Medusa: A Tiger by the Tail

CHAPTER THIRTEEN A Victim of Philosophy

The lock was of the modern, standardized type, with the shuttle docked in space against a long tubular entryway into the space station itself. I knew that all four planets had such stations, and that the Four Lords made good use of them. The_ master computer for Medusa was here, for example, but I was unprepared for the enormity of the place. It had good artificial gravity, perhaps a bit lighter than I’d become used to. From the entry tube you could look out through a transparent strip and see the gigantic structure stretching away from you on all sides. It was more than a mere space station; it was more like a small floating city several kilometers across, large enough to be self-sufficient in those things that would support a sizable population.

At the end of the long walk up the entry tube I came upon a second airlock chamber, which I entered without hesitation. If they’d meant to kill me they could have done so far more easily and less messily elsewhere. This second lock was pretty much an insurance measure against premature leak and emergencies, but it also served as a neat security cell. Up top was the ever-present monitor, almost certainly with a real person on the other end, and a series of small and unfamiliar-looking projections that could have been either decontamination or weapons.

The first door closed behind me, but the second did not open right away. Suddenly those projections flooded the chamber with a pale blue force field that had a rather odd effect on me. The sensation must have been similar to that of being suddenly struck deaf or blind or both, yet I could see and hear perfectly well. What I no longer could do was sense or contact the Wardens within my own body. They had cut off communications, somehow, and, in so doing, had reverted me to my original form. I could see and feel it happening, with no powers except my own brain.

The ray cut off quickly, and the outer door opened. I found it very difficult to move, though, as if heavy weights had suddenly been placed all over me. I wasn’t quite sure what they were doing, but I guessed that they, not I, were now sending to the Wardens in my body somehow, and they were telling them to produce this sensation. It was quite effective. I could still move and act normally, but any quick or sustained actions would be beyond me. I had walked into the trap, and now they had me good. I had a vague thought that I should have made a run for it back at Gray Basin, no matter what the risks, but it was a little late for that now.

A strong-faced Medusan woman in government black waited for me in the reception lounge, along with a monitor sergeant armed with some sort of small, light sidearm. It was certainly no laser weapon, and I guessed it to be some sort of stun gun, which made perfect sense in this situation. You could shoot hostages as well as the hostage-takers with no fear of permanent injury to either, and you were unlikely to burn accidental holes in the space-station wall.

“I am Sugah Fallon,” the woman announced, “director of this installation. You are, I would guess, the one called Tarin Bul, although I expect that that’s not your real name, either.”

“It will do,” I told her wearily. “I see you know a lot more about the Warden organism than even I expected.”

She smiled. “Research into the possibilities is never-ending, Bul. You would be amazed at the things we can do these days. Come. It must be days since you ate, so we’ll attend to that first.” With my every move physically restricted, I had little choice but to follow her. Besides I was starved, I had to admit.

The food was good, and it was fresh. “We grow it all ourselves,” Fallon told me with some pride. “In fact, we support a staff here of over two thousand permanent party personnel plus half again as many on transient business. It is from here that the entire monitoring system is guided.

All the records are here, and all are centrally coordinated and beamed by satellite to every city on the planet. Our laboratories and technical specialists are drawn from all four Diamonds worlds, and are the best in their fields.”

I really was impressed. “I’d like to see the whole thing sometime,” I said dryly.

“Oh, perhaps you might, but we will show you only a few departments today, I think. You’ll be fascinated by what we’re doing in those areas, I think.”

“Alien psychology?”

She laughed. “No, sorry, that’s off limits. You understand we have to be somewhat circumspect with you since we know that you carry some sort of broadcaster inside your head. Until that goes I’m afraid your movements will be rather limited here.”

“How do you know about that?” I asked, not bothering to deny it. This wasn’t a fishing expedition—they knew a whole hell of a lot.

“We know a bit from some of your compatriots. You may be interested to know that the agent sent to Lilith did manage to kill Marek Kreegan, although in a rather oblique way, and that Aeolia Matuze of Charon is also dead, partly thanks to your man there. On Cerberus, though, your man failed, and did a most interesting thing—-he joined our side without even making a. real attempt at Laroo.”

That was news, most of it welcome. Two out of four wasn’t bad at all, everything considered. Her comment further indicated that none of the other three had revealed that they were, in fact, the same person as myself. I wondered about the turncoat on Cerberus, though—was his conversion sincere, or some sort of ongoing ruse? The fact that he was alive and apparently influential indicated to me that he couldn’t be counted out.

