THE PROCESS OF CHANGING THE PRETTY AND BRILLIANT Song Ching into the rougher and masculine Chu Li, while unlikely to succeed, was nonetheless solidly based on predictable principles. One was that authoritarian societies, particularly those which received their orders from machines, ran on orders and tended to carry out those orders to the letter and without question, even at the cost of common sense. The other was that most people would believe that it took someone with the artistry, skills, and experience of an expert like Doctor Wang to accomplish such a transformation at all, when in a computer age all it took was someone who could talk to a computer and order it to do the work.
Chu Li was barely fifteen; his youth made the illusion easier to pull off, and some rather basic changes helped it along. Song Ching’s hair was cut extremely short, almost but not quite gone along the sides and short with a straight-back clipper cut on top, while the nails had been closely trimmed to the fingers. The heavy cotton prisoner tunic and baggy trousers made any wearer shapeless. Song Ching’s middle soprano had been lowered in pitch one half octave; any more would have been inconsistent with a boy of fifteen. Chu Li’s dialect was Mandarin, not Song Ching’s native dialect but the one used at Center and therefore no problem.
The boys had been back in the cell, sedated, barely twenty minutes when the guards came for them. Their sleeves were rolled up, and each was given a shot that counteracted any sedative drugs still in their bodies. Both sat up, groaning and holding their heads.
“Get yourselves in order!” a guard barked to them. “In five minutes each of you will be fed. I strongly recommend you eat everything; it may be a long time before you get another decent meal, if ever.” That was said with something of a smirk. “You will be permitted ten minutes for this and another five to use the toilet. Then you will be prepared to leave.” With that, the guard turned and stalked out. The cell door closed behind him.
“Oooh! My head is only now trying to make peace with me,” Deng Ho moaned.
“It is the same with me,” Chu Li responded. In Han and many other Oriental cultures, cousins of the same generation regarded one another as brothers and sisters and acted accordingly. The two boys were close. “My head is crowded and confused, almost as if . . . ”
“As if what?”
As if there is another also inside my head, he thought, but he couldn’t say that. “I just wonder if they messed with our minds, and if they did, would we know?”
“How’s your—thing?”
Memories of brutish guards beating and torturing for the slightest infractions. Memories of one of them.
“There is no pain,” Chu Li told his cousin. “It is not right, though. I shall have to pee sitting down for a while, I think. I do not know what awaits us, but it cannot be any worse than here. Even death is better than here.”
Chu Li tried to clear his mind. So long as he concentrated on the here and now, it was fine, but when he let himself relax, his thoughts became somewhat crowded and confused. The guards who had beaten him had threatened “to make a girl of him,” but even that would not have given him memories and information that seemed to belong to a girl, one from a far different background and one he had never known. Some of those memories and impressions were far sharper than those from his own life—but there was a difference. He could remember that other life, but he could not place himself in the position of that girl. He felt as if he were looking at things from the viewpoint of an outside observer.
He had little time to dwell on this right away, for the guards were sticking solidly to their schedule. Chu Li and Deng Ho were placed in handcuffs and short leg irons and marched rudely through corridors, checkpoints, and safeguards to the main entrance, where a squad of black-clad regular security police awaited them.
“They’re all yours, Lieutenant,” the chief guard said, sounding not the least bit sorry. “We’ve put them through the mill and taught them some manners. Good riddance.”
The lieutenant just nodded, and both men pressed their thumbs on the receiving board to signify the transfer.
“All right, you two,” the new captor said to the boys. “No trouble, now. I don’t know what they did to you in there, and I don’t care. Legally, you are no longer citizens of the Community or even human beings. You are cattle, the property of the System Administrative Council, and they can and will do with you as they wish, as can I as their deputy. Not a word out of you, now; follow me.”
They were led out to a landing bay where a skimmer awaited them. They got in and were surprised to find two girls already seated there, both in the same prison garb they themselves wore. Neither girl turned to look at them but just sat quiet and sullen. Chu Li thought he saw some sort of scar or welt on the face of the one closest to him, but then he was chained in his seat and could look only forward.
The large passenger skimmer lifted quickly into the air, took its assigned exit trajectory, and smoothly cleared the dome, then rose to cruising altitude. As the skimmer gained speed, the boys were pushed back into their seats.
They wanted to talk to the girls, who were seated in front of them, but a few nasty whacks from a guard’s leather stick produced silence. Chu Li had nothing to do but settle back and think.
Why did he have this strange girl’s memories? What had they done to him in there and why? He tried to relax and sort out what he could of this alien information. The Lord Buddha protect him! She’d been the daughter of the chief administrator! The very bastard who had ordered the massacre of his people! And she had been there!
He compared his own memories to hers. Darkness, sudden cold, people screaming and running, shots all over, illuminating the dark. One shot catches his sister and burns her upper half to melted goo. All the time she had been up there, in the officer’s skimmer, enjoying every moment and wanting to get down and get into the battle herself, to shoot some of his people. It had been nothing but a game to her, an amusing entertainment.
The more he examined her memories and attitudes, the more he hated her. People were mere objects to her, toys for her amusement or fools to play off each other for her gain. Rich, pampered, spoiled, and arrogant, she was a most unpleasant person, the very kind he had always been taught ruled the world. Such beauty and such genius. Such evil.
