AFTER THEY HAD MADE THEIR DECISION, THE CHOWS had more than a
month to think about it and agonize over it and have not only
second, but third and fourth thoughts about doing it at all.
For the crew of the Thunder the time had not been
wasted. Originally, the vast interior of the ship had been designed
for two purposes: to transport large numbers of uprooted humans
from old Earth in a sedated state, and to link them directly to the
transmuters through which they could be changed into the form
Master System had designed to tailor them to the planet. Most of
that was gone now; the enormous interior was almost planetlike,
with grass and artificial sunlight and trees and small personal
buildings for the inhabitants. About eight kilometers by two were
available, but only a bit over four kilometers had been transformed
into living space, first for the small Earth-human crew who’d
stolen her and then for the crew of the freebooter ships who had
joined her. Aft was a work area for the ship’s maintenance
robots to repair and build whatever was needed. Only the final row
of transport tubes, set against the rear bulkhead, remained
untouched.
While this work was in progress, the great computer pilot whom
they called Star Eagle worked with China Nightingale, the blind and
eternally pregnant genius, and Doctor Isaac Clayben, the greatest
human expert on forbidden technology. With the files from the
freebooter freighter Indrus, they pooled their intellects
to learn all they could about the strange people who inhabited the
world called Janipur.
The diverse Hindu culture from which the ancestors of that world
had been plucked fascinated all of them. Its many and complex
deities, its theories about reincarnation and an expanding and
collapsing universe, its art and music and literature were all new
to the crew of the Thunder and quite wondrous.
There was also a dark side to it, in that it used its cosmology
to impose a rigid class structure determined by birth. One began as
some insignificant living thing and then grew over successive lives
to become a more complex organism and ultimately human, with the
power to reason and study and make conscious decisions. But even as
a human one had to start at the bottom, the lowest of the low
classes, and serve a life as both a male and a female in each
class, excelling and learning from that experience and thereby
progressing to a new life in the next highest class. The ultimate
were the Brahman, the highest class of the society, beyond which
there was a new state, perhaps a godlike one.
The idea of rebirth was appealing in a way, but most of them
shared the view of the cigar-smoking Crow security man, Raven.
“If you don’t remember who you were then what’s
the difference between bein’ really dead and bein’
reincarnated? Me, I think you get one go and that’s it. Look
at me. Smart-ass fat kid from a primitive village high in the
mountains who became a warrior, then a Center security man, and
now—well, whatever this is. Down there, if you’re born
a dirt fanner you stay a dirt farmer, no matter how smart
or skilled you are.”
Both the Chows and China had been born and raised in a culture
that also believed in reincarnation and thought it quite logical,
but their system was not as rigid as the Hindus’. And though
they were familiar with a number of variants of Buddhism, Taoism,
and Confucianism, they would find Janipur to be quite different.
Master System believed in stability; the cultures it created were
carefully edited versions of old Earth cultures, pared of all
extraneous material. The China that had bred the Chows and China
Nightingale was not the culture of their ancestors any more than
were the Crow or Hyiakutt societies that had produced Raven, Hawks,
and Cloud Dancer. Hawks, historian, had known this from the start,
but few others could appreciate his thoughts that the various
reservations on Earth were not so much museums as free-form
historical fictions.
Janipur had been the victim of a particularly ironic twist by
Master System. There were no sacred cows in Janipurian society; the
people were the cows. At least, that was how the crew of
the Thunder thought of it when looking at the pair now in
the aft transport tubes.
Vulture, the strange creature who was the creation of the
distorted genius of Isaac Clayben, and who could absorb the
physical form, personality, and memories of any organic being, had
done his job well. After infiltrating Cochin Center on Janipur, he
had consumed and then become the deputy chief of security, which
gave him great power and access to the vast bulk of Center files.
He had picked a pair of Janipurians from Awadi Center, on another
continent from Cochin; Brahmans by their gray coloration. As
middle-level bureaucrats, part of the inevitable faceless horde
that kept all political organizations working, these two would have
easy access to Cochin Center without being known there.
It was the first time any but the crew of the Indrus
had ever seen a real Janipurian, and the forms made a major
impression on them.
They were human sized; the female was noticeably smaller man the
male. Lying on their sides in the tubes, they looked very much like
hoofed animals. Their “hind legs” were mounted on
either side of the torso on a swivel joint that allowed the body to
actually stand upright. The lower calf was thicker than one would
expect in a four-footed animal and seemed to end in a broad, thick,
rock-hard hoof. The hoof, however, was actually mounted on the back
of the ankle, and the major thickness of the lower calf was due in
part to a broad, flat, padlike extension of muscle and bone on
another swivel joint that could lock out of the way for running on
all fours but was otherwise wide enough and powerful enough to
serve as a foot when the creature stood erect.
The torso was broad and thick; the arms were the same length as
the legs and constructed in much the same fashion, although the
handlike extensions beyond the hooves were more specialized, each
with four long fingers and an opposable thumb that folded up when
the creature was standing on all fours. The necks were long and
thick, and constructed to allow the head to face forward in both
four-and two-legged positions.
The faces were expressive and very human-looking, with pushed-in
noses and overly wide jaws that moved from side to side as well as
up and down and contained only broad, flat teeth. These were
herbivores. Most of the body area, excluding the face, was covered
in thick gray fur.
“The musculature and skeletal structure are
amazing,” Clayben told them, sounding like a kid with a new
toy. “Upright they are as elastic and as able to twist and
bend and perform as normal humans are. On all fours, they are far
more rigid but can probably run, leap, and kick better than any
human. The feet are better designed for standing than walking
upright, but the hands are very well suited for even the most
intricate work.”
Sabira, the crewwoman from the Indrus who had
volunteered to go along on the mission because she knew and
understood the basic culture of Janipur, said nervously, “I
suppose there are greater differences than would be immediately
apparent to anyone from the outside. Still, I had not thought of
them as all that different in spite of appearances. Such things
would affect their whole culture and way of looking at things,
their basic behavior. I had not considered that.”
“There will be other surprises, I fear,” Hawks told
her. “But the transmutation is essential to our mission.
Second thoughts?”
She gave a slight smile and shrugged.
“Some . . . many. It is to be expected.
But I am needed; I am the only one with experience who is willing
to go.”
And that, of course, was the crux of the matter.
“One thing does puzzle me,” Clayben added. “On
their heads, here, seem to be nubs representing incipient horns.
I’d be curious to know whether they have a function or are
merely ornamental.”
Sabira nodded. “The horns are functional only on the
female. The way in which the child must be carried in the womb to
be fully protected and insulated is with the mother in the
four-footed position. As term progresses, the mother finds it
increasingly difficult to stand until it becomes impossible about
the fifth month. The pivot joints in the hands and feet lock into
position so they cannot be lowered, the breasts enlarge, and the
mother grows a long and nasty pair of horns with sharp points.
Without her usual speed, it is the only protection she has during
the remaining time. A few weeks after birth the horns fall off, and
she can return to normalcy. The horns are saved and usually
fashioned into carvings that are given to the child upon gaining
maturity. They are considered a part of the child. The children are
breast-fed for only a couple of weeks; after that their digestive
systems are fully formed and they can eat basically what the adults
eat. Do not think of the women as helpless at this time, however.
They are extremely aggressive and quite dangerous.”
Clayben nodded. “Fascinating. And the children are born
fully formed and able to get about? Not like our helpless
lumps?”
“Their hands and feet are rudimentary, but their legs are
strong and firm. They are quite imitative and learn the basics of
survival early on. They are self-sufficient as animals, although
mostly defenseless, by the first month. But they are well advanced
in many ways and because of their mobility and independence learn
at a far faster rate than our own children at that age. The hands
and feet, however, take years to fully develop, and their use must
be learned and practiced. They are intellectually humans but
physically animals until about the age of seven or so. They mature
sexually at about age twelve or thirteen.”
Clayben nodded again. Clearly the old scientist, after long
inactivity, was coming alive again. Hawks wondered how alive he
would be if it became his turn to be transmuted into
something else. He suspected it was far easier to do things to
others in the name of research than to undergo the process yourself
at someone else’s hands.
“Have the Chows seen these yet?” Sabira asked.
Hawks shook his head negatively. “Not yet. Today, perhaps.
Now that we have our two prototypes, the clock is running, as it
were, to get things going. This pair is officially on leave and a
cover story has been developed for them. However, their leave is
one hundred days and already five are gone. You all must study
their bodies and learn whatever else you can in order to pass as
Janipurians. Part of that study time must be here, until you have
learned the basics, and then we will send you all down to live for
a period with the natives and polish up. If you cannot fool the
natives, then you will not fool Cochin Center and you certainly
will not fool the troops infiltrated down there. Thanks to Vulture,
you will then be reassigned to Cochin Center. By then you will have
passed the hard tests and be ready to attempt the
impossible.”
“It is a lot to ask, to get that far in ninety-five
days,” she responded worriedly. “There will be so much
to learn.”
“More than just your lives will depend on your learning
well that quickly. Without this ring, the rest are meaningless. If
you are caught, then it will be a thousand times more difficult for
those who follow to try again.”
There was usually very little need for Chow Mai and Chow Dai to
talk to one another. As identical twins, they had been virtually
inseparable for good and ill. Each knew the thoughts of the
other—or so it seemed, even to them—which made their
conversation after they saw the Janipurians all the more
remarkable.
“I do not want to do this thing,” Chow Mai, usually
the quiet one of the pair said. “You saw them. You thought
what I thought.”
Chow Dai nodded. “More like cows than people, I think, and
their ways are very strange, as well. I look at us and know that we
are not things of beauty, yet we are still human.”
“And yet there is honor and obligation. Our lives belong
to these people who saved us for this purpose. My nightmares have
never gone away, nor have I felt normal
since . . . ”
Chow Dai nodded once more, understanding completely. They had
been caught in common burglary by China Center security,
mindprinted, and determined to be neither spies nor traitors but
simply childish and immature thieves with a remarkable talent for
getting past the most sophisticated locks. Neither understood flush
toilets, let alone computers, yet they had been given a gift, or a
curse, by their ancestors and by their illusionist uncle long
ago.
After their capture, they had been taken down to the biotech
labs where they had been examined and, still virgins, had been
rendered forever incapable of bearing children. Then they had been
lightly drugged and taken to the place where the lowest guards
stayed, and there, no longer regarded as people but as mere
playthings of the brutish louts, they had been tormented, tortured,
and raped, again and again, until they felt so low and so vile that
they were no more than what their tormentors regarded them as. It
had gone on and on and on; there were three shifts of guards and
little food or rest. When they had fought they had been cut and
burned and mutilated, scarred beyond recognition, so that they
looked barely human at all when suddenly the order came to prepare
them and ship them off to Melchior.
On Melchior, China Nightingale had been treated by transmuter
but they had not, their scars and disfigurements treated by slower,
more conventional means. At the time this did not seem odd or
unusual, but now they realized that the security chief of Melchior
had been one of those conspiring against Master System and had not
wished to subject them to the machine that could only be used once.
Only the prisoner tattoos on their cheeks were of the transmuter
process, and those could be disguised by added skin layers and
colorization.
“It is what the gods decreed for us from the start,”
Chow Dai said, and sighed. “It is what we were born to
do.”
Chow Mai nodded ruefully. “I am unhappy but reconciled.
Better to become a monster than to deny our destiny and be damned,
or remain here and watch others suffer in our place.”
“Perhaps,” Chow Dai responded wistfully, “this
will be the end of suffering.”
They were ready.
