AFTER THEY HAD MADE THEIR DECISION, THE CHOWS had more than a month to think about it and agonize over it and have not only second, but third and fourth thoughts about doing it at all.
For the crew of the Thunder the time had not been wasted. Originally, the vast interior of the ship had been designed for two purposes: to transport large numbers of uprooted humans from old Earth in a sedated state, and to link them directly to the transmuters through which they could be changed into the form Master System had designed to tailor them to the planet. Most of that was gone now; the enormous interior was almost planetlike, with grass and artificial sunlight and trees and small personal buildings for the inhabitants. About eight kilometers by two were available, but only a bit over four kilometers had been transformed into living space, first for the small Earth-human crew who’d stolen her and then for the crew of the freebooter ships who had joined her. Aft was a work area for the ship’s maintenance robots to repair and build whatever was needed. Only the final row of transport tubes, set against the rear bulkhead, remained untouched.
While this work was in progress, the great computer pilot whom they called Star Eagle worked with China Nightingale, the blind and eternally pregnant genius, and Doctor Isaac Clayben, the greatest human expert on forbidden technology. With the files from the freebooter freighter Indrus, they pooled their intellects to learn all they could about the strange people who inhabited the world called Janipur.
The diverse Hindu culture from which the ancestors of that world had been plucked fascinated all of them. Its many and complex deities, its theories about reincarnation and an expanding and collapsing universe, its art and music and literature were all new to the crew of the Thunder and quite wondrous.
There was also a dark side to it, in that it used its cosmology to impose a rigid class structure determined by birth. One began as some insignificant living thing and then grew over successive lives to become a more complex organism and ultimately human, with the power to reason and study and make conscious decisions. But even as a human one had to start at the bottom, the lowest of the low classes, and serve a life as both a male and a female in each class, excelling and learning from that experience and thereby progressing to a new life in the next highest class. The ultimate were the Brahman, the highest class of the society, beyond which there was a new state, perhaps a godlike one.
The idea of rebirth was appealing in a way, but most of them shared the view of the cigar-smoking Crow security man, Raven. “If you don’t remember who you were then what’s the difference between bein’ really dead and bein’ reincarnated? Me, I think you get one go and that’s it. Look at me. Smart-ass fat kid from a primitive village high in the mountains who became a warrior, then a Center security man, and now—well, whatever this is. Down there, if you’re born a dirt fanner you stay a dirt farmer, no matter how smart or skilled you are.”
Both the Chows and China had been born and raised in a culture that also believed in reincarnation and thought it quite logical, but their system was not as rigid as the Hindus’. And though they were familiar with a number of variants of Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism, they would find Janipur to be quite different. Master System believed in stability; the cultures it created were carefully edited versions of old Earth cultures, pared of all extraneous material. The China that had bred the Chows and China Nightingale was not the culture of their ancestors any more than were the Crow or Hyiakutt societies that had produced Raven, Hawks, and Cloud Dancer. Hawks, historian, had known this from the start, but few others could appreciate his thoughts that the various reservations on Earth were not so much museums as free-form historical fictions.
Janipur had been the victim of a particularly ironic twist by Master System. There were no sacred cows in Janipurian society; the people were the cows. At least, that was how the crew of the Thunder thought of it when looking at the pair now in the aft transport tubes.
Vulture, the strange creature who was the creation of the distorted genius of Isaac Clayben, and who could absorb the physical form, personality, and memories of any organic being, had done his job well. After infiltrating Cochin Center on Janipur, he had consumed and then become the deputy chief of security, which gave him great power and access to the vast bulk of Center files. He had picked a pair of Janipurians from Awadi Center, on another continent from Cochin; Brahmans by their gray coloration. As middle-level bureaucrats, part of the inevitable faceless horde that kept all political organizations working, these two would have easy access to Cochin Center without being known there.
It was the first time any but the crew of the Indrus had ever seen a real Janipurian, and the forms made a major impression on them.
They were human sized; the female was noticeably smaller man the male. Lying on their sides in the tubes, they looked very much like hoofed animals. Their “hind legs” were mounted on either side of the torso on a swivel joint that allowed the body to actually stand upright. The lower calf was thicker than one would expect in a four-footed animal and seemed to end in a broad, thick, rock-hard hoof. The hoof, however, was actually mounted on the back of the ankle, and the major thickness of the lower calf was due in part to a broad, flat, padlike extension of muscle and bone on another swivel joint that could lock out of the way for running on all fours but was otherwise wide enough and powerful enough to serve as a foot when the creature stood erect.
The torso was broad and thick; the arms were the same length as the legs and constructed in much the same fashion, although the handlike extensions beyond the hooves were more specialized, each with four long fingers and an opposable thumb that folded up when the creature was standing on all fours. The necks were long and thick, and constructed to allow the head to face forward in both four-and two-legged positions.
The faces were expressive and very human-looking, with pushed-in noses and overly wide jaws that moved from side to side as well as up and down and contained only broad, flat teeth. These were herbivores. Most of the body area, excluding the face, was covered in thick gray fur.
“The musculature and skeletal structure are amazing,” Clayben told them, sounding like a kid with a new toy. “Upright they are as elastic and as able to twist and bend and perform as normal humans are. On all fours, they are far more rigid but can probably run, leap, and kick better than any human. The feet are better designed for standing than walking upright, but the hands are very well suited for even the most intricate work.”
Sabira, the crewwoman from the Indrus who had volunteered to go along on the mission because she knew and understood the basic culture of Janipur, said nervously, “I suppose there are greater differences than would be immediately apparent to anyone from the outside. Still, I had not thought of them as all that different in spite of appearances. Such things would affect their whole culture and way of looking at things, their basic behavior. I had not considered that.”
