Charon: A Dragon at the Gate

CHAPTER THREE Orientation

After getting dressed, we were gathered around the two greeters in the small terminal.

“All right—listen up!” the man called out, his voice almost lost in the sound of the heavy rain hitting the roof of the building. “We’re going to leave here and go into town where we have set up temporary quarters for you. I strongly recommend that you follow us closely, since Charon is a world that can kill the newcomer in a minute. Mechanized transportation is not allowed in town, so well have to go in two coaches that are parked outside now. Don’t be startled at what’s pulling them, just get in the nearest one.”

“Got any umbrellas?” somebody called out The man and woman both smiled a bit but didn’t reply.

I became acutely aware of my physical disadvantage in the group. Everybody, male and female, was taller than I, and so I was forced to watch our hosts from a small break in the gathering that opened and closed. The whole thing was very frustrating.

“Come on!” the woman called to us. “Don’t run or rush—those sandals have fair traction, but on the slick pavement just outside they’ll slip on you.” With that both Charonites turned, and the man started leading us out, the woman bringing up the rear.

It wasn’t just bad outside, it was worse than I had imagined—incredibly hot, almost like a steam bath. The rain seemed to be pouring out of some giant faucet in the sky, so thickly was it coming down. The rigid awning to the street offered little protection thanks to a hot wind, and we were an soaked in moments. Still, the ugly climate wasn’t the real shock—it was what waited for us at the curb.

Two huge wheeled coaches made entirely out of what appeared to be wood, were there: pulling each of them was a pair of monster lizards, each almost four meters tall. Well, they weren’t quite lizards, but that was the closest you could come. They were bipedal, standing on enormous, muscular legs, balancing themselves by use of a long, thick tail. Their saurian like heads, with unblinking eyes of burning red, were not only enormous but looked full of row after row of sharp teeth. Two small arms ended in hand like appendages now flexed in apparent anticipation—or boredom. Those hands, smaller versions of the enormous feet, were composed of three, long Jointed fingers connected by webbing that made them look like giant leaves. The fingers ended in sucker like tips. The splayed hand and foot was, as I later learned, a feature of many of the animals of Charon. Instead of having reptilian scales, the great creatures were smooth-skinned, and colored a uniform and ridiculous-looking perfect baby blue.

Each wore an elaborate looking bridle, with a network of reins rivaling a marionette’s strings in number and complexity, that stretched back into a raised driver compartment above the coach proper. The driving compartment was completely enclosed, and included a windscreen with a huge windscreen wiper.

I jumped into the nearest coach, almost slipping on the smooth paving despite the warning—that rain was so fierce it almost hurt—and found myself jammed in with five other prisoners and the male Charonite. The coach was quite comfortable, with soft, padded upholstery but it would have been a lot more comfortable with two less people.

After closing and locking the door, our coach, the lead one, started off with a strong jerk. The ride was not at all comfortable; extremely hard and bumpy all the way, with the coach lurching this way and that, more like a ship at sea in a storm than basic ground transportation. I saw the Charonite looking at us with some amusement, probably wondering if any of us were going to get seasick. “Don’t worry, it’s not a long trip. Sorry about this, but it’s considered deluxe transportation here on Charon.”

’This ain’t Lilith—machines operate there,” a big man sitting next to him grumbled. “How come all this primitive shit?”

“Some machines operate here, when they are permitted to,” the native responded somewhat enigmatically. “Fact is, most of this misery is a sort of compromise. Machinery’s so easy to foul it isn’t worth a damn here anyway, so we go with what we can. For the most part though, it’s this bad or worse. Better get used to losing a couple of thousand years, “cause that’s what you just did.”

“Damn foolishness,” the big man grumped, but the rest of us remained silent, either because we didn’t know enough or out of real depression.

Within five minutes the coach rolled to a stop with a jerk even worse than the start. I thought to myself that these vehicles could use seat belts more than the space shuttles, but said nothing. My situation was still too new and I was far too green, not to mention soaked and perspiring from the heat.

It was a relief when the door was opened, since at least it let in a breeze with the ram. The Charonite emerged and stood there, almost oblivious to the rain, helping us all down and pointing to a nearby door, which we made for. Once inside that door we were all dripping wet again and a little dazed, but after a half a minute or so I got my bearings and was able to look around.

When they said the place was primitive they weren’t kidding. The buildings seemed to be made mostly of various kinds of native wood, along with other plants of the area. They were well-crafted but very utilitarian, that was for sure. Along the walk of polished mosaic in front of the buildings on this side of the street, were what appeared to be wick-lamps, burning oil of some kind magnified through polished glass. The reason they didn’t fall victim to the rain was ingenious: between the walk and the street a wall of some glassy substance ran the length of the street and had a roof attached to the roofs of the buildings themselves. Although there was some seepage through cracks in the walk, it was pretty well watertight—a clever idea. There was also some airflow, which felt oddly chilling, although I couldn’t figure out where it came from.