“I suppose it’s too late for me to defect,” I said half-seriously.

“I’m afraid so. Defections under duress are so undependable. It really was nothing personal, either, that you failed. You accomplished a tremendous amount that we would have thought impossible, and you’ve caused a major reassessment of our entire monitoring system. In fact, if you hadn’t attacked the Altavar on your way out, you would still be free and a tremendous threat to us. Even so, you could have escaped. You have a weak spot, a sentimental streak, that your compatriots seem to lack. It’s what’s done you in.”

I shrugged. “I owed it to them to see what I could do. Besides, if I couldn’t pull it off, I was neutralized anyway, with no hope of ever really doing anything beyond living with the Wild Ones. Call it the testing of a theory—and the theory proved wrong. I simply underestimated the system. Just out of curiosity, though, I’d like to know when you got on to me.”

“We knew you were in Gray Basin when we sent somebody to check on the missing monitor at the station,” she told me. “However, we really didn’t have any idea of who you were until you punched Ching Lu Kor into the computer. Since the monitor you were pretending to be didn’t have knowledge of, interest in, or anything to do with that case, it raised a flag here. From that point on, of course, we had you. We were pretty certain it was you, since few others would have the combination of nerve and timing to pull off such a thing even that far.” She paused, then added, “You should have kept switching identities every hour or so.”

I nodded, then added, “I could still have gotten away if I hadn’t misjudged how long I’d slept. That was my key mistake and I admit it. One little mistake in a long string of successes, but that’s all you get in this business.”

“That’s why the system always wins. We can make a hundred mistakes, but you can make only one.”

“Tell that to those two you said are dead.”

The comment didn’t faze her. “Their systems were quite different from ours. Technology doesn’t even work on Lilith, and it’s easily negated by a strong mind on Charon. They will have to develop systems better suited to their own homes, as we have evolved this one.”

“I’m not very impressed with this one,” I told her. “It’s a dull, stupefying world of sheep you’ve created down there, people without drive, ambition, or guts. And for the elite on top, human slaves kept as status pets—like something out of the Dark Ages of man.”

She didn’t take offense. Her reply, in fact, was indirect and at first I didn’t see where she was going. “Tell me one thing that’s puzzzled me, Tarin Bul or whatever your name is. Just one thing. I know you’ve been conditioned so that we can’t get any information from you by force, but I would like to know the answer to one question.”

“Perhaps. What is it?”

“Why?”

“Why what?” I was very confused.

“Are you really as blindly naive as you say you are, or is there a real reason why you continued doggedly on your mission once you were here?”

“I told you I found your system repugnant.”

“Do you really? And what are the civilized worlds if not an enormous collection of sheep, bred to be happy, bred to do their specific jobs without complaint, and also without ambition or imagination. They look prettier, that’s all—but they don’t have to survive the hard climate of Medusa. What you see down there is simply a local adaptation, a reflection of the civilized worlds themselves. And do you know why? Because most people are sheep and are perfectly content to be led if they are guaranteed security, a home, job, protection, and a full belly. In the whole history of humankind, whenever people demanded democracy and total independence and got it, they were willing and eager to trade their precious freedom for security—every time. Every time. To the strong-willed, the people who knew what to do and had the guts to do it. The people who prize personal power above all else.”

“We don’t have cameras in people’s bathrooms,” I responded lamely.

“Because you don’t need cameras in the bathroom. You’ve had centuries of the best biotechnology around to breed out all thoughts of deviant activity, and a barrier not of energy but of tens of thousands of light-years of space to keep out social contamination. The few who slip by, people like you, are sent here. That’s why so many of them wind up in charge, and why the system here is a reflection of the civilized worlds. We grew up there, too, Bul, so it’s the system we know and understand best. We’re the people most fit to rule, not by our own say-so, but the Confederacy’s. That’s why we got sent here.”

I opened my mouth to reply, but nothing came out.

There had to be a flaw in the logic somewhere, but I could find none. However, accepting her thesis didn’t make things any more pleasant. “If I admit the point, then all I can say is that the system itself is corrupt, bankrupt, and wrong, whether it’s here or in the Confederacy.”

“Then you are naive. Both Medusa and the Confederacy have given the masses exactly what all the social reformers have clamored for all these years—peace, plenty, economic and social equality, security. All other alternatives that are not variations of the plan have resulted in mass privation. You saw nothing wrong with the Confederacy while you were there because you were a part of the power structure, not one of the sheep. You chafed-here because we tried to make you a sheep. But if you’d come in as a government official, perhaps a monitor officer, you’d have felt right at home.”

