The Damned Trilogy

by Alan Dean Foster

First-of-Surgery senior looked on intently as the sonic scalpel hummed softly for a split second. One needle shifted its position infinitesimally on the surface of the dish. Each time the needle moved and hummed a single neuron within Ranji’s brain was severed.

  “All that can be done has been done. Scanning was rescanned, computer-enhanced, and scanned afresh. No other ‘traps’ were found.”

  “Amplitur nanobioengineering is infernally subtle.”

  “Truly. But science it only is, not magic.” A click of sharp teeth emphasized the point.

  Monitors scattered throughout the Surgery displayed rock-steady images of the operation as it progressed. They could clearly see the ganglionic complex, the flow of blood through a nearby cerebral capillary, the neurons which connected the nodule to the rest of the patient’s brain. One by one they were neatly severed with impossibly brief, precisely applied bursts of high-frequency sound, progressively isolating the nodule with the intent of rendering it as harmless as a benign tumor.

  “I’ve heard,” the tall Human murmured as his attention shifted from monitor to subject and back again, “that there are some on the staff who wouldn’t be particularly distressed if during the course of the operation this patient happened to die. This Ranji-aar’s no monster. He’s a normal Human who had his birthright stolen from him before he was born.”

  “I have his genome map seen. You do not me need to convince,” replied First-of-Surgery.

  “Sorry.” To his surprise the man found he had bitten his lower lip. He’d never done that before, but then this was no ordinary surgery. There was more than one life at stake here. All of the subject’s friends were also potential candidates for cutting. Though if they failed to restore this first one …

  He knew that if he lived to be two hundred he could never hope to match the supernal precision of the medical computer or the programming skill of the Hivistahm, but something within him still made his fingers twitch slightly, as if he and not binary impulses were manipulating the instruments.

  First-of-Surgery interrupted his thoughts. “I know of those of whom you speak. They believe that this individual and all like it should on sight be killed. They the interbreeding and contamination fear which could to Amplitur subjugation of the Human species lead.

  “They do not individual salvations consider. As physicians we differently think.”

  Not to mention how much you can learn from him so long as he lives, the Human surgeon mused. Though he could not condemn the Hivistahm. Not when he felt the same way.

  Except for the barely audible, methodical sparking of the scalpel and the click of other instruments the Surgery was as quiet as a tomb. Above the patient nothing moved save the scalpel’s angustipunctal needle.

  Only when the gleaming dish rose and withdrew, its programming completed, was the air filled with general conversation in several tongues and the febrile hum of busy translators. The scanners showed the nodule clearly, isolated and no longer connected to the rest of the patient’s brain. Even so, it was far too soon for shouts and hisses of triumph. Apparent success required medical confirmation.

  The attending physicians crowded around the various technical stations, anxiously scanning readouts and eyeing monitors. The patient’s cerebrum did not explode. No armies of ravening cells were released from the nodule to destroy his brain. Circulation, respiration, wave functions, and all relevant vital signs read normal. There was no internal bleeding. First-of-Surgery allowed himself to gnash his teeth hopefully.

  To the Human physician hardly any time seemed to have elapsed since actual surgery had commenced. He left the monitor he’d been studying to rejoin First-of-Surgery.

  “That should do it. When he wakes up he won’t be any different from before, except that for the rest of his life he’ll carry a minuscule knot of useless cells around in his brain, and any Amplitur that tries to give him ‘suggestions’ will be in for a big surprise. Assuming that the operation has restored his nervous system’s natural defensive mechanism, of course.”

  “It enough is that he can no longer be subject to their mental whims,” said First-of-Surgery decisively. “That the principal intent of the operation was. If the Human defense also restored is, that is a bonus to him.” First-of-Surgery looked thoughtful. “I also believe the knowledge can and should from the general Weave population be withheld.”

  Conversing in low tones, the two physicians left the Surgery, together with the rest of the staff which had supervised the sensitive operation. Their patient remained behind. A second surgical team had entered and was busying itself with checkouts of fresh programming and different instrumentation.

