"Not necessary," Jack said. "Just give her a sense of extended time during those years, the feeling that the first four were the longest. For the last year, though, since the events of that year will seem to be the most recent, you should increase the number of pseudomemories."
Writing a scenario for seven years was not easy and required much rewriting. Tappy had awakened before dawn. Jack had to quit work, talk to her awhile, and give her another sedative in a fresh cup of cocoa. She was not aware that much time had passed between the two drinks.
While he ate breakfast, he worked on the scenario. Though he desperately wanted to sleep, he kept writing and talking to Candy until he had completed his work. Then he said, "You can start work on the memories."
"It seems satisfactory," Candy said.
It was silent and unmoving for a minute. Jack's eyes were drooping; his body sagged; he felt that his immediate surroundings were sliding in and out, in and out. They seemed to be drawers filled with tableaux which someone invisible was pulling out and then shutting.
Suddenly, Candy was shaking his shoulder. Jack said, "Wha... ? Wha'ss going on?"
"You were sleeping," Candy said. "We didn't want to wake you up, but you should know that the work is complete. Tappy has her seven years of pseudomemories."
That brought him up off the pillows and to a standing position. His legs felt numb, his back ached, and his brain seemed to be filled with antifreeze.
"How, how long have I been asleep?"
"Fifteen minutes and thirty-two seconds," Candy said.
"That quick?"
"The scenario was prepared while you wrote it out, and the changes were made immediately," the AI said.
"I thought you had to take Tappy to the equipment!"
"You assumed that. All the pseudodata was transmitted to her mind while she slept in the bedroom."
Jack asked for a large mug of black coffee. It arrived about ten seconds later, carried by a male AI. After Jack had downed the hot liquid as swiftly as he could stand it, he walked to the bedroom and looked in it. By then, the sun had come up, but the pole lights were still on. Tappy was sleeping on her side. She was in a new nightgown. Near her, on hangers on a line, were her new clothes.
Her old clothes had been stripped off and thrown away. When she woke up, she would have to have different garments, of course. In fact, one of the false memories was of throwing the original nightgown away.
Held in one arm was a big fuzzy teddy bear. That had been given her, supposedly several years ago, as a birthday gift. She had, supposedly, asked for it, and, since then, had used it as her No. 2 security blanket. Her No. 1 was Jack himself.
The suspended bed had been replaced by a conventional one. It was large enough for Tappy and Jack to romp around on in sexual play. Jack was supposed to have been sleeping with her for the last five years.
The formerly bare room was now filled with many things: furniture, machines that played the music of many planets, though not of Earth, dolls, an ice-cream dispensing machine, a table loaded with cosmetics, which she supposedly used for makeup, and a mirror she could not use as yet, games for blind people, and dozens of other items, some useful, some recreational.
One of the AI had followed Jack to the bedroom entrance. Jack turned to it.
"The Imago?" he said very softly. "Shouldn't it be manifesting itself?"
His heart battered his chest hard. He felt a great fear and awe. It was as if he would soon be in the presence of the living God.
He did not know if he could endure such an experience. His flesh would become wax and would melt in the terrible light and heat. He looked at Tappy and drought he saw, for a second, something stirring in her, something no human eyes could look upon without being seared.
"Why doesn't it wake her up?" he said softly. His voice trembled.
Part of his fear was the knowledge that she would no longer be the Tappy he had known. She would be a fleshly tool of the Imago.
"What do you mean?" me AI said.
"It... the Imago... should awaken her when it awakens."
"I don't know why," the AI said. It added, "There's no guarantee that the woman will have matured. Even though she may think she's seven years older, her body might not. Or her subconscious may not be fooled. Or the Imago may perceive the truth."
"Can you give her a shot of something to make her wake up?"
"It's better to allow her to awake naturally."
At that moment, Tappy turned onto her back.
Jack said, "For God's sake!"
Her nightgown revealed the top half of her breasts. Between them was a bulge the size of a large egg. The tight and dark red skin over it looked as if it were about to burst. Around it at its base was a purplish swelling. A yellowish liquid shone on its surface, and that oozed out even as Jack stared at it.
He strode to her bedside and reluctantly touched the skin on top of the bulge. It was fever-hot. Her forehead felt hot, too, though it was cooler than the bulge.
"The egg the honker inserted!" he said. "It's infected!"
"No. It's just grown," the AI said. It put a finger on the bulge and then on Tappy's forehead. "Notice how much weight she seems to have lost in the last few hours. The egg's grown so fast it's sucked energy from her. The whole process probably involves an enormous expenditure of energy. She should be all right as soon as the process is completed."
"What does this mean for Tappy?"
