THERE WAS NOTHING WRONG WITH THE EYES OF SONG Ching except that she who thought of herself as Chu Li received no messages from them. It was a devastating blow to her, but she knew she had to cope and put on a brave front for the other two. She could not afford self-pity.
“I think there probably are no traps in there, after all,” she told them. “I think, though, that there are ones like this, used to subdue the worst and render them helpless or impotent. This can be restored with a mindprinter. It is simply an order to my brain not to process or pass the images it receives.”
“But what can we do?” Chow Dai asked. Chu Li thought it was Chow Dai, anyway: The two sounded exactly alike. “You are the one who knows the magic of these things.”
“We continue,” she told them. “And I continue, since I have already paid a price. Do not blame yourselves. There is no way to know in advance about these things. Get me back to the chair. We are almost half done, and we must hit a key one soon.”
They helped her, and she was right. The next one, in fact, was the one she had been hunting for all along. She knew it the moment she awoke, and she knew, too, just how it worked. She could talk to the ship, the pilot—anything. The language the ship used was English. She had suspected something like that; most of the computer controls from the old designs were in English, French, or Russian. The problem had been finding the right cartridge for communications. She immediately called a halt to further experimentation, although she insisted that the Chow sisters also take both the English program and the basics of the ship. They wouldn’t be very proficient no matter what, but at least she would have some backup.
She was ready to communicate. She knew the language, and she knew what to ask. She put the headset back on. Now was the time to risk it all.
“Captain to pilot,” she said in her adjusted male voice, this time in English.
“Go ahead,” the computer responded in a monotone.
“Number of human life forms aboard vessel at this time. Monitor.”
“Monitoring. Four life forms.”
Four! That meant that Sabatini was still alive somewhere, although if he hadn’t shown himself by now, it was probable that he was indeed trapped. “Location of human life forms.”
“Three in central compartment. Fourth is in emergency module.”
Just as she had thought. “Sealed orders have been opened that necessitate emergency change of operational plan.”
“Go ahead.”
“Captain Sabatini has fallen under suspicion of treason and has been relieved of his command. I am assuming command of this vessel.”
“Identifier code?”
She swallowed hard, but she had thought this out. This was a Presidium ship making China calls. It was unlikely that Song Ching’s father would have overlooked it. “Code Lotus, black, green, seven two three one one.”
There was a nervous pause, then the computer responded, “Code acknowledged. Reason for interrupt?”
“Pawn takes king.”
“Details?” the pilot requested.
She decided that it was requesting a rationale since there was obviously no king aboard.
“I am Song Ching, daughter of the chief administrator, China District. Enemies of my father altered my voice and tried to alter more of me, as well as doctoring my security records, to abduct me and thereby gain leverage with my father. I was being shipped to Melchior as a common prisoner, there to be handed over to confederates. As I am registered as a male named Chu Li, who was disposed of, nothing appears in the records, nor will it.”
“Identification of enemies?”
“Unknown, but to do this and to use Melchior they must certainly be on the Presidium.”
“Shall your father be notified?”
“Impossible. He is on Leave, which is why this was done now. Extent of plotters unknown, but some must be in the China Directorate.”
“Desired course of action?”
“I am assuming complete and total command of this vessel from this point on. Captain Sabatini is relieved and will be confined where he is until he can be properly interrogated. In the meantime, I and my servant girls must get beyond the reach of Presidium authority and Master System must not be notified, as I am currently classified as prisoner Chu Li and will be returned. Recommendations?”
“I am a system vessel. I cannot remove you to any place where you would not be traced here. I could forge documentation that would pass an interstellar pilot’s muster, but you would be easy to trace. There is a clandestine network of interstellar traders, but it is, like this ship, loosely affiliated with the galactic presidiums. These people are quite rough and loyal only to themselves in the end. If they knew who you were, they would turn you over for reward to the highest bidder. If they do not know and do not find out, then you might wish you were on Melchior. They are men and women of the same sort of mind-set as Captain Sabatini.”
She well understood what that meant, particularly now that she was blind. Sabatini had broken her without drugs or computers in a matter of days, and although she didn’t feel like she was one, she was in fact a very desirable young woman. There was no question now where Sabatini’s sex cartridges had come from.
“There are no other alternatives?”
“None available. The only habitats fit for you without severe and permanent alterations, which themselves would have to be done under the aegis of Master System, are Earth, shipboard, and Melchior. All others are under a Directorate. Mars, for example, would require both Master System’s direct contact and also artificial atmospheres, as you are not modified for the Martian environment. Remaining with this ship for long is also not an alternative. Once we miss traffic control at the Outer-belt Marker, an alarm will be given and search initiated. Short of my destruction, there is no way to avoid detection and apprehension for long periods.”
She broke contact and decided to discuss things with the sisters.
“The pirate warlords will be no gentle masters,” Chow Dai noted. “They will be a race of foreign devils, all Sabatinis, but with all the magic boxes in the world and the protection of the warlords. They will make us the lowest of slaves and make us love to be slaves. I would rather die than be like that.”
“I agree, but we have come too far to die now,” Chu Li responded. “Yet what you say is true, and if we go home and try to sneak back down, and do so, we would have to become peasants in some remote and foreign place. It would not be much different than the other way, and we would always be looking over our shoulders.”