“There will be other surprises, I fear,” Hawks told her. “But the transmutation is essential to our mission. Second thoughts?”
She gave a slight smile and shrugged. “Some . . . many. It is to be expected. But I am needed; I am the only one with experience who is willing to go.”
And that, of course, was the crux of the matter.
“One thing does puzzle me,” Clayben added. “On their heads, here, seem to be nubs representing incipient horns. I’d be curious to know whether they have a function or are merely ornamental.”
Sabira nodded. “The horns are functional only on the female. The way in which the child must be carried in the womb to be fully protected and insulated is with the mother in the four-footed position. As term progresses, the mother finds it increasingly difficult to stand until it becomes impossible about the fifth month. The pivot joints in the hands and feet lock into position so they cannot be lowered, the breasts enlarge, and the mother grows a long and nasty pair of horns with sharp points. Without her usual speed, it is the only protection she has during the remaining time. A few weeks after birth the horns fall off, and she can return to normalcy. The horns are saved and usually fashioned into carvings that are given to the child upon gaining maturity. They are considered a part of the child. The children are breast-fed for only a couple of weeks; after that their digestive systems are fully formed and they can eat basically what the adults eat. Do not think of the women as helpless at this time, however. They are extremely aggressive and quite dangerous.”
Clayben nodded. “Fascinating. And the children are born fully formed and able to get about? Not like our helpless lumps?”
“Their hands and feet are rudimentary, but their legs are strong and firm. They are quite imitative and learn the basics of survival early on. They are self-sufficient as animals, although mostly defenseless, by the first month. But they are well advanced in many ways and because of their mobility and independence learn at a far faster rate than our own children at that age. The hands and feet, however, take years to fully develop, and their use must be learned and practiced. They are intellectually humans but physically animals until about the age of seven or so. They mature sexually at about age twelve or thirteen.”
Clayben nodded again. Clearly the old scientist, after long inactivity, was coming alive again. Hawks wondered how alive he would be if it became his turn to be transmuted into something else. He suspected it was far easier to do things to others in the name of research than to undergo the process yourself at someone else’s hands.
“Have the Chows seen these yet?” Sabira asked.
Hawks shook his head negatively. “Not yet. Today, perhaps. Now that we have our two prototypes, the clock is running, as it were, to get things going. This pair is officially on leave and a cover story has been developed for them. However, their leave is one hundred days and already five are gone. You all must study their bodies and learn whatever else you can in order to pass as Janipurians. Part of that study time must be here, until you have learned the basics, and then we will send you all down to live for a period with the natives and polish up. If you cannot fool the natives, then you will not fool Cochin Center and you certainly will not fool the troops infiltrated down there. Thanks to Vulture, you will then be reassigned to Cochin Center. By then you will have passed the hard tests and be ready to attempt the impossible.”
“It is a lot to ask, to get that far in ninety-five days,” she responded worriedly. “There will be so much to learn.”
“More than just your lives will depend on your learning well that quickly. Without this ring, the rest are meaningless. If you are caught, then it will be a thousand times more difficult for those who follow to try again.”
There was usually very little need for Chow Mai and Chow Dai to talk to one another. As identical twins, they had been virtually inseparable for good and ill. Each knew the thoughts of the other—or so it seemed, even to them—which made their conversation after they saw the Janipurians all the more remarkable.
“I do not want to do this thing,” Chow Mai, usually the quiet one of the pair said. “You saw them. You thought what I thought.”
Chow Dai nodded. “More like cows than people, I think, and their ways are very strange, as well. I look at us and know that we are not things of beauty, yet we are still human.”
“And yet there is honor and obligation. Our lives belong to these people who saved us for this purpose. My nightmares have never gone away, nor have I felt normal since . . . ”
Chow Dai nodded once more, understanding completely. They had been caught in common burglary by China Center security, mindprinted, and determined to be neither spies nor traitors but simply childish and immature thieves with a remarkable talent for getting past the most sophisticated locks. Neither understood flush toilets, let alone computers, yet they had been given a gift, or a curse, by their ancestors and by their illusionist uncle long ago.
After their capture, they had been taken down to the biotech labs where they had been examined and, still virgins, had been rendered forever incapable of bearing children. Then they had been lightly drugged and taken to the place where the lowest guards stayed, and there, no longer regarded as people but as mere playthings of the brutish louts, they had been tormented, tortured, and raped, again and again, until they felt so low and so vile that they were no more than what their tormentors regarded them as. It had gone on and on and on; there were three shifts of guards and little food or rest. When they had fought they had been cut and burned and mutilated, scarred beyond recognition, so that they looked barely human at all when suddenly the order came to prepare them and ship them off to Melchior.
On Melchior, China Nightingale had been treated by transmuter but they had not, their scars and disfigurements treated by slower, more conventional means. At the time this did not seem odd or unusual, but now they realized that the security chief of Melchior had been one of those conspiring against Master System and had not wished to subject them to the machine that could only be used once. Only the prisoner tattoos on their cheeks were of the transmuter process, and those could be disguised by added skin layers and colorization.
“It is what the gods decreed for us from the start,” Chow Dai said, and sighed. “It is what we were born to do.”
Chow Mai nodded ruefully. “I am unhappy but reconciled. Better to become a monster than to deny our destiny and be damned, or remain here and watch others suffer in our place.”
“Perhaps,” Chow Dai responded wistfully, “this will be the end of suffering.”
They were ready.