How he would like to get hold of her, rip off her fine clothes, dress her in rags, exchange her jasmine perfume for sweat and dung, make her the lowest peasant slave, show her what it felt like to be brutalized. She and her whole cursed family. It was they who should have been on this ship going to some deep hell, not the ones who were here.
But what were her memories doing in his mind? Some kind of mistake? She had been at Center herself, it seemed, and not as a visitor or voyeur but to be remade into a good noble’s wife and breeder. It was too kind a fate for her, but it was at least a step toward justice. She had been an expert at computers; she had examined his people’s discoveries. Had her old memories and knowledge gotten mixed in with his in that computer by some mistake? It was possible. It was also possible that she had managed this herself, to save her knowledge even as they were stripping clean her soul. If so, it was justice that the daughter of his people’s murderer should inadvertently pass on that knowledge to one of her victims.
He now had that knowledge, including the actual way to steal a spaceship, and he hoped he could use it. It would be the ultimate revenge on her if she was mentally made over into a prim little wife while he, whose people had made these discoveries and had been destroyed while she watched and thrilled at the spectacle, was somehow able to use that to escape.
It was all too evil to him and too disturbing. His grandfather long ago had taught him an ancient mental discipline, one which gave control of thoughts and memories and could even fool the big computers for periods of time. His people had survived with it and escaped detection for a generation, and he now applied it to another aim. It was a form of self-hypnosis, but it was more than that; it was a mystical thing that worked by will and concentration and the Ten Exercises. He wanted her out. He wanted all traces of her banished from his conscious mind, save only the computer knowledge and skill and the secrets she knew. She would give up her knowledge, skills, and discoveries, but then he would have the pleasure at least of killing her in his mind.
But for the first time in his memory, the mental discipline did not really work. It distanced the girl’s memories a bit more, but she was still there.
The skimmer flew over vast, rocky desert and eerie tablelands, then began to slow and descend. Atop one desolate plateau there was a huge blocky complex, and to one side, rising up like a temple spire, was a spaceship. It could be seen clearly against the morning sky; the pilot pointed it out through the broad front windscreen of the skimmer. Chu Li brought himself out of the Ten Exercises to see what the excitement was about and got somewhat excited himself.
Space! They are exiling us to space!
They settled down so slowly and so close to the spaceship that it went by the front windows in dramatic fashion. Finally the door opened, and the security lieutenant unbuckled himself and got out, carrying the security identifier from Center. After greeting the other security officials, he immediately inserted the module into the space center systems slot. This way, the four young people would be identified by security records and systems as outbound prisoners. It was also another link in the computer-engineered masquerade: Now the spaceport records would show Chu Li as “he” now appeared, with the current Chu Li’s fingerprints and eyeprints. The spaceport was tied directly into Master System; therefore, the Center security computer had encoded a correction program showing initial data errors and reversing the prints of Song Ching and Chu Li. Her body was now totally identified and registered as Chu Li, 15, male, born in Paoting, Hopeh Province, apprehended in illegal activity, Chamdo Province, and declared Property of the State; remanded to Melchior Research and Detention facility until death. As the real Chu Li no longer existed, not even in trace, Song Ching was about to vanish impossibly and forever—and heads would roll for it.
When the prisoners were ordered out, the boys got their first clear look at the girls, both of whom looked downcast and old beyond their years. There were scars on their faces. Ugly ones.
They were marched inside and down a busy corridor, past many eyes staring at them from offices, to an elevator, then taken to an upper-level detention area. It had clearly not been designed as such; there were barred gates at either end of a short corridor monitored by cameras as well as by human guards, but the four cells were little more than barren, unfinished offices in which had been placed some army mattresses that looked as if they’d seen work and a small commode not attached to plumbing but containing a pitcher of water and some plastic glasses. They were told that if they needed to eliminate they were to yell for a guard and that one would be along to take them one at a time to the lone toilet on the floor.
To Chu Li’s surprise, he was pushed into a cell with one of the girls. “This is not proper!” he protested.
The guard grinned. “My orders were to split that pair up. They have a real way with locks and stuff. Go ahead and have some fun if you’re old enough to know what I mean. We don’t care.”
The door slammed shut, leaving them alone. The girl kept her eyes on him but did not say a word. The haunted expression in her eyes drew his attention away from the two large, irregular scars that disfigured her face.
“Don’t worry,” he assured her. “I have much honor but little else and would not do that if I could.”
The ice was broken, and she relaxed a bit. “What do you mean, if you could?” Her voice was high and nasal, her Mandarin dialect colored by a peasant’s accents and tone.
“It is too embarrassing to discuss.”
“There is nothing too embarrassing for me. I have lost even my honor. They—they gave us to the male guards for two days and nights before cleaning us up for this.”
He was not certain what to say to that. Finally he managed, “You need not feel shame at that, at least I think not. It was not of your doing, and it is they who have dishonored themselves, not you.”
She stood there a moment, then, slowly, tears came to her eyes and she began to cry. He wasn’t quite sure what to do. Finally he went over to her, and she leaned against him and just cried and cried as he held her. He was just at the stage where he was finding girls different, exotic, and strangely important, but this was the first time he had ever held one in his arms. It felt good to lend some strength to her; he had been treated harshly, but she had endured far more.
Clearly this cry had been a long time coming, and he eased her onto the floor mat and just sat beside her, holding her until she had it cried out. She clung to him as if he were very important, yet they had only just now met and did not even know each other’s names.
When she was done crying, he asked her if he could get her some water, and she nodded. He brought her a cup and a paper towel to dry her eyes.