“The process itself is intricate and could not be done
without the computers designed for it,” Isaac Clayben told
them, “but in actual practice it’s rather simple,
quick, and straightforward. The original physics of the transmuter
was discovered in ancient times, we think by humans. The idea was
to eventually disassemble anyone or anything into energy, stored
and coded so that it could be reassembled as matter someplace else
after being broadcast or transmitted. The process eventually worked
to a limited degree over special wiring networks, but the energy
could not be broadcast and thus the system was somewhat
impractical. Even though it represented the answer to Earth’s
diminishing resources, the project was not fully believed or
supported—we think because many died or worse in the final
experiments, increasing public anger—and it was abandoned. It
didn’t matter anyway. Without murylium the system could have
never worked in a wireless mode. Master System picked up the
experiments and continued them. It discovered that murylium was the
key and perfected the broadcast capability that we have used to get
from Thunder to our original base world and back.
It’s quite limited, however, and not practical for distances,
say, on an interplanetary scale.”
Clayben, excited to be in his own area of action once again,
seemed completely oblivious to the tension and nervousness of those
around him. Hawks was not, but he understood the necessity. Clayben
was being longwinded about it, but this was essential
information.
“Now, when the Thunder was designed,” the
scientist continued, “it was designed to use it as a limited
transport mechanism first and foremost, bringing up whole
populations from a planet and storing them in the tubes we saw when
we first arrived on board. Each was then analyzed and an individual
formula for their transmutation was devised. A mass mindprinter
device was also used to insure uniformity of the new colonial
culture.
“The mindprinting and transmuting programs were worked out
and stored inside the computer memory. We have access to the
ship’s computers, mechanisms, everything—but not those
original programs. We have improvised as best we could. We have an
advantage in that we must have exact duplicates of this pair of
Janipurians to pass security. Their brain structure is nearly
identical to ours, although some functions were added and others
redirected to allow for the physiological changes. By simply
comparing your brain structures with theirs, and noting the
differences we are able to retain your own mental patterns while
making the adjustments necessary to handle the body. All we can do
with the mindprinter, however, is feed in the basics of the culture
from the Indrus data banks. It will give you a grounding,
but not the finer points. Those you will have to learn by
experience, and that will be your most dangerous period before
going into Cochin Center itself.”
“I am puzzled,” Chow Dai said. “There are
three of us and only two of . . . them. Also,
one of them is male. We are all female. How will, you do
this?”
“Any two that met our specifications for fooling and
getting you into the Center were the best we could hope for,
considering the time limitations. Although some Brahman women in
this society do hold high positions, the basic family structure is
more traditional, whether high or low caste. This male is a
bureaucrat; the female is married to and dependent upon him. The
marriage was arranged and is less than two years old, which helps
us. What helps even more is that she came from the field, not a
Center, and is the daughter of the local equivalent of a judge.
That means her Center records are minimal. The marriage to a Center
official, no matter how minor, is a step up for the family. It is
not uncommon even on Earth for a high official of the general
population to raise children or to romance officials on leave. One
major danger is that even from the field, one of her class would be
expected to be literate. You will have to fake that or learn the
rudimentary elements of literacy. No way around it.”
“But the two—male and
female . . . ”
“I’m getting to that. Married two years and not yet
with child is unusual down there. The fact is, she’s not
totally infertile but there are medical problems that make her
chances of pregnancy very remote. Since divorce is socially
unthinkable down there, there’s only one solution for a
bureaucrat who winds up this way, and it is socially acceptable and
understood. A relative of the same sex as the infertile one is
brought in and given some job—maid, clerk, whatever is
appropriate—but her real function is to produce a child for
the couple. He had applied for permission to do this while on
leave—it’s what Vulture was looking for in the security
records, as such a request has to be approved by top security at
the chief administrator level. One side effect of the transmuter is
that we can fix the infertility problem, which is caused by
partially blocked tubes. We will now create a sister from the
field—an identical twin. I doubt that she actually has such a
twin, but Vulture assures me that he can create such a record. One
psychological truth of using computers for all record keeping is
that if you can somehow bypass the security codes and enter false
data, it will be believed by anyone who looks without checking
further—unless someone suspects you. The male is expected to
report to his new post with his wife’s sister. He
will.”
Sabira turned to them. “Because I know my way around
machines, am literate in Sanskrit, and I know their ways, I will
become the man.”
The Chows were both appalled. Even though they had often dreamed
of the power men held in their society, neither had ever wanted to
be a man. It seemed, somehow, a step down.
“You—you want this?” Chow Dai
asked.
“None of us want any of this. It is our duty. I follow the
basic beliefs of my ancestors. I believe I have been a man before
and will be again before my human incarnations are completed. This
will probably cause me to live an extra life, but to not do what is
needed for our survival and the future of all humankind would be
vastly immoral. I must learn to act and think like and be a man;
you must steal the ring. The burden is equal.”
“I will correct the fallopian tube problem in both of
you,” Clayben told them. “The defect is potentially
life-threatening as there is a danger of ectopic
pregnancy—outside the womb. The defect is difficult to spot
or diagnose; I don’t think a routine return-from-leave
physical will have any chance of noticing the change and blowing
the cover. After this is over I will also correct the problem in
the original female, and we will use the mindprinter and hypnos to
put them in a very cooperative frame of mind. They can never return
down there as they are. Even if it was established later on that
they were duplicated and not the perpetrators, they would most
certainly be killed anyway just as insurance. Now, whenever you are
ready we can begin. There will be no pain or other sensation. It
will be no different from being transmitted down to the
world.” Forever . . . like them . . . forever . . .
“Get it over with,” the Chows said in unison.
“Do it now.”
The easiest and most efficient way for Star Eagle to work was to
use the last remaining bank transport tubes and the local network
transmuters built into them. In a sense, it was an echo of long
ago, when Master System had determined that populating the stars
was the only way to ever guarantee that humanity would survive. The
tubes could be automatically sterilized before use, then loaded
with their human cargo and sealed until the process was complete.
Up on the bridge, Star Eagle allowed China to monitor but not to
participate in the operation. It was too delicate. Still, she could
comment to the computer and did so.
“Are you certain you can do this without the program for
Janipur?” she asked, not for the first time.
“You know I only deal in probabilities,” the
computer responded. “The initial tests went well. I hesitate
to say this, but Clayben has more experience in this sort of thing,
and he feels confident. I do not like the man, but if he could make
Vulture with far inferior equipment, he can do this. All three of
us have done our best.”
She sighed. “The poor Chows. They haven’t had much
of a life until now. I hope this doesn’t condemn them to
eternal misery.”
“They may never be totally satisfied, but they will
adjust,” the computer assured her. “That is the one
area in which the human mind is both superior and incomprehensible
to me. You have an almost infinite capacity to adapt to almost
anything. Freezing cold, boiling heat, eternal rain,
desert . . . All these primitive conditions
humans adapted to and thrived. You, too, have adapted, both to
blindness and to your overpowering drives.”
“Adapted—yes. I accept my conditions because there
is no alternative. But content this way? No, that I will never be.
I accept it, as one accepts and learns to live with disfigurement,
handicaps of various sorts, and accidents of birth and fate. In my
mind, though, I am always—envious. Always someone
else.”
There seemed no proper response to that.
“Energizing,” reported the ship’s computer.
“I now have them in three large files and I am doing a
comparison check. It is fascinating in a way. No one, not even the
Chows, have identical checksums, but those are the closest I have
ever measured between two people. Now energizing the models. Done.
Comparing male model file to file Sabira. Fascinating—in many
ways there are far fewer differences than I would have expected.
Now reading and comparing genetic codes. Fascinating. Again there
are far fewer differences than anyone would have thought. It is
almost trivial, yet the results are so different. There are
millions of differences but they are so minor, so slight, that it
shows how remarkable it was that humanity evolved the way it did.
There are more common denominators than differences here. The
ancestry of the Janipurians is quite clear.”
“The body is not the problem. It is integrating body and
mind that is the problem.”
“Very slight. More difference in the spinal column than in
organization of the brain. Different areas of the brain are used
for some motor and autonomic functions, but personality and memory
are stored the same way and in the same places. This should not be
as difficult as I thought.”
China wondered about that, considering that this was a computer
that could read through and find specific data in a hundred
encyclopedias in nanoseconds, yet it was taking several minutes to
do this process. Star Eagle, however, was leaving nothing to
chance—with this kind of transmutation, there was no margin
for error, no tolerance for mistakes.
Still, she knew that what it was doing was astonishing, beyond
human comprehension for speed and complexity. It was creating
comparative computer models of the reformed Sabira and then
stimulating various areas of the brain and central nervous system,
checking out everything to make absolutely certain that there was
no mistake. The entire psychogenetic and psychochemical makeup had
to be correct or the body might not work right or “fit”
right. The skeletal mechanics and the kinesiology of the exercise
were the easy parts. Personality and memory had to be absolutely
retained white the new body had to operate seamlessly with the
different brain information. Cell memory learned by the mere act of
being born and growing up Janipurian had to be retained and
integrated with memory and personality formed in a completely
different environment. Immunities gained from mother’s milk
and from a lifetime on Janipur also had to be maintained. Most
microorganisms on colonial worlds had evolved into different enough
forms that Earth-humans could not catch the diseases, but these
people would be Janipurians going into a Janipurian world. It would
not do to effect a perfect transmutation and then have them sicken
and die from the lack of immunity to some common virus.
“They should check with their doctors more down
there,” Star Eagle remarked almost off-handedly. “The
male had some incipient signs of early arthritis and a weak
pancreas; the female has other things wrong including some small
viral tumors. One wonders what the state of medicine is even at the
Center level. I will correct those problems and flush the veins and
arteries as well. Standing by. I have a new checksum validated by
models. The male is completed. Sabira is completed. The female is
completed. Chow Dai integrated. Chow Mai integrated. Stand by at
the tubes. Reconverting . . . Done.”
A small crowd had gathered at the tubes with Hawks and Clayben.
The tube mouths had gone opaque when the humans had been energized;
now they flicked to clear again. Inside, now, were no longer any
Earth-humans. The two on top looked the same, but the three below
now contained Janipurians.
For Chow Dai and the others it was almost as if nothing had
taken place. She had crawled naked into the tube and lay flat, then
watched as the machinery activated and the mouth clouded up. There
was a slight disorientation as if the scene she was seeing had been
suddenly altered, then strong hands reached in, grabbed her arms,
and pulled her from the tube.
The first thing that struck her was the noise. There were sounds
all around her that she could not place; clicking and
whirring and whooshing, and there were voices,
too, far off but if she concentrated, she could almost make out
what they were saying even over the din created by the crowd at the
tube.
“Try to stand,” Clayben said, his voice sounding
oddly distorted but still clear and a bit too loud. “Just on
your hands and knees for now. Give it a try.”
She managed, and it felt rather comfortable. Steady, anyway. She
crawled completely out onto the catwalk and looked around. All the
familiar faces were there, but they looked different
somehow. There seemed less color, as if things were washed out, but
those nearby—and even the catwalk itself—seemed far
more detailed; by focusing she could count every thread in
Hawks’ pants or see the pores in Clayben’s craggy face.
She looked forward toward the building and maintenance area below
and found it difficult to focus. Nothing down there, or beyond,
seemed to register, yet when one of the spindly robots far away
moved and picked up something she was able to not only focus in on
it but see it clearly, almost isolated from its surroundings. A
perfectly defined form almost suspended in space.
I cannot feel my hands or my feet! she thought
suddenly, and looked down and saw her—forelegs. Even though
she knew academically that it had happened, it wasn’t until
now that the reality of the situation sunk in.
She felt oddly distant from it. Later, perhaps, it would sink in
but not now. Now she simply felt nothing deep inside. She looked
over and saw the other two emerge from their tubes with the same
aid.
