Tales of Chills and Thrills: The Mystery Thriller Horror Box Set (7 Mystery Thriller Horror Novels) (168 page)

Brett wanted to protest, but he knew the bailiff would restrain him. There had to be some point to this. He was pretty sure the lawyer hadn’t said anything like that in real life. Even thinking that made him feel much less Bookie and much more Brett. Did the Oceanians mean to convince him to abandon the idea of individual responsibility?

While becoming an officer, Brett had studied the criminal justice system of Old Earth. He knew certain elements of common law on many English speaking worlds were based on it, but Old York’s system didn’t come quite as close as this. A dreamlike inconsistency, or did it mean something?

‘His’ lawyer wouldn’t shut up. “My client believes he’s learned something deep and profound about personal responsibility and individualism. And how has he made this profound philosophical leap? Has he studied the concepts? Has he requested books from the prison library?”

Now the lawyer’s voice filled with scorn. “No. Instead, he just took a bunch of concepts supplied by society which he had never really thought about and made them the keystone of a brand new personal philosophy without further consideration.”

Brett frowned. Well, this wasn’t quite as pointless as it had seemed. And they were coming to some sort of climax, which had to be good. No matter what was being done to the temporal lobe of his brain, this couldn’t last much longer unless something were seriously wrong.

“Your Honor, we need to teach him what being an individual really means.”

Which was actually what they had done. But …

He jumped to his feet. “You’re twisting it all around!”

The judge banged his gavel. “Contempt of court!”

He banged again. “Send him up the river!”

Was this really how it was supposed to end? Had some inner change occurred that might make it possible for him to join the hive mind now? Somehow Brett didn’t think so. At best, he had screwed up. At worst, had he condemned himself to fail to wake, to die dreaming of a dreary prison?

The judge thundered, “Up the river of time!”

The low coffee table was filled with alluring objects. Ashtrays bore grey cylinders of ash with interesting scents, and cigarette butts. Half empty glasses and open liquor bottles shined where the light caught them. A bottle of pills with the childproof cap lying next to it offered opportunity to learn as well.

Brett stood proudly. It was hard balancing on two legs, but instinct bade him imitate the giants who walked on two legs around him, and muscles yearned to be exercised. Standing allowed him to grasp, manipulate, and explore a whole new realm.

He heard a loud and angry voice. “Don’t touch that!”

Brett mostly understood the simple words, but he wasn’t trying to touch anything right now. He understood the tone even better. He could not have defined a hangover, but knew this was not one of the rare good times to go over for a kiss or hug, not a good time to go near his mother at all.

He wanted to jump up and down, exploring the wonderful new abilities his legs were acquiring every day, but experience had taught him not to make noise when the voice sounded like that. Inevitably his eyes were drawn to the invitingly graspable objects on the table, as his mother had anticipated.

With all the grasping he had practiced, he had never lifted a smooth glass bottle full of liquid. The weight and slippery texture caught him by surprise, and it slipped out of his hand. It didn’t fall far enough to break, but landed sideways on the table, with a river of liquid flowing out onto the carpet.

The voice was louder now. “You understood me. I told you three minutes ago. You didn’t forget. Why are you always out of control?”

The ideas were too complicated now, but the anger was familiar. Brett wanted to escape but there was no hiding place she could not reach. He wasn’t even tall enough to grasp a doorknob.

Did he understand what a doorknob was? Then he had escaped in a sense, into the mind of full grown Brett to whom the beating and even the bruises would be endurable. He clung to the grown up self he had almost lost. He tried to explain to his mother that, yes, he had understood her original sentences, but the part of his brain that wanted to explore and manipulate had overpowered the verbal part, while the prefrontal cortex was still too underdeveloped to choose between them, but no words came.

Brett ran behind the couch, although he knew his mother would only have a little trouble squeezing in far enough to grab him. He clung to the nonsensical thoughts because they allowed a little bit of him to escape from the frantic fear of the young child he was now to the adult he had been. Or was that reversed.

