Among the Powers (30 page)

“
The man was Lord Hollingsworth, of course, and
his home the sunken palace Atlantis, deep beneath the ocean. They
rode there together in the boat, or fish, or whatever it was, and
he showed her many of the sea’s creatures, weird and frightening
things of every size and shape.

“
You know, a watersheet is so thin that if you
get the right angle, you can put your hand right through it and not
even notice. It’s so thin that it tears apart into practically
nothing if you pick it up, so thin that you can only see it by the
way it changes the texture of the water’s surface—but it’s so
strong, in some ways, that it can live through the worst storms,
storms that will smash a boat or a house to splinters. Well, this
woman said that there were creatures in the sea that made
watersheets seem as normal as rabbits. There were things that
changed color and shape, things that swam by spitting out pieces of
their own flesh, things that glowed in the dark, things with flesh
she could see through, so that she could watch their blue-green
blood flowing. There were worms kilometers long, things like fish
with heads at both ends—oh, she could go on for hours describing
the monstrosities Lord Hollingsworth showed her.

“
But what she really remembered was the Power’s
own comments on these creatures. ‘You know,’ she said he said, ‘I
never get tired of watching these. They’re stranger than anything I
could ever make.’

“
And of course, I’m sure that you’ll be struck
with the same thing that struck her, and that struck me when I
heard that—if he didn’t make all the creatures in the sea, who
did?”

—
from a conversation with Atheron the
Storyteller

In all the old stories, the tales of the ancient
times when death was a common thing, the heroes always faced
certain doom bravely, daring their foes to step forth and do
battle, loudly proclaiming their faith in whatever noble cause they
served, right to the last.

Geste wondered how, in all the hells of
every dead religion that had ever been preached, anyone could ever
believe such tripe. He was facing death now, he knew, and he was
too terrified to stand, let alone laugh in its face. He fell back
in his chair, teeth chattering, his entire body shaking with fear,
forcing his eyes to stay open in the forlorn hope that he might see
and fend off at least one or two attacks, extending his existence
for a few precious seconds.

All he saw was his own face, mockingly
reflected in the stasis field.

Thaddeus’s laughter surrounded him, roaring
laughter that did not sound sane to him.

“You thought you had me, didn’t you,
Trickster?” Thaddeus shouted. “You thought that you had me in
stasis forever, out of your way, so you could go on playing God
with these pitiful primitives, go on playing your stupid games with
the women! Well, Trickster, it looks like
I’m
the one with
the last laugh, the one with the best trick!”

Geste could not have answered had he wanted
to. He had lived his entire life, centuries now, with the
conviction that he would live on until he grew tired of it—and the
happy suspicion that he would never grow tired of it. Death was for
other, lesser beings, never for A.T. Geste of Achernar IV.

Now he knew, with absolute certainty, that
Thaddeus was going to kill him, and the thought of death, of
ending, of nonexistence, tumbled down on him like an endless
avalanche. He waited, trembling, for oblivion.

It wasn’t fair, something screamed in the
back of his mind. Sure, mortals died all the time, but they
knew
they were going to die, they were told from early
childhood that they would someday die, and no one had ever told him
that, no one had prepared him. He had been promised eternal life,
and he was being cheated out of it because he had been stupid
enough to stand up for what was right, instead of cowering like the
rest.

“How
did
you hide that thing,
anyway?” Thaddeus asked. “I didn’t see, either through my puppet or
on the recordings. It’s a good trick, Geste—not good enough, of
course, but a good trick. How did you do it?”

Like the swift and sudden dawn of Denner’s
Wreck, the realization burst in Geste’s mind that Thaddeus was
not
going to kill him immediately. He wanted something,
first. Fear washed away. It was if he had been trapped inside a
mounting wave that had broken upon the seashore—not the little
waves of this tideless, moonless planet, or anything from the tamed
and broken oceans of Terra, but the great pounding surf of Achernar
IV. He was still afloat, drifting against his will, but he was no
longer blind and drowning. He was able to think again.