Our host, as soaked as we, examined us with a sour smile, and I knew we probably looked worse than he did.

The second coach arrived shortly after, and the rest of our party joined us and went through the same drying out—not that we were dry by any means.

“It doesn’t rain like this all the time, does it?” I asked the native.

He laughed. “No, not like this. Usually it’s no more than an hour or two, but in early spring and late fall the rain sometimes lasts two, three days at a clip, dumping up to three centimeters per hour.” He paused a moment for that to sink in, then added, “We do have a good drainage system.”

They’d better, I thought, more amazed than anything else. Three days of such a downpour at that rate would come to almost two meters of water.

“What season is it now?” someone asked sourly.

The middle of spring,” our guide responded. “It’s gonna be getting hot soon.” Unfortunately he didn’t say it like he was joking.

The group was led into the nearest building, which proved to be—well, rustic. It was composed of logs of some kind, including log bracing for the log ceiling, which was very high. There were wicker like chairs around, some tables, and very little else. The building was also lit by those basic lamps, and they did a very good job I had to admit, despite the slight flickering that took some getting used to. The floor was carpeted with a rubbery-feeling tile like substance with an elaborate grooved design—to allow water run-off, I supposed. Still, if this place didn’t flood it must be well designed indeed.

Groaning, we sank into the chairs, feeling as if we’d put in a full day already despite the fact that we had actually done very little. The tension was beginning to wear off, producing a general lethargy.

“This is normally the lobby of the town’s hotel,” the woman told us. “We requisitioned it for a few days so that you could get acclimated. We reserved the top floor rooms for you—although I’m afraid you’ll have to share two to a room for the most part. We need the lower floor for regular guests, and they’re cramped as it is. The guests and townspeople will not come in here while we are using it, and for the first stages of orientation we’ll take all our meals here as well. I would recommend that, pending our series of talks, you avoid any of the townspeople you might meet in the lavatory or on the stairs. Don’t be mean, just don’t strike up any conversations or get into any arguments. Most of them are natives here and won’t understand your lack of familiarity with Charon and it’s no use getting into trouble before you know what you’re getting into.”

Several of us nodded in agreement on that. “What about getting out of these wet clothes?” I asked.

“We all have wet clothes,” she replied. “Well try and get some dry ones for you as soon as we have your sizes down, but for now you’ll have to make do with the ones you have.”

A pretty young woman in our party shivered slightly and looked around. “Is it my imagination or is cold air blowing in here?”

“It’s not really all that cold,” the man told her. “But, yes, cooler air is circulated through a system of pipes that blows cool air from below ground, where there are natural underground river caverns, and some man-made ones as well. The blower system is powered by windmills located on top of the buildings, and it keeps us from frying or strangling in stagnant air.”

Pretty ingenious, I had to admit, although I couldn’t help wondering why the ban on machinery. The spaceport terminal was tiny, it was true, but it was quite modern, electrically powered and air-conditioned, all the rest. Technology then wasn’t so much impossible on Charon as it was banned. By whom? Matuze? No, she hadn’t been in power long enough to produce this sort of thing. This town and the culture reflected by the male native was long-term. By the Lord of Cerberus, that” was for sure—perhaps long, long ago. That made some sense if the ruling could be enforced on a planetary scale. If only the Lord of Cerberus and those he or she designated had access to technology and the training to use it, they would be assured of absolute control.

“We’ll let you go to your rooms first for a while,” the woman was saving. “There are towels and such there, and you can get fairly dried out. We also have robes there, so if you want to change into those you’ll probably be more comfortable. Top floor, pick your own rooms and roommates, and meet us back down here in—say, an hour for food. I know you don’t have watches, but we’ll make sure you get called.”

We made our way to the rear of the lobby area and discovered an alcove in the back with a spiral wooden staircase. From the other side of the alcove, beyond two closed wooden doors, came the smells of food cooking and people talking loudly. The bar? The restaurant? Well, it didn’t matter—yet.

I hung back. I had decided the easiest way to guarantee either that I’d be alone in a room or at least get a random shot at it was to be last, there being an odd number of us.

No such luck on the single, though. The big, gruff man who had made all the sour comments along the way staked out a single and nobody seemed inclined to argue with him. Everybody else, including two of the women, paired off; and by the time I reached the top of the stairs only one person remained—the pretty young woman who had asked about the air system downstairs. I saw her down at the end of the hall looking slightly worried and more than a little confused. She cautiously opened the last door on the right and looked inside then turned back to see me approaching. I could tell by her expression that she wasn’t thrilled by the situation.