They also had little trouble standing on all fours, and she
remembered that Clayben had explained that this was in the design
of the creatures. She stared at Chow Mai, both the form and the
face, and knew that she was also staring at herself. By the gods, we are hideously ugly! she thought, almost
breaking but catching herself in time.
The catwalk was also an elevator system, and it slowly lowered
them all down to the main deck level. None of the three had any
trouble walking off; with arms and legs the same length it was
easier than crawling.
“I’m going to remain and process the other
two,” Clayben told Hawks. “Let them get the feel of
their bodies and give them some time. They must learn to use those
bodies naturally, without thinking. Then we can give them what
printer support we can.”
Hawks nodded. “Now their burden begins.”
When Star Eagle had first sent the thick bundles of grasses to
them to eat, all three had recoiled. Finally, Sabira had decided
that it had to be done and hoped that it would taste better to a
Janipurian than to an Earth-human. It didn’t. The stuff
tasted like grass and straw, and the only positive thing to be said
about it was that it was filling.
“We never ate with the Janipurians before,” she
noted. “I got the impression they prepared highly spiced
food, both cooked and raw. Grazing was for the very young and the
very poor. A survival skill, not a mark of civilization. No one
needed to starve on Janipur.”
“It is all we can furnish until you are down there,
though,” Star Eagle responded apologetically. “We do
not really know their foods. I could only synthesize based upon
logical deductions from the way the digestiye system operates and
traces of food in the systems of the pair we have. Their
mindprinting will soon be finished, however, and they should be
quite willing to help thereafter.”
Mindprinting indeed, more than one of the crew thought.
Brainwashing was the old term for it, when it was less subtle and
more difficult to do.
None of the three felt extremely comfortable in their new forms,
but they had no problem moving around so long as they were in, as
Isaac Clayben called it, their “four-legged mode.”
Attempts to stand, or even unlock the hands and feet from their
holding positions, met with frustration. Since they weren’t
much larger or heavier than Earth-humans, a couple of crewmembers
of the Thunder’s complement tried lifting them into
sitting positions in chairs. The three found themselves unbalanced,
though, and tended to flail at the air with forelegs or fall over
and out.
The addition of Jeruwahl Peshwar and his wife Madowa changed
things a bit, but it wasn’t easy. The two native Janipurians
firmly believed their provided cover story, however, so they were
friendly and cooperative if a bit taken aback and both awed and a
little afraid of the strange forms now around them. As with the
best cover stories, it contained more fact than fiction.
They now believed that Master System was attempting to eliminate
the Centers of Janipur and reduce the population to limited,
animal-like savagery. It was not known if Master System actually
had this in mind for worlds other than Earth, but it was convincing
enough, particularly since the pair knew that forces from Master
System itself now roamed somewhat lordly over their land and
Centers. They were impressed with the honor of the mission,
although not a little bit unhappy that they were the ones chosen to
be uprooted and their lives disrupted. This was ameliorated,
somewhat, by the seriousness of the mission and most of all by the
fact that three of the alien company should be willing to become
like them. They were most touched, however, when shown evidence of
their medical conditions and problems, particularly the dangerously
malformed uterus, and the fact that these things had now been
repaired.
“It is most confusing,” Jeruwahl noted in his thick
Janipurian accented English, “but we will do our part in
this. I feel like I now have a twin, and I cannot tell my wife from
the two others if all stand still.”
It was Madowa who partially solved the food problem by providing
a list of ingredients that turned the stomachs of those who
understood what they were. Once equivalents were found for those
ingredients that were native to Janipur, she was able to prepare
very elaborate dishes for them all that had only one thing in
common: one did not feel one’s mouth after starting the
dishes, but one felt the stomach for quite a while. All Janipurian
food, it seemed, consisted of either the basic bland grasses or
elaborate dishes spiced so hot they were almost on fire. The dishes
could be eaten by the Earth-humans and many of the colonials on
board, but few tolerated more than a taste. Only Sabira and the
crew of the Indrus seemed immune; the captain of the ship
proclaimed it was the first decently spiced food he’d had in
many months.
Madowa worked with Chow Dai and Chow Mai on body movements and
uses; Jeruwahl worked with Sabira, although he was more than a bit
disconcerted by how effeminate this new male was. Sabira,
shortening her name to Sabir, had thought it best for cultural
reasons not to tell him that she was originally female.
There were tricks to making the body fulfill all its potential;
subtle weight shifts, twists, and turns that someone born
Janipurian took for granted but someone new to the body would never
guess. It was startling and somewhat exciting to see Madowa, for
example, simply stand up in a fluid motion with long hands and
longer fingers looking very human indeed. Unexpectedly, they also
walked upright—albeit very slowly and deliberately and for
short distances. Upright was for civilized company, inside
dwellings, and for social occasions. All fours was long-distance
moving and speed. The combination of the two modes was smooth,
effortless, and chosen almost without thinking.
The Chows were absolutely ecstatic when they stood erect,
unsteadily, for the first time on their own, and falling over,
almost breaking a few bones a number of times, did not daunt them.
As on Janipur, the upright stance and use of hands and feet set
human apart from animal in their minds, more than any other trait.
They were determined, and they did it.
Only five days after they began their training, the Chows were
standing up and even walking a bit with relative ease, and were
talking with their hands as much as their mouths. By observing
Madowa, they were now mastering the fine points of fluid and
effortless natural motion.
Sabir was not as adept a pupil, even when helped by all the
others. He could stand in a wobbly sort of way, but often failed
miserably. It was Raven, in fact, who figured out part of the
problem by just watching.
While Jeruwahl had been born with male anatomy and moved to
accommodate it without thinking, Sabir was used to being female.
Now, when Sabir tried to stand, he found that his mind was
unaccustomed to directing the movement of his new male anatomy. It
was slow and frustrating having to learn the basics of walking all
over again.
The Chows, meanwhile, were already learning Janipurian cooking,
at least partly out of self-defense. They wanted to prepare dishes
that were merely volcanic rather than intolerable, and they finally
found the right mix. Madowa Peshwar proclaimed the results
“as bland as straw grass,” though it was still fiery to
everybody else.
Just when Sabir was willing to give up and accept the idea that
he would never adapt, he did it—and had little trouble
thereafter with movement. However, they now had only sixty-one days
left before the leave was terminated and they were to report to
Cochin Center.
The most profitable use of the time for the Chows, other than
getting used to their new bodies, had been practicing with lock
problems and traps rigged by Star Eagle in the office complex
surrounding the central living area. There was no way to actually
know the exact mechanisms used in the Center museum, but Star Eagle
attempted to simulate the types of locks and traps reported by
Vulture, attaining more and more complexity as they solved the
easier ones. One of Sabir’s predictions proved true—the
eyes, at least in their near vision, and the hands were so superior
that the Chows found themselves able to work successfully on very
small, intricate traps. Their new physical attributes significantly
enhanced that uncanny innate ability they had always had, but which
even they really couldn’t explain.
Their score was not perfect, however. In fact, in the most
complex problems involving weights, cameras, and sound monitors
they succeeded only four in ten times. But with the strict time
limitation they hoped it would be enough. It had to be
enough. They needed to get down to the planet almost immediately if
they were to have time to interact with the natives while there was
still a chance to survive any errors. And so they turned to China
and Isaac Clayben, whose wizardry with the mindprinter and
biochemical manipulations could best prepare them for their
mission.
China had visited the Chows quite often during this period.
Other than Sabir and each other, she was the only one they really
felt comfortable around. It was, perhaps, the blindness as well as
the shared past experiences. China could not see them as they were
now, and even if their voices were slurred and they smelled a bit
funny, her mental picture was still of their old selves.
“You are adjusting quite well,” she told them.
“I have seen the results through Star Eagle’s
interconnects, and you look and act quite natural. It is a
fascinating human variation, in some ways superior to us and in no
real way inferior.”
“We are now used to it, yes,” Chow Dai agreed,
“but I am not certain we can ever fully accept ourselves this
way. It is still wrong, strange, and we
feel . . . ugly. At night we still dream our
normal dreams, and when we wake up and see each other as we are, we
feel it a nightmare.”
China nodded and sighed. “I, too, have such dreams. Thanks
to the bridge interface I have seen all this, all of you, but in my
mind and in a different way than one truly sees. I was always so
totally independent, so confident and arrogant, and now I am far
less man you. I am totally, absolutely dependent. That,
more than the loss of my sight, is my continuing curse. I am blind,
my belly is swollen, my soul is filled with odd rushes and urges,
and this is when I am at my best. During that period when I am not
with child, I am degraded, and I hate myself later even though I
know it is none of my doing. In a sense, I have become what my
father intended: a breeding factory. In my youthful ignorance I
cursed him, not for his intent or his contempt for me but because
he would cost me my mind, my awareness, my knowledge, and turn me
into a simpering little slave. I see that there was some mercy in
the old man after all, for now I am in that exact situation, but
with full mind and knowledge and it is far worse. I keep going only
for the mission and victory. Perhaps, although I would like to
think otherwise, I do it just for my father’s reaction if we
are able to win. You have merely changed to an alternate form.
There are worse things that can be done to you, far worse. You must
always remember that.”
“We have been thinking that way,” Chow Mai told her.
“It may well be that Hawks is right—we all may pay a
terrible price for this, and ours may not be the worst.”
“You must remember that millions of people have been born
and raised as you are now and have different standards. They will
think of you as the only true human. Look at Jeruwahl and Madowa.
It is a race far gentler and with kinder features than those of,
say, Chunhoifan’s races—either one.” The
captain of that freebooter ship and two others had glistening black
exoskeletons, terrible faces, and many features more appropriate to
insects, and they ate stuff that made the rest sick just to look
at. The two others of that crew, owlish, green humanoids with
bulging eyes and winglike organs on their backs, were difficult
even to talk to; it seemed as if they lived in a slightly different
universe from the rest, and perhaps they did. When one heard in
ranges far different from Earth-humans and ate a mixture of bloody
meat and crushed rock and saw well into the infrared spectrum,
different attitudes were to be expected. The point was well taken,
and the Chows knew it, but the realization didn’t lessen
their own private agony.
“Tomorrow we will be using on you a mindprinter technique
used by Centers all over Earth and perhaps all over the
galaxy,” China told them. ‘”We have taken the
preadjusted imprints of Jeruwahl and Madowa and added logical and
expected experiences to account for their missing time. We were
also able to edit a version of Madowa’s recording to create a
twin sister, Sedowa, and blend that into the Madowa experience
sufficiently well so that the memories of the real Madowa will
include our addition. It will fool the records computers. Such
things always have. We were able to edit in memories of a minor
brain dysfunction, a type of dyslexia that is not unknown in
Earth-humans and possibly also is here. Vulture, who has created
Sedowa’s records to match our own, has added that to the
files transferred from their old Center to Cochin. You will not be
expected to read or write, and that will get you over a large
hurdle. For the next sixty days you will be Jeruwahl and
Madowa Peshwar and Sedowa Bhutto. You will truly believe this, just
as I truly believed myself to be the boy Chu Li when first we met.
It will remain consistent, your true selves inaccessible to
mindprinter or your own will or knowledge, until Vulture brings you
out of it.”
“We are nervous and a bit scared of it, but we understand
the routine,” Chow Dai assured her. “We remember,
however, that you were affected by Chu Li long after you reasserted
control. After we . . . come out of it, will
we still be ourselves, or something new?”
