by S. J. Ryan
The creature's paws released the blade and instantly the metal slipped deep and fatally into the creature's belly. Carrot twisted the sword and blood gushed in a torrent. Her thought of victory was short-lived, for the creature's claws clutched at her throat. Carrot released the sword, grabbed the creature's wrists, felt the mass of the creature press upon her.
A hand-span from Carrot's face, the creature's mouth hissed: “You'll die with me, misbegotten spawn! All for Mother!”
Carrot glimpsed the future as the creature did. They would die together. The airship would come and take Pandora Beta to Pandora Rome. The sacrifice of one guardian would be consoled by the gain of a guardian army.
Carrot subvocaled, “Ivan Lite!”
“Yes, Carrot!”
“Go into her!”
“Yes, Carrot!”
Knowing the implant could not penetrate armored skin, Carrot repositioned her hand to clamp on a wound on the creature's forearm. She felt a tingle as Ivan Lite migrated. The creature must have felt the passage too, for it uttered a violent laugh.
“Fool! My spine is sheathed from such invasion! It cannot – NO!“
The hands fell away and the creature tumbled backward. It staggered to its knees and slapped palms to forehead.
“Get out of me! Get out of me! She is not in control! I am!”
Wheezing, the creature dropped to all fours. Carrot retrieved her sword, arose and approached and poised the kedana's shadow on the ground before the creature's lowered head. The creature heaved a deep breath – and collapsed.
Carrot warily circled the sprawled body, fearing a trick. But no, the creature's muscles had relaxed. Its head was turned to one side with eyes shut, throat vulnerable. Carrot resisted the temptation to make the fatal cut.
Blade ready, she knelt before the face.
“Matlid,” she said softly. “Are you there?”
The eyes opened. Carrot saw the serenity in the gaze. Somehow, a middle-aged woman's visage peered through the reptilian features.
In a different voice, and hardly lisping, Matlid replied, “You have released me. I am grateful.”
Carrot felt her eyes well with tears. “Don't speak, Matlid. You must rest.”
Amid pantings, Matlid replied, “No. My life was gone before your blade touched me, Arcadia of Umbrick. What they did to me was done at cost of gravely shortening my lifespan. I had only days more to live at most. Best that I go now than suffer a moment more!”
Carrot wept. “I'm sorry, so sorry!”
“Lords of Aereoth forgive my bargain with demons! But listen, dear Carrot, Queen of Britan, I bear warning – “
Carrot listened, eyes growing wider as she did. Matlid's voice trailed off and her body became still. Unable to do more, Carrot pressed her hand to the cooling forehead and retrieved Ivan Lite.
She slowly stood, shaking with rage.
Despite the folklore, her life had not passed before her eyes during battle. But in the aftermath, as she stood upon the plateau over the corpse of her foe, her entire miserable childhood swept in review. It was summed in a single name – a name that, Matlid had warned in her final words, now cast a shadow upon all Britan.
“Letos!”
10.
Within the bowels of the airship, Matt sat on the floor of a tiny compartment. He leaned against the wall, his arms wrapped around his shins. He stared in the dark at the tiny slit of light between the bottom of the door and the floor His ears rang, his nose dripped, his joints were sore, his mouth was dry, his skin itched, and weird squiggly things moved across his field of vision.
He had been 'only human' for over a day. It was driving him mad. And he knew it.
The drone of the engines of the Nemesis reverberated through the hull, the only noise he'd heard for hours besides the shuffle of feet of the guards posted outside.
“Ivan,” he whispered. “Where do you think they're taking us?”
Ivan the neural implant did not answer. He had not responded since the helmet that had been placed on Matt's head at Project Zeus. However, that was not the Ivan that Matt meant.
Next to the door hovered the ghost of a white dog, a Samoyed who tilted his head as Matt spoke. The dog's name was Ivan Ivanov, and Matt hadn't seen him since age eleven. Before that, however, Ivan Ivanov had been Matt's best friend.