  The sonic scalpel had withdrawn into the ceiling. Its position above the recumbent form was now taken by different instruments riding on slightly larger supportive arms. While the nature of the initial procedure had been far more sensitive, the second was to prove messier, for the newly arrived team planned to remove the excess bone from the patient’s cheeks, rebuild his ears, shorten his fingers, and restore additional bone around his unnaturally wide occipital orbits.

  It was their intention to render the patient as Human externally as the first team had made him within.

  It did not matter that there were no Humans among them. Hivistahm and O’o’yan physicians knew the physiology of Homo sapiens inside and out, having spent much of their careers repairing injured Human soldiers. Artists as much as surgeons, they were completely confident that when the protective wraps were finally removed the patient would resemble anything but a member of a hostile species.

  The Human surgeon who’d been present would have preferred to have remained to see that day, but knew how unlikely it was. His presence was required in combat. Few Humans chose anymore to enter professions at which other species excelled. This made the value of those who did so that much greater. The surgeon understood the situation completely. It was both simpler and more gratifying to specialize in what a Human did best.

  Killing.

  XII

  Funny thing about mirrors. Like individual thoughts, they can’t be avoided forever. After some time had passed, Heida Trondheim came to see him. She talked, and he listened. There was an exchange of inconsequentialities punctuated by long silences. Then she left.

  Ranji’s next visitor was a lanky Human male, slightly shorter, slightly older than himself, a little lighter in color. Not a mirror image, but close.

  That’s when Ranji allowed himself to cry, not much caring whether they happened to be Human or Ashregan tears. It was a strain on his surgically altered eyes, but he ignored the discomfort. The young man, puzzled, returned the room to Trondheim.

  Ranji still had to use a translator to talk to her. He might look Human, might be Human, but his speech remained that of another species. She was very patient with him.

  “Appearances,” he mumbled. “Just appearances. Why?”

  “Because you should look like what you are,” she replied straightforwardly.

  He tilted his head back to stare at the recovery-room ceiling. “I admit that visually the change is striking, but that doesn’t mean I accept it intellectually.”

  “You’ve been more thoroughly analyzed and appraised than any single Human being in recent history. While Humans and Ashregan look a lot alike, subtle chemical and physical differences remain. The Amplitur missed some of those. They didn’t alter everything. You’re definitely Human. As Human as I am.”

  He looked back at her. “Why doesn’t that possibility fill me with glee?”

  Their conversation was interrupted by the opening of the single door. First-of-Surgery entered, resplendent in dress vest and shorts. Even for one so cosmopolitan it took an effort of will to enter a room occupied solely by Humans, but he concealed his unease gracefully.

  Ranji was shown reams of charts and figures (which could have been faked) and dozens of three-dimensional pictures (likewise fakable). The senior Hivistahm was very persuasive, but not completely convincing. Numbers and words were feeb
le levers with which to try and topple a person’s entire life. The brief visit of the young Human who had so closely resembled him had carried more weight than all their statistics.

  Though unprepared to acquiesce, he confessed a willingness to contemplate possibilities. First-of-Surgery considered it a victory.

  “My head hurts,” Ranji muttered.

  Three claws on the Hivistahm’s right hand snicked together. “As well it might, considering the quantity of excess bone that has from both sides of your skull been removed. A portion was used your occipital orbits to restore to normal Human diameter. For the same reason your appropriately shortened fingers will ache for a while. The discomfort will pass.”

  The disconsolate patient fingered the thin bedsheet. “Why bother? Why go to the trouble?”

  “So that you’ll be comfortable among your own kind,” Trondheim told him. He looked over at her.

  “My kind? Which ‘kind’ is that? You?”

  She didn’t look away. “Yes. Me. It helps to explain … certain things.”

  “There more is.” First-of-Surgery found a suitable seat. “The ganglionic complex the Amplitur emplaced in your cerebrum remains, but all neural connections between it and the rest of your brain severed have been. It can affect you no longer.”

