Not only did he feel good; he was also no longer cold. He sat up, noticing that he wore a formfitting robe, a solid gray in color. Slippers of an identical material—fibrous, silky, but thickly tough—clung to his feet.
He hopped off his slab and looked up at the clouded ceiling. “Hey! Thanks, guys. I feel much better. Are we going to talk now?”
The clouds shifted darkly in response, a tremble of light shuddering through the shadow.
“The strong, silent types, right?” He lifted his robe to check his burned and bruised legs, wondering why he no longer felt pain. His ankles, calves, knees, and thighs, once blackened or bloody, were now unmarked. They were also hairless.
“Holy shit,” Cal said, a hand rising instinctively to the top of his scalp.
Baby-rump bald!
“Well, you guys have certainly been busy, haven’t you?” Cal said, annoyed despite his renewed sense of well-being. “So, are you going to have the decency to come out and play?”
Silence.
Violet light spasmed through layers of creamy translucence that seemed to stretch upward for many meters.
“Okay. The name is Calspar Shemzak, predoc, University of Alpha Ceti.” He grinned. “Correspondence school, mind you. Born under supervised conditions on Terra, serial number A59 Omega Omega Zero 45 Subdivision 12. I want you to know that’s all you’re going to get from Cal Shemzak!”
Unless, of course, Cal thought, you threaten to torture me.
His words reverberated through the chamber, dying off into whispery echoes.
A sudden shaft of bluish light hit the floor two meters from his feet. The base widened, creating a cone of light. Two people—or rather, holograms of people—appeared within the cone, auraed with a ghostly glow.
Cal recognized his sister Laura immediately. It took him a little longer to recognize himself.
The figures were younger versions … perhaps fifteen years old ….
Four years ago!
“ … Do you think they know?” Laura was asking. She wore the red-and-white skip suit of a cadet, complete with epaulets and trim.
“No,” said Cal’s younger image, slouched nonchalantly upon a couch. “But if we keep our promise to each other, they will soon enough. I dare say, knowing these jokers and the kind of important positions we’re being trained for, they’re going to be screening our mail.” He lit his pipe, one of a stream of affectations he used to demonstrate his impending adulthood.
“A code!” Excitement lit her dark eyes, and the older Cal fell in love with her all over again. She looked so much better in long hair. Wait a minute, he thought. How did the Jaxdron get a recording of this conversation? “We can devise a secret code,” Holo-Laura was saying, “consisting of banal everyday words, so they won’t even know it’s a code. Won’t that be fun?”
“Hold on a second, motor mouth,” Cal said affectionately. “It’s not like we’re going to be doing anything wrong. Just unconventional. Society these days looks upon our sort of relationship like … well, like farting and belching and picking your nose in public … you know, uncivilized, barbaric.”
“But it’s not, Cal. It’s wonderful.” She was all smiles then, an innocent little girl, and Cal hated the Friendhood for what they had done to her in these past four years.
“Yeah, well, just don’t wipe your snot on me, okay?” Cal said, grinning his best mischievous grin.
“Oh, you’re awful!” she said, hitting him playfully. Her blows had been harmless then, but she certainly could pack a wallop these days! These days he watched his mouth around her. “You’re the one who found all those delightful old films, those old books.”
“Yeah, and I’m also the one who peeped into those record spools and found out certain relevant genetic information.” He put his arm around her and hugged her.
“We have had a good time, haven’t we?”
“We’ve been naughty!” she said, her eyes shining as she kissed him on his cheek.
“But we’re going to see each other again, whenever possible. And the only way we’re going to be able to stay in touch is through letters, so I guess we’re just going to have to be a little more obvious about our feelings. There will be a lot of frowns, sure, and if our companions in our respective schools find out, which they most likely will, we will no doubt get oodles of flak.” The holo-image of his younger self stood up. “Now then, all packed?”
“Yes.”
“Just remember this, Laura Shemzak. I love you, and I shall always love you. I’m learning in my classes that time and space can just be an illusion, if you want them to be. Let the Friendhood and all its bureaucratic cubbyholes keep its illusions that just because you’re going off to be a starship pilot and I’m staying here to juggle numbers and symbols, we’re going to be apart where it counts … ”
Holo-Laura went to hug holo-Cal, and the real Cal Shemzak had to turn away from the interplay of colored light because a pang was forming in his throat and his eyes smarted with tears.
“What are you doing to me, you assholes?” he screamed up at the ceiling clouds. But Cal Shemzak knew full well what they were doing, and he did not like it at all. The Jaxdron were somehow futzing about in his brainbox, tapping into his memories.
“Get out of my head,” he yelled, offended to the core of his being at the invasion. “You bastards hear me? Get out of my head!”
He couldn’t feel it, but they were somehow dissecting his mind. The Jaxdron paid no attention to Cal’s loud complaints, so eventually he just shut up.
Cal and Laura Shemzak might have been whelped from the same womb, he would always tease her, but you could have fooled me! They had different approaches to life. Laura fought things tooth and nail, whereas Cal simply cruised blithely through things. If you’re getting raped, he would tell her, you might as well lie back and enjoy it. Laura hated that particular tease, and Cal secretly felt sorry for anyone who tried to rape his sister.