“You will remember all that you do now,” China
assured them. “However, none of the memories you had
imprinted, including those of the sixty days, will vanish. You will
be in complete control. Becoming fully yourself again is a slow
process but a painless one; things will fade if not used or
accessed. What memories of your experience you need, you will keep
as long as you need it. What you do not need will fade. Even now
there is a bit, a tittle bit, of Chu Li in me, but it is not a bad
thing. I treasure it. His rebelliousness helps keep me going. His
spirit will not let me quit. All I have truly lost is my
overwhelming arrogance, and that from my experience since and not
through any mindprinter trick. We know they will check and spy on
all newcomers with a thoroughness they never had before, so the
mindprint must be a perfect job, but you will gain from it and lose
nothing later. It is when you come out that the danger will be
great. Take care. We have had limited time to get you this far, but
there is no time limit, even if it be years, to getting the rings.
If we do not live to see the fifth and final one in place, our
children will do it. The only thing you must not do is fail, and
death will be failure, as well.”
“We will take care and we will return,” Chow Dai
promised her. “We will do it because it is what we were
ordained to do. We were born in ignorance and fated, it seemed like
all those who grew up with us, to work the paddies and have babies
and die young. Instead the gods worked in strange ways to make us
part of a great thing. We will not fail, and we will
personally hand you the ring, and if it is the will of the
gods we, not our children, will stand at the doors to Master System
itself and see the great thing we have helped bring about.
That is what keeps us going.”
China hugged and kissed them, and for the first time in her
mature life felt tears come to her unseeing eyes. “I will
hold you to that,” she said, “and I shall not forgive
you if it does not come out that way.”
They were sedated after the mindprinter treatment, then sent
down to Janipur in coordination with Vulture’s plan. Because
the odd creature had assumed the body, form, and personality of the
deputy chief of security for Cochin Center, he had some freedom of
movement and resources. Master System’s forces on Janipur
might still have been suspicious of his moves and actions had they
any idea that such a creature as Vulture existed, but they did not
and the deputy chief of security was well known and above normal
suspicion. Clayben had originally created Vulture as the prototype
for a whole army of creatures designed specifically to avoid any
trap Master System might lay, to penetrate any security, to become
an invisible force, but his creation had proven too perfect:
impossible for Clayben to control. It would never have occurred to
the scientist to do what Hawks and Raven had done and simply treat
the creature as a fellow human being and ask for its help.
Thus, Jeruwahl Peshwar awoke one morning in the large town on
Janipur where he’d been born, as did his wife Madowa and her
twin sister Sedowa, with memories of having visited the
women’s family and bargaining for Sedowa’s
participation in propagating the Peshwar name. Sedowa had been
married at thirteen, of course, but her husband had died while
experimenting with a new form of deep meditation that involved slow
and supposedly controlled strangulation. Suttee had been
outlawed long ago by her own tribe’s progressive government,
which happened to include her father, but not everyone agreed with
this decision and Sedowa had been stigmatized and somewhat
ostracized outside the family. She had been more than happy to
comply with her sister’s husband’s request, and her
father was particularly pleased that she had at last found a
place.
None of this, of course, actually happened, but there was some
distance between her family and his native city and they
believed the scenes.
Skill was not transferable by mindprinter, but knowledge was.
Jeruwahl was convincing enough that differences in movements and
habits could be put down to changes made by his very alien Center
lifestyle in the two years between visits; he was not suspected by
the real Jeruwahl’s family. The twins cooked and cleaned and
made clothing and jewelry. Clothing was not a basic of the race,
but the genitals and rears and often the breasts were covered, and
both men and women wore various jewelry appropriate to their caste
level.
The women delighted in the sights and smells of the city, the
huge markets, the bazaars, the street performers, and the general
electricity even a small city provides those who live outside
it.
Had they known they were in an environment even more alien than
city versus Center or rural village, they might have gaped in
wonder as a man on four legs pulled a small wheeled car to a
building, then stood up, picked up the cart, and climbed a ladder
straight up to the third floor. But such sights did not and should
not seem wondrous to them under the mindprinter’s hold.
Vulture had his men keep an eye on them, supposedly because they
were about to be promoted and transferred at the end of leave to
Cochin Center, but it allowed the trio to pass the closest
inspection without raising suspicion. As they were newcomers,
Vulture was required to put SPF personnel on them, as well. This
was now an absolute requirement of Master System when anyone not
already thoroughly checked was transferred to Cochin Center, and
the risk and suspicion wouldn’t stop even after they had
entered and cleared all the usual checks. Master System, needless
to say, knew about transmuters and mindprinter programs, as well.
They would be only three of twenty new people coming in, which
helped, and Vulture knew that he was dealing more with the SPF and
a Val than with Master System directly and that the soldiers might
not believe that the pirates of the Thunder would have
such resources or go to such extremes. He hoped so.
Although there was nothing else it could do right now to help or
in any way interfere with the Janipur mission, Thunder was
not idle during this period. Captain Paschittawal and the rest of
the Indrus crew, along with Pirate One, were
doing what they could to monitor, watch, and wait. The other crews,
restless for some action, also had their chance. Star Eagle
developed a separate recording system that would play back to
Thunder from the freebooter ships giving a complete
account of all that went on. It was in a code only Star Eagle knew,
and he was certain it could not be broken or altered without him
detecting it. There was no way to protect all the ships and crews
from Master System and the SPF; that was up to them. What Star
Eagle could do was guarantee, as much as anything could be
guaranteed, that no ship sent off into the void could be taken,
turned, and made into a Trojan horse that might threaten the
Thunder. San Cristobal, Chunhoifan, and Bakakatan,
however, could now have freedom of movement and action. Since
Janipur had been lightly defended, with Master System gambling more
on preventing a theft and successful escape than preventing entry,
it was probable that the same situation existed in the solar
systems of Chanchuk and Matriyeh, the two other places where rings
were thought to exist. Security might tighten after the Janipur
mission was finished so complete surveys of those worlds were
ordered without any landings. This would at least identify the
unique properties of the worlds they would eventually have to
enter, give them basic information on the land and people and
security arrangements.
After this, they could attempt to tap resources that might have
escaped the pogrom against the freebooters. Savaphoong was valuable
here; the former ruler of Halinachi knew not only unlikely sources
of information and material but also various codes for automated
Master System devices, the result of gathering together the
collective discoveries of a generation of freebooters who partook
of his pleasure palace. The man himself remained mostly within his
own ship, a semirecluse in a luxury yacht that supported him in the
manner to which he felt entitled. Kaotan was kept in reserve along with
Lightning, although Takya Mudabur, the amphibian, was
taken along on the San Cristobal. Discussions with the
denizens of some of the water worlds, she knew, might give a clue to
the location of the fourth ring, although it exposed both her and
the ship to maximum danger. Kaotan had been held in reserve at Vulture’s
request. They weren’t yet certain what he had in mind, but it
was possible that the ship would yet see action within the Janipur
plan.
At the end of leave, Jeruwahl Peshwar, his wife, and his
mistress bade good-bye to the city and journeyed four days
northwest to the predetermined rendezvous point, where they were
picked up by one of Janipur’s few flyers and flown in a
matter of hours to Cochin Center for entry processing.
The Center, a large, domed structure in an area remote from any
pattern of settlement and in a region that would not support much
of a local population, looked much like any other Center of Janipur
or even on Earth. It was unobtrusive, nearly invisible except from
the air, and most of it was actually underground.
As newcomers coming off leave, the trio were processed first by
security; a mindprint was taken of each to be examined and
evaluated by security computers that were not all that hard to
fool. Then they were each given complete physicals that not only
assessed their general condition but also would reveal any scars,
birthmarks, evident of past medical procedures, and the like, all
of which could be compared with their records before leave, to
provide a check against tampering or possible imposters. Finally,
they were started once again on the elite drugs that increased
concentration, enhanced thinking, and also protected them against
most common diseases; issued specially encoded clearance cards for
the areas they were authorized to be in; and taken to their new
quarters. All of their old belongings, including the art, the
tapestries, and the other niceties of life in high position, had
been shipped to Cochin from their old Center post.
As far as Vulture could see, they had passed their security
screening with flying colors. He had no intention of bringing them
out of their mindprinting any time soon; best they settle in and
make new social contacts and betray nothing to the prying eyes of
security and the SPF. He sat in a chair specially contoured for
Janipurian shapes and went over their data, nodding to himself. It
was part of the deputy chief’s job to oversee and check on
newcomers. He was looking for any flaws, holes, or minor details
that he might have to balance out or rectify.
He almost missed it, and that would have been a tragedy. Even
now, he wasn’t certain what to do about it since it simply
hadn’t been thought of. The fact was, he couldn’t think
of everything, and apparently this had never occurred to
Clayben and the rest, either. It was, however, a major problem, and
one that could not be easily covered up. Things had been going
along too smoothly; he and the rest had been lulled into a false
sense of security and he knew it now. The question was, what to do
about it?
He had an audio link with Thunder using a subcarrier of
the regular transmissions between the orbital monitoring satellites
and Cochin Center and a secure place to use it. That had been a
major priority and was the one big risk he had taken. Now he used
it to call to space.
The relay was first to the satellite, which was also being
monitored by a drone fighter with a communications link. The
fighter then sent it to Indrus, which relayed it to
Thunder, both of which were stationed many light-years
from Janipur. There was some time delay between transmissions, but
not enough to inhibit conversation.
“Thunder, we have a real problem,” Vulture
reported.
“Go ahead,” Star Eagle responded. “I have
Hawks and China tied in now.”
“Stupid of us. We were so concerned with the mind-printing
and computer, security and all the rest that we overlooked the
obvious. I almost didn’t see it in the records because I
wasn’t looking for anything such as that. I’ve managed
to cover up one part but I can’t do it forever and then
everything will hit the fan.”
“What are you talking about?” Hawks asked
worriedly.
“We made both the Chows fully functioning females and
Sabir a fully functioning male, and then we mindprinted them so
they thought they were the natives they’re impersonating.
It’s quite natural, and I just don’t understand how we
could have overlooked it. According to their physicals, both women
are pregnant—maybe five, six weeks.”
“Damn!” Hawks swore, feeling like a fool. Then he
thought of the other wrinkle. “But Madowa’s on record
as barren. This blows any reason for Sedowa.”
“Not so much of a problem. She wasn’t totally
barren, it was just that the odds were against conception, and if
it happened, the odds favored a nasty pregnancy. We can cover for
that, but it really puts the heat on here. Either we let them go
ahead and have the kids and wait a year or more—plus having
to get two kids out—or we have to move very quickly on the
ring. Too quick for my liking. The first three months,
they’ll be getting morning sickness and all that. At four and
a half months, they’ll start to show and feel more
comfortable on all fours. By five and a half months they’ll
be on all fours and the horns will be growing. By six
months, give or take, they won’t have any more use of their
hands or feet. No hands, Hawks—for four or five
months, allowing for birth and recovery of the system.
Hawks—you can’t pick locks and steal things without
hands!”
The leader of the group sighed. “Yes, I see. We’ll
have to run this through the group for a while here and make our
decisions.”
“The only positives from this are that the SPF and Master
System sure as hell aren’t gonna suspect two pregnant girls
of being plants, and it’s natural, even normal, to return
from leave with child. We should’a thought that. It’s
the little things that kill you. Hawks—I can’t
guarantee getting the three of them out. Two four-legged
kids with the minds of newborns—I can’t see it. Not to
mention they might not be so tolerant of having a mistress from the
field here long if he’s got a legitimate heir.”
“The risks of waiting are worse than the risks of going
too soon,” Hawks said firmly. “I don’t like it,
but I see no alternative. We must go within the next ninety days.
We will need every detail you can muster on that security system
now. Your sleepers must be awakened. We go.”