“The process itself is intricate and could not be done without the computers designed for it,” Isaac Clayben told them, “but in actual practice it’s rather simple, quick, and straightforward. The original physics of the transmuter was discovered in ancient times, we think by humans. The idea was to eventually disassemble anyone or anything into energy, stored and coded so that it could be reassembled as matter someplace else after being broadcast or transmitted. The process eventually worked to a limited degree over special wiring networks, but the energy could not be broadcast and thus the system was somewhat impractical. Even though it represented the answer to Earth’s diminishing resources, the project was not fully believed or supported—we think because many died or worse in the final experiments, increasing public anger—and it was abandoned. It didn’t matter anyway. Without murylium the system could have never worked in a wireless mode. Master System picked up the experiments and continued them. It discovered that murylium was the key and perfected the broadcast capability that we have used to get from Thunder to our original base world and back. It’s quite limited, however, and not practical for distances, say, on an interplanetary scale.”
Clayben, excited to be in his own area of action once again, seemed completely oblivious to the tension and nervousness of those around him. Hawks was not, but he understood the necessity. Clayben was being longwinded about it, but this was essential information.
“Now, when the Thunder was designed,” the scientist continued, “it was designed to use it as a limited transport mechanism first and foremost, bringing up whole populations from a planet and storing them in the tubes we saw when we first arrived on board. Each was then analyzed and an individual formula for their transmutation was devised. A mass mindprinter device was also used to insure uniformity of the new colonial culture.
“The mindprinting and transmuting programs were worked out and stored inside the computer memory. We have access to the ship’s computers, mechanisms, everything—but not those original programs. We have improvised as best we could. We have an advantage in that we must have exact duplicates of this pair of Janipurians to pass security. Their brain structure is nearly identical to ours, although some functions were added and others redirected to allow for the physiological changes. By simply comparing your brain structures with theirs, and noting the differences we are able to retain your own mental patterns while making the adjustments necessary to handle the body. All we can do with the mindprinter, however, is feed in the basics of the culture from the Indrus data banks. It will give you a grounding, but not the finer points. Those you will have to learn by experience, and that will be your most dangerous period before going into Cochin Center itself.”
“I am puzzled,” Chow Dai said. “There are three of us and only two of . . . them. Also, one of them is male. We are all female. How will, you do this?”
“Any two that met our specifications for fooling and getting you into the Center were the best we could hope for, considering the time limitations. Although some Brahman women in this society do hold high positions, the basic family structure is more traditional, whether high or low caste. This male is a bureaucrat; the female is married to and dependent upon him. The marriage was arranged and is less than two years old, which helps us. What helps even more is that she came from the field, not a Center, and is the daughter of the local equivalent of a judge. That means her Center records are minimal. The marriage to a Center official, no matter how minor, is a step up for the family. It is not uncommon even on Earth for a high official of the general population to raise children or to romance officials on leave. One major danger is that even from the field, one of her class would be expected to be literate. You will have to fake that or learn the rudimentary elements of literacy. No way around it.”
“But the two—male and female . . . ”
“I’m getting to that. Married two years and not yet with child is unusual down there. The fact is, she’s not totally infertile but there are medical problems that make her chances of pregnancy very remote. Since divorce is socially unthinkable down there, there’s only one solution for a bureaucrat who winds up this way, and it is socially acceptable and understood. A relative of the same sex as the infertile one is brought in and given some job—maid, clerk, whatever is appropriate—but her real function is to produce a child for the couple. He had applied for permission to do this while on leave—it’s what Vulture was looking for in the security records, as such a request has to be approved by top security at the chief administrator level. One side effect of the transmuter is that we can fix the infertility problem, which is caused by partially blocked tubes. We will now create a sister from the field—an identical twin. I doubt that she actually has such a twin, but Vulture assures me that he can create such a record. One psychological truth of using computers for all record keeping is that if you can somehow bypass the security codes and enter false data, it will be believed by anyone who looks without checking further—unless someone suspects you. The male is expected to report to his new post with his wife’s sister. He will.”
Sabira turned to them. “Because I know my way around machines, am literate in Sanskrit, and I know their ways, I will become the man.”
The Chows were both appalled. Even though they had often dreamed of the power men held in their society, neither had ever wanted to be a man. It seemed, somehow, a step down.
“You—you want this?” Chow Dai asked.
“None of us want any of this. It is our duty. I follow the basic beliefs of my ancestors. I believe I have been a man before and will be again before my human incarnations are completed. This will probably cause me to live an extra life, but to not do what is needed for our survival and the future of all humankind would be vastly immoral. I must learn to act and think like and be a man; you must steal the ring. The burden is equal.”
“I will correct the fallopian tube problem in both of you,” Clayben told them. “The defect is potentially life-threatening as there is a danger of ectopic pregnancy—outside the womb. The defect is difficult to spot or diagnose; I don’t think a routine return-from-leave physical will have any chance of noticing the change and blowing the cover. After this is over I will also correct the problem in the original female, and we will use the mindprinter and hypnos to put them in a very cooperative frame of mind. They can never return down there as they are. Even if it was established later on that they were duplicated and not the perpetrators, they would most certainly be killed anyway just as insurance. Now, whenever you are ready we can begin. There will be no pain or other sensation. It will be no different from being transmitted down to the world.”
Forever . . . like them . . . forever . . .
“Get it over with,” the Chows said in unison. “Do it now.”
The easiest and most efficient way for Star Eagle to work was to use the last remaining bank transport tubes and the local network transmuters built into them. In a sense, it was an echo of long ago, when Master System had determined that populating the stars was the only way to ever guarantee that humanity would survive. The tubes could be automatically sterilized before use, then loaded with their human cargo and sealed until the process was complete. Up on the bridge, Star Eagle allowed China to monitor but not to participate in the operation. It was too delicate. Still, she could comment to the computer and did so.
