The False Mirror

by Alan Dean Foster

  "This picture here, for example." The Hivistahm removed a compact indicator from a vest pocket and used it to highlight portions of the image. "Do you see these points . . . here, here, and here?" The indicator shifted precisely as he spoke.

  Ranji squinted, unimpressed. "What about them? Am I supposed to volunteer identification? They could be bits of bone, or blood vessels. You're the surgeon, not I. If you're offering me lessons on my own physiology, I don't need any."

  "Truly that to be seen remains." The indicator moved anew. "These are grafting points." Wide slitted eyes gazed up at him, both eyelids drawn back. "You no comment have?"

  Ranji blinked at the image, trying to make sense of what the Hivistahm was saying. What was the object of all this, anyway? Why were there so many of them in the room, and why were they all watching him so closely? What did it matter if such things were inside his head, or anywhere else in his body?

  "No, I don't have any comment." He tapped the plastic. "This means nothing to me. Should it?"

  "It should indeed." The surgeon removed another of the sheets. "That the right side of your skull was. This the left is. On this one you will see three additional points. Note that as to location they are to the previous three identical. It is thought that this work very early was carried out."

  "Still means nothing to me." Ranji was cautiously indifferent. "Does it mean something to you?"

  "Truly. It tells me that the prominent bony ridges which just beneath each of your eyes begin and over your ears and into the back of your skull run are not natural, but rather the result of prenatal osteoplasty."

  Ranji started to reply, hesitated, instead said slowly, "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "Permit me." First-of-Surgery strained on the toes of his sandals to reach the right side of Ranji's face. With a clawed finger he delicately traced the prominent bony line which dominated each side of the prisoner's skull.

  "These are to you not natural. They are of surgery and implants the result. Your skin was similarly modified to allow for the additional unnatural projections. The same sort of modification has to your occipital orbits, ears, and fingers been done. Everything carried out was before you were born, before your bones time to set had.

  "To insure that such work 'takes' without interfering with the natural process of bone maturation and fusion requires skills we do not possess. Only one species at bioengineering so clever is." He replaced the current sheet with a new one.

  "See here, your hands. Again the grafting points." Ranji stared without comprehending.

  "But ... if any of what you say is true, why?"

  The Hivistahm's teeth clicked softly. "To give you the appearance of an Ashregan. If one backward works to delete these points and their projected effects, the result is a quite different skeleton." He hesitated and took a step away from the prisoner. "Truly truly what one has is not a mutant Ashregan, but a normal Human."

  Ranji snorted derisively. "That's crazy."

  First-of-Surgery slipped the pictures back into their protective envelope. "The rest of your body-your muscular structure, density, organ placement and function, sensitivity of sense, everything-comfortably within Human-normal parameters sits. You grade out high-end Homo sapiens, not off-the-scale Ashregan. You are as Human as the three others in this room."

  The prisoner's gaze darted reflexively to the Ashregan-fluent woman and her squat male associate. They stared evenly back at him.

  "This is more than aberrant; it's insane. No, it's more subtle than that. You're all trying to trick me. You've got some ulterior purpose in mind and in order to carry it through you need to confuse and trick me. You might as well forget it. I'm not so easily fooled."

  "Perhaps not," said the short Human, "but you're not stupid, either. You scored as high in intelligence as you did in everything else. Environmental factors aside, scanner tridis aside, can't you tell just by looking at yourself that you're more Human than Ashregan?" His companion took up the refrain.

  "No Ashregan ever grew bones as dense as yours, or had such median muscular strength. No Ashregan ever had your reflexes or striking ability." The emphasis on the elements of the ruse he expected and was prepared for, but not the imploring tone in her voice.

  Still he remained perfectly composed. "I concede that I may have been slightly altered to give me certain specific Human fighting characteristics and abilities. That conclusion's inevitable and I no longer try to deny it." Comments in different tongues filled the room. "Nor does it trouble me. Obviously such information needs to be withheld from children and young adults since they are not sufficiently mature to cope with it. Whereas as an adult I can understand what was done and why. So what if maybe I've been physically enhanced in order to better serve the Purpose? I see nothing sinister in that."

