Flea Powder

Illustration by Richard Crist

Flesh bodies make me itch.

Not that I have anything against a temporary in a natural org, mind you. I can appreciate a soft breeze, or a starfall, or a groupsie as well as the next cyb. Nonetheless, flesh bodies make me itch.

I was encybbed in a real beauty, a light-class Star-Dancer, over ten to the thirteenth Hydrogen one radii of sleek engineering, hottest legs available, double-hundred interface and every one connected, frolicking along and filling my cargo holds with some of the sweetest rares going when the call came.

I ignored it.

But whoever it was was stubborn, and had my private address code. It’s hard to keep ignoring a direct-to-brain input that can’t be turned off and seems as loud as a meteor crashing into a planet not quite on top of a natural ear. So I acknowledged.

Jolly, it’s about time, accused the mind that touched mine. I knew who it was, of course; minds are totally individual, and my association with Tango goes back to memories I’ve long since edited out. I knew my old pupil was way far away, too, from the out-of-synch flavor. I tried to explain to an anti-cybber once, who’d never experienced mind-to-mind inputs, how a cyb can tell distance in a mind touch. I had to fall back on the hoary old wheeze, about immersing in a multisense piece a little out of synchronization, so that acceleration pressure comes before the gauges show take-off, or sounds come after doors close and the like. I don’t think I got the point across, but any cybber or direct input type just knows. Tango was wallowing out, way, way into the fringes.

You know, I grumbled, used to be when a person put out a Leavemebe signal, they could depend on their friends to—

Jolly, come quick, there’s a problem!

Oh. Nova it, that was different. Where are you? How far?

We compared coordinates, and even at my top ratio, it would take me over five Half-Lives of Copper 67 to get there. (I cheated a little, too, stopping off to swoop around an unusually lovely rainbow system, and then wasting a few HLs of carbon 11 by side-tripping in a twinkle cluster, storing the sensories in my banks for more leisurely appreciation later.)

My destination was one of the dullest, most ordinary systems I’d ever seen. One, count it, one sun, an assortment of planets in a standard pattern including an asteroid belt in the warm zone around the sun, and the usual frozen cometary ring. The only ringed planet (I adore ring skimming! ) was too far out to get enough sunlight to be interesting. I did a file search but I’d never been to this system in person before, and none of my traded-for files had anything on it either. (Cybs are always trading files with each other; it’s a big universe.) I thought, anyway. I didn’t bother to compensate for big time changes, planetary evolution, long term star moves or the like. I might later, but for now—

I’d never known my usually placid friend to be so jittery. We rendezvoused, and Tango was wearing a sleek courier job, twice my legs and inputs but no cargo space to speak of—and I could almost see the field phase outer shell pulsing.

Ay, Tango, what’s the worry? Your maintenance has cross-inputted, has it? You want me to give you an external going-over? There must have been someone closer, but what the Way, what else are friends for?

No, Jolly, I’m four significant figures on all circuits. But there’s a BAD problem here, and I don’t know what to do!

Totally odd. Tango is a top-efficiency cyb, who usually has no trouble picking the optimum flow-path. (Unless there was something significant in my culled memories. But then, even I must have been newcybbed myself once, though I haven’t bothered to keep it in my personal files. For that matter Tango could have been my dupe, plenty of cybs felt the urge to reproduce every so often. Our long term mentor/disciple relationship argued for it. But I didn’t think so. We were more different than my much greater experience alone could account for.)

Well, youngster, tell me what’s feedbacking you, and I’ll help as much as I can.

I said it, and I was stuck with it.

I had pulled Tango out of a black hole once too often, and now I was going to pay the price for being Jolly Who Can Fix Anything.

Natural bodies make my mind itch.

Tango had discovered a whole world of Nats. Not a group of anti-cybbers who were Natural by choice that traded components and whatnot with cybs, but a group of Uncontacted Nats.

