The Cyber Chronicles - Book I: Queen of Arlin

by T C Southwell

Chapter Twelve

  At dawn, they started the long walk to Olgara, heading for the distant road that ran along the edge of the Badlands. Tassin was certain she was safer now, for surely Torrian would not dare to send soldiers into a foreign kingdom? She missed her home, and the servants who had made her life so pleasant. All she had now was one strange warrior, whose manners had not improved since he had become himself. If anything, they were worse. Now he used her title mockingly, and expected her to help with revolting, dirty tasks. At least he had not asked her to carry some of the baggage.

  As they descended, the climate warmed, and Sabre removed his wool coat, revealing a chest mottled with yellowish bruises. The bruise on his forehead had also faded, and the skin around cyber band’s struts was healing. They walked towards the road, where carts and wagons raised clouds of dust, and Tassin hoped they would be able to get a ride on one. She still had some money left from Sabre’s fights, and wondered if he would fight for money again when it ran out.

  Now she could no longer order him around, which complicated matters. She did not want to walk all the way to Olgara, already her feet throbbed and her legs ached. Sabre strode ahead, apparently tireless, and she glared at his back. She had removed her woollen coat, but by the time they reached the road, sweat trickled down her face and her head hurt. Deciding that she could not go another step, she sat down on a convenient rock.

  “Sabre!”

  He stopped and looked around, then strolled back to her. Although he was a little drawn, he showed no other signs of fatigue, and his smile was cheerful. “Tired?”

  She nodded. “My feet hurt.”

  “Ah, would you like me to wrap them again for you?”

  “No. I want to wait for a wagon.”

  Sabre glanced up and down the deserted road. “You may have a long wait. It seems like rush hour is over.”

  “Then we will camp here tonight.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Why not?”

  “We have no water. You drank the last of it.”

  “Oh.” She frowned at him.

  “It looks like there’s a stream a bit further along the road.”

  Tassin squinted at the line of verdure in the distance. “That is far! Could you not just go and get some?”

  A short, pregnant silence fell. Sabre sighed. “Come on, it’s not all that far. Then we can camp under the trees instead of out in the open, and we can wash. I don’t know about you, but I need a bath, and you could do with one too, I think.”

  She resented his common sense. “If I pass out from exhaustion, you will have to carry me.”

  “No, I’ll just leave you there until you wake up.” She gasped, and he chuckled. “Just kidding. Come on, you won’t pass out. You’re a warrior queen, remember?”

  Sabre’s mocking smile spurred Tassin to her feet, and she trudged after him, arriving at the stream as limp as a cooked nerril. She flopped down on the grass and closed her eyes with a sigh. When she opened them, several minutes later, Sabre had vanished. She almost panicked, drawing breath to bellow his name, then got a grip on herself and went in search of him instead.

  Moving upstream, she came across a grotto that sheltered a waterfall, below which a deep pool of crystal clear water filled a rocky bowl. Sabre lazed in it, paddling idly. She climbed down to the mossy rocks beneath the rainbow-shot mist and sat down to watch him. He eyed her. His harness lay on the rocks beside her, and she noticed that most of its straps and hooks were empty. Soon he would need a sword. She looked up as he moved towards the bank.

  “I’d like to get out now, if you don’t mind,” he said.

  “I am not stopping you.”

  His brows rose. “I’m not the local entertainment for pubescent girls, so scram.”

  Tassin smiled. “What will you do if I do not?”

  “Dunk you.”

  “But you will have to come out to do that.”

  “If I must.”

  Tassin giggled, then retreated when he advanced, but only far enough to stay out of his reach.

  He said, “You might think you’re safe, but I promise you, I’ll dunk you if you don’t scarper now.”

  Tassin pulled a face and left him to dress, returning to the campsite. A few minutes later, he appeared, clad in damp trousers and carrying a wet harness. He looked refreshed, the lines of fatigue washed from his face with the grime and dried sweat, and the pale operation scars stood out on his tanned skin.

  He sat down nearby. “Your turn.”

  “That water is too cold. When we get to Olgara, I will have a hot bath at an inn.”

  “You stink.”

  “I do not!”

  “It’s not that cold. Once you’re in, it’s nice.”

  “You do not feel the cold.”

  Sabre regarded her impassively, reminding her of the cyber’s blank stare, then seized her wrist and pulled her to her feet.

