Concept YUS (Cross-World Murder Cases Book 1)

by Set Wagner

  Watching him intensely, Reder squatted next to the smaller table and fumblingly unblocked its wheels. He stood up and waved impatiently at Elia, who cleared the way by moving aside some of the surrounding equipment. Then Reder aimed the remote control at the operating table again. It began moving, followed by the smaller table. The scene almost appeared comic, although “incongruous” would be a better description. With two or three maneuvers, Reder managed to direct the tables bearing the Yusian into the X-ray room and position them directly under the X-ray without ever entering the room and then to close the gate before walking toward us.

  Elia looked at one of the monitors to confirm that the Yusian was in one of its “normal” positions, which is to say that it was still relatively calm. Then she entered some commands on the neighboring keyboard, but no pictures appeared on its monitor. I didn’t know what was going on, but by Elia’s and Reder’s expression, I easily guessed that it wasn’t what they had expected.

  Almost a whole minute passed as we waited in a silence broken only by the barely audible hum of the cameras, indifferently capturing something that in fact hadn’t happened, evidence of yet another failed experiment.

  “Noooo!” Elia broke our silence with a groan. “It’s not possible. This is absurd!”

  As if to confirm her words with his actions, the Yusian started to expand, losing even the poorly defined shape he held before.

  “What is he doing, for God’s sake?” Elia cried.

  “It’s swallowing,” Reder responded tensely.

  “What!”

  “He is feeding. Consuming, gorging. How can I say it more clearly?”

  “He’s swallowing the X-rays? All of them? Is that what you’re trying to—”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Don’t you understand? He’s expanding, increasing his surface so he can absorb everything we ‘offer’ him.”

  “My God! He must think that what we need from him is—to eat! That this is why we put him there!”

  “Stop the radiation,” I advised her, “or he will x-ray himself to death before you have time to finish ‘studying’ him.”

  “Shut up!” Elia snapped at me but immediately turned off the equipment.

  “Stop interfering, Simon!” Reder upbraided me too. “You understand nothing about what we’re trying to do.”

  “You’re mistaken,” I said, growling. “I know exactly what my role is here. And that’s why I’m calling a halt to your futile round of routine experiments.”

  “What!” Elia responded, startled.

  “That’s right. We are starting the vivisection, right now.”

  Chapter 38

  From the air, the southern settlement held no surprises for me: houses, stores, parks, public buildings, all built in typically eclectic and gaudy Yusian style, and an abundance of decorative landscape consisting, of course, only of the five modified stages of the original Sedum herb.

  I made a few low passes over the city to orient myself better before setting the shuttle down next to one of the houses and then walked toward the main town square.

  Standing exactly at its center, I crossed my arms over my chest so I could see my watch and remained silent for three minutes—time enough for an enemy’s half-formed conjectures and welter of conflicting possibilities to thicken into edgy tension.

  When I finished with that part of my performance, I stood with my legs slightly spread, put my hands on my hips, and roared, “Listen, you pitiful, misshapen nonhumanoids! Cosmic decrepit old men! I came to show you what it really means to be human!”

  There was no answer of course.

  I waited even longer this time and then used some of Chuks’s phrases: “If you are ‘in jolt because of our new condition,’ the answer is yes—you really are ‘facing necessity’ to communicate with me. ‘Should exploit readiness,’ because I can explain some things to you. And if you can’t understand them, I’ll drive you crazy! I’ll destroy you!”

  My challenge again went unanswered.

  I took a deep breath and continued, “A colossus with feet of clay—that’s all your polyplanetary system is. And you, all of you, are its groveling servants. You sense that; you know it’s ‘rebellion for your instincts too.’ Only your cowardice prevents you from doing anything about this. That’s why you cling to us. Just as when you implanted eyes in yourselves, you are hoping that, through what you call ‘equalized generosity’ and a ‘contact’ with us, you will implant an additional soul. A human soul. And that’s exactly what you need. Otherwise you will wither completely away. You will rot!”

  This time the absence of any reaction worried me a little. I started wondering how many more insults and threats they could take.

  “Well, fine!” I spoke with arrogant disdain. “Don’t answer, but if you continue to play your game with me, you will lose! A person stands here! Come on, try your idiotic attempts at ‘contact’ with my soul. ‘Implant’ it into yourselves! Then you will begin to understand what I mean. Or are you afraid even to try?”

  I threw back my head and laughed raucously.

  To no avail. Everything remained as passive as before, frozen in a grotesque imitation of a small provincial town, which was designed supposedly to make the colonists very, very happy. So happy that they wouldn’t realize how this very town is gradually sucking out their very souls and replacing them with another, nonhuman, identity. The goal was to make them “mutual” by turning them into deformed psychohybrids—into subject-mediators, whose chronal relations with both Earth and the Yusian polyplanet system would enable all kinds of instantaneous interactions between our two civilizations. In the end, however, all of us—both humans and Yusians—will become, similar to the hybrid Sedum, mere human-Yusian hybrids, more subject-mediators to be made use of by the system. That is what is really meant by establishing “contact.”