Worse, a world of Uncontacted Nats on the verge of true ratiodrive. Now there’s plenty of room in this Galaxy alone for worlds full of Naturals converted to cybs; when cybs find a new world of Nats, they either contact them directly if the psych profiles show opt, or leave them alone to develop star-cybbing by themselves. But these cuties were well on the way to developing star-drive without cybbing. Cybbing usually comes first, but what the Way, there are many paths to the same goal, and these babes were almost ready to shoot out among the stars in natural bodies encased in ships.

And they were warlike.

Bad.

Cybs can usually defend themselves, but few cybs are naturally aggressive. What for? There’s plenty of everything to go round. Most cybs prefer to trade honestly for what they want (replacement parts, files of unexplored areas, whatever) rather than try to be grabby. Besides, it’s too easy to crash somebody, the way we’re always sharing stuff around. Cybs are the most independent—and interdependent—individuals ever developed, I think. Effectively immortal, too, as long as we clean out our files every so often, and transfer into fresh cyberbrains when the bonds start fraying. But a cyb can die just like anything else. Deratio too close to a star, for example, and it’s goodbye cybbie. Oh, most cybs dupe every so often, but passage of time and different experience make the dupe a different indi altogether. So death is death, even for a cyb, and technically primitive or not, I’m not sure who I’d wager on, between a cyb and a shipful of these warbabies.

Something had to be done, and fast, before we found our comfortable galactic neighborhood contaminated by these shoot-first-second-and-third-Natties-come-latelys.

So here I was in a natural organic body—and itching. Could hardly think straight for that urge to scratch. What I really wanted to do was debody and encyb and shoot at highest ratio out of this place, warbabies or no warbabies. After all, ratiodrive or not, we could always throw a Quarantine ring around the local sector, warning everybody to stay away until these infants grew up a little.

Trouble was, with ratiodrive, no telling where the little darlings and their long-range stings could turn up. So it was better to erase the menace before it became a Menace.

That was Tango’s conclusion, and I agreed. Only Tango hadn’t the vaguest idea of What To Do, and so had screamed for good old Jolly, question answerer, problem solver… and now, it seemed, Nattie tamer.

They seemed a standard organic pattern, biped, bisexed, sense organs concentrated on the head with org brain inside, assortment of colors and features. Nats, plain ol’ generic naturals, except for their viciousness.

Or maybe that was standard, too. Put too many mouths on a too small world, and something has to give. Usually, it’s the pops, spreading out peacefully in ratiodrive, joining the rest of the googools of cybs playing seine the universe. But sometimes the overpop comes first, and something has to give, and usually—

I saluted (in this culture it meant holding the one arm out straight from the shoulder, elbow bent so the forearm came up vertically, and hand held flat and facing the superior) and stared assessingly at the org standing in front of a large square of a transparent synthetic looking down on the org-hive they called their major city.

The nat gave himself (of the two sexes, he was male) another couple of breaths, and sighing, turned. Stared, one tufted ear pointing straight at me, the other closing. He was an org, I’ve seen enough of them, thick and somehow very solid looking. But inside that org body, a force of personality like few I’d encountered gave an extra glow like a sun’s aura.

I tried to make myself as cipherlike as I could.

“Who are you? Where’s Haken?” he barked, with just the slightest undertone of impatience.

“Regrets, lord leader.” I kept my hand in the salute, though I could feel the muscles trembling, reflexive flesh body reaction. “Your assistant Haken has met with a slight accident. I am Jasso. The computer selected me as having the next best qualifications to assist you.”

Of course it had. After we’d primed it a bit. Luckily, they had primitive computers here. There wasn’t a low-tech computer built that a cybber couldn’t play any games they wanted to with. Poor Tango would have more of a job infiltrating the other major power, since they hadn’t advanced to computers much. But that wasn’t my worry. I had to convince this org that he couldn’t do without me.