“Are you certain you can do this without the program for Janipur?” she asked, not for the first time.
“You know I only deal in probabilities,” the computer responded. “The initial tests went well. I hesitate to say this, but Clayben has more experience in this sort of thing, and he feels confident. I do not like the man, but if he could make Vulture with far inferior equipment, he can do this. All three of us have done our best.”
She sighed. “The poor Chows. They haven’t had much of a life until now. I hope this doesn’t condemn them to eternal misery.”
“They may never be totally satisfied, but they will adjust,” the computer assured her. “That is the one area in which the human mind is both superior and incomprehensible to me. You have an almost infinite capacity to adapt to almost anything. Freezing cold, boiling heat, eternal rain, desert . . . All these primitive conditions humans adapted to and thrived. You, too, have adapted, both to blindness and to your overpowering drives.”
“Adapted—yes. I accept my conditions because there is no alternative. But content this way? No, that I will never be. I accept it, as one accepts and learns to live with disfigurement, handicaps of various sorts, and accidents of birth and fate. In my mind, though, I am always—envious. Always someone else.”
There seemed no proper response to that. “Energizing,” reported the ship’s computer. “I now have them in three large files and I am doing a comparison check. It is fascinating in a way. No one, not even the Chows, have identical checksums, but those are the closest I have ever measured between two people. Now energizing the models. Done. Comparing male model file to file Sabira. Fascinating—in many ways there are far fewer differences than I would have expected. Now reading and comparing genetic codes. Fascinating. Again there are far fewer differences than anyone would have thought. It is almost trivial, yet the results are so different. There are millions of differences but they are so minor, so slight, that it shows how remarkable it was that humanity evolved the way it did. There are more common denominators than differences here. The ancestry of the Janipurians is quite clear.”
“The body is not the problem. It is integrating body and mind that is the problem.”
“Very slight. More difference in the spinal column than in organization of the brain. Different areas of the brain are used for some motor and autonomic functions, but personality and memory are stored the same way and in the same places. This should not be as difficult as I thought.”
China wondered about that, considering that this was a computer that could read through and find specific data in a hundred encyclopedias in nanoseconds, yet it was taking several minutes to do this process. Star Eagle, however, was leaving nothing to chance—with this kind of transmutation, there was no margin for error, no tolerance for mistakes.
Still, she knew that what it was doing was astonishing, beyond human comprehension for speed and complexity. It was creating comparative computer models of the reformed Sabira and then stimulating various areas of the brain and central nervous system, checking out everything to make absolutely certain that there was no mistake. The entire psychogenetic and psychochemical makeup had to be correct or the body might not work right or “fit” right. The skeletal mechanics and the kinesiology of the exercise were the easy parts. Personality and memory had to be absolutely retained white the new body had to operate seamlessly with the different brain information. Cell memory learned by the mere act of being born and growing up Janipurian had to be retained and integrated with memory and personality formed in a completely different environment. Immunities gained from mother’s milk and from a lifetime on Janipur also had to be maintained. Most microorganisms on colonial worlds had evolved into different enough forms that Earth-humans could not catch the diseases, but these people would be Janipurians going into a Janipurian world. It would not do to effect a perfect transmutation and then have them sicken and die from the lack of immunity to some common virus.
“They should check with their doctors more down there,” Star Eagle remarked almost off-handedly. “The male had some incipient signs of early arthritis and a weak pancreas; the female has other things wrong including some small viral tumors. One wonders what the state of medicine is even at the Center level. I will correct those problems and flush the veins and arteries as well. Standing by. I have a new checksum validated by models. The male is completed. Sabira is completed. The female is completed. Chow Dai integrated. Chow Mai integrated. Stand by at the tubes. Reconverting . . . Done.”
A small crowd had gathered at the tubes with Hawks and Clayben. The tube mouths had gone opaque when the humans had been energized; now they flicked to clear again. Inside, now, were no longer any Earth-humans. The two on top looked the same, but the three below now contained Janipurians.
For Chow Dai and the others it was almost as if nothing had taken place. She had crawled naked into the tube and lay flat, then watched as the machinery activated and the mouth clouded up. There was a slight disorientation as if the scene she was seeing had been suddenly altered, then strong hands reached in, grabbed her arms, and pulled her from the tube.
The first thing that struck her was the noise. There were sounds all around her that she could not place; clicking and whirring and whooshing, and there were voices, too, far off but if she concentrated, she could almost make out what they were saying even over the din created by the crowd at the tube.
“Try to stand,” Clayben said, his voice sounding oddly distorted but still clear and a bit too loud. “Just on your hands and knees for now. Give it a try.”
She managed, and it felt rather comfortable. Steady, anyway. She crawled completely out onto the catwalk and looked around. All the familiar faces were there, but they looked different somehow. There seemed less color, as if things were washed out, but those nearby—and even the catwalk itself—seemed far more detailed; by focusing she could count every thread in Hawks’ pants or see the pores in Clayben’s craggy face. She looked forward toward the building and maintenance area below and found it difficult to focus. Nothing down there, or beyond, seemed to register, yet when one of the spindly robots far away moved and picked up something she was able to not only focus in on it but see it clearly, almost isolated from its surroundings. A perfectly defined form almost suspended in space.
I cannot feel my hands or my feet! she thought suddenly, and looked down and saw her—forelegs. Even though she knew academically that it had happened, it wasn’t until now that the reality of the situation sunk in.
She felt oddly distant from it. Later, perhaps, it would sink in but not now. Now she simply felt nothing deep inside. She looked over and saw the other two emerge from their tubes with the same aid.
