“I thought I had it all figured out. All contained. We were extra careful. We simply did not foresee how good an organism we had created. It is less an organism than a colony. Memory, control, you name it, is distributed in a unique and ever-changing pattern throughout the cells. You could blow Sabatini’s brains out and it would only slow it down. Sabatini’s memories and personality would be gone, but the rest—that’s stored and accessed differently. Unfortunately, what allows it to survive also makes it eventually unstable. Cells die or wear, new ones replace them. We hardly notice, but it does. Its cells have to do so much more than ours that it can’t replace them at our rate by normal means. You saw how it can do the job all at once.”
“I saw. It was a person once? A real human?”
“Yes. Frankly, I don’t even remember who. Someone from the penal area whom we took and cleaned with the mindprinter of all memory and all personality. A spiritual blank, as it were. It was the only merciful way to do it. After all, it—the mechanism—needed to know how we work, the quadrillions of intricate interrelationships we all possess. The original was a physical template, nothing more. A dedicated army of those could be anyone anywhere, walk through any security except the highest machine-only accesses, be invulnerable to most threats. Sent out as information collectors, they could get all the bits and pieces of knowledge we cannot and put it together. I had no knowledge of the rings. It seemed a fragile hope, but the only one, of breaking the system.”
“Why, Doctor?”
“Huh? Why what?”
“Why bother breaking the system? You and it seem so well made for each other, and I cannot see you as wanting to be god. Too much detail work. You were as free as any human can be in your own little playground. Certainly not on moral grounds, nor out of revenge. Why break the system?”
“Forbidden Knowledge. We were always on the edge of discovery, of being wiped out or worse. I have no idea why Master System ever tolerated Melchior. Even there, we had so many dead ends, and we were not free to pursue any leads we might develop. Humanity was born to quest for knowledge, Hawks. It is the only activity that really matters. The system places great limits on that, and I do not believe in limits.”
“That,” Hawks said dryly, “is obvious.”
“I could ask the same of you, you know. I think we are more alike than you want to admit. The system wasn’t exactly bad to you, either. You knew when you opened and read that pouch, even before you had actually divined a single word, that it would be dangerous, probably fatal. You just couldn’t resist it. Forbidden Knowledge.”
There was a sudden series of loud shrieks from behind them, then sudden silence, then the cry of a newborn baby. Neither man turned to the source of the sound, but both heard and understood.
“Just another digit in the mass of humanity to you, Doctor,” Hawks remarked. “Another subject, another plaything, nothing more. Not a new soul damned to strangulation, its future one of chains. That is the difference between us. That new one in there, who is getting such a rude awakening, is just as important, if not more important, to me than you are. You will not understand that. You will quantify it or dismiss it, but that is because there is a part of you that is missing. That is your curse, Doctor—the ultimate irony. Even without Master System there is Forbidden Knowledge for you; Forbidden Knowledge you can never have because you can never comprehend it. The quest is not the end, it is the means.”
“Spiritual claptrap. You are blinded by your romanticism and your mysticism, Hawks. You will never attain what you seek until you discard them.”
“The Fellowship did so, and gave us Master System. You did so, and now you cower in fear of your own creation. I do not wish to become Master System, Doctor. I do not wish a race of organic robots. That creature was your second creation, your second monster, Doctor—not your first. You are by far your most dangerous and aberrant creation.”
Cloud Dancer emerged from the hut behind them and approached the two men sitting by the fire. “It is a boy child,” she told them. “Healthy, looking well. The mother is also doing quite well physically, although her mind seems addled. It is almost as if she is drugged. I do not believe she even remembers her name or where she is, but she is suddenly all very soft and she smiles dreamily. She speaks gently and only of the act of giving birth. It is not the same woman.”
Isaac Clayben sighed. “This one isn’t really my fault, you know.” He sounded almost defensive. “Had I known that we’d all be stuck together like this in the immediate future I wouldn’t have meddled at all, but this would have eventually come about anyway. I helped things along, I admit, but she is her father’s creation.”
Hawks looked over at the scientist. “What do you mean?”
“The old man’s chief administrator for China, and brilliant in many ways, but he’s handicapped as much or more than most of us by the culture in which he was born and raised. He had the same sort of idea I did—to breed a superior race that might be able to run rings around Master System—but he was more conventional. He used his own daughter—his own daughter, mind you—for it. In fact, she wasn’t conceived in the usual way at all, but in a laboratory, from modified egg and sperm. She was designed to be superior, but there are lots of superior individuals about these days. He wanted more than that, and he’s a patient man. She was a prototype, too, of a possible large group of superior human beings—physically, mentally, you name it. Women who would breed his superior race. He wasn’t dumb, either—he knew that if she were not superior it was all for nothing, but if she was she’d hardly be content breeding future generations, so he planned to have her reverted to a nontechnological level so she wouldn’t know what she was missing and would accept her lot in a patriarchal system. The marriage arranged for her was actually a sham—the fellow’s a highly born noble all right, but he’s a total homosexual in a society that considers that grounds for death by torture. Being highly placed and well connected, he accepted the marriage and arrangement in much the same way others in his position have since time immemorial.”
