The pack snapped and snarled at his heels. As they closed in, they took on the forms of huge black wolves, their eyes burning with a terrible, inhuman intelligence. Harry fell through the event horizon of cold, blue fire. He was almost home-free when the lead wolf leapt at him. Its claws raked a trail of darkness through the flaring back of his ka. Harry screamed in agony and tried to shake it off. He could feel it trying to claw its way in, trying to become him.
The impact of the attack started his ka tumbling. In desperation, he exaggerated the motion, whirling faster and faster like a top. He felt the claws tear free one by one until finally the thing lost its grip and centrifugal force hurled it away, shrieking with frustration. Moments later, he dropped through the black hole of the spin-generator positioned over his cloned body. Automatically, the machinery shut down, and Harry sank into and became once again flesh.
His first sense was always a feeling of suffocating heaviness, of being trapped inside thick meat. It was never a pleasant feeling; but this time, he was grateful for the secure solidity of flesh. It was like slamming a solid oak door in the face of a ravening wolf pack. He could almost feel them snuffling and scratching at the edges of his ka. He let it sink deeper into flesh; felt the slow push of blood through arteries, the heavy rise and fall of lungs as they sucked in air. He began feeling all the minor aches and pains that usually hide just under the threshold of consciousness.
Suddenly, he felt a terrible, searing pain rake across his back as if a memory ghost of the attack finally caught up with him and ripped its mark in his flesh. His eyes bulged open; his body convulsed, and he screamed in fear and pain. Foamy amniotic fluid sloshed over the edges of the glass cloning tank he floated in. He tried to force himself up and away, ripping through the maze of plastic life-support tubes and electrode monitor wires. His only thought was to escape the nameless terror that had set its claws in him. Firm hands tried to hold him down as he struggled to clamber out of the tank.
“Harry! Harry, now take it easy!” He heard someone say, but he couldn’t see who it was. He blinked his eyes trying to clear them of amniotic fluid. His breath was coming in harsh gasps.
“Harry, it’s me, Doc Jericho. You know me, Harry. Now just take it easy.”
The familiar voice of the old man cut through the clawing panic. Harry blinked his eyes again. The concerned, bespectacled face of his old friend swam into view. Jericho made a point of being on hand whenever Harry resurrected. He was always a reassuring sight, and Harry felt himself calming down. He looked around wonderingly at the clean, softly lit room. He was safe in the birthing chambers beneath Eternal Life. Here, everything was orderly and familiar. The black wolves had no place among the white-clad technicians, blinking electronic displays, and gurgling pumps.
“Harry, are you all right?” Jericho asked, watching him closely.
Harry looked down at his naked body, dripping with milky amniotic fluid. He could still feel the pain, tearing across his back; but he was safe now, safe in his new body.
In the background he heard a familiar recorded chant, recited over and over again: “You live again, you revive always, you have become young again and forever.” It was the motto of Eternal Life Inc. stolen directly from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, along with the idea of the ka. It was chanted at every resurrection. Even though Harry knew it was just a publicity gimmick, he found it comforting by its very familiarity.
“Come on, Harry,” Jericho said soothingly. “Lie down and take it easy.”
Harry smiled sheepishly and began to slide back down into the warm, fluid-filled tank.
“Jesus Christ, Doc! What’s going on?” Roger Morely, Eternal Life’s CEO, shouted as he burst through the double doors of the birthing chamber. He was still dressed in his black tuxedo and must have hurried down right after Harry’s performance. His fat, florid face was layered with concern as he leaned over the cloning tank and smiled.
Harry looked up into Morely’s pale blue eyes, and something black seemed to flutter across his vision. Harry heard himself whimper in fear as Morely’s pug nose elongated into a feral snout. His curly, ginger hair straightened into a coarse, black pelt; his smile turned into a fanged growl.