There was no way his mother could have accepted his undeliverable explanation. She was angry at being disobeyed, or maybe she was just angry and didn’t know quite why. But there was also an ancient rule she had always obeyed unthinkingly, a rule hard to put into words because it underlay language. She wasn’t allowed to accept such an explanation. By punishing him for the actions initiated by any part of his brain, she taught him the meaning of ‘I.’ Captain of my soul.

No, that wasn’t quite right. ‘Him’ implied there was already a him to learn. No, a young creature was being shaped into an individual. Only did the lesson have to be so hard?

She grasped the arm nearest to her and pulled. His whole weight was suspended from that arm and it hurt. He saw the river of funny smelling liquid was slowing to a trickle. Brett decided the ordeal was nearly over. He couldn’t go back much further. He hoped what he had learned would help him, but at times he had almost lost his Brettness.

Then the river flowed again, and he was cast into deep time.

Grug couldn’t sleep, though he heard the fire crackling reassuringly. The head fire-tender added wood periodically, and his apprentice would take over for him when he slept. The predators of the plains feared fire, and it was that which distinguished Anthroid from beast. The Cousins of the forest might use crude tools, but they too feared fire.

Still, Grug was wakeful. He heard one of the children crying, and it was Cool Water’s son, the one who looked like Grug. Cool Water was attempting to quiet him before he woke the rest of the band, but he insisted he was hungry.

They had eaten most of the edible roots on their side of the river, and thinned the ranks of the beasts which were more likely to fill their bellies than eat them. The weather had been dry, and most of the vegetation far from the river was brown. Too many children had been born in the good years when food was plentiful.

Still the boy cried. Grug rose silently from his place by the fire. The moon was bright, but he could have walked with only starlight to see by. Fording the river at night would be harder, but this would not be his first nighttime expedition.

As Grug walked towards the river, he saw fire burning, not too far on the other side of the river. It was unfair. Krok’s band was smaller, and there was more food on their side. All the same, to cross the river openly might mean not merely a fight, but war between their bands. If Grug crossed it during the night and returned before dawn they would be none the wiser, and Grug would manage to bring back a few roots. Crossing the river at night wouldn’t be too hard. It was shallow now, part of the reason there were so few fish.

Carefully scrabbling on his hands and knees, Grug found all the rocks of the ford. Only a couple of times did he dip an arm or leg into the icy water. Then he was scrambling up the far bank of the river. He had remembered every stone for the ford, but forgotten the scratchy bushes.

When he had passed them he heard an Anthroid voice. “Nobody not in Krok’s band dare enter his territory.”

Krok had been hiding in the bushes, waiting for him. Why today? Had he observed signs of hunger on the other side of the river? Had his sharp ears even picked up the noise of a child crying? Could his previous invasions have been detected?

More importantly, as Krok emerged into the moonlight, he was carrying a huge rock in both his hands. Krok was strong enough to throw it, but from this distance Grug would be able to dodge. A smaller rock might serve Krok better, but Grug didn’t suggest it.

“Sorry,” he said, and turned as if to ford the river again, knowing it would not be that easy.

Krok’s roar of rage must have woken both camps, but none would dare come to investigate. “Nobody defies Krok and lives to brag about it afterwards!”

Grug gave up the idea of the ford. He didn’t really want to be crossing the rocky path while Krok used him for a target. Yet if he stayed on this side of the river and fled, he was far from help. He had nowhere to go, and the enemy camp was between him and escape.

Krok taunted him. “Some say Grug is good at magic. Cast a spell on me now.”

