by Victor Koman
He raced back to the command area-passing the unconscious Brennen at the end of the axial tube-and powered up the habitat’s Valliardi Transfer. Typing in a command, he waited until the computer announced that a course had been calculated. He requested a ten-minute delay before transference and pressed the command entry button. For an instant he considered setting the fission bomb with a fifteen minute delay. Instead, he defused it and fastened it and his waist pack to the command seat.
There, Mad Wizard, he thought, heading back to the airlock, go back to Pluto and scare them. Maybe they’ll settle for taking you apart to find out why you survive transfers. They’ll get a wrong answer because you’re insane and I’m not not not not… well, not exactly.
“Not not not not not not not,” he muttered as he sealed the clone up completely and pulled her inside the airlock. He pointed his hand and fired the laser, blowing a finger-sized hole in the hatch. A hiss filled the room, bringing with it a wind that whistled through the outer door. He fired again. The wind blew stronger, the hiss grew louder. Both gradually decreased to stillness and silence. He opened the hatch and rushed his barely human cargo through the airless passageways. She only had the air inside her helmet to sustain her, but it was all she needed.
He strapped her into the seat next to him and powered up the shuttle. He locked down the hatch and pressurized the cockpit and only then opened her headgear.
Still breathing. Good. Death Angel, you fight your master well. One minute. We go.
He eased the spacecraft out of the docking bay and ran the engine up to full power for an instant. They drifted away from Bernal Brennen. The huge sphere and shaft receded slowly to less awe-inspiring dimensions. When it suddenly vanished, he blinked his eyes twice.
So that’s what a transfer looks like from the outside. Goodbye, Mad Wizard. Sate their curiosity in twelve years. Now I’m free.
He calculated approximate return coordinates to Circus and transferred.
Finally Death Angel is dying beside me. She heads down the corridor with me, but then she becomes Jenine, her body whole, forgiving me and asking me through the hole at the end of the corridor. Yes, Jenine, I’ll follow you. Don’t let me go back. Please-
“No!” The space he was in looked very much like the space he had left. Except that a tiny point of light slightly ahead and to starboard grew in brightness and diameter.
Why can’t I ever go beyond? What lies there? Light? Peace? New life? Circus flies up to me, Ben chattering through the roar that’s surrounding me now. I ease the shuttle inside the small hole in wall of steel and aluminum…
Then I pull her out and take her to our playroom…
Gently he removed the pressure suit to inspect her dirty, abused body. He cut her hair to shoulder length. He washed her and placed her into the boxdoc. Its silver surgeons mended her ankle and soothed her other ills, which the machine displayed on a scrim: intestinal parasites, squamous-cell skin cancers, respiratory disease, ulcers, and several different bloodstream infections.
“Virgil,” the computer said. “You have been here an hour and you have not told me what happened at Bernal Brennen.”
Ben, can’t you see I’ve got no time for your ciphers? “Brennen had her. I took her back and sent him to trans-Plutonian orbit where I figure the Belters will pick him up. Maybe they’ll find out why he could survive the transfer.” And divert Master Snoop away from me, maybe. “What did the dead man in me do while I was away?”
The computer took some time to consider the possible interpretations of the question before answering, “He was in therapy with Delia.”
“What sort?”“I recorded the proceedings.”“Play it back.”He watched and listened. So Jord’s afraid he’s nothing. Nothing but a dead man. Why is Death Angel talking about killing me? DuoHypno? Why did I fall for that? No! The dead man is fouling me up! Messing my resistance to Duodrugs. Hide? But I can’t hide. Not for sure anymore. Jackal? Jackass! Listened too long. Now I’m back. Back here. Baker.
He switched off the scrim and smiled. He glanced at the boxdoc, seeing the body inside, and asked, “When will she be ready?”
“The bone is already set and welded. It will be stato-braced with a portable electro-healing pack and she should be ready for zero-gravity activity by tomorrow. Her other problems- ulcerated wounds, vitamin deficiencies, capillitic seborrhea, and some other minor nuisances-will all be cleared up by that time.”