Despite the AI's reassurance, Jack was certain that she was sick and that she could die from the disease.
"I do not know. It must be part of the Imago's maturing process. Or hers. Or both. Or it could have nothing to do with the Imago. We'll have to wait and observe."
Tappy, though still sleeping— or unconscious from the fever— jerked. That was followed by a twitching of her hands, which then became motionless. Her eyelids fluttered but did not open. Then a line redder than the rest of the skin appeared on the very top of the bulge. One end was pointed toward her chin; the other, toward her navel.
Then the break gaped like two thin lips. A few seconds later, it extended itself for a half inch on each side of the bulge, revealing something dark greenish below it. Then the line very quickly ran down both sides and disappeared into the purplish fester.
"We have to do something!" Jack cried.
"We can only wait and observe."
The line bisecting the skin gap on the top widened slightly.
The greenish round thing pushed upward a trifle.
The AI, standing by Jack, touched his shoulder.
He looked up and then behind him as the AI gestured to him.
A haze just beyond the entrance was clearing. It cleared, revealing a female AI. It walked in swiftly and stopped a few feet from Jack before speaking with the usual emotionless tones of the androids.
If it had been human, it would have screamed out the news.
"The Gaol have found us!"
Chapter 9
A flurry of questions surged through Jack's mind. Could they flee again? Obviously not, or the AI would have done so. Could they fight the Gaol? Same answer. Could they talk the Gaol out of it? Unlikely.
Jack realized that their ploy to age Tappy in her fancy, so as to evoke the Imago immediately, no longer mattered. The Imago might be awake, or it might still be asleep; either way, the Gaol had won, because they had closed in too soon. There just hadn't been time!
He sighed. This was the part he hated. "Then do what you have to do," he told the AI.
"And what is that?"
"Destroy us both. So the Imago will be freed to seek another host. It's the only way we can foil the Gaol now."
"We are unable to do that."
Jack was perversely annoyed. "What do you mean, unable? You told me that you would do it, to prevent the Imago from falling into Gaol power. There's very little time left. So do it now, while you can."
The scene was fading or changing. The exotic vegetation he had first seen from the station's window ap
peared around them. The AI assumed better definition, and became the voluptuous creature he had named Candy. "No."
"No? Why?"
"Because we no longer serve the Imago. We have been taken over by the Gaol and are now agents of the empire."
Jack saw the awful logic of it. Naturally the Gaol knew how to handle the AI. They had nullified those androids at the outset, before physically taking over the station. Maybe they had managed to deceive the AI about their approach, so that the AI thought they had more time than they did.
Jack came to a sudden, terrible decision. "Then I'll do it!" He turned toward Tappy, hoping that he could bring himself to kill her bare-handed. One smash of her head against the floor could do it. Then they could do what they liked to him; he didn't matter. He saw that she now lay unceremoniously on the floor, between the plants, her book beside her. He took a step.
But Candy moved more swiftly than he thought possible, and intercepted him. Suddenly he had an armful of phenomenal woman who was nevertheless not a woman at all. She closed her arms around him and lifted him from the floor. He felt her awesome power and knew that he was helpless. She might look like a siren, but she was also as deadly as one.
"All right!" he gasped. "Put me down. I'm helpless."
She set him down.
"So what happens now?" he asked. He doubted that he would be able to distract her or change the course of the conquering Gaol, but he was casting about for anything that might conceivably make a difference.
"Now we wait for the arrival of the minion of the Gaol."
"Oh, you mean Malva," he said jokingly, remembering the woman who had tempted and threatened him, back on the honkers' planet.
"Yes. She is the human interface for the Gaol."
No luck there. He looked around. "What's happened here? Did the vision change?"
"The effect of the plants has been nullified by the Gaol. This is reality."
Reality is a dream. Jack remembered that statement of the sleep-talking Tappy. Suddenly it had new meaning. Could this be just another dream, a product of his own worry? So that the Gaol had not captured them? In that case, all he had to do was change it.
He heard a small noise. It was just a kind of plop.
He turned to Tappy— and stopped. Because now he saw that the egg-thing on her chest had completed its hatching. There was just a purple wound with yellowish froth. Something green was sliding, rolling, or scrambling away from her: the hatchling.
Candy dived for it. But the thing scooted around one of the plants, just eluding her grasp. She tried to pursue it, but it was lost.
"What is it?" Jack asked.
"We do not know. But the artifacts of the honkers can have devious effects. It is better to destroy it immediately."
"Too late for that," Jack said, privately satisfied. "You'd have to destroy the whole greenhouse to get it now."
She did not reply. Instead she went to Tappy. "We shall cleanse and cover this injury," she said. "It will not prevent the host of the Imago from surviving."