Although Krok clearly felt himself ready for that, it offered a better chance of survival than anything else. Grug prepared himself to utter the sounds that sounded like Anthroid language but were not. They were softer, longer, more complex, hypnotic. Sometimes Grug thought the words really had meaning, in a language even he couldn’t understand. “You seem to think all the effort you’ve put into becoming alpha male makes you master of all and servant of none. Primatologists have studied primates like you, and they’ve determined when they grow old they usually have no allies, and often have to leave the troop. The ones who do best personally are the ones who groom females. Your behavior may maximize the spread of your genes, but it doesn’t benefit you personally. Your ego is really the slave of your chromosomes.”

At first it seemed to be working. Krok’s eyes unfocused and he walked forward slowly, as if in a dream. Grug kept talking, unwilling to break the spell. Then in one swift movement, Krok brought the rock down on his head. Stunned, Grug fell over. Krok lifted him and carried him down the riverbank.

Krok said, “I hear you swim good. Stay underwater, I have more rocks to throw.”

He pushed Grug in the river, upstream of the ford, so he had to swim upstream or be dashed against the rocks. The shock of cold revived him enough to avoid the fatal mistake of inhaling water. The muscular arms left him only one escape.

Swimming up the river of time as a mammal was hard. He longed to surface, to fill his lungs, to leave the watery womb. The burning in his chest grew intense, but to breach the surface was death. Then he reached the time before mammals and his metabolism was slower, he could hold his breath longer, but still not breathe under water. Amphibians were better off still, but eventually he became a fish which neither had nor needed lungs but breathed through gills.

His brain was smaller now, and he no longer remembered what he fled. The illusion of self burned away, he was no longer a being escaping an enemy, but Being headed remorselessly for the fount of life.

His melting brain was a remnant of its former self, his only claim to potential individuality. He could no longer grasp why that was to be feared, could only swim instinctively upstream.

After millions of years of life in reverse, the memory of Brettness was faded irretrievably. The little fish brain had no mind, and offered no resistance to dissolution. Even ‘he’ness was forgotten, as all single celled organisms could reproduce themselves as females.

Eyes had been left behind millions of years ago – yet there was light. The tank lid opened.

The sea receded – yet lungs and air breathing had been abandoned. The water began to drain.

He was reborn – but live birth had been left with mammalianism. The tank was empty.

He was he, yet individual consciousness had vanished with language near the beginning of the retrograde journey.

“You bastard! What the hell have you done to him?”

There was anger and fear in Ariel’s voice. Somehow time had come a full circle, and Brett was Brett again.

He heard Michael’s voice as well. “If he’s damaged, even psychologically, it may cost us the moral high ground. Public opinion is what will ultimately force the Federalist Worlds to back down.”

What was Michael doing here? The totaling facility was supposed to be confidential, and even Ariel shouldn’t have been able to find him. Had she noticed the irony of asking him to use his new political power this way?

The dominance relationships of primates were complex, but he found he could don his Brettness like a cloak. He pulled off the breathing mask. “I’m fine.”

His voice sounded normal to him, even familiar. If the words weren’t completely true, it wasn’t because something was wrong, but because Brett was not quite ready to call himself ‘I’ yet.

Napoleon leaned eagerly over the tank. “Did it help?”

Ariel spoke almost simultaneously, “Are you sure you’re alright? Can I help you up?”

Brett lifted his head and looked towards Ariel, using a smile to convey that he really was fine, and a headshake to convey that he didn’t want to be helped up just yet. His verbal answer was directed towards Napoleon. “I feel like I learned a secret that I could never put into words, one I can’t quite remember, but can never forget. I’ll have to try it and see, but I think I’m ready to get started now.”

Chapter 24

Brett stood up and stretched his legs, arched his back. It felt as if he’d been sitting forever, though it had only been a few hours, and only a few days since his uncanny confrontation with the interior of his own mind. “How did I do? I don’t remember.”

Ariel laughed. “That’s the point of a privacy ring. You did great.”

Certain chemicals aided the formation of long term memory, and others inhibited it. Several people could monitor each other and make sure that no personal memories were retained from a client using accelerated learning techniques. Helping people learn new skills sometimes required intense interaction with an individual brain, as did large scale collaborations.