AFTER THEY HAD MADE THEIR DECISION, THE CHOWS had more than a
month to think about it and agonize over it and have not only
second, but third and fourth thoughts about doing it at all.
For the crew of the Thunder the time had not been
wasted. Originally, the vast interior of the ship had been designed
for two purposes: to transport large numbers of uprooted humans
from old Earth in a sedated state, and to link them directly to the
transmuters through which they could be changed into the form
Master System had designed to tailor them to the planet. Most of
that was gone now; the enormous interior was almost planetlike,
with grass and artificial sunlight and trees and small personal
buildings for the inhabitants. About eight kilometers by two were
available, but only a bit over four kilometers had been transformed
into living space, first for the small Earth-human crew who’d
stolen her and then for the crew of the freebooter ships who had
joined her. Aft was a work area for the ship’s maintenance
robots to repair and build whatever was needed. Only the final row
of transport tubes, set against the rear bulkhead, remained
untouched.
While this work was in progress, the great computer pilot whom
they called Star Eagle worked with China Nightingale, the blind and
eternally pregnant genius, and Doctor Isaac Clayben, the greatest
human expert on forbidden technology. With the files from the
freebooter freighter Indrus, they pooled their intellects
to learn all they could about the strange people who inhabited the
world called Janipur.
The diverse Hindu culture from which the ancestors of that world
had been plucked fascinated all of them. Its many and complex
deities, its theories about reincarnation and an expanding and
collapsing universe, its art and music and literature were all new
to the crew of the Thunder and quite wondrous.
There was also a dark side to it, in that it used its cosmology
to impose a rigid class structure determined by birth. One began as
some insignificant living thing and then grew over successive lives
to become a more complex organism and ultimately human, with the
power to reason and study and make conscious decisions. But even as
a human one had to start at the bottom, the lowest of the low
classes, and serve a life as both a male and a female in each
class, excelling and learning from that experience and thereby
progressing to a new life in the next highest class. The ultimate
were the Brahman, the highest class of the society, beyond which
there was a new state, perhaps a godlike one.
The idea of rebirth was appealing in a way, but most of them
shared the view of the cigar-smoking Crow security man, Raven.
“If you don’t remember who you were then what’s
the difference between bein’ really dead and bein’
reincarnated? Me, I think you get one go and that’s it. Look
at me. Smart-ass fat kid from a primitive village high in the
mountains who became a warrior, then a Center security man, and
now—well, whatever this is. Down there, if you’re born
a dirt fanner you stay a dirt farmer, no matter how smart
or skilled you are.”
Both the Chows and China had been born and raised in a culture
that also believed in reincarnation and thought it quite logical,
but their system was not as rigid as the Hindus’. And though
they were familiar with a number of variants of Buddhism, Taoism,
and Confucianism, they would find Janipur to be quite different.
Master System believed in stability; the cultures it created were
carefully edited versions of old Earth cultures, pared of all
extraneous material. The China that had bred the Chows and China
Nightingale was not the culture of their ancestors any more than
were the Crow or Hyiakutt societies that had produced Raven, Hawks,
and Cloud Dancer. Hawks, historian, had known this from the start,
but few others could appreciate his thoughts that the various
reservations on Earth were not so much museums as free-form
historical fictions.
Janipur had been the victim of a particularly ironic twist by
Master System. There were no sacred cows in Janipurian society; the
people were the cows. At least, that was how the crew of
the Thunder thought of it when looking at the pair now in
the aft transport tubes.
Vulture, the strange creature who was the creation of the
distorted genius of Isaac Clayben, and who could absorb the
physical form, personality, and memories of any organic being, had
done his job well. After infiltrating Cochin Center on Janipur, he
had consumed and then become the deputy chief of security, which
gave him great power and access to the vast bulk of Center files.
He had picked a pair of Janipurians from Awadi Center, on another
continent from Cochin; Brahmans by their gray coloration. As
middle-level bureaucrats, part of the inevitable faceless horde
that kept all political organizations working, these two would have
easy access to Cochin Center without being known there.
It was the first time any but the crew of the Indrus
had ever seen a real Janipurian, and the forms made a major
impression on them.
They were human sized; the female was noticeably smaller man the
male. Lying on their sides in the tubes, they looked very much like
hoofed animals. Their “hind legs” were mounted on
either side of the torso on a swivel joint that allowed the body to
actually stand upright. The lower calf was thicker than one would
expect in a four-footed animal and seemed to end in a broad, thick,
rock-hard hoof. The hoof, however, was actually mounted on the back
of the ankle, and the major thickness of the lower calf was due in
part to a broad, flat, padlike extension of muscle and bone on
another swivel joint that could lock out of the way for running on
all fours but was otherwise wide enough and powerful enough to
serve as a foot when the creature stood erect.
The torso was broad and thick; the arms were the same length as
the legs and constructed in much the same fashion, although the
handlike extensions beyond the hooves were more specialized, each
with four long fingers and an opposable thumb that folded up when
the creature was standing on all fours. The necks were long and
thick, and constructed to allow the head to face forward in both
four-and two-legged positions.
The faces were expressive and very human-looking, with pushed-in
noses and overly wide jaws that moved from side to side as well as
up and down and contained only broad, flat teeth. These were
herbivores. Most of the body area, excluding the face, was covered
in thick gray fur.
“The musculature and skeletal structure are
amazing,” Clayben told them, sounding like a kid with a new
toy. “Upright they are as elastic and as able to twist and
bend and perform as normal humans are. On all fours, they are far
more rigid but can probably run, leap, and kick better than any
human. The feet are better designed for standing than walking
upright, but the hands are very well suited for even the most
intricate work.”
Sabira, the crewwoman from the Indrus who had
volunteered to go along on the mission because she knew and
understood the basic culture of Janipur, said nervously, “I
suppose there are greater differences than would be immediately
apparent to anyone from the outside. Still, I had not thought of
them as all that different in spite of appearances. Such things
would affect their whole culture and way of looking at things,
their basic behavior. I had not considered that.”
“There will be other surprises, I fear,” Hawks told
her. “But the transmutation is essential to our mission.
Second thoughts?”
She gave a slight smile and shrugged.
“Some . . . many. It is to be expected.
But I am needed; I am the only one with experience who is willing
to go.”
And that, of course, was the crux of the matter.
“One thing does puzzle me,” Clayben added. “On
their heads, here, seem to be nubs representing incipient horns.
I’d be curious to know whether they have a function or are
merely ornamental.”
Sabira nodded. “The horns are functional only on the
female. The way in which the child must be carried in the womb to
be fully protected and insulated is with the mother in the
four-footed position. As term progresses, the mother finds it
increasingly difficult to stand until it becomes impossible about
the fifth month. The pivot joints in the hands and feet lock into
position so they cannot be lowered, the breasts enlarge, and the
mother grows a long and nasty pair of horns with sharp points.
Without her usual speed, it is the only protection she has during
the remaining time. A few weeks after birth the horns fall off, and
she can return to normalcy. The horns are saved and usually
fashioned into carvings that are given to the child upon gaining
maturity. They are considered a part of the child. The children are
breast-fed for only a couple of weeks; after that their digestive
systems are fully formed and they can eat basically what the adults
eat. Do not think of the women as helpless at this time, however.
They are extremely aggressive and quite dangerous.”
Clayben nodded. “Fascinating. And the children are born
fully formed and able to get about? Not like our helpless
lumps?”
“Their hands and feet are rudimentary, but their legs are
strong and firm. They are quite imitative and learn the basics of
survival early on. They are self-sufficient as animals, although
mostly defenseless, by the first month. But they are well advanced
in many ways and because of their mobility and independence learn
at a far faster rate than our own children at that age. The hands
and feet, however, take years to fully develop, and their use must
be learned and practiced. They are intellectually humans but
physically animals until about the age of seven or so. They mature
sexually at about age twelve or thirteen.”
Clayben nodded again. Clearly the old scientist, after long
inactivity, was coming alive again. Hawks wondered how alive he
would be if it became his turn to be transmuted into
something else. He suspected it was far easier to do things to
others in the name of research than to undergo the process yourself
at someone else’s hands.
“Have the Chows seen these yet?” Sabira asked.
Hawks shook his head negatively. “Not yet. Today, perhaps.
Now that we have our two prototypes, the clock is running, as it
were, to get things going. This pair is officially on leave and a
cover story has been developed for them. However, their leave is
one hundred days and already five are gone. You all must study
their bodies and learn whatever else you can in order to pass as
Janipurians. Part of that study time must be here, until you have
learned the basics, and then we will send you all down to live for
a period with the natives and polish up. If you cannot fool the
natives, then you will not fool Cochin Center and you certainly
will not fool the troops infiltrated down there. Thanks to Vulture,
you will then be reassigned to Cochin Center. By then you will have
passed the hard tests and be ready to attempt the
impossible.”
“It is a lot to ask, to get that far in ninety-five
days,” she responded worriedly. “There will be so much
to learn.”
“More than just your lives will depend on your learning
well that quickly. Without this ring, the rest are meaningless. If
you are caught, then it will be a thousand times more difficult for
those who follow to try again.”
There was usually very little need for Chow Mai and Chow Dai to
talk to one another. As identical twins, they had been virtually
inseparable for good and ill. Each knew the thoughts of the
other—or so it seemed, even to them—which made their
conversation after they saw the Janipurians all the more
remarkable.
“I do not want to do this thing,” Chow Mai, usually
the quiet one of the pair said. “You saw them. You thought
what I thought.”
Chow Dai nodded. “More like cows than people, I think, and
their ways are very strange, as well. I look at us and know that we
are not things of beauty, yet we are still human.”
“And yet there is honor and obligation. Our lives belong
to these people who saved us for this purpose. My nightmares have
never gone away, nor have I felt normal
since . . . ”
Chow Dai nodded once more, understanding completely. They had
been caught in common burglary by China Center security,
mindprinted, and determined to be neither spies nor traitors but
simply childish and immature thieves with a remarkable talent for
getting past the most sophisticated locks. Neither understood flush
toilets, let alone computers, yet they had been given a gift, or a
curse, by their ancestors and by their illusionist uncle long
ago.
After their capture, they had been taken down to the biotech
labs where they had been examined and, still virgins, had been
rendered forever incapable of bearing children. Then they had been
lightly drugged and taken to the place where the lowest guards
stayed, and there, no longer regarded as people but as mere
playthings of the brutish louts, they had been tormented, tortured,
and raped, again and again, until they felt so low and so vile that
they were no more than what their tormentors regarded them as. It
had gone on and on and on; there were three shifts of guards and
little food or rest. When they had fought they had been cut and
burned and mutilated, scarred beyond recognition, so that they
looked barely human at all when suddenly the order came to prepare
them and ship them off to Melchior.
On Melchior, China Nightingale had been treated by transmuter
but they had not, their scars and disfigurements treated by slower,
more conventional means. At the time this did not seem odd or
unusual, but now they realized that the security chief of Melchior
had been one of those conspiring against Master System and had not
wished to subject them to the machine that could only be used once.
Only the prisoner tattoos on their cheeks were of the transmuter
process, and those could be disguised by added skin layers and
colorization.
“It is what the gods decreed for us from the start,”
Chow Dai said, and sighed. “It is what we were born to
do.”
Chow Mai nodded ruefully. “I am unhappy but reconciled.
Better to become a monster than to deny our destiny and be damned,
or remain here and watch others suffer in our place.”
“Perhaps,” Chow Dai responded wistfully, “this
will be the end of suffering.”
They were ready.