Course, making the computers spill his psych profile was a prime advantage. We used it to design this synth org body for me. But as I stood there, erect and trying to control instinctive tremors, I wondered. This one was a system-of-a-lot more than whatever the psych profile had indicated. He limped toward me, leaning on a cane, and I saw the twisted mess an early battle had made of one leg. He hadn’t let them amputate, though they’d told him he’d die if they didn’t. Then he’d fooled them a second time, when they told him he’d never walk again.

I was glad we hadn’t used our first, simplistic plan. Tango had been totally in favor. This one standout org had all but united a planet split asunder by war, and would finish the job very soon. Eliminate him, and with any luck, they would fall back into squabbling savagery.

But, I had argued, suppose they don’t. Suppose it’s happened, they unite around his corpse. Can you imagine the havoc they’ll cause? I had convinced Tango to dig a little deeper before we tried anything.

Now here I was, already having found the first datum, the incredible power of this org’s personality.

He stood in front of me, glaring. “I don’t need an assistant at all.”

“No, sir.”

“Or a bodyguard.”

“No, sir.”

“Or anything el—”

“LOOK OUT!” I hurled us both to the floor as the flash of concentrated energy sizzled the air where we’d both been standing. We rolled, but he, because of his greater weight, wound up on top. Even as I struggled to get my handweapon out, he had his and was shooting back in the direction the beam had come from. The synthetic square he had been looking through at the world outside was already mostly vaporized, leaving a huge hole ringed with jagged shards. There was a howl of pain, and a spinning figure hurtled past the emptiness.

I scrambled to my feet, but his cane, still in his off hand, tripped me. “Young fool! Suppose there’s more than one.”

I knew there was only one, a programmed fake-org Tango and I had whipped up, but he couldn’t know that. I crawled rapidly toward the opening, angling so the wall protected me as much as possible. When I got there, I cautiously stuck enough of my head past solidity to see out. I glanced around and said, “Don’t seem to be any more, but you stay there until I can call security and be sure.” “Ump. Call security? They should have come as soon as the window broke and the alarms sou—”

There was pounding behind a closed entryway, and it burst inward. Security had arrived. Too late, of course. They almost skewered me before he could stop them and tell them the attack had been from outside. As it was, they were dragging me away, struggling valiantly, before he could say any more.

“Stop!” It was all he said. All that was needed. Six security types froze, their hands on various portions of my flesh anatomy. I was almost sorry he did it. By the Circle of Stars itself, it was the first time I had been enfleshed that I had found something that helped the itching.

“Sir!” What was evidently the squad leader, a tall and lissome female that made my male body (this was a theoretically egalitarian society, but we’d decided that putting me in a female body and close to the leader might complicate what I had to do) itch in another way, saluted and froze, awaiting orders.

“He helped defend me,” said the leader in a low but firm voice. “The scum who attacked me fell. Find the body, and see if you can get a clue from it.”

“Sir!” The security squad leader straightened her arm as if pointing from the shoulder, and then saluted again. “Suppose the filth managed to drag itself away?”

“I shot the attacker, squad leader.”

“Oh.” She was almost smiling. “Did you leave enough for us to analyze, sir?”

His face was totally blank, yet somehow he had returned her smile without smiling. “I tried, squad leader. Go see if I succeeded.”

Again she straightened her arm and returned to full salute position. “Sir.” Then, with the effect of a cybber about to face a nova, “If you would permit me to keep my squad closer to you—”

It was as far as she got. “No,” was all he said. I knew it was an old argument. He glanced out the… window. “And send somebody up here to replace that.”

She about-faced, and her squad followed, taking me along, whether I wanted or not. Six times my mass dragging me entrywards was a potent argument.

“Leave him.” However softly spoken, it was an order.

Hands dropped away from me.

His lips curled. Radiation blast me if I could have described the expression. But what he said was, “He can help protect me.”

She turned, and her expression was plainly readable. You’ll have to protect him.

