Final Book

by Peter W Prellwitz

  "I'll just bet."

  "You misunderstand, Wyeth. I have not abused the woman whatsoever. She has been my house servant and only my house servant. The only proof I can offer you are the surroundings - we are in her room right now - and any mental link the two of you may share. I know you carried on a correspondence for several months at your room in Glendale. I forbade her to write to you during the past month, and she agreed."

  "She agreed? Why? Miss DeChant knows I'm the soulner, and would be looking to have me reclaim my body." Something about Deiley's manner relaxed me. I would need to be on my guard.

  "She agreed because of a partial deception. I told her that if she sharded back as you, I would execute you for being a member of the Resistance. She believed me."

  "And that was a deception?"

  "As I said, a partial deception. At the time, I probably would have executed you under most circumstances, but not all. I had no intention of being as ruthless as I led Miss DeChant to think."

  "Trying to be the tough guy for her, huh?" I stood up slowly, still leaning against the wall. "Pretty typical NATech attitude. So now what?"

  "You are entering the final stage of your life, Miss Wyeth. Dissolution."

  It hit hard. Hot tears welled up and my heart pressed against my chest. Despite my need to keep a confident front up, I crumbled and sank back to the floor. He stepped up, probably to hit me.

  AGAIN AND AGAIN, PLEASE. OH! THE BLOOD ON MY ARM IS SO WARM AND TINGLY! COULD YOU PLEASE DO THAT TO THE OTHER ONE, MASTER?

  Instead, he helped me to my feet and led me to the bed. Seating me on it, he then pulled up a chair for himself. He began shaking me gently.

  "I want you to tell me how to control microsat reentry, Wyeth. Tell me and I'll return you to Lockwood."

  I looked at him through tear-filled eyes. I could probably have disabled him in that moment, he was so intent getting me to answer him. A quick head butt, followed by a finger thrust into his eyes ...

  It wasn't worth it. He could have been lying about my dissolution, but he wasn't. Deep inside me I felt a hot urge, and uncontrollable feeling, as though my body was rejecting my mind. Or was it my mind rejecting itself? Regardless, the outcome would be the same. I shook my head.

  "No, Deiley. I wouldn't give Chris what he wanted and I won't give you what you want."

  "Chris?"

  "Your boss. His name is Chris Young. He was the creator of webbing technology, and is responsible for everything NATech is and everybody else isn't."

  "And even though I might use this microsat bombardment against him, you will still not tell me?"

  "I'll die before I share such technology with NATech."

  "As you wish." He stood up and stepped into the small bathroom attached to my room. He reappeared almost at once, carrying an energy pistol. He snapped the gun to full, and it whined.

  I was too tired to move. He didn't get what he wanted, so I had no further value to him. I was a little surprised he would defy Chris. It would be the end of his career, probably his life. He just didn't care, and it was probably better this way. The gun toned full charge and I closed my eyes, quietly praying. The terminal suddenly crackled to life, and Chris' voice broke in.

  "Stop this at once, Deiley! If you value your life at all, you will--" The terminal squealed and popped as the plasma bolt smashed into it. Deiley lowered his gun and looked thoughtfully at me. He reached down and shut the gun off.

  "Well, I suppose I'll be needing to look for another line of work." He smiled a slow smile. "I don't suppose you'd put a good word in for me with the Resistance?"

  "Why?" I whispered. A streamer of smoke filled curled up from the terminal and danced on the ceiling.

  "Your friends will be here shortly. I know you have a construct of some sort who has been monitoring my transmissions for the past month. No doubt they're scrambling now to pull off some daring rescue. Abruptly terminating the source of the monitoring will force them to act immediately."

  "Why, Deiley?" I repeated.

  "You'd best get your things packed quickly. There's not much, but I allowed Miss DeChant a small clothing allowance and you're welcome to her clothing." He laughed. "I imagine they'll fit perfectly. Get dressed now. I'll fetch your pistol." He turned to leave.

  "Why, Deiley?" I said a third time.

  He turned back to face me. His face was emotionless and he was looking past me and into a distance far greater than the room. He said nothing for a moment, then sighed heavily.

