by Greg Cox
“Ronnie? Dr. Neary?” Takagi waved a hand in front of her face, and she realized that she had let her mind wander a little too obviously.
Oops! “Sorry about that,” she apologized hastily. Her face assumed a more attentive expression. “The reactor. Right.”
This high-tech control room, overlooking the reactor, was the latest stop on the tour. She and Takagi stood at the rear of the room while industrious technicians monitored an impressive array of lighted panels and gauges. Mounted schematics illustrated the internal workings of the reactor, currently hidden behind several feet of reinforced concrete. Her unfamiliar face drew a few curious glances from the workers present, but apparently Takagi's presence was enough to vouch for her status as a security non-risk. If only they knew why I'm really here, she thought, feeling guilty once more for taking advantage of these people's trust. Undercover missions really suck sometimes.
“I'm sorry again,” Takagi emphasized, “that neither Viktor nor Dr. Kaur could join us this morning, but both of them have plenty of responsibilities to keep them busy.” As a safety precaution, a badgesized radiation tag was affixed to the front of his T-shirt.
“I'll bet,” Roberta replied, wondering how she could shake Takagi long enough to go searching for Gary Seven on her own. She glanced around the control room, pretending to be interested in the various flashing lights and switches. The sterile white chamber, with its long banks of consoles and computers, reminded her of Mission Control at Cape Kennedy. “I'm afraid I don't know much about nuclear power,” she lied, having defused an A-bomb or two in her time. “So where's the self-destruct switch?” she joked. “In the movies, there's always a button that blows everything up.”
A serious expression came over Takagi's face, momentarily dimming the friendly young scientist's natural ebullience. “Believe it or not, there really is a self-destruct procedure, just in case some newly developed recombinant bacteria or virus is in danger of escaping into the environment. If the director judges the threat is serious enough, she has the option of triggering an irreversible chain reaction in the reactor core. In theory, the resulting atomic explosion would completely sterilize the area, preventing the bug from spreading.”
“Like in The Andromeda Strain, ” Roberta said, nodding her head in understanding. She had seen that creepy super-germ movie the year before. In the film, an overzealous computer nearly triggered a thermonuclear blast in order to keep the titular Strain from escaping a significantly more fictional underground lab. Of course, if Seven's dire theories were correct, Kaur and her colleagues were already whipping up some sort of Chrysalis Strain. “You aren't actually breeding any bugs like that, are you?”
Way to go, Roberta, she thought. Real subtle. “Well, not on purpose, certainly,” Takagi insisted, sounding quite sincere, “although it doesn't hurt to play it safe.” He tried to lighten the mood by flashing Roberta a reassuring smile. “That's a completely last-ditch emergency measure, of course. It's never going to happen. We're extremely careful when it comes to handling hazardous materials, especially genetically modified microbes and such.”
Why don't I find this terribly comforting? Roberta wondered, readily imagining a mushroom cloud rising over the Great Thar Desert.
Maybe because she knew how easily at least one potential saboteur had already penetrated Chrysalis's supposedly airtight security?
Namely, me.
Kaur lied when she promised Seven that Chrysalis eschewed torture. Resisting the neurotransmitter's effects was proving to be an agonizing ordeal comparable to enduring the tender mercies of a Klingon mind-sifter.
He hadn't eaten or slept for hours, maybe even a day, and his jaw ached from the strain of keeping his teeth tightly clenched together. Kaur's supersophisticated truth serum had worked its insidious alchemy upon his brain cells, provoking an almost irresistible compulsion to reveal his secrets to whomever was listening, in this case Williams and one remaining guard. He couldn't even open his mouth for fear that vital intelligence, like Roberta's true identity, would start pouring out of him uncontrollably.
Seven kept waiting for the effects of the serum to wear off, but instead the compulsion only kept building, like floodwaters bearing down upon an overstressed dam. It was only a matter of time before the dam cracked under the mounting pressure; the tailor-made synthetic neurotransmitter seemed to have stimulated a reflex that would not disappear until it had been discharged. Like a sneeze that won't go away, he thought, only a hundred times more insistent.