I had to suppress the urge to flip my tail at her. It was a totally instinctive reaction, from reflexes Imprinted in the body. I knew what it meant, too. Thinking it over quickly, I almost did it deliberately. Then decided against it.

I might as well have. She gave me a Look.

“My new assistant, squad leader. Better get used to him. Unless—” It was a question, directed at me.

I used another Imprinted instinct, my ears drooping and springing full erect. Then put it into words: “The medics won’t say how long Haken will be in the hospital, or how much longer before he can be any use to you, lord leader.”

“Do you know how to use a computer?”

Do cybs graze rares? ‘Yes, lord leader.”

“Then come along.” To the squad leader. “Go. Send me whatever information you can come up with as soon as possible.”

“Yes, lord leader!” She snapped one last salute and led her squad out. I watched her rump working with total male pleasure.

The leader glanced down and behind me, and I followed his gaze. And saw, with embarrassment, that my tail was sticking straight out behind me. Again, an Imprinted body reflex, reflecting what I was thinking.

“Word of advice, son.” His voice rollicked with amusement. “Let her make the first and the second move.”

“Sir?”

“I’m not fool enough to murky the air with emotion when all should be professional. But I know my people. She has more than her share of female pride. But—” Definitely a smile equivalent. “I understand that nobody lucky enough to be one of her chosens has any complaints, afterwards.”

“Uh, yes.” My tail was sticking out so hard it almost hurt.

He tweaked the tip of it. “To business, son. Get your mind off female twitches, and onto work.”

“Yes, sir.”

Work was sitting in front of a computer. I appreciated that the chairs were designed to accommodate tails in any position, because it took quite a while for mine to relax back into limpness. And the itch was fierce.

But I was soon immersed in what I was doing. It was… a long discussion on war, not just the moral aspects of using force to take what someone else may have, but the economic cost, the biological destruction, the effect on the world itself, the—

Fascinating. I had thousands of selected wonderful works in my memory, and while I would never go so far to rate this the best, it belonged in the top ranks of moral philosophy.

For now, I was just going through it, correcting grammar and punctuation and spelling. Easy enough, since I had prepared myself by implanting all the data I needed on the local language, along with a lot of other subjects.

Incredible. Absolutely incredible.

I have absorbed a number of philosophies, or ethical systems, or what have you. This wasn’t just a treatise on the morality of war, it was a summary of morality, period.

I quit fixing what needed fixing, and just kept on, totally enmeshed in what I was seeing, screen after screen. (Won’t comment on the idiocy of using eyes to scan a screen instead of direct brain input.)

I don’t know how long I’d been there, when a hand landed on my shoulder and startled me almost out of the chair.

“Lunch time, son.”

I had forgotten that flesh bodies needed stoking at frequent intervals. An odd vertigo when I tried to stand up reminded me. But soon I was putting my flesh body around nutrient. I didn’t know what it was, but my mouth seemed to like it OK, and it filled the sudden ache (now that I was aware of it) in my insides.

I was cogitating so hard about what I had been absorbing that his voice startled me into spilling the liquid I was conveying to my mouth.

“What do you think of it, son?”

“Why haven’t I seen it before?” I asked before I thought. After all, I hadn’t put in everything extant in the culture.

Again, a smile that wasn’t visible. “Did you think it was Remaldorixal?” (That was the Main “other” culture, where Tango was. The hatred in this culture for Remaldor was incredible—blind, voracious, unending.)

“No, sir!”

“Think nobody as evil as the Remaldorixi could produce work like that?” he asked softly.

“Sir,” I replied almost without thinking, “nobody who could produce That could possibly be evil.”

His ears twitched. “I… see.”

“Sir?” Again I couldn’t help myself. “Why can’t everybody see it? Sir? It would make… life so much better for all of us.”

“All of us,” he asked softly. “Including the Remaldorixi?”