She had been attractive once; he could see that. No great beauty, but it had been a good face, and because of that, the scars were an even greater disfigurement. One ran from the left side of her mouth up her cheek and then back toward her ear, pulling the corner of the lip up grotesquely and permanently exposing two teeth; the other was a huge, deep horizontal gash. Both were built up like mountains on her smooth skin by scar tissue that had partly turned purple and brown. Still, as he looked at her now and helped her dry her tears, he felt odd stirrings inside him, and though he could not forget the scar tissue, for the moment it did not seem very important.
“I’m sorry,” she managed, blowing her nose. “I—I was always the strong one. I am sorry that I permitted you to see me this way.”
“It is all right,” he responded. “You must be strong indeed to go through that and not be mad.”
“Perhaps I am mad,” she responded. “I have been living what can only be a nightmare, in which you are the first man to show any kindness.”
“Only half a man,” he responded, not realizing how much truth there was in that description. Because she had told him her ultimate shame, he felt not only that he could tell her his secret but that it might give her some idea that suffering was not exclusive. “The guards beat me terribly where that which makes me a man is, leaving it battered, bruised, and perhaps broken. There is no pain, but it will be a long time before I know. That is what I was too embarrassed and ashamed to say before.”
“Oh! I apologize for asking. Please forgive me.”
He shook it off. “What is done cannot be undone, and who knows what was done? Only time will tell that. I am otherwise whole and very angry at all this. My people taught us that the world was ruled by monsters in human form, but I did not really believe this until they came for us. I am Chu Li, by the way, sometimes called Rat because of my small size and the year of my birth.”
“I am Chow Dai. My sister who suffers with me is Chow Mai. As you might guess, we are—” she touched the scar on her right cheek “—were twins.”
“I hope that my cousin, Deng Ho, is honorable with her and that they get along. He is more likely to be crying on her shoulder, I fear, though he has held up better than I would have guessed.” Sparing little, he told her how he and his cousin had come to be there and what his own people had been like, free of the tyranny of the machines.
She listened, fascinated. “I have nothing of that in my past,” she told him. “I fear I have never known even that much freedom. Even the women of your people were free and educated.”
“You are not of the Center?”
“No. Oh my, no! We are simple peasant girls. The family was very big, and we were always hungry, it seemed. When a time of drought came, my parents had no way to feed us all and no money to marry us off. Unlike some of the others of their generation, they did not believe in drowning baby daughters, and so had too many.”
He was appalled. “They drowned babies?”
She seemed surprised at his reaction. “It has been the custom for thousands of years. They try and wipe it out, but in bad times it returns. Sons may return what they consume and care for the parents in their old age. Daughters are a burden, for you must pay even to marry them to someone. We understood this. There was a petition to the Lord of the Estates, who had always encouraged even the poor families to keep their daughters, and he listened. We were sold to the household of Colonel Chin, a mighty warlord, to be personal servants to his own daughter.”
“Sold?” He could hardly believe this. Hers was a world far removed from his experience.
“We didn’t mind. Our parents were relieved of their burden, received some sum they could use, and knew that we were honorably employed. Our mistress was harsh and demanding, but we had fine clothes, food such as we had never dreamed of eating, protection, and something of a position.”
“As a slave, you mean.”
“No, as a member of the household staff. It has far more standing than planting and picking rice, and we were very young. Then we were taken one time to Center, a place we had never dreamed existed. It was like a high-born’s heaven. It was our undoing, though, in the end. We helped the mistress bathe and clothe herself, tended to the personal things, but much of the other work was done by the machines. We were not permitted out of the quarters except in the company of our mistress, so it was very boring. We could not even sneak out, for we did not know how to open the locks.”
“I would have spent the time reading. Surely there were many books and tapes around on many topics.”
Again she looked embarrassed. “I—we—cannot read or write.”
He felt foolish and ashamed of himself. In the colony there were many who were never able to master most or all of the more than thirty thousand characters of the alphabet. He himself had had help with machines and special training to allow him to read at a level far beyond what one his age, even if very bright, would have managed without them. Most people in China could not read, in fact. Literacy was what truly set the classes apart, the heart of their division. If, somehow, a peasant could learn to read and take the examinations, he could rise in society. The better one read and the more one read, the more complex the examination one took. It was the one road to social mobility open to all Chinese, although, of course, it was next to impossible for a peasant to learn to read, while the child of a stupid or slow highborn who could not manage the skill was never demoted to peasant.
“I am sorry. I will make no more stupid remarks,” he said lamely. “Please tell me more of how you came here.”
Her smile told him that all was forgiven. “One day a man came who was an expert on locks. A security man of sorts. He was young and very handsome, and we made a fuss over him, I’m afraid. He began to brag about his trade and show off his knowledge of the locks and security systems, and even explained some of his tools. It was quite an education. He didn’t think mere peasant servants could understand what he said, but it was actually quite simple. We soon found basic apartment locks no problem at all. Some other locks and doors were more difficult, but even ones requiring fingerprints were beatable. Once you understood the principle, it was simple to find a way around each.”
“Some of those would still require special tools to defeat,” he noted. “You said as much yourself.”
“Some tools were simple and could be made from other things. Others, the complicated mechanical tools, you could get if you wanted. We once had an uncle who was something of a magician. A criminal, really, but a minor one. He would put on little magic shows and phony gambling games in the village. Sometimes he arranged to lose, for he would then simply brush against you, and the contents of your purse would be in a hidden pocket in his shirt. Anyone with long fingers, nerve, and short nails could do it if they practiced, and he showed us all the tricks. We kids would always be doing it to one another and to others just for fun. We never—hardly ever—kept anything.”
