Finally, Theowane shrugs. “It’s clear,” she says. “No one’s been messing with his mind. He has no special training. He hasn’t been brainwashed.”
“I could have saved you trouble if you had just listened to me in the first place.”
Amu claps a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I’ll let you know when I’ve thought of a suitable way for Theowane to apologize.”
When the survivor of the PEACE ship comes through with Theowane and Amu, I receive the unmistakable impression of tourist and tourguides. No, that is not quite correct . . . more like a visiting dignitary being shown points of interest.
Inside the forcewalls I watch them. True, I have a million different eyes around Bastille, optics to observe through, from monitoring cameras around the corridors, to the remote sensors of automatic digging machines. But my real eyes are here.
Purposely, I think, Amu ignores me as he brings the boy down the corridor. He points to the auxiliary control systems, explaining them with deceptive ease, making them sound simpler than they are. The three keep their backs pointedly turned and walk to the viewing window, outside of which the diggers continue their relentless excavations. The sky swirls with dark, oily colors over the hostile sea.
“It’s going to be generations before anybody can bask under the Bastille sun, but at least it is now ours,” Amu says, then lowers his voice. “And we aren’t going to give it back when this world becomes habitable.”
“Is it going to be worth the wait?” the boy asks, pushing his face close to the thick glass. I flick my concentration to one of the digger machines outside, looking through a different set of eyes, but the coarse optics and the glass distort the boy’s face through the window.
Amu shrugs and rubs a hand on his silvery beard. “Theowane spends hours down here staring out the window. Actually, I think she just likes to taunt the Warden.”
Finally, they turn toward me. I am too familiar with Theowane’s close-cropped reddish hair and her narrow, hard eyes. Amu carries much more capacity within him—an extraordinary person, with charisma and intelligence and compassion that allows him to do virtually anything he wants to. But he has chosen a path that society deems unacceptable.
The boy is the last to turn away from the sprawling view. He looks at me directly. I see him.
I know him.
He has counted on me recognizing him.
Instantly, I flash through a handful of buried newsclips, quick photographs shaded by the promise of anonymity, but it is enough. It augments my suspicions. I can remember few details of the person on whom I myself have been based, but some things are impossible to erase.
I remember.
I wonder what he is up to. Why is he here, and what am I supposed to do about it?
The three visitors say no word to me as they continue their tour. I am left with the absolute conviction that the fate of Bastille, and perhaps the Praesidentrix’s Federation, depends upon me recognizing this boy, understanding what he wants, and acting accordingly.
I can no longer avoid the risk to myself. I must save my son.
Amu sits across from Dybathia for another meal. The boy fascinates him. He reminds Amu of himself as a young boy, or what Amu wanted to be—scrappy, irreverent, and intelligent.
Amu serves the two plates himself. Prisoners in the kitchen have prepared a tough pancake-like dish from cultured algae and protein synthesizers. They are trying to develop a pseudo-steak, but they are several years from perfecting it. No matter. Amu is used to it and it is, after all, nutritious. What more can they ask for, with their limited supplies?
“It’s tough. You might need to use your knife to cut it,” he says. Dybathia frowns at the crude knife in his hand, but Amu continues. “It is easy to get mush from the hydroponics tunnels, but we keep striving for something with a firm texture. It’s only been in the last month or two that we’ve been able to have something tough enough to cut.”
Dybathia works at the food on his plate. “I was looking at the knife.” The blunt instrument is barely serviceable.
Amu smiles; it is the “winning” smile he uses when making converts to his various causes. “A holdover from prison life.”
“That was long ago,” Dybathia says.
“Yes, and things have changed now.”
Dybathia lifts an eyebrow.
“We’re here alone, with no non-prisoners for us to worry about. Knives are no longer any threat. And the Warden is nicely contained. But we like to remember what we are and where we are. We manufacture these knives, and they serve the purpose.” Amu lowers his voice. “Maybe if the meat gets a little more meat-like, we’ll need better ones.”