As Brett continued to stretch, Ariel stood up. “You want to go for a walk?”

Brett protested, “It’s dark outside.”

“You afraid of the dark? Poor baby.”

“It’s the middle of winter.”

“You brought your coat. For a tough guy you sure are fragile.”

Sighing, Brett shrugged on his coat. He switched on the heating element even before they left the house.

Ariel only dragged him a few blocks. The all-night diner they entered was blindingly white, except for some pink roses painted on the wall. Ariel ordered coffee for both of them without consulting Brett, though he could have added something had he chosen.

There were a few moments of quiet before she spoke again. “Kenny and Katrina want us to go to a grottleball game with them.”

“At some kind of indoor sports arena?”

“No, they’ll be playing a little south of Ulayn.”

The weather would be warm there. For a few minutes Brett contemplated the prospect. He didn’t know how Ariel planned for them to travel, but he recalled her measuring the efficiency of travel in units of pleasure per mile.

He shook his head regretfully. “This probably wouldn’t be a good time for me to take a break. Something’s going to happen soon, one way or another.”

The waitress placed coffee on the table in front of them. Ariel added a little milk and sugar to hers, then took a sip before speaking. “Brett, what happens isn’t going to be that Oceania finally comes to understand your perception of the Space Force’s determination. That’s already happened. Some people think you’re mistaken, and others think we should prepare for war, but very few think we can or should offer more concessions.”

Brett held on to his reflexive reply. He wasn’t as convinced of the rightness of his cause as he had been, and he never argued politics with Ariel. Before he could try and change the subject, she struck off in an unexpected direction.

“Brett, I love you. I want you to stay here with me forever. Please defect and become an Oceanian citizen.”

Brett stared into her eyes, for the first time dismayed by the depths in them. To tell her he loved her also seemed too cruel, though it was the truth.

“If there’s any chance of avoiding war, that isn’t it. That would be the ultimate proof I’d been taken over by the overmind, wouldn’t it?”

Her face flushed angrily, and there was a sudden bite to her voice. “Is that what you think?”

Brett shook his head tiredly. “No it isn’t. I’m proud of the Space Force, and I’ve studied their history, and even now this is the only major action in the last hundred years I don’t feel proud of. You wouldn’t have cared for the boy I was before the Space Force got hold of me. Even so, I’d give it all up to be with you if I could.”

Brett could see she was holding back tears, on the border between rage and despair. “So instead you’ll go back to what? Do you have a – a family? I’m sure the Federalist Worlds will be very grateful for your self sacrifice!”

Brett suspected she had been about to ask if he had a wife at home. The question was absurd, since it was not unusual for ships in the Space Force to be away from home for a decade.

He had nothing to hide from her. “I don’t have any family. As for my homeworld and the Federalist Worlds, in public perhaps they will. In private I’ll never be trusted, not just as an officer, but as a citizen. I’ll be lucky if I’m watched by intelligence services instead of locked up for ‘my own protection.’”

For a second Brett wondered if she would hate him now, as much as she had loved him before. Instead she squeezed his hand. “But you still feel you have to go? Oh Brett, I’m sorry.”

They were quiet for awhile. Eventually Ariel bought more coffee. Brett didn’t, but the place was almost empty, so nobody bothered them.

Eventually Ariel broke the silence. “Brett. Maybe my being your teacher while I’m involved with you is a lousy idea, but it’s too late to worry about that now. You’ve absorbed a lot, and I want you to talk about it. Your brain assimilates some things better by putting them into words.”

Brett gave himself a few moments to adjust to the lower emotional temperature. Another customer entered the far end of the diner, but Brett still couldn’t see how it paid for them to stay open at this hour.

Some of his experiences could be discussed only by analogy. Brett had come to think of calling Oceania a ‘collaborative system’ as an analogy. Instead of trying to describe his experiences as a whole, he pulled out a piece almost ready to put into words and shaped it a little more.

