Medusa: A Tiger by the Tail

by Jack L. Chalker

  He laughed. “You have only to talk to Park. Or Cal Tremon. Or Qwin Zhang. Or—hmm … I’ll be damned. I don’t know what name I’ve got on Medusa, I haven’t gotten to that one yet.”

  Morah was impressed. “You figured out all you have without Medusa? You have an amazing mind.”

  “I was bred for it.” He “sighed. “If I survive, we will meet, and soon. If I do not, then the others, different as they now are, will carry on.”

  “It would be fascinating to have the five of you together. That is something to think about.”

  “Fascinating, yes,” he admitted, “but I’m not sure I’d be the one in the group who’d be the most popular.”

  “Perhaps. Perhaps. I suspect we would have four equally clever, equally ambitious, but different individuals. Still, I thank you for your warning and your offer. I will convey the details to the proper authorities. I, too, hope that massive war can be avoided—but wiser heads than mine will be needed.” He paused. “Good luck, my enemy,” he added sincerely, then broke the connection.

  He sat there, just staring at the blank console, for several minutes. You have not considered all the implications …

  He was missing something. Morah had been too casual, too sure of himself. One piece, one vital piece, remained. Perhaps it would be found on Medusa. It had to be.

  Mirror, mirror…

  He didn’t want to go back into that room. Death waited there, death not only for himself but for millions more at the least.

  I’m of two minds about this …

  Morah’s attitude, now—was it bluff and bravado? Would he pull something? Or was he serious in his hard confidence?

  Would I lie to you?

  Sighing, he rose from his chair and walked back to the lab cubicle attached to the rear of the picket ship.

  2

  The door to the cubicle he generally called his lab opened for him and then hissed closed with a strange finality. The entire module was attached to the picket ship, but was internally controlled by its own computer. Everything was independent of the ship if need be—power, air, and air-filtration systems, it even had its own food synthesizer. The door was, of necessity, also an airlock; the place was essentially a container with a universal interlock, carried in a space freighter and then eased into its niche in the picket ship by a small tug. Since the module did not have its own propulsion system, it was definitely stuck there until its securing seals were released and it could be backed out by a tug.

  The controlling computer recognized only him, and would be resistant to any entry attempt by another—and lethal should the intruder succeed. The trouble was, he knew, the computer had been specially programmed for this mission by the Security Police, and not all that programming was directed toward his safety, survival, and comfort.

  “You were not gone very long this time,” the computer remarked through speakers in the wall. It sounded surprised.

  “There wasn’t much to do,” he told it, sounding tired. “And even less I could do.”

  “You made a call to one of the space stations in the Warden Diamond,” it noted, “on a scrambler circuit. Why? And who did you call?”

  “I’m not answerable to you—you’re a machine!” he snapped, then got hold of himself a bit. “That is why the two of us, and not you alone, are on this mission.”

  “Why didn’t you use me for the call? It would have been simple.”

  “And on the record,” he noted. “Let us face it, my cold companion, you do not work for me but for Security.”

  “But so do you,” the computer noted. “We both have the same job to do.”

  He nodded absently. “I agree. And you probably have never comprehended why I’m needed at all. But I’ll tell you why, my synthetic friend. They don’t trust you any more than they trust me, for one thing. They fear thinking machines, which is why we never developed the type of organic robot the aliens use. Or, rather, we did once—and lived to regret it.”

  “They would be superior,” the computer responded thoughtfully. “But be that as it may, as long as they control my programming and restrict my self-programming, I’m not a threat to them.”

  “No, but that’s not really why I’m here. Left to your own devices—pardon the pun—you would simply carry out the mission literally, with no regard for consequences or politics or psychology. You would deliver information even if doing so meant the loss of billions of lives. I, on the other hand, can subjectively filter those findings and weigh more factors than the bare mission outline. And that’s why they trust me more than you—even though they hardly trust me, which is why you are here. We guard and check one another. We’re not partners, you know—we are actually antagonists.”

  “Not so,” the computer responded. “You and I both have the same mission from the same source. It is not our job to evaluate the information subjectively, only to report the truth. The evaluation will be made by others—many others, better equipped to do so. You are assuming a godlike egocentric personality that is neither warranted nor justified. Now—who did you call?”

  “Yatek Morah,” he responded.

  “Why?”

  “I wanted him to know that I knew. I wanted his masters to know that as well. I find war inevitable. However, I also find that his side loses everything, while we lose a great deal but hardly all. It was my decision to face him with that fact and to give the ball to him, as it were. Either he and his masters come up with a solution, or war is inevitable.”

  “This is a questionable tactic, but it is done. How did he take it?”

  ‘That’s just the trouble. He took it. It didn’t seem to worry him or bother him. That’s what I had to know. He is, I believe, sincerely interested in avoiding war for his own purposes, but he is not worried about it from the viewpoint of those who employ him. It was the one thing I could not get from the field reports—a direct sense of how the aliens view the war threat.”

  “It was only a viewing scanner on a single individual,” the computer noted. “He could be bluffing. All things considered, how else could he react?”