“You said you used to have an uncle. He is dead now?”
“Yes. Hanged when I was twelve. The trick is even easier with two, and my sister and I are very good at it. So, when we saw a repairman with tools we wanted walking along, we had no problem getting them. The highborn used to be the easiest, but those of Center are easier yet. They are ignorant of the trick and casual about it.”
He nodded, his appreciation of her skills growing. “So you were not bored anymore.”
“No. Oh, it was really all just a game. Slip out and slip into the dwelling of some highborn who was not in at the time and take something minor, something pretty but not likely to be missed, such as a bottle of perfume or some bauble. It became a contest, and it was most exciting.”
“I bet. And then you were caught?”
“Not very quickly. We simply were carried away by our own poor ignorance. We wandered in one time to a security zone which was computer-monitored and tripped alarms. We were sealed in and trapped. At first they could not believe that we were who and what we seemed, but after long sessions with drugs and doctors and machines, they decided we were just what we seemed to be. So they tied us to a wall, whipped us, then gave us to the security guards. Then, suddenly, we were pulled back, bathed, cleaned up and tended to, placed in chains, and sent to the flying machine.”
“Pardon me for mentioning it, but your wounds are from the beating?”
“No. I have more scars all up and down my back. When they first threw me to the guards, I fought. We both did. I scratched the face of one of them very badly. They held us down while he carved this in my face and similar gashes in my sister’s face. He—he said that we might as well enjoy what was coming, because no man would wish to do anything with us again. I wished only to kill myself in my shame, but they made very sure I could not do that. Only by finally convincing them that I would do nothing rash right now did I gain any freedom of movement, even to being here like this. I could see in every eye how hideous I have become.”
“I—knew—a woman once. A girl. She was of highborn stock, and her beauty was perfection, yet inside she was the personification of all that is foul, evil, and monstrous in people. Those attracted to her beauty will be as flies in a spider’s web. I, too, might have been a fly in her web, but even in this place I learn and improve myself. My Buddhist teacher would understand, although it took his pupil this long to see his meaning. The body is but a shell. One must look beyond to the soul and see only it if it shines pure.” Impulsively, although he had never done it before, he drew her to him and kissed her. When their lips parted, the look on her face was a mixture of shock, surprise, and almost childlike wonder.
“I think,” she whispered, “that I may yet live a little while.”
“I did not do this out of pity, you must believe that, but I feel your pain within me,” he said softly. “You have suffered far more than I have.”
“No. I did not lose my family and all my people, and what I did I did myself, knowing it was criminal. You had no choice in it. We threw away comfortable lives out of boredom, and now we pay for that, but you are without guilt or blame, and you have lost everything. Now we both go to our fate, whatever and wherever it is. I heard them say that the great spire out there is a ship that goes into the heavens, beyond the world. Is that true? Is that even possible?”
“Yes. It can go from this plant to another.”
“What is a planet?” she asked him, genuinely curious.
“Huh? Other worlds than this, like the moon, only farther off.”
“You mean they are sacrificing us by sending us to the moon goddess? I have often prayed to her. She may be merciful.”
He was startled. Ignorance was one thing, but how could he reconcile someone who had figured out in a brief lesson how to pick some of the most elaborate computer-controlled security locks in a high-tech place like Center with someone who clearly had no idea that there was any place beyond China, who thought the moon was a goddess and probably also believed that the world was flat?
“We are not being sacrificed,” he assured her. “Not that we might not be better off at that. We are being sent to another place like the one we have just left, only suspended in the heavens so that there is no way for us to ever leave. I do not know what happens to the people sent there, except that it strikes fear even in the hearts of the guards of Center security.”
She accepted that. “That fills me with fear as well. A place in the heavens could not ever be escaped from. You might go through the locks, but you would fall endlessly in the heavens.”
“No, you would be dead before that. There is no air to breathe in space. The only air we will have will be in the place they keep us. It is better than any locks to keep someone imprisoned.”
“Yet you are not afraid. I can tell.”
In fact he was afraid, particularly now that he’d heard about her own treatment, seen the scars on the outside and sensed the others on her soul. If what both of them had experienced was not the worst punishment, then they were being taken to a horror he could not imagine. The fact that it was an unknown of such dimensions was terrifying, yet he could not admit that to her or let it dominate him.
“I fear only what I face that is worthy of that fear,” he responded bravely. “Then I will face death bravely and spit at him. For now, I still yearn to fight.”
As they talked, he began examining the room for hidden cameras and microphones. A plan was beginning to take shape in his mind, and if he could somehow communicate it to her and she could do her part, it was just possible. His people were gone, save for himself and Deng, but he still had their dream, and he had the knowledge to carry it out, as well.
He found surveillance devices—not many but sufficient to block any real secrets. He settled back on the mat next to her. “You know, my people found how to fly one of those spaceships,” he said casually but in a low tone. “It is a pity we will be chained and probably guarded in a locked room all the way to wherever we go.”
She lay down comfortably beside him and squeezed his hand. “Yes, it is,” she agreed.