“I doubt that now,” I told her. “I have lost my faith.”

“Then, perhaps, that’s why you really did what you did. Think about it. You could have been home free, yet you persisted. You could have turned back at several points, yet you came on against hopeless odds. That isn’t the act of a trained Confederacy assassin, even a disillusioned one. You came willingly because you know what I say is true. You cannot accept the system in any form, yet you accept the fact that it is the best one. For one like you, living as a savage in a dead-end existence would eventually drive you crazy, yet you could not embrace the system. You didn’t really came after us to rescue anyone, Bul. You came here to surrender, and you did. There is no place in this world for one like you, and you know it.”

I didn’t want to believe that what she said was true, and I would not admit her conclusions no matter what. I had no desire for suicide, no need to purge myself. She had it only partly right, I realized, and I would not give her the satisfaction of admitting even that to her. I could not exist on Medusa; there was no place on it for one like me. I came either to destroy the system or die trying.

Or was I just kidding myself?

“What happens to me now?” I asked her.

“Well, first J think we should give you something of an education, I think, perhaps, we should first take you to your friends. It should be interesting to see your reactions to our rather unique art form.”

We stood on a walk overlooking a vast expanse of plant growth. In many ways it was reminiscent of a resort complex back in the civilized worlds, with white sandy beaches, small pools of clear water fed by artfully constructed artificial waterfalls, and a safe but beautiful flower-filled planned jungle.

“The First Minister’s personal pleasure garden,” Fallen told me. “A place to totally relax and get away from it all.”

I squinted and looked down. “There are people down there.”

She nodded. “The garden is staffed by several dozen Goodtime Girls,” she told me. “They are there to fulfill his every wish, indulge his every whim, as well as keep the place in perfect condition.”

“At least in the Confederacy we don’t turn people into robotized slaves,” I noted acidly. That was one clear difference.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Fallen admitted. “However, you killed four people in cold blood just to get this far, and who knows how many others over your career? The Confederacy takes the so-called criminals people like you catch and either totally wipes their minds and rebuilds childlike, menial personalities, or they totally remake your psyche into their own image if they can. In extremely violent cases, they simply kill the people. They send only the best to the Warden Diamond, but only because they have done something unusual or creative—or are highly connected politically, which is the most important factor in being sent here, since someday those determining the criminal’s fates may be caught doing something naughty and sent down themselves. The difference between the Council and the Congress and the so-called criminals like Talant Ypsir and Aeolia Matuze, two former government members, is only that Ypsir and Matuze made some enemies and so were prosecuted. They’re no different from any other Confederacy rulers. The personality goes with the job.”

“But—slaves out of some thirteen-year-old boy’s wet dreams?”

“They serve a purpose. All are criminals by our standards. Their guilt is not in doubt in the least. The strongest and cleverest we send to the moons of Momrath—our Warden Diamond, you might say. The rest, the ones who cannot be trusted to continue at all, we either kill or change. We change them. We make them useful. In many ways we’re more humane than the Confederacy. Come.”

We walked back into the main station complex and past a door that read psych section, authorized personnel only. I knew what the next stop was. My faithful armed guard, who had not so much uttered a word or changed her dour expression, followed.

“Originally the idea was just to change the mind-set into something useful,” Fallon continued, seemingly enjoying the grand tour she was giving me. “We have, after all, a lot more menial jobs than the civilized worlds. But we discovered that when we did a wipe on a Medusan, a funny thing happened. The body, whether male or female, reverted to a primal female form as welL” We stopped in front of a door, which opened for us. We entered an observation room for a psych machine. “Recognize the subject in the chair?” she asked me.

I looked hard. Connected as she was to all sorts of tubes, sensors, and the like, it was at first difficult to get a good look at the woman “on the couch,” as psychs liked to call it. Still, I recognized the general facial features and. form quite well. “Ching,” I sighed.

She nodded. “We’re almost to the state we call ‘at rest’ in our process here. You can see that the skin is abnormally soft and pliant, there is no hair or any blemish or unusual feature. The basic form is female but not unusually so.”

I nodded, feeling sick again. So this was what this business was all about. They were going to take great pleasure in making me watch, and I knew they could force me whether I wanted to or not.