He began, “I wasn’t exactly in a dojo. There were a number of practice areas, with some supervision. These were surrounded by tables where people ate and drank and talked and watched. It was a trendy hangout for people in their late teens and early twenties.”

Ariel asked him, “What language did they speak?”

Brett started to reply ‘English,’ and then reconsidered. “This isn’t a real memory, is it? Just some sort of aide for me to convey judo skills to a client.”

Ariel smiled. “You got it. Go on.”

“I was this kid, who might have been named Todd or Ted or something. My thoughts felt funny inside of his spoiled and undisciplined mind. All the fat slowed us down, and threw our balance off as well.

“This wasn’t the first time I – he really, but I was him by then – had paid for martial arts skills. I’d never had to work for the money. They’d done no good. Knowing moves didn’t help someone who hated to practice and exercise, who got tired and bored easily. I rarely pushed myself to the point where it began to hurt.

Today was the first time I realized Sammy, the guy with me, wasn’t really a friend. I wanted to learn something else. I wanted to know what it felt like not to be in awe of someone just a bit less lazy than myself, not to be always afraid – or at least not care so much.”

When Brett stopped speaking, the silence momentarily startled him, along with the knowledge of where he was. Then he said, “It’s not that easy, surely? Nobody would agree to overwrite his brain?”

A moment later he flushed. He knew the technology couldn’t and didn’t work that way. Ethics aside, nobody understood the brain that well, and you had to learn to work the technology at least as much as it learned to work with you.

And … Brett sort of remembered. “He could learn how someone else might think and react. He could choose to act differently, and imagine feeling differently, and try to become another person. It might be just barely easier than doing the same thing without nanotechnology.”

Ariel smiled. “I used to know a woman who rarely wore makeup and was very shy. So self conscious she didn’t even like interacting with people face to face. Not ugly really, just sort of mousy. She trained as a Neuron, and loved interactions where brains could show their mettle without mediocre bodies getting in the way. Little by little she learned there was nothing wrong with her body. It took the guise of her own habits and expectations. The knowledge she wanted consisted of more than a skill or set of skills, but she knew how to do that kind of learning, and had friends linked up. She learned new ways of walking, or dressing, of talking, of smiling and looking at people. Even how to dance.

“The difference was dramatic. Some men were too shy to talk to her at parties, but the ones who weren’t would not have noticed her before. She was pretty pleased with the end result, but I’m not sure what you would think if you met her. Did a collective somehow leach away part of her soul?”

The subject of her story was obviously Ariel herself. Indignant at being constantly tested, Brett raised his eyebrows and replied innocently, “Was it worth it? Did she end up prettier than you?”

She leaned across the table and gave his shoulder an open handed punch.

Brett shook his head sadly. “Beating your students? I thought that went out with the dark ages.”

He paused a moment, let the mood grow serious once again. “This is fascinating stuff, but after coming so far I’m starting to wonder what it feels like to be part of a unified consciousness.”

Ariel smiled at him. “You’re getting there. The day after tomorrow will be your first full four hour session, and your first time as part of a large scale project. Don’t worry, I’ll be with you.”

He replied, “Uhmm, you’ve been with me almost all the time I’ve been learning, and I appreciate it. So I take it you’ve been taking time off from the stuff you usually do?”

She shook her head. “I can’t, really. You of all people know, this is a critical time right now.”

Alarm bells were going off. “How many hours have you totaled the week? Spoken with Muriel lately?”

Ariel squeezed his fingers, which had been about to pick up a coffee cup. “You’re sweet to worry, but she couldn’t stop me even if I did. Neither can you. This is my job. Promise you won’t worry her, since it won’t help?”

The hell he couldn’t stop her – at least from working with him so much. He said aloud, “I promise.”

That promise he would keep, since that wasn’t his plan anyhow.