  Tassin tried to wrench free. “Let me go!”

  “No, Your Majesty, you’re going to have a wash. You’ll feel better for it, otherwise you’ll be complaining all day tomorrow about how tired you are, and I’ll have to put up with the smell as well as the whining.”

  “Unhand me at once!”

  Sabre dragged her towards the pool, her struggles in no way slowing him down, but he stopped when she grabbed a sapling and hung on with all her might. He turned back, his expression telling her that he could easily have yanked her free, but had no wish to hurt her. Instead, he prised her fingers loose, adroitly avoiding the kicks she aimed at his shins.

  “Sabre, stop it!”

  “What are you so worried about? Don’t you primitive people ever bath? Or is it a once a year thing?”

  “I bathe every day, but not in a freezing mountain stream!”

  Sabre continued to pull her along, stopping to unglue her from various trees. When they drew close to the grotto, Tassin grabbed a tree and sat down. Sabre turned and scooped her up. She growled at this manhandling, struggled and cursed him foully in several languages.

  “If you don’t stop that, I might drop you,” he commented.

  “Put me down! That is an -”

  “Don’t!” He halted. “Don’t say it, or I swear I’ll drown you.”

  Tassin huffed, furious at his unforgivable behaviour, and embarrassed by his proximity. Changing her tactics, she glanced at him through her lashes.

  “Are you going to undress me as well?”

  He smiled and walked on. “If you like.”

  “No!” Her cheeks heated, furious that her attempt to embarrass him had backfired.

  “Then I’ll just chuck you in with your clothes on.”

  “No! I will wash!”

  Sabre nodded, and she studied him covertly, struck afresh by the placid cast of his features. He lacked the hard, aggressive aspect most men had, possessing gentle eyes and a sensitive mouth. Putting her down beside the pool, he performed a mocking bow and left.

  When Tassin returned to the campsite, Sabre was not there, but he soon returned, carrying a wild pig. A hole burnt through its head testified to his marksmanship, so the loss of the cyber had not detracted from his skills, it seemed. The pig was already gutted, and he set it on a spit over the fire to roast, noticing her interest.

  “Don’t worry. I’m just as good at what I do as the cyber. When they train cybers to fight and shoot, they’re actually training the host, as we’re called, and all the information is stored in my brain, not the cyber’s memory.”

  “What was it like, being a cyber?”

  He frowned at the pig. “Horrible. Cybers have a set of instructions on how to care for the host body, and one of the important ones is to keep it clean. That’s all well and good, but washing in a freezing horse trough in winter is not exactly fun. When the cyber told you it controlled pain, it meant it didn’t allow me to react to it, not that I didn’t feel it. When I stepped out of that casket, I was in agony. If it hadn’t been for the cyber,
I would’ve been useless for a week. And of course, when I was wounded, that was just as bad.”

  He prodded the fire. “Cybers also don’t care what they eat, but they know the host requires food and water. When I was guarding that dear old lady, she fed me animal food, because it was cheap and nutritious, but it didn’t taste very nice. On a number of occasions, the cyber made me do things that caused extreme pain, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. The cyber, of course, doesn’t really feel pain, although it knows when the host’s being damaged.”

  Tassin had seen miscreants flogged and soldiers die in battle, but those agonies had been brief, deserved or voluntary. To be unable even to vent one’s pain was something she found hard to imagine. Once, she had seen a man who had been paralysed in battle, unable to move his arms or legs. Her father had given him a pension, and his wife had nursed him until he died, but the frustration and rage in his eyes had given her an idea of what it must be like to be unable to move. To have one’s body controlled by another, however, had to be the ultimate degradation and misery.

  “Those who did this to you must be monsters. They deserve to be punished as you were.”

  Sabre smiled. “A nice thought.”

  His calmness spoke volumes of pent-up anger, and she swallowed more hot words that might goad unwanted reactions and asked, “The cyber said that it did not need sleep, but surely you did?”

  “Yes, it allowed me to sleep. That was no problem. It just woke me very quickly when it needed me to do something. It’s a bit like having a bucket of ice shoved down your britches, and believe me, you wake up bloody fast. You see, the cyber can’t control the host body on its own, or they’d have removed my brain. It needs the brain to control the body, because that’s far too complicated for it. It also needs the brain to store its memories. The cyber used my brain for its purposes, and I had no say in the matter.”