  I decided to change my tactics. “By the way, that strange Yusian didn’t die in the accident,” I announced. “He wasn’t annihilated! If you want to know his fate, you’re going to have to activate this whole pseudolandscape around me.”

  I knew that bombshell would have consequences—once the implications penetrated those Yusian thick “skulls.” But how this would all play out not even the Yusians could determine. I assumed an arrogantly self-confident expression and started waiting.

  In the end, nothing unusual or new occurred. However, in the park across from the square, the five-trunk trees started rocking, although there was no wind. Then they shook their crowns until little clouds of crystals, pink under Shidexa rays, formed around them and started floating gracefully into the air—in my direction.

  I looked around and for a moment began to imagine people already sitting at the colorful little tables of the nearby coffee shop. They were smiling, chatting about unimportant but very pleasant trivia, joking, flirting with women, enjoying, and so on.

  What? Some illusions created by nonhumanoids.

  “I’m sick of you!” I exploded into the crystal clouds gathering above my head. “The same game, over and over again. No, you will never be worthy partners for us if, even in this critical moment, you can’t even overcome your own stereotypes.”

  The crystal rain continued to fall, and through my senses, the same familiar feelings began crawling: joy, compassionate concern, ecstatic love, that sense of universal harmony. I tossed them all away like dirty rags.

  “But what have you done on this planet so far, damn it? And what have you accomplished on Earth? All you’ve done is watch people, for ten long years, in every way possible. Yet you still understand nothing! Why is that? Are you stupid?”

  I let the question hang in the air along with their euphoria clouding crystals.

  “No, you are not stupid,” I answered the hanging question after a while. “Even worse: you are faceless. Thousands of years ago you decided that your system was perfect, and that’s when it began robbing you. It deprived you of stimuli for personal performance and took away your sense of personal si
gnificance. As you tell us, you seek ‘necessary impersonal understanding,’ which simply doesn’t exist. So what are you now? Creatures that are clearly distinct only in your bodies, not in your minds. That’s exactly why you don’t understand us. You think we are just like you—an anonymous herd. Well, we do not share a herd mentality!”

  I shook the crystals from my hair and clothes to make my point. Then I laughed, but—take note—not intentionally. It welled up spontaneously, from a deep spring of joy, deeper and more complicated than any manufactured response. I concentrated and laughed again, now in a different way.

  “Do you think your euphoria is euphoric? Nonsense. Exactly during its peak, one of us killed two people, didn’t he? He killed his friend: stood before an innocent blue-eyed man with a boyish face, took out his flexor, and shot him point-blank in the head! Well? Is that what you intended with this blindman’s bluff game you’re playing with something as unpredictable as human beings? Any human being!”

  I stood defiantly silent. But their silence was so palpable, so filled with manufactured compassion, that I lost my temper.

  “Check what the word ‘vivisection’ means!” I shouted, shaking my fist at the empty square. “And then accelerate the ‘contact,’ because only then can I show you what happened to that wretch of yours.”

  But could I really show him to them? Well, yes, since they learned long ago how to read the “memories” incorporated in material objects by reanimating the energy processes performed in that material’s past. But I had come here to impart something infinitely more complicated and important: my own conscious memories. That unique mixture of perceptions, thoughts, and feelings the Yusians couldn’t just “read.” They had to experience them with me, which was exactly my goal.

  “A vivisection!” I repeated. “And accelerate the ‘contact’! Now!”

  But no. Instead, sounds of a lullaby came from somewhere. For a few seconds, I stood overwhelmed, numb with helplessness and fury. But then I understood the delicate hint and crossed the square, following the sounds down the closest street. I passed three or four houses with pseudostately courtyards and finally stopped at the house from which the music was coming. Opening the gate, I walked down a fern-fringed path and passed a glistening oval pool, lined with lounge chairs and boasting a diving board at the deep end. Reaching the front door, I climbed the stairs and jerked it open. The lullaby ceased abruptly, though I sensed that the house was sighing and detected a pungent odor, though not the rank smell of decay.

  I walked through the foyer straight to the stairs. I didn’t need to look around to know that the furnishings everywhere were luxurious and, so far, relatively normal. After reaching the second floor and checking here and there, I found the bedroom. I approached the bed, pulled aside the silk comforter, and ran my hand over the pale-blue sheet, also silk. But the material was slightly warm and very flexible. I took my flexor from its holster, put on the safety, and placed it on the nightstand. I took the detonator from under my shirt, attached it to the palm of my left hand with the surgical tape Elia had given me, and began to undress.

  They have achieved a level of development incomparably higher than ours. But their intellectual capacity, in the strictest sense, if we discount the knowledge they possess, is similar to that of humans. Where they surpass us, then, is in spirituality—the united spirit of their civilization.

  Yes, even Stein, like everybody else, considered the superiority of the Yusians an indisputable fact. But he was wrong. So what does it mean for a civilization to have a united spirit? Does it mean that each individual gains billions of times more spiritual profundity? The answer is obviously no. Spirituality can’t be measured in quantities. It is qualitative and personal. Even if an arbitrary number of individuals with this quality unite, the achievement is still not collective. It remains singular, an individual quality.

