Forbidden Knowledge (26 page)

Nick wheeled to verify the positions of the guards as if he were measuring his chances of escape. Then he barked, “Mikka—”

Morn stopped him.

“Nick, it’s all right.” If he ordered Mikka to begin self-destruct, the command second would obey; and then everything would be wasted. “I’m not afraid.”

He turned on her as if he were appalled. “You’re
what
?”

“We’ve come too far to back out now.”

It must have been her black box talking, not her. She was still sane, she
was
, and “a transfer of mind” dismayed her to the core; the consequences for little Davies shocked her spirit. He would be born thinking he was
her
, his brain would be full of rape and treason when nature intended only rest and food and love. The whole idea was intolerable, abhorrent; she knew that because she wasn’t crazy.

And yet she wanted it. If her mind was transferred to her baby, it would be transferred without the corrosive support, the destructive resources, of her zone implant.

“You need to get
Captain’s Fancy
repaired, and I need my son. I don’t care what it costs. I’m not afraid. I don’t mind taking the chance.”

“It’ll finish you,” he hissed through her earphones, bringing his head closer until his faceplate touched hers. “‘Total and irreparable loss of reason and function.’ I’ll lose you.”

Vector Shaheed said her name, then broke off.

“Morn,” Mikka Vasaczk breathed softly, “you don’t have to do this.”

“I don’t mind taking the chance,” she repeated, listening to the sound of ruin like an echo in her helmet.

Before Nick could interfere, she turned to the Amnioni and said, “The agreement is acceptable.”

The doctor replied, “It will be done.”

Nick let out a short, frayed howl like a cry of grief.

She walked away from him, leaving him to the guards.

At the nearest crèche, she stopped and began to unlock her faceplate.

The doctor offered her the breathing mask it held. She shook her head and murmured, “Not yet.”

When she opened the faceplate and took off her helmet, acrid Amnion air bit into her lungs, as raw as the stink of charred corpses; but she endured it. She had one more thing to do to complete her surrender.

Stripping off the EVA suit, she stood, effectively naked, beside the crèche. Then she reached into the pocket of her shipsuit and grasped her black box; she adjusted the intensity of its emissions until they brought her right to the edge of a serene and unreachable unconsciousness.

Nearly fainting, she accepted the breathing mask.

As she pressed it to her mouth, oxygen and anesthesia enveloped her in the attar of funerals and old sleep.

“
Morn!
” Nick cried again. But now she could no longer hear him.

Unnecessarily gentle, since she was in no condition to know what anyone did, the Amnioni kept her asleep while it worked. It stretched her out in the crèche; with its deft secondary arms, it removed her shipsuit and set it beside her.

Blood was drawn. Electrodes were attached to her skull, to the major muscle groups in her arms and legs.

Then an alien serum was injected into her veins, and a biological cataclysm came over her.

In minutes her belly swelled hugely. A short time later, water burst between her legs; her cervix dilated; contractions writhed through her.

As careful as any human physician, the Amnioni accepted Davies Hyland from her body. The doctor bound and cut the umbilical cord, cleaned the struggling little boy—struggling for human air—with monstrous tenderness, then set the child in the second crèche, attached electrodes corresponding exactly to the ones which held Morn, inserted IVs, and closed the crèche.

At once a normal O/CO
₂
mix surrounded the baby, and new respiration turned him a healthy pink.

At the same time more chemicals were injected into Morn to smooth her recovery. Plasma replaced lost blood; coagulants and neural soothers enriched her body’s responses to damage.

In the second crèche, a form of biological time-compression began. A potent amino soup, full of recombinant endocrine secretions and hormones, fed every cell in Davies’ small form, triggering in seconds DNA-programmed developments which should have taken months to complete; sustaining a massive demand for nutrients and calories; enabling his tissues to process growth and waste with an efficiency at once ineffable and grotesque—as wondrously vital and consuming as cancer.

Under the subtle distortions of the crèche’s cover, his body elongated itself, took on weight and muscle; his features reshaped themselves as baby fat spread across them and then melted away, and their underlying bones solidified; his hair and nails grew impossibly long, until the doctor trimmed them. At the same time, the electrodes copied Morn’s life and replicated it in him: the neural learning which provided muscle tone, control, skill; the experience which gave language and reason reality; the mix of endocrine stimulation and memory which formed personality, made decision possible.