“It’s actually rather unfortunate that all Medusans reach this base female pliancy. It would be useful to have some Goodtime Boys. But don’t think that all Goodtime Girls are mere sex objects. I’m afraid many of our top male administrators prefer to use them that way, as does the First Minister, but there can be a number of different types. My two, for example, are like very muscular young boys, very cute. Female, of course, but you’d hardly know.

“It’s the new art form I was talking about. The artists are our top psychs, who can actually feed information through the psych machines to the Wardens within a body, once all mental resistance is eliminated. Goodtime Girls to order, according to preference. All still smart, able to learn all sorts of things as instructed, and all totally and completely devoted to their owners.”

“Who is … she being made up for?” I asked, my previous meal turning sour in my stomach as I watched.

“Haval Kunser. He is my counterpart on the planet itself, you might say. He runs the administrative side of the government. Both of us are equals, just, below the First Minister, who sets the policies we carry out. Of course, Hav probably won’t keep her. He’ll give her to somebody as a reward or something. We even export a few to the other Diamond worlds. Ah! I see the psych is ready. Now watch.”

“I don’t want to see any more,” I snapped.

“What you want is of no concern,” she responded coolly. “I can freeze you in place and make you, so shut up. Whining doesn’t become a Confederacy assassin.”

And, of course, she was right. How different, really, was this from the young woman I’d killed on the train platform? The only real difference was that I hadn’t known that woman. Maybe Fallen was right, after a fashion, I told myself. The more I looked at myself coldly and dispassionately, the less I liked what I saw.

The process was fascinating to watch, in a macabre sort of way. The same fluidity I had used to become a bird and a bunch of people was now being used on Ching’s body, but not by her. She was effectively dead, I knew, although I couldn’t accept that fact emotionally yet. How many deaths had I caused in just this operation? Krega had said twenty or thirty minds were destroyed for nothing just getting one “take” in the Merton Process that had put a recording of my mind into Tarin Bul’s body.

Ching had always been short, slightly built, like many Medusan women, but now she was—well changing before my eyes. She did not grow in height but weight was redistributed to the hips and bust, and her whole body was becoming sleekly redesigned. The head was modified far less, although her slightly too large ears were trimmed back and her face was softened and slightly rounded at the mouth and chin. When they were done, I could still recognize Ching on the table, but probably nobody else could have.

Hair was added, but only on the head, and it grew with astonishing, almost comical speed—a light reddish brown in color, which surprised me. I had to admit I was fascinated even though revolted. “Hair color can be changed?”

“And eyes. Actually, anything can be almost anything. That is the beauty of it.”

In a few. more minutes Ching was physically complete. I could see the shadowy form of the psych punching in and controlling and mixing small recording modules. The last step—the mental buildup. Finally she was detached from die machine and all its connectors and left there in what looked like normal sleep. The lights came up, and I saw her stir.

“Now, you remember her,” Fallon said, “and you saw it all. Now observe her as she awakens there.”

It didn’t take long. The woman I’d known as Ching stirred, smiled, then opened her eyes, smiled wider, sat up, stretched, and looked wonderingly around the psych lab as if she’d never seen it before and had no idea what it was, which was. probably the case.

Fallon flipped an intercom switch. “Girl?”

She looked up in happy anticipation. “Yes, mistress?”

“What are you called, girl?”

“I am called Cheer, mistress. Please let me serve you.”

“Go through the rear door. There you will find a wardrobe. Pick out whatever clothing you feel is proper for you, use whatever cosmetics and jewelry you like, and brush your hair. Then go through die next door and stand and wait there until I come.”

“As you command, mistress. I live to serve.” And, with that, smile still on her face, she jumped down and walked out of the psych chamber and into the other room.

Fallon turned to me. “Well? What do you think?”

“Very impressive, but if this is to soften me up to spill all or something, it won’t work. I’m not that impressed.”

“You should be. She was, I understand, quite a fighter under the psych probes. We got very little information out of her on her life with or without you. However, she couldn’t avoid giving us information and impressions on you, since you were the reason for her resistance. Come. Let’s go into the other room.”

We walked down the corridor to a rather bare office that didn’t seem as if it were being used for much of anything, and waited. All I wanted now was to get this over with and get down to my ultimate fate. All this was leading somewhere, I knew. I wanted to know where.

In short order Ching appeared and then smiled and bowed low. “How do I please you, mistress?”

Fallen looked her over. She was a truly tiny and curvaceous beauty now, that was for sure; her moves were sexy and provocative. Her voice had a throaty tone that seemed at once sensuous and childish. Hell, I’d once been a thirteen-year-old boy myself.

