrators out of the rock itself. The closed atmospheric
system necessitated a huge number of safety air locks, which also
served as security checkpoints; anyone who managed to sneak in
could be caught merely by ordering the surrounding air locks sealed
and then pumping out the air.
The prison cum prison town was in the larger of the two
sides and was interconnected to the laboratories and other research
facilities through deliberately confusing and well-monitored
tunnels and air locks. The odd design not only maximized use of
space but helped to disorient anyone who tried to figure the place
out. The labs were underneath the prison and, from the
prison’s point of view, upside down. Gravity, impossible to
create here by the spin method, which was cheapest and most
efficient, was provided by a complex electromagnetic system
designed by Master System. Over the centuries here, many scientists
had gone absolutely crazy trying to figure out just how it
worked.
To make matters worse, the center tunnels connecting the smaller
“east” and the larger “west” were not
equipped with the gravity system; one actually swam through them,
weightless. The maintenance tunnels and chambers were also all
weightless. Fortunately, the gravity in the habitation sections was
close to Earth normal.
And so, to this place came first Chu Li and the Chows under
false colors and then, within a week, Hawks, Cloud Dancer, Silent
Woman, Raven, and the strange Manka Warlock. The Chinese, however,
were treated a bit better, being listed as official patients, and
assigned at the start to the staff area. Because most spaceships
were entirely controlled by a computer pilot, the lack of any staff
save the three was not even considered unusual.
The psychogeneticist interviewer looked Chu Li over critically.
She was brisk and professional but not judgmental.
“So, you are here to become male,” the scientist
noted, looking at her screens. “A waste, considering your
looks. Is this voluntary? I mean, do you concur?”
Chu Li nodded. “I do. I was always supposed to be, but
Master System saw differently. I am a genetic construct.”
“I could see that by the cell samples,” the
psychogeneticist huffed. “There are limits to what can be
done short of a total remake, and that takes a lot of time. It says
here you must be back in a new identity with all possible speed.
That limits us.”
“I will be fully functioning? And feel it?”
“Oh, of course. However, the sperm would not be yours but
a—donor’s—and we could make only superficial
cosmetic changes. Your basic female body shape and bone structure
will remain, for example, although we’ll remove most of the
breasts and smooth out what is left and perhaps surgically adjust
the face to give it a more masculine cast. The strong male hormones
which we will distill from the minute quantities you produce now
but which will then be duplicated and produced by your new glands
and sacs will alter you far more as time goes on. I gather no
mental adjustment is required for this.”
“They want me just the way I am, mentally. That’s
why they did the first part of the adjustment back
there.”
“Now, then, you were blinded in a mindprinter
accident?”
“Not exactly an accident. I think I wasn’t supposed
to see something. It was understood that my sight would be restored
here.”
“Uh huh. Well, we’ll have to scan for damage, but if
it’s just a printer program, it should be simple. We’ll
send you in for tests now. If all prove out, we’ll get
started right away.”
Melchior was not at all what Chu Li had expected. True, it was
inside an asteroid, and there was a strange coldness and dryness to
the air, but everyone had been quite nice and quite professional
all the way. She didn’t really know what the place looked
like, of course, but at the moment it seemed more like a hospital
than a horrible prison. They were even going to attend to the
terrible scars of the Chow sisters. Of course, the fact that their
records now identified them as some other people and seemed to come
from the higher security levels of China Center didn’t hurt,
nor did the fact that such records could not be cross-checked with
Master System files here.
Melchior was an exciting and exotic place, one that she would
like to have seen. She hoped that they would restore her sight
quickly. But even if they did not, she would get a totally new
identity. A complete sex change, some cosmetic changes, even subtly
different fingerprints and a slightly altered eye pattern. She
could walk right into China Center and right up to Song
Ching’s miserable relatives, and they would never know.
Doctor Isaac Clayben looked over the data modules on the subject
and frowned. “You were right to come to me,” he told
the assistant. “You’re sure there’s no
mistake?”
“Absolutely, sir. We took the print when we suspected
something and checked it without her even knowing it.”
“And the other two?”