  "I don't know, Wyeth." His gaze focused on me. Despite his being there, I had begun changing my outer clothing. "Do you know this is the first time I've ever said that? I've served NATech now for nearly twenty years. My commission is battle earned, not one of those convenient political posts."

  I nodded, slipping into a darker top. Miss DeChant had a preference for dresses, and they were my only selection. Fortunately, she had a two-piece navy blue that would move freely. I ized the back, settling my shoulders in.

  "I know. Alan gave me your history months ago. I knew I had to avoid you while I was here, and the best way to figure your enemy out is to know him."

  "I'm not surprised. Lockwood and I have been playing our little cat and mouse game for years now. He's quite good, and although the comment would rankle him, I consider him one of my best subordinates."

  "Funny. That's pretty much what he says about you." I put on Miss DeChant's work shoes, which were thankfully fairly rugged.

  "Again, I'm not surprised. So why did I give up my commission and put my life in jeopardy? Perhaps Lockwood and I are closer in thought than either of us suspected. I have been charged with keeping the peace in a Shard refugee camp, but I've also always considered it my duty to see to their well being."

  "Then explain your rape squads."

  "One works with the resources one has. My first duty was to keep the peace, as laid out by NATech. My cohorts, both the normal ones as well as the SS squads, saw to that. And the peace has been kept."

  "So why not sacrifice me to continue that peace?" I had finished dressing and was sitting on the bed. "Give me up to Chris for harvesting and you get to keep playing your little game with the Resistance."

  "That's it. It was a game. Yes, I kept the peace. And Lockwood had considerable freedom under my command. But Shards continued to die. Don't you see? We were not working within the system, we had become the system. We were perpetuating the very thing your precious Resistance was fighting and I had lost faith in. It must be changed!"

  "You still haven't told me why you're letting me go, Deiley."

  "You are persistent, aren't you, Wyeth?" he complained.

  I shrugged. "Hey, I've a lot more experience than you might think."

  "I doubt that. I've followed your history quite closely. For instance, do you know what keyed memory encapsulation is?"

  I started. How did he ...

  He chuckled. "That's right. I've done my research. LeClaire perfected the process of pocketing self-writing code and embedding it into the mind, protected by a sheath of psionic barriers that would survive riping.

  "But shortly after he published his work, he disappeared from the public eye. Which meant NATech - still hidden from the public eye - had killed him. And since there were no actual experiments done with KME, his paper was generally disregarded and no further investigation was done. It is my belief that there was no further research because LeClaire was so far ahead of his time no one could even hope to replicate his work without an actual specimen.

  I sat motionless in the dimly lit room, enraptured by his story.

  "But there was a specimen, though no one knew about it. On the night that LeClaire and Miss DeChant were killed, LeClaire embedded a KME and initiated the program. When NATech - under the guise of local authorities - stormed the house that night, they were met with armed resistance by LeClaire. It was useless of course; he was burned down within seconds. But he did shift the focus of the raid completely away from the real source of danger: Miss
DeChant. You, Miss Wyeth."

  "I'm not Miss DeChant. We share the same mind, but our personas are completely different. You know that."

  "I do. But I am not talking about the personas. I am talking about the mind. You understand that there is only one mind - one soul, if you will - no matter how many ripes it goes through?" I nodded. "Then you will see that even though you were completely repressed during your multiple ripings, you were nonetheless there. LeClaire understood it, and reasoned that he didn't necessarily have to embed the mnemonic inlays into Miss DeChant's mind. Indeed, it was altogether to his benefit that he didn'tembed them there. It would be the first place they'd look. Besides, the KME would require centuries to mature, and he knew Miss DeChant would certainly not be the beneficiary of the completed process. Only the original persona could ever hope to gain access to the fruits of his labor.

  "So he placed a partial capsule into her mind, and hid the real KME in an unused portion of your mind. Again, your mind, Wyeth, not Miss DeChant's. Are you following me? I mean no offense, but I've been studying this for months."