From my imprinting: “The Remaldorixi are scum!” Then I took a deep breath. Trying to integrate what I had had Implanted, and what I had just absorbed. “The Remaldorixi…” He was watching me closely, as I seemed to struggle with these “new” concepts. “Sir? Do the Remaldorixi… count?”

“Son, suppose you had a Remaldorix right here, now. Suppose you stuck a knife into him or her right up to the hilt. What would happen?”

That had to be the stupidest question in the Universe. When you cut a flesh body—

“Go on. Tell me. What would happen.”

“Well, I’d make a big hole, and life fluid would burst out.”

“Would it hurt? The Remaldorix, I mean?”

“It would probably kill, if I thrust hard enough, and deep enough.”

“Kill. But would it hurt first? Would the Remaldorix scream, or writhe in agony, or plead for its life?”

I made the ear gesture that means, Who cares. “All three, probably. They’re not just scum, they’re cowardly scum.”

“How many Remaldorixi have you known? Personally?”

I dug through the bio we’d made up for my fake identity. My persona had fought in a couple of very big battles. Oddly, the few survivors of his group had all died in a flyer crash after the second. (The flyer crash was real, that’s why we’d picked the squad we did for the fake background.) My persona had survived because he had stayed behind; we’d whomped up a good reason. But no, except in battle, he hadn’t met any Remaldorixi. “Not any, unless you mean in battle.”

“Did you think they fought like cowards, in battle?”

“No. But—” I knew the propaganda. “My battles must have been exceptions.”

“No, son. No. Except that their ears are much rounder, and their noses broader, and they tend toward light colors in their stripes, Remaldorixi are just like us.”

I made myself gasp. “Isn’t that treason, sir?”

“It’s a physical fact, son.”

“Oh.” He was the leader, and I was doing my best to project myself as young, naive. Not that hard, since none of this was more than a recent implant. But an old cyb like me has seen most of the Universe, and there’s very little new.

He breathed out, an odd sad, hopeless sound. “Never mind, son.”

We finished eating in silence, and I went back to working on this strange computer file.

I got in touch with Tango the first sleep period I had. (That’s another idiocy of natural bodies. Why can’t they just take a flush to get rid of accumulated poisons? Noooo, they have to spend a third of their lives semi-conscious, letting their organisms get rid of what could be taken care of in a flash, with proper systems.)

What are you doing, Tango?

Translating a sort of morality discussion into Maldorit.

I was so surprised, I had trouble looking like I was sleeping. Tango! I’m working on a similar treatise. Is yours mostly about war, with lots of sidebars into how to treat other people, singly and in groups?

You mean you’re translating something out of Maldorit?

No. I’m just doing some small editing on my file. Spelling and the like. It’s in Javenesk. Do you think it’s the same file, Tango?

Be a funny coincidence if it was. Yet… if I have more fuel than I need to get around and keep me warm, and you have more food than you can eat, and we war, and you win, you have more fuel and more food than you need, and I have nothing. If we trade, we both end up with what we need. So why is war a solution to a scarcity?

That’s it! That one idea is the heart of the war section, the rest is just, well, explaining and extending.

Ahh, Jolly? I think we’d better not even think of meddling any more until we dig a lot deeper. Something very Odd is happening here.

Yes. Though I didn’t say so to Tango, I had a strong suspicion who the originator was.

My suspicion grew to almost certainty a couple of days later, when he kicked me off the computer to make a few additions to the file.

I knew this was It. The way to turn these warbabies into civilized folk. Only… how was he going to make the rest of them accept it?

Tango still wanted to kill him off, and solve the problem that way. Remove the linchpin, and the “world order” would collapse back into splinter fragments.

I said No. Wait and see.

Time passed. Until we had spent much longer on this world than either of us had anticipated. Tango began to sulk. Especially about not wanting to miss an imminent rendezvous, a Thrills-and-Chills halfway across the galaxy with a merry group of cybbers, including a favored partner.