As Nick had promised, the process was finished in an hour.

In effect, Morn Hyland gave birth to a sixteen-year-old son.

ANCILLARY
DOCUMEMTATION

THE AMNION

First Contact
(continued)

T
he contrary argument—that “first contact” had taken place years previously—is based on the fact that Captain Vertigus learned nothing new (aside from the matter of appearance) or vital about the Amnion. That they were technologically sophisticated, especially in matters of biochemistry; that they were oxygen-carbon-based; that they were profoundly alien: all could be deduced from the contents of the satellite which an Intertech ship,
Far Rover
, had discovered in orbit around the largest planet in the star system she had been sent to probe.

This occurred prior to the Humanity Riots—and to Intertech’s absorption by SMI.
Far Rover
had been studying that system for nearly a standard year when the satellite was discovered. She continued her studies for several months afterward—but now with a radically altered mission. At first, of course, she had been looking for anything and everything: primarily resources, habitability, and signs of life. But since until now no one had ever found signs of life, her attention had been fixed on more mundane matters. However, after the discovery of the satellite, she forgot the mundane. She stayed in the system long enough to be certain that the satellite was not of local origin. Then she crossed the gap back to Earth.

Her arrival surely had enough scientific, economic, and cultural impact to qualify as “first contact.”

Far Rover
made no attempt to open or examine the satellite: she lacked the facilities. The alien object, untouched, was transported to Earth in a sealed hold, where it remained until the Intertech installation on Outreach Station was able to activate a sterile lab for it. Then, as carefully as anyone knew how, the satellite was opened.

It proved to contain a small cryogenic vessel, which in turn contained a kilo of the mutagenic material that comprised—although no one knew it at the time—the Amnion attempt to reach out to other life-forms in the galaxy.

Study of the mutagen went on for three years at a frenetic pace before Captain Vertigus and
Deep Star
were commissioned.

That the substance in the vessel was a mutagen was discovered almost routinely. In the normal course of events, scientists of every description ran tests of every kind on minute samples of the substance. Naturally most of the tests failed to produce any results which the scientists could understand. Earth science being what it was, however, the tests eventually included feeding a bit of the substance to a rat.

In less than a day, the rat changed form: it became something that resembled a mobile clump of seaweed.

Subsequently any number of rats were fed the substance. Some of them were killed and dissected. Pathology revealed that they had undergone an essential transformation: their basic life processes remained intact, but everything about them—from their RNA and the nature of their proteins and enzymes outward—had been altered. Other altered rats were successfully bred, which showed that the change was both stable and self-compatible. Still others were put through the normal behavioral tests of rats; the results demonstrated conclusively, disturbingly, that the mutation produced a significant gain in intelligence.

Experiments were attempted with higher animals: cats, dogs, chimpanzees. All changed so dramatically that they became unrecognizable. All were biologically stable, able to reproduce. All were built of fundamental enzymes and RNA native to each other, but wholly distinct from anything which had ever evolved on Earth.

All showed some degree of enhanced intelligence.

By this time, Intertech as a corporate entity was positively drooling. The potential for discovery and profit was immeasurable, if the mutagen could be traced to its source. Theorists within the company and out agreed that the satellite must have been designed to accomplish one of two things: communication or propagation. The propagationist theory, however, suffered from one apparent flaw: the mutated rats, cats, dogs, and chimps simply were not intelligent enough. They retained the limitations of their species. In other words, the mutagen was clearly inadequate to replicate its makers on lower lifeforms.

Nevertheless by either theory a source existed—somewhere—not just for mutated Earth-forms with higher intelligence, but for entirely new sciences, resources, and possibilities.

But how could the satellite be traced to its source? As “first contact” with alien life, the object was exceptionally frustrating in this regard. Hence the emphasis placed on Sixten Vertigus and his experiences. Except for its cryogenic workings, the satellite contained nothing which could be analyzed: no drive, no tape, no control systems; certainly nothing as convenient as a star chart.

If the satellite were intended as a means of communication, its message had to lie in the mutagen itself.

It did.

The course of Earth’s history was changed when the decision was made within Intertech to risk the mutagen on a human being.