  Tassin shuddered. “It must have been terrible, especially when you were a child.”

  “Until they put me in the tank, I had some control. The cyber also did, so it was kind of a fifty-fifty relationship. When the cyber wasn’t using me, I could do things on my own, but in the tank you lose contact with your body, and once it’s gone, you never get it back.”

  “What do people use cybers for?”

  Sabre shrugged. “Lots of things. Bodyguards are probably the commonest occupation, but some very rich people have cyber armies. They’re expensive, so that’s rare. A lot of governments use cybers as police, since they’re incorruptible and reliable, and they don’t need to be paid or receive pensions. There are people who hire out cybers, and they make a fortune, because when a cyber’s inactive he can be stored in his casket for years, costing nothing in upkeep.

  “Quite often, they’re hired as hunters, taken to alien planets and sent after monstrous prey. The sportsmen watch from floaters. Of course, they’re insured, in case a host is killed.” His grim parody of a smile chilled her. “If they retrieve the cyber, they get a refund, because barrinium is expensive. Myon Two cremates the bodies to reclaim the implants and control unit.

  “Some people use them for fighting sports, but usually against dangerous animals or aliens. No man can beat a cyber, and two cybers are too evenly matched. The fight would go on until they both died of exhaustion. They’re no good as companions, as you know. They don’t have much in the way of conversational skills, and they’re banned from competing in any sports against ordinary men, like foot racing or weight lifting.”

  “Has anyone ever tried to disconnect a cyber?”

  Sabre turned the pig, whose juices dripped into the fire, spluttering and hissing on the coals. “I overheard a story about a woman who tried. It seems her cyber saved her from something terrible, at great cost to himself, and the stupid woman fell in love with him or something. Anyway, she took him to Myon Two and insisted that they remove the control unit, because she wanted to reward him with his freedom. They removed it, and he was left a vegetable, of course.”

  “But that’s because it causes brain damage. What about if they just cut those struts, where they go into your head?”

  He shook his head. “You can’t cut barrinium. There’s something about its molecular structure that doesn’t allow it. It can be melted, so everything is moulded and welded. When they put the barrinium cap on my head, they welded it to the cyber band. Barrinium joins with other materials easily, and in a process that doesn’t involve heat, only tiny amounts of electricity. But it doesn’t part company easily at all, so it’s pretty well impossible to cut the struts. The entire skull cap has to be removed, including the wires, which are hooked deep into the brain, and that’s what causes the brain damage.”

  “But if it is so easy to melt, surely they could melt the struts and take it off that way?”

  “If they do that, the heat of the melting cooks the brain. To join or mould it, only a small amount of electricity is required to soften it, but to melt through it would need a lot more power, and make it too hot. Barrinium is a superconductor, as well as being extremely light, tough and impervious to metal fatigue. That’s why they use it on cybers.

  “The reason my brain didn’t freeze when I was lying in the snow is because the conductivity works both ways, so my body heat prevented the cold from penetrating. It must have cooled my brain a bit, I expect, which would have helped to prevent swelling after the impact, and probably saved me from brain damage. The superconductivity only really becomes a problem when heat is involved, or if the control unit’s subjected to such intense cold that it overwhelms my body’s warmth.”

  “Was it not strange being with all those other men who all looked exactly the same as you?”

  Sabre cast her an amused glance. “Actually, I wasn’t aware that I looked like them. I knew they all looked the same, but I didn’t bump into a mirror until after I left Myon Two, and even then, the image was blurred. It’s funny how the mind refuses to accept the obvious. I was convinced that I didn’t look like all the rest. Even when I was old enough to realise that I must look like them, I never got a clear view of them either. It’s quite a novelty, being able to see properly.”

  Tassin’s mouth watered at the pig’s savoury aroma. “So now you are unique. You must be the only cyber in the world who has taken back control of his body.”

  His eyes glowed silver as he watched the flames. “In the universe. The cyber wasn’t joking, that night when it pointed to the stars. That’s where Myon Two is. It’s another planet. Your friend, who loaned me to you, must be a space traveller. Not only gods live in the stars. People do too.”

