A Mind Programmed

by Vox Day

  His face unreadable behind his mirrored visor, the Marine captain nodded, then kneeled down and picked up Jonas Norden in his powered gauntlets. In response to a command only they could hear, the other four Marines followed suit and each seized an unconscious Dai Zhani agent.

  “What are you going to do with them?” Doctor Benbow called as she followed the Marines out of the mess hall.

  “Shoot them and space them,” York answered. “Shed no tears for them, Doctor. It's a far more merciful death than they offered us.”

  After the five bodies were ejected into space by means of Airlock Number Four, Daniela York wearily made her way up to the captain's cabin. Captain Hull had sent Tregaski to witness the executions, no doubt in keeping with official Naval policy concerning ad hoc Directorate executions taking place on destroyers of the relevant tonnage, along with a message to see him in his cabin at her earliest convenience.

  The ship would be back in hypertransit, now that the risk of another gas attack was gone. A conversation with Galton had confirmed Hing Poy's explanation of why the attack on the Rigel had been so effective. All the computer-automated environmental failsafes were designed around dumping the tainted atmosphere when there was space to dump it in. In hypertime, there was nothing outside the ship and no way to clear the air, thus helping her anticipate when the subsequent attack on Draco would take place.

  She felt exhausted even though she'd done little more today than talk, throw two kicks, and kill five men. It was the stress, the interminable waiting for those five crucial seconds of decisive action, that wore a woman down. Thank God both Benbow and Osborn had come through for her. If she had gotten one thing right, it was trusting those two rock-solid Navy men.

  She wondered if the doctor would ever speak to her again. Hull might have spoken out against the execution of the five Dai Zhani, but Benbow had simply looked away, unwilling to even witness what was little more than cold-blooded murder, however justified. However necessary.

  Upon reaching the captain's cabin, she hesitated before announcing herself. She took a deep breath, ran her hands through her hair, straightened her tunic, and then finally touched the pad. The door opened to her.

  “I received a very strange message,” Captain Hull announced without any ritual pleasantries as she entered.

  She stiffened, holding her breath.

  “It informed me that I was promoted to the rank of rear admiral, effective immediately.”

  York exhaled slowly, feeling as if she had received her own stay of execution. “Congratulations, Admiral!” she exclaimed heartily. “You certainly earned it!”

  “But why?” Hull made a face. “Come now, Agent York. You know I'm a spinworlder, and spinworlders don't make rear admiral. I don't have to tell you that.”

  York studied the man, seeing the bewilderment in his eyes that had prompted him to betray his insecurity. No, she thought, the captain didn't understand what had happened, but he would soon enough. “You're privy to a terrible secret, Admiral. That's what makes you eligible. That's what makes you far more special than even a prince of the blood.”

  “The secret of the sunbuster?” Hull asked skeptically. “But Rigel was unarmed. You saw it yourself.”

  “And that's the secret,” she smiled wryly. “That's the heart of the matter.”

  “You're saying what, exactly?”

  “There is no sunbuster, Admiral. There never has been.”

  “I… I don't believe that! That's simply not possible!”

  “Nevertheless, it's true. The nova-triggering technology is a massive hoax created by House Malhedron to keep the peace throughout the Ascendancy, to assure the supremacy, as it were, of the Terran empire. It's the most important secret in all of human history.”

  “But all the Shiva-class cruisers–” Hull interrupted.

  “All the Shiva-class cruisers are patrolling unarmed except for conventional weapons,” she explained. “Those empty forward compartments have kept Terra unchallenged for centuries, Admiral. How they did it, I don't know, but my guess is that they announced a weapons test at the same time a star was observed to go nova.”

  “That's absurd!”

  “You're right.” She laughed, feeling momentarily intoxicated by relief. “It's much more likely that the Navy issued an official denial of any weapons test after the star went nova on its own. The human mind has an incredible ability to fill in blanks with monsters of its own imagination. After that, they simply announced the new Shiva-class, issued a few empty threats, and everyone was sufficiently cowed to promptly fall in line. What a masterpiece of propaganda! Whoever thought it up merits a prime place in the pantheon of the greatest geniuses of Man.”