And the Gaol did want that host to survive so that the Imago could not escape to occupy some other, unknown, host.
But here he was, taking this vision literally again. He needed to change it to something more acceptable. To a dream in which the Gaol were far away and the AI still served the Imago. He concentrated.
Nothing changed. But perhaps it would change when he slept, as it had before. Except that this last change had happened while he was awake and alert. Just as it would if reality were taking over. Damn!
Then he realized that it didn't matter. If this were merely another dream, then the Gaol were not here anyway. There was no point in scaring himself. He could believe anything he wanted, good or bad, but Tappy would remain safe. And maybe the Imago would wake.
Maybe all it needed was to be evoked. To be called up. "Imago!" he said. "I charge you, wake! We have dire need of you."
Nothing happened. Candy was treating and bandaging Tappy, ignoring him. She evidently took this dream seriously.
Suppose this was reality? If he gambled that it wasn't, and did nothing, Tappy was doomed. He had to assume that it was, and search for any possible way to save her. If he succeeded, and it was real, then Tappy won; if he failed, and it was a dream, Tappy won. Only if he failed in reality did Tappy lose, even if he seemed to be succeeding in a dream.
So this was reality. It was the only safe assumption, despite the seemingly hopeless situation.
Jack squatted and touched Tappy's hand. "Imago! Wake!"
There was still no response. Whatever it took to wake the Imago, this wasn't it.
Unless its consciousness was linked to Tappy's. "Tappy, wake!" he cried, squeezing her hand.
Her eyes opened. She smiled. "Oh, Jack, I see you!"
He felt an electric thrill. She saw him! She was talking to him! Their ploy had worked!
She sat up, and she looked at Candy. "And who is this woman?"
"You have a— an injury," Jack said, still elated over this success, though her questions were awkward. "This is an AI android. She is treating you."
Tappy looked down. "Oh, it stings!"
"Here is the bandage," Candy said. "Let me apply it."
Tappy lay back again, allowing the treatment to proceed. "This won't interfere with our lovemaking, will it. Jack?"
The implanted memories! She remembered five years of sexual activity with him. What was he to say to that?
"The injury won't interfere," he said carefully. "But there is something else that will. Tappy, the Gaol have caught us, and only the Imago can get us free. Can you— is it— did it wake with you?"
She hesitated, as if exploring her inner being. "No. There is nothing."
Tappy had been fooled, but not the Imago! It was a Pyrrhic victory. How much better it would have been if it had been the Imago instead of Tappy who had gained the ability to see and speak!
"It hardly matters," a new voice said. "We have gained control."
Jack turned, startled. There was Malva, the human minion of the Gaol they had encountered on the honkers' planet. The woman they had tricked, because she had not known about the honker's egg and its effect.
Jack saw nothing to be gained by politeness. "You wouldn't have control, you quisling, if the Imago had matured in time."
"We are assuming that the Imago has matured," Malva said. "Didn't the androids tell you its nature?"
"No." Surely the AI knew, but somehow in the rush of other things he had never thought to ask them directly, so of course they had not told him.
"It is a creature of extreme empathy. Any living entity with whom it associates closely becomes similarly empathic, and transfers this quality in turn to others, though the effect diminishes with each transfer. In due course it damps out, but the presence of the Imago continually renews it. If it lives free, the Imago will in due course conquer the galaxy. This is of course why the Gaol oppose it."
"Empathy?" Jack was bewildered. "How can that hurt the Gaol?"
"It does not hurt any creatures, directly. It merely changes them. Empire becomes impossible."
Candy continued to work on Tappy, who was listening; evidently she had not known this either.
"I must be really dense," Jack said. "As I understand empathy, it is merely a matter of identifying so closely with something else that you seem to fee! its nature yourself. You seem to project your personality into it. You feel its feelings as your own. That's nice for understanding, but not much for blowing up enemy spaceships."
Malva smiled. "You are indeed somewhat obtuse about this, but this can be attributed to your primitive background. Do you mistreat, oppress, or exploit a person or creature for whom you feel empathy? Tappy, for example?"
"No, of course not!" Then Jack began to understand. "You mean the Imago causes others to feel empathy for it? So they won't hurt it?"
"No one can hurt the Imago, because it has no tangible essence. It is eternal and invulnerable. However, it is true that othe
rs soon lose their inclination to mistreat whatever host the Imago occupies. But this is only part of it; they develop general empathy for all living things, and that changes their lives."
"And it affects the Gaol, too!" Jack exclaimed. "So they don't feel like exploiting other species!"
"Precisely. Therefore the Gaol take steps to prevent exposure of any other creatures to the Imago. It will be isolated for the lifetime of its current host."
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