“Of course,” Chow Dai said thoughtfully, “we could just go on to Melchior.”
“Huh? What?”
“I do not understand these things, but did you not say that this ship’s spirit could change our papers, make us someone we are not, enough to fool those above us?”
“Yes, I did, but—” Suddenly she saw where Chow Dai’s mind was going and reached for the headphones. “I wish data on Melchior.”
“Melchior is a hollowed-out asteroid between Mars and Jupiter maintained as a reserve by the Presidium,” the pilot responded. “Just what do you wish to know about it?”
“Is all of it a prison?”
“No. There are three parts. The prison itself, where all who are sent there are kept. It is something of a community in and of itself, but it is ugly and unpleasant. No one has ever escaped from it. The center is the research complex. All staff there are also there for life, and many of their experiments are on the prisoners. A third area, however, is the staff complex itself. All supplies and new people enter through it, and there is some interaction with the outside world through the small spaceport that connects there, as well as security personnel who may be rotated and the independents who sneak in to do business. Presidium members and staff also sometimes meet here, and the full Presidium always does at some point or another every one to three years.”
“Details on this staff complex. What is it? A town? A city like Center?”
“It has a town organization and is quite small, but it is unique. There are dwelling units of increasing size and comfort depending on position in three areas, surrounding a town center. The center sells luxuries and dispenses necessities according to a computer-controlled system of work credits. There is, however, much human service work, all manual, usually performed by former prisoners modified for that service.”
Blind, she could hardly pass herself off as someone new in security, nor could the sisters, with their terrible scars. She had to think as Song Ching would think—as Song Ching’s father would think.
“You say there is much human experimentation and some two-way traffic. Is this place never used to modify or repair Earth people?”
“That is a primary function. Those whom the Presidium wish to use but who cannot be allowed to continue to exist as they are, for example, are sent there and changed radically. A death is convincingly faked for them on Earth and recorded with Master System. Also, there are enhancements and repairs of grave injuries suffered doing things which cannot be registered with Master System.”
“Then we will go to Melchior with our records modified,” she told it. “I will give you my story and then cover stories for the other two. You will prepare supporting documentation. We will be not prisoners but patients.”
“This is dangerous. I have no hypnotics or master mindprinter aboard. You will have to give convincing performances, at least until you can get clandestine access to a mindprinter yourself. One curious hypno or security examination will expose all three. One slip will expose all three.”
“We will have to risk it. Orders and paperwork and records often supersede common sense. It is why I have gotten this far. I have some codes and overrides, a knowledge of the equipment, and I will not be a prisoner but a patient. Besides, no one ever breaks in to Melchior.”
“You have no idea what they can do in there,” the pilot warned. “It is said that if Master System knew, it would blow the whole place to pieces.”
“It is the best of a bad set of alternatives,” she responded, but inwardly she was excited. Change identities, change personalities, change into whole new people . . . You have no idea what they can do in there. Might not even Chu Li perhaps live again? Might not the Chows gain outer beauty to match their inner selves? Considering how far she’d already come, nothing was beyond reach.
“Uh—if we go to Melchior under those conditions, what about Sabatini?”
“He is already past the normal preservation stage and has been placed in a cryogenic condition. I can keep him there at least until I return to Earth orbit. By that time, you should either be away or exposed. In either case it will make no difference.”
“Very well. Let’s do it.”
“Hawks!” The voice echoed through the subterranean garden. “Where’s the heap big Hyiakutt chief now, eh? Come talk to Raven!”
There was a rustle and the sound of a large body dropping to the ground and coming toward the edge of the garden and its forcefield.
Even though he’d been well briefed, Raven was still shocked at Hawks’s appearance. The man was filthy, worse than when the Crow had captured him, but, more, he had a wildness in his face and eyes and a brutal, animal-like gait and carriage that was somehow unnerving. Even though the Hyiakutt’s current personality set was mere overprinting—that is, all of him was there below it and could be used—the Crow knew that he’d use tranquilizer darts before trusting himself with this fellow now to redo the printing and preparations.
If Raven was surprised to see Hawks, then the reverse was even more true. Hawks squinted. “Ray-ven,” he growled. “Why are you still here?” It was obviously a labor to speak, which was understandable.
“I’ve got a new job and a new boss, that’s why. We’re not rid of each other yet. How have you liked it the last few days?”
Hawks charged the forcefield with a roar and was thrown back. He picked himself up but returned only a surly glare. “Bas-tard Crow!”
Lazlo Chen had indeed taught Hawks the true meaning of “primitive.” He had restored the two women, and after having them fully mindprint recorded so they could be restored later, he had wiped them basically clean and imprinted on them the mindprints of female apes of some kind. They had no memories that were not ape memories, no language except the guttural grunts and shrill cries that amounted to about six basic phrases—”danger,” “good food,” and such. More, they were conditioned to see themselves as apes and each other as apes of the same type and tribe—and to see Hawks that way as well. They ate, preened each other, and slept, and that was life. At least they had no idea that anything was different. Hawks, however, did.
Chen had ordered him imprinted with the bull ape imprint but otherwise left alone. He knew, and he had to watch those he loved act as animals and react to them so, as well. It was the most miserable, unhappy experience in his whole life.