Hawks nodded. “I see. And since she would bear many children, he would have honor and manhood even though they would be from specially modified laboratory sperm and not his at all. Under orders from husband and family, she would accept, like it or not.”
“Well, if she didn’t, he had the way to make her fall into it. Once impregnated, her entire brain and body chemistry changed permanently. Pregnancy is her natural condition; she is compelled to be so. Everyone—you, me, Cloud Dancer, Raven, you name it—have elements of both the male and female in us, biochemically speaking. All but China. During labor her body purged itself of all male-linked hormones and biochemical blockers. The only way to trigger aggression in her would be to threaten the child. She will react to maleness, even in the other women. She will be quite childlike, docile, eager to please, and without any control of her passions. She will quite literally do anything you want and beg to be ravished. Nothing else will matter—until she is pregnant once again. That will restore the balance and trigger normalcy of a sort in her system and she will be back in control, regaining her maleness, as it were. In fact, in the old man’s original genetic map, she would remain as she now is, which was what he wanted. I restored the chemical balance, allowing her, once pregnant, to regain her control and will. That way the experiment goes on, but without wasting that brilliant mind.”
“I think that is disgusting,” Cloud Dancer remarked. “She is but a girl yet—seventeen, eighteen perhaps. You are saying she will be compelled, if she lives that long, to bear children for the next twenty-five or thirty years nonstop, all the time knowing and remembering.”
“Worse than that. She’s physically perfect, as well. She’s going to remain youthful, healthy, and strong abnormally long, and free of most diseases that might ravage others. Assuming we aren’t all blown up or wiped out, she could be doing this for the next seventy or eighty years—a one-woman colonization program. The pilot understood this. I think she might, a
s well, although she’s repressed it to keep sane. And we need her sane. Next to me, she probably understands these machine intelligences better than anyone alive. Unfortunately, what looked simple to handle on Melchior now complicates us beyond belief. The longer she remains in this submissive and animalistic state, the harder it will be for her to deal with it when she is not. Her sanity depends on perpetual pregnancy, and that means we will soon be knee-deep in children, all of whom will require care and attention and possibly something approaching a staff. We can’t spare that staff—and we can’t spare her.”
“You seem to know a lot about her situation,” Hawks noted suspiciously.
“Well, of course, we had to read it all out to modify it or we would have lost that mind and will for good. We were aided because the old man quite naturally used Melchior’s resources in establishing his genetic criteria. I had no real part in it, but Melchior did it. We had the records.”
“So all the great minds of the world have spent their time devising monsters,” Hawks commented, “and they are all with us. Anything you want to tell me about yourself or any of the others here? At one time or another we were all common to Melchior.”
Clayben gave an odd half smile. “Nothing, really. Those of you who were prisoners rather than employees or staff were either too important or not important enough, I’m afraid. We were going to use your wives and the Chows as nursery matrons for the early products of the experiment, of course, and we did some minor mental conditioning to that effect, but nothing serious and nothing that might be an impairment. Nothing else that I know of.”
Hawks slapped his knee impatiently. “Damn it! We cannot just sit here and rot! The time to move is now, before things get too domesticated.” He sighed. “Yet we must wait for Star Eagle. I wish I knew just what he was planning that is taking so long.”
The crying stopped behind them, and there was a sudden stillness that seemed louder than the noises. Hawks looked at Cloud Dancer. “For now it’s Raven, Nagy, and I. We will draw lots when she is physically up to it. I do not like it, but these are exceptional circumstances.”
She nodded. “I understand. I do not think it would be moral or proper for him to be included.” She referred to Clayben, who said nothing.
“What about Sabatini, Doctor?” Hawks added, suddenly struck by the implications. “What would be the result of such a thing?”
“I’m not certain. There wouldn’t be sufficient information in a single sperm cell to do anything terrible. It won’t breed, if that’s what you’re thinking about. It’s probable that the union would be rejected, the product spontaneously aborted, but I don’t really know. I’d rather not have to deal with that one if we can avoid it.”
“Then it is up to us to make certain that is avoided. At any cost.”
“Star Eagle to Pirate’s Den.”
“Go ahead,” Hawks responded. “We thought we had been forgotten and abandoned.”
“Do you know what it is like to do massive maintenance without a proper shipyard? It was like performing surgery on yourself. Thunder is still not completed, but Lightning, I believe, is ready and well prepared. I wish to know the condition of all below.”
Hawks gave the computer pilot all the news in fairly explicit terms, particularly about China and Reba Koll.
“China is now all right?”
“Yes. She’s coming out of her physiological stage and will be back to normal in another week or two at most, but I don’t think it would be wise to part her from the child for any length of time as yet. Still, we’re hot, tired, and very bored down here. The whole thing is very limited.”
“I understand. I have not been idle myself, since my alterations are internal and are not affected by my movement. I have used the time to check out the situation. There is a world called Halinachi one jump and no more than six days from here that is a freebooter stronghold and base. I have no data except monitored transmissions on it, but it appears to be one of the officially tolerated outposts. There are at least two Vals in the vicinity and there is some indication that they go down to the settlement there.”