“What about the other body?”
“It has been ground down, the RNA and picotechs centrifuged out.”
Such a calm pronouncement. Just like some other computer must have announced that my own body had been pulped and leeched.
He wiped the dirty sweat from his forehead and transferred it to his thigh. “All right. Brainwipe this one while she’s in there and administer the juice.”
“Affirmative.” A series of posts extended from the inside walls of the machine, reaching toward the clone’s head. They touched and remained in contact. The electrodes withdrew ten minutes later.
“Brainwipe complete,” the computer said. “No brain activity other than autonomic functions.”
“Administer the picotechs whenever you deem it safe.”
“Affirmative.”
Baker drifted to a corner of the medical bay and slept.
He awoke hours later and washed, shaved, and ate.
Feels good to do normal things again. Now back to the abnormal.
“Is she awake yet?”
“No,” the computer answered. “I administered the transfusion fourteen hours ago. Her integration will probably be much faster in this clone because it was a brainwipe who had been more than marginally aware. The neural paths are built up, but uncircuited. She is healthy, though there is no telling when she will awaken.”’
“Can I take her out of the boxdoc?”
“Yes, you may.”
Baker made his preparations. First, he overrode the computer’s independent ability to actuate the Valliardi Transfer, leaving only its calculative function.
“That’s so we don’t have to go through any surprise transfers,” he said in response to a question from the computer.
“What if we are attacked?”
“By whom? You told me that Brennen was on its way back to the Solar system. And it would take more than twelve years for a psychfighter to make it out here. Is there any life on Tau Ceti’s planet?”
“On the fifth planet there exists life forms that have reached a stage of development not quite capable of space flight.”
“Primates?”
“Phytoplankton.”
“No threat there. And space is vast enough that no one else will find us. I just don’t want you killing me again for any reason.”
“Do not think I have any emotions that might be bruised.”
Baker closed up the circuit cabinet and returned to the medical bay with the equipment he had rescued from the airless recreation room.
He bolted a chair next to the bed in the psychometric bay. He arranged the buckles and straps around it and bolted them to the frame. Then he welded a support to the back of the chair and fastened a five-liter bag of intravenous nutrients to it.
Returning to the boxdoc, he gagged Delia, lifted her out, then carried her to the next room and strapped her into the chair, inserting the needle in her arm and taping it to her wrist. He strapped down to the bed and waited. Sleep soon overcame him.
A muffled cry woke him from a dream. Delia writhed before him, her neck length hair swirling about her in short arcs. Her hands, fingernails carefully trimmed all the way back, wrestled with the straps at wrist and elbow. Her legs kicked, but her pink scarred flesh only turned redder against the straps at ankle and calf. She breathed in angry snorts, her abdomen pressing hard against the wide belt cinching her midriff. She could not look away from him because of the brace holding her head in position; she could only close her eyes. Saliva drenched the gag that pulled her lips back and blocked her tongue.
&
nbsp; “Calm down, Dee, and listen.
“You’re going to get rid of Kinney and you’re not going to trick me again. I don’t know how bad the pentabarbitol messed up your memory, but I think there’s enough of you left, am I right?”
She sat still for a moment, then nodded as best she could.
Baker smiled. “And the memories of the clone-are they with you?”
She tried to shrug. Her eyes glistened. She looked at him like a wounded animal.
“I just want to be cured, Dee. I just want to make sure that when I die, it won’t be like a picture fading in the sun; my mind, my self eroding bit by bit until I forget I exist. That’s why I turned on you. I want to die as a whole person, not as someone else’s dimming memory. For what we had back on Earth, do this. I could threaten to kill you and rebuild you a thousand times until you do what I want. I could and would do it. Don’t make me. Cure me. Then I’ll be Jord for good.”
Teardrops broke away from her eyes and drifted like jewels in front of her.
“I may be in a different body, but I’m Jord. We were lovers once. My death changed that, but I’m alive, see? We can have it all again. We don’t even have to transfer ever again. There’s a habitable planet here that we can use the engines to reach.”