“So you found out being a chief ain’t all romance and glory,” Raven noted sardonically. “I don’t know about you, but among the Crow, though bloodlines will get you a real shot, a chief must prove himself and be elected—and he can be canned if he doesn’t have it. That’s because the job isn’t bravery, although it calls for that, or smarts, although it calls for that. Lots of folks can be politicians and generals. What a chief really means is responsibility. Sending young men off to die. Making widows. Protecting those of the tribe even at the cost of his own life or even his honor. Not like Chen, either, because he doesn’t care about his people, only himself. That’s because folks like that lack honor. That’s why you don’t want to work for him, you know. No honor.”
Hawks stared at the strange, ugly Crow. Raven had put his finger exactly on the problem, the moral dilemma, and also had shamed him. Men like Chen got where they were and stayed that way because they had no honor and took no responsibility. Even now, Chen wanted others to make him ruler of the universe, to take all the real risks, then hand him the ultimate in power and profits. Chen didn’t care how many were killed or even if his own people were wiped out in doing it. He didn’t care about them; he cared only for personal power while avoiding any real sense of responsibility. And yet Chen understood the concept of honor, of responsibility. Understood it and saw it as a weakness, something to be exploited. That was why he had done this.
“Have you come to taunt me in my misery?”
“Naw,” the Crow responded. “I’ve come to take you all away from all this. The heat for you is getting tremendous for one thing, and also, old Chen wants his garden back before it’s trampled flat. You can go as apes in cages or you can give your solemn oath that you’ll be good, cooperative passengers, and we’ll put you all back together. They won’t even remember any of this. Only you.”
“You—you can put them back?”
“Good as new, except for bruises, scratches, hair tangles, and that sort of thing. Your absolute bond is all I need.”
“You have it.”
“Now you’re thinking like a chief. All right, Chief. We’ll get this show on the road tonight. Put you all to sleep, cart you over as cargo, stick you on, then bring you back after we’re away.”
“You say we. You are going, too?”
“Yeah, me and Cuddles the Warlock. You remember her. She’s attacked four people since you left. Chen thinks she’s got potential if she can be redirected a bit. Don’t know what he sees in me. I think my job’s to keep her in line.”
“You are one to speak of honor!”
Raven shrugged. “You’ll never really know that, will you? So don’t get too excited. This is a one-way trip to Melchior, the nice little garden spot where folks go who have to disappear or be disappeared. At least you won’t have to worry about them making monkeys out of you, will you?”
The screen repelled a new attack.
The Melchior asteroid was small and irregularly shaped. Resembling a monstrous, misshapen baked potato, it was ugly, dark, and forbidding. Pockmarked with craters and pits, its one distinguishing feature was a space dock at the smaller end, and even that wasn’t visible from a distance.
The origins of the place were lost in antiquity or covered in forbidden knowledge. Why this asteroid, out of all the other ones around, was picked and developed was a mystery only Master System could solve. The rumor was that when humanity was forced kicking and screaming out into the universe, it required adaptation. Mars had been the testing ground for the whole project, and for half the year Melchior was not all that far from Mars as the spacecraft flies. It was said that here the original Martian colonists were tinkered with and reprocessed until they were just right, and perhaps other prototypes were developed on Melchior later. Still, the asteroid wasn’t very big, certainly not the sort of place that could process the billions involved, and so it was more or less abandoned by Master System in favor of new and improved mass production models.
How the Presidium then got hold of Melchior was another lost mystery, although it was certainly the Martian Directorate that saw its uses first and somehow convinced Master System that there was a need for a prison strictly for the most valuable prisoners, the ones who could never again be allowed contact with normal society but who had talents or bright ideas. After a few centuries with no escapes and no real threats, Master System didn’t even care anymore that the place wasn’t hooked into its all-seeing monitors. Some thought its preoccupation with its enigmatic war was the cause, but more likely it was that Master System understood that the sort of men and women who would maintain its system on Earth and Mars had to have some outlet. Better that outlet be a little asteroid in the middle of nowhere and totally self-contained than in the Centers and Councils of Earth and Mars. It didn’t really care who or what went in there, or what went on there, so long as they stayed there and so long as they never got out to threaten the system.
The place consisted of three large and countless small chambers, all set apart by kilometers of interlocking tunnels and all blasted with disintegrators out of the rock itself. The closed atmospheric system necessitated a huge number of safety air locks, which also served as security checkpoints; anyone who managed to sneak in could be caught merely by ordering the surrounding air locks sealed and then pumping out the air.
The prison cum prison town was in the larger of the two sides and was interconnected to the laboratories and other research facilities through deliberately confusing and well-monitored tunnels and air locks. The odd design not only maximized use of space but helped to disorient anyone who tried to figure the place out. The labs were underneath the prison and, from the prison’s point of view, upside down. Gravity, impossible to create here by the spin method, which was cheapest and most efficient, was provided by a complex electromagnetic system designed by Master System. Over the centuries here, many scientists had gone absolutely crazy trying to figure out just how it worked.
To make matters worse, the center tunnels connecting the smaller “east” and the larger “west” were not equipped with the gravity system; one actually swam through them, weightless. The maintenance tunnels and chambers were also all weightless. Fortunately, the gravity in the habitation sections was close to Earth normal.
And so, to this place came first Chu Li and the Chows under false colors and then, within a week, Hawks, Cloud Dancer, Silent Woman, Raven, and the strange Manka Warlock. The Chinese, however, were treated a bit better, being listed as official patients, and assigned at the start to the staff area. Because most spaceships were entirely controlled by a computer pilot, the lack of any staff save the three was not even considered unusual.