  “So Barngate must have guessed after he and Shumway blasted their way into the compartment.”

  “He didn't have to guess. He knew. He was the quartermaster. He knew the Rigel hadn't unloaded anything. He may have been an amateur when it came to intelligence work, but he was far from inobservant.”

  “And that's why you insisted on silencing him as soon as the others were exposed.”

  “Exactly. That's why it was worth risking your ship and all of our lives in order to expose the other three. I have no doubt that Barngate had told Norden at the very least, and most likely, Apgar and Wong as well.” She smiled thinly. “Since there is still the remote possibility that we missed them all, I expect you can expect your entire crew to undergo neuro-interrogation upon reaching Rhysalan.”

  “I didn't understand what I saw, though.”

  “That makes no difference. You still saw it,” York reminded him. “All the information required to eventually reach the correct conclusion was already there in your mind. Sooner or later, you might have put all the pieces together. In the meantime, even your awareness of that empty chamber was dangerous.”

  “So they made me a rear admiral,” Hull said bitterly. “Not for my service, or my abilities, but because they want to keep an eye on me.”

  “I wouldn't feel bad about it,” she suggested. “You understand their alternative was to kill you.”

  “I suppose it would have been your job.”

  “I expect so. But never mind that. They keep an eye on everyone, and that includes the Admiralty as well as Director Karsh. It's all part and parcel of the system. No empire in history has ever survived without some variation on it.”

  “I wasn't aware of that.”

  “You learn to live with it,” she reassured him. “Everyone else seems to manage.”

  “What about you?” he asked. “What will they do to you?”

  She shrugged. “I expect you aren't the only one who will be promoted. They can't have me out in the field knowing what I know. They probably have a nice office on Terra reserved for me with glass windows and a real wood desk, two or three floors down from the Director. I'll be given a fat raise, some sort of generic reward for meritorious service that I can't tell anyone about, and I'll spend the rest of my career reading about what my replacements are doing and worrying about how they're screwing up.”

  “It strikes me that you lead a lonely life, Agent York.”

  “Perhaps.” She smiled broadly. “But you have to admit, Admiral, this was one hell of a last mission to go out on!”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Death gives meaning to our lives. It gives importance and value to time. Time would become meaningless if there were too much of it.

  —“The Sacred Meditations of the Bio-Prophet Kurzweil”

  ONE HOUR to Rhysalani orbit.

  One hour to Rhysalan's great metropolises of Trans Paradis and Rhys City.

  One hour to safety.

  Daniela York sat in her small stateroom, her eyes on the clock, watching the seconds count up and return to zero again. With great navigational skill, Galton had brought Draco from hypertransit well inside the solar orbit of the gas giant Ratu, and for the last three days the destroyer had been hurtling rapidly toward Rhysalan on its conventional engines. Now well inside the
orbit of its two moons, Rhysalan would be filling the star window, an immense bluish-yellow planet that lay in half phase, with its sun a gleaming disk off to one side.

  In less than three point five kilosecs, Draco would be within Rhysalan's gravity well, and her mission would finally be at an end. Even now, she hardly managed to believe that she had been successful. Listening, she heard the rumble of Draco's nuclear drives in retro-fire, transmitted through the bulkheads as a faint whisper. The minute G force set up by the destroyer's constant deceleration tugged gently at her body.

  And then it was two point five kilosecs.

  She let her thoughts wander, refusing to let herself obsess on the clock. Admiral Hull would be on the bridge with Galton, scanning the local maps of system space while he watched the great bluish-yellow planet swim toward him out of the velvet night. At last he was an admiral, with a rank and status he'd never even hoped to attain. Instead of being assigned to patrol sparsely inhabited colonial worlds, he'd have a cozy office in the Admiralty, replete with all the benefits that came with his lofty rank. He'd never again travel the spinward marches or stand on the bridge of a ship on the farthest reaches of space. For him, the story was ended.