“The process itself is intricate and could not be done
without the computers designed for it,” Isaac Clayben told
them, “but in actual practice it’s rather simple,
quick, and straightforward. The original physics of the transmuter
was discovered in ancient times, we think by humans. The idea was
to eventually disassemble anyone or anything into energy, stored
and coded so that it could be reassembled as matter someplace else
after being broadcast or transmitted. The process eventually worked
to a limited degree over special wiring networks, but the energy
could not be broadcast and thus the system was somewhat
impractical. Even though it represented the answer to Earth’s
diminishing resources, the project was not fully believed or
supported—we think because many died or worse in the final
experiments, increasing public anger—and it was abandoned. It
didn’t matter anyway. Without murylium the system could have
never worked in a wireless mode. Master System picked up the
experiments and continued them. It discovered that murylium was the
key and perfected the broadcast capability that we have used to get
from Thunder to our original base world and back.
It’s quite limited, however, and not practical for distances,
say, on an interplanetary scale.”
Clayben, excited to be in his own area of action once again,
seemed completely oblivious to the tension and nervousness of those
around him. Hawks was not, but he understood the necessity. Clayben
was being longwinded about it, but this was essential
information.
“Now, when the Thunder was designed,” the
scientist continued, “it was designed to use it as a limited
transport mechanism first and foremost, bringing up whole
populations from a planet and storing them in the tubes we saw when
we first arrived on board. Each was then analyzed and an individual
formula for their transmutation was devised. A mass mindprinter
device was also used to insure uniformity of the new colonial
culture.
“The mindprinting and transmuting programs were worked out
and stored inside the computer memory. We have access to the
ship’s computers, mechanisms, everything—but not those
original programs. We have improvised as best we could. We have an
advantage in that we must have exact duplicates of this pair of
Janipurians to pass security. Their brain structure is nearly
identical to ours, although some functions were added and others
redirected to allow for the physiological changes. By simply
comparing your brain structures with theirs, and noting the
differences we are able to retain your own mental patterns while
making the adjustments necessary to handle the body. All we can do
with the mindprinter, however, is feed in the basics of the culture
from the Indrus data banks. It will give you a grounding,
but not the finer points. Those you will have to learn by
experience, and that will be your most dangerous period before
going into Cochin Center itself.”
“I am puzzled,” Chow Dai said. “There are
three of us and only two of . . . them. Also,
one of them is male. We are all female. How will, you do
this?”
“Any two that met our specifications for fooling and
getting you into the Center were the best we could hope for,
considering the time limitations. Although some Brahman women in
this society do hold high positions, the basic family structure is
more traditional, whether high or low caste. This male is a
bureaucrat; the female is married to and dependent upon him. The
marriage was arranged and is less than two years old, which helps
us. What helps even more is that she came from the field, not a
Center, and is the daughter of the local equivalent of a judge.
That means her Center records are minimal. The marriage to a Center
official, no matter how minor, is a step up for the family. It is
not uncommon even on Earth for a high official of the general
population to raise children or to romance officials on leave. One
major danger is that even from the field, one of her class would be
expected to be literate. You will have to fake that or learn the
rudimentary elements of literacy. No way around it.”
“But the two—male and
female . . . ”
“I’m getting to that. Married two years and not yet
with child is unusual down there. The fact is, she’s not
totally infertile but there are medical problems that make her
chances of pregnancy very remote. Since divorce is socially
unthinkable down there, there’s only one solution for a
bureaucrat who winds up this way, and it is socially acceptable and
understood. A relative of the same sex as the infertile one is
brought in and given some job—maid, clerk, whatever is
appropriate—but her real function is to produce a child for
the couple. He had applied for permission to do this while on
leave—it’s what Vulture was looking for in the security
records, as such a request has to be approved by top security at
the chief administrator level. One side effect of the transmuter is
that we can fix the infertility problem, which is caused by
partially blocked tubes. We will now create a sister from the
field—an identical twin. I doubt that she actually has such a
twin, but Vulture assures me that he can create such a record. One
psychological truth of using computers for all record keeping is
that if you can somehow bypass the security codes and enter false
data, it will be believed by anyone who looks without checking
further—unless someone suspects you. The male is expected to
report to his new post with his wife’s sister. He
will.”
Sabira turned to them. “Because I know my way around
machines, am literate in Sanskrit, and I know their ways, I will
become the man.”
The Chows were both appalled. Even though they had often dreamed
of the power men held in their society, neither had ever wanted to
be a man. It seemed, somehow, a step down.
“You—you want this?” Chow Dai
asked.
“None of us want any of this. It is our duty. I follow the
basic beliefs of my ancestors. I believe I have been a man before
and will be again before my human incarnations are completed. This
will probably cause me to live an extra life, but to not do what is
needed for our survival and the future of all humankind would be
vastly immoral. I must learn to act and think like and be a man;
you must steal the ring. The burden is equal.”
“I will correct the fallopian tube problem in both of
you,” Clayben told them. “The defect is potentially
life-threatening as there is a danger of ectopic
pregnancy—outside the womb. The defect is difficult to spot
or diagnose; I don’t think a routine return-from-leave
physical will have any chance of noticing the change and blowing
the cover. After this is over I will also correct the problem in
the original female, and we will use the mindprinter and hypnos to
put them in a very cooperative frame of mind. They can never return
down there as they are. Even if it was established later on that
they were duplicated and not the perpetrators, they would most
certainly be killed anyway just as insurance. Now, whenever you are
ready we can begin. There will be no pain or other sensation. It
will be no different from being transmitted down to the
world.” Forever . . . like them . . . forever . . .
“Get it over with,” the Chows said in unison.
“Do it now.”
The easiest and most efficient way for Star Eagle to work was to
use the last remaining bank transport tubes and the local network
transmuters built into them. In a sense, it was an echo of long
ago, when Master System had determined that populating the stars
was the only way to ever guarantee that humanity would survive. The
tubes could be automatically sterilized before use, then loaded
with their human cargo and sealed until the process was complete.
Up on the bridge, Star Eagle allowed China to monitor but not to
participate in the operation. It was too delicate. Still, she could
comment to the computer and did so.
“Are you certain you can do this without the program for
Janipur?” she asked, not for the first time.
“You know I only deal in probabilities,” the
computer responded. “The initial tests went well. I hesitate
to say this, but Clayben has more experience in this sort of thing,
and he feels confident. I do not like the man, but if he could make
Vulture with far inferior equipment, he can do this. All three of
us have done our best.”
She sighed. “The poor Chows. They haven’t had much
of a life until now. I hope this doesn’t condemn them to
eternal misery.”
“They may never be totally satisfied, but they will
adjust,” the computer assured her. “That is the one
area in which the human mind is both superior and incomprehensible
to me. You have an almost infinite capacity to adapt to almost
anything. Freezing cold, boiling heat, eternal rain,
desert . . . All these primitive conditions
humans adapted to and thrived. You, too, have adapted, both to
blindness and to your overpowering drives.”
“Adapted—yes. I accept my conditions because there
is no alternative. But content this way? No, that I will never be.
I accept it, as one accepts and learns to live with disfigurement,
handicaps of various sorts, and accidents of birth and fate. In my
mind, though, I am always—envious. Always someone
else.”
There seemed no proper response to that.
“Energizing,” reported the ship’s computer.
“I now have them in three large files and I am doing a
comparison check. It is fascinating in a way. No one, not even the
Chows, have identical checksums, but those are the closest I have
ever measured between two people. Now energizing the models. Done.
Comparing male model file to file Sabira. Fascinating—in many
ways there are far fewer differences than I would have expected.
Now reading and comparing genetic codes. Fascinating. Again there
are far fewer differences than anyone would have thought. It is
almost trivial, yet the results are so different. There are
millions of differences but they are so minor, so slight, that it
shows how remarkable it was that humanity evolved the way it did.
There are more common denominators than differences here. The
ancestry of the Janipurians is quite clear.”
“The body is not the problem. It is integrating body and
mind that is the problem.”
“Very slight. More difference in the spinal column than in
organization of the brain. Different areas of the brain are used
for some motor and autonomic functions, but personality and memory
are stored the same way and in the same places. This should not be
as difficult as I thought.”
China wondered about that, considering that this was a computer
that could read through and find specific data in a hundred
encyclopedias in nanoseconds, yet it was taking several minutes to
do this process. Star Eagle, however, was leaving nothing to
chance—with this kind of transmutation, there was no margin
for error, no tolerance for mistakes.
Still, she knew that what it was doing was astonishing, beyond
human comprehension for speed and complexity. It was creating
comparative computer models of the reformed Sabira and then
stimulating various areas of the brain and central nervous system,
checking out everything to make absolutely certain that there was
no mistake. The entire psychogenetic and psychochemical makeup had
to be correct or the body might not work right or “fit”
right. The skeletal mechanics and the kinesiology of the exercise
were the easy parts. Personality and memory had to be absolutely
retained white the new body had to operate seamlessly with the
different brain information. Cell memory learned by the mere act of
being born and growing up Janipurian had to be retained and
integrated with memory and personality formed in a completely
different environment. Immunities gained from mother’s milk
and from a lifetime on Janipur also had to be maintained. Most
microorganisms on colonial worlds had evolved into different enough
forms that Earth-humans could not catch the diseases, but these
people would be Janipurians going into a Janipurian world. It would
not do to effect a perfect transmutation and then have them sicken
and die from the lack of immunity to some common virus.
“They should check with their doctors more down
there,” Star Eagle remarked almost off-handedly. “The
male had some incipient signs of early arthritis and a weak
pancreas; the female has other things wrong including some small
viral tumors. One wonders what the state of medicine is even at the
Center level. I will correct those problems and flush the veins and
arteries as well. Standing by. I have a new checksum validated by
models. The male is completed. Sabira is completed. The female is
completed. Chow Dai integrated. Chow Mai integrated. Stand by at
the tubes. Reconverting . . . Done.”
A small crowd had gathered at the tubes with Hawks and Clayben.
The tube mouths had gone opaque when the humans had been energized;
now they flicked to clear again. Inside, now, were no longer any
Earth-humans. The two on top looked the same, but the three below
now contained Janipurians.
For Chow Dai and the others it was almost as if nothing had
taken place. She had crawled naked into the tube and lay flat, then
watched as the machinery activated and the mouth clouded up. There
was a slight disorientation as if the scene she was seeing had been
suddenly altered, then strong hands reached in, grabbed her arms,
and pulled her from the tube.
The first thing that struck her was the noise. There were sounds
all around her that she could not place; clicking and
whirring and whooshing, and there were voices,
too, far off but if she concentrated, she could almost make out
what they were saying even over the din created by the crowd at the
tube.
“Try to stand,” Clayben said, his voice sounding
oddly distorted but still clear and a bit too loud. “Just on
your hands and knees for now. Give it a try.”
She managed, and it felt rather comfortable. Steady, anyway. She
crawled completely out onto the catwalk and looked around. All the
familiar faces were there, but they looked different
somehow. There seemed less color, as if things were washed out, but
those nearby—and even the catwalk itself—seemed far
more detailed; by focusing she could count every thread in
Hawks’ pants or see the pores in Clayben’s craggy face.
She looked forward toward the building and maintenance area below
and found it difficult to focus. Nothing down there, or beyond,
seemed to register, yet when one of the spindly robots far away
moved and picked up something she was able to not only focus in on
it but see it clearly, almost isolated from its surroundings. A
perfectly defined form almost suspended in space. I cannot feel my hands or my feet! she thought
suddenly, and looked down and saw her—forelegs. Even though
she knew academically that it had happened, it wasn’t until
now that the reality of the situation sunk in.
She felt oddly distant from it. Later, perhaps, it would sink in
but not now. Now she simply felt nothing deep inside. She looked
over and saw the other two emerge from their tubes with the same
aid.