The psychogeneticist interviewer looked Chu Li over critically. She was brisk and professional but not judgmental.
“So, you are here to become male,” the scientist noted, looking at her screens. “A waste, considering your looks. Is this voluntary? I mean, do you concur?”
Chu Li nodded. “I do. I was always supposed to be, but Master System saw differently. I am a genetic construct.”
“I could see that by the cell samples,” the psychogeneticist huffed. “There are limits to what can be done short of a total remake, and that takes a lot of time. It says here you must be back in a new identity with all possible speed. That limits us.”
“I will be fully functioning? And feel it?”
“Oh, of course. However, the sperm would not be yours but a—donor’s—and we could make only superficial cosmetic changes. Your basic female body shape and bone structure will remain, for example, although we’ll remove most of the breasts and smooth out what is left and perhaps surgically adjust the face to give it a more masculine cast. The strong male hormones which we will distill from the minute quantities you produce now but which will then be duplicated and produced by your new glands and sacs will alter you far more as time goes on. I gather no mental adjustment is required for this.”
“They want me just the way I am, mentally. That’s why they did the first part of the adjustment back there.”
“Now, then, you were blinded in a mindprinter accident?”
“Not exactly an accident. I think I wasn’t supposed to see something. It was understood that my sight would be restored here.”
“Uh huh. Well, we’ll have to scan for damage, but if it’s just a printer program, it should be simple. We’ll send you in for tests now. If all prove out, we’ll get started right away.”
Melchior was not at all what Chu Li had expected. True, it was inside an asteroid, and there was a strange coldness and dryness to the air, but everyone had been quite nice and quite professional all the way. She didn’t really know what the place looked like, of course, but at the moment it seemed more like a hospital than a horrible prison. They were even going to attend to the terrible scars of the Chow sisters. Of course, the fact that their records now identified them as some other people and seemed to come from the higher security levels of China Center didn’t hurt, nor did the fact that such records could not be cross-checked with Master System files here.
Melchior was an exciting and exotic place, one that she would like to have seen. She hoped that they would restore her sight quickly. But even if they did not, she would get a totally new identity. A complete sex change, some cosmetic changes, even subtly different fingerprints and a slightly altered eye pattern. She could walk right into China Center and right up to Song Ching’s miserable relatives, and they would never know.
Doctor Isaac Clayben looked over the data modules on the subject and frowned. “You were right to come to me,” he told the assistant. “You’re sure there’s no mistake?”
“Absolutely, sir. We took the print when we suspected something and checked it without her even knowing it.”
“And the other two?”
“Petty criminals sent here because Doctor Shasvik wanted as many identical twins as he could get. You must admit, sir, that she’s both brazen and brilliant even to have tried this. I have no idea how she could have switched full identification through Master System with this Chu Li boy. I would have sworn it was impossible without coming through here to begin with. In fact, her only mistake was that Melchior is not on Master System, so our records aren’t updated when the master is. With the systemwide alert, we naturally put them all through. Her eye and prints matched up with Song Ching, and the other two are former servants of some high-ranking security officer in China Center. When we shot them back to Earth for a run-through, though, Master System identified her absolutely as Chu Li, a natural male. Fascinating.”
Clayben scratched his scruffy full beard. “Pity. They are going to make this Song Ching into nothing more than breeding stock. Anyone who could do this is a mind that shouldn’t be lost to some culturally sexist attitudes. She could easily do the one thing without sacrificing the other. No one at China Center has been notified?”
“No, sir. Do you wish me to call them?”
“No. Not yet. Let me think about this. In the meantime, continue with all the tests but do absolutely no surgery, psycho or physical.”
“Very well. What about the blindness? It’s a simple trap program from a portable mindprinter. We could remove it in twenty or thirty minutes.”
“Leave it. Give her a fancy and convincing but meaningless excuse. If she can get herself shipped here, change Master System records, take control of a spaceship in midflight, and come up with something so basic that only a lifetime of thinking about beating Master System flawed her success, we don’t want her getting oriented here. Imagine somebody like that running loose in this place.”
It was a sobering thought.
“Come to think of it,” Clayben added, “separate her from her two friends and place them all in the Security Block in the prison. If she figures out where she is, tell her it’s routine until everything is set so that no one will know she is even due for a change.”
“I doubt she’ll buy that.”
“What’s the difference? And she might, which would make life a lot easier for us. If she figures it out and causes enough uproar, tell her the truth, which includes the fact that I might decide to go through with it anyway and put her to work here. Someone that young who’s that good at beating the best could be very valuable.”
“Shall we encode her?”
The boss thought about it. “Yes, but slip her a mild sedative first so that she doesn’t know it. Encode her as Chu Li and adjust our records accordingly. If I decide not to send her home, I don’t want her father coming in here some day and finding out that she was ever here.”