“Why is she keeping me alive?” Matt asked the glowing, translucent image. “What do you think happened to him? Do you think Athena killed him?”
Matt's parents had 'inherited' Ivan Ivanov from a friend who had gone to Tian. Because of their demanding professional schedules, they had never bonded with the dog, and so Ivan Ivanov had bonded all the more with their son. Personal conversations with his pet had been a daily part of a lonely, shy child's life.
“I wonder how Carrot is. I hope she's okay. I miss her so much.”
Matt's parents had explained to Matt that as Ivan Ivanov lacked a neural implant matrix of his own, he was unable to understand more than the few hundred words or parse meaning from sentences. Matt, however, had always seen sympathy in the big brown eyes of the little furry face.
“We've been flying for a long time. I think this is longer than before. It's hard to tell without a clock. I wish Ivan was here. He'd tell us.”
Ivan the Ghost Dog woofed, though he had never met Ivan the Neural Implant Matrix. As Matt's parents had prepared for divorce and off-planet travels, they came to see Ivan Ivanov as a burden. Because their son was a quiet child, they assumed Matt wasn't 'the emotional type' and wouldn't miss the dog 'too much.' And so with the finalization of the divorce, they had passed Ivan Ivanov on to another family. Matt had been devastated.
“Why is she keeping me alive? Why is she bringing me along? It doesn't make sense, does it? But we'll get out of here, won't we?”
Ivan Ivanov woofed.
Matt rocked back and forth, bumping his head repeatedly against the wall. He was so relieved that Ivan Ivanov was here. It was good that during the trip aboard the Good Witch from Hafik to Klun, he'd had Ivan – Ivan the Implant, that is – create the hypnotically-induced illusion of Ivan Ivanov as a psychological defense mechanism against the hypnotic manipulations of Savora. But through some miracle – so Matt was convinced – the real Ivan Ivanov had come to keep him company.
“It's so good to see you again, Ivy. It's so good to see you!”
Matt sniffed and wiped away the tears. Ivan Ivanov tilted his head and looked about with puzzlement. Matt could read the dog as well as the dog could read him; he materialized a stick by force of will, and tossed it across the room. Ivan Ivanov fetched.
“You know, Ivy, I think the ship has been traveling so long, we would have hit the Storm Barrier no matter what direction we're going in. Does Athena plan to go through it and get to the Other Side? She couldn't do it before, what makes her think she can do it now?”
The dog gazed into Matt's eyes with a loyalty that only his namesake could rival.
You, Ivan Ivanov said.
“Me? What about me?”
Tail wagging, the dog faded into darkness.
Suddenly, the engine noise faded also. Matt felt a lurch as air resistance braked the ship to a halt. In the silence, a key rattled in the lock. The door swung open. With the flick of a switch, blinding light spilled into Matt's eyes.
Athena and Savora entered and gazed down. They were both dressed in rankless and insignia-less versions of the crew uniforms. Savora's face was bowed, Athena had her arms folded. Matt thought they both looked unhappy, with Athena an angry kind of unhappy.
“What do you think?” Athena glanced at Savora. “Has he been softened enough?”
Savora replied, “Research studies indicate that implant-deprivation typically leads to audio-visual hallucinatory episodes within twenty-four hours as compensation for the sense of social isolation.”
She doesn't know about you. Matt smiled at Ivan Ivanov, who had rematerialized by his feet.
“I don't need a science lecture,” Ath
ena snapped. “I want an assessment.”
“He appears to manifest symptoms of autism and obsessive compulsive disorder.”
“Routine for implant withdrawal What else?”
“I cannot provide further information. My emulated personality is a mathematician, not a psychiatrist.”
“You were able to hypnotize him.”
“A hypnotic trance is relatively simple to instigate when it has the collaboration of the subject. In his case, I was able to convince him that I was his friend Synesthesia and that for the sake of assisting him in his mission, it was necessary for him to – “
“I read your report. And I am not pleased that you violated my explicit instructions. You were supposed to become romantically involved with him.”