The woman who volunteered for the assignment probably hoped for some kind of immortality, personal as well as scientific. After all, the experimental animals which had been permitted to live were viable, hardy, and intelligent. They were also benign: they could reproduce with their own kind, but could not spread the mutagen. If her intelligence increased similarly, she might become the most important individual humankind had yet produced. And she might open the door to discoveries, opportunities, and riches which would earn her enduring reverence.

Unfortunately she only survived for a day and a half.

During that time, she changed as the animals had changed: she became, according to observers, “a bipedal tree with luxuriant foliage and several limbs.” But the only sign of advanced intelligence was that, an hour or so before she died, she wailed for paper. As soon as she got it, she spent several minutes scribbling furiously.

When she collapsed, heroic efforts were made to resuscitate her. They failed utterly. The medical technology was all wrong: it had little relevance to her new structure.

An autopsy showed that she had become genetically and biochemically kin to the mutated rats and chimps—a product of the same world. She had been transformed from her RNA outward. Nevertheless she was the only mutated life-form to die quickly of “natural causes.” In the opinion of the pathologists who studied her corpse from scalp to toenails, she died of “fright.”

Conceivably the mutation had produced an uncontrollable adrenaline reaction.

Equally conceivably the knowledge of what she had become—the knowledge she gleaned from the mutagen—terrified her beyond bearing.

Whatever the explanation, her “immortality” could be gauged by the fact that few texts on the subject mention her by name.

Or it could be gauged by this, that her final scribbles eventually led humankind into a fatal relation with the Amnion.

Mostly she had written numbers, strings of figures which had no meaning to anyone—or to any of Intertech’s computers—until a young astronomer as crucial, and as forgotten, as the volunteer herself thought to analyze them as galactic coordinates.

Those coordinates enabled Captain Sixten Vertigus and
Deep Star
to establish contact with the Amnion for the first time.

CHAPTER       
13

M
orn began drifting toward consciousness when the Amnioni eliminated anesthetic from the mix of air she took in through the breathing mask.

The process seemed to require a long time. Controlled by her zone implant as well as by alien drugs, she was helpless to bring herself back. Gradually she became aware of the numb ache in her loins—the stress of parturition muffled by some powerful analgesic. She felt the distension of her belly: the elasticity of her muscles had been strained away. But those things weren’t enough to focus her attention; she couldn’t concentrate on them.

Yet her body continued to throw off the effects of the anesthetic. Eventually she realized that she could hear Nick’s voice.

“Morn!” he demanded, “wake up! You said you weren’t afraid. Prove it. Come back!”

Some part of her heard his fury, recognized that he was in a killing rage. She could feel his hands shaking her shoulders, shaking her heart. She remembered that she hated him.

“Those bastards cheated us! They did something to him!”

He broke into a fit of coughing.

Another piece of her, a separate compartment, understood that she shouldn’t have been able to hear him. He was wearing an EVA suit, and she had no earphones. Nevertheless it wasn’t his voice or his coughing that snagged her attention.

They did something to him.

Him? Who?

Like a momentary gap in dense smoke, a glimpse of light, the answer came to her.

Davies. Her son.

The Amnion had done something to her son.

She lay still, as if she were deaf; as if she were lost. Nothing external showed that she was fighting urgently for the strength to open her eyes.

She had the impression that Nick pulled away from her. His voice went in a different direction as he snarled, “You
cheated
, you fucking sonofabitch. You did something to him.”

Davies Hyland. Her son. The reason she was here—the reason she’d surrendered herself.

Nick was answered by another voice she shouldn’t have been able to hear. It was full of pointed teeth and sulfuric light.

“Presumed human Captain Nick Succorso, that is a false statement. The Amnion do not accept false statements. You charge a betrayal of trade. It is established that the Amnion do not betray trade. Your own tests will demonstrate that the offspring is human. The genetic identity is exactly what it was in the female’s womb. Your statements are false.”

Another fit of coughing tore at Nick’s lungs. When he could talk again, he rasped, “Then why does he look like
that
?”

The alien voice conveyed a shrug. “Your question cannot be answered. Is there a flaw in the offspring’s maturation? It is not apparent. Tests indicate no genetic defect. However, if you wish the offspring altered, that can be done.”

“You bastard,” Nick spat, nearly retching. “He doesn’t look like
me.
”

“Presumed human Captain Nick Succorso,” the voice explained with what may have been Amnion patience, “your genetic identity has no point of congruence with that of this offspring. He is not your—translation suggests the word ‘son.’ Therefore resemblance would be improbable.”