They also had little trouble standing on all fours, and she remembered that Clayben had explained that this was in the design of the creatures. She stared at Chow Mai, both the form and the face, and knew that she was also staring at herself.
By the gods, we are hideously ugly! she thought, almost breaking but catching herself in time.
The catwalk was also an elevator system, and it slowly lowered them all down to the main deck level. None of the three had any trouble walking off; with arms and legs the same length it was easier than crawling.
“I’m going to remain and process the other two,” Clayben told Hawks. “Let them get the feel of their bodies and give them some time. They must learn to use those bodies naturally, without thinking. Then we can give them what printer support we can.”
Hawks nodded. “Now their burden begins.”
When Star Eagle had first sent the thick bundles of grasses to them to eat, all three had recoiled. Finally, Sabira had decided that it had to be done and hoped that it would taste better to a Janipurian than to an Earth-human. It didn’t. The stuff tasted like grass and straw, and the only positive thing to be said about it was that it was filling.
“We never ate with the Janipurians before,” she noted. “I got the impression they prepared highly spiced food, both cooked and raw. Grazing was for the very young and the very poor. A survival skill, not a mark of civilization. No one needed to starve on Janipur.”
“It is all we can furnish until you are down there, though,” Star Eagle responded apologetically. “We do not really know their foods. I could only synthesize based upon logical deductions from the way the digestiye system operates and traces of food in the systems of the pair we have. Their mindprinting will soon be finished, however, and they should be quite willing to help thereafter.”
Mindprinting indeed, more than one of the crew thought. Brainwashing was the old term for it, when it was less subtle and more difficult to do.
None of the three felt extremely comfortable in their new forms, but they had no problem moving around so long as they were in, as Isaac Clayben called it, their “four-legged mode.” Attempts to stand, or even unlock the hands and feet from their holding positions, met with frustration. Since they weren’t much larger or heavier than Earth-humans, a couple of crewmembers of the Thunder’s complement tried lifting them into sitting positions in chairs. The three found themselves unbalanced, though, and tended to flail at the air with forelegs or fall over and out.
The addition of Jeruwahl Peshwar and his wife Madowa changed things a bit, but it wasn’t easy. The two native Janipurians firmly believed their provided cover story, however, so they were friendly and cooperative if a bit taken aback and both awed and a little afraid of the strange forms now around them. As with the best cover stories, it contained more fact than fiction.
They now believed that Master System was attempting to eliminate the Centers of Janipur and reduce the population to limited, animal-like savagery. It was not known if Master System actually had this in mind for worlds other than Earth, but it was convincing enough, particularly since the pair knew that forces from Master System itself now roamed somewhat lordly over their land and Centers. They were impressed with the honor of the mission, although not a little bit unhappy that they were the ones chosen to be uprooted and their lives disrupted. This was ameliorated, somewhat, by the seriousness of the mission and most of all by the fact that three of the alien company should be willing to become like them. They were most touched, however, when shown evidence of their medical conditions and problems, particularly the dangerously malformed uterus, and the fact that these things had now been repaired.
“It is most confusing,” Jeruwahl noted in his thick Janipurian accented English, “but we will do our part in this. I feel like I now have a twin, and I cannot tell my wife from the two others if all stand still.”
It was Madowa who partially solved the food problem by providing a list of ingredients that turned the stomachs of those who understood what they were. Once equivalents were found for those ingredients that were native to Janipur, she was able to prepare very elaborate dishes for them all that had only one thing in common: one did not feel one’s mouth after starting the dishes, but one felt the stomach for quite a while. All Janipurian food, it seemed, consisted of either the basic bland grasses or elaborate dishes spiced so hot they were almost on fire. The dishes could be eaten by the Earth-humans and many of the colonials on board, but few tolerated more than a taste. Only Sabira and the crew of the Indrus seemed immune; the captain of the ship proclaimed it was the first decently spiced food he’d had in many months.
Madowa worked with Chow Dai and Chow Mai on body movements and uses; Jeruwahl worked with Sabira, although he was more than a bit disconcerted by how effeminate this new male was. Sabira, shortening her name to Sabir, had thought it best for cultural reasons not to tell him that she was originally female.
There were tricks to making the body fulfill all its potential; subtle weight shifts, twists, and turns that someone born Janipurian took for granted but someone new to the body would never guess. It was startling and somewhat exciting to see Madowa, for example, simply stand up in a fluid motion with long hands and longer fingers looking very human indeed. Unexpectedly, they also walked upright—albeit very slowly and deliberately and for short distances. Upright was for civilized company, inside dwellings, and for social occasions. All fours was long-distance moving and speed. The combination of the two modes was smooth, effortless, and chosen almost without thinking.
The Chows were absolutely ecstatic when they stood erect, unsteadily, for the first time on their own, and falling over, almost breaking a few bones a number of times, did not daunt them. As on Janipur, the upright stance and use of hands and feet set human apart from animal in their minds, more than any other trait. They were determined, and they did it.
Only five days after they began their training, the Chows were standing up and even walking a bit with relative ease, and were talking with their hands as much as their mouths. By observing Madowa, they were now mastering the fine points of fluid and effortless natural motion.
Sabir was not as adept a pupil, even when helped by all the others. He could stand in a wobbly sort of way, but often failed miserably. It was Raven, in fact, who figured out part of the problem by just watching.
While Jeruwahl had been born with male anatomy and moved to accommodate it without thinking, Sabir was used to being female. Now, when Sabir tried to stand, he found that his mind was unaccustomed to directing the movement of his new male anatomy. It was slow and frustrating having to learn the basics of walking all over again.