“Looks like we’re stuck together,” I noted.

She thought a moment, then sighed. “What the hell—what does it matter, anyway?”

“Thanks a lot,” I responded sourly and walked into the room. It was surprisingly spacious and contained two large comfortable beds, mattresses and all, some closet space and a sink with a cold water tap. I was surprised at that, having expected to have to go down to a well someplace. The beds were not made, but clean linen was folded at the foot of each along with washcloths and towels and, as promised, a robe each.

I saw her hesitating, a little nervous, and I sympathized. “Look, if I’m offending your morals I’ll step into the closet. Somebody my size could practically live in there.”

“No, no, that’s not necessary. After all, we were all naked on the shuttle coming in.”

I nodded, relaxed a little, and peeled off the wet clothes and stuck them on the towel rack to dry. I then took the towel and dried myself as best I could, particularly my hair, which was a tangled mess, then tried the robe. As I suspected, it was quite a bit large for me. So much for standardization. Still, I decided I could manage in it without breaking my neck.

During this time she just stood there, watching me. I began to wonder if she knew who her roommate was. “Something wrong?” I asked her.

For a moment she said nothing, not even acknowledging my comment or existence. I was beginning to suspect I had somebody really ill but she finally snapped out of it and looked at me.

“I—I’m sorry, but it’s been hard for me. I feel like this is all an ugly dream, that I’ll wake up from it sometime.”

I nodded sympathetically. “I know what you mean. But you can’t let it get to you. You have to figure that you’re alive, and you’re still you and not some psych’s dream, and that you’ve got a whole new start in a whole new life. It isn’t as bad as all that.” But, of course, it was. She was from the civilized worlds and probably had never even seen a frontier settlement. Her world, a world she not only had loved but had taken entirely for granted, was now totally and irrevocably gone.

Come to think of it, so was mine.

She walked over and sat on the edge of her bed. “Oh, what’s the use? It seems to me that being dead would be better than this.”

“No, death is never better than life. Besides, you have to consider that you’re really pretty special to the Confederacy. There’s only eleven of us out of the—what? Hundreds?—convicted at the same time. They saw something in us that they didn’t want to lose. In a sense, they’re saying we’re better than almost all the people in the Confederacy.”

“Different, anyway,” she responded. “I don’t know. I just don’t. Spending the rest of my life in this rotten place.” She looked me straight in the eye. “What makes you so special? What did you do to get here?”

Well, here it was—acid test early on. I decided to take a very mild gamble, but first a proper priming. “You know you aren’t supposed to ask that.”

She was beginning to relax a little now, and moved to get rid of her own wet clothes. “Something you’re ashamed of?” she asked. “Funny. I never thought it mattered.”

“It doesn’t matter to you?”

She thought a moment as she dried her hair. “No, not really. I’m Zala Embuay, by the way.”

“Park Lacoch,” I responded, tensing a bit to see if it got any reaction. He—I—was pretty damned notorious.

She let it pass without a glimmer of recognition. Well, that was something, anyway.

“Well, Park Lacoch, weren’t you some sort of criminal?”

“Weren’t we all?”

She shook her head. “No, not me. Fm different. I may be the only person ever sent to the Warden Diamond because I was an innocent victim.”

I was finding it hard to take her seriously. “How’s that?”

She nodded seriously. “You’ve never heard of the Triana family?”

It was my turn to betray ignorance. “Nope.”

“Well, the Trianas are the ranking political family on Takanna. Ever been there?”

“No, can’t say I have,” I admitted.

“Well, you know at least what it’s like to be a ranking political family, don’t you?”

You bet I did—but Lacoch would have been a little more removed. “I understand it, although I’m a frontier man myself. I’ve been to many of the civilized worlds but I’ve never actually lived on one.”

“That’s what I mean. You’re much better equipped for someplace like this.”

“The frontier’s not as wild and primitive as you think,” I told her. “In comparison to the civilized worlds, yes, but it’s nothing at all like this. Believe me, our backgrounds may be very different but they’re much more alike than either of us is to the people who were born here.”

I’m not sure she accepted that truism, but she let it pass. “Well, anyway, I was raised in a government house, had a happy childhood and was being prepared for an administrative slot. Everything was going right when all of a sudden, the Security Service came in one day and arrested my designated mother and me.”

I understood what she meant by that. All people of the civilized world were born in vitro, perfect products of genetic engineering, pre-designed and predestined for their lives and careers. Each career on a civilized world was a Family, and when children were five they were given to a designated member of that Family unit to be raised and educated. “What was the charge?” I asked her, really interested now. I wondered whose territory Takanna was in.