  “I see,” he said quietly. “This means that the Teachers can no longer communicate directly with me?”

  “That is so. We hopeful are also that the operation has restored your Human mind’s ability to against uninvited mental probes defend itself. You from now on against that enemy should secure be.”

  Against the enemy? Who was the enemy and who ally? he thought tiredly. It was too much for a simple soldier’s mind to grasp. Soldier … for whom, and whom against?

  Vast resources had been brought to bear to convince him of his Humanity. Did he continue to resist them from reason … or stubbornness and fear? Had something vital been taken from him … or restored? How would he know? How could he find out?

  Confrontation with a Teacher would answer all his questions, but somehow he doubted any were to be found on Omaphil. Therefore he would have to arrive at conclusions by other means. Of one thing he was certain.

  If everything they’d shown and told him was true, if he was Human and not Ashregan, then his whole life up to this point had been nothing more than an elaborate lie.

  How much did they know, his parents? Mother and father whom he’d respected and honored from the day he’d learned how to speak. Were they no more than innocent recipients of irresistible Amplitur “suggestions”? Or was the nature of their participation more elaborate, more sinister?

  He blinked, conscious of warm pressure on his forearm where Trondheim gripped him gently. “Are you all right, Ranji?” Even his own name sounded unnatural, he thought. She did not have the right accent.

  First-of-Surgery had risen anxiously to stand behind his chair. “You are not again violent going to become, are you?”

  “No. I’m too tired to be violent, even were I so inclined.” Keeping a wary eye on his patient, the surgeon resumed his seat. Ranji directed his words to Trondheim. “While I’ve been listening to everything you’ve been telling me I’ve also been remembering my childhood.”

  “Your Ashregan parents,” she murmured sympathetically. He gestured, then hesitantly added the Human equivalent; a terse nod of affirmation. The movement felt not unnatural.

  “Tools of the Ashregan, willingly or otherwise.” First-of-Surgery was unrelenting.

  Despite his promise Ranji experienced a sudden urge to smash the surgeon’s toothy snout down his throat. A perfectly natural reaction, he told himself. For a Human. The harder his mind tried to convince him that they’d been telling him nothing but lies, the more his body and emotions argued otherwise.

  Trondheim was talking. “It’ll be okay. Everything’ll be all right.”

  “Will it really?” He wondered if the translator was conveying something of his fear and uncertainty along with his words. “I’ve been Ashregan all my life. Now you ask me on the basis of images and figures to suddenly be Human. No matter what happens I’ll always be Ashregan.”

  Surprisingly, she smiled. “You act more Human than you know, Ranji-aar.”

  “I say that this thing you cannot do! Unscientific it is. Against accepted procedure it is. Truly forthrightly dangerous it is!”

  “Dangerous to whom?” The gray-furred Massood towered over the Hivistahm. Though he wore the uniform of a full field commander, his recent duties had been largely administrative in nature.

  The uncommon insignia of the S’van who waited patiently nearby identified him as a scientific advisor to the military with attendant special privileges and qualifications. The Hivistahm found the combination inherently contradictory. First-of-Surgery knew he could not, for example, have sanely combined soldiering and medicine.

  The three sentients stood on a long wide porch that clung like an attenuated bird’s nest to the sheer cliff of black basalt. The dawn did its best to mitigate against unpleasant discussion. It was near the end of the second of Omaphil’s two springtimes, an uncommon seasonal arrangement that was the result of orbital peculiarities. High forest grew right to the base of the cliff, succumbing only in the distance to cultivated fields. On the horizon sunlight diverted by the towers of Oumansa sought oblivion in yellow gleamings.

  A storm was massing behind the distant city, silhouetting it in black weather. Hard to believe, the S’van thought, that on a day like this the civilized inhabitants of Oumansa were a people at war. As were his companions of this bright morning, and all their relations. Out beyond the crisp, unpolluted atmosphere of Omaphil, ships and sentients wheeled and maneuvered for strategic advantage, seeking opportunities to capture and destroy. The S’van tried to work it all into a joke, but just then there was little humor in him.

