The Cyborg and the Sorcerers

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  Slant was surprised at his own disappointment; had he really thought that these people might free him so quickly? He said nothing.

  "What is the demon's name?"

  That seemed a very peculiar but harmless question. "Computer Control Complex, Independent Reconnaissance Unit Two-oh-five," he replied in his own language.

  "So long? And in a strange tongue? Unfortunate. Is that its true name, or its calling name?"

  Slant considered that, and suddenly realized that the question might not be peculiar or harmless; it might have been very important, had he been able to give the answer the councillor wanted. "That's its calling name. I don't know its release code—what you'd call its true name."

  "That's unfortunate."

  Slant shrugged. If he knew the release code, he wouldn't need any wizards in the first place.

  "You killed a man this morning."

  The abrupt change of subject caught him by surprise. "I'm sorry." He remembered the bloody disaster in the top-floor bedchamber, and asked, "What about the girl? Will she live?"

  "She will live, but she lost her hand, and we are unsure it can be repaired."

  "I'm sorry about that, too. Really."

  "Where did you get that weapon you used? We have never heard of such a thing."

  "Until I came here I'd never seen real magic."

  "You have not answered the question."

  "I brought it with me." He wasn't about to get killed for cooperating with the enemy at this point; it would do him no good to answer such questions, where questions about the computer might have led to his freedom.

  His interviewer changed tack. "Why did you come here?"

  "Where?"

  "To Teyzha."

  An answer to this might possibly be of use in dealing with the computer, so he replied, "The demon sent me to learn about magic."

  "Why?"

  "I don't know."

  The councillor turned back for another session of whispering; Slant watched, and showed no outward reaction when the computer said, "Query: Report status."

  "I'm in what I believe to be the center of local government, being questioned by a governing council. I hope I can learn more about the gravitational disturbances from the framing of their questions."

  "This is not a recommended approach. Advisable course of action would be escape followed by further investigation in another area showing gravitational anomalies representing enemy weapons research."

  "What? Where?"

  "Appropriate subject locations may be found in several places on this planet. Eleven have been identified."

  "I don't know; we've already spent so much time here." He really didn't want to start all over, particularly since wizards in other places might be less eager to exorcise his particular demon. He tried to think of a convincing reason for staying that wouldn't put his loyalty in question.

  "Prepare to attempt escape. Ship will land near you and provide covering fire."

  "What, inside the city?"

  "Affirmative."

  "That'll do a lot of damage; is it necessary?"

  "Why is the demon interested in our magic?" The whispering session was over.

  "Affirmative. Maximum possible destruction has high distraction and deterrence value, and is in accordance with standard procedure."

  "I don't know," he said aloud; at the same time he asked the computer telepathically, "May I warn these people? It would have high propaganda value as a humanitarian gesture."

  "Is our magic that much different from its own?" the wizard asked.

  "Affirmative," the computer answered his request

  "Listen, in a couple of minutes my ship is going to rescue me and destroy anything that gets in its way; it could wreck the entire city. I suggest you get out of here and take shelter." He shouted this warning, loudly and slowly and clearly, so that everyone in the room would hear and understand despite the stir it created.

  His guards stepped forward and tried to grab him; one called, "We'll hold him! He won't get away this time!"

  The guard had miscalculated, however; he had assumed Slant was an ordinary human, and that it took a perceptible time for him to react. The human nervous system has synapses that transmit impulses from one nerve cell to the next, and serve to slow down messages to and from the brain; Slant's nervous system had been completely rewired, and the synapses bridged or eliminated, so that his reaction time was measured in millionths of a second instead of hundredths. In an ordinary human this would put intolerable strains on the body, as the brain would not be able to regulate itself at such a pace, but in Slant's computer-assisted system, with his steel-braced skeleton and restructured muscles, there were no such problems. In less time than it would take a normal man to register that something had been said, let alone to interpret or react to it, Slant had turned control over to his combat persona and was in motion, moving with blurring speed.

  The edge of his right hand caught one man in the belly, causing serious and possibly fatal internal injuries; one heel struck out to his left, catching a second guard in the crotch. This motion served to spin Slant around, so that he faced the third and final member of the trio of guards who had accompanied him from his cell. This individual was reacting to the sudden assault reflexively, in the way he had been conditioned to react; he was reaching for his sword. That meant Slant could deal with him in any number of ways; the right hand reaching across for the sword hilt was out of action and served to block the motion of the left, so that the entire right half of the man's body was unprotected. Vaguely aware that his dominant personality did not want to kill unnecessarily, he passed up several fatal or crippling blows and instead brought the heel of his left hand against the side of the guard's head; the man went down immediately, almost certainly unconscious, but unless he fell wrong he could expect to survive with nothing worse than a mild concussion.

  There were two other guards in the room, at the door to the entrance corridor, and eight wizards. None were making threatening moves in his direction—at least, not yet.

  Without any conscious thought, he knew that his next priorities were weapons and flight. His own weapons were not in evidence, nor did any of his enemies have any firearms visible; he had not been trained in archaic weaponry and therefore did not choose to acquire a sword. A knife, garrote, or other device used in modern espionage would have been far more to his liking.