“Petty criminals sent here because Doctor Shasvik wanted
as many identical twins as he could get. You must admit, sir, that
she’s both brazen and brilliant even to have tried this. I
have no idea how she could have switched full identification
through Master System with this Chu Li boy. I would have sworn it
was impossible without coming through here to begin with. In fact,
her only mistake was that Melchior is not on Master
System, so our records aren’t updated when the master is.
With the systemwide alert, we naturally put them all through. Her
eye and prints matched up with Song Ching, and the other two are
former servants of some high-ranking security officer in China
Center. When we shot them back to Earth for a run-through, though,
Master System identified her absolutely as Chu Li, a natural male.
Fascinating.”
Clayben scratched his scruffy full beard. “Pity. They are
going to make this Song Ching into nothing more than breeding
stock. Anyone who could do this is a mind that shouldn’t be
lost to some culturally sexist attitudes. She could easily do the
one thing without sacrificing the other. No one at China Center has
been notified?”
“No, sir. Do you wish me to call them?”
“No. Not yet. Let me think about this. In the meantime,
continue with all the tests but do absolutely no surgery, psycho or
physical.”
“Very well. What about the blindness? It’s a simple
trap program from a portable mindprinter. We could remove it in
twenty or thirty minutes.”
“Leave it. Give her a fancy and convincing but meaningless
excuse. If she can get herself shipped here, change Master System
records, take control of a spaceship in midflight, and come up with
something so basic that only a lifetime of thinking about beating
Master System flawed her success, we don’t want her getting
oriented here. Imagine somebody like that running loose in this
place.”
It was a sobering thought.
“Come to think of it,” Clayben added,
“separate her from her two friends and place them all in the
Security Block in the prison. If she figures out where she is, tell
her it’s routine until everything is set so that no one will
know she is even due for a change.”
“I doubt she’ll buy that.”
“What’s the difference? And she might, which would
make life a lot easier for us. If she figures it out and causes
enough uproar, tell her the truth, which includes the fact that I
might decide to go through with it anyway and put her to work here.
Someone that young who’s that good at beating the best could
be very valuable.”
“Shall we encode her?”
The boss thought about it. “Yes, but slip her a mild
sedative first so that she doesn’t know it. Encode her as Chu
Li and adjust our records accordingly. If I decide not to send her
home, I don’t want her father coming in here some day and
finding out that she was ever here.”
When the aide left, Doctor Clayben sat back in his large padded
desk chair and sighed. He was a man of advancing middle age and
looked it; he had achieved the position of Director of the Medical
Section of Melchior, a dream assignment and one which involved
being able to poke into everybody’s ideas whenever he liked.
Although not a Presidium member himself, he worked for the body as
a whole and so had no loyalty or obligation to any one person. He
saw himself as a pure scientist, in the one position where he and
his colleagues were free from any concepts of forbidden knowledge
or political, moral, and religious restrictions. He had no
reservations about authorizing the most radical experiments on
human beings; he used only prisoners sent here by the Presidium,
people who would have otherwise been executed back on Earth. He
felt he gave their miserable lives meaning by allowing them to
contribute to the growth of human knowledge, knowledge which for
the most part remained right here, under his authority and under
his control.
Not even the Presidium guessed the amount of power, knowledge,
and abilities contained within Melchior’s small confines. The
girl had wanted to become a fully functioning male. Child’s
play. Clayben knew, as most did not, what the bulk of humanity had
become out there among the vast stars. It had become alien to its
birth species and alien to all in many ways, although curiously
still human in the mind. Humanity had always been adaptable; that
was its key to survival. It could learn to live permanently with
little or no modern technology in arctic wastes or steaming, acidic
tropical jungles. Moving five billion people to a thousand worlds
was no easy task in the old days, particularly since no two planets
were alike and the supply of those tolerable even to adapted humans
was rather low.
Humanity, without technological support, was actually very
fragile. Earth had been just right, just exactly right, and what
evolved there evolved to match it. Within Earth tolerances,
humanity was supreme, but Earth tolerances, while not unique, were
very rare indeed. Master System had been in a hurry, and Master
System developed the means—possibly right here, on
Melchior—to get the job done expeditiously. Clayben knew the
means and the methods. That knowledge often made him feel like a
god.