  "You're saying that LeClaire's KME was meant for me?" I felt like I'd been hit with a stun gun, and not lightly. All my problems were momentarily forgotten by this staggering news. "But how could he even hope I'd ever be reintegrated to take advantage of the memory capsule?"

  "Hoping is easy when your life is forfeit, Miss Wyeth. I'm sure we both have firsthand knowledge of that. LeClaire did, too. He knew his hours were numbered the moment Far Bank - the being you say is Chris Young - discovered LeClaire had betrayed him and kept the knowledge for himself.

  "So he embedded the KME and activated it. He then did what must have been the most difficult thing of all. The NATech report on the raid of December 4, 2315, lists LeClaire as being gunned down. It also states that Miss DeChant was found lying comatose on her bed. LeClaire had drugged Miss DeChant and had her mind - your mind, rather - shut down to avoid interrogation. He was guessing that once they scanned Miss DeChant's portion of your mind, they would discover the partial KME, find it useless, then store you for future riping. And that's what happened. They found the decoy, missed the real KME - which is embedded in your foundry ripe, by the way - and reriped you. And nearly four centuries later, you were finally restored to your original persona. And no one ever knew that deep inside your mind, a mnemonic inlay was slowly growing and maturing. And that one day it would give its owner an incredible ability. In my opinion, you are the only person, Abigail Wyeth, who will ever fully understand unbound trinary code."

  I considered him thoughtfully. He was a man who could scare me. If Chris had had this man's focus, tenacity and intelligence, I'd either be dead or his hopelessly obedient servant.

  "I don't think the world will ever know the contribution you've made to bring it back to where it belongs, Major Deiley."

  "So? That is your goal then?" He nodded. "Appropriate enough. And certainly within your means."

  "If I survive dissolution, which no one ever has," I pointed out, returning to reality.

  "Eh?" He seemed surprised. "You doubt that? Ah! That's right, you don't know. You must forgive me, Wyeth. It can be difficult keeping track of what I know and whom I've shared it with. Especially when the person I'm having a conversation with can be any one of several personas."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "LeClaire was a genius in the field of mental collaboration. There has been no one else quite like him before or since. He had anticipated a scenario not unlike what you're going through right now.

  "The Resistance movement has been actively restoring ripes since 2491, almost two hundred years. But LeClaire died nearly four hundred years ago. There were no attempts at restoring original personas in his day. It had been given up as being impossible. Even he couldn't do it. But he knew it could be done in theory. He also theorized that there would be a high probability of breakdown in the artificial barriers between the personas. You'll find that the KME will provide a reasonably strong anchor during your upcoming ordeal, Wyeth. Be sure to tell that to Barrett."

  "Barrett? Doctor Barrett? But he's ... he's ..."

  "He's alive and well, and no doubt awaiting your imminent rescue. I received the report from my people in Australia. You see, it was I who had you snatched from your unit during the battle that destroyed the Third in Africa. I'd dispatched a small group a friend had loaned me for the mission. I apologize for their attack on your person. They were to subdue you only, not molest you."

  I looked at him carefully and slowly nodded.

  "I'll take your word for that, Major. I could have killed you at the time, had I known."

  "You undoubtedly could have tried. I feel fortunate that you are weak right now. At full strength, you would be a worthy opponent. But I digress.

  "What isn't generally known, and what I've gone to great pains to discover without actually trying to find out, is that the few survivors of the Sandrat Debacle were not the remnants of our NATech forces. Just prior to the two explosions that destroyed the entire base, a transport left the vicinity."

  I nodded again. "I was in the hov, heading back to engage and saw it pull out."

  "Yes. And it was undoubtedly marked as a troop transport. It's a common ploy to mark prisoner transports as troop carriers. It makes rescue attempts during transit a difficult tactic."

  What he was saying dawned on me. Some of the Third had survived! Aaron! Could I even hope? My heart raced and I started breathing hard. Susie. Raul. Sarah. Dusty. It was possible. I suddenly had an overwhelming desire to leave. I forced it down, wanting to hear Deiley out.

  "Are you all right, Wyeth?" He sounded concerned.