He pulled himself up onto his slab, folded his arms over his chest, and watched the show.
He knew it all, of course, but some of it he had forgotten in recent years; so the significant scenes that began to play across the chamber floor like a ten-ring circus were interesting, the course of his life in bright images and soft sounds.
He chuckled as he watched a particularly cherished memory: the time he had flummoxed the Dayfriends at country school with tales of what the Nightfriends would gossip about them. Cal had always been a playful character, and his jokes were more often practical than verbal. If the heart of Earth society had been the nuclear family, he might have had problems. But since the individuals who cared for the broodgroups did so in shifts, it was child’s play to raise hell, and Cal Shemzak, with his sister’s help, did just that.
Summerhome; tripschool; winterspill: the scenes from this variety of government raiseplaces continued for some time, forming a fascinating mosaic.
“Trying to figure it all out, huh?” Cal said, addressing the ceiling. “Well, good luck.”
Then a particular scene caught his attention, a moment in his past that he did not particularly care to remember; yet he could not turn away.
A boy of seven—himself—was sitting beside a pretty young woman. Her image made Cal’s heart leap. It was his favorite Dayfriend, Mirg Lifta.
“Now, Cal,” the woman was saying, “you know that this is the way it has to be.”
“But why?” The little boy’s voice was close to a sob.
“I don’t want you to leave. You all leave!”
“Now, don’t cry. You’re much too old to cry. If you can’t control that emotionsphere, Cal, I’m going to have to report it to the Overfriends, and they’ll give you medication again.”
“No,” the little boy said. “I’m not crying!” His voice was angry.
“Good. Anger is power, but remember, power needs control. Now,
as to my departure: why does it trouble you so, Cal? You know it’s part of the rules, and the Overfriends made the rules for the good of their children and for the good of the state. So if we obey those rules, then that makes my leaving good, makes us all good. Don’t you want to be good, Cal?”
“No.”
“It’s not good to be attached. The only true commitment anyone has is to the Microstate of Earth and the Macrostate of the Human Federation. ”
“Can’t you stay just a few more months? I like the games you teach me.”
“Well, you’re very good at math, Cal, good at these sorts of games. I’ve recommended you for advanced computer interface, did you know that?”
“No!” the little boy said, unable to hide his excitement. “Thank you.”
“And I must go because I must go. This is my job, Cal. I do it not out of any feeling for you children, but because it is my obligation to you as part of this Microstate.” The words were soft and considerate … touched with the very feeling they denied. Cal saw a gleam of wetness in the Dayfriend’s eye for just a moment, and then she was under control again.
“I think the state can go to hell and toast to pure carbon!” Cal said viciously.
“Cal, that’s treason talk, and we’ve spoken about treason talk before. I won’t report it. We’ve had a good time together, and I don’t wish to see it end on a sour note.”
“I’m sorry,” the little boy murmured.
“Of course you are. Now, I am already late.”
“I’ll never see you again.”
“There’s no rule against seeing each other again, Cal. But I will be placed on different planets, so it is unlikely.”
The little boy could not look at the pretty Dayfriend as she rose to leave. Cal could see the struggle to fight back tears in the little boy’s face, and suddenly he vividly remembered that moment in his past as though it were happening again.
As the hologram faded away, he found tears leaking down his face, tears that had been stored away, fermenting a long time. “Goodbye, Friend Mirg,” he whispered.
All at once he was angry again. He jumped off the slab and shook his fist upward. “Okay, you jerks. Alien scumbags! You made me cry. Does that make you happy? You want a drop of the stuff for your specimen box? All it is is salinated H2O, you pathetic morons!”
There was no response to his ranting, and so his rage spent itself. Realizing he was strangely tired again, Cal crumpled down to a sitting position on the floor.
“No more show, huh? Got all the info stored away in the psyche files, right? Good. You know, I’m kind of hungry. Does this boat have dinner service?”
Again no answer.
“How about a good book? I’m getting pretty damned bored. In fact, I … ”
The clouds solidified, opaqued. The ceiling was just a ceiling again.
With a whir, an outline of a door appeared in the far wall. The door began to slide open.
Cal jumped up. He wanted to run. But he controlled the emotion and stood his ground.
When the door fully opened, only darkness lay beyond. Then a figure separated itself from the darkness.
“Oh, my God,” said Cal Shemzak.
Chapter Five
The building in Upper Pan-America was a plain, functional sort: blocks on blocks; adhered stone, metal, glass. However, if its sprawling mass was architecturally plain to the casual Denver stroller or motorist, its interior was undeniably remarkable, not merely in context but in content. The plainness concealed the most advanced security system of the human universe: a complex gridwork not merely of alloys and rock but of force fields and energy bafflers. Guarded by a crack military division specifically bred and trained for the task, the Big Box, as it had been dubbed, was also paid special attention by the space weaponry array that guarded the home of humanity in this its most hazardous period in a long and spectacularly troubled history. This was the kernel of Federation government; it was here that the Overfriends—snidely called “the Best Buddies” by the Free Worlds they did not control—kept their offices.