  "Truly it no wonder is how confused you are," First-of-Surgery said. "You still do not see."

  "See what?" Ranji snapped impatiently. He'd had about enough of this nonsense.

  "That you are not an Ashregan to whom Human characteristics given have been, but a Human into whom Ashregan features have been engineered. We have your genome pattern scanned and found the alterations which will enable you to pass on these features to your offspring. They into your genes have been induced. The Amplitur the long view take.

  "To the Amplitur you are a warrior only second, Ranji-aar, and breeding material first."

  10

  He waited until he was sure he was still in complete control of himself before responding. "If everything you claim is true, then how do you explain my parents? My memories, my homeworld? The Houcilat outrage?"

  "We've been doing some research, using as a starting point some of the things you've told us." The woman's manner was far more soothing than anything Ranji would ever have associated with a Human. "You and the friends you have spoken of are indeed the survivors of a massacre of civilians."

  "Ah," Ranji said.

  The woman continued. "There was a colony. Not Houcilat. A world whose name is now synonymous with mindless destruction. It was utterly obliterated a number of years ago by an unsupervised, unanticipated Crigolit attack. Just the right number of years ago, in fact, to place you and your age-group companions there as fetuses,

  "Whole regions were incinerated. It was the only time within modern memory that weapons of mass destruction have been utilized on a planetary surface. The Crigolit commanders who directed the attack were severely disciplined by their own superiors and by the Arnplitur. Based on what we have learned from you we have come to believe that this did not prevent the Amplitur, ever pragmatic, from seeing the possibilities inherent in the situation.

  "At the time it was thought that no one could have survived. The majority of bodies were incinerated, carbonized. An accurate count of the dead could not be made. Therefore it was not possible for those who came after to say whether or not any children, men, women, or-" Her voice broke for the barest instant. "-pregnant women had been taken prisoner. Considering the unprecedented scope of destruction it was presumed not. Your presence vitiates a reappraisal." She tried to go on, couldn't, and left it to her colleague to continue.

  "You were taken by the Amplitur, not rescued," the man said curtly. "Of course you have no memory of it. The abductions were carried out prior to your birth."

  "Many images of the devastation are available for scholarly study." The elderly Massood spoke for the first time. "The world in question is there for all to see, a barren testimonial to war without rules."

  "My parents." Ranji was mumbling. More than his self-assurance was under assault now. The walls of himself were under attack, and he was frightened, terrified because he could feel them crumbling.

  Too much. Too much to listen to at once, to try and absorb and dissect and analyze. Too much to think about. Pictures and words, stories and facts. Invention, invention! They were trying to drive him mad.

  The woman was remorselessly gentle. "As soon as you were born you must have been taken from your natura
l mother and placed with foster Ashregan parents. The same would be true for your brother." She paused. "We suspect that the much younger sister of whom you have spoken is the result of in vitro fertilization and subsequent implantation. With sufficient medical support an Ashregan womb will support a Human fetus. Such action would contribute to familial verisimilitude. The Amplitur are careful about details."

  None of it could be true, he told himself numbly. Not a word of it. Because if it were so then it meant that his real parents were dead, extinguished by the Amplitur as soon as their usefulness had come to an end. It meant that the two individuals on Cossuut he had all his life called mother and father were ao more than Amplitur agents who had dedicated their lives to perpetuating a monstrous fraud on innocent children. It meant that all his hard work, everything he had devoted his life to preserving and fighting for, was no more than sham and shadow in the service of monstrous eugenics.

  "Deception." He was muttering under his breath now. "Tricks and lies. You're trying to convince me I'm something I'm not."

  Abruptly the eviscerating uncertainty vanished. Once again he was composed and relaxed. The fear that possibly they were right, that everything he was and had stood for all his life was a lie, simply evaporated under the cool glare of knowledge.