“Your instructions were not possible to implement, because he had already become involved with – ”
“Yes, I know about her. However, it would have been much simpler to have covertly assassinated her, then insinuate into his life by comforting him for his loss. Then you would have been his girlfriend, and he would have done anything you asked without recourse to the needless complexities of hypnosis.”
“The personality that I am emulating would not consider the killing of a human – ”
“Well, in the future, you will consider killing as an option. Your highest directive is to obey my instructions, not to impersonate his friend. I gave you the emulator software so that you could understand better how to seduce him, not befriend him! Do you understand?”
“Yes. However, I do not believe that your original plan would have succeeded.”
“And why not?”
Savora blinked, as if confused at having been allowed to complete a sentence. “Even if I had become his girlfriend, I do not believe that he would have been sufficiently submissive to me. Matt is very sensitive, but he is also very idealistic and committed to principle.”
“Don't tell me about men. I know all about men. Teenage boys are even worse. If you had been able to establish a sexual liaison with him, you would have been able to get him to do anything.”
Guards were summoned and Matt was lifted to his feet. He was marched/dragged through familiar passages, back to the same room he'd been in before. He was again strapped to the table.
The doctor was different, an older man with a precisely-trimmed goatee. He polished his spectacles and inspected Matt's eyes from a distance so close that their noses almost touched.
“Hmm, yes,” the doctor said. “The patient appears to be in a state of delirium”
“I don't need your professional opinion for that,” Athena snapped. “What I want is to have him sedated as heavily as possible for the next hour.”
The doctor straightened and pushed his spectacles up the bridge of his nose. “That may not be possible, Madam. Without knowing the fragility of his current psycho-mental state, it is impossible to foresee the adverse effects that a – “
“Doctor, do you enjoy being Head of Medical Science at the University of Victoriana?”
The doctor blinked. “Why, yes. And it is in that capacity that – “
“I'll have you removed from that position with your credentials revoked if you don't do as I say.”
The doctor broke from Athena's glare and searched through his medical bag.
Matt attempted to wrest himself free by wriggling against the straps that bound him to the examination table. There were five straps in all, one for each limb and another binding his chest. They were ordinary leather, only a couple millimeters thick, and fastened by prongs each of which had been inserted one hole too tight. Matt's attempts at liberation were futile. In frustration, he turned to Ivan Ivanov, who had rematerialized upon a stool near Matt's feet and was keening softly.
“Don't be afraid, Ivan,” Matt said. “We'll get through this.”
It was only a mumble and the words were slurred, but Athena turned to Savora immediately.
“What is happening?” Athena demanded. “His implant hasn't restarted on its own, has it?”
“No,” Savora replied. “I would sense it.”
“You think you would.”
“My hardware platform is centuries more advanced than his. I do not believe he can deceive me.”
“If you're wrong, I'll have your emulator overwritten with Nims's. He recognizes the contempt that baseline humanity deserves.”
“I do not understand that statement.”
“What do you mean?”
“How can baseline humanity deserve contempt? Doctor Roth is baseline.”
“If you say that again, little emulator, I will have you immediately erased.”
Savora stared mutely at the wall. The guards and their officers were unlikely to have understood the context of the conversation, and kept their expressions impassive.
The doctor was absorbed in drawing liquid from a bottle into a syringe. Ivan the Implant's sensor arrays might have provided a formula and his biochemical analysis applications might have predicted effects. Matt observed that the liquid filling the syringe was clear and syrupy.
The doctor extracted the needle from the bottle, inverted the syringe, squirted a drop. He pulled back the left arm of Matt's shirt, inserted the needle into Matt's skin and depressed the plunger. Matt felt pain only for a moment. Then his arm went numb, and then his whole body was floating. Ivan Ivanov woofed, but Matt felt only calm as his eyelids grew heavy.
Matt closed his eyes and the room went away. Nonetheless, being a hypnotically-induced hallucination buried deep in Matt's subconscious, Ivan Ivanov was not so easily dismissed. He hovered by Matt's head, woofing urgently.