They had talked almost nonstop throughout the day, without reservation or hesitancy in even the most personal and intimate things. It was as if they had known each other all their lives and were catching up on the time spent apart. Too, there was both a direct and a subtle exchange of vital information as he tried to give her a cram course in the basics of astronomy while also conveying what he needed from her in the practical sense.
A meal was finally delivered, and it proved to be a pleasant surprise. The recipe was Mongolian, with chunks of lamb, fried wonton in a spicy garlic-laced sauce, and rice, and the vegetables tasted fresh. Even the tea was hot. Chu Li wasn’t sure if this was the last meal of a condemned prisoner or, more likely, the same thing being served to the staff in this cobbled-together prison section.
Chow Dai wondered why they had bothered to split up the two pairs, since with human guards and cameras in unfamiliar territory she was unlikely to be able to do anything. Chu Li had responded that it was probably just another tactic to disorient them, but he didn’t really believe that. Their captors had analyzed his mind, and Deng’s, and the minds of the Chow sisters and knew them probably better than anyone did. They were being sent to this distant place, at great trouble and expense, because someone there, for some unspeakable reason, had a use for two boys and two girls in their middle teens. He suspected they knew that both Deng and he were the kind whose hearts would go out to such kindred spirits in distress and that mere attentions by a male might well guarantee that the pair would not commit suicide or try something so desperate it would mean their death.
The spaceship they had seen was an OG-47 resupply ship. It had to have landed for repairs of some sort that were not available at the moment in space; usually such ships did not land at all but were serviced by ground-to-orbit cargo ships. The OG-47 had a pressurized passenger compartment holding up to sixteen for one to three days, fewer for longer journeys. The pilot’s cabin as usual was in a vacuum state in space but could be entered by airlock in a space suit. There was no guarantee that such suits would be aboard, but if they were, they would be Type 61s and stored in a computer-locked compartment to the rear of the passenger cabin, to be opened automatically in case of emergency.
It startled him just to know that. Where had he learned it? Not with his own people, certainly. Not from those strange memories of the girl, either. He became more and more convinced that someone had played some nasty tricks on his mind, and he didn’t like it. Were they being toyed with? Had someone who knew his people’s project given him this much just to see if he could really do it? Steal a spaceship?
It had to be something like that. Dai and Mai were part of it, too. It was too impossible to believe that he, with his knowledge, would find himself teamed with two accomplished thieves and locksmiths. He did not for one minute believe that the girls were anything other than what they appeared to be, but someone or something had assigned them to be going just where he was going at the same time and on the same ship.
He disliked the feeling of being a wind-up doll in someone else’s toy game. Who? This Song Ching? It would be in character, but what profit would she get by it? She wouldn’t know if her plan succeeded or failed or get the data to use in any attempt of her own. To test the security system? Four teenagers with no real experience when there were almost certainly so many others they could use who would be better suited?
He could not know, but he would simply have to watch out. The fact was, no matter what the reason, they had to try to escape.
Certainly Dai was bright; she had understood immediately the implications of his comments and had been giving and getting information through the day’s conversations as well.
That evening, the guards came for each prisoner individually and took them down the hall to a different room, which proved to be a small water shower with a little dressing area complete with built-in mirror. After bathing, they were provided with fresh clothing of the same design as their prison garb, but dyed yellow with security stamped front and back in Chinese and two other languages.
Chu Li felt a reluctance to actually take the shower, although it appeared that there were no visual monitors in there and therefore that there was some measure of privacy afforded. He had never bathed very often, but he ordinarily would have wished it now. But some fear, an unreasoning thing, made him hesitate. He did not, however, have much choice.
The hypnotics held. When he emerged and looked at himself in the mirror, he still saw the image of a young boy, not the image that was actually there. He dressed again and was led back to the detention room.
After lights-out, she lay beside him, and their hands came together and squeezed; she clung to him as if he were the only real thing in her life. They hugged and cuddled for a bit and rubbed each other’s backs. In the dark, she had no deformities at all.
He wanted her, and clearly she wanted and needed him, but his injuries prevented that for now. The fact that they were isolated and alone and facing an uncertain but definitely unpleasant future heightened their desire. But they both slept, huddled against each other for reassurance.
For Chow Dai, Chu Li’s companionship was a deliverance, no matter how temporary, from the pit of hell. She had never experienced the kindness and gentleness that this boy had shown her even when she had been unscarred; the fact that he did so even when she looked so horrible was wondrous and magical. She barely knew him, yet she knew she needed him and would risk anything for him. He had but to ask. She dreamed the first pleasant dreams she had dreamed in weeks.
Chu Li’s dreams were different. He dreamed that he was making real love to her, although she had long, silky black hair and no scars, but as he approached her, naked, she suddenly got a look of horror on her face and shied away, crying. This was mixed with other, stranger dreams that even included spaceship schematics and nightmares where he saw his parents, alive again, but when he ran to them they recoiled in horror and turned, and when they turned back they were not his parents at all but the tall, frightening figures of that other girl’s parents, the chief administrator and his wife. The girl was there, too, running in and out of his dreams, spoiling even the good ones, dancing through and whispering tauntingly, “I know a secret.”
The elderly orderly awakened them with a breakfast of rice and fish heads. “Eat well and relax,” he told them genially. “Tonight you leave for your destinies.”
“My sister and the boy—are they all right?” Chow Dai asked nervously. She had almost a sixth sense, as did many twins, about her sister even when separated, but she had no real feelings of Chow Mai now, and that worried her more than anything.