As he had since the beginning of his ordeal, Seven relied on age-old Vulcan meditation techniques to resist the lure of the serum. My mind is outside my body, he chanted silently, seeking the ancient wisdom of Kolinahr. My mind is under my command. He sought to observe himself from a perspective of absolute detachment, viewing both the exhaustion of his body and the artificially induced obsession gripping his brain as he would any other external phenomena. I cast out fear, he recited over and over. I cast out desire.
His weary frame trembled with fatigue and mental exertion, but he kept his thoughts to himself, despite the relentless prodding of the foreign chemicals tickling his neurons. Escape, in his present compromised condition, seemed increasingly unlikely, so he knew he had to hold himself together long enough for Roberta and Isis to take whatever action was necessary. The cold metal handcuffs chafed painfully against his wrists, and his legs were numb from squatting in the same uncomfortable position for many hours, but he willed himself to ignore his physical anguish, just as he forced his resolve to stand firm against the cerebral extortion of the truth serum. My mind is outside my body. My mind is under my command. . . .
Kaur and her personal bodyguards had left several hours ago, leaving only Williams and one solitary guard to conduct the interrogation, but now the door to the storeroom swung open once more to admit the self-assured director of Chrysalis, who, unlike Seven, looked just as fresh and energetic as the day before. “Still no progress?” she asked of Williams. Her accented voice held both frustration and fascination.
Williams was merely frustrated. “Not so much as a peep,” he grumbled. Stubble infested his unshaven jowls, and the remains of a partially consumed sack lunch rested upon his lap as he perched upon a metal stool that a guard had produced for his convenience. “If I couldn't see him breathing, I'd wonder if he was still alive.”
“Intriguing,” Kaur admitted, sounding impressed despite herself. “This level of resistance, sustainable for such a lengthy duration, is literally unheard-of.” She knelt beside the cage to inspect Seven more closely. “We've never seen anything like this in all our clinical trials.”
“Are you sure you gave him the right stuff?” Williams asked irritably. The Englishman had to be getting pretty fed up, Seven surmised, if he was willing to question Kaur so openly. The prisoner watched his captors' interactions from behind drooping bangs of hair and half-closed eyelids. Playing possum seemed like his best bet to avoid an even more grueling interrogation, at least for the time being, so he chose not to acknowledge Kaur's return.
“Quite sure,” she replied to Williams's query. She took little note of his impertinence, seeming far more interested in the mystery of Seven's continued silence. “Can you hear me, Mr. Seven?” she inquired, poking his chest through the bars of the cage. He remained immobile, but she eyed him suspiciously, brushing the hair from his eyes with incongruous gentleness and attempting to look him in the eyes, which Seven kept resolutely fixed upon the floor, avoiding her gaze. Even still, he felt an almost overwhelming urge to tell her everything he knew. I cast out fear. I cast out desire.
She grabbed on to his chin and tilted his head back roughly, so that he could no longer look away from her unbearably inquisitive face. “Yes, I believe you can hear me,” she said perceptively, “appearances to the contrary.” She held his head upright and peppered him with questions asked almost more urgently than he could endure. “Who are you? Where did you come from? How are you able to resist the serum?”
&
nbsp; He stared back at her as blankly as he could manage, but an agonized groan escaped through his clenched teeth. Each unanswered interrogative was like a fresh torrent of floodwater pounding against the crumbling dam he had erected inside his besieged psyche. His tongue twitched spasmodically between his jaws, aching to satisfy his chemically inspired craving to confess everything to Kaur.
“Who are you?” she demanded. Her face was only inches away from his, dissecting his will with her eyes. “Tell me. Tell me now.”
My name is Gary Seven, he thought involuntarily, the words bubbling up out of his consciousness. My designation is Supervisor 194, and I was born in a cloaked solar system fifty thousand light-years from here. I was trained by the Aegis and sent to Earth to insure that humanity survives its technological and societal adolescence. My primary operatives include Roberta Lincoln, a contemporary human of this era, and Isis, my
“No!” he barked hoarsely, breaking his long silence. He bit down on his lip until blood flowed, choking back the revelatory deluge that threatened to gush from his lips. His entire body jerked convulsively as he struggled to hold back a cascading stream of verbiage beyond his ability to control or censor. My mind is outside my body, he thought desperately, straining to regain dominion over his mental processes. My mind has been trained by aliens from—no! My mind is under my control.