  Doctor Benbow would be reading his magazine in his little-frequented medical suite. He had refused to speak with her since the execution of the five enemy agents. She couldn't blame him, even though she lamented the loss of his company and intelligent conversation. He was a man sworn to preserving life and she had made herself a monster in his eyes. For him, the story was ended.

  Somewhere out in deep space, five frozen corpses preserved the secret they had slain so many to obtain. For them, too, the story had ended.

  But not for her.

  Everything depended on so many things. The destroyer's inertial momentum, its rate of deceleration, the timing of its entry into orbit, Rhysalan's intraorbital communications network, and the efficiency of the naval base's personnel. To say nothing of things that were happening elsewhere, things over which she had even less control.

  What of the others, the players who had played the game so many light years away from the board?

  She chuckled at the thought of what the head of House Dai Zhan must be thinking. Prince Li-Hu was probably still fretting in his palace on Shan-Hai, wondering why he hadn't heard from his agents, wondering why Draco hadn't appeared at the prearranged rendezvous in space. Did he suspect that he had lost the secret of the sunbuster that had so briefly been held in his unknowing hands? Probably, she thought, for although the prince was ambitious, reckless and power-mad, he was no fool. No doubt he would be spinning a second plot as soon as he knew of the first one's failure.

  What of Dr. G? He was on Kurzweil, somewhere under the cyborg world's huge violet sun, contemplating the probabilities with neither anticipation nor fear. For him the great game had been the laborious construction of a complex mathematical equation in which each action had been geared to a specific reaction, and events were arranged to take place at their preordained times. But for all his ruthless calculations, in the end he was little more than a gambler. When the numbers fell his way, he won. And when they did not, he lost.

  And August Karsh? Director Karsh undoubtedly would be at the space terminal, and equally undoubtedly would be accompanied by the High Admiral of the Galactic Seas. But Karsh would not be relaxing or speaking of victory. Not yet, for he was a cautious man. Despite his renown as an intelligence chief without peer, he would be fully cognizant that he was pitted against Dr. G. No, he would not speak of victory, not until he had it firmly in his own hand.

  What of herself? What of Daniela York?

  York smiled and brushed her long, dark hair, finally freed from its tight ponytail, from her eyes. Her final mission had been an unthinkably audacious one, complicated, and so dependent upon a broad range of factors completely beyond her control that it seemed doomed from the start. And yet, it was that very audacity that had paid off in the end. The Directorate's death rolls were filled with the names of agents who had died on far less risky missions, and yet, here she was, only a few paltry decaseconds from safety.

  She returned her eyes to the clock.

  Point five kiloseconds to orbit.

  Draco had already entered Rhysalani orbit and she was leaning back in her chair, her eyes closed, when she heard the ship's alarm klaxons suddenly erupt, followed soon after by footsteps pounding down the corridor outside her cabin.

  She sat up with a sigh and tapped the communications console with her fingertips. The ship was on full alert now. Captain Pedrattus and his Marines would be suiting up for action and the crew would be rushing to their duty stations. It served little purpose, of course, but it was always a pleasure to observe competent men in action.

  The door burst open to reveal Admiral Hull, his face grim, his pale blue eyes narrow and suspicious. Tregaski behind him, his pugnacious face a mask of hostility, one hand on his duty stunner. To her surprise, Doctor Benbow was with them as well.

  She nodded to them in a friendly manner. “Well, this is pleasant surprise! I would have thought you'd be on the bridge, Admiral.”

  “No sooner had we entered orbit than I received an urgent message from NSB-Rhysalan, Agent York. It said that the operative captured on Terentulus may not be Myranda Flare!”

  “Now that would appear to be a problem,” she replied calmly.

  “A problem?” Hull exclaimed, taken aback. “Yes, I suppose you could call it a problem. And what do you say to this? Under interrogation, she claimed to be Daniela York!”