The Chows, meanwhile, were already learning Janipurian cooking, at least partly out of self-defense. They wanted to prepare dishes that were merely volcanic rather than intolerable, and they finally found the right mix. Madowa Peshwar proclaimed the results “as bland as straw grass,” though it was still fiery to everybody else.
Just when Sabir was willing to give up and accept the idea that he would never adapt, he did it—and had little trouble thereafter with movement. However, they now had only sixty-one days left before the leave was terminated and they were to report to Cochin Center.
The most profitable use of the time for the Chows, other than getting used to their new bodies, had been practicing with lock problems and traps rigged by Star Eagle in the office complex surrounding the central living area. There was no way to actually know the exact mechanisms used in the Center museum, but Star Eagle attempted to simulate the types of locks and traps reported by Vulture, attaining more and more complexity as they solved the easier ones. One of Sabir’s predictions proved true—the eyes, at least in their near vision, and the hands were so superior that the Chows found themselves able to work successfully on very small, intricate traps. Their new physical attributes significantly enhanced that uncanny innate ability they had always had, but which even they really couldn’t explain.
Their score was not perfect, however. In fact, in the most complex problems involving weights, cameras, and sound monitors they succeeded only four in ten times. But with the strict time limitation they hoped it would be enough. It had to be enough. They needed to get down to the planet almost immediately if they were to have time to interact with the natives while there was still a chance to survive any errors. And so they turned to China and Isaac Clayben, whose wizardry with the mindprinter and biochemical manipulations could best prepare them for their mission.
China had visited the Chows quite often during this period. Other than Sabir and each other, she was the only one they really felt comfortable around. It was, perhaps, the blindness as well as the shared past experiences. China could not see them as they were now, and even if their voices were slurred and they smelled a bit funny, her mental picture was still of their old selves.
“You are adjusting quite well,” she told them. “I have seen the results through Star Eagle’s interconnects, and you look and act quite natural. It is a fascinating human variation, in some ways superior to us and in no real way inferior.”
“We are now used to it, yes,” Chow Dai agreed, “but I am not certain we can ever fully accept ourselves this way. It is still wrong, strange, and we feel . . . ugly. At night we still dream our normal dreams, and when we wake up and see each other as we are, we feel it a nightmare.”
China nodded and sighed. “I, too, have such dreams. Thanks to the bridge interface I have seen all this, all of you, but in my mind and in a different way than one truly sees. I was always so totally independent, so confident and arrogant, and now I am far less man you. I am totally, absolutely dependent. That, more than the loss of my sight, is my continuing curse. I am blind, my belly is swollen, my soul is filled with odd rushes and urges, and this is when I am at my best. During that period when I am not with child, I am degraded, and I hate myself later even though I know it is none of my doing. In a sense, I have become what my father intended: a breeding factory. In my youthful ignorance I cursed him, not for his intent or his contempt for me but because he would cost me my mind, my awareness, my knowledge, and turn me into a simpering little slave. I see that there was some mercy in the old man after all, for now I am in that exact situation, but with full mind and knowledge and it is far worse. I keep going only for the mission and victory. Perhaps, although I would like to think otherwise, I do it just for my father’s reaction if we are able to win. You have merely changed to an alternate form. There are worse things that can be done to you, far worse. You must always remember that.”
“We have been thinking that way,” Chow Mai told her. “It may well be that Hawks is right—we all may pay a terrible price for this, and ours may not be the worst.”
“You must remember that millions of people have been born and raised as you are now and have different standards. They will think of you as the only true human. Look at Jeruwahl and Madowa. It is a race far gentler and with kinder features than those of, say, Chunhoifan’s races—either one.” The captain of that freebooter ship and two others had glistening black exoskeletons, terrible faces, and many features more appropriate to insects, and they ate stuff that made the rest sick just to look at. The two others of that crew, owlish, green humanoids with bulging eyes and winglike organs on their backs, were difficult even to talk to; it seemed as if they lived in a slightly different universe from the rest, and perhaps they did. When one heard in ranges far different from Earth-humans and ate a mixture of bloody meat and crushed rock and saw well into the infrared spectrum, different attitudes were to be expected. The point was well taken, and the Chows knew it, but the realization didn’t lessen their own private agony.
“Tomorrow we will be using on you a mindprinter technique used by Centers all over Earth and perhaps all over the galaxy,” China told them. ‘”We have taken the preadjusted imprints of Jeruwahl and Madowa and added logical and expected experiences to account for their missing time. We were also able to edit a version of Madowa’s recording to create a twin sister, Sedowa, and blend that into the Madowa experience sufficiently well so that the memories of the real Madowa will include our addition. It will fool the records computers. Such things always have. We were able to edit in memories of a minor brain dysfunction, a type of dyslexia that is not unknown in Earth-humans and possibly also is here. Vulture, who has created Sedowa’s records to match our own, has added that to the files transferred from their old Center to Cochin. You will not be expected to read or write, and that will get you over a large hurdle. For the next sixty days you will be Jeruwahl and Madowa Peshwar and Sedowa Bhutto. You will truly believe this, just as I truly believed myself to be the boy Chu Li when first we met. It will remain consistent, your true selves inaccessible to mindprinter or your own will or knowledge, until Vulture brings you out of it.”
“We are nervous and a bit scared of it, but we understand the routine,” Chow Dai assured her. “We remember, however, that you were affected by Chu Li long after you reasserted control. After we . . . come out of it, will we still be ourselves, or something new?”