“Oh, they are getting along fine, as are the two of you, it seems. Do not worry about them. You will see them today.” He chuckled to himself and left.
He looked at Chow Dai. “Today. Sometime today.”
She nodded. “I hope they let us see each other for a while first. You know, when my sister and I are together, often we need few words even to talk to one another.”
Chu Li was feeling a bit dizzy, a little fuzzy in the head, but he put his disorientation down to nervous tension and apprehension. About midday he felt he had to go to the bathroom and called for the guard. The sense of disorientation continued and his stomach was upset. In the bathroom, he could be alone and, hopefully, get something of a grip on himself. He felt as if he was losing his mind.
Twice he’d failed to respond when Chow Dai had addressed him by his name. Images—strong, primary images—of his parents, siblings, old friends, the details of his past life, seemed to be melting or fading. He suddenly could not remember what his father or mother looked like. The other memories, though—her memories—were all still there and seemed to be getting clearer in spite of his attempts to push them back.
He was led to the bathroom, and he sat, holding his head in his hands. Then he looked down and put one of his hands down between his legs. Suddenly, some of the conditioning broke away and was gone. They have emasculated me! He unbuttoned his tunic and looked at and felt his chest. Two huge nipples atop small, perfect breasts. He quickly got up and disrobed completely, examining his body as if for the first time. The smooth skin, the curves . . . A girl! They have changed me into a girl!
And not just any girl. He knew what was happening now. He was being changed not just to female, but into her, the one he hated, the daughter of his people’s murderers!
He saw it all now, or thought he did. She could not remain as she was, so she had somehow convinced the computers there, or the doctors, to take him, a lowly nothing, and change him into a mental and physical duplicate of her. The victim was turning into the oppressor. The memory of the beatings had probably been planted so that he wouldn’t notice the surgery until it was too late to betray her.
There was an angry knock and an impatient snarl from the other side of the door. He knew he had to get dressed again fast and get out of there. They could change his shape, but they could not change his mind, he vowed to himself. He was a boy, even if now locked in a girl’s body. He might have her memories, but he would never become her. Never. He would die first. There was more to manhood than what they had stolen from him. Monks refused all sex, yet they were certainly men. It was important to him that he keep this attitude no matter how much of her eventually took over. He could never become her, become the callous, cruel, and evil one she was, if he retained that.
He was rudely cursed by the guard and led back to the detention room where Chow Dai awaited. Chow Dai. He could face anything but dashing her few hopes—even this. He still wanted her. He loved her, damn it—but he could never make love to her. That was what his dreams had been telling him.
“Rat! You were gone so long, I was getting worried about you,” she told him.
“I—I made some discoveries about myself,” he responded carefully. At least his voice still sounded normal, at least to him. He wanted to tell her, to tell somebody, but while she would understand, the revelation would still crush her. He couldn’t do it. Not now. Not until he had to.
“Discoveries?”
“My—injuries—are far worse than I thought, that’s all.”
She hugged him. “Don’t worry. Peasant girls are taught infinite patience.”
Infinite is right, he thought sourly, but said nothing. For the time being, escape was the only thing that mattered. If they did not escape, none of the rest would matter. Later, if they made it, he would find some gentle way to tell her.
In fact, by the change in him, the quieter periods, his reluctance to really get close, she guessed a part of the truth. She suspected that he had just now realized the extent to which the same people who had tortured, raped, and disfigured her had also disfigured him. She knew just from the treatment she had received afterward that they could do much, even make you forget your injuries and pain for a while, although the effects wore off. Her mood fell as she voiced her suspicions to herself. They have made him a eunuch, she guessed. It is the only explanation. She had almost expected it, guessed it from the start when he had spoken of his injury. Well, she wasn’t going to pretend that it didn’t matter to her, but he was still the same kind, gentle one who had treated her with respect and ignored her own disfigurement. She had no intention of abandoning him, not now. If he could ignore her disfigured shell and see only someone worthwhile inside, she could certainly do the same.
But though both of them saw and preferred the lie, the truth would not be kept down inside of Chu Li. Bit by bit, as the day wore on, Song Ching’s truth chipped slowly but methodically away at Chu Li, and he fought it. The boy’s memories and sense of identity were rapidly fading now, leaving only Song Ching, yet the biochemically induced Chu Li personality was becoming firmer, harder, fixed.
Even for the computer it had been a rush job, an emergency, and it might have been predicted that something undefinable and unanticipated would arise. Song Ching had ordered blocks that made her cold, unemotional, machinelike, and this had been altered only as required by the masquerade. As a result, the basic personality and responses of Chu Li were the only ones present and created an overwhelming desire to remain as they were, resisting all attempts at change. The brain created personality, but it also was subject to a measure of adaptation, and, having no countermanding “fallback” personality, it responded to this urgent desire to maintain current levels. There was a dichotomy inside of her, a war between body and brain that simply could not go on.
“Are you all right?” Chow Dai asked worriedly. “You look ill.”
“I—I think I should just lie down for a while,” he managed. “It is an—aftereffect of what was done to me. I apologize, but if I lie down for a while, it will be all right.”
He was a conscious combatant in the war raging inside him, and it had made him physically ill, both feverish and upset. The tension and confusion were enormous; he could not stand this much longer. Either something had to break or he knew he might well die—die on the brink of possible success and escape in which he was the only hope for these other people. Any moment now the guards could come for them, so there was no time for such a fight. By now he knew he really was Song Ching; there had been no tampering with Chu Li’s body or mind. Chu Li was certainly dead, his body long sent to dust or turned to energy, and she was responsible for that. It was an intolerable thought. It was intolerable that she should live again while he was dead, no matter what the price of that life might be, yet his memories even now were less than ghosts, mere wisps fading with each passing moment, leaving only Song Ching.