  "Yes. Yes, I'm fine. It's just a shock. Then you're saying some of my unit is still alive?"

  "Yes. About thirty of them were put under alpha suppression and are being held at a camp southeast of Port Augusta on the Australian continent. Barrett was killed about four weeks ago, during a skirmish with some civilian miners who had wandered into the area. The base commander, a Colonel Forncheth, reported all died in the ensuing fire, and their escape vehicle was destroyed above ground. I know the man, and he's competent enough, but lacks a suspicious mind."

  "Unlike you."

  "Unlike me." He seemed unaffected by the jab. "I looked into it and was not able to collaborate their story. In NATech, you should always assume the worst until it is proven otherwise. Forncheth assumed they were miners and as such could not survive the fight. I assumed they were not miners, and therefore not only survived the fight, but had a reason to start it. My inability to prove they were civilians told me they were Resistance dogs. And since Barrett also 'died', it is my assumption he was the target for extraction. Barrett was with the Third Regiment. You were with the Third. It might be a coincidence. But since I can't prove it, then it's not."

  I stood up. It was time to go. I marveled at the man's skill at finding the right path of logic through the maze of leads, false trails and hidden paths. He didn't know everything, but he probably knew more than any other person besides Mike and me.

  "Incredible, Deiley. You've deduced all this, and haven't left this house in all that time?"

  He smiled. "Well, this one and the one you blew up. I have found that while action is sometimes called for - and it will be in just a few minutes - performing unneeded actions is a waste of time."

  "Why, Deiley? You still haven't told me why. Why did you turn your back on NATech, after serving all these years? Why did you turn traitor?"

  "Harsh words, girl. And uncalled for. I didn't turn my back on NATech. I turned it on Far Bank. On Chris Young. It's true, I had originally become interested in you personally when you destroyed two of my cohorts in the White Tanks about six months ago. I didn't know you had used guided microsats until after you repeated the action in the Sahara. The trail was hidden magnificently."

  "Not enough to fool you."

  "Not true. I only deduced it because of my knowledge of the two incidents. The White Tank attack
was filed by me and I withheld the full nature of the bombing because it was a skill I wanted to have for my own use."

  "So why haven't you pressed harder to get it?"

  "Because it's clear that you're not the one who initiates the attacks. I suspect you have a UTC construct in the puterverse that is capable of performing the millions of adjustments needed to bring it down with such accuracy, prevent burnup, and then hide all trace of the microsat's disappearance until an appropriate time. Once I knew it wasn't you personally, I essentially gave up. I doubt I could exert any control over your constructs. Especially since I would have to go into their environment.

  "But I also gave up because of my loyalty to NATech. I am convinced that NATech can be a force capable of maintaining peace on the planet without sacrificing liberty and personal freedoms. But not while Far Bank is in control. His agenda is far different from any that a human would choose." He glanced at me. "At least, a human who didn't permanently live in the puterverse.

  "So that is why I have chosen my path, Wyeth. Not to betray NATech, but to help it survive and become a proper mechanism again. A servant of the people and not its master. You are the best hope that NATech has."

  He sounded sincere. He sounded convinced and coherent and confident. He had a vision of NATech as it had once been, in my days of service. I understood how he felt and I know he believed it completely. And I knew he was lying.

  "I never thought I would say this to a man wearing a NATech uniform, but: Thank you, Major. You've helped out more than could ever be expected. I wish I could offer you more. Thank you."

  He waved it off. "My reasons are purely selfish, I assure you. If you are successful in your mission of destroying Far Bank and restoring proper order to the puterverse and society, then NATech will be the obvious choice to be a guide into the future, and my services will be in great demand. If you fail, then I've risked very little, because Far Bank would have killed me anyway; I knew too much about him. And you."

  We stepped onto the porch to wait for Alan and the attack force. Deiley seemed confident they would penetrate the outer defenses with little trouble and head straight here. He returned my gun to me, fully charged. I glanced at it briefly, then set it to wide field sonic inducer. It was hard to believe I'd had it modified by Dusty half a year ago, and still had not fired it.