Amu looks across the table at Dybathia. The boy seems fascinated with everything about Bastille, and Amu waits for him to ask the obvious question. But over several days it has not been forthcoming. Finally Amu breaks down and answers it anyway. “I grew up on New Kansas and left my parents, and their religious sect—” he burns inside, thinking of the PEACE converts.
Dybathia smiles. Amu dims the lights, bathing the room in a softer glow. It is storytime.
“New Kansas was a young planet, the soil somewhat unstable. We had planted grassland across entire continents. Wheat, alfalfa and prairie grass, with some used as rangeland for imported animals. But three-quarters of what we grew, the landholders exported offplanet. They were a handful of people who had financed the first colony ships and therefore claimed to own all of New Kansas. We were forbidden to leave our holdings.
“But I had learned how to whip my followers into a frenzy of religious devotion. We fought for our freedom. The colonists had come to New Kansas to start a fresh life. They felt that the Federation owed them at least a chance at autonomy. I knew how to galvanize them.
“They burned their fields. The fires swept across the plains for dozens of kilometers, pouring smoke into the sky that you could see from landholding to landholding. The others rose up.”
Amu speaks with a sense of wonder, paying little attention to the boy. “My people were ready to die for me. Can you imagine that? Holding people so much in the palm of your hand—” Amu extends his fist across the table, opening it so that Dybathia can see the callouses from his hard life—“they were ready to die for me. And we almost succeeded.”
Amu lowers his eyes and pushes his plate away from him. “Almost.”
“I’ve had enough,” Dybathia says. He has eaten most of his pseudo-steak, but Amu stares at the wall, seeing in his memories the visions of burning grass and the bodies of his followers after the landholders had called in Federation reinforcements.
He doesn’t notice as Dybathia stands and slips toward the door. “I’m going to sleep,” the boy says. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
Amu nods and blinks his eyes. But they are filled with water and sting as if from smoke.
Theowane enters the control center alone. She moves with precise steps, as if stalking. She wants to know what is going on. She will catch the Warden. She will get the information together, and then she will take it to Amu.
The holographic Warden looks at her from his glass-walled cage. His expression remains dubious, fearful, with a layer of contempt. Theowane says nothing as she casually walks over to the panorama window. She gazes across the blasted ground. Though the diggers continue to reform the landscape, she never sees any actual improvement.
Theowane stares for a few moments longer, then turns to meet the Warden’s eyes. “You pride yourself so much in having human emotions and human reactions, Warden, but you’re naive. You don’t know how to hide things from other people. I can read your reactions as clearly as if they were spelled out on a screen.”
The Warden blinks at her. “I do not understand.”
“I caught you yesterday.”
He extends his hands forward until the image fuzzes near the edge of the forcewalls. “What do you mean?”
“The boy,” Theowane says. “You recognized him. It was painfully obvious. You know who he
is. You know why he’s here —and it isn’t because of that crazy story he told us. Explain it to me now.”
The Warden hesitates a moment, then hardens his face into a stoic mask. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”
Theowane raises her eyebrows. She reaches out and caresses the control panel. “I can turn the worm loose and delete you.” That doesn’t seem to frighten the Warden; she has used the same threat too many times before.
“Then you will lose whatever information you imagine I have.”
“Perhaps I can find some way to make you feel pain,” she says.
The Warden shrugs. “I am not afraid anymore.”
In all her taunting, Theowane has taught the Warden as much about herself as she has learned from him. He knows exactly how to infuriate her.
“I’ll inform Amu,” she says, trying to regain her composure. “That will stifle whatever plans you are hatching.”
Theowane straightens away from the window and sees the Warden turn his head, flicking his glance to look outside. Sensing something, hearing a muffled sound too close, she whirls around—
The giant automatic digger rears up and plunges through the glass. With its great scooping and digging gears churning, it claws out the poured-stone and insulation, ripping girders and breaching the wall.