  "If I am not Ashregan but Human," he inquired triumphantly of them all but the two Humans in particular, "how is it that I can have mind contact with the Amplitur without the Human neurocerebral defensive mechanism engaging? I've experienced this without any harm coining to either myself or the Teachers involved. No Human could do the same, even if they so desired."

  First-of-Surgery consulted with a cluster of O'o'yan and other Hivistahm. Removing a sheet from the envelope of lies, the elderly surgeon approached the prisoner for the second time.

  "Remember this picture?"

  Ranji glanced haughtily at the plastic. "Maybe."

  "I again call your attention to the small area in red highlighted. This a much deeper scan is than any of the others. It shows a tiny portion of the interior of the right side of your cerebral cortex."

  "If you say so," he replied indifferently. "What's this one supposed to be? Another graft? Another trick?"

  The Hivistahm's teeth ground against one another as he slowly explained. "The red-enhanced portion the location signifies of a minute ganglionic complex. A nodule, a collection of nerve endings and connections. It took quite a while to find and was not at first noticed. Once it was identified a great deal of our time it occupied." The sheet rustled slightly in his fingers.

  "The Human brain no such formation contains."

  Ranji smiled. "You see? That only proves what I've been saying all along."

  The short Human scratched at an ear. "There is also no such nodule present in the Ashregan brain."

  Ranji involuntarily found himself eyeing the picture again. There it was: a fuzzy blot of indeterminate size and indistinct outline. Reason enough to concede one's sanity?

  First-of-Surgery handed him another picture. "Here still another view is. The magnification is greater."

  The blot resolved itself into a tight cluster of cells from which tiny filaments extended in many directions. It looked like any creature one might observe through a microscope.

  "And still greater magnification."

  The third picture revealed the filaments and cells in detail. No biologist, he was incapable of identifying any of it. Except . . .

  He pointed. "What's that?"

  First-of-Surgery forced himself to lean close. "A nanoneural weld. A place where nerve endings artificially joined have been." The slit-eyed, scaly reptilian face stared up at him.

  "Your body no code contains for such a complex. It was built and then in your mind installed. As one would accessorize any rare precision instrument. It in a portion of your brain reposes which Human scientists have designated as unused. I should prefer to say hitherto dormant.

  "Research leads us to believe that this is the region of the Human mind which holds the key to Homo sapiens's ability to resist Amplitur mind-probes and suggestions. It therefore follows logically that this unique addition to your cerebral structure was by Amplitur nanobioengineers there emplaced in order susceptible to their mental manipulation to render you. It a bridge appears to be. A neural bypass, if you will. As artificial and unnatural as the bony ridges above your ears."

  "Not only are they breeding Ashregan-looking Humans to fight for them," said the woman softly, "if they can get you and your friends to mate with Human captives or others, they can breed out of the species the neurocerebral mechanism that enables humankind to resist their mind-probes. That has to be their eventual aim."

  "First-of-Surgery told you they take the long view," her companion huffed.

  Ranji stared blankly at them. A psychosomatic throbbing started near the back of his skull, where the minuscule nodule supposedly reposed.

  "I don't believe you," he finally managed to mutter hoarsely. "If this thing is for real, then it's something all my people possess. All Ashregan people. You're trying to make me paranoid by showing me some obscure, harmless growth or faked imagery. Well, it won't work. You're crazy if you think I'm going to be taken in by something so obvious."

  "The nodule is to you unique." First-of-Surgery was quietly insistent. "It is real, it is not found in Humans, it is not found in Ashregan. Only you."

  "This is a wicked thing," the elderly Massood whispered. "Barbarous. Uncivilized."

  "Like war itself." The short Human scanned the roomful of allies. "Mankind is just the only species that readily accepts the fact, is all. That's why this discovery only surprises but does not shock us."

  "Indubitably." The Massood's comment was a peculiar melange of distaste and admiration.

