Charon (37 page)

 
He shrugged. "I don't know them, but it might be a real family and not a Brethren one. Still, you see what this means?
A fifth Lord, a secret one, in the game for maybe forty years."

 
"Morah.
It has to be Morah."

 
"I agree. And yet Morah closed down the thing and exposed at least one, maybe all, the remaining ones. Why?"

 
"Well, I can think of one reason," I told him.

 
'"Huh?"

 
"With organic super-robots and an alien force behind him he didn't need them anymore.
Not there, anyway."

 
"Perhaps.
But why did he need them
here!
And why, once here, didn't he use her?"

 
He thought a moment. "Maybe he wasn't ready to use her yet."

 
It was my turn. "Huh?"

 
"Suppose there aren't many of these—people. Suppose there are only, maybe, four of them. You remember Mor-ah's getaway in the square at Bourget?"

 
"The four-headed hydra."

 
"And now Kreegan's dead. Remember—Dumonia said it
•wasn't
the assassin who got him. A fluke, he called it." He looked straight at me. "And Morah's seen, met with, talked with those aliens face to face."

 
I finally saw where he was going. "So Korman might
not
have known. Or
Aeolia
Matuze either."

 
He nodded. "The Confederacy might not be the only ones trying to knock off the Four Lords. In fact, the Confederacy might just be doing Yatek Morah a favor.

 
"Not Four Lords of the Diamond—but one."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN - Forced Decisions

"That girl—Zala or Kira or whoever she is—worries you, doesn't she?" Darva asked. -

 
I nodded. "Not the Zala part
There's
something even likable about Zala. But ever since Korman told me about the other part of her I've wanted to meet that part—and now that I have, I'm not sure I should have forced it."

 
"I guess I'll never understand you," she sighed. "You force her out,
then
get really unhappy about it. Why? Isn't Kira more or less the same type as you?"

 
I whirled and felt my blood pressure go up. I paused a moment to try and get control of myself. I was going to make a nasty remark and strong denial, but Darva had really hit the nail on the head. Admitting that to myself calmed me down.

 
"All right.
Yes, in a way. Never that cold, that unemotional, but, yes, she
is
a lot like I used to be. The way I still really think of myself. But she's me stripped down to the least common denominator. No morality, no cause, no feelings of any sort. That's what those biotechs managed with that two-mind technique. She's able to shift all her emotions, morals, feelings into Zala. It gives Kira the mind of a computer, unencumbered by any traces of—well, humanity. Zala may be dumb, shallow, and not good for much, but she's all that's human in that body and brain. And, still, when I look at Kara, talk to her, I see—me."
I
see a man I used to be, sitting up there, a third of a light-year off the Warden system,
I added to myself.

 
And, in fact, just how different
was
Kira from that man up there? Outside of assignments, psych blocked and mostly wiped, he was really nothing more than a Zala with money.
A playboy in the haunts of the rich and powerful, contributing little and totally hedonistic.
The only difference between Kira and me, deep down, was that when I got all that information back before a mission, like now, I still had at my base that other man, that playboy lover of fun. Kira, on the other hand, experienced everything vicariously and never felt that her cover was anything more than that—certainly not a part of her.

 
The technique by which Zala/Kira had been formed remained a mystery. The medics here had poked and probed and found nothing. Her brain, aside from the Warden organisms' odd grouping, appeared normal. Nothing in medical science could pinpoint the difference in any way. And yet it was not a psych technique, or some mental aberration—the
wa
showed clearly a true biological division there somewhere.

 
To look into a mirror, to see such a personality—the perfect assassin—and see in all its ugliness the perfection of those qualities you always prided yourself on, this was the problem. Nor did I have the faith, the moral certitude, any more that I was on the side of right, justice, and good. Charon and its viewpoints and my own experiences here had killed that certainty, and even though I was still, for now, on the same side, I was there because the opposition repelled me, not out of any lingering loyalty to the Confederacy ideal. Had this, I wondered, happened to the others, my counterparts on Lilith, Cerberus, and Medusa? I knew this—I was more completely human now than ever before, and both the weaker for it and yet, somehow, whole as Kira was not and might never be.

 
Explaining all this to Darva wasn't easy. Although it helped to share it and talk it out, the fact was she could never fully understand. She hadn't been raised to
believe.

 
And that, in the end, was the bottom line of difference between Kira and me. I had been a believer who lost his faith but found his humanity. She had never believed in
anything,
and, because of that, could never find or even fully comprehend her own humanity.
I had been literally reduced to the animal on Charon and been reborn a human.
Kira was reduced to the machine and locked there for all time.

 
In a sense, she'd forced me to take a good, hard look at myself—and in the process, I was free. The last bonds were cut. Like that little Cerberan, Dumonia, I severed my last ties to my past and stayed allied with it only because, for the moment, our interests coincided.

 
For the first time I reached .back and examined myself, and much to my surprise, was able to locate through my own
wa
that tiny piece of organic goo in my brain.
Still there.
From Lacoch to changeling to bunhar to changeling again, it had somehow survived. So you're still listening, my brother out there?
My . . . Kira.

 
Koril looked grim-faced. His office was littered with reports and photos, and he wasn't pleased with whatever they said.

 
He got straight to the point. "We have been compromised. After all these years, we've been compromised."