As the deadline for making the T&C opener crept closer, Tango’s constant theme became: With The Expert on the scene, The Mere Assistant is unnecessary.

I began to agree. Better no helper at all than an unwilling one. One world only needed one cyb to adjust it.

Finally, I told Someone to go play and leave this problem to those equipped to deal with it. (I didn’t specify mentally, but any cyb can fill in between the screens.)

More eager to head out than to argue, Tango scooted Centerward at full ratiodrive. The warbabies were all mine.

I did what I had said over and over was The Right Thing. I waited.

The war leader kept making small corrections to the file, until finally he just read it, over and over.

Sometimes he questioned me again. In a way, answering him was difficult, because my own answers were the exact opposite to the answers my native programming demanded. A sentient, after all, is a sentient, no matter what color their stripes are. After all, most of the sentients I know off this world have no stripes. Most have, for that matter, no flesh bodies to have stripes on.

But as I continued to work on and absorb the file, I found it easing the programming, so more and more I could simply answer naturally.

Of course Remaldorixi would feel pain if I stuck them.

The day I could say it, easily and truthfully, was the day he closed the file, as it was.

Also, though I didn’t know it until later, that was the day he started setting up the Final Peace Conference.

He kept me too busy to worry about security, and that wasn’t my job anyway. But when I found out what he had in mind, it totally appalled me. Killer understatement. Or maybe, just plain killer.

I doubt there was any race of Nats anywhere, except the cave types perhaps, who don’t have some equivalent of an arena. This org-hive had one, used for war games, the kind that half the pops come to watch in person, to see how well the troops are doing. It may have originally been designed for more peaceful sports but who knew.

It could hold a generous fraction of the pops of this org-hive. A large fraction.

It was going to.

He was going to be on stage. Plus two huge screens, one on each side of the platform, each holding the main top Nats of one of the respective cultures. A third screen behind showed the audience a similar arena in Remaldor, showing the Remaldori leader, on their stage in that arena.

I argued until my tail drooped between my legs. I could have saved my energy. The only concession he made was that I could be on the platform with him. But not too close.

Not too close. Of course. If assassins did happen to manage to smuggle a weapon in, no use giving them an extra free target, besides the top leader of the whole world, no my no. I couldn’t believe it. But he was doing it. So, while he and his people were setting up his Idiocy, I was making my own preparations. All I could think of. Then I thought of more. Started processes I prayed to all Infinity I’d never need to depend on. Cursed and pummeled my brain and kept trying to close off all the loopholes. Knowing it was the one contingency you haven’t thought of that does you in, every time.

There wasn’t a wall anywhere near where I was, the next few cycles, that didn’t have my nervous scratch marks.

There were only seven people on the stage, but hundreds crowding on each screen, and hundreds of thousands in the audience. A similar setup in the capital of Remaldor, held their leader, and security, with their screens showing our audience and the smaller screen on the platform, our leader.

Seven people on the stage. Him, me, the security squad leader and four of her people.

The Remaldori leader had an assistant also (not Tango’s body, with a drone running it when I couldn’t spare enough attention, but someone else) and a similar squad of security types.

But the security folk were merely for show. They didn’t have energy weapons, or even the older, explosive propellant stuff. (I’d never even heard of those before coming here. Talk about primitive!)

No. They had ceremonial swords. Long sharp knives in fancifully decorated sheathes.

Oh so helpful if somebody in the audience pulled a real weapon.

I stood poised, ready to fling myself in front of him, if any weapon did appear.

He read the file, slowly. The other leader did the same, in their language. As if one was merely translating what the other was saying. Except I knew how much labor had been put in, to make this statement. I even knew what the other leader had contributed. I got that from Tango early on. Mine wrote stuff that needed translation. But the Remaldorix wrote a share too, which had to be translated into my language. Both of them had worked on it.

I knew whose idea it had been originally, though, and who had contributed the most.

He finished. The other leader finished.