“Well, they charged her with unauthorized genetic manipulation,” she told me. “They claimed I was a special product—product!—illegally created and born.”

I sat up, all ears. This was interesting. “You look perfectly normal to me,” I assured her. “Just what were you supposed to be that you weren’t supposed to be?”

“That’s just it! They wouldn’t tell me! They said it would be better that I didn’t know, and maybe if I didn’t the truth wouldn’t make any difference. That’s what’s so frustrating about it all. How would you like to be told one day that you’re a freak, but not told how or in what way?”

“And you haven’t a clue? Your mother never indicated anything?”

“Nothing. I’ve searched and searched my whole childhood, and I haven’t come up with anything that anyone found odd or unusual. I do admit I found the whole business of administration pretty boring, but a lot of it is boring. And I never saw her after the arrest, so I never got a chance to talk to anybody else who might know and would tell me.” “And for that they shipped you here?”

She nodded. “They told me it was for my own good; that I’d do all right here, that I could never fit into the civilized worlds. Just like that, I’m a convicted criminal—and here I am.”

I studied her face and manner as she spoke and came to a conclusion. The tale was pretty bizarre, but it had a ring of truth to it. It was just the kind of thing the Confederacy would do. It would be interesting to know why she couldn’t have been re-cultured or simply shifted elsewhere. There was no such thing as a criminal gene, of course, but there were hormonal and enzyme causes for a large number of physical and mental tendencies, from violence to anger to schizophrenia. If her story rang true all the way, it meant I might be sharing a room with a ticking bomb. Still, if she ever learned the complete truth about Park Lacoch she might think the same thing—and be wrong.

“Well, if it’s any comfort to you, I’m something of a freak myself, as you can see,” I told her. “You get cases like me out on the frontier, where there’s all sorts of complications in the different planetary conditions—radiation, you name it—and most births are the old-fashioned kind, of mother and father. By ‘like me’ I don’t really mean exactly like me, just—well, unusual.”

“You do look—well, unusual,” she said cautiously. “I mean, most of the frontier people seem to be so big and hairy.”

I chuckled. “Well, not quite, but my small size is only part of it. Tell me, just seeing me in the clothes and now, what do I look like? How old would you say I was?”

She thought a moment. “Well, I know you’re a lot older just by the way you talk, but, well, to be honest, you look like… well…”

“I look like a ten-year-old girl, right?”

She sighed. “Well, yeah. But I know you aren’t. Even your voice is kinda, well, in between, though.”

That was news. My voice sounded like a sharp but definite tenor to me. [I had the advantage of all that information Krega had fed into my fanny, and I was beginning to understand Park Lacoch a little more.

“Well, I’m twenty-seven,” I told her, “and I’ve looked this way since I was twelve. Puberty brought me pubic hair, a slightly deeper voice, and that was it. It wasn’t until I was sixteen, though, that my folks were able to get me to a really good meditech. They found out that I was a mutation, a real freak. A hermaphrodite, they called it”

“A—you mean you’re both sexes?”

“No, not really. I’m a man, but I’m probably the only man you’ll ever meet who’s a man entirely by choice. Inside I have the makings of both, but the psychs and meditechs struck a balance, and that’s the way I’ll stay—because I wanted it. They could have adjusted the other way and, with a minimum amount of surgery, I’d have wound up female.” Poor Lacoch, I’d reflected more than once. Confused totally about his sexual identity, hung up in a limbo not of his own making, permanently small and girlish. No wonder he went nuts. The file said he even masqueraded as a young girl to lure his victims away. I wondered if he’d have been different, perhaps better off, if he’d chosen to be female instead—but he hadn’t, and while seventeen victims was a terrible price, here and now, in his body, I was damned glad to be a man.

“Then, in a way you and I are alike,” Zala said, fascinated. “We’re both genetic freaks. The only difference is, you know what’s wrong. I wish I did.”

I nodded. “Maybe you will now. Or maybe this Warden organism will just wipe out the problem. It’s supposed to do that.”

The idea sobered her a bit “I’d almost forgotten about that Funny, I don’t feel… well… infected.”

“Neither do I, but we are. Bet on it”

Then without warning, she returned to the original conversation. “Ah, Park?”

“Uh-huh?”

“What did you do to get here?”

I sighed. “What I did I won’t do again,” I told her. “It was a terrible sickness, Zala—mental illness that came from a lot of things, including my physical condition. The psychs cured me of that, though, and I’ve never been more sane in my life. That alone is really worth the price. I was in real hell, Zala, back home. I may be a prisoner here, but I’m free for the first time in my life. I was a district administrator, by the way, so we do have a little more in common.”