Certainly it was better than being a tinpot Presidium dictator
always doing the System’s bidding and feeling, every time a
minor victory was scored, like the little boy who steals pie
cooling in the window and gets away with it. Isaac Clayben feared
only one thing about Master System, but he could not allow himself
to dwell on it: Some day Master System would tire of this
sufferance of its loyal servants, or become too suspicious, or not
need its Presidium anymore, and then blast this rock into
atoms.
Although they remembered nothing of their existence from the
time of the hypno treatment along the banks of the Mississippi to
the moment they woke up aboard a spaceship, both Cloud Dancer and
Silent Woman were somewhat traumatized by their sudden propulsion
from a nontechnological culture to one so advanced that it seemed
only magical. Magical but cold, Cloud Dancer decided. There was no
fresh air, or warm sun, or cold winter’s night, or the smell
of trees and flowers here. No sense of freedom or of the vastness
of a starry sky or an endless horizon. There were only sterile
walls, sterile seats and furnishings, and unnatural things. The
toilet had taken her days to understand, and the shower seemed
somehow a violator of her body. Food, both hot and cold, appeared
magically on large trays, yet it all tasted like week-old lard.
Still, both women were committed to Hawks, wherever he might
lead. They had already followed him to hell; there could be no
place left to go but up.
Manka Warlock was as cool, aloof, and condescending as ever, but
if she fell into any more fits of madness, they didn’t see
it. Raven seemed far more relaxed and always the pragmatist. Hawks
suspected that Chen had given Warlock a bit of enforced calming
with a mindprinter, changing only her irrational extremes and not
her basic self. Such calm wouldn’t hold; no one except
Warlock would be surprised if she were due for something more than
a job when she got to Melchior.
Hawks himself was trying to decide whether he had won a reprieve
or was now condemned to the circles of hell. The only thing known
about Melchior was that it was a prison from which there had never
been an escape, though obviously people did—if
rarely—come and go from there. He began to wonder how much of
a fool he had been in not taking Chen’s offer at the start.
Certainly they could make him accept and love anything once they
had him on Melchior; they could convince him that the sky was
purple and he was Lazlo Chen’s identical twin brother. He
consoled himself in the rather certain hunch that even if he had
accepted, he’d still be aboard this ship. Raven and Warlock
had accepted, and here they were. Chen was not about to accept
promises of fidelity no matter what the oath.
They disembarked directly into a high-security area, with armed
security guards and automatic security devices everywhere, and were
then printed and processed. The women understood only that they
were to be imprisoned in a strange cave; their views of creation
did not yet encompass a sufficient cosmology to understand just
where they were or the nature of Melchior. It was a place in the
Inner Dark, a spiritual realm ruled by spirits of evil. That was
enough.
They were stripped, decontaminated, bound, then blindfolded and
linked together for the final part of their journey. Silent Woman
particularly protested the treatment, and Cloud Dancer was none too
happy, but Hawks managed to calm them, convincing them that nothing
could be done until they were settled and could get information, so
there was no purpose to any resistance at this point. Privately he
wondered if there was any possibility of successful resistance even
later. Like Dante, he had been forced by his enemies into entering
hell alive; unlike Dante, he had no spirit guides to get him safely
through and out again.
At the end of the nightmarish and disorienting journey, in which
they seemed almost to float or fly in places, they were brought to
a small, unfurnished room watched by security monitors all around
the ceiling. Their blindfolds removed, they saw that Raven and
Warlock were no longer with them, and none wished for a reunion.
Those two had been replaced with an officious woman who looked as
if she had been carved from some massive stone block, dull gray
uniform and all. She had a small clipboard in her hand and glanced
at it, then up at them.
“You three have been consigned to the Melchior Penal
Colony,” she told them unnecessarily. “These walls and
tunnels are incredibly thick and solid; the only way out is the way
you came in. From this point back, there is no place at which you
are not under constant monitoring and observation. Ahead of this
point is a large chamber divided into two sections. The red block
of flats off to your right as you enter is Maximum Security. The
dwellings there are comfortable and self-contained but soundproof
and allow only one inmate to a dwelling. Those inside must stay
there. Inside, there is not a single point, not a square
millimeter, that is not constantly under both visual and audio
observation by humans and computers. Nothing, not even human waste,
goes out without inspection and analysis, and nothing comes in
except through totally computer-controlled access ports. You will
be able to see inside every one, for the open walls are
forcefields, all individual, but so firm that not even sound can
pass through, and visual is one-way only. Anyone can see in, but
you see a blank wall. You do not want to be in Maximum
Security.”