Theowane stumbles back, sucking in a breath to scream as the deadly, acid-drenched air of Bastille rushes inside.
“You’re quiet today,” Amu says as he leads the boy down into one of the lower levels. Smells of oil, dirt, and stale air fill the tunnels.
“Introspective,” Dybathia corrects. He thinks that word will better disarm Amu. He has not thought his silence and uneasiness would be so noticeable, but then he remembers that Amu is a master at studying other people.
“Ah, introspective is it?” Amu’s lips curl in amusement.
“I have been through a lot in the last few days.”
Amu accepts this and continues leading him down to where the corridors widen into larger chambers hewn from the rock. Amu spends hours showing him distillation ponds that remove the alkaloid poisons from the seawater. Like a proud father, Amu demonstrates the rows of plants growing under garish artificial sunlight, piped in and intensified through optical-fiber arrays stretching through the rock to surface collectors.
Other prisoners work at their tasks and seem to move more quickly when Amu watches them. Dybathia wonders how they can consider this to be so different from working under another kind of master.
Amu continues to talk about his grand vision, how they have made their colony self-sufficient. It has been difficult at first without supply ships from the Federation, but they have overcome those obstacles and now have everything they did before—except their prison.
Then Amu speaks in a dreamier voice, explaining about the terraforming activities, how he has switched the diggers to mining materials useful for their own survival, rather than supplying ubermindist offplanet. The floater harvesters are spreading algae and Earth plankton that have been tailored to Bastille’s environment. They are resculpting the atmosphere of the planet, making it a place where humans will one day be able to walk outside and in peace. Amu’s long-term goals and his naive sense of wonder disgust Dybathia, but he keeps his feelings hidden. The boy will know when the time has come.
Amu says something he thinks is funny. Dybathia isn’t paying attention, but automatically snorts in response. Amu nods, approvingly.
When alarm klaxons belch out and echo in the tunnel, the noise startles Dybathia, even though he has been expecting it.
My life-preservation overrides force me to close the airlock on the other end of the corridor to keep Bastille air from penetrating farther into the complex. I do not resist the impulse. I know it will trap Theowane inside.
She sprawls on the floor, trying to crawl forward. The floor is smooth and slippery, and she cannot get enough purchase to move herself. Her eyes are wide with horror. Her lips turn brown, then purplish as she gasps, and the sulfuric acid eats out her lungs. I force myself to watch, for all the times she has watched me.
The digging machine, sensing that it has been led astray, stops clawing and churning, then uses its scanners to reorient itself. The big vehicle clanks and drops clods of dirt and shattered rock as it backs outside.
Theowane croaks words. “Open—open door!”
“Sorry, Theowane. That would endanger the colony.”
Before, I was afraid of the worm, which forbade me to do anything against Theowane and the other prisoners. But the worm, though deadly, is not intuitive and is unable to extrapolate the consequences of my actions. I will take the risk, for my son. I can do much damage, while doing nothing overt.
I have used an old sensor-loop taken from the archives of the digging machines’ daily logs. Broadcasting this sensor-loop along with an override signal to one nearby digger, I made the machine think it saw a different landscape, where the route of choice led it directly through the viewing window.
The chamber has filled with Bastille’s air, and I begin to see static discharges as the corrosive atmosphere eats into the microchips, the layers that form the computer’s brain, my Simulated Personality—and the worm.
But the auxiliary computer core lies deep and unreachable below the lower levels. Bastille’s acid atmosphere will destroy the main system here, where the worm has been added, but within a fraction of a second my own backup in the auxiliary computer will kick in. I should lose consciousness for only an instant before I am recreated.
My only wonder is whether the other Me will be me after all, or only a Simulated Personality that thinks it is.
Theowane lies dead but twitching on the floor, sprawled out in front of me. Blotches cover her skin. It is difficult for me to see anything now, with the images growing distorted and fuzzy, breaking up. I feel no pain, only a sense of displacement.