She wasn’t buying the stall. “Park, why won’t you tell me what you did?”

I sighed. “Because if I did you wouldn’t get a good night’s sleep while we were together, that’s why.”

She thought for a moment. “You… killed somebody, didn’t you?”

I nodded.

“A woman?”

Again I just nodded.

She hesitated. “More than one?”

Again I could only nod and wish this conversation hadn’t come up.

“A lot?”

I sighed and sat back up on my bed. “Look, let’s stop playing games. I really don’t want to remember that part of myself. It’s like I was somebody else, Zala. It was a terrible, terrible madness, a sickness. Looking back on it makes me more nauseated than people who remember it or were there. I swear to you, though, that they have to terminate anybody they can’t cure of such madness, and the fact that I’m here proves that I’m cured. They could have sent me back on the streets with perfect confidence and in perfect safety, but my case was so notorious and I’m so physically distinctive that I would have been lynched, or worse. The Diamond was the only way out for me and, believe it or not, I’m grateful For the first time I can be a whole human being—and that means a lot to me, even here on this pesthole.”

She smiled. “Then I’m your acid test, because I don’t want to be here. If you’re lying, and you kill me, well, at least it’ll be over. And if you’re telling the truth, both of us will know it and maybe, together, we can survive this place.”

“Sounds fair to me,” I told her sincerely. A temporary alliance, anyway. I did have a woman left to kill, but it wasn’t Zala Embuay.

They knocked on our doors shortly after that, and we trooped downstairs again like a convention of bathhouse enthusiasts. I had some trouble with the robe on the stairs, but I managed to keep from tripping.

Our hosts, in fresh black clothes of the same kind we’d been issued, but looking dry and prim, were waiting for us. In the center of the lobby area a table had been set with a lot of steaming dishes on it, and eleven place settings.

The food was all natural, which was bizarre enough, but the tastes and textures were also rather odd. I won’t go into a catalogue of the meal, but I had the feeling that, with the stew anyway, we really didn’t want to know what was in it For the six civilized-worlds prisoners, Zala included, it was probably the first non-synthetic, non-computer-balanced and prepared meal they had ever had, and they showed it. The rest of us rude frontiersmen and women ate with gusto. As I said, I really didn’t want to know what the stuff was, but it was good and highly but delicately spiced. At least the food was going to be decent here.

Our native guides obviously had either, already eaten or would eat later. They busied themselves setting up a large chart stand and adjusting lights and the like until we were through.

Eating mostly in silence but feeling for the first time a lot more human, we finally finished and waited anxiously on our hosts.

The man began. “I am Garal,” he introduced himself, “and this is Tiliar. We’ve been assigned this job by the Honuth District Supervisor, acting for and at the command of the planetary government. We are both former prisoners ourselves, so we know what you’re going through. Let’s start out by saying that you must have fears and odd superstitions about the Warden Diamond, and we want to assure you that those fears have no. basis. You’re not going to get sick—in fact, you will most likely not notice any real difference between yourselves before and yourselves here. It is true, though, that your bodies are even now altering in minute and undetectable ways. Within a few days you and the Warden organism will reach a state of what we like to call ‘alliance.’ Let me emphasize that you are not sick. In fact, in the five years I’ve been here I’ve never been sick, not once. The Wardens are far more effective than any body defense in killing off viruses and any other disease organisms you might have brought with you—the ones native here are too alien to do you any harm—as well as infection and a host of other ills. You can appreciate the fact that, in a climate like this, nobody ever gets a cold.”

That brought a small chuckle from us, but it was an important aspect of this world. Back in the civilized worlds people never got sick much either, but that was due to the immediate access to the best medical facilities. Here, if Garal was to be believed, doctors and the like were simply not necessary.

“Some of you may find a little discomfort in one or two areas,” Tiliar put in, “because you aren’t healthy enough. Anyone who has chipped or lost a tooth, for example, may find it growing back, which can be an irritating thing. Anyone who has vision problems might experience some dizziness or slight headaches as whatever problems you had are corrected. The Warden organism doesn’t just keep you from getting worse, it makes you better. And it keeps you that way. Cuts heal quickly and rarely leave a scar; even whole limbs are often regenerated if lost”

“You make it sound like we’re immortal,” the big prisoner with the single room commented.

“No, not immortal,” she replied. “Fatal wounds Outside are fatal wounds here. The Wardens use your own body’s natural abilities to keep you healthy and whole, but if your body can’t fix it, well, neither can they. However, more people on Charon die from external causes than natural causes. With the Warden ability to repair and even replace brain cells, your potential lifespan in a healthy body is longer than in the civilized worlds.”