  Flight was called for, but he did not yet know where his ship would be landing, or exactly when. It might be a good idea to try and get out of the building, in case the ship brought down the ceiling.

  That meant leaving the room through the guarded door, which meant getting past the two guards. They were too far away to take by hand, by surprise; even he couldn't cross the intervening distance that fast. If he tried it, one might get him while he took care of the other. He needed a missile, or a distraction.

  First, he had to get away from the three downed guards and the wizards; they might get in his way. He followed through on his left-handed head blow, having thought this out before it landed, and used the momentum to give him a start in his dash not for the door but for the nearest wall. The wooden benches that stood along the sides of the room would do for weaponry in lieu of better, and the oil lamps would be useful if flung, as either missiles or diversions.

  He never reached the bench he was aiming for; he stumbled halfway there, though he saw nothing that could have tripped him, and fell. He caught himself before he hit the floor and landed in a crouch, but when he tried to rise and continue his run he found himself unable to do so. Something invisible was holding him down.

  That was the wizards' doing, of course; he knew that immediately. He would have to eliminate them—all of them—if he was to escape unhampered. He considered methods of doing that

  Unable to move as he was, he could not attack them directly, and he was still too far away to help; he needed something he could throw. He tried to figure out where the energy field holding him originated; he could not see
or hear any machinery at all, though he felt that now-familiar electric tingle all over his body. He assessed his resources.

  He wore a thin pressure suit of insulating plastic, from neck to ankle. An equipment belt, with no equipment attached, was around his waist. He had gloves and boots, and nothing else. The boots and belt might be useful armament; he tried to release the catch on his belt but discovered that he could no longer move at all.

  The warrior was stymied. There was no simple tactical solution, except to wait until the ship arrived to rescue him. There was no need for combat training if all he had to do was wait. Therefore, his combat personality shut itself off, abdicating control, and Slant was himself again, held immobile in an awkward crouch in the middle of the marble floor by the wizards' magic while the three guards he had incapacitated lay unconscious a few meters away.

  The remaining two guards were just now becoming aware of what had happened; they drew their swords and looked hesitantly from Slant to the Council and back.

  "We have him; stay where you are," said the middle-aged woman.

  Slant was still reorienting himself; his more specialized personalities often operated at such high speed that time seemed to distort. It took him a moment to realize that the warrior persona had only been in control for about ten seconds and that it would still be a few minutes before his ship reached the city.

  When his head was clear, he shouted at the councillors, "Let me go and get out of here! This place is going to be destroyed in a few minutes!"

  They looked at one another, and a ripple of current seemed to flicker across his skin, but no one answered, and he still couldn't move.

  "Listen, I'm sorry about the guards, but it was self-defense. Get out of here! If you don't take shelter you'll be killed!"

  "I don't understand," said the white-bearded old man. "What will destroy this place? We see no one but you, and we've taken your weapons."

  "My ship! It'll be here any minute now!"

  He still saw only blank incomprehension.

  "Look, you can see I'm not lying! It's a starship, don't you know what that means? It's from the Bad Times, the same kind of ship that almost wiped out your entire world three hundred years ago!"

  "A sky machine, you mean?"

  "Yes, a sky machine, a death machine."

  The wizards looked at one another; another ripple ran through the field holding him.

  "One minute to impact."

  "Wait, they've got me restrained somehow."

  "Fire will be directed toward possible power sources as they are detected. Destruction of power supply should remove restraining field."

  "But the power source may be right near me! I've seen no sign of any major power sources; I think they're all small portable units."

  "No preferable course of action is known to be available."

  "You've got less than a minute! Run for cover!" This final yell seemed to register; the invisible hold on him was gone, and he was up and running. His training in evasion was in control; before the guards could react, he was past them and out the door, racing down the corridor. Somehow, his normal self managed to communicate even while suppressed, saying "I'm free; you don't have to shoot up power sources, they let me go."

  The only reply was a screaming roar that drowned out his footsteps on the marble floor; there was a thunderous booming crash, a vivid flash that was visible through the crack around the door a few feet in front of him, and the entire building shook around him.

  He skidded to a stop, half a meter from the door, waiting for the roar to subside. The sound did not subside but merely changed form; the initial howl of the ship's approach became the shattering crash of its impact on the place in less than a second, and that first great explosion had not yet faded when a series of lesser but still earth-shaking explosions began. The ship was firing its main armament.

  There was a roar of falling masonry somewhere behind him, barely audible over the sound of the ship's weapons; sunlight spilled into the corridor behind him, lighting clouds of drifting dust that he knew must be powdered stone. He wondered whether any of the people in the Council chamber were still alive.

  He also wondered whether he himself would survive; the computer seemed to be getting careless, shooting closer to him than necessary, and he remembered that it wanted him dead.

  He heard a human voice; someone was screaming, sounding like the faint call of a distant bird over the cacophony of the starship's assault.