In the last moment, even the forcewalls seem to be gone. I have conquered the worm.
Dybathia watches Amu closely as the alarms sound. The leader stiffens and looks around. The other prisoners run to stations. Amu claps his hands and bellows orders at them. His face looks concerned: he doesn’t understand what is happening.
Dybathia gives him no time to understand.
Amu bends down to him. “We’ve got to get you to a safe place. I don’t know what’s going on—”
In that moment, Dybathia brings up the prison knife taken from Amu’s table, pushing all the wiry strength of his body behind it. He drives the dull point under Amu’s chin, tilting it sideways, and slashes across his throat. He has only one chance. He has no special training. Only his heritage.
Blood sprays out. Amu grunts, falling to his knees and backward. Scarlet spatters the silver of his beard, and the whites of his eyes grow red from burst capillaries. He reaches out with a hand, but Dybathia dances back, holding the dripping knife in his hand.
Amu’s expression is complete shock shadowed with pain and confusion. He tries to talk, but only gurgles come out.
Dybathia kneels and hisses. “How? Is that what you’re trying to say? How? Are you amazed because your psyche assessor detected no brainwashing? You forgot to consider that maybe I wasn’t brainwashed, that maybe I wanted to do this because I hate you so much. I am free to act. I have no special training.”
The light fades behind Amu’s eyes, but the confusion seems as great. Dybathia continues. “My father was a great man, an important man—a fleet commander. He became an ubermindist addict, and that was a great secret. Does that mean I am not supposed to love him? That I wasn’t supposed to try to help him? Do you know what happens when an ubermindist addict is cut off from his supply?”
Dybathia kneels beside the dying man to make sure his words come clear. “The withdrawal fried my father’s nerves. He lost all muscle control. He went into a constant seizure for eight days—his mind took that long to burn out. He went blind from the hemorrhages. His body was snapped and broken by his own convulsions. You caused
that, Amu. You did that to him, and now I did this to you. My choice. My revenge.”
But Amu is already dead. Dybathia does not know how much he understood at the last. The only sound Dybathia hears is his own breathing, a monotonous wheeze that fills his ears. The boy stands without moving as several other prisoners shout and come running toward him.
Inside her office, the Praesidentrix has chosen a honey-colored sky with a brilliant white sun overhead. She finds it soothing. For the first time in ages, she feels like smiling.
The First Secretary stands at the doorway, interrupting her reverie. “You asked to see me, Madame?”
She turns to him. For a moment he wears a fearful expression, as if he thinks she has caught him at something. She nods to make him feel at ease. “I’ve just received word from the Warden on Bastille. We have two gunships in orbit and all prisoners are now subdued. Amu and Theowane are both dead.”
The First Secretary takes a step backward in astonishment. He looks for someplace to sit down, but the Praesidentrix has no other chairs in her office. “But how?” He raises his voice. “How!”
“I placed an operative on Bastille. A . . . young man.”
“An operative? But I thought Amu had equipment to detect any training alterations.”
The Praesidentrix pulls her lips tight. “The young man’s father died from ubermindist withdrawal after the prison takeover. I believed he had sufficient motivation to kill Amu. He was free to act.”
The First Secretary sputters and keeps looking for a place to sit. “But how did you know? What did you do?”
“He acted as a catalyst to spur the Warden into taking a more drastic action than he was likely to take on his own, with nothing else at stake. Remember, we built the Warden’s Artificial Personality. I knew exactly how he would react to certain pressures.” She waves a hand, anxious to get rid of the First Secretary so she can use the subspace radio again. “I just thought you’d like to know. You’re dismissed.”
He stumbles backward, unable to find words. He stops and turns back to the Praesidentrix, but she closes the door on him. The subspace projection chimes, announcing an incoming transmission. She sighs with a pride and contentedness she has not felt in quite some time. He has called her even before she could contact him.
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