  A handsbreadth from a sheer dropoff an empty table awaited them. An automated server brought refreshments.

  “Your opinion will be noted but it will not change anything.” The field commander sipped from his peculiar drinking utensil. The Massood were noted for their dedication to the cause and for their fighting abilities. Masters of tact they were not. The S’van hastened to intervene, disdaining the use of his translator in favor of fluent Hivistahm. He could speak Massood as well.

  “I’m sorry, First-of, but the commander is right. The decision has already been made, at Military Council level. Even if we wanted to, there’s nothing we can do about it.”

  “This is not a decision for the Military Council to make.” The surgeon was livid, which in a Hivistahm generated interesting color changes in the scales which covered the head. Teeth clicking in agitation, he settled into one of the self-adjusting chairs. Among his people brooding had been raised to the level of fine art.

  Deep within the wiry mass of black beard the S’van’s lips worked soothingly. “I realize that your staff here still has preliminary studies they would like to complete.”

  “Complete? Preliminary?” The Hivistahm ignored his drink. “We barely begun have. Conceive of it! A Human child raised as an Ashregan. To like an Ashregan think, talk, believe, but to like a Human fight. We have his Humanness restored.”

  “But not his Humanity,” the Massood interjected.

  “That will in time come to him. All the more reason here to keep him, so that help we can provide as well as study.”

  “Personally, I agree with you.” The S’van sampled his drink.

  “Then why is it not so ordered?” The Hivistahm eyed the splendiferous sunrise morosely. “Why this precipitous decision?”

  The Massood put down his drinking utensil. “Admittedly it is something of a gamble. But it is one that the Council feels it must take.”

  “He is not properly to his new condition acclimated,” the surgeon grumbled. “As you say, he has not yet had his Humanity restored. We cannot his mind rebuild as we have his body. Yet you wish us via prostheses to temporarily back his Ashregan appearance gi
ve him.” Claws clicked against claws.

  “If this thing the Council proposes in its finite wisdom fails, we lose not only this individual but the unique opportunity he presents.”

  The field commander sipped delicately. Working and living alongside Wais and Motar, he had learned manners. “I remind you that the subject’s wishes must also be taken into consideration, and that he energetically supports the proposal.”

  “I am to the subject as sympathetic as any,” huffed the Hivistahm, “but we must think first of the good of the Weave.”

  “As do my superiors. The fact that the Council’s desires happen to coincide with those of the individual weaken your position considerably.” The Massood leaned forward.

  “As you know, this Ranji-aar is apparently but one of many like him who were in prebirth corrupted and coopted by the Amplitur. That he wishes to return to his people and reveal the heinous deception to his friends and fellow fighters in order to foment rebellion among them is considered by the Council an enterprise of sufficient worth to make the risk worth taking.”

  “If that is truly what he has in mind,” said the surgeon.

  “Truth is always the first casualty of war.” The Massood waxed uncommonly philosophical, and his companions eyed him in surprise. “I have seen the xenopsychs’ analysis. At this point in time our Ranji-aar trusts no one, including himself. Therefore he must be allowed to find truth, along with himself. Otherwise he will be useless to us as well as himself. As you say, physician, his problems cannot be cured by surgery. He must convince himself of what he is.

  “If he can also do that for his friends, then the Amplitur will lose not only the fruits of their experiment but the most effective single fighting force they have yet developed. The Weave will benefit in the short as well as the long term.”

  First-of-Surgery closed both sets of eyelids against the intensifying light. “Unless the return to familiar surroundings his Ashregan conditioning reinforces. If that happens then he is to us lost forever. Truly.”

  The S’van clicked his short flat teeth in imitation of the Hivistahm. As was often the case with the subtle S’van, the surgeon was unable to tell if the burlesque was performed out of respect or amusement.