She closed her eyes and clenched her fists. Her breaths came in short sobs.
“We’re the only ones left,” he said. “Everyone we know died in the Earth-Belt wars, and it’s years after that. It’s Twenty-Two Twenty-Four, Dee. More than a century. We’re all alone. Get rid of Kinney and we can live and die together.”
Her sobbing grew audible. Her hands unclenched and fluttered weakly. Her chest trembled.
“Say you’ll help me.” When she nodded her head, he said, “Thank you, Dee. Push your jaw forward. The gag is knotted around the brace and it’ll loosen if you tug at it like that.” After several minutes of tearful effort, she tugged at the gag and it untied, drifting free.
She looked at him with the sorrowful eyes of a little girl. “I’m sorry, Jord,” she said. “Hide.”
“Bitch!” He shrieked and lunged against his belts.
The bitch tricked me and I can see me sink away-and- I see Death Angel lashed before me and I feel the dead man burying down and I know now what he wants. Why he’s been hurting Death Angel, why I’m here. All his memories come, now. I’ve crossed and touched him. He wants to die. I’ll show him dying.
This is dying.
“Virgil!” Delia cried as he unstrapped from the table. “Jord’s trying to drive you under permanently. You’re in control now. I couldn’t let him do it. I… I lo-It wouldn’t be right.”
“I’ll show him, Death Angel. Don’t worry.”
He bounded away from her, out of the room.
“Virgil-No!”
The roar becomes too much. Death Angel you foiled the final plan of Master Snoop. He almost got my mind. My me.
He raced toward the prow of the ship like a human missile.
Dead man you wanted death you’ll get it. I can die a million times. How many can you survive?
He lunged at the console and started pushing buttons. There. Random number generator locked in. Are you watching, dead man, as I watched you? This is galactic roulette. Round and round the numbers go and where we transfer-
He pressed the button when it lit.
Nobody knows.
Like rubber stretching, the walls bend away and grow thin. I see the corridor open, twisting somehow, different. Maybe this time. Maybe this time I’ll go. Happy, with mother and father and Jenine urging me through.
No!
The viewing port before him turned deep violet. The glow of a sun filled the entire screen. Throwing his hands up to cover his eyes, he punched the transfer button again.
Jenine and the lady in white grow impatient. They argue with me, pointing at my naked body standing at the console. They plead, and I tell them I want to but I can’t seem to-
“No!” he screamed, looking out the port at a place where no star shone. The darkness terrified him even more than blazing suns. He jabbed the button.
Out of black into black. The lady calls, urging me into the doorway as a lover, as a friend. I want to go along but Something pulls me back. I almost see it this time. It has to fight harder to pull me-
“Back!”
“Cease transferring,” the computer thundered. “I cannot override. We are in danger of transferring into matter!”
“More darkness than light in the sky!” Virgil cried. “More void than value. Forward!” He shoved his finger into the button again and again.
I’m back and the corridor is dim. No one greets me. Now it is all mine. I run down it and almost reach the door. My fingers scrape the handle and something grabs me and throws me back.
The spaceship sped through a cluster of stars at a velocity that made them streak like meteors. He slammed a fist against the console.
Out of Nightsheet’s flame arcade into cool darkness.
I have to crawl uphill to the door this time. I grasp it and it creaks open. I almost see who seizes me and pulls me down, back into the Circus where I see vast swirls of gas and dust all around me. Reds, yellows, purples, blacks, they boil and snake
and I die again, feeling my heart stop, my blood seize, my muscles
brake. Please free me. Doesn’t death mean an end anymore?
No. I return again and float in the center of a ring of flame encircling two suns in a fiery bolo. I leave and feel myself shoved through a tiny hole that doesn’t exist and I’m falling toward the door. I swan dive, then look behind me to see something white and blinding lasso me and pull me up into the world.
“Why?” An explosion rocked the spacecraft. Virgil pressed the button. Nothing. He whirled around.