  "Lies, clever lies." Ranji glared defiantly at the two Humans. "They won't help you. Did you really think you'd be able to convince me of such a sweeping hypothesis on the basis of such paltry evidence? This," and he shook the plastic sheet violently, "is nothing!" He whirled and flung it as far as he could. It sailed through the air.

  In the split second that every eye in the room turned to follow the picture's progress Ranji was out of his seat and moving. First-of-Surgery went flying as a powerful forearm brushed him aside.

  With no one else standing in his way Ranji was at the door before the two guards could react. The larger of the two caught a brace of stiffened fingers square in his throat. He gagged and went down as heavily as if he'd taken a slug to the chest. His companion was trying to backpedal and aim his gun when the prisoner's spinning heel caught him across the side of the face, sending blood and teeth flying.

  Ranji roared up the corridor, legs and lungs functioning smoothly in tandem. If he could just reach the surface . . . He was counting on his specimen value to preserve him from destruction, betting that the order was out to shoot only to stun.

  Turning a comer brought him face-to-face with a single Wais. The ornithorp was seated behind a high metal desk in the center of a floor inlaid with speckled stone. Walls of glass revealed the underground parking area he remembered from his arrival many months earlier. Few vehicles were in evidence. More importantly, the external door was open. Beyond lay blue sky, clouds, and fringing vegetation.

  Turning, the Wais started to speak, recognized him for who he was, and froze. Ranji was racing past the desk and halfway to the exit when his right leg went numb from the knee down.

  He kept moving, dragging the paralyzed limb, lurching desperately forward. A glance over his shoulder showed a pair of Humans firing as they came up the corridor. He ignored them and concentrated on the egress. If he could just make it outside he might be able to appropriate a vehicle and get clear before they shut the tunnel on him. The paralysis would wear off soon enough. He tried to will himself to limp faster, to run on one good leg; to levitate.

  Something shocked his left thigh and he fell forward onto the smooth stone floor. The Wais at the desk had yet to move. A pair of Hivistahm techn
icians hesitated in the doorway, staring blankly at his prone form, clicking their teeth at one another with soft reptilian eloquence.

  Ranji began pulling himself hand over hand, struggling to get a purchase with his fingers on the slick tiles. Out of the corner of an eye a pair of legs appeared, effortlessly paralleling him. Turning to look up, he recognized the guard he'd jabbed in the throat. The man's expression as he drew back his leg was more than simply hostile.

  Despite the throbbing in his legs Ranji smiled up at him. "You see, I would never contemplate doing what you're about to do, but that's because I'm not anything like you. I may be a soldier, but I'm also civilized Ashregan. Whereas you are only Human."

  The guard hesitated, then slowly let his foot drop to the floor. He stood close, keeping the rifle he carried pointed at the back of the prisoner's skull. Muttering nervously to themselves, the pair of confronted Hivistahm entered in haste, scurrying across the floor to disappear down another corridor.

  A resigned sigh escaped Ranji as he gazed longingly at the vacant portal. "Almost made it. I should have hit you harder."

  The guard rubbed his neck. "Wouldn't have mattered. They would've caught you before you'd gone far." He glanced back the way he'd come. Other guards were moving to seal the exit and block off the far corridor. Shaky but now mobile, the Wais was frantically filling her headset unit with declamations in several languages.

  Some of the scientists and research specialists from the conference room had arrived. Bunched up behind the guards, they were murmuring and pointing in Ranji's direction, worried lest their precious specimen suffer further damage.

  "You know," the burly Human standing over Ranji informed him conversationally, "I want to kick you really bad. A good, hard, uncivilized shot right to the kidneys. Assuming you've got kidneys. If the brainoids are right, yours are just like mine. Waited too long, though. Too many witnesses now."

  Ranji pushed himself into a seated position, leaning back on his palms. He regarded the Human as one would a particularly nasty carnivore recently collected from a hostile, uninhabited world.