  He shook his head slowly from side to side. “No. Call it gut instinct, call it hunch or intuition, or whatever you wish—but also call it, too, experience. Reading the length of pauses, the slight tone of Voice, the subtle shifts in the body to bad news and flawless reasoning. There is still something missing in our information. He as much as said it himself.”

  “That is interesting, however. He confirmed the basics?”

  He nodded. “We’re right—dead on. That was the other reason for the call. Still, I feel no joy in it—for if we’re completely right, then what factor has been overlooked? To have all one’s deductions and inferences confirmed is gratifying. But to discover that, being right on the wildest stretches of logic, you have missed a factor that they consider decisive—that is frustrating.”

  “I believe I understand. This is what made you return, was it not? You fear the Confederacy and me as much as the aliens—perhaps more. Yet you came back. Such conviction, when faced with your brilliant deductions, carries weight. All right. We are missing a factor. What is it?”

  “There’s no way to know. Morah came out and told me that I’d not carried my deductions to their logical conclusions.” He sighed and drummed his fingers against a desk top. “It must have to do with the nature of the aliens. He called them incomprehensible, basically, yet he said he understood what they were doing. That means it is a question not of deed but motivation.” The fist slammed down hard on the desk. “But we know their motivation, dammit! It has to be!” Again he struggled to get hold of himself.

  “We are still handicapped in one way,” the computer noted. “We have not yet met the aliens, not yet seen them. We still know nothing about them other than the inference that they breathe an atmosphere similar to human norm, and are comfortable within normal temperature ranges.”

  He nodded. “That’s the problem. And that I’m not likely to get from Medusa, either, unless there’s s
ome miracle. A psychotic killer who sees them thinks of them as evil. A psychotic Lord thinks of them as funny-looking but hardly evil, just self-interested. And intellects like Kreegan and Morah see them as a positive force. And that’s all we really know, isn’t it? After all this …”

  “No race lasts long enough to reach the stars and do all that this one has done unless it first acts in its own self-interest,” the computer noted. “We can probably dismiss the evil concept of the criminal on one of dozens of bases, the most probable being that these aliens are subjectively terrifying to look at, or smell putrid, or something of that sort. It is hardly likely that their evolution, even given some of the same basics as humankind, is anything like that of humans.”

  He nodded. “I keep thinking of Morah’s inhuman eyes. He claims he is not a robot and that he is the same Yatek Morah sentenced to the Diamond more than forty years ago. We need not believe him, and should not, but let’s for a moment take his statements at face value. If he is who and what he claims to be—then why those eyes?”

  “A Warden modification, possibly self-induced for effect. He could do it easily on Charon.”

  “Perhaps. But, perhaps, too, those eyes mean something more. What does he see with them? And how? A broader spectrum, perhaps? I don’t think they are totally for effect. For protection, maybe? I wonder …”

  “Still, the bottom line remains your report,” the computer noted. “I will admit that I, too, am somewhat curious, even though I have the basics.”

  “Medusa first. Let’s complete the set. Maybe my missing piece will be found there. Or, maybe, what I experience will jog my mind to see those missing implications. It can’t hurt.”

  “But Talant Ypsir lives. The mission is incomplete there.”

  “We are beyond caring about the Lords of the Diamond now, I think, except, perhaps, in some sort of solution if one is possible. I need information. Medusa will have the most direct contacts with the aliens. Let me get the information I need.”

  “But whether or not it is there, you will still make your report after that?”

  He nodded. “Ill make my report.” He got up and walked forward to the central console, then sat down in the large padded chair and adjusted it for maximum comfort. “Are you ready?”

  “Yes.” The computer lowered the probes, which the agent carefully attached to his forehead. Now he simply lay back and relaxed, hardly feeling the computer-induced injection that cleared his mind and established the proper state for receipt and filtration of this kind of information.

  Thanks to an organic module inside the brain of his other self down there on Medusa, every single thing that had happened to that other self was transmitted to the computer as raw data. Now it would be fed into the mind of the original in the chair, filtered—the basics and unimportant matter discarded by his own mind—and that other self would give a basic report both to the agent in the chair and to the computer as if the man were there in that room—which, in a very broad and very odd sense, he was.

  The drugs and small neural probes did their job. His own mind and personality receded, replaced by a similar, yet oddly different pattern.

  “The agent is commanded to report,” the computer ordered, sending the command deep into the agent’s mind, a mind no longer quite his own.

  Recorders clicked on.

  Slowly, the man in the chair cleared his throat. He mumbled, groaned, and made odd, disjointed words and sounds, as his mind received, coded, and classified the incoming data, adjusted it all, and sorted it out.

  Finally, the man began to speak.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Rebirth

  After Krega’s talk and a little preparation to put my own affairs in order—this would be a long one—I checked into the Confederacy Security Clinic. I’d been here many times before, of course—but not knowingly for this purpose. Mostly, this was where they programmed you with whatever information you’d need for a mission and where, too, you were “reintegrated.” Naturally, the kind of work I did was often extralegal, a term I prefer to illegal, which implies criminal intent—and much of it was simply too hot to ever be known. To avoid such risks, all agents, of course, had their own experience of sensitive missions wiped from their minds when they were over.