  Unification, depersonalization, regimentation, or communism—it doesn’t matter what we call it. Nor was it likely that the Yusians achieved this on purpose; more likely, it befell them, insidiously and gradually, the typical pattern for social disasters. There it is. They have paid an exuberant price for their carefree, untroubled, safe life, and they will pay yet again, in this unique duel.

  “I’m ready,” I announced clearly. “My spirit against the united spirit of all your civilization. One on one.”

  Their reaction was banal and predictable: the window shutters automatically closed, and a dark fog surrounded me. I lay on the bed. It didn’t squeak; the sheet didn’t rustle but did fit itself to my body and then stopped moving. I felt nothing else, except for barely detectable, preprogrammed sleep-inducing impulses. I crossed my arms on my chest and closed my eyes. At first it seemed hellishly complicated: the last thing I wanted was to fall asleep, but I did want to enter a state like sleep, to be fully susceptible to the Yusian influence. Unless I could achieve that state, the contact wouldn’t take place, or worse, it would take place on their terms. I needed to hold a thought that was sufficiently pleasant to relax me but at the same time disturbing enough to keep me awake, a thought precisely balanced between pleasure and pain. It turned out to be not about something but someone. I thought about Elia.

  If I achieved the exact balance, it must have been for only a few seconds. Yet that was time enough for the substances to have received their needed stimulus so they could switch to their next phase. Or maybe the Yusians had finally found the strength to overcome their stereotypes and had really accelerated the contact? I don’t know. But when I opened my eyes, although the fog was still as thick as before, my own reflection could clearly be seen about three meters above me.

  I looked at it with annoyance; another optical illusion, I told myself. Soon, however, I realized that was too simple an answer. Actually, the ceiling was not like a mirror, nor was that figure my reflection. Its eyes were closed, its proportions volumetric. A hologram? Lying horizontally in the air, its face was looking down, its arms crossed on its chest, and it was radiating an inner light—a light that logically should animate it but instead made it appear stiff, deathlike. Its prone position contributed to this impression, as if I were looking at my own corpse, carefully embalmed and arranged and slowly sinking down toward me through the dark fog.

  I raised myself on my elbows and looked down. Thousands of phosphorescent lines were crawling over my body, back and forth, left and right, seemingly searching for each other. As soon as they located suitable “partners,” they arranged themselves in perfect rows. They continued to move in formation, rows constantly joining other rows, ever more precise. Just as Odesta’s figures at the deserted Yusian base had been, I was now completely covered with these dotted lines. Like swarming insects, they were studying me, learning me, and remembering me. I couldn’t feel their touch—obviously they were without substance—but I was still absolutely convinced that they were wandering inside as well as all over me. Inside my body, inside my brain, and so on. Maybe even in my soul, wherever it is located? They swarmed everywhere.

  Resisting an urge to leap up, I lay back down, and what had been a bed with a sheet clumsily splashed with a greasy gurgle. Yet if the substances under me had turned into liquid, why didn’t I feel that? Then I realized that I had no bodily sensations at all. I looked up at the form floating above me. It no longer appeared deathlike—just asleep. And it was beginning to wake up slowly, very slowly, as shown by a tightening of its facial muscles, a slight frown, and a pursing of the lips. Not simply a hologram, it might better be described as a plasma robot. Now it was receiving information from the swarming “insects.” That was exactly their function: to make him into an exact copy of me.

  Realizing this, I carefully reviewed my present condition. My thoughts were clear, and my senses suitably numb considering the situation. This would be a good moment for them to be copied as well.

  The plasma robot came closer and closer until his body gradually sank, somehow seeped, into my body, and then suddenly jumped out—or, more precisely, bounced u
p again about three meters above me. He opened his eyes widely, writhed convulsively, and became me. Me staring at myself with unseeing eyes. Yes, but I was also here, looking up at myself. If I could manage to hold this position, I would be able to witness my transformations from afar.

  This presence of mine—this duplicate—was not what the Yusians wanted, of course. Immediately my will started bending under the pressure of blatantly intense forces. No more Mr. Nice Yusian: the game was getting rough. I was nearly unconsciousness, caught in the swampy trap of what had been a bed, not even able to free my fingers to pinch myself awake again.

  But I came back to my senses despite their efforts—through another kind of pain, the memory of somebody’s oncoming end. My thoughts became clear again, not completely, but enough to realize that I had to act before the next attack.

  “No. You can’t eliminate me.” My husky voice was unrecognizable even to me. “I’m not some colonist! Nor will I give myself to you as did the woman I killed. I’ll still be here! I will exist even when my mind flows with yours, even when you appropriate my emotions. Even if you assimilate my mind completely, I will still remain. Because I’m more than thoughts and emotions. And way more than any of you worthless creatures!”

  After ten years of Zung-style diplomacy, my attitude must have definitely shocked them. When I concentrated, my face above me took on a ferocious smile that contrasted sharply with those empty glass-like eyes.

  “You want me asleep or unconscious! You’re afraid to stand face to face with even a single human being! You can only ‘be in contact’ with objects and corpses! Right?”