Nick’s silence was as loud as a shout.

With an effort that seemed to drain the marrow from her bones, leaving her as weak as paper, Morn opened her eyes.

For a moment a flood of sulfur from the ceiling blinded her. But once her eyes opened they blinked on their own. Tears streaked the sides of her face, leaving damp, delicate trails that were more distinct to her nerves than any of the consequences of giving birth. She felt naked from her scalp to her toes; yet something kept her warm. By increments she moved closer to true consciousness.

Soon she was able to see.

A shape in an EVA suit with the faceplate open stood several paces away, near the other crèche. Sour yellow light gleamed up and down the mylar surface.

Nick.

He confronted a rusty and monstrous shape which must have been the Amnion doctor.

Towering over the crèche, the Amnioni said into its headset and the acrid air, “The offspring resumes consciousness. In humans a period of adjustment is required. The transfer of mind produces—translation suggests the word ‘disorientation.’ For a time the mind will be unable to distinguish itself from its source.

“Data is inadequate to predict the course of this disorientation. Speculation suggests that adjustment can be rapid with proper stimulation.”

The doctor moved one of its arms along the side of the crèche, and its protective cover opened.

Morn saw bare limbs twist, heard a wet cough. The sound was weak; it seemed to come from a baby who couldn’t get enough air.

Her baby.

She tried to move.

Some weight held her down. It wasn’t heavy, but it was too great for her. She couldn’t understand it. Had the Amnioni put her under restraint?

With an effort, she shifted her gaze to her own form.

There were no restraints. The weight was only the light fabric of her shipsuit. Presumably the doctor had stripped her so that her baby could be born. Then it must have dressed her again.

She was too weak to carry the burden of a mere shipsuit. Like an infant, she needed to come naked back to herself.

Somehow she turned her head so that she could look at the other crèche again.

The doctor put a breathing mask to the mouth of the body in the crèche; secured the mask with a strap. The coughing stopped, but the frail, uncertain movement of the limbs continued.

With three of its secondary arms, the Amnioni lifted her son into a sitting position. For a moment he remained there, breathing strenuously; then the doctor helped him move his legs off the crèche so that he could stand.

Except for the mask over his mouth and the relative slightness of his build, he might as well have been Angus Thermopyle.

The sight would have shocked her, if she’d been capable of shock. But her zone implant held her so close to blankness that she couldn’t react to the image of the man who’d ravaged her flesh, shattered her spirit.

He was only an hour old, and already he appeared like a bloated toad, dark and brutal. His arms and chest were built for violence; he stood with his legs splayed as if to withstand the abuse of the universe. His penis dangled from his crotch, as ugly as an instrument of rape.

Only his eyes betrayed the heritage of his mother. They were Morn’s color—and full of her dread.

His fear made him look as helpless as a child.

Davies Hyland. Her son.

Her mind in Angus’ body.

He needed her. For him this moment was worse than it could ever be for her. He suffered everything that had ever terrorized her—but he had no zone implant.

His extremity gave her the strength to slide one hand into the pocket of her shipsuit.

“Again,” said the Amnioni, “the offer is made to accept the female. A suitable recompense will be negotiated. Her usefulness to you is gone. The only means by which her reason can be restored requires alteration of her genetic identity.”

“In other words,” Nick snarled, “you want to make her Amnion.” His voice was raw with coughing. Through his open faceplate, Morn saw that his face was slick with sweat or tears, the result of the bitter air he breathed so that she would be able to hear him.

Too weak and still too close to unconsciousness for subtlety, she didn’t try to adjust her black box; she simply switched it off.

Then she rolled over the edge of the crèche.

While the jolt of impact and transition slammed through her, she heard the doctor intone, “The procedure produces a total and irreparable loss of reason and function.”

At the edge of her vision, she saw Nick’s boots stamp toward her. He stopped at her side; his knees flexed.

“Get up,” he gasped.

She tried, but it was beyond her. Like a stretched elastic cord when it was released, her mind seemed to snap away—out of the void where it had been held; toward the need of her son. In her thoughts, she surged upright, hurried to his aid. For him an incomprehensible awakening would be made more terrible when he saw her and believed that she was himself. He would need help to absorb the truth; help to counter his fear; help to understand who and what he was, and not go mad.