“I’ll tell you how I survived, if you like,”
Thaddeus said, as if making casual conversation. “It wasn’t hard.
What you have in the bubble there is an old-fashioned clone. I made
him about sixty, seventy years ago now, did a little surgery when
he was about a year old, destroyed his personality, juiced up his
growth hormones to bring him up close to my own size, and then grew
a receiver into the brain, so that I could use that body myself.
I’ve got a little switch here, so that, up until a few minutes ago,
I could use whichever body I fancied at any given time. I did some
adjustments, so we’d be as indistinguishable as possible—sped up
his growth, as I said, and carved some scars, that sort of thing. A
neat job, wasn’t it?”

Geste managed to nod. His reflected face
bobbed up and down on the stasis field, distorting as it slid
across the magnifying curve of the sphere.

“I figured it might be useful to have a
back-up of myself.”

Geste fought to control his trembling; it
lessened, but did not stop.

“That’s about the smallest stasis generator
I’ve ever seen, Geste; did you build it yourself?”

Geste twisted his head to one side, then
back.

“No? Aulden?”

Another twist and return.

“No? Well, it doesn’t matter. Is it
collapsible? Is that it? I don’t really see how it could be,
though.”

Thaddeus paused, but Geste did not
respond.

“You know, with that clone of mine, I had
the switching mechanism set so that if the signal ever got
interrupted, I’d be in control of my own body again, so here I am.
A little safety measure. Has it occurred to you just what you would
have done to me, if I hadn’t done that?” Thaddeus’s voice, which
had been bantering and conversational, took on an edge.

Geste shuddered once more, then managed to
still himself.

“I don’t think you’ve thought about that,
Geste. You see,
I
am always in my own body, the essential
self; I’ve never trusted technological transmigration. If I’m in
another body, I don’t know it’s still
me
. Sure, lots of
people have transferred into other bodies, or machines—it’s been
going on for millenia—but how do you
know
that they didn’t
just die, that the mind in the new body isn’t a simulation that
thinks
it’s the same person? I’m sure you’ve heard the
philosophical debates about this, haven’t you?”

Geste nodded.

“I was sure you had. So you see, I keep my
consciousness, my personality, my
soul
, in my own head, this
same one I was born with seven thousand years ago. When I used that
other body, it was all remote control, using a little transceiver
arrangement at the base of the brain. When you put that body into
stasis, you cut off all the input and output through that
transceiver. You
cut off my brain
, Geste. I wasn’t
in
the stasis field, not the
real
me, so I stayed conscious the
whole time, but I was cut off from my own body, because I can’t run
both at the same time. And I couldn’t switch back, Geste—the
control is worked from whichever body I’m controlling at the time.
We’re talking about total sensory deprivation. I had a very bad
second or two, wondering if the emergency switch would work—I had
designed it for when the clone was killed, not enfielded. I suppose
you thought you were being merciful, using a stasis field instead
of a blaster, but what if I hadn’t had my little switch, Geste? You
wouldn’t even have known what you’d done to me! I’d have starved,
rotted, conscious the whole time!” His voice rose to a cracking
screech.

Geste, his mind still slowly emerging from
panic, saw the error in this; Thaddeus would
not
have stayed
conscious once his body deteriorated below a certain level, and in
a state of total sensory deprivation he would have felt no pain,
had no sensation of the passing of time.

Still, it would have been a gruesome fate
indeed, and Geste, shaken and terrified as he was, decided not to
quibble.

“Now, how did you get that stasis generator
in here?” Thaddeus demanded.

The thought of actually answering Thaddeus
truthfully occurred to him, but he suppressed it. Right now, he was
sure, only the fact that he had information Thaddeus wanted was
keeping him alive. Besides, he was sure that his voice would
tremble—if he could speak at all. He remained silent.

“Damn it, punk, do you want me to have to
dissect you to find out?”

Geste shuddered again, even while a part of
his mind wondered what would happen if an autopsy knife cut into
the mouth of the bent-space pocket. Would it pop back out into
normal space, its integrity disrupted? What would it do to his head
if that happened?