When the aide left, Doctor Clayben sat back in his large padded desk chair and sighed. He was a man of advancing middle age and looked it; he had achieved the position of Director of the Medical Section of Melchior, a dream assignment and one which involved being able to poke into everybody’s ideas whenever he liked. Although not a Presidium member himself, he worked for the body as a whole and so had no loyalty or obligation to any one person. He saw himself as a pure scientist, in the one position where he and his colleagues were free from any concepts of forbidden knowledge or political, moral, and religious restrictions. He had no reservations about authorizing the most radical experiments on human beings; he used only prisoners sent here by the Presidium, people who would have otherwise been executed back on Earth. He felt he gave their miserable lives meaning by allowing them to contribute to the growth of human knowledge, knowledge which for the most part remained right here, under his authority and under his control.
Not even the Presidium guessed the amount of power, knowledge, and abilities contained within Melchior’s small confines. The girl had wanted to become a fully functioning male. Child’s play. Clayben knew, as most did not, what the bulk of humanity had become out there among the vast stars. It had become alien to its birth species and alien to all in many ways, although curiously still human in the mind. Humanity had always been adaptable; that was its key to survival. It could learn to live permanently with little or no modern technology in arctic wastes or steaming, acidic tropical jungles. Moving five billion people to a thousand worlds was no easy task in the old days, particularly since no two planets were alike and the supply of those tolerable even to adapted humans was rather low.
Humanity, without technological support, was actually very fragile. Earth had been just right, just exactly right, and what evolved there evolved to match it. Within Earth tolerances, humanity was supreme, but Earth tolerances, while not unique, were very rare indeed. Master System had been in a hurry, and Master System developed the means—possibly right here, on Melchior—to get the job done expeditiously. Clayben knew the means and the methods. That knowledge often made him feel like a god.
Certainly it was better than being a tinpot Presidium dictator always doing the System’s bidding and feeling, every time a minor victory was scored, like the little boy who steals pie cooling in the window and gets away with it. Isaac Clayben feared only one thing about Master System, but he could not allow himself to dwell on it: Some day Master System would tire of this sufferance of its loyal servants, or become too suspicious, or not need its Presidium anymore, and then blast this rock into atoms.
Although they remembered nothing of their existence from the time of the hypno treatment along the banks of the Mississippi to the moment they woke up aboard a spaceship, both Cloud Dancer and Silent Woman were somewhat traumatized by their sudden propulsion from a nontechnological culture to one so advanced that it seemed only magical. Magical but cold, Cloud Dancer decided. There was no fresh air, or warm sun, or cold winter’s night, or the smell of trees and flowers here. No sense of freedom or of the vastness of a starry sky or an endless horizon. There were only sterile walls, sterile seats and furnishings, and unnatural things. The toilet had taken her days to understand, and the shower seemed somehow a violator of her body. Food, both hot and cold, appeared magically on large trays, yet it all tasted like week-old lard.
Still, both women were committed to Hawks, wherever he might lead. They had already followed him to hell; there could be no place left to go but up.
Manka Warlock was as cool, aloof, and condescending as ever, but if she fell into any more fits of madness, they didn’t see it. Raven seemed far more relaxed and always the pragmatist. Hawks suspected that Chen had given Warlock a bit of enforced calming with a mindprinter, changing only her irrational extremes and not her basic self. Such calm wouldn’t hold; no one except Warlock would be surprised if she were due for something more than a job when she got to Melchior.
Hawks himself was trying to decide whether he had won a reprieve or was now condemned to the circles of hell. The only thing known about Melchior was that it was a prison from which there had never been an escape, though obviously people did—if rarely—come and go from there. He began to wonder how much of a fool he had been in not taking Chen’s offer at the start. Certainly they could make him accept and love anything once they had him on Melchior; they could convince him that the sky was purple and he was Lazlo Chen’s identical twin brother. He consoled himself in the rather certain hunch that even if he had accepted, he’d still be aboard this ship. Raven and Warlock had accepted, and here they were. Chen was not about to accept promises of fidelity no matter what the oath.
They disembarked directly into a high-security area, with armed security guards and automatic security devices everywhere, and were then printed and processed. The women understood only that they were to be imprisoned in a strange cave; their views of creation did not yet encompass a sufficient cosmology to understand just where they were or the nature of Melchior. It was a place in the Inner Dark, a spiritual realm ruled by spirits of evil. That was enough.
They were stripped, decontaminated, bound, then blindfolded and linked together for the final part of their journey. Silent Woman particularly protested the treatment, and Cloud Dancer was none too happy, but Hawks managed to calm them, convincing them that nothing could be done until they were settled and could get information, so there was no purpose to any resistance at this point. Privately he wondered if there was any possibility of successful resistance even later. Like Dante, he had been forced by his enemies into entering hell alive; unlike Dante, he had no spirit guides to get him safely through and out again.
At the end of the nightmarish and disorienting journey, in which they seemed almost to float or fly in places, they were brought to a small, unfurnished room watched by security monitors all around the ceiling. Their blindfolds removed, they saw that Raven and Warlock were no longer with them, and none wished for a reunion. Those two had been replaced with an officious woman who looked as if she had been carved from some massive stone block, dull gray uniform and all. She had a small clipboard in her hand and glanced at it, then up at them.