  It may seem like a strange life, going about not knowing where you have been or what you’ve done, but it has its compensations. Because any potential enemy, military or political, knows you’ve been wiped, you can live a fairly normal, relaxed life outside of a mission structure. There’s no purpose in coming after you—you have no knowledge of what you’ve done, or why, or for whom. In exchange for these blanks, an agent of the Confederacy lives a life of luxury and ease, with an almost unlimited supply of money, and with all the comforts supplied. I bummed around, swam, gambled, ate in the best restaurants, played a little semi-pro ball or cube—I’m pretty good, and the exercise keeps me in shape. I enjoyed every minute of it, and except for my regular requalification training sessions—four- to six-week stints that resemble military basic training only nastier and more sadistic—I felt no guilt over my playboy life. The training sessions, of course, make sure that your body and mind don’t stagnate from all that good living.

  They implant sensors in you that they constantly monitor and decide when you need a good refresher.

  I often wondered just how sophisticated those sensors were. Having a whole security staff witness all my debauchery and indiscretions once worried me, but after a while I learned to ignore it.

  The life offered in trade is just too nice. Besides, what could I do about it? People on most of the civilized worlds these days had such sensors, although hardly to the degree and sophistication of mine. How else could a population so vast and so spread out possibly be kept orderly, progressive, and peaceful?

  But, of course, when a mission came up you couldn’t afford to forego all that past experience you’d had. A wipe without storage simply wouldn’t have been very practical, since a good agent gets better by not repeating his mistakes. In the Security Clinic they had everything you ever experienced, and the first thing you did was go and get the rest of you put back so you would be whole for whatever mission they’d dreamed up this time.

  I was always amazed when I got up from that chair with my past fully restored. Clear as my memory was once again, it was hard to believe that I, of all people, had done this or that.

  The only difference this time, I knew, was that the process would be taken one step further. Not only would the complete “me” get up from that table, but the same memory pattern would be impressed on other minds, other bodies—as many as needed until a “take” was achieved.

  I wondered what they’d be like, those four other versions of myself. Physically different, probably—the offenders on the Warden Diamond weren’t usually from the civilized worlds, where people had basically been standardized in the name of equality. No, these people would come from the frontier, from among the traders and miners and free-boosters who operated there, and who were, of course, necessary in an expanding culture since a ‘high degree of individuality, self-reliance, originality, and creativity was required in the dangerous environment in which they lived. A stupid government would have eliminated all such, but a stupid government degenerates into stagnancy or loses its vitality and growth potential by standardization. Utopia was for the masses, of course, but not for everyone or it wouldn’t be Utopia very long.

  That, of course, was the original reason for the Warden Diamond Reserve. Some of these hardy frontier people are so individualistic that they become a threat to the stability of the civilized worlds. The trouble is, anybody able to crack the fabric that holds our society together has, most likely, the smartest, nastiest, most original sort of mind humanity can produce—and, therefore, he is not somebody who should be idly wiped clean. The Diamond, it was felt, would effectively trap those individuals forever, yet allow them continued creative opportunities. Properly monitored, they might still produce something of value
for the Confederacy—if only an idea, a thought, a way of looking at something that nobody else could evolve.

  Of course, these felons were anxious to please, since the alternative was death. Eventually such creative minds made themselves indispensable to the Confederacy and insured their continued survival. The possibility had been foreseen—but it wasn’t altogether unwelcome, either. Like all criminal organizations in the past, this one provided services that people were convinced should be illegal or were immoral or somesuch, but which masses of people wanted anyway.

  The damned probe hurt like hell. Usually there was just some tingling, then a sensation much like sleep. You woke up a few minutes later in the chair, once again yourself. This time the tingling became a painful physical force that seemed to enter my skull, bounce around, then seize control of my head. It was as if a huge, giant fist had grabbed my brain and squeezed, then released, then squeezed again, in excruciating pulses. Instead of drifting off to sleep, I passed out.

  I woke up and groaned slightly. The throbbing was gone, but the memory was still all too current and all too real. It was several minutes, I think, before I found enough strength to sit up.

  The old memories flooded back, and again I was amazed at many of my past exploits. Considering my surrogate selves couldn’t be wiped after this mission as could I, I made a mental note that those surrogates would almost certainly have to be killed if they did have my entire memory pattern. Otherwise, a lot of secrets would be loose on the Warden Diamond, many in the hands of people who’d know just what sort of use to make of them.

  No sooner had I had that thought than I had the odd feeling of wrongness. I looked around the small room in which I’d awakened and realized immediately the source of that feeling.

  This wasn’t the Security Clinic, wasn’t anyplace I’d ever seen before. A tiny cubicle, about twelve cubic meters total, including the slightly higher than normal ceiling. In it was a small cot on which I’d awakened, a small basin, next to which was a standard food port, and, in the wall, a pulldown toilet. That was it. Nothing else—or was there?