Most of those at the table, Zala included, heard only the second part of that statement and seemed pleased. I was much more interested in the implication that a lot of people died here from unnatural causes. I couldn’t forget the teeth on those baby blue lizards.

Our guides followed up with a general rundown of the planet, much of which I already knew. It was interesting in the context of the torrential rams to discover that there were a few deserts on the central continent, often the only places where blue sky was seen for more than brief periods. Water, it seemed, was feast or famine on Charon—mostly feast. But in those dry areas it might rain once a century. Additionally, there were violent storms, tabarwinds they were called, that were quick and deadly and could strike out of nowhere with tremendous lightning charges and winds of over 160 kilometers per hour. Much of the weather, including these storms, could not be accurately predicted since a layer in the upper atmosphere had an odd field of electrically charged particles that fouled most conventional radars, infrared cameras, and the like, while artificial electrical fields on the ground attracted the full fury of tabarwinds. I began to see a practical reason why they kept technology at a minimum level. The spaceport was immediately shut down at the first sign of such tabarwinds, and, even so, it had been hit and destroyed twice in the memory of these two people. The shuttle had special protection against many of these electrical fields, but was not totally immune.

As with all the Warden worlds, a “research” space station was maintained in orbit well outside the range of any nasty stuff, but it was closed to unauthorized personnel. It was an interesting fact that on those space stations the Warden organism would infect anyone that it came into contact with, but would leave all the inorganic material alone. Its full properties were operative only on one of the planets, and then only on people affected with the same breed of organism.

That brought us to what we really wanted to know. “In addition to the total lack of technological comforts,” Garal told us, “there is a by-product of the Warden affiliation that is, well, hard to accept even after you’ve seen it. There’s a different by-product on each of the four Diamond worlds, all relating to the fact that the tiny Wardens are, somehow, in some sort of contact or communication with one another. On Lilith, for example, some people have the power literally to move, build, or destroy mountains with a thought, by telling their Wardens to give orders to other Wardens in the rocks, trees, other people, you name it. But the degree of power an individual has is arbitrary. On Cerberus this communication is so bizarre that people can literally exchange minds with each other—and it’s so universal that they often do so without meaning to. No control. On Medusa, the Warden communication is so limited that it’s really only within one’s own body, and causes rapid and involuntary shape-changing to meet whatever environment the person finds him or herself in. Here—well, things are a bit different but still related.”

We were all silent now, raptly intent on the speaker. Here was the heart of the Charon experience—what we would become.

“As on Lilith, we have a certain power over objects and people,” Tiliar jumped in, taking up the talk. “As on Cerberus, it is a mental ability rather than a physical one, and mind-to-mind contact is possible. As on Medusa, physical change is possible, but in a different sense. And, while these powers are not arbitrary—that is, everyone has these abilities—it takes great training and discipline to be able to use them properly, while those with the training and control can use them on you. That’s why we cautioned you to avoid the locals for a while.” She paused for a moment, carefully considering her words.

“You see,” she continued after a moment, “Charon is a world out of children’s stories and fairy tales. It is a world where magic works, where sores—sorcerers and their spells have devastating effects. And yet it is a world where none of the laws of science are violated.”

This was a hard concept to digest, and several of our company muttered and shook their heads.

“I know, I know, it’s hard to accept,” Garal said after a while, “but the more hard-headed of you will quickly grasp the reality. Let me ask you first how you know you’re here. How do you know this place looks like this place, that you look like you and we like us? How do you know it’s raining?”

“We got wet,” somebody mumbled, and we all laughed.

“All right, but how do you know you got wet? You—your personality, your memories, the thinking part of you—are really all locked up in the cerebellum and cerebral cortex. Your brain is the only real you that you know—and the brain is totally encased in your skull. It has no way of directly knowing what’s going on at all—it doesn’t even have pain centers. Every single thing you know comes to you, your brain, by remote sensors. Vision. Smell. Taste. Touch. Sound. The five senses. Each transmits information to the brain, and supports the others to tell the brain what’s going on. But what if those five senses were wrong. There are methods of torture—and a lot of psych work, which may be the same thing—that capitalize on this. Sending you false information. There is, in fact, an ancient human religion called voodoo—that might explain it”

“A practitioner of voodoo,” Tiliar explained, picking up the lecture, “took samples of your fingernails, hair, even shit, and put it on a doll. Then whatever that magician-priest did to the doll was supposed to happen to you. And why has voodoo really survived the space age? Because it works.”

“Aw, c’mon,” the big man scoffed.