“You three have been consigned to the Melchior Penal Colony,” she told them unnecessarily. “These walls and tunnels are incredibly thick and solid; the only way out is the way you came in. From this point back, there is no place at which you are not under constant monitoring and observation. Ahead of this point is a large chamber divided into two sections. The red block of flats off to your right as you enter is Maximum Security. The dwellings there are comfortable and self-contained but soundproof and allow only one inmate to a dwelling. Those inside must stay there. Inside, there is not a single point, not a square millimeter, that is not constantly under both visual and audio observation by humans and computers. Nothing, not even human waste, goes out without inspection and analysis, and nothing comes in except through totally computer-controlled access ports. You will be able to see inside every one, for the open walls are forcefields, all individual, but so firm that not even sound can pass through, and visual is one-way only. Anyone can see in, but you see a blank wall. You do not want to be in Maximum Security.”
They accepted that at face value.
“The rest of the area is more communal. In a sense, it is a small town, although with rigid rules. We monitor the whole but not every specific thing. Rest assured, though, that we could pick you out of a crowd and eliminate you even in the most hidden corners, should we choose to do so. The dwellings there are larger and shared. Because we always know where you are when we want you, we have no limitations. You will be assigned a communal unit. If one or more of you moves elsewhere, it is not our problem. Everything used there is designed to degrade and is disposable. Clothing is not permitted. It is difficult to conceal a weapon or anything else if all are naked. You will draw everything that you need from the automated stores in the center area, as well as getting fed there. You may draw three meals a day that are coded to you, no more. These cannot be saved up. Eat when you like within this limitation. Cold water is always available from the central fountain. Questions so far?”
There were none.
“All right, then,” she continued. “We run on a twenty-five-hour schedule, which we have found more conducive to routine in this enclosed place. Everyone sleeps the same eight hours, marked by a bell sounding and then the lights going dim. You will be in a dwelling within ten minutes of that bell and before the lights go down permanently. Anyone out after that or making excessive noise after that will be severely punished. Anyone ill or injured should report or be reported to the medical kiosk. Someone will come and tend to you. Those are the only major rules. You will learn the rest down there from your fellow inmates. When we want you, we will come and get you. Violence, resistance to our authority, or anything we determine as troublemaking will get you into Maximum Security and move you up to the head of the list for laboratory experimentation. Many inmates are already veterans of experimentation. Look at them and remember the price. Now, there is just one more process, and you will enter. This will be your home from now until you die, so adjust to it and accept it. Go through that door now, one at a time. You may wait for your companions on the other side.”
There was a small chamber, dimly lit by a greenish glow, beyond the door. A technician’s voice said, “Step onto the little platform there and lean your whole face and body into the fabric stretched in front of it. Remain that way until I tell you differently.”
It was like a spidery thin but incredibly dense mesh. Hawks pressed into it as directed and felt a similar substance close behind him. A sudden very bright light flared all around him, and he closed his eyes, the afterimage remaining. He felt a sudden, intense, burning pain across his back and on his face as well. He almost cried out but controlled himself. He would show no weakness.
It was over quickly. The mesh fell away, and the technician ordered him to go forward and out the security door. Still a bit stunned and feeling some residual pain on his back and face, he looked around and saw his first glimpse of the true heart of the Middle Dark.
In the Hyiakutt religion there were many spirits and many levels of magic and mysticism. There was but one god, all-seeing, all-knowing, and all-powerful, the Creator, the Father Spirit in whose image humanity had been created. Below the Creator were two levels of spirits set to do His will and protect His domain: the spirits of nature, and then the least of spirits, those of His most complex creation, humanity.
There was, of course, an opposite force, which the Creator allowed because He had created man as an experiment, perhaps as a game, to amuse and interest Him but also to be more complex companions. The human spirit was the least, yet it could rise higher than the fixed spirits if it worshiped the Creator, respected His creations, understood that the Creator made and alone owned all things, and showed himself worthy in courage and honor to rise above the middle spirits. Without evil, without pain and temptation, humans would be as the middle spirits; defeating those things could make them worthy of the Creator’s company. For this reason the Dark had been formed and allowed to reign where it could. Humans were born into the Outer Darkness, subject to the forces of evil as well as good. By making their spirits shine with deeds, they could dispel it.
Against this were the spirits of the Middle Dark, those that corrupted both human spirits and nature, and below it the Inner Dark, the place from which all evil came and where One lived whose Hyiakutt name translated out roughly to Corruption. It was a formidable enemy, for it had to be, in order to test humans. Without a worthy foe, the struggle, too, was worthless.
Hawks felt he was in the domain of the Middle Dark, although he had little religious faith or feeling. Now he knew it was real, for here it was. If such diverse and disconnected cultures as those of the Hyiakutt and Dante could feel the same contest and see the same visions through their individual cultural filters, then it did exist. Now he understood the odd, subconscious bond he’d always felt between that ancient foreign poet and himself. Culture masked truth—but there could be only one truth.
When Cloud Dancer emerged, he saw on her what they had done to him. Her pretty face and coppery skin had been marked on the cheeks with a bright silvery design, a line that began pencil-thin under the eyes and broadened out into a solid curve that bent back in on itself and ended as tiny little tendrils or even flowers. The design seemed to drink in light; he was certain it would retain some and glow in the dark, perhaps for a very long time. When she touched his face, and he hers, their fingers felt only skin, yet the design seemed inset, permanent, almost like a nameplate set into a piece of furniture or machinery. It was actually rather pretty and not at all disfiguring in the usual sense, but both had the feeling that the thing would not wear off. Silent Woman’s identical markings were the most natural looking, although the shiny silver clashed with her muted reds, greens, blues, and oranges.