They accepted that at face value.
“The rest of the area is more communal. In a sense, it is
a small town, although with rigid rules. We monitor the whole but
not every specific thing. Rest assured, though, that we could pick
you out of a crowd and eliminate you even in the most hidden
corners, should we choose to do so. The dwellings there are larger
and shared. Because we always know where you are when we want you,
we have no limitations. You will be assigned a communal unit. If
one or more of you moves elsewhere, it is not our problem.
Everything used there is designed to degrade and is disposable.
Clothing is not permitted. It is difficult to conceal a weapon or
anything else if all are naked. You will draw everything that you
need from the automated stores in the center area, as well as
getting fed there. You may draw three meals a day that are coded to
you, no more. These cannot be saved up. Eat when you like within
this limitation. Cold water is always available from the central
fountain. Questions so far?”
There were none.
“All right, then,” she continued. “We run on a
twenty-five-hour schedule, which we have found more conducive to
routine in this enclosed place. Everyone sleeps the same eight
hours, marked by a bell sounding and then the lights going dim. You
will be in a dwelling within ten minutes of that bell and before
the lights go down permanently. Anyone out after that or making
excessive noise after that will be severely punished. Anyone ill or
injured should report or be reported to the medical kiosk. Someone
will come and tend to you. Those are the only major rules. You will
learn the rest down there from your fellow inmates. When we want
you, we will come and get you. Violence, resistance to our
authority, or anything we determine as troublemaking will get you
into Maximum Security and move you up to the head of the list for
laboratory experimentation. Many inmates are already veterans of
experimentation. Look at them and remember the price. Now, there is
just one more process, and you will enter. This will be your home
from now until you die, so adjust to it and accept it. Go through
that door now, one at a time. You may wait for your companions on
the other side.”
There was a small chamber, dimly lit by a greenish glow, beyond
the door. A technician’s voice said, “Step onto the
little platform there and lean your whole face and body into the
fabric stretched in front of it. Remain that way until I tell you
differently.”
It was like a spidery thin but incredibly dense mesh. Hawks
pressed into it as directed and felt a similar substance close
behind him. A sudden very bright light flared all around him, and
he closed his eyes, the afterimage remaining. He felt a sudden,
intense, burning pain across his back and on his face as well. He
almost cried out but controlled himself. He would show no
weakness.
It was over quickly. The mesh fell away, and the technician
ordered him to go forward and out the security door. Still a bit
stunned and feeling some residual pain on his back and face, he
looked around and saw his first glimpse of the true heart of the
Middle Dark.
In the Hyiakutt religion there were many spirits and many levels
of magic and mysticism. There was but one god, all-seeing,
all-knowing, and all-powerful, the Creator, the Father Spirit in
whose image humanity had been created. Below the Creator were two
levels of spirits set to do His will and protect His domain: the
spirits of nature, and then the least of spirits, those of His most
complex creation, humanity.
There was, of course, an opposite force, which the Creator
allowed because He had created man as an experiment, perhaps as a
game, to amuse and interest Him but also to be more complex
companions. The human spirit was the least, yet it could rise
higher than the fixed spirits if it worshiped the Creator,
respected His creations, understood that the Creator made and alone
owned all things, and showed himself worthy in courage and honor to
rise above the middle spirits. Without evil, without pain and
temptation, humans would be as the middle spirits; defeating those
things could make them worthy of the Creator’s company. For
this reason the Dark had been formed and allowed to reign where it
could. Humans were born into the Outer Darkness, subject to the
forces of evil as well as good. By making their spirits shine with
deeds, they could dispel it.
Against this were the spirits of the Middle Dark, those that
corrupted both human spirits and nature, and below it the Inner
Dark, the place from which all evil came and where One lived whose
Hyiakutt name translated out roughly to Corruption. It was a
formidable enemy, for it had to be, in order to test humans.