That was a surprise. “I thought the freebooters were more tolerated than actually part of the system.”
“They exist only because they are occasionally useful to Master System and otherwise do not get in its way. However, most freebooters hate the system as much as we—they just have no choice, as we did not. I had hoped that Koll would have contacts there.”
Hawks thought a moment. “Nagy, too, maybe. Let’s see.” He summoned both the security chief and the one now called Sabatini. “Halinachi. Either of you know it?”
“Both of us, I expect,” Nagy replied. He was getting a fairly good dark beard, and the sun had turned him almost as brown as Hawks was naturally. “I’ve been there. It’s one of a half-dozen contact worlds used by both sides when they want something from the other.”
“I can see much that they might wish from Master System, but what could they offer it?”
Sabatini spat. “Eyes and ears. Human bodies who can walk the other side where the best machines can’t get. The freebooters control the illicit trade between the colonial worlds—the stuff Master System won’t let get traded the usual ways. It’d take Master System too much time and effort to really stamp it out, so it just tries to limit it to things that won’t really upset the apple cart. Because of this, though, they’re able to have the confidence of some of the top administrators in the colonies. They hear things, and they listen. When they hear a bit of news that would interest Master System, they trade the secrets for something they want or need. You of all people should know that the system can be beat, to a point. To fill in the gaps, as it were, the machine uses the freebooters. It’s simple.”
“They sound like rather interesting excuses for human beings. The questions are simple, then. Would they turn any of us in to Master System for that sort of reward?”
“Probably,” Nagy responded. “At least we’d be in the file of people to sell out when the time was right.”
“Then how can you deal with them?”
Nagy sighed. “Look, you got to see it their way, too. They ain’t living in the lap of luxury, you know. No cradle-to-grave care for them, no instant spare parts, nothing. They’re high-tech barbarians, and they’re not even all human by our lights. Lots of ‘em are colonials. They don’t live, most of ‘em. They survive. Survive in a thousand little pockets scattered to hell and gone, like this one we got here. They like to think they’re outside the system—hell, I think they all believe they’re outside the system—but they’re really a part of it. They’d sell their own mother because they’re part of it. They really believe the system can’t be broken but only bent, just like all of us bent it. They’re true believers, just like we were.”
Hawks thought it over. “Suppose they thought there was a chance to break the system? What would they do?”
“Try to break it, most likely,” Sabatini replied. “Only not as a team, more like a mob. The ones who believed it would be shooting each other to get to the rings. The ones who didn’t would turn the ones who did in to Master System.”
“Can any of them be bought? Or rented?”
Sabatini chuckled. “We got nothing to buy them with, and even less to rent that the other side couldn’t outbid.”
Nagy scratched his chin in thought. “Hold it. Maybe we’re going at this wrong. The one thing they’re scared of is strength. That’s why Master System is the big cheese even when they kid themselves that it’s not. They have their masters and their warlords. Not all of ‘em, sure, but a fair number. This Halinachi—it’s more a big town than a world. Most of the world’s not very habitable. Last time I was there it was run by a fellow name of Fernando Savaphoong. Get him interested in the rings and you got a real power there with a lot of resources.”
“Yeah, sure—and then he knocks us all off and goes after the rings himself,” Sabatini pointed out. “You can’t make a deal that’ll stick with his kind—exce
pt the kind that has him sticking something in your gut or back. Nope. If we need warm bodies the best thing to do is prowl and take some of the freebooters by force, and then run ‘em through the mindprinter and whatever else we got to make ‘em ours.”
First Warlock, then Raven, had noticed and approached the conversation, and both had been listening quietly.
“Suppose we eliminated this leader. Who would rule?” Warlock asked them.
“The next in line, mostly likely,” Sabatini replied. “Not the one who knocked him off, that’s for sure. If you could knock him off, and nobody’s invulnerable, he’s got a setup so the killer at least would go, too.”
“And if the next chieftain was eliminated, and the next?”
“Eventually they’d have your number, and somebody would be smart enough to spare no expense and effort to track us down and pay us back for the sake of sheer insurance. If you were good enough or powerful enough to prevent that, which I doubt, then you’d make the next in line scared enough to call in the Vals and all the resources of Master System.”
“They would not make a deal to avoid this?”
“Doubtful,” Nagy put in. “Or, if they did, then you’d have to expose yourself to them. They take the deal and. then they wipe you out, deal or no deal. We start messin’ with the freebooters in more than a casual way, and we got to decide just how many bodies we want piled up.”
“Ours or theirs?” Raven asked casually.
Hawks settled back and thought for a moment. This is what it is like to be chief, he told himself. How many bodies...? For that matter, whose bodies? It was a good question, one he’d never really thought about until now. Could he order a massacre if he had to? Could he be as ruthless and heartless as the enemy in order to break him?
“What if this man believed that Master System had turned against him? Or could be turned against him?” he asked them. “What if he could be convinced that his petty little empire could not be held?”
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