 
"Somebody got word out?"

 
He nodded.
"Somehow.
I'm not sure how. But this complex is doomed, Park. It's only a matter of time. Oh, it's safe enough against ground assault, but once its location is known they could bring in heavy stuff, off-planet stuff, and fry hell out of us."

 
"Then why haven't they?"

 
He smiled. "Funny.
Basically because the Confederacy monitors the system so well.
They don't have the heavy weapons on Charon to do the job, and if they tried to get them they'd be shot to hell in space. To hit us hard they'd have to bring in one of their alien friends' vessels—and that would force them into the open. But it's only a matter of time until they work out some way to fool our Wardens."

 
"How much time?"
I asked uneasily.

 
"Who knows?
A day?
A week?
A month?
A minute from now?
Whenever they can work it out.
We can't take the chance of its being long." He sat back in his chair, and for the first time he looked very old, old and incredibly tired. "Well, perhaps it's for the best.
To end it, one way or the other, once and for all.
He looked up at me, the weight of his decision showing in his face. "You know, Park, for the first time I realize how I've been kidding myself all these years. I
enjoyed
this place. I loved the research, the peace, the lack of demands. I even loved being the rebel leader. It was far more of a challenge to be the opposition than to actually run the place. It's funny—always preparing but never acting. That's just what Dumonia was saying the other—son of a bitch!"

 
•What's the matter?"

 
"That old bastard!
Outside of people directly under my control, Dumonia was the only one who knew precisely how to determine this base's location. He had to—his people stocked it. Why, I ought to . . ." He was turning so red I feared his rage, but he soon calmed down.

 
"Oh, hell," he said, "I guess he had a right. Without him I wouldn't have all this."

 
"You mean the
Cerberan
betrayed you?"

 
He nodded.
"Had to be."

 
"But why?"

 
"Just to get me to move.
Damn it, Park, I'm ready. I've been ready for over a year. You saw Bourget—just a little test. That's why Dumonia was here. We talked_.and talked and talked, and I gave him a hundred excuses, but hell, the man's a psych. He knew I would have to be pushed, and so he pushed."

 
I frowned. "Who
is
that man, anyway? Where does he get the resources and power he uses?"

 
"He's probably the most dangerous man in the Diamond, and that's saying something," Korfl replied. "He could be Lord if he wanted, or just about anything else, I think. He's absolutely brilliant, particularly at making other powerful people do what he wants. Right now he has the Confederacy and who knows how much of the Diamond doing his bidding. What his motives are I can't say—but I know it's not power for its own sake. If he wanted to run things, he would. I asked him once why he was helping me and you know what he said? He said it was a relief from boredom!
But, enough of him.
He's kicked me hard now—and I have no choice but to act."

 
"You're going to try and retake control then?"

 
He nodded. "Now, I don't want to minimize anything. You're still new here—a little over a year total, I think. You still don't really appreciate what we're up against."

 
I waved my hands around. "This place is equipped to take the whole system, and your planetwide underground is effective. I can't see why you'd have a problem at this stage."

 
He smiled grimly. "Ah, but you see only the surface. First of all, we can't depend on the weapons here. Didn't you ever wonder why those troopers in Bourget had projectile weapons? I took a great risk with the laser stuff there. One small tabarwind and we'd have been blown to kingdom come."

 
"You know, ever since I've been on Charon I've heard about tabarwinds," I told him. "And yet they have to be rare. I never saw one, or met anyone who did."

 
"It only takes one to scare hell out of you. It's, a whirling electrical storm that reaches from the ground to the ion layer surrounding the planet. Nobody knows what causes them, but they look like something out of the most fanatical of religious hells. There's even a religion based on them, if you can believe it. They just appear—i-no cause, no real reason we've ever found. They can be anywhere—except here, in the center of Gamush, for some reason. They follow no set path and no logic, and they vanish as quickly as they come. It can be a year between them—and then there can be dozens, even hundreds. Aside from the direct fury of the storm, almost anything electrical within a dozen or more kilometers of the storm just goes crazy. Overloads and explodes, often with a force beyond anything inherent in the exploding device. No sorcery, no force of will can stand against them. And electrical energy attracts them like a magnet."

 
"Sounds like an experience I can gladly skip," I told him truthfully.

 
"And they're more common than you think," Koril went on. "There are three right now in the north, and that's where we have to go."

 
I sighed. "I see. But reduced to those primitive weapons, numbers mean even more—and I think you have them. If Bourget is any indication, the masses of people here really don't give a damn
who
runs things."

 
"As usual anywhere," Koril agreed. "Oh, it's certain that we could take as much as seventy percent of the north and the few settlements on Gamush without problems. Tu-kyan's hardly worth worrying about it's so primitive. I have enough powerful sores, trained and developed here, to carry the day, force the government to a few strongholds like Monttay and Cubera. But it makes no difference. As long as they hold the Castle they hold one of only two spaceports on the planet, and they hold the power really.
The trade, the records—the whole economy.
Holding that, they can disrupt the business of the planet. Things don't work
right,
people get hungry, or angry. And while we deteriorate sitting on our seven-tenths, they wait for reinforcements either from the other three Lords or, maybe, directly from the aliens. Basically, we take the countryside without the Castle and we take nothing we can hold. Take the Castle and the rest falls automatically into line."