Without a worthy foe, the struggle, too, was worthless.
Hawks felt he was in the domain of the Middle Dark, although he
had little religious faith or feeling. Now he knew it was real, for
here it was. If such diverse and disconnected cultures as those of
the Hyiakutt and Dante could feel the same contest and see the same
visions through their individual cultural filters, then it did
exist. Now he understood the odd, subconscious bond he’d
always felt between that ancient foreign poet and himself. Culture
masked truth—but there could be only one truth.
When Cloud Dancer emerged, he saw on her what they had done to
him. Her pretty face and coppery skin had been marked on the cheeks
with a bright silvery design, a line that began pencil-thin under
the eyes and broadened out into a solid curve that bent back in on
itself and ended as tiny little tendrils or even flowers. The
design seemed to drink in light; he was certain it would retain
some and glow in the dark, perhaps for a very long time. When she
touched his face, and he hers, their fingers felt only skin, yet
the design seemed inset, permanent, almost like a nameplate set
into a piece of furniture or machinery. It was actually rather
pretty and not at all disfiguring in the usual sense, but both had
the feeling that the thing would not wear off. Silent Woman’s
identical markings were the most natural looking, although the
shiny silver clashed with her muted reds, greens, blues, and
oranges.
Hawks understood what it was for. One might impersonate someone
in authority, perhaps steal clothing or the proper uniform; one
might try all sorts of tricks, but one would never hide his or her
face routinely without drawing attention. In the darkness of some
of the tunnels, you would even glow in the dark, making a perfect
target. He wouldn’t be at all surprised, he thought, if the
tattoo contained some synthetic mineral that could be automatically
tracked by sensors, probably specific and unique to each
individual. That was how they could pick out and shoot a
troublemaker even in a crowd. On their backs, between their
shoulder blades, was a bar of the same silvery material, going
almost from shoulder to shoulder and about five centimeters thick.
Within it, in black, was embedded a long string of characters in a
language even Hawks did not know, but it was clearly a prison file
number and identifier. It looked somehow superfluous on the back of
Silent Woman.
“These are the demon brands so that we shall be known
everywhere,” Cloud Dancer noted. “Even should we leave
here, we would carry their mark for all to see.”
He nodded. “That’s about it.” He turned and
looked over the interior of the prison complex. “It is a
grayer underworld than I had imagined.”
Cloud Dancer nodded grimly. “It is the worst of things. A
place where all beauty and nature had been banished, all joy and
all hope. A place without colors.”
The entire semicircle could be viewed from the entrance. Walls,
floor, and ceiling were all gray. The natural rock was gray, and
all else had been painted or manufactured to match it so that it
all blended into a plain nothingness. The cells, or dwellings, or
whatever they might be called, were along three sides from floor to
ceiling, rising up at least four stories in a stepped design. They,
too, were gray, although dull lights shone from each doorway. The
only color was the flat and dull red of one block set off from the
others to their right. The cells there had no doorways, just
three-sided frames looking to the interiors, which were brightly
lit, the very walls glowing with illumination. Each was a single
room with cot, toilet, sink, and nothing else except, in most of
them, a lone occupant either sitting silently or pacing.
Below the dwellings, the area continued to be stepped; the lower
levels were broad and somewhat rough-hewn and were basically
featureless. The concentric rings formed an eerie rock amphitheater
without seats or ornamentation. In the center was a broad oval in
which a number of cube-like buildings sat, all equally dull and
gray.
There were people about; a rather large number, it seemed, some
in the area of the central cubes but most just along the broad
steps or wandering aimlessly about. The lighting was indirect, its
source the rocky ceiling of the chamber, and though little could be
made out of individual humans from where the newcomers stood,
little reflective glints off backs and faces told them that
everyone here had the mark.
A man approached them. It was impossible to guess his age, but
he was thin and light of build. He was so fair of skin that the two
women, who had never seen humans from northern Europe, at first
thought he was a walking dead man. He had incredibly thick light
blond hair flowing down almost to his waist but no facial hair as
Hawks might have expected from one of this man’s race. His
complexion was fairer than a baby’s, although in a number of
places he had some ugly bruises that showed up particularly well on
his light skin. His cheeks bore the same silver design as theirs;
the bar on his back was masked by his hair.