“You will remember all that you do now,” China assured them. “However, none of the memories you had imprinted, including those of the sixty days, will vanish. You will be in complete control. Becoming fully yourself again is a slow process but a painless one; things will fade if not used or accessed. What memories of your experience you need, you will keep as long as you need it. What you do not need will fade. Even now there is a bit, a tittle bit, of Chu Li in me, but it is not a bad thing. I treasure it. His rebelliousness helps keep me going. His spirit will not let me quit. All I have truly lost is my overwhelming arrogance, and that from my experience since and not through any mindprinter trick. We know they will check and spy on all newcomers with a thoroughness they never had before, so the mindprint must be a perfect job, but you will gain from it and lose nothing later. It is when you come out that the danger will be great. Take care. We have had limited time to get you this far, but there is no time limit, even if it be years, to getting the rings. If we do not live to see the fifth and final one in place, our children will do it. The only thing you must not do is fail, and death will be failure, as well.”
“We will take care and we will return,” Chow Dai promised her. “We will do it because it is what we were ordained to do. We were born in ignorance and fated, it seemed like all those who grew up with us, to work the paddies and have babies and die young. Instead the gods worked in strange ways to make us part of a great thing. We will not fail, and we will personally hand you the ring, and if it is the will of the gods we, not our children, will stand at the doors to Master System itself and see the great thing we have helped bring about. That is what keeps us going.”
China hugged and kissed them, and for the first time in her mature life felt tears come to her unseeing eyes. “I will hold you to that,” she said, “and I shall not forgive you if it does not come out that way.”
They were sedated after the mindprinter treatment, then sent down to Janipur in coordination with Vulture’s plan. Because the odd creature had assumed the body, form, and personality of the deputy chief of security for Cochin Center, he had some freedom of movement and resources. Master System’s forces on Janipur might still have been suspicious of his moves and actions had they any idea that such a creature as Vulture existed, but they did not and the deputy chief of security was well known and above normal suspicion. Clayben had originally created Vulture as the prototype for a whole army of creatures designed specifically to avoid any trap Master System might lay, to penetrate any security, to become an invisible force, but his creation had proven too perfect: impossible for Clayben to control. It would never have occurred to the scientist to do what Hawks and Raven had done and simply treat the creature as a fellow human being and ask for its help.
Thus, Jeruwahl Peshwar awoke one morning in the large town on Janipur where he’d been born, as did his wife Madowa and her twin sister Sedowa, with memories of having visited the women’s family and bargaining for Sedowa’s participation in propagating the Peshwar name. Sedowa had been married at thirteen, of course, but her husband had died while experimenting with a new form of deep meditation that involved slow and supposedly controlled strangulation. Suttee had been outlawed long ago by her own tribe’s progressive government, which happened to include her father, but not everyone agreed with this decision and Sedowa had been stigmatized and somewhat ostracized outside the family. She had been more than happy to comply with her sister’s husband’s request, and her father was particularly pleased that she had at last found a place.
None of this, of course, actually happened, but there was some distance between her family and his native city and they believed the scenes.
Skill was not transferable by mindprinter, but knowledge was. Jeruwahl was convincing enough that differences in movements and habits could be put down to changes made by his very alien Center lifestyle in the two years between visits; he was not suspected by the real Jeruwahl’s family. The twins cooked and cleaned and made clothing and jewelry. Clothing was not a basic of the race, but the genitals and rears and often the breasts were covered, and both men and women wore various jewelry appropriate to their caste level.
The women delighted in the sights and smells of the city, the huge markets, the bazaars, the street performers, and the general electricity even a small city provides those who live outside it.
Had they known they were in an environment even more alien than city versus Center or rural village, they might have gaped in wonder as a man on four legs pulled a small wheeled car to a building, then stood up, picked up the cart, and climbed a ladder straight up to the third floor. But such sights did not and should not seem wondrous to them under the mindprinter’s hold.
Vulture had his men keep an eye on them, supposedly because they were about to be promoted and transferred at the end of leave to Cochin Center, but it allowed the trio to pass the closest inspection without raising suspicion. As they were newcomers, Vulture was required to put SPF personnel on them, as well. This was now an absolute requirement of Master System when anyone not already thoroughly checked was transferred to Cochin Center, and the risk and suspicion wouldn’t stop even after they had entered and cleared all the usual checks. Master System, needless to say, knew about transmuters and mindprinter programs, as well. They would be only three of twenty new people coming in, which helped, and Vulture knew that he was dealing more with the SPF and a Val than with Master System directly and that the soldiers might not believe that the pirates of the Thunder would have such resources or go to such extremes. He hoped so.
Although there was nothing else it could do right now to help or in any way interfere with the Janipur mission, Thunder was not idle during this period. Captain Paschittawal and the rest of the Indrus crew, along with Pirate One, were doing what they could to monitor, watch, and wait. The other crews, restless for some action, also had their chance. Star Eagle developed a separate recording system that would play back to Thunder from the freebooter ships giving a complete account of all that went on. It was in a code only Star Eagle knew, and he was certain it could not be broken or altered without him detecting it. There was no way to protect all the ships and crews from Master System and the SPF; that was up to them. What Star Eagle could do was guarantee, as much as anything could be guaranteed, that no ship sent off into the void could be taken, turned, and made into a Trojan horse that might threaten the Thunder.
San Cristobal, Chunhoifan, and Bakakatan, however, could now have freedom of movement and action. Since Janipur had been lightly defended, with Master System gambling more on preventing a theft and successful escape than preventing entry, it was probable that the same situation existed in the solar systems of Chanchuk and Matriyeh, the two other places where rings were thought to exist. Security might tighten after the Janipur mission was finished so complete surveys of those worlds were ordered without any landings. This would at least identify the unique properties of the worlds they would eventually have to enter, give them basic information on the land and people and security arrangements.