Out of the wall it comes, silver and gold, swinging its fist at my head and I just watch it connect and I spin and it bends over me and raises me and pushes me. I can’t move anything but I can watch. Back to the playroom it takes me, Ben’s personal strongarm. I knew they lurked in the walls and now I’ve seen one.
Death Angel sits there wide-eyed, her mouth open. The roar is too strong for me to hear what chokes from inside her. She looks at me, jaw slack and eyelids fluttering like captive moths.
Ben’s robot climbs back inside the walls with Master Snoop and I reach for the bruise on my head. Red comes off on my fingers, matching the red on Death Angel’s ankles and wrists. I move toward her. Ben babbles something in my ears but the roar is too great.
“Damage report: Ship transferred into asteroid belt surrounding massive infrared source. Transfer unit in six-oh-five defeat. Vernier pitch controls damaged. We cannot maneuver or transfer out of orbit. Human assistance required for repairs.”
Death Angel is limp as I unstrap her. She watches through eyes that echo hollow in my gaze. She says something and I strain to hold back the roar. It parts and I hear a complex cipher.
“I’m killed,” she said. “I’m killed. I died there again and again and they tried to comfort me by the entrance but this man kept sending me back. I wasn’t done, he said like a school teacher. I’m done. I’m done.”
She grows all firm in my hands and hits me on the head. I spin away from her and watch her bundle up and scream, her body studded with sweat diamonds.
She screamed again, whipped her head savagely around her, and ran her hands all over her body in a frenzied attempt to wipe away the perspiration. Trembling fingers clutched for the instrument table and pulled her to it. An electrosurgical knife glinted silver in her hand.
Virgil screamed and plunged toward her, seizing her wrist. She tried to drive the knife into her chest anyway. Virgil cursed and cried at the same time.
“Stop, Death Angel! Stupid, stupid to die like that when I can rebuild you. Waste of time!” He winced as the misguided blade sizzled through his shoulder, cutting a shallow groove in his skin. He twisted his arm around to knock the weapon from her hand. It sparked and crackled against a bulkhead.<
br />
He grabbed both her wrists. She tried to slash him with her nails.
“Let me die!” she pleaded, kicking at him. He twisted about at the waist, grappling her legs with his. Furious teeth snapped at his arm.
“Sorry,” he said. “Sorry I made you die. Tried to kill Jord, is all. Don’t go crazy, Delia. Death Angel mustn’t die.”
“Have to!” she cried, pulling back and freeing an arm. He caught it before she could deliver a blow to his neck. He pulled her arms as far away from each other as he could. Their faces were inches apart, but still they shouted.
“I can die and die. Why can’t you? What’s wrong? All of you given up to Nightsheet?”
“Death, death-the Reaper Man.”
“Reaper, Nightsheet-all one. We’ve beat him and can keep doing it.”
“No!” She tried to squirm free from the grip of his legs. Her thighs slipped between his, then held fast.
“Don’t make me, Death Angel. Don’t make me-”
“No!” She kicked her legs about, but he tightened his thighs against hers and wrapped his legs around her calves. She moved against him, rubbing against him, trying to wriggle loose. Her head swung at him, lashing him with her hair.
Death Angel stop! Something’s going wrong. I want you to stop struggling but I don’t.
“Virgil. Please. Kill me!” She twisted into him, running her flush skin against his. He held her tighter.
“I can’t kill you. I-I want-t-to-”
“Cut into me, Virgil!” She moved her legs under his, lashed him again with her hair.
“No!” he shouted. He released her legs, let go of her arms. She clung to his shoulders and wrapped her legs around his thighs.
“Please. Cut me deep, Virgil, so deep. I want you to stab into me. I want to feel your blood inside of me.”
He screamed a scream that sank into a powerful sob and clutched her to him. Death Angel moves madly against me and it’s so much what I want but how could I ever tell her when I didn’t even know my most hidden of secret codes. And she cracked it before I cracked hers. I move inside her and the room twists and grows dim and I and I and I see her here and what she’s done and I’ll show her what it’s like to trick me.