Harry felt his fear suddenly turn into a wild, unreasoning rage. This was his world! They had no right to be here. He would not run again. He levered himself up and grabbed a fist full of Roger’s tuxedo. With an inarticulate roar of triumph, he brought his other fist around in a flat, hard arc that snapped Roger’s head back. The black demon face disappeared and Harry was confronted with the surprised, bruised face of Roger Morely. The man was dazed from the blow and tried feebly to pull away.
Just then, Harry felt a sharp prick in his arm. He let go of Roger and swung around, ripping the hypodermic out of Jericho’s hand, but the anesthetic was already taking effect. Harry felt consciousness spiraling down into soft blackness. He could have transferred his awareness to his ka and remained awake but didn’t dare. Instead he let the darkness take him, welcoming its healing oblivion. Slowly, he slid down into the tank of amniotic fluid, floating there gently with the hypodermic still stuck in his biceps.
2
Sanctuary is a dangerous Place
Her grav-car crossed the first defense perimeter five miles out from the island. The rain was coming down hard by then. Her sensors picked up the first ping of incoming targeting radar. She felt the tell-tale tingle of a graviton detector beam wash over her body. Then, every alarm in the car began to scream a warning. She ignored their squawk of protest as she shut them off and continued on her course heading.
Isis lay slumped against her in the front seat, her head lolling, feverish, her skin slick with cold sweat. Every once in a while she’d mutter something incoherent and then drop back into her inner battle with the demon that was trying to take possession.
Diana had used the grav-car’s safety harness to restrain her after the battle turned particularly nasty and she woke up screaming and snarling, punching the air, tearing at her clothes, and raking her own skin. After that, the fight internalized into this cursing mutter of choked off screams interspersed with low animal growls and hisses. Sometimes, it sounded almost like language before dissolving into a guttural rage of gibberish again.
Suddenly, she felt the dull thump of a lamprey mine fastening to the body of the car. A moment later the car’s holo-screen lit up with a zombie slave program of a square-jawed, military construct. “You are entering restricted air space! Please stop and identify yourself!” Its voice, laced with threatening subsonics, boomed from the speakers.
Diana looked over at her sister. The muttering, hissing growls had gotten louder as she tossed her head from side to side and occasionally banged it against the head rest in a fit of violent frustration. Blood began to drip from her nose and ooze out of her ears. Diana decided to ignore the robot defense warnings and pushed on through the inner defense perimeter.
The grav-car’s sensors recorded weapons systems locking on, and the military construct raised his voice. “You have entered restricted airspace! This is private property. According to Jurisdiction Law 58j6, paragraph 5, we can use all necessary force to stop you. Please be advised, you are putting your life at risk if you continue.”
Once again, Diana ignored the warning and pushed on. By now, alarm bells should be going off all over the island. That should fire up his processors and make the old fart sit up and take notice, she thought.
“This is your last chance!” the construct screamed. “Weapons system are activated and locked on!”
Diana slowed fractionally and shouted, “Jericho it’s me, Diana Lloyd! I need your help!”
The military construct’s threatening protests cut off in mid screech, and the holo-image dissolved into distortion pixels and went blank for a few seconds.
When it cleared, Jericho appeared pulling on a ratty, old, velvet robe that had once been the color of vintage burgundy. His thatch of gray hair stood out in disheveled spikes. He blinked sleepily a
s he fumbled on an ancient pair of wire rim spectacles. When he set them on his nose, the lenses dissolved into a glowing pixel fog. A second later, they cleared again as the spectacles connected to the data sphere. The old man stared through them directly at her. “Diana?” he said.
“You should know,” she said and glanced over at her sensor array. The number of weapons locking on to her had gone way beyond overkill. “Now call off your dogs!” she shouted.
Jericho said nothing. His china blue eyes studied her carefully as if she was some kind of rare butterfly he was considering for his collection. At last, he turned and shuffled over to a leather, wing backed chair and sat down. He steepled his fingers and tapped them thoughtfully against his chin and waited.
“Nano Trees…Jake Lloyd…Anubis invasion!” Diana shouted in exasperation. “God Damnit, it’s started! My father was right!”