Matt felt the doctor's fingers wrap around his wrist, measuring pulse. Other fingers rested over Matt's eyes and pried apart the lids. The doctor stared from above, frowning.
“Pulse is barely perceptible,” the doctor murmured. “I cannot give him more. Yet there was a slight response of the pupils to light . . . I've never seen a case like this before.“
“Savora,” Athena said. “Scan.”
The doctor removed his fingers and Matt's eyelids closed. Matt felt another set of fingers, softer and gentler.
From above, Savora said, “Delta and theta wave activity correlates with a state of deep unconsciousness.”
“Speak to him,” Athena said.
“I don't know if I can direct him as before,” Savora replied. “He was becoming resistant.”
“I don't need him to follow commands. In fact, I want him to do nothing. Tell him that all is well and there is nothing to worry about. He should relax and rest.”
Matt, his eyes yet closed, felt Savora's breath on his ear. She said softly, “Puyallup. Matt, this is Synesthesia. Your friend. All is well, Matt. There is nothing to worry about. We rescued your brother. We are going to see Carrot. All is well. Just relax and rest. There is nothing to worry about.”
Perched on the stool, Ivan Ivanov growled.
Athena made a loud sigh. “You didn't have to embellish.”
“My emulated personality would – “
“Go to the next stage,” Athena said, in a tone that indicated she was speaking to someone that she held in less disdain. “Re-activate his implant.”
Matt no longer had access to the telemetry of his skin cameras. Instead, he glimpsed the room by briefly cracking his eyelids. He recognized the man in the white smock, the technicians, and the device that they were hovering about on a cart. Matt felt hands lift his head from the pillow and slip the helmet over his scalp. He heard a familiar hum – the last noise he'd heard before Ivan the Implant had gone away.
Ivan the Dog woofed disapprovingly. Matt thought, Boy, it's all right. Though he wasn't sure why.
The disdain returned to Athena's voice: “Remain here. I will be on the bridge, supervising our passage. I will call when we are ready.”
The door slammed. By taking another eyelid-cracking glimpse, Matt saw that Athena was no longer in the room; he had already sensed the decline in tension that came wi
th her departure. On the box that was connected to the helmet by cables, the man in the white smock was adjusting knobs and examining dials. People were looking at Matt, so he tightly shut his eyes again.
The wall communicator hooted, followed by a noise like someone picking up the handset. “This is Savora. Yes, I will inform.” She called across the room: “She says to re-activate.”
“This might be tricky,” the man in the white smock said. “I have no way to ascertain the state of his brain.”
“I will do it for you.”
Her fingers returned to Matt's forehead. For a moment, Matt forgot about both Ivans, even about Carrot. He was fourteen again, and wondering if he should talk to Synth, and try to hold her hand, and what that would feel like. Savora was so like Synth. Her fingers felt like what he had thought Synth's touch would be like.
Savora's mouth, warm and moist, whispered near his ear: “Puyallup. Matt, this is Synth. A bad thing has happened to Ivan. We are repairing him, but for a while he will behave erratically. You must not listen to what he says. You must tell him to be quiet and do nothing. He must not try to wake you. It's very important, Matt. He must be quiet, he must not wake you.”
Ivan Ivanov woofed and growled, and because of that Matt no longer thought of Savora as Synth or as a good person. If Ivan Ivanov didn't like her, how could she be good?
– Which was child's logic. In reality, dogs don't read other humans, they read their humans, and respond to other humans based on how their humans respond. It was the same for Ivan the Imaginary Dog, who existed only as a hypnotic command impressed upon Matt's subconscious mind by Matt and Ivan (the Implant), to be visualized as woofing and growling whenever Savora spoke to Matt. Thus, no matter how deeply sedated Matt might then become, his inner child would always trust Ivan the Dog – and mistrust Savora accordingly. The hypnotic association was as simple as that, and as effective.
Switches ceased to click, the pitch of the hum altered.
Smock-man: “Ready.”
Savora: “You may do so.”