Kaur's dark eyes gleamed with triumph and expectation. “His throat is dry,” she called out to Williams. “Give me something to drink. Hurry.”
Dismounting awkwardly off his stool, the British scientist stumbled over to donate his liquid refreshment to the cause. He hastily offered a mug of lukewarm tea to Kaur, who lifted the rim of the cup to Seven's cracking and bleeding lips. “Here,” she said solicitously. “Drink this.”
The tantalizing scent of the chai was more than tempting. His entire body felt dehydrated, and he wanted to gulp down the tea nearly as much as he needed to fill his listeners in on the full particulars of his assignment on Earth. His parched throat, however, was his last defense against the malignant influence of the truth serum, so he knew he couldn't risk even a single sip. He tried to pull his mouth away from the cup, but Kaur held on to the back of his head with her free hand, keeping it in place. She tipped the cup slightly and he felt the tea slosh against his teeth and lips, which he kept locked tightly together. The warm, brown liquid dribbled down his chin and onto the front of his sweat-soaked white shirt.
My name is—my name is— To his extreme dismay, Seven felt the words forming in his mouth. His tongue twitched of its own accord and he realized that, despite all stringent discipline and conditioning, he was about to tell Kaur everything. Perhaps sensing her victory, Kaur leaned in closer. “Yes, that's right,” she prompted. “Go ahead. I'm listening.”
Only at the last instant, as his moistened lips parted irrevocably, did Seven realize there was still one way to hang on to his secrets. . . .
“[My name is Gary Seven,]” he confessed in Klingon. “[My designation is Supervisor 194, and I was born in a cloaked solar system fifty thousand light-years from here. . . .]”
Anger and acute frustration disfigured Kaur's elegant features. Despite her vast erudition, the guttural sounds emanating from Seven's throat made no sense whatsoever; to her earthbound ear, they sounded more like the growling of wild dogs than comprehensible human speech.
“Bloody hell!” Williams exclaimed. “He's gone barking mad!” “No, I don't think so,” Kaur said slowly. Assuming a more patient demeanor, she gave the snarling prisoner an exacting appraisal before tipping her head in respect. “Very clever, Mr. Seven. I must confess, I can't even begin to place that language.” She waited until Seven's indecipherable outburst ran its course and the caged man fell silent once more. “Don't think that you've won so easily, however.” She smiled in anticipation of Seven's ultimate capitulation. “A true scientist never abandons an experiment after just one failure.”
She glanced at Williams. “There's a filled hypodermic syringe in my right coat pocket,” Kaur informed her lackey. “Retrieve it and inject the contents of the syringe into the subject's arm.” She continued to press the mug against her prisoner's lips. “I want to give the formidable Mr. Seven a booster shot of the serum.”
“Is that safe?” Williams asked nervously, fumbling to fulfill her instructions. He plucked the hypo from Kaur's spotless lab coat, then removed the rubber cap over the needle.
“I don't know,” she confessed. “That's one of the things I want to find out.” She kept her intense, analytical gaze on Seven's face as Williams injected a fresh dose of the serum into Seven's exposed elbow. “Remind me to get a tissue sample later, regardless of the serum's effect. I definitely want to take a close look at this subject's DNA.”
Seven welcomed the sharp sting of the needle as it threaded his vein; it distracted him momentarily from the constant psychic pressure to answer Kaur's questions. Then the needle withdrew, leaving behind an all-too-familiar burning sensation, and the grueling interrogation resumed.
“Who are you?” the director cross-examined him once more. Within minutes, Seven could feel the concentrated neurotransmitter agitating his brain cells all over again, adding a horrible new keenness and intensity to what was already an overpowering compulsion. “Who sent you?” Kaur asked forcefully, and he felt the muscles in his jaw loosen to a dangerous degree. His tongue rose against his palate, poised to speak the instant he parted his lips. “And no speaking in tongues this time. I want English. Only English.”