  She smiled skeptically. “I would say that would appear to be extraordinarily unlikely on its face. Have you heard from Director Karsh yet? Has he confirmed this absurd assertion?”

  Hull appeared taken aback by her amusement. “Well, no, I haven't heard from the Director,” he admitted in a calmer tone of voice.

  “I expect you will soon, Admiral. That's a very unsettling claim, to be sure!” She glanced at the clock. They were barely a kilosecond into orbit. The Admiralty had acted remarkably quickly by Navy standards. “You needn't be impatient. I'm hardly going to go anywhere, am I?”

  “I don't know what your game is, Agent York,” growled Hull. “And I don't know why this strikes you as such an amusing affair, but you had better start explaining everything right now. Everything. Starting with your name. Your real name, Miss York.”

  “I rather think I'd better.” York sighed and gazed sadly at the admiral. “You weren't supposed to be apprised of this aspect of my mission. Not yet, anyhow.”

  “Start talking,” Hull snapped. “Now!”

  “Very well.” She tapped her fingers on the console and began explaining. “First, you must understand that Director Karsh was never fooled, Admiral. He knew that both Prince Li-Hu and Golem Gregor were after the Shiva technology. But between the two of them, he felt that Dr. G represented the greater threat to Terra's empire in the long term. And Dr. G realized that as well.”

  “Realized what?” demanded Hull. “What are you talking about?”

  “I'm talking about the two masters of the game and their basic assumptions. Dr. G was well aware that Director Karsh's strategy was based on the idea that the cyborgs posed a greater threat than House Dai Zhan. A rival to House Malhedron might replace the ruling House or it might reinvigorate it, but in either case, Man would triumph. The only question concerned which human faction reigned supreme. The cyborgs, on the other hand, presented a historic challenge to the human race itself.”

  “I don't give a damn about the history, York!” Hull interrupted. “Why is this other woman claiming to be you?”

  “With all due respect, Admiral Hull, the background is essential to understanding the facts,” she explained. “We have loads of time before we land, so bear with me. Dr. G also knew that his best chance to obtain the Shiva technology was through his agent, Myranda Flare. The challenge, then, was how to get Flare on the scene without Karsh's knowledge.”

  “Keep talking,” Hull or
dered.

  “I believe the rest should be obvious enough at this point,” she replied amiably. “In order to accomplish his end, Dr. G created a convincing personification of Myranda Flare and sent her traveling throughout the sector, travelling from planet to planet in order to lead Director Karsh astray.”

  “Sent a what?” Hull demanded. “I just want to know why there are two women claiming to be Daniela York!”

  “Because I was on Kurzweil at the time. I've told you that before.”

  “What has that got to do with this personification?”

  “Everything. The cyborgs marked York, that is to say, me. While I was on Kurzweil watching Flare, I was being watched by the machines, but of course, I didn't know that. Once Dr. G learned of House Dai Zhan's successful sabotage of the Rigel, he ordered me seized, violated my neurological integrity, and forcibly programmed my mind.”

  “Programmed your mind?”

  “Or to be more precise, her mind.” She laughed. “You'll have to forgive me, but these multiple self-identifications can be hard to keep straight. In Daniela York's mind, she was Myranda Flare, carrying out Dr. G's orders on a mission of vital importance. Perhaps Doctor Benbow can explain it to you later. It's all a matter of intense neuro-psychological programming.”

  “So Flare was really York? My God, then you're–”

  “Myranda Flare, of course.”

  She laughed and blew them a kiss. Then, without warning, the life went out of her brown eyes and her head slumped to her chest, mouth agape. The three men stared at her in confusion that rapidly turned to alarm as she began to drool.

  “Doctor?” Tregaski said uncertainly, lowering his stunner.

  “She did not just have a stroke!” Benbow declared. “That's impossible!” He bent over her, pulled her head back by her hair, and shined a small light in her eyes. “She's unresponsive, pupils fixed and dilated. She's breathing, her heart is still beating, but otherwise it's as if there's nothing there at all!”