She nodded seriously. “Yes,^ it works. But only under two conditions. First, the intended victim must believe that the priest has this power. It doesn’t even have to be strong belief, just a subconscious fear that maybe it does work. And second, the intended victim must be made aware that he or she is being hexed. People have been crippled, physically and mentally, and even killed by this method, as long as those two conditions are met. And it’s easier than you think. Even the most rational-minded have, deep down, a streak of superstition or doubt about unknown powers. The voodoo priests are master psychs, and every visible success reinforces the belief in their powers among others.”

“Of course the priest doesn’t really do anything,” Garal noted. “They just establish the psychological conditions and you do it to yourself. In a sense, you might say that voodoo is a magic force that violates no known scientific laws.”

“You mean this is a voodoo world?” I asked jokingly.

They did not think me at all funny. “In a sense, yes,” the man replied. “But here you can eliminate the variables completely and go a lot further. If you’ll remember, I said that the Warden organisms can communicate, so to speak, with one another, even outside the body they inhabit. But it’s a passive thing. They communicate, but they don’t actually say anything. But, because they are a part of you, they can talk to you as well—and you to them. That’s the trick. How well you can master communication between your own Wardens and others. In a sense, Charon is the ultimate voodoo world where belief and preparation are not really necessary.”

Tiliar thought a moment. “Look, let’s put it this way. Suppose some powerful person decided to turn you into a uhar—one of those big blue things that pulled the coaches. If he has the power, the training, and the self-control, he contacts the Wardens in your mind through his Wardens. He sends out a message—you are a uhar. Not being trained, or not possessing the mental control needed, or any combination of these things, you have no defense, no way to tell your own Wardens that they are receiving false data. So this idea, that you are a uhar, gets pounded into your brain, much like a forced hypnoprobe. Your senses are fooled, all the information coming into the brain now confirms that you are a four-meter-tall blue lizard—and, from your point of view, you are.”

I saw Zala shiver slightly and felt some perspective was needed. “So all we are dealing with is a powerful form of hypnotism, the same kind we can achieve with machines, only we’ve dispensed with them to make the contact mind to mind.”

“Sort of,” Tiliar agreed. “But it doesn’t stop there. Remember, your Wardens are in constant communication with all the other Wardens. Your own perceptions and self-image are ‘broadcasting,’ so to speak, to everyone else. What this means is that if you think you’re a uhar, well then, so will everybody else. Even uhar win perceive you as uhar, since they, too, are Warden affiliated. Every single thing will act as if the command, or spell, is real. And since we depend on our senses for all our information, what we and everybody else perceive as real will be real. The more training and self-control you have in this ability, the more protected you will be and the more vulnerable everyone else will be. It’s that simple.”

“Needless to say, the better you are at it, the higher you will rise in Charon society,” Garal added.

Tm not sure any of us really believed what we were being told, but we kept an open mind as it was information on how the place operated. Before I believed in any magic though, I’d have to see it demonstrated myself.

If this ability took training, it was worth going after. “Just how do we get the training needed to develop this?” I asked our hosts.

“Maybe you do, maybe you don’t,” Garal replied. “First of all, there’s that self-control, a certain mental ability and attitude-set that you just can’t teach. The fact is, most people can’t handle the discipline involved, or can only handle it to a degree. Needless to say, it’s also not in the best interests of the powers-that-be for everyone to develop this ability, even if they could. It is this way all over. There are few wolves and many sheep, yet the wolf rules the sheep. There are masses of people, nearly countless people, in the Confederacy, yet their entire lives, from their genetic makeup to jobs, location, even how long they will live, are in the hands of a very few. Please don’t expect Charon to be any different.”

That we could all understand at least. There was a government here, a government headed by the worst kind of power-mad politicians and super-crooks, and they had to preside over a society that was at least five percent as crooked and nasty as they were, or the children and grandchildren of the same sort. Such a government would not willingly share any of its power, nor dare to make it easily available. Still, I reflected, my own self-discipline and mental training and abilities were engineered to be way above the norm, and what an Aeolia Matuze and lesser lights could do, I most certainly could do as well. And there was always somebody ready to beat the system. Unofficial training would be around someplace—if it could be found, and if its price could be met.

In a way I suspected this might be something of a test We had come to Charon with nothing but our wits; those who could secure the method and means for training and its protection and chance for upward mobility would do so. The rest would join the masses in the endless pool of eternal victims. That was, I felt sure, the challenge they were issuing us here.

Back in our room, Zala and I talked over what we’d been told the first day.

“Do you think it’s-for real?” she wanted to know. “Magic, hexes, voodoo—it all sounds so ridiculous!”