His gorge rose in his throat.

No, he desperately told himself, the knife
couldn’t cut the pocket, he was sure. It was far more likely that
the blade would break.

“I’m sending some machines, Geste—we’ll see
if they can’t convince you to be a little more forthcoming with
your information.”

Geste sat, watching the triangular black
floater bumping helplessly against its own reflection on the stasis
field, never spilling a drop of whatever beverage it held.

The machines Thaddeus sent would not be as
ineffective, he was sure. He lifted the stasis generator, thinking
hard.

Thaddeus spoke again, but this time his
voice was cut off in mid-word.

“What the hel...” he began.

Geste looked up, suddenly hopeful.

“
Lady Tsien lives in the treetops of the southern
jungles, where she leads a horde of strange manlike creatures.
Travelers there report that these creatures shout taunts at them as
they pass by below, whooping with laughter and calling insults.
Some claim that these were once true men and women, but that Lady
Tsien ensorcelled them; others say that that’s nonsense, for there
are certainly men and women who have met Lady Tsien and come away
unscathed, and no one can name anyone who turned up missing after
seeking her out...”

—
from the tales of Atheron the
Storyteller

The machine was not meant for riding on, but Bredon
managed to cling to it. He sat precariously atop its central box,
his feet on two of the forward appendages, his hands clutching the
edge. “Go to the war room,” he ordered. “
Ka nama kaa
lajerama!
”

Giving the password again was probably
unnecessary, he knew, but it reassured him.

The machine started forward smoothly, and
Bredon held on tightly, ready to jump aside, out of danger, if it
threw him off.

His caution was unnecessary. This mount did
not make the abrupt starts, stops, and jerks of an unbroken horse.
It made no attempt to dislodge him at all, but glided swiftly to
its destination, doors sliding out of its way as it approached. It
did not need to give any audible commands; it belonged here, and
the doors recognized that. Unlike Bredon, the machine was a part of
Fortress Holding. Other machines let it pass unchallenged, and paid
no attention to its passenger.

Five minutes after Bredon ordered it to the
war room, his motorized mount stopped dead in a tiny corridor. This
cramped little passage ended in a door that did not open unasked as
the machine approached.

This, Bredon guessed, was the final door.
The war room would be just beyond it.

Thaddeus might well be there, too.

“
Ka nama kaa lajerama!
” Bredon
shouted. “Get into the war room, as fast as you can! Cut your way
in if you have to!” It occurred to him that even if the machine
couldn’t open the door, maybe a human could, and he yelled,
“Emergency override! Human in danger!”

Then he dove off his perch and landed
rolling.

The door slid open, while Bredon’s erstwhile
transport sped forward so quickly that it struck the receding edge
of the door a glancing blow on its way into the war room.

Moving as swiftly and silently as he could,
Bredon got into a tense crouch at the corner of the doorframe,
ready to spring into the room beyond or to flee, whichever might
seem advisable. Then he leaned forward and peered around.

“What the hell?” Thaddeus’s voice said.
“What do you think
you’re
doing here, you stupid
machine?”

Bredon could not see Thaddeus. Leaning as
far forward as he dared, he could still see only part of the
chamber beyond the door.

The war room was huge, and every inch of it
seemed to be lined with machinery. Bredon had never seen anything
like it.

In Arcade and aboard the Skyland all the
machinery was hidden away, to be maintained and operated by the
artificial intelligences designed for that purpose. Systems
generally functioned in response to spoken orders, and needed no
switches or levers. Communications equipment projected images or
voices from tiny, hidden openings, when necessary, but more often
projected them directly through solid walls or created them
entirely through invisible fields requiring no openings at all.

Thaddeus apparently did not trust such
indirect methods. His war room was jammed with archaic screens,
projectors, dials, gauges, switches, buttons, and so forth. Lights
flickered and blinked in a rainbow of colors; the machinery itself
was mostly steel gray.