Yet her body only lay on the floor, trembling. She braced her arms, but couldn’t lever her chest up. The pressure on her swollen breasts made them ache impersonally, like distant fire.

Coughing until his voice nearly failed, Nick croaked, “
Get up
, you bitch!”

She couldn’t.

As if she were weightless, he caught her by the fabric of her shipsuit and hauled her off the floor; he flung her against the edge of the crèche, then spun her to face him. From inside his helmet, his eyes glared: black; beyond appeal. His scars were flagrant with blood and rage.

“Goddamn it! You put me through all this, and he isn’t even mine! That’s Thermopyle!
He isn’t even mine
!”

Then he went down because Davies had come off the other crèche and punched him in the back with all Angus’ harsh force.

Unable to catch herself, Morn flopped on top of Nick.

Gasping, he arched his back and tried to squirm away from the pain as if his ribs were broken.

When she rolled off him, she found Davies stooping over her. As soon as she stopped moving, he bent closer, dropped to his knees. His eyes searched her face as if he were transfixed with horror.

More Amnion were there—the guards. Between them, they picked Nick up and held him so that he couldn’t attack. He struggled like a man whose ribs weren’t seriously damaged. Nevertheless the raw air ripped at his lungs, and every exertion made him cough harder, draining his strength.

“Restore the integrity of your suit,” the doctor told him, “so that breathing will be easy. Your words will be broadcast to each other.”

“He was going to hurt you,” Davies breathed. His vocal cords were sixteen years old, but his voice had the innocent inflections of a child; he sounded like a young, lost version of his father. Dismay as deep as the dimensional gap stared out of his eyes. “I couldn’t let him do that.

“You’re me.”

She wanted to wrap her arms around his neck and hug him against her sore breasts, but she was too weak. And other things were more important. “No,” she said through her mask and her frailty and the stress of transition. “That’s not true. You’ve got to trust me.”

His instinctive crisis showed on his face, the conflict between the impulse to believe in her because she was him and the need to reject her because she shouldn’t have been separate from him. It was the fundamental crisis of maturation made grotesquely, extravagantly worse by the way it came upon him—all in minutes, instead of slowly over sixteen years.

Reaching up to him, she gripped his arms—arms like his father’s; arms so strong that they’d once beaten Nick. “None of this makes sense to you,” she said as if she were pleading. “I know that. Everything feels wrong. If you think hard you may be able to remember what happened. I’ll explain it all—I’ll help you every way I can. But not now. Not here. You’ve got to trust me. You think you’re Morn Hyland, but you’re not.
I’m
Morn Hyland. You know what she looks like. She looks like me. You don’t.

“Your name is Davies Hyland. I’m your mother. You’re my son.”

Nick’s voice boomed as if it were playing over speakers large enough to fill an auditorium. “And Angus goddamn Thermo-pile is your fucking father!”

While he raged, the doctor—or the Enablement authorities—turned down the volume of their broadcast. He seemed to fade as he cursed.

Davies’ eyes flicked toward Nick. Morn saw them narrow with inherited revulsion. Then he looked back down at her. At once his disgust returned to panic.

“I don’t understand,” he whispered past his mask. “You’re me. You’re what I see in my head when I see myself. I can’t remember—Who is Angus Thermo-pile?”

“I’ll help you,” she insisted urgently. “I’ll explain everything. I’ll help you remember. We’ll remember it all together.” Her own mask seemed to hamper her voice; she couldn’t make it reach him. “But not now. Not here. It’s too dangerous.

“Just trust me. Please.”

“This does not conform to established reality,” said the doctor. Morn heard strange Amnion cadences with one ear, language she knew with the other. “The procedure produces total and irreparable loss of reason and function. Analysis is required.” As if speaking to one of the computers, the Amnioni instructed, “Complete physiological, metabolic, and genetic decoding, decisiveness high.”

Abruptly Davies took her in his arms and lifted her. He set her on her feet and started to let go of her; but when her knees buckled, he caught and supported her by her elbows. Like his father, he was an inch or two shorter than she.

Almost strangling on his distress, he murmured, “I’m Morn Hyland. You’re Morn Hyland. This is wrong.”

“I know,” she replied from the bottom of her heart. “I know. It’s wrong.” Desperately she tried to confirm his grasp on reality, so that he wouldn’t go mad. “But I didn’t have any other way to save your life.” Or my soul.