  He paused, sighing. “It was certainly a freak accident that caused this; one that’s probably never happened before, and may never happen again. That fall from the cliff was just far enough to crack the crystals in the brow band, and the rock was in just the right place. It was pure luck. If I’d hit a little harder, it might have killed me, less hard, and it wouldn’t have broken the control unit. Somehow, that crack is in just the right place to interfere with the cyber’s control circuit.”

  Tassin pondered his creation in a machine. “Why did they do this to you? If they have these fancy machines that can nurture a baby, why can they not build a machine to fight too?”

  “They’ve tried. They’ve built great big robots that can do all sorts of things, and certainly kill people.” He noticed her confused look and explained, “A robot is an intelligent machine, a sort of creature made of metal. Anyway, these robots are okay against ordinary people, and they use them for things like crowd control, fighting regular troops, or usually, other robots. But when they come up against a trained fighter, they’re useless. They simply don’t have the speed or agility. And no matter how hard they try, they can’t make them invulnerable. Even if they could, what good would that do, if they can’t defeat their opponent?

  “So they created the cyber, a machine-controlled man; the best of both worlds. We’re known as cyborgs. They had to control us with a computer, because a cyb
er with the freedom to make choices would be extremely dangerous. The very fact that he’s practically invincible is enough to make most men drunk on power.”

  “Are you afraid that will happen to you?”

  Sabre shot her a look that made her wish she had not asked. “No.” He drew the knife from his harness, carved a slice of pork and handed it to her. “I think I have enough self-control not to take advantage of my situation.”

  The following morning, Tassin refused to walk another step, insisting that she would wait for the first wagon. Sabre shrugged and smiled, then went and squatted on a rock in the stream, trying half-heartedly to catch fish. Tassin became so engrossed in his antics that she almost did not hear the first wagon rolling by. When at last she did, she dashed out onto the road and tried to flag it down. The driver warned her off with his whip, refusing to stop, even when she offered money.

  His only comment was, “Get lost!”

  When Tassin returned, Sabre smiled, his fishing momentarily forgotten, and asked, “No luck?”

  She glowered. “The man was a beast. I am glad he did not stop.”

  “Ah, of course.” He turned back to the stream, where silver shadows slid through the water.

  “You could stop a wagon better than me.”

  Sabre chuckled, bending to gaze into the water, his hands poised. “Oh, sure, you want me to rush out there and hold them up at gun point? Maybe blow them away and steal the wagon?”

  She remembered the wagoner’s arrogant dismissal of her plea. “Would that be so difficult? You do not have to kill them.”

  He laughed, straightening to look up at her. “It’s bad enough that you’re on the run from the lecherous King Torrian, now you want to be an outlaw in this land too?”

  Tassin raised her chin. “I am a queen. Once they know that, they will be glad to help.”

  Sabre shook his head and hopped onto another rock. “Do you really think they’re going to believe you? You don’t look like a queen, more like a vagabond, if you ask me.”

  “I did not ask you. I can pay them. That should be good enough.”

  “And what do we live on when we get to Olgara? You want to stay at an inn, and that costs money.”

  “You expect me to walk all the way to Olgara?” she demanded.

  “It’s not that far. And maybe, if we’re walking beside the road, someone will take pity on us and stop.”

  Tassin jumped up as a rumble of wheels and hooves announced a passing coach. Dashing out onto the road, she almost succeeded in getting run down by a team of four blowing, sweating chestnut horses. She was left standing in the dust, shouting insults at the driver, who swore back with equal venom. When she returned to the stream again, Sabre was trying to tickle another fish.

  “Are you not going to do anything?”

  He swore as the fish darted away. “You really want me to stop a cart by force?”

  “Yes!”

  He looked up at her and sighed, flicking water from his fingers. “All right, Your Majesty. But don’t blame me if we have to leave this country too, because we’re wanted for hijacking.”

  “How can they cry foul if I pay them?”

  Sabre turned back to the stream. “You go and try to stop them with your feminine charms. If that fails, call me.”

  Tassin stomped back to the road, where a wagon was visible in the distance, a pair of trotting bay horses pulling it. The wagon kept going when she waved. As it passed her, she shouted her offer of money to the driver, who ignored her. She stamped her foot.

  “Sabre!”

  The wagon was moving away when Sabre strolled onto the road, carrying the pack. She frowned at his tardiness, and he looked exasperated. Dropping the pack at her feet, he said, “Bring this.”