“Ah, why didn’t you say so?” Jericho smiled and, with a wave of his hand, all targeting systems cut off. He shook his head. “One can’t be too careful, you know.”
3
Playacting
Harry rode the long, slow waves of consciousness up out of darkness. He did not try to force the process but instead lay quietly monitoring his body and letting his senses expand, rippling outward, testing the world around him. He was in bed. He could feel the rasp of fresh linen against his newly cloned, naked body. Usually when he woke up in a new body, there was a feeling of vigorous health and well-being. This time he felt a sense of physical depletion coupled with a dull, throbbing pain in his back. He felt the pull of bandages and the cooling touch of medicaments against pain. He was almost tempted to regress to his Ka and explore the source of his discomfort but decided not to risk it. They would be watching him closely. Better wait until later.
He heard the soft hum of the monitors and felt the cool, metallic touch of the pickups attached to his skin. He was careful to control the output of information the pickups received, a man resting peacefully, just coming into the first stages of awakening from deep sedation. There would be no sign on the monitors of the wide-awake mind that hid behind his sleeping features.
He could almost taste the sharp, antiseptic tang of the negative ions in the air, almost hear the feel-good subsonics behind the piped in “natural” sounds of bird song and burbling brooks that came from the hologram screen. He knew that if he opened his eyes the lighting would be soft and indirect; the walls done in gentle pastels. Everything designed to soothe the newly reborn in the recovery rooms above the birthing chambers at Eternal Life.
It was all so familiar…except the restraints. He felt them almost immediately upon awakening. They were something new. Imperceptibly, he tensed individual muscle groups, testing the extent of his imprisonment. Thick nylon bands were snugged down tightly over his ankles, thighs, hips, chest, and arms. There was even a band across his forehead holding him totally immobile. He smiled to himself. He must have scared them badly. If the stories he had heard were true, they had reason to be scared.
Someone came quietly into the room and Harry began feeding new data to the monitors; a man about to wake up. There was a faint rustle of movement beside his bed and someone took his wrist. He felt the familiar cool, dry touch of Jericho’s long, sensitive fingers. He was relieved that they had let the old man stay after what happened. They could have just isolated Harry and refused to let anyone near him. Jericho was Harry’s best friend and knew more about resurrection technology than any man alive. He should, he invented it, although he didn’t have much say around Eternal Life anymore.
Harry pushed the thought aside. It was curtain time. He saw to it that his pulse quickened and breath rate went up. The monitors dutifully recorded a change in his brain wave pattern towards full wakefulness. A moment later, he let his eyes flutter open and gave a low, theatrical moan.
“Take it easy, Harry,” Jericho said gently.
Harry blinked, let his eyes go in and out of focus, and feigned a look of disorientation. His performance was not aimed at Jericho, but at the grav-corders hovering above his bed, and at the men behind the two-way mirrors set in the opposite wall. He could easily imagine them bent over banks of computer monitors and TV-screens, eagerly studying diagnostic printouts and watching his every move.
Right from the beginning, Harry had used his acting skills to conceal the strange powers he began acquiring from his ka. He told no one at Eternal Life about them except Jericho. Even now, he wasn’t quite sure why he had been so secretive. In the beginning, maybe it was just to spite Roger or maybe to salvage a little bit of dignity and self-respect at a time when the rest of his life was sliding into the sewer. Later, when he began to realize the potential of what he was dealing with, he decided that it was simply too dangerous to put such knowledge in the hands of someone like Roger Morely and his greedy shareholders.
And so the charade went on, he thought, and let his eyes swim into focus and at last looked up at Jericho’s kindly, old face. The old man studied him carefully. He looked uncertain and worried. “Welcome back to the land of the living…Harry,” he said with a forced smile and hesitancy in his voice that almost turned the greeting into a question. It was as if he wasn’t completely sure of who or what he might be dealing with. Harry’s violent reaction in the birthing chamber must have scared him too. He’d probably heard the wild stories and whispered rumors going around about Eternal Life.