“This,” he said, “is how all of us are going to live our lives from now on. If nobody wants war, it need not be, ever again.”

The other leader said the same thing, in Maldorit.

“I agree,” said our man.

“I agree,” said their man.

“Now,” said our man, “you, all who are here, all who are listening, must also agree. You must—”

“NO!”

I whirled. It was the security leader. “No! We cannot trust them. You are a traitor!”

And something was happening on the screen, on the other platform. But I paid no attention to it. I was diving for him, to protect him from the danger coming from the direction I had never expected.

“NO!” He put out a hand to shove me aside, but I was diving—

The energy bolt splashed us both. I screamed, I had never endured such a wash of sheer pain in my entire existence. He gasped and went limp.

I pulled myself away. One arm and part of that side was a mass of pure agony. But he had taken most of the blast right in the torso. My body might be fixable. (If not, I would survive, since if this body died I would merely return to my ship brain.) He was dying if not dead.

“You killed him!” I screamed.

“My country above all.” She put the muzzle of the weapon in her own mouth and pulled the trigger.

“May your anima rot forever!”

“Son…” It wasn’t much more than a whisper, a breath, but I heard it.

I crouched, tried to support him, my good arm around the back of his body—even there I could feel cracked and burnt flesh. “Medic!”

“No.” He looked up, into the camera. “Give my death… meaning. Make mine… the last death… in war.”

“Nooooo!”

“Accept… my covenant.” He slumped against me. I knew a dead weight when I felt one.

One of the security guards came over, bowed. “I accept all your covenant, lord leader.” Another came behind. “And I.” The third, then the fourth. “And I.” “And I.”

It was the last one who turned to the screen with our own leaders, and said. “What about you?” Then to the audience. “And you! He died to give us peace. Will you not take his last gift?”

Somewhere in the audience, someone was shouting, “Peace! Peace! Peace!” Only it wasn’t one someone, it was two… three… a dozen… a score… a hundred. Hundreds. Thousands. Emphasizing the single word with the stomp of feet. Peace! Peace! Peace!

There was a racket coming from the screens showing Remaldor. I realized that it, too, was a single word. Their word for Peace. I looked at the screens. Everyone was standing, stamping, shouting out the one word. Peace. Peace. Peace.

Except in the smallest screen. In that screen… ah, the sweet black of infinity! On the other screen, my opposite number was holding their leader, slumped and limp.

Both leaders. Dead. For peace. Killed by those closest to them, who couldn’t stand the thought of ending war.

Yet those deaths would seal the peace, and the covenant, more than any other single act.

Pain was washing over me, and I gave into it.

My flesh Jasso body was damaged enough that no one would be surprised if it didn’t survive. I left it completely, with enough circuits shut down that it would never regain “consciousness” and slowly die. I didn’t even keep tabs to know when it stopped breathing finally.

But I didn’t just go back to the ship and encyb. I returned to the ship, yes, but I entered another flesh body there, one of my preparations, that I had grown and kept ready, just in case.

Now I was hoping I would need it.

So I sat, enfleshed and itching, inside my ship, watching the dials, watching another newly decanted body kept alive by medic equipment. Watching that equipment slowly withdraw as the body integrated its own systems. Watching… and waiting. The question was…

The eyes opened. Unfocused and wandering. Then they integrated, and intelligence glinted within them. “Report,” he barked.

“How do you feel?” I said softly.

“Who are you? Report! What happened after I—” He sucked in air, on a gasp.

“They accepted the covenant.” I gave him what I thought he wanted most, immediately.

“All of them?”

“All of them.” He relaxed.

“Lesper?”

Took me a blink to remember that that was the Remaldori leader’s given name. “Dead.” There had been no way that I could have gotten close enough to that one to make a pattern, even if I had wanted to… and known it would work. I hadn’t been sure it would work with my leader. But I had hoped. His force of personality made it a hope.

I reached out and touched his cheek. He jumped a little, and gazed at me though wide opened eyes. “Who are you?”