The brain had several mechanisms for resolving such dilemmas, whether caused by biological malfunction or trauma or otherwise induced, and all of them were forms of what they called insanity. If it could not resolve the problems, the brain got hung up in endless loops and the result was catatonia, but in this case both sides had a sense of urgency and a single central purpose: escape. Escape to the stars. The brain needed only a lie that both sides could accept and believe; if that happened, then memories could be rewritten, attitudes adjusted, and everything resolved to allow function. A new reality was called for, and a very personal one.
In a miraculous revelation, she suddenly understood what had happened, and there was no more fight, only awe at the justice of the gods. When the computer had executed Chu Li, his soul had not gone on but had instead been placed in the body of Song Ching, who had ordered the destruction of her own personality in her plot. Her own soul had been cast adrift when this was done, and Chu Li’s had filled the empty vessel in a measure of justice. The soul was shaped and formed and purified or dirtied by its experiences in the flesh, but it did not retain memories as such. Still, she knew it was Chu Li’s soul animating Song Ching’s body and guiding her thoughts. That was true justice: The soul of the enemy who was destroyed by her family was now in possession of her body, her memories, her knowledge, and those would be used against her family and the system that supported it. That was clearly the will of the gods.
There was a price for this, of course. Chu Li’s soul had not risen to be purified; it remained the soul of a teenage boy. He was a man trapped in the body and with the memories of a beautiful woman. It would be a frustrating burden to carry, but the symmetry of the justice meted out by the gods required it. Because the knowledge in her head was so vast, so complete, and so dangerous to those who must be punished, it was a burden that had to be accepted. It left someone with the means to avenge, and that had to be sufficient.
For now, the Chu Li masquerade had to be continued so that the primary goal could be attained. Later there would be time for explanations and the truth. The reclining figure sat up, saw the anxious Chow Dai, and smiled. “I am all right now,” he assured her. “I will be all right from now on.”
She looked relieved. “I was almost going to call the guard and have you looked at. You really worried me.”
He was glad she hadn’t done that, or the ruse would have been up right there. There being no machines to measure and identify souls, it would have taken but a moment for the stupidest of medics to realize that this was not a boy named Chu Li.
He looked at Chow Dai’s ugly, scarred face and reflected on how truly ironic this all was. He could do just as well looking like her; indeed, it would solve some potential problems down the line. She, on the other hand, would prosper and blossom with the body he wore. The scientists could make a sadist a gentle poet and a peasant into an educated artist with their chemicals and processes, but only the gods could switch souls. Although it would work out here, it was in a way a reassuring thought: that there was one thing, at least, beyond science and reserved for the gods.
Not long after, Chow Mai and Deng Ho were sent in to join them. Deng’s conditioning still held; Chu Li hoped it would hold long enough to avoid any complications. The two sisters rushed to each other and embraced and cried a little. Deng grinned at Chu Li. “Hello, Rat. Surviving?”
Chu Li nodded. “And you?”
Deng gave a knowing smirk. “No problems if you just shut your eyes,” he whispered, then grew more serious. “They’ve been through even worse than us. It’s crazy, but we’re going to some mad hell, and I feel sorry for them. Kind of takes your mind off it.”
Chu Li looked over at the sisters, who were chattering away in pure peasant dialect. They seemed to be talking at the same time, and he guessed from the few words he caught that they were using a kind of spoken shorthand, expressing complete thoughts. That’s fine, he thought. He understood full well that the monitors would never make sense of that garbage.
The girls had only a few minutes for their reunion, though. The door opened again, and the duty guard stepped in.
“You will all stand and be silent!” he barked imperiously. “You will now be addressed by the captain of the vessel that will carry you to your final destination!” He was as stiff as usual, but nervousness was revealed in his eyes and in small jerks of his head back toward the door.
Chu Li—he refused to think of himself as otherwise and certainly not as a “she,” all physical evidence to the contrary—was startled that such a ship had a captain at all. A steward perhaps, or even a jailer—but a captain?
They heard the barred gate open and then clang shut again, then the sound of heavy footsteps approached the door, which the guard had continued to hold open. When the captain walked in, the prisoners all gasped and stared at him as if he were some sort of monster.
They are giving us to foreign devils!
Carlo Sabatini stopped and looked at the expressions of absolute fear and revulsion on those four young faces and drank it in. Seeing the reactions of people who had never in their lives seen anyone who was not Oriental was the only bit of fun there was in this hick, provincial spaceport. These four looked like they’d never seen anybody but a Han Chinese and the Mongolian guards before.
“My name is Captain Sabatini,” he announced in flawless Mandarin, the result of a session with a mindprint machine. “I am master of the interplanetary ship Star Islander which will take you from here to Melchior.”
Three of the kids looked blank, but he noticed that the boy on his far right did not seem to react at all. Clearly that one knew more than the others, and Sabatini wondered why. He filed it for future reference.
“The ship, as you may or may not know, is fully automated. It is piloted by a machine that can make decisions far quicker than any of us and can fly the ship as no human could. Basically, my job is to make sure it works correctly and to be certain that any and all passengers and cargo get safely and comfortably to their destination, as well as handling things at the ports. As you can see, I am not Chinese, but rest assured, I am human. I have the same sort of blood inside of me, and I work the same way.”