“How are you feeling?” Jericho asked with forced casualness as he took out a large, antique pocket watch and made a show of taking Harry’s pulse. The old man looked tired. His body was stiff with tension, and he never even looked at the watch. His eyes never left Harry’s face.
Harry grinned lopsidedly and said in his best Bugs Bunny cartoon voice, “Na-a-e-e-h, what’s up Doc?” It was the way he always greeted Jericho after a resurrection, a sure sign that everything was okay.
A look of tremendous relief passed over the old man’s face. “Boy, you don’t know how glad I am to see you back!” he said as if he couldn’t believe his luck.
Harry tried to push himself up, but the restraints still held him tightly. He let a look of surprise settle over his face as if he had just become aware of the restraints. “Jesus Doc, am I that dangerous?”
“Some people seem to think so,” Jericho grinned.
Harry smiled ruefully for the cameras. “How’s Roger?”
Jericho let go of Harry’s wrist and put away his watch. “Don’t worry, he’ll live,” he said. “He’s been asking for that for years. But what got into you?”
Harry made a show of trying to move again. “Look Doc, how about taking these off? I’m not going to bite anyone.”
Jericho cocked his head with a mischievous grin. “Maybe you should tell that to Roger,” he said as he stepped away from the bed and straightened up. He was over six feet tall, stoop-shoul-dered, and rail thin. The rumpled, black suit that he habitually wore hung on his scarecrow frame like a potato sack. His white linen shirt was yellow with age, open at the throat and frayed on the collar. With his unruly shock of silver-gray hair, bushy eyebrows and sharp hawk-like features, he looked like a cross between an Old Testament prophet and a funeral parlor director gone to seed. “Okay let’s see if you’ve got it all together,” he said and held up his hand. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
“Five.”
“Good, and now?”
“Two.”
“And now?”
“Three.”
“What’s my middle name?”
“Randolph. For Christ’s sake, Doc! What’s this supposed to prove! Your name is Jeremiah Randolph Arnold Jericho. Age?” Harry shrugged. “Who knows? You’re presently unmarried, and the man who made all this possible.” Harry rolled his eyes to encompass not only the room but all of Eternal Life. “Is that enough or would you like a thumbnail sketch of my wasted life too?”
“That won’t be necessary,” Jericho grinned, obviously enjoying Harry’s performance. “You know, you really had us worried,” h
e said as he began undoing the restraints.
“I had myself worried,” Harry said as he started to push himself up on the pillows and winced with pain. It felt as if his back had been torn open with red-hot tongs. For a moment, he was tempted to put a mind block on the pain but was afraid the monitors might pick up the anomaly. So instead, he just gritted his teeth and tried to move as slowly and carefully as possible.
“Hurts, doesn’t it?” Doc asked, cocking his head like a bird eyeing a particularly tasty worm. Light flashed off his round wire-rimmed spectacles.
Harry grimaced. “What is it?” he asked, although he was pretty certain he knew the answer.
“There are blistering welts like claw marks all up and down your back,” Jericho said. “I’ve never seen anything quite like them before. Would you mind telling me who you were out with last night?” He grinned. “She must have been some lover.”
“Doc, you don’t know the half of it!” Harry was about to continue but something in Jericho’s eyes stopped him. “…and I wish I knew the other half,” he finished lamely.
“Why don’t you be quiet a minute and lift up your shirt,” Jericho interrupted in a no nonsense tone of voice and took out his stethoscope and listened to Harry’s heart.
“Doc, is this really necessary?” Harry protested when Jericho finished. “I feel great.”
“Who’s the Doctor here, you or me?” Jericho barked as he put away the stethoscope. “Now open your mouth,” he said and took out a tongue depressor. Jericho made a big production out of scanning Harry’s throat and then checking his eyes.
Finally, he leaned back and beamed. “Congratulations, son!” he said and grabbed Harry’s hand and began shaking it. “You’re healthy as a horse. Now, close your mouth and tell me what happened.” His bantering good humor was belied by a strange tension in the air and by the folded piece of paper he had slipped into Harry’s hand when he shook it.
Eternal Life Inc. Page 2