  He opened the palace door and moved out into the plaza, with the broken zigzag run that he had been taught for battlefield use.

  The square was already strewn with rubble, ranging from marble dust and gravel to a chunk of wall several meters across that leaned up against the side of the palace. To his left he saw the glint of metal; he turned and saw his ship lying across a huge heap of debris, its nose thrust up over the ruins of the palace, its tail resting on the plaza pavement The air rippled around it from the heat of the hull, and the main drive exhaust was invisible in a fog of vaporized stone. The explosions continued, mostly up around the nose, as the computer fired off everything from antipersonnel missiles to snark-type blasters.

  "Well, here I am; how do you suggest I get aboard, with the ship at that angle?"

  "Climb service ladder."

  The service ladder, intended for use in space, was, like the rest of the ship, at about a forty degree angle. Its tail end was a good four meters off the ground. Slant took a running start and leaped for it, catching hold with one hand and hauling himself up, trying to keep his bare head as far from the hot metal of the hull as he could. The insulated gloves, boots, and suit made it bearable for the rest of his body as he clambered his way up the side of the ship.

  "Open up," he demanded as he neared the hatch, "and stop shooting. You're wasting power and ammunition."

  "Affirmative." The explosions stopped, leaving only the sounds of crumbling walls and falling debris and the hiss of the airlock door opening.

  As soon as he was aboard he ordered the computer to open the inner lock door immediately, rather than wait for the full cycle. It opened; he strode through, went straight to the control cabin, and climbed onto the acceleration couch. He reached back for the direct-control cable and told the computer, "Get us out of here."

  Immediately he was smashed back into the couch by the crushing acceleration of a full-power launch, and he knew that anything that had still stood in the immediate area of the plaza was gone. Besides the blast itself there would be fires from the heat, and nobody around to fight them. The pressure of acceleration overcame him, and he blacked out.

  Chapter Eight

  WHEN HE CAME TO, THE DIRECT-CONTROL CABLE WAS still in his hand, though he had not managed to plug himself in. He lay still for a moment, gathering his wits, looking about the cabin at the familiar tapestries and fur-covered walls he hadn't gotten around to changing from white. He idly turned them light blue and asked, "Where are we?"

  "In low elliptical orbit around planet; no surface references available."

  "Was the ship damaged in the landing?"

  "Minor abrasion of hull occurred on impact; no other known damage."

  "What about Teyzha?"

  "Restate question."

  "How much damage did the city receive?"

  "Exact information unavailable. Estimate severe damage to central area, ten percent of area within walls; light or moderate damage to further twenty percent of area within walls. Probable enemy losses between one hundred and three thousand dead."

  "That's a pretty damn wide range." He hoped that the lower end was more nearly correct. He noticed the direct-control cable he still held and fitted it into the back of his neck. "Play the tapes of the landing." He closed his eyes and waited.

  He was tearing down through the sky toward Teyzha at an incredible speed; the tape had been made through a camera mounted below the nose of the ship, so that his vision was cut off at the top by an arc of metal but wide open below. The camera and tape wer
e extreme wide-angle, wider than human vision, but for his convenience he was shown only the central portion in normal perspective, with the option of turning his view in any direction to the limits of the lens.

  The city rushed up at him, hundreds of times faster than it had when he parachuted in; he felt a moment of vertigo. Then his plunge was slowing; a full-speed impact would have vaporized the ship and probably the entire city as well. Still, he flinched mentally as the image of the palace came up and seemed to smash into him.

  There was something about the last few seconds that bothered him. "Back it up, then come forward at quarter speed," he ordered the computer.

  Obediently, the view pulled back, so that he was again hanging in midair, approaching the city. This time the speed was much less, and he was able to make out more detail instead of just a blur. Something flickered at the bottom of his field of vision as he neared the city wall; then again.

  "Stop a minute."

  The computer obeyed; the forward motion stopped, and the flicker became a short line of golden light, frozen immobile in the air over Teyzha's ramparts.

  "I'd like some magnification; zoom in slowly."

  He kept his gaze fixed on that yellow line as the image enlarged; it was tipped with silver. The silver tip was in turn tipped with glowing red.

  It was a missile; the ship had gone in shooting, as well as providing covering fire on the ground.

  "What is that?"

  "Restate question."

  "Identify that missile I'm looking at."

  "Ordnance model MHE-fifteen, serial number one-one-seven-zero-one-five. High-explosive warhead, shrapnel-loaded, antipersonnel type. Impact fuse. Range—"

  "That's enough. Why'd you fire it?"

  "Enemy personnel on thoroughfare provided target of opportunity."

  "Run the tape from the belly camera, one-quarter speed."

  He was looking straight down, the ground sweeping by underneath, as the ship once more approached the city. He watched as a barrage of missiles ripped the city wall apart; that had been the first flicker. A string of antipersonnel missiles then laced the main avenue, and incendiaries sprayed into flame atop the surrounding buildings. Heavy lasers flashed across the streets, cutting through softer materials and igniting anything flammable.