“Hello,” the stranger said in a gentle low tenor.
“My name is Hendrik van Dam, although most here just call me
Blondy, particularly the Englishers and the others who
speak it.” He had a mild but pleasant north European accent.
“I was told to meet you and get you settled.” He paused
for a moment. “English is all right, is it not? I
was told—”
“No, English is fine,” Hawks responded. “It is
the only common tongue we have. I am called Jonquathar,
which means Runs With the Night Hawks. Mostly I am just called
Hawks, although in some circles where English is required, I am
also called Jon Nighthawk. These are my wives, Chaudipatu,
or Cloud Dancer in English, and the painted one we call
Masituchi, or Silent Woman, since she has no tongue to
tell us how she was truly called.”
“You are of the Americas, I believe,” van Dam noted.
“We get very few of your people here, although some
are sent.” He sighed. “I would bid you
welcome, only that seems a bit out of place.”
Hawks nodded understandingly. “That is very
true.”
“I have a number for your assigned quarters, although we
should go down to the shops first. You should eat something and
relax a bit, then draw your bedding and supplies there before going
up. I am afraid that seniority reigns here, so you are up top and
off to the side. They are all really the same inside, so otherwise
it does not matter. When you have nothing, the most trivial things
become important, as you will see.”
Cloud Dancer looked over to her left as they descended a rough
rock staircase and gasped. “That couple over there—are
they making love right there?”
“Oh, yes,” van Dam replied casually. “You will
see a lot of it, some of it quite passionate and some extremely
nontraditional—some would say aberrant or
abnormal.”
“But—everyone is just ignoring
them!”
“We are given nothing here. We can possess nothing. There
is no reading matter, nothing to use for art or to record, not even
things for sport. You spend much time talking here, but eventually
you get talked out. It looks big, but the community is actually
quite small, although there’s some small turnover. There is
some intimidation by the rougher sorts, but it is relatively mild
here since they have no way of enforcing their will except through
violence, and violence in here is strictly and severely punished.
So you do what you can. You quickly lose all the usual social
inhibitions here, and there are only so many footraces,
wrist-wrestling contests, and the like you can do before you run
dry. So you eat, you sleep, and you have whatever sort of sex you
wish here. You cannot get pregnant, and if you were when you came
in, you are not now. There is nothing here but eternal boredom, and
even that pales after a while. Then you just sit and wait until you
are called.”
“Called?” Hawks echoed. “By whom? For
what?”
“Called by the Institute. Your mind, emotions, body,
will—they play with all of them as they wish. We are their
toys, you see. You will see some of their games here. At first you
might be upset with seeing them or lose your appetite, but after a
while it becomes just like that couple back there. You simply
don’t think of them as odd or even unusual anymore. Even when
you know they play with mind and body, cripple and contort, after a
while you look forward to being called. Anything to relieve this.
You will see.”
“How long have you been here?” Cloud Dancer asked
the blond man.
“I truthfully do not know. You start to count the sleeps
when you get here, but you lose count sooner or later, and after a
while you don’t try to start again. Hair grows about
six-tenths of a centimeter a month, and I have not cut mine. It was
rather short when I arrived. Still, I have had a few
sessions—brief, I think—at the Institute, so it is hard
to say for sure.”
“At some point,” Cloud Dancer noted grimly,
“we will all go mad.”
“Oh, even that is not permitted. They look for signs of it
and pick it up quite well. They then pick you up, treat you, and
you are not insane anymore. They make few slips. They catch it
early on, when we haven’t even seen it ourselves.”
Hawks shivered. “And no one—tries to
escape?”
“How? Through fifteen meters of solid rock with our
fingernails and our teeth? Then what? To the vacuum of space? The
only other way out is through that door you came in, then through a
maze of tunnels with countless air locks, all monitored. Even if
you got all the way, which no one ever has, there is an average of
two ships a month in here, and they stay only long enough to do
their business and go. A few hours at best. Access to the ships is
strictly controlled. I heard once that someone did get loose in the
Institute and took some important hostages. The computer security
system ignored the hostages and got the inmate anyway. No, I know
of only three ways out.”