“Your medic, for now. How do you feel?”

He took a deep breath, I could almost see him testing out his body, searching for pain, or damage, or mutilation. Half puzzled, he said slowly, “I don’t hurt.” Another breath, almost appalled. “At all.”

“That’s good. That’s what I hoped for.”

“It’s impossible,” he stated bluntly. “Whatever happened on the platform, my leg always aches.”

“Not any more. Ever again.”

“Who are you?”

“My real name… translates as Jolly,” I told him. Then, taking a risk: “You knew me as Jasso, before.”

He took one look. “Impossible.”

Well, Jasso had been male. But this body was female. “The first time I as Jasso met your security leader, my tail went so tight it took half a morning for it to loosen again.”

His ears twitched. “That’s the commonest male reaction.”

“You told me to let her make the first and second steps. And that those lucky enough to have her choose them hadn’t any complaints yet.”

“You’d better explain.”

My tail curled nervously. I took a deep breath. “It’s simple, really. My people are much, much more advanced than yours. We can do things your people can’t. One of them is… is move about from body to body. As easily as you put on a uniform and then change to another.”

Clipped: “I don’t believe you.”

“We can. We do. Mind, soul, persona, identity, individuality, whatever you want to call it, is only a pattern, really. Such patterns can be reproduced, or moved. Just like you take a computer file and put it on a tape and then take the tape and put the file in another computer.”

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t believe a word of it.

“I don’t remember what my original body was like. I don’t even remember how many different bodies I’ve inhabited—”

He froze. I remembered that his world, like so many others, had its legends.

“I can’t enter an already occupied body. The body of Jasso, like the one I’m wearing now, was grown for the purpose. It never had a… a previous owner.”

Silence. Unbelieving silence.

I decided to give him the works. “You died. The body your… your selfness was housed in died. But I copied your pattern, when I was working with you, and stored it. I wasn’t sure if I could, without your cooperation, and without all the proper equipment, but your personality is so strong it worked. I had already grown a body for you, just in case.”

His mouth worked. “Why do you lie? I know this is my body.”

I had prepared for that. I held up a reflecting surface. “Is it?” He looked at himself.

“Yes!”

“Sure?”

He stared, glared. “I look… younger. Is that some part of whatever miracle treatment saved my life?”

“No. It’s because I grew this body from some spare cells of yours, so it’s an exact duplicate of your original. But I didn’t bother to age it past maturity. Prime. You’re a male in his prime again.”

His mouth worked again. I tilted the surface, so it showed his body. He stiffened. The climate inside my ship was controllable to almost anything. So I hadn’t bothered with putting clothes on him. Nor had I bothered—why should I?—duplicating the scars he had acquired in his first life. “Where—”

I kept tilting the mirror. It showed a smooth, unscarred body… two firm muscled, straight legs.

He sat up, felt the left one incredulously.

Finally: “I begin to believe. But why?”

“Why did I do it at all? Or why you?” I touched his cheek again. Touch is the most primitive of senses, but also the most effective. “It’s the same reason. I liked you. I didn’t want the waste your death would mean.”

“None of my people ever got a second chance like this, did they?”

Infinity, the altruism of the man. But I had almost anticipated that, and I had an answer ready. “But I need you. I’m still so ignorant. I have only limited resources. Without your wisdom to draw on, how can I effectively help keep your people on the path you’ve started them toward with your sacrifice?”

“I see.” He didn’t accept it right away, of course. But it gave me an edge. I was a cybber, with a cybber’s long, long-term mentality. Keep him busy helping his people, get him used to cybbing, pop him on occasion into a pure cyb, to do this or that—

I had been a single cyb for too many long cycles. It was time I had a partner again.

It was even worth spending most of my time enfleshed, and itching. Besides, once I convinced him that emotions could strengthen a working relationship instead of just, as he had once put it, murky the air, he was a most effective scratcher.