Overfriend Chivon Lasster was, at thirty-three standard Earth years, the fourth youngest member of the august body that guided the course of the Second Galactic Empire. Overfriends were the only group not specifically developed for their particular positions by the sociocultural machinery. Rather, they were the cream of their fields, elected by the other Overfriends after careful screening by the Auditions Council, part of the large network of subofficers called the Underfriends.
Chivon Lasster took great pride and satisfaction in her position. In this neo-Platonic determinist form of government that held the Federated Empire together, the position of Overfriend was the only career one could choose to strive for. Every other social and occupational niche was either genetically or behavioristically preprogrammed. There were plenty of levels of accomplishment within every Calling; achievement and drive were the stuff that fed the energy and motivational drive of the Macrostate. Still, becoming an Overfriend was a rare distinction for an individual, and Chivon privately reveled in her victory—particularly since it gave her the leverage she needed if she was ever to find Tars Northern.
“Sometimes,” she told Overfriend Zarpfrin after Laura Shemzak had left, “I wonder if we are not too arch, too tricky for our own good.”
“Pardon?” said Zarpfrin, looking up from a study of documents called up from the central computer.
“I mean, there really was no good reason for me to put up any opposition to the woman’s volunteering. After all, she’s perfect for the mission, and she’s come forward exactly at the time we need her. She’s playing right into our hands.”
“Precisely,” said the meticulously groomed man. “Didn’t you read the psychoprofile? If we were too cooperative, she’s the sort who would be suspicious. Let us just say that all we have done today is to provide an illusory barrier for Laura Shemzak to break through.”
“Psychoprofile … I only glanced at it, I’m afraid,” said Friend Lasster. “Just gleaned something of her background, and that she’s a remarkable blip-ship pilot. Which quite surprises me, considering her generally unrefined qualities, her reckless air—she must hide a great deal in ordinary person-to-person dealings. In fact, Overfriend, she seems to me to be far too impetuous, too impulsive to be a logical choice for a Calling of such importance in our military.”
Zarpfrin shook his head. “You should take a moment to study that profile as well as the girl’s record. Not only is it fascinating, it’s also highly entertaining. Suffice it to say that Laura has mental capacities far enough away from the norm to border on the psychic. Add to those the impetuous and impulsive—and decisive!—nature you have taken note of, and you have a powerful agent in unpredictable situations, where action is necessary immediately.”
“You mean she hardly even thinks about what she’s doing?”
“Not consciously, certainly. Her decisions are incredibly quick. Add a mind able to grasp all she needs for piloting our experimental XT’s on a subconscious level, and you have a top agent in the field.”
“I don’t know, Zarpfrin. She seems awfully slow to pick up on some things—cocky, maybe, but often just stupid.”
“You forget how young she is, Friend Lasster. Her success in the field is not built on hard-gained wisdom, nor on a great deal of knowledge, but on the qualities I have previously described, plus a large measure of self-confidence. As to her coarse nature: that was picked up to survive among the ruffians in the Space Force. She’s changed since she was selected for blip-ship training—different posture, accent, world view. What remains is her devotion to her brother—which we are using to our benefit, as you can see.”
“Still, it’s hard to imagine her as one of our top Intelligence agents!”
Zarpfrin smiled with genuine amusement. “Let’s just say that on the occasions when her hunches are wrong, the re
sults are monumentally catastrophic. But she is rarely totally wrong, though I must say she’s landed in some ungodly situations! The entertaining aspect of her profile I spoke of—”
“The mission is as near-impossible as the readout indicates?”
“Deadly,” said Zarpfrin, standing and smoothing his costume. “Even with her abilities and the features of the XT Mark Nine, she has about an icicle’s chance in Hades of reaching Cal Shemzak in Jaxdron space.”
“And if she does?”
“If she does, she has been prepared for that eventuality.” Zarpfrin grinned. “In more ways than one.”
Chivon nodded.
“I trust you realize, Friend Lasster, that you have been chosen to monitor her mission. I also am paying special attention, which means I may be making trips to the Fringe Worlds. I trust you can handle matters here in that eventuality.”
“I think I am one of the few Earth-based Overfriends who actually enjoy interstellar travel,” Lasster said, “yet I rarely get the chance these days.”
“I’ve done my share, and I have rather come to loathe it,” said Zarpfrin. “Especially in the past five years, with added war duties … to say nothing of my little hobby.”
“Northern. The council has specifically censured your search, hasn’t it?”
A troubled expression flitted over Zarpfrin’s firmly set features. Then he smiled grimly. “Call me Ahab.”
Chivon Lasster found a shiver passing through her. She poured herself another drink. “I think I have given up,” she whispered harshly. “We have that bond, though. This is why we work together so well, I think. This is why I can keep your activities in that area … secret.”
“An entirely separate matter, dear lady, from the one at hand. One that does not bear mention, actually. You must pardon me, but I must make arrangements for Laura Shemzak’s … reception … at her destination. There are definite prerequisites for the proper function of the XT.” Zarpfrin’s eyes turned thoughtful. “I do hope she gets back. She does have a certain sexual vitality that strikes my fancy. An imposing potential conquest, I think.”
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