“One, I suppose, is death,” Cloud Dancer said,
making it sound not at all an unattractive idea.
“Yes. Another is when they finish with you or can no
longer use you. Then they might turn you into a slave, an obedient
slave for them in their own quarters. They have robots and all the
comforts, but these are the kind of people who get a thrill out of
having slaves to boss around and pamper their every whim. You
can’t fake it, though. They make very sure of you
over here before they recode you over there.”
“You said three ways,” Hawks noted.
“Yes. The rulers here are in many ways just like the ones
we grew up under. If they decide you have something, some talent,
some brilliance, that will enhance their own power and position,
they may employ you at the Institute. It’s just as much a
prison as here, but it is not boring.”
They approached the boxlike buildings in the center. A number of
people were there, eating off plasticlike trays with a variety of
utensils, all rather soft and pliant. All the buildings were
automated and computer-controlled. One put one’s face into a
depression to be scanned and identified. The food building
delivered the food and whatever was needed to eat it, in portions
matched to an individual’s physical needs. The tray and
utensils were encoded with the user’s identification and were
to be dropped in a waste disposal box available on the bottom three
levels. No one could get any more of anything from the stores until
everything was accounted for from last time. If a prisoner
stubbornly kept an item, it began to decompose and give off a
deliberately awful scent within a few hours.
Bedding was two sheets and a pillowcase, turned in daily before
breakfast could be dispensed and replaced any time after the third
meal. Some basic toiletries in very small amounts could also be
picked up, and a new kit could be issued by turning in what was
left of the old one. The newcomers ate, finding the food filling
though even more tasteless than shipboard meals, then drew their
meager supplies and followed van Dam all the way up to the top
dwelling level. They would, Hawks thought, not lack for
exercise.
The apartment, or cell, was spartan but functional. There were
two bunk beds on either side of a rectangular room measuring about
three by four meters. In the rear was a bare toilet, a sink with
hot and cold water faucets and a small basin, a rack to hang the
towels and washcloths, a small shelf for the lesser toiletries, and
that was that. Van Dam told them that showers, with real water,
were twice-weekly affairs and that they would be told when they
were printed for a meal to go take one and then return to eat. The
showers, in a chamber under Maximum Security, were fully monitored
and could not be accessed except when ordered there. Anyone who
refused to shower was denied food.
There was no door, although a forcefield came down during sleep
period. Prisoners were always monitored and recorded while inside
their rooms, van Dam warned, which was why everybody stayed outside
as much as possible. Cloud Dancer went to the door and looked out
at the grim chamber.
“I am surprised,” she said, “that no one has
hurled themselves from here. It would be impossible to
stop.”
“Easy,” the blond man responded. “Computers
think a million times faster than people. They would snap on a
forcefield that would catch you and hold you—in extreme pain,
I might add—until somebody came and got you. Then you’d
rate a trip to the hospital, and when you got back you’d be
just the same, but you’d never think of doing that
again. Believe me. I’ve seen it tried.” He sighed.
“Well, that’s about it. The rest you’ll catch on
to in the days ahead. I’ll show you how to make the bed and
use the toilet, and that will be that. We’re never full, so
this level isn’t very crowded. If you want to use any of the
unoccupied rooms until they’re assigned, feel free. The only
other assigned ones are some other newcomers. Been here about two
weeks. They’re three down in apartment forty-two. Two
sisters. Chinese, I believe. You might like them. They’re an
interesting pair. Real bad scars, though, so be prepared. Not from
here—they already had them.”
The blond man left and made his way slowly back down toward the
center. The two women watched him go, wondering why he was in such
a hurry to get anywhere in this place.
Hawks walked up between the two women and put his arms around
them. “I’m very sorry I got you into this. This was all
my own stupid fault.”
“We chose to keep the marriage and to follow you,”
Cloud Dancer replied. “Now we will do as any Hyiakutt would
do. We will survive, and we will wait.”
He gave a dry, humorless chuckle. “Wait? For
what?”
“For opportunity. For whatever comes. Perhaps, even, for
five golden rings.”