Hawks understood what it was for. One might impersonate someone in authority, perhaps steal clothing or the proper uniform; one might try all sorts of tricks, but one would never hide his or her face routinely without drawing attention. In the darkness of some of the tunnels, you would even glow in the dark, making a perfect target. He wouldn’t be at all surprised, he thought, if the tattoo contained some synthetic mineral that could be automatically tracked by sensors, probably specific and unique to each individual. That was how they could pick out and shoot a troublemaker even in a crowd. On their backs, between their shoulder blades, was a bar of the same silvery material, going almost from shoulder to shoulder and about five centimeters thick. Within it, in black, was embedded a long string of characters in a language even Hawks did not know, but it was clearly a prison file number and identifier. It looked somehow superfluous on the back of Silent Woman.
“These are the demon brands so that we shall be known everywhere,” Cloud Dancer noted. “Even should we leave here, we would carry their mark for all to see.”
He nodded. “That’s about it.” He turned and looked over the interior of the prison complex. “It is a grayer underworld than I had imagined.”
Cloud Dancer nodded grimly. “It is the worst of things. A place where all beauty and nature had been banished, all joy and all hope. A place without colors.”
The entire semicircle could be viewed from the entrance. Walls, floor, and ceiling were all gray. The natural rock was gray, and all else had been painted or manufactured to match it so that it all blended into a plain nothingness. The cells, or dwellings, or whatever they might be called, were along three sides from floor to ceiling, rising up at least four stories in a stepped design. They, too, were gray, although dull lights shone from each doorway. The only color was the flat and dull red of one block set off from the others to their right. The cells there had no doorways, just three-sided frames looking to the interiors, which were brightly lit, the very walls glowing with illumination. Each was a single room with cot, toilet, sink, and nothing else except, in most of them, a lone occupant either sitting silently or pacing.
Below the dwellings, the area continued to be stepped; the lower levels were broad and somewhat rough-hewn and were basically featureless. The concentric rings formed an eerie rock amphitheater without seats or ornamentation. In the center was a broad oval in which a number of cube-like buildings sat, all equally dull and gray.
There were people about; a rather large number, it seemed, some in the area of the central cubes but most just along the broad steps or wandering aimlessly about. The lighting was indirect, its source the rocky ceiling of the chamber, and though little could be made out of individual humans from where the newcomers stood, little reflective glints off backs and faces told them that everyone here had the mark.
A man approached them. It was impossible to guess his age, but he was thin and light of build. He was so fair of skin that the two women, who had never seen humans from northern Europe, at first thought he was a walking dead man. He had incredibly thick light blond hair flowing down almost to his waist but no facial hair as Hawks might have expected from one of this man’s race. His complexion was fairer than a baby’s, although in a number of places he had some ugly bruises that showed up particularly well on his light skin. His cheeks bore the same silver design as theirs; the bar on his back was masked by his hair.
“Hello,” the stranger said in a gentle low tenor. “My name is Hendrik van Dam, although most here just call me Blondy, particularly the Englishers and the others who speak it.” He had a mild but pleasant north European accent. “I was told to meet you and get you settled.” He paused for a moment. “English is all right, is it not? I was told—”
“No, English is fine,” Hawks responded. “It is the only common tongue we have. I am called Jonquathar, which means Runs With the Night Hawks. Mostly I am just called Hawks, although in some circles where English is required, I am also called Jon Nighthawk. These are my wives, Chaudipatu, or Cloud Dancer in English, and the painted one we call Masituchi, or Silent Woman, since she has no tongue to tell us how she was truly called.”
“You are of the Americas, I believe,” van Dam noted. “We get very few of your people here, although some are sent.” He sighed. “I would bid you welcome, only that seems a bit out of place.”
Hawks nodded understandingly. “That is very true.”
“I have a number for your assigned quarters, although we should go down to the shops first. You should eat something and relax a bit, then draw your bedding and supplies there before going up. I am afraid that seniority reigns here, so you are up top and off to the side. They are all really the same inside, so otherwise it does not matter. When you have nothing, the most trivial things become important, as you will see.”
Cloud Dancer looked over to her left as they descended a rough rock staircase and gasped. “That couple over there—are they making love right there?”
“Oh, yes,” van Dam replied casually. “You will see a lot of it, some of it quite passionate and some extremely nontraditional—some would say aberrant or abnormal.”
“But—everyone is just ignoring them!”
“We are given nothing here. We can possess nothing. There is no reading matter, nothing to use for art or to record, not even things for sport. You spend much time talking here, but eventually you get talked out. It looks big, but the community is actually quite small, although there’s some small turnover. There is some intimidation by the rougher sorts, but it is relatively mild here since they have no way of enforcing their will except through violence, and violence in here is strictly and severely punished. So you do what you can. You quickly lose all the usual social inhibitions here, and there are only so many footraces, wrist-wrestling contests, and the like you can do before you run dry. So you eat, you sleep, and you have whatever sort of sex you wish here. You cannot get pregnant, and if you were when you came in, you are not now. There is nothing here but eternal boredom, and even that pales after a while. Then you just sit and wait until you are called.”
“Called?” Hawks echoed. “By whom? For what?”