“Ridiculous perhaps, when put in that context, but that’s the context of science. Look, they’re not saying that anybody on Charon can do anything that a good psych with a battery of mechanical devices couldn’t do. Believe me, I know.” And I did know—but not from being on the wrong end of them as she believed.

“Yes, but that’s with machines and experts…”

“Machines, yes,” I agreed, “but don’t kid yourself that the experts are any less expert here than back there. There are even psychs sent here—they’re the most imaginative people you can find, but they go out of their heads more often than those in any other job. No, the only difference here is that everybody^ carrying his own psych machine around inside of him—an organic machine, but still a gadget, a device.”

She shivered. “What’s wrong?” I asked her.

“Well, it’s what you said. Psychs are the people most likely to go nuts, right? I guess it’s because they not only get involved in hundreds of messed-up people’s minds, but then: machines give them a god complex.”

“That’s pretty fair,” I agreed.

“Well, what you just said is that we’re on a world of psychs and everybody is under their machines and can’t get disconnected. I mean, if a psych goes nuts back home, there are other psychs and computer monitors and all the rest to catch it, pull the plug, and get him out of you, right?”

I nodded.

“But, Park—who’s the monitor here? Who’s around to pull the plug on these people?”

And that, of course, was the real problem. Loose in a Bedlam with the psychs crazier than the patients, and nobody to pull the plug—and no plug to be pulled. Nobody except… me.

It hadn’t been a very trying day, but the release of tension added to the fact that none of us had gotten any real exercise for weeks, made it pretty easy to turn in fast. I had a little trouble figuring out how to extinguish the oil lamp in the room without burning myself, but I finally discovered the way the globe was latched. A tiny little cup on a long handle hanging next to the towel rack proved the easiest way to extinguish the light. It was not until days later that I found out that this was exactly what the little cuplike thing was for.

Despite my near exhaustion, I couldn’t fall asleep right away. I kept thinking about Charon and the challenge it posed. Obviously I could do nothing until I was able to experience this pseudo-magic first hand and get a measure of what I was up against and what I had to learn. After that I’d have to get a job, I supposed, to develop some local contacts, to find out what I needed to know about training and rogue magicians. I would be totally ineffective until I had enough experience and expert instruction to hold my own on this crazy planet. It was entirely possible—likely, in fact—that the top politicians like Matuze weren’t the top powers in magic here. I suspected the skills involved were quite different. But she would be flanked and guarded by the absolute tops, that was for sure; and the only way to her would be right through them. As a top agent, I had no doubt that I could eventually master the art enough to get by the best, but I was pragmatic enough not to think I could get through all of them single-handedly. No, I would need help—local help. The one thing I could be certain of was that a system like this would breed a whole raft of enemies for Matuze, and they’d all be either as criminal or as psychotic as they come—or both. The trick was to find them and organize them.

“Park?” Her voice came to me in the darkness, through the sound of the omnipresent rain on the roof.

“Yes, Zala?”

“Can I… would you mind if I got into your bed? Just for a while?”

I grinned in the dark. “Not afraid I’ll strangle you or something.”

She got up and walked over, almost stumbling, and sat on the edge of my bed. “No, I don’t think so. If I really ever thought so I wouldn’t have stayed in here a minute.” She crawled into bed with me and snuggled close. It felt good, oddly comforting, but also a little disconcerting. I wasn’t used to women that much larger than I was. Well, I’d better get used to it.

“What makes you so sure about me?” I teased, whispering. Still, it was reassuring to have the uncertainty settled so quickly.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she replied. “I’ve always been able to tell things about people.”

“Things? Like what?”

“Oh, like the fact that Tiliar and Garal are a couple of hoods who don’t really give a damn about us. Or that that big son of a bitch would enjoy breaking people in two just for fun.”

“And what can you tell about me?”

“I—I’m not sure. There’s a hardness in you somewhere, that’s for sure, but you’re no psycho. It’s almost as if, well, if I didn’t know it was impossible I’d say you weren’t Park Lacoch at all but somebody very different, somebody who didn’t belong in t at body at all.”

Her observations was dead on, and my respect for her intuitive abilities, if that’s what it was, went up a hundred notches. Still, a smooth, glib cover was called for.

“In a way you’re right,” I told her carefully. “I’m not the same man I was all my life. Mentally, I’m the man I should have been all along. I owe them at least that much.

The old Lacoch’s dead and gone, never to return. He was executed in the psych rooms with my full and hearty cooperation.” That was true enough, although not in the way it sounded.

“Do you still have any doubts about what you are?” she asked. “I mean, ever think of maybe having the operation?”

I laughed. “Not anymore,” I told her, and proved it, both to her and to my own satisfaction.