They stared at him, still somewhat awestruck and not a little afraid. He was imposing, standing over a hundred and eighty centimeters tall and weighing at least ninety-five kilos of pure muscle. He had an olive complexion that in their society would have marked him as ill and at death’s door, thick black hair with some streaks of gray on the top and cut short on the sides, and a medium black mustache. He wore a shiny black uniform with leather boots and belt; the shirt was open at the top and exposed a fair amount of chest, covered in thick, black hair. He even had hair on his arms and the back of his hands: thick, black curly hair. The body hair in particular fascinated all of them. It was impossible not to think of him as some big ape or gorilla wearing clothes.
Still, Chu Li was able to break the spell enough to think clearly. If he goes along, then there is at least one space suit aboard.
“We don’t normally take off from Earth,” he told them, “so this will be a rough ride at the start. You will need to board the ship when it’s angled up, get into seats as if it were lying flat, and get strapped in, and I do mean strapped. Anyone who isn’t fully strapped in will die in the takeoff. Since some of you might be tempted by that idea, we will have you restrained in place for that part of the trip. Once we reach orbit and the artificial gravity in the cabin stabilizes, you will get a measure of freedom, since I don’t want to have to cart you to the bathroom or spoon-feed you, but you will still be under limited restraint. I want no problems in our journey, which, if no unexpected problems or emergencies develop, should take forty-one days. This is no interstellar speed ship.”
That impressed all four of them. The two boys, who at least understood what spaceships were, still had trouble with that time span. The distance involved was really beyond their comprehension.
“Don’t be too downcast. At other times it might have taken up to a year to reach Melchior. The positions are the best possible right now for the shortest distance, which is why we are taking off now and why we have to do everything exactly on schedule. Now, since we’re going to be together a long time, I want to get some facts and rules straight before we even begin.”
They just continued to gape at him.
“First, and most important, you are booked not as passengers but as live cargo. That puts you in the same class as dogs, cats, chickens, and horses. There are two pressurized sections of the cabin. One is for people, the other is for animals. The animal section has cages that are not very large and is otherwise pretty dark and unpleasant. You will be placed initially in the human section, but if any one of you causes me any problems at all, one or all of you will be put back there and kept there for the duration of the voyage. They don’t even have toilets back there, so think about it. Second, so I don’t have to look behind me all the time, you will be shackled at all times and limited in the area you can move. Still, some of you may figure that I’m only one man, and you might try and get the best of me in a weak moment of mine. You might try. You might even succeed, although I promise you that if you try and fail, you will find me very unpleasant. But let’s say you succeed.”
He could see in their eyes that this had crossed their minds. It always did, and he’d transported tougher and nastier ones than these.
“I cannot pilot the ship,” he told them. “I cannot even get to the bridge, since it is without air or pressure, and so neither can you. No matter what happened to me, I couldn’t help you, and you would wind up in the exact same place and in the hands of the exact same people, only you wouldn’t know how to run the life maintenance and support system for the cabins. I also have within me, implanted by a surgeon—where, I don’t know—a tiny transmitter. It is hooked both to the ship and to a Master System relay. If I die, that beacon stops transmitting. When it does, Master System will call the ship and determine whether my death was natural or murder. If it was murder, Master System will take direct command of the ship and release gas into the compartment that will not kill you but will put you down into a sleep from which you cannot wake up without the antidote. If you kill me, not only will you not escape and not die, but your families back here, no matter how innocent, will replace you.”
Not likely in the Song Ching family, Chu Li reflected, but then realized that there were cousins and others who might well be forced to replace her. However, it was empty to threaten Deng or himself that way. The system had already destroyed their families and friends as well. Still, for the girls’ sake, he could not fail.
All right. So far it was proceeding exactly as the plans in his mind told him it would. Of course, Sabatini had not mentioned a couple of other safeguards, but he wouldn’t. That was all right. There were ways around this.
“Now, with all that out of the way,” Sabatini concluded, “let me say that I am a ship’s captain, not a member of the police or the military of anyone. I haul cargo and people. If you are friendly, cooperative, and make no trouble, this can be a pleasant voyage. I treat people the way they treat me. Treat me nasty, and I’ll be nastier. Treat me nice, and I can be very nice as well. Any questions? Come—speak up. We will be off soon, and it’ll be too late.”
Chu Li didn’t want to draw much attention, but he had to know one thing. “If you please, Honorable Captain—what is this Melchior to which we are being sent?”
“Melchior is a rock about thirty kilometers across that floats around the sun out in the asteroid belt. There’s nothing on top but some beacons and a single dock, but the thing is a hollowed-out rock full of chambers, tunnels, rooms, even something of a town. It’s a lot of things. It’s a place for scientific research. It’s occasionally a meeting place for important administrators who want to be away from all monitoring. Mostly it’s a prison run by scientists who don’t have to obey the rules because they’re cooped up there, too. I’ll tell you what more I know when we’re under way. That satisfy you for now?”
Deng Ho wet his lips nervously. “Then—we are to be the experiments this time?”
Sabatini shrugged. “I don’t know, boy. Nobody really knows, except maybe some of the administrators. I never heard of anyone ever escaping, though. Once you’re inside, with that maze of tunnels and air locks, you get so lost, you might never even find your way out.”