“[My name—]” He tried to bypass Kaur's new restrictions, but the harsh Klingon words caught in his throat. He grasped for other, even more alien vocabularies, yet the strange, unearthly words would not stick to his tongue. In desperation, he tried falling back once more on the ancient wisdom of the sages of Vulcan: My mind is, my mind is, my mind is—what? He could not remember the rest of the mantra. The pounding in his head was too loud. All he could hear were the questions, echoing loudly within his skull, and the answers that could no longer be restrained.
“My name is Gary Seven,” he began.
“Here we are,” Takagi declared grandly, reminding Roberta somewhat of a carnival barker. “The spiritual, if not actually the geographical, heart of Chrysalis. Get ready to see what the whole project is really all about.”
World domination? Roberta speculated, hoping that wasn't the case. A pair of turquoise steel doors stood before her, concealing the next stop on her tour of Chrysalis. Before Takagi could lead her past the mysterious doors, however, an indignant and altogether too familiar meow interrupted her sight-seeing expedition/ reconnaissance mission. “Oh, great,” Roberta muttered as she spun around to see, just as she expected, a twelve-pound, four-legged busybody horning in on her undercover snooping.
“What the devil?” Takagi exclaimed. He stared through his spectacles at the furry black feline on the floor behind them. “How did your cat get here?”
“Just misses me, I guess,” Roberta answered dryly, glaring daggers at Isis, who didn't look at all bothered by the human woman's baleful gaze. What's the matter? Roberta thought testily. Wasn't I spying fast enough for you? Isis had scolded her mercilessly for sleeping in this morning, and then protested vocally when Roberta left her behind in their room. I don't blame her for being anxious about Seven. I'm worried, too. But she's not helping by being a pest .
“But what's she doing here?” Takagi asked, still flummoxed by the cat's surprise appearance. “How did she get out of your room?”
Roberta shrugged. “Trust me, she has an amazing talent for turning up where she's not invited.” None too gently, she scooped up Isis, who clambered just as roughly onto her shoulder. Guess she's along for the ride now, Roberta thought, wincing as the cat dug in with her claws. To change the subject, she tilted her head toward the waiting turquoise doors. “So, you going to show me what you've got here?”
Takagi eyed the cat uncertainly, then threw up his hands in resignation. “Okay, I suppose there's no harm bri
nging little Isis along on this part of the tour. It's not like there's anything delicate or dangerous inside.”
“Just the heart of Chrysalis,” Roberta teased. “Exactly,” he grinned, going back into carnival-barker mode. Stepping forward, he pressed a plastic button alongside the double doors. They slid open in front of her, and Takagi gestured for her to step inside. Perched alertly atop Roberta's left shoulder, Isis peered ahead intently.
The noise hit her at once, before her eyes even had a chance to take in what lay beyond the obviously soundproof doors. The babble of a dozen high-pitched voices produced a cacophonous battering ram of sound that came as quite a change from the calm, focused atmosphere of the reactor control room. Roberta was only momentarily disoriented, though, instantly recognizing the carefree and discordant clamor of small children at play.
The heart of Chrysalis turned out to be a spacious classroom/ playroom populated by the same pack of toddlers she had spotted earlier. In typically Indian style, there were no chairs or desks, but rather a generous assortment of mats and pillows for the children to work and play upon. At least a dozen kids were present, supervised by a trio of adult caretakers, who circulated among the kids, offering advice and encouragement. The class was admirably integrated, Roberta noted, including children of various races and ethnicities. Each child appeared to be working independently on a project of his or her own, under the gentle supervision of the soft-spoken and smiling instructors. Roberta heard several different languages, from Hindi to Esperanto, being spoken. Her translator pendant could decipher any or all of the various dialects, of course, but the din of competing voices pretty much reduced the bulk of the chatter to white noise.
At first, the scene looked like a typical nursery school or kindergarten, albeit more international than most. But as her gaze zeroed in on the individual children and their activities, Roberta's eyes widened and her jaw dropped open in astonishment.