After this, they could attempt to tap resources that might have escaped the pogrom against the freebooters. Savaphoong was valuable here; the former ruler of Halinachi knew not only unlikely sources of information and material but also various codes for automated Master System devices, the result of gathering together the collective discoveries of a generation of freebooters who partook of his pleasure palace. The man himself remained mostly within his own ship, a semirecluse in a luxury yacht that supported him in the manner to which he felt entitled.
Kaotan was kept in reserve along with Lightning, although Takya Mudabur, the amphibian, was taken along on the San Cristobal. Discussions with the denizens of some of the water worlds, she knew, might give a clue to the location of the fourth ring, although it exposed both her and the ship to maximum danger.
Kaotan had been held in reserve at Vulture’s request. They weren’t yet certain what he had in mind, but it was possible that the ship would yet see action within the Janipur plan.
At the end of leave, Jeruwahl Peshwar, his wife, and his mistress bade good-bye to the city and journeyed four days northwest to the predetermined rendezvous point, where they were picked up by one of Janipur’s few flyers and flown in a matter of hours to Cochin Center for entry processing.
The Center, a large, domed structure in an area remote from any pattern of settlement and in a region that would not support much of a local population, looked much like any other Center of Janipur or even on Earth. It was unobtrusive, nearly invisible except from the air, and most of it was actually underground.
As newcomers coming off leave, the trio were processed first by security; a mindprint was taken of each to be examined and evaluated by security computers that were not all that hard to fool. Then they were each given complete physicals that not only assessed their general condition but also would reveal any scars, birthmarks, evident of past medical procedures, and the like, all of which could be compared with their records before leave, to provide a check against tampering or possible imposters. Finally, they were started once again on the elite drugs that increased concentration, enhanced thinking, and also protected them against most common diseases; issued specially encoded clearance cards for the areas they were authorized to be in; and taken to their new quarters. All of their old belongings, including the art, the tapestries, and the other niceties of life in high position, had been shipped to Cochin from their old Center post.
As far as Vulture could see, they had passed their security screening with flying colors. He had no intention of bringing them out of their mindprinting any time soon; best they settle in and make new social contacts and betray nothing to the prying eyes of security and the SPF. He sat in a chair specially contoured for Janipurian shapes and went over their data, nodding to himself. It was part of the deputy chief’s job to oversee and check on newcomers. He was looking for any flaws, holes, or minor details that he might have to balance out or rectify.
He almost missed it, and that would have been a tragedy. Even now, he wasn’t certain what to do about it since it simply hadn’t been thought of. The fact was, he couldn’t think of everything, and apparently this had never occurred to Clayben and the rest, either. It was, however, a major problem, and one that could not be easily covered up. Things had been going along too smoothly; he and the rest had been lulled into a false sense of security and he knew it now. The question was, what to do about it?
He had an audio link with Thunder using a subcarrier of the regular transmissions between the orbital monitoring satellites and Cochin Center and a secure place to use it. That had been a major priority and was the one big risk he had taken. Now he used it to call to space.
The relay was first to the satellite, which was also being monitored by a drone fighter with a communications link. The fighter then sent it to Indrus, which relayed it to Thunder, both of which were stationed many light-years from Janipur. There was some time delay between transmissions, but not enough to inhibit conversation.
“Thunder, we have a real problem,” Vulture reported.
“Go ahead,” Star Eagle responded. “I have Hawks and China tied in now.”
“Stupid of us. We were so concerned with the mind-printing and computer, security and all the rest that we overlooked the obvious. I almost didn’t see it in the records because I wasn’t looking for anything such as that. I’ve managed to cover up one part but I can’t do it forever and then everything will hit the fan.”
“What are you talking about?” Hawks asked worriedly.
“We made both the Chows fully functioning females and Sabir a fully functioning male, and then we mindprinted them so they thought they were the natives they’re impersonating. It’s quite natural, and I just don’t understand how we could have overlooked it. According to their physicals, both women are pregnant—maybe five, six weeks.”
“Damn!” Hawks swore, feeling like a fool. Then he thought of the other wrinkle. “But Madowa’s on record as barren. This blows any reason for Sedowa.”
“Not so much of a problem. She wasn’t totally barren, it was just that the odds were against conception, and if it happened, the odds favored a nasty pregnancy. We can cover for that, but it really puts the heat on here. Either we let them go ahead and have the kids and wait a year or more—plus having to get two kids out—or we have to move very quickly on the ring. Too quick for my liking. The first three months, they’ll be getting morning sickness and all that. At four and a half months, they’ll start to show and feel more comfortable on all fours. By five and a half months they’ll be on all fours and the horns will be growing. By six months, give or take, they won’t have any more use of their hands or feet. No hands, Hawks—for four or five months, allowing for birth and recovery of the system. Hawks—you can’t pick locks and steal things without hands!”
The leader of the group sighed. “Yes, I see. We’ll have to run this through the group for a while here and make our decisions.”
“The only positives from this are that the SPF and Master System sure as hell aren’t gonna suspect two pregnant girls of being plants, and it’s natural, even normal, to return from leave with child. We should’a thought that. It’s the little things that kill you. Hawks—I can’t guarantee getting the three of them out. Two four-legged kids with the minds of newborns—I can’t see it. Not to mention they might not be so tolerant of having a mistress from the field here long if he’s got a legitimate heir.”
“The risks of waiting are worse than the risks of going too soon,” Hawks said firmly. “I don’t like it, but I see no alternative. We must go within the next ninety days. We will need every detail you can muster on that security system now. Your sleepers must be awakened. We go.”