They also had little trouble standing on all fours, and she
remembered that Clayben had explained that this was in the design
of the creatures. She stared at Chow Mai, both the form and the
face, and knew that she was also staring at herself. By the gods, we are hideously ugly! she thought, almost
breaking but catching herself in time.
The catwalk was also an elevator system, and it slowly lowered
them all down to the main deck level. None of the three had any
trouble walking off; with arms and legs the same length it was
easier than crawling.
“I’m going to remain and process the other
two,” Clayben told Hawks. “Let them get the feel of
their bodies and give them some time. They must learn to use those
bodies naturally, without thinking. Then we can give them what
printer support we can.”
Hawks nodded. “Now their burden begins.”
When Star Eagle had first sent the thick bundles of grasses to
them to eat, all three had recoiled. Finally, Sabira had decided
that it had to be done and hoped that it would taste better to a
Janipurian than to an Earth-human. It didn’t. The stuff
tasted like grass and straw, and the only positive thing to be said
about it was that it was filling.
“We never ate with the Janipurians before,” she
noted. “I got the impression they prepared highly spiced
food, both cooked and raw. Grazing was for the very young and the
very poor. A survival skill, not a mark of civilization. No one
needed to starve on Janipur.”
“It is all we can furnish until you are down there,
though,” Star Eagle responded apologetically. “We do
not really know their foods. I could only synthesize based upon
logical deductions from the way the digestiye system operates and
traces of food in the systems of the pair we have. Their
mindprinting will soon be finished, however, and they should be
quite willing to help thereafter.”
Mindprinting indeed, more than one of the crew thought.
Brainwashing was the old term for it, when it was less subtle and
more difficult to do.
None of the three felt extremely comfortable in their new forms,
but they had no problem moving around so long as they were in, as
Isaac Clayben called it, their “four-legged mode.”
Attempts to stand, or even unlock the hands and feet from their
holding positions, met with frustration. Since they weren’t
much larger or heavier than Earth-humans, a couple of crewmembers
of the Thunder’s complement tried lifting them into
sitting positions in chairs. The three found themselves unbalanced,
though, and tended to flail at the air with forelegs or fall over
and out.
The addition of Jeruwahl Peshwar and his wife Madowa changed
things a bit, but it wasn’t easy. The two native Janipurians
firmly believed their provided cover story, however, so they were
friendly and cooperative if a bit taken aback and both awed and a
little afraid of the strange forms now around them. As with the
best cover stories, it contained more fact than fiction.
They now believed that Master System was attempting to eliminate
the Centers of Janipur and reduce the population to limited,
animal-like savagery. It was not known if Master System actually
had this in mind for worlds other than Earth, but it was convincing
enough, particularly since the pair knew that forces from Master
System itself now roamed somewhat lordly over their land and
Centers. They were impressed with the honor of the mission,
although not a little bit unhappy that they were the ones chosen to
be uprooted and their lives disrupted. This was ameliorated,
somewhat, by the seriousness of the mission and most of all by the
fact that three of the alien company should be willing to become
like them. They were most touched, however, when shown evidence of
their medical conditions and problems, particularly the dangerously
malformed uterus, and the fact that these things had now been
repaired.
“It is most confusing,” Jeruwahl noted in his thick
Janipurian accented English, “but we will do our part in
this. I feel like I now have a twin, and I cannot tell my wife from
the two others if all stand still.”
It was Madowa who partially solved the food problem by providing
a list of ingredients that turned the stomachs of those who
understood what they were. Once equivalents were found for those
ingredients that were native to Janipur, she was able to prepare
very elaborate dishes for them all that had only one thing in
common: one did not feel one’s mouth after starting the
dishes, but one felt the stomach for quite a while. All Janipurian
food, it seemed, consisted of either the basic bland grasses or
elaborate dishes spiced so hot they were almost on fire. The dishes
could be eaten by the Earth-humans and many of the colonials on
board, but few tolerated more than a taste. Only Sabira and the
crew of the Indrus seemed immune; the captain of the ship
proclaimed it was the first decently spiced food he’d had in
many months.
Madowa worked with Chow Dai and Chow Mai on body movements and
uses; Jeruwahl worked with Sabira, although he was more than a bit
disconcerted by how effeminate this new male was. Sabira,
shortening her name to Sabir, had thought it best for cultural
reasons not to tell him that she was originally female.
There were tricks to making the body fulfill all its potential;
subtle weight shifts, twists, and turns that someone born
Janipurian took for granted but someone new to the body would never
guess. It was startling and somewhat exciting to see Madowa, for
example, simply stand up in a fluid motion with long hands and
longer fingers looking very human indeed. Unexpectedly, they also
walked upright—albeit very slowly and deliberately and for
short distances. Upright was for civilized company, inside
dwellings, and for social occasions. All fours was long-distance
moving and speed. The combination of the two modes was smooth,
effortless, and chosen almost without thinking.
The Chows were absolutely ecstatic when they stood erect,
unsteadily, for the first time on their own, and falling over,
almost breaking a few bones a number of times, did not daunt them.
As on Janipur, the upright stance and use of hands and feet set
human apart from animal in their minds, more than any other trait.
They were determined, and they did it.
Only five days after they began their training, the Chows were
standing up and even walking a bit with relative ease, and were
talking with their hands as much as their mouths. By observing
Madowa, they were now mastering the fine points of fluid and
effortless natural motion.
Sabir was not as adept a pupil, even when helped by all the
others. He could stand in a wobbly sort of way, but often failed
miserably. It was Raven, in fact, who figured out part of the
problem by just watching.
While Jeruwahl had been born with male anatomy and moved to
accommodate it without thinking, Sabir was used to being female.
Now, when Sabir tried to stand, he found that his mind was
unaccustomed to directing the movement of his new male anatomy. It
was slow and frustrating having to learn the basics of walking all
over again.
The Chows, meanwhile, were already learning Janipurian cooking,
at least partly out of self-defense. They wanted to prepare dishes
that were merely volcanic rather than intolerable, and they finally
found the right mix. Madowa Peshwar proclaimed the results
“as bland as straw grass,” though it was still fiery to
everybody else.
Just when Sabir was willing to give up and accept the idea that
he would never adapt, he did it—and had little trouble
thereafter with movement. However, they now had only sixty-one days
left before the leave was terminated and they were to report to
Cochin Center.
The most profitable use of the time for the Chows, other than
getting used to their new bodies, had been practicing with lock
problems and traps rigged by Star Eagle in the office complex
surrounding the central living area. There was no way to actually
know the exact mechanisms used in the Center museum, but Star Eagle
attempted to simulate the types of locks and traps reported by
Vulture, attaining more and more complexity as they solved the
easier ones. One of Sabir’s predictions proved true—the
eyes, at least in their near vision, and the hands were so superior
that the Chows found themselves able to work successfully on very
small, intricate traps. Their new physical attributes significantly
enhanced that uncanny innate ability they had always had, but which
even they really couldn’t explain.
Their score was not perfect, however. In fact, in the most
complex problems involving weights, cameras, and sound monitors
they succeeded only four in ten times. But with the strict time
limitation they hoped it would be enough. It had to be
enough. They needed to get down to the planet almost immediately if
they were to have time to interact with the natives while there was
still a chance to survive any errors. And so they turned to China
and Isaac Clayben, whose wizardry with the mindprinter and
biochemical manipulations could best prepare them for their
mission.
China had visited the Chows quite often during this period.
Other than Sabir and each other, she was the only one they really
felt comfortable around. It was, perhaps, the blindness as well as
the shared past experiences. China could not see them as they were
now, and even if their voices were slurred and they smelled a bit
funny, her mental picture was still of their old selves.
“You are adjusting quite well,” she told them.
“I have seen the results through Star Eagle’s
interconnects, and you look and act quite natural. It is a
fascinating human variation, in some ways superior to us and in no
real way inferior.”
“We are now used to it, yes,” Chow Dai agreed,
“but I am not certain we can ever fully accept ourselves this
way. It is still wrong, strange, and we
feel . . . ugly. At night we still dream our
normal dreams, and when we wake up and see each other as we are, we
feel it a nightmare.”
China nodded and sighed. “I, too, have such dreams. Thanks
to the bridge interface I have seen all this, all of you, but in my
mind and in a different way than one truly sees. I was always so
totally independent, so confident and arrogant, and now I am far
less man you. I am totally, absolutely dependent. That,
more than the loss of my sight, is my continuing curse. I am blind,
my belly is swollen, my soul is filled with odd rushes and urges,
and this is when I am at my best. During that period when I am not
with child, I am degraded, and I hate myself later even though I
know it is none of my doing. In a sense, I have become what my
father intended: a breeding factory. In my youthful ignorance I
cursed him, not for his intent or his contempt for me but because
he would cost me my mind, my awareness, my knowledge, and turn me
into a simpering little slave. I see that there was some mercy in
the old man after all, for now I am in that exact situation, but
with full mind and knowledge and it is far worse. I keep going only
for the mission and victory. Perhaps, although I would like to
think otherwise, I do it just for my father’s reaction if we
are able to win. You have merely changed to an alternate form.
There are worse things that can be done to you, far worse. You must
always remember that.”
“We have been thinking that way,” Chow Mai told her.
“It may well be that Hawks is right—we all may pay a
terrible price for this, and ours may not be the worst.”
“You must remember that millions of people have been born
and raised as you are now and have different standards. They will
think of you as the only true human. Look at Jeruwahl and Madowa.
It is a race far gentler and with kinder features than those of,
say, Chunhoifan’s races—either one.” The
captain of that freebooter ship and two others had glistening black
exoskeletons, terrible faces, and many features more appropriate to
insects, and they ate stuff that made the rest sick just to look
at. The two others of that crew, owlish, green humanoids with
bulging eyes and winglike organs on their backs, were difficult
even to talk to; it seemed as if they lived in a slightly different
universe from the rest, and perhaps they did. When one heard in
ranges far different from Earth-humans and ate a mixture of bloody
meat and crushed rock and saw well into the infrared spectrum,
different attitudes were to be expected. The point was well taken,
and the Chows knew it, but the realization didn’t lessen
their own private agony.
“Tomorrow we will be using on you a mindprinter technique
used by Centers all over Earth and perhaps all over the
galaxy,” China told them. ‘”We have taken the
preadjusted imprints of Jeruwahl and Madowa and added logical and
expected experiences to account for their missing time. We were
also able to edit a version of Madowa’s recording to create a
twin sister, Sedowa, and blend that into the Madowa experience
sufficiently well so that the memories of the real Madowa will
include our addition. It will fool the records computers. Such
things always have. We were able to edit in memories of a minor
brain dysfunction, a type of dyslexia that is not unknown in
Earth-humans and possibly also is here. Vulture, who has created
Sedowa’s records to match our own, has added that to the
files transferred from their old Center to Cochin. You will not be
expected to read or write, and that will get you over a large
hurdle. For the next sixty days you will be Jeruwahl and
Madowa Peshwar and Sedowa Bhutto. You will truly believe this, just
as I truly believed myself to be the boy Chu Li when first we met.
It will remain consistent, your true selves inaccessible to
mindprinter or your own will or knowledge, until Vulture brings you
out of it.”
“We are nervous and a bit scared of it, but we understand
the routine,” Chow Dai assured her. “We remember,
however, that you were affected by Chu Li long after you reasserted
control. After we . . . come out of it, will
we still be ourselves, or something new?”