“Called by the Institute. Your mind, emotions, body, will—they play with all of them as they wish. We are their toys, you see. You will see some of their games here. At first you might be upset with seeing them or lose your appetite, but after a while it becomes just like that couple back there. You simply don’t think of them as odd or even unusual anymore. Even when you know they play with mind and body, cripple and contort, after a while you look forward to being called. Anything to relieve this. You will see.”
“How long have you been here?” Cloud Dancer asked the blond man.
“I truthfully do not know. You start to count the sleeps when you get here, but you lose count sooner or later, and after a while you don’t try to start again. Hair grows about six-tenths of a centimeter a month, and I have not cut mine. It was rather short when I arrived. Still, I have had a few sessions—brief, I think—at the Institute, so it is hard to say for sure.”
“At some point,” Cloud Dancer noted grimly, “we will all go mad.”
“Oh, even that is not permitted. They look for signs of it and pick it up quite well. They then pick you up, treat you, and you are not insane anymore. They make few slips. They catch it early on, when we haven’t even seen it ourselves.”
Hawks shivered. “And no one—tries to escape?”
“How? Through fifteen meters of solid rock with our fingernails and our teeth? Then what? To the vacuum of space? The only other way out is through that door you came in, then through a maze of tunnels with countless air locks, all monitored. Even if you got all the way, which no one ever has, there is an average of two ships a month in here, and they stay only long enough to do their business and go. A few hours at best. Access to the ships is strictly controlled. I heard once that someone did get loose in the Institute and took some important hostages. The computer security system ignored the hostages and got the inmate anyway. No, I know of only three ways out.”
“One, I suppose, is death,” Cloud Dancer said, making it sound not at all an unattractive idea.
“Yes. Another is when they finish with you or can no longer use you. Then they might turn you into a slave, an obedient slave for them in their own quarters. They have robots and all the comforts, but these are the kind of people who get a thrill out of having slaves to boss around and pamper their every whim. You can’t fake it, though. They make very sure of you over here before they recode you over there.”
“You said three ways,” Hawks noted.
“Yes. The rulers here are in many ways just like the ones we grew up under. If they decide you have something, some talent, some brilliance, that will enhance their own power and position, they may employ you at the Institute. It’s just as much a prison as here, but it is not boring.”
They approached the boxlike buildings in the center. A number of people were there, eating off plasticlike trays with a variety of utensils, all rather soft and pliant. All the buildings were automated and computer-controlled. One put one’s face into a depression to be scanned and identified. The food building delivered the food and whatever was needed to eat it, in portions matched to an individual’s physical needs. The tray and utensils were encoded with the user’s identification and were to be dropped in a waste disposal box available on the bottom three levels. No one could get any more of anything from the stores until everything was accounted for from last time. If a prisoner stubbornly kept an item, it began to decompose and give off a deliberately awful scent within a few hours.
Bedding was two sheets and a pillowcase, turned in daily before breakfast could be dispensed and replaced any time after the third meal. Some basic toiletries in very small amounts could also be picked up, and a new kit could be issued by turning in what was left of the old one. The newcomers ate, finding the food filling though even more tasteless than shipboard meals, then drew their meager supplies and followed van Dam all the way up to the top dwelling level. They would, Hawks thought, not lack for exercise.
The apartment, or cell, was spartan but functional. There were two bunk beds on either side of a rectangular room measuring about three by four meters. In the rear was a bare toilet, a sink with hot and cold water faucets and a small basin, a rack to hang the towels and washcloths, a small shelf for the lesser toiletries, and that was that. Van Dam told them that showers, with real water, were twice-weekly affairs and that they would be told when they were printed for a meal to go take one and then return to eat. The showers, in a chamber under Maximum Security, were fully monitored and could not be accessed except when ordered there. Anyone who refused to shower was denied food.
There was no door, although a forcefield came down during sleep period. Prisoners were always monitored and recorded while inside their rooms, van Dam warned, which was why everybody stayed outside as much as possible. Cloud Dancer went to the door and looked out at the grim chamber.
“I am surprised,” she said, “that no one has hurled themselves from here. It would be impossible to stop.”
“Easy,” the blond man responded. “Computers think a million times faster than people. They would snap on a forcefield that would catch you and hold you—in extreme pain, I might add—until somebody came and got you. Then you’d rate a trip to the hospital, and when you got back you’d be just the same, but you’d never think of doing that again. Believe me. I’ve seen it tried.” He sighed. “Well, that’s about it. The rest you’ll catch on to in the days ahead. I’ll show you how to make the bed and use the toilet, and that will be that. We’re never full, so this level isn’t very crowded. If you want to use any of the unoccupied rooms until they’re assigned, feel free. The only other assigned ones are some other newcomers. Been here about two weeks. They’re three down in apartment forty-two. Two sisters. Chinese, I believe. You might like them. They’re an interesting pair. Real bad scars, though, so be prepared. Not from here—they already had them.”
The blond man left and made his way slowly back down toward the center. The two women watched him go, wondering why he was in such a hurry to get anywhere in this place.
Hawks walked up between the two women and put his arms around them. “I’m very sorry I got you into this. This was all my own stupid fault.”
“We chose to keep the marriage and to follow you,” Cloud Dancer replied. “Now we will do as any Hyiakutt would do. We will survive, and we will wait.”
He gave a dry, humorless chuckle. “Wait? For what?”
“For opportunity. For whatever comes. Perhaps, even, for five golden rings.”