“You will remember all that you do now,” China
assured them. “However, none of the memories you had
imprinted, including those of the sixty days, will vanish. You will
be in complete control. Becoming fully yourself again is a slow
process but a painless one; things will fade if not used or
accessed. What memories of your experience you need, you will keep
as long as you need it. What you do not need will fade. Even now
there is a bit, a tittle bit, of Chu Li in me, but it is not a bad
thing. I treasure it. His rebelliousness helps keep me going. His
spirit will not let me quit. All I have truly lost is my
overwhelming arrogance, and that from my experience since and not
through any mindprinter trick. We know they will check and spy on
all newcomers with a thoroughness they never had before, so the
mindprint must be a perfect job, but you will gain from it and lose
nothing later. It is when you come out that the danger will be
great. Take care. We have had limited time to get you this far, but
there is no time limit, even if it be years, to getting the rings.
If we do not live to see the fifth and final one in place, our
children will do it. The only thing you must not do is fail, and
death will be failure, as well.”
“We will take care and we will return,” Chow Dai
promised her. “We will do it because it is what we were
ordained to do. We were born in ignorance and fated, it seemed like
all those who grew up with us, to work the paddies and have babies
and die young. Instead the gods worked in strange ways to make us
part of a great thing. We will not fail, and we will
personally hand you the ring, and if it is the will of the
gods we, not our children, will stand at the doors to Master System
itself and see the great thing we have helped bring about.
That is what keeps us going.”
China hugged and kissed them, and for the first time in her
mature life felt tears come to her unseeing eyes. “I will
hold you to that,” she said, “and I shall not forgive
you if it does not come out that way.”
They were sedated after the mindprinter treatment, then sent
down to Janipur in coordination with Vulture’s plan. Because
the odd creature had assumed the body, form, and personality of the
deputy chief of security for Cochin Center, he had some freedom of
movement and resources. Master System’s forces on Janipur
might still have been suspicious of his moves and actions had they
any idea that such a creature as Vulture existed, but they did not
and the deputy chief of security was well known and above normal
suspicion. Clayben had originally created Vulture as the prototype
for a whole army of creatures designed specifically to avoid any
trap Master System might lay, to penetrate any security, to become
an invisible force, but his creation had proven too perfect:
impossible for Clayben to control. It would never have occurred to
the scientist to do what Hawks and Raven had done and simply treat
the creature as a fellow human being and ask for its help.
Thus, Jeruwahl Peshwar awoke one morning in the large town on
Janipur where he’d been born, as did his wife Madowa and her
twin sister Sedowa, with memories of having visited the
women’s family and bargaining for Sedowa’s
participation in propagating the Peshwar name. Sedowa had been
married at thirteen, of course, but her husband had died while
experimenting with a new form of deep meditation that involved slow
and supposedly controlled strangulation. Suttee had been
outlawed long ago by her own tribe’s progressive government,
which happened to include her father, but not everyone agreed with
this decision and Sedowa had been stigmatized and somewhat
ostracized outside the family. She had been more than happy to
comply with her sister’s husband’s request, and her
father was particularly pleased that she had at last found a
place.
None of this, of course, actually happened, but there was some
distance between her family and his native city and they
believed the scenes.
Skill was not transferable by mindprinter, but knowledge was.
Jeruwahl was convincing enough that differences in movements and
habits could be put down to changes made by his very alien Center
lifestyle in the two years between visits; he was not suspected by
the real Jeruwahl’s family. The twins cooked and cleaned and
made clothing and jewelry. Clothing was not a basic of the race,
but the genitals and rears and often the breasts were covered, and
both men and women wore various jewelry appropriate to their caste
level.
The women delighted in the sights and smells of the city, the
huge markets, the bazaars, the street performers, and the general
electricity even a small city provides those who live outside
it.
Had they known they were in an environment even more alien than
city versus Center or rural village, they might have gaped in
wonder as a man on four legs pulled a small wheeled car to a
building, then stood up, picked up the cart, and climbed a ladder
straight up to the third floor. But such sights did not and should
not seem wondrous to them under the mindprinter’s hold.
Vulture had his men keep an eye on them, supposedly because they
were about to be promoted and transferred at the end of leave to
Cochin Center, but it allowed the trio to pass the closest
inspection without raising suspicion. As they were newcomers,
Vulture was required to put SPF personnel on them, as well. This
was now an absolute requirement of Master System when anyone not
already thoroughly checked was transferred to Cochin Center, and
the risk and suspicion wouldn’t stop even after they had
entered and cleared all the usual checks. Master System, needless
to say, knew about transmuters and mindprinter programs, as well.
They would be only three of twenty new people coming in, which
helped, and Vulture knew that he was dealing more with the SPF and
a Val than with Master System directly and that the soldiers might
not believe that the pirates of the Thunder would have
such resources or go to such extremes. He hoped so.
Although there was nothing else it could do right now to help or
in any way interfere with the Janipur mission, Thunder was
not idle during this period. Captain Paschittawal and the rest of
the Indrus crew, along with Pirate One, were
doing what they could to monitor, watch, and wait. The other crews,
restless for some action, also had their chance. Star Eagle
developed a separate recording system that would play back to
Thunder from the freebooter ships giving a complete
account of all that went on. It was in a code only Star Eagle knew,
and he was certain it could not be broken or altered without him
detecting it. There was no way to protect all the ships and crews
from Master System and the SPF; that was up to them. What Star
Eagle could do was guarantee, as much as anything could be
guaranteed, that no ship sent off into the void could be taken,
turned, and made into a Trojan horse that might threaten the
Thunder. San Cristobal, Chunhoifan, and Bakakatan,
however, could now have freedom of movement and action. Since
Janipur had been lightly defended, with Master System gambling more
on preventing a theft and successful escape than preventing entry,
it was probable that the same situation existed in the solar
systems of Chanchuk and Matriyeh, the two other places where rings
were thought to exist. Security might tighten after the Janipur
mission was finished so complete surveys of those worlds were
ordered without any landings. This would at least identify the
unique properties of the worlds they would eventually have to
enter, give them basic information on the land and people and
security arrangements.
After this, they could attempt to tap resources that might have
escaped the pogrom against the freebooters. Savaphoong was valuable
here; the former ruler of Halinachi knew not only unlikely sources
of information and material but also various codes for automated
Master System devices, the result of gathering together the
collective discoveries of a generation of freebooters who partook
of his pleasure palace. The man himself remained mostly within his
own ship, a semirecluse in a luxury yacht that supported him in the
manner to which he felt entitled. Kaotan was kept in reserve along with
Lightning, although Takya Mudabur, the amphibian, was
taken along on the San Cristobal. Discussions with the
denizens of some of the water worlds, she knew, might give a clue to
the location of the fourth ring, although it exposed both her and
the ship to maximum danger. Kaotan had been held in reserve at Vulture’s
request. They weren’t yet certain what he had in mind, but it
was possible that the ship would yet see action within the Janipur
plan.
At the end of leave, Jeruwahl Peshwar, his wife, and his
mistress bade good-bye to the city and journeyed four days
northwest to the predetermined rendezvous point, where they were
picked up by one of Janipur’s few flyers and flown in a
matter of hours to Cochin Center for entry processing.
The Center, a large, domed structure in an area remote from any
pattern of settlement and in a region that would not support much
of a local population, looked much like any other Center of Janipur
or even on Earth. It was unobtrusive, nearly invisible except from
the air, and most of it was actually underground.
As newcomers coming off leave, the trio were processed first by
security; a mindprint was taken of each to be examined and
evaluated by security computers that were not all that hard to
fool. Then they were each given complete physicals that not only
assessed their general condition but also would reveal any scars,
birthmarks, evident of past medical procedures, and the like, all
of which could be compared with their records before leave, to
provide a check against tampering or possible imposters. Finally,
they were started once again on the elite drugs that increased
concentration, enhanced thinking, and also protected them against
most common diseases; issued specially encoded clearance cards for
the areas they were authorized to be in; and taken to their new
quarters. All of their old belongings, including the art, the
tapestries, and the other niceties of life in high position, had
been shipped to Cochin from their old Center post.
As far as Vulture could see, they had passed their security
screening with flying colors. He had no intention of bringing them
out of their mindprinting any time soon; best they settle in and
make new social contacts and betray nothing to the prying eyes of
security and the SPF. He sat in a chair specially contoured for
Janipurian shapes and went over their data, nodding to himself. It
was part of the deputy chief’s job to oversee and check on
newcomers. He was looking for any flaws, holes, or minor details
that he might have to balance out or rectify.
He almost missed it, and that would have been a tragedy. Even
now, he wasn’t certain what to do about it since it simply
hadn’t been thought of. The fact was, he couldn’t think
of everything, and apparently this had never occurred to
Clayben and the rest, either. It was, however, a major problem, and
one that could not be easily covered up. Things had been going
along too smoothly; he and the rest had been lulled into a false
sense of security and he knew it now. The question was, what to do
about it?
He had an audio link with Thunder using a subcarrier of
the regular transmissions between the orbital monitoring satellites
and Cochin Center and a secure place to use it. That had been a
major priority and was the one big risk he had taken. Now he used
it to call to space.
The relay was first to the satellite, which was also being
monitored by a drone fighter with a communications link. The
fighter then sent it to Indrus, which relayed it to
Thunder, both of which were stationed many light-years
from Janipur. There was some time delay between transmissions, but
not enough to inhibit conversation.
“Thunder, we have a real problem,” Vulture
reported.
“Go ahead,” Star Eagle responded. “I have
Hawks and China tied in now.”
“Stupid of us. We were so concerned with the mind-printing
and computer, security and all the rest that we overlooked the
obvious. I almost didn’t see it in the records because I
wasn’t looking for anything such as that. I’ve managed
to cover up one part but I can’t do it forever and then
everything will hit the fan.”
“What are you talking about?” Hawks asked
worriedly.
“We made both the Chows fully functioning females and
Sabir a fully functioning male, and then we mindprinted them so
they thought they were the natives they’re impersonating.
It’s quite natural, and I just don’t understand how we
could have overlooked it. According to their physicals, both women
are pregnant—maybe five, six weeks.”
“Damn!” Hawks swore, feeling like a fool. Then he
thought of the other wrinkle. “But Madowa’s on record
as barren. This blows any reason for Sedowa.”
“Not so much of a problem. She wasn’t totally
barren, it was just that the odds were against conception, and if
it happened, the odds favored a nasty pregnancy. We can cover for
that, but it really puts the heat on here. Either we let them go
ahead and have the kids and wait a year or more—plus having
to get two kids out—or we have to move very quickly on the
ring. Too quick for my liking. The first three months,
they’ll be getting morning sickness and all that. At four and
a half months, they’ll start to show and feel more
comfortable on all fours. By five and a half months they’ll
be on all fours and the horns will be growing. By six
months, give or take, they won’t have any more use of their
hands or feet. No hands, Hawks—for four or five
months, allowing for birth and recovery of the system.
Hawks—you can’t pick locks and steal things without
hands!”
The leader of the group sighed. “Yes, I see. We’ll
have to run this through the group for a while here and make our
decisions.”
“The only positives from this are that the SPF and Master
System sure as hell aren’t gonna suspect two pregnant girls
of being plants, and it’s natural, even normal, to return
from leave with child. We should’a thought that. It’s
the little things that kill you. Hawks—I can’t
guarantee getting the three of them out. Two four-legged
kids with the minds of newborns—I can’t see it. Not to
mention they might not be so tolerant of having a mistress from the
field here long if he’s got a legitimate heir.”
“The risks of waiting are worse than the risks of going
too soon,” Hawks said firmly. “I don’t like it,
but I see no alternative. We must go within the next ninety days.
We will need every detail you can muster on that security system
now. Your sleepers must be awakened. We go.”