She had chosen some small golden earrings, a matching necklace, and a silvery clinging slit dress, and she had expertly and discreetly applied some lip rouge and eye makeup, and painted her newly created long fingernails to match the lips.

Fallon turned to me with a slight grin. “Well? How does she please you?”

“She looks … stunning,” I managed.

“Want to see her do tricks?”

“No, I—”

“Cheer—get down on all fours and lick the man’s feet.”

I started to protest, but “Cheer” joyfully and immediately complied. The exercise was disgusting, somehow unclean, and I stood there only because I had to.

“That’s enough, girl. Get back up.”

“Yes, mistress.” In a moment she was back up and looking expectantly at Fallon.

“Now, go out this door. There you will meet a man dressed like me. He will be your master and will tell you what else to. do. Now—go.”

“At once, mistress.” She was gone.

“Definitely a giveaway,” Fallon commented, mostly to herself. “The kind who provides company for visiting dignitaries and the like and does dances on tables.” She looked over at me. “Useful to others, though. She’s frozen, just like that, for just about her whole life. No external aging, no physical changes that aren’t internal adjustments to climate or weather conditions, no attitudinal changes. If she got lost or separated down there, she’d plead with people to return her to her master. She’ll give pleasure, and only in serving her master will she find pleasure. Now, isn’t that better than the mines or death or a permanent job as a janitor someplace?”

“I’m not convinced,” I told her. “I don’t think I’ll ever be convinced.”

“Probably not,” Fallen agreed cheerfully, “but it’s the way of the world. Come—we have one more interim stop.”

Again we walked out into the corridor and went down to yet another office, this one obviously used and cluttered with all sorts of stuff. Fallon rooted through a desk drawer and finally came up with what looked like, and was, an artist’s sketch pad. She flipped over a few sheets, and I could see that there were, indeed, drawings in pencil and ink on them. Finally she found the one she wanted, held it up, and handed the pad to me. I looked at the image.

“What do you think?” she asked.

The drawing, a very good drawing by a very skilled artist, was of a stunningly beautiful woman, perhaps the most stunning vision of womanhood I’d ever, seen. Rendered in colored pencils, the drawing showed a dark-skinned beauty with long mixed blond and light brown hair, two very large and sexy dark green eyes, set in perhaps the most sensual face I could imagine. The body was large, lean, sexy, and sleek, but the sexual organs were very exaggerated. The artist had drawn multiple views, including one of the figure crouching, animal-like, like some perfect primal savage, wearing some sort of spotted animal skin. It was an incredible vision, a bestial sex machine. Even though it was only a cartoon in colored pencils, I felt the intent in the artist’s skilled strokes and could only whistle.

Fallon nodded. “I’m glad you approve. This has been the First Minister’s special project for some time, although he’s been waiting for just the right time to translate it into reality.”

“Ypsir drew these? He’s quite talented, no pun intended.”

“Yes, he is—in quite a” number of ways. And, yes, he drew that, in addition to working with our best artist psych for better than half a year to create the mental and emotional sets. The hormonal is obvious. The primal savage, the perfect and uncorrupted natural woman, he calls her. I wish sometimes I’d been built like that.”

“You’d have a terrible backache,” I noted.

She shrugged. “She’s far more than a mere Goodtime Girl. He calls her Ass, by the way. His strong male libido is as firm as your own, I might note. She’ll be his constant companion, his mark of perfection, you might say. He owns many great works of art stolen from the finest museums in the Confederacy, but he intends her as his prize possession. Everyone will drool with envy, but she will be totally and absolutely committed to and devoted to him. A tamed wild animal, you might say, totally passive, yet with the wild streak that will make her all the more exotic, and with a bit of a twist. Like a good devoted tamed thing of the wild, she will do whatever is necessary to protect him. Here is a multipurpose, totally sensuous creature that is also a work of art.”

I nodded. I understood Ypsir pretty well after this; he was certainly the most slimy soul I could ever remember coming across. “I see,” I said.

“I don’t think you do,” Fallon responded. “I think you don’t fully appreciate the First Minister’s sense of justice. Not just anyone would do for Ass, of course. He likes to be reminded constantly that he is in total, control, so she is to be a symbol of his superior position, his superior system, and his basic invulnerability to’ the Confederacy and its schemes. Ass, you see, is not for her ample posterior, but rather short for assassin.”

“No!” I screamed, and tried to lunge at her. The monitor behind just put me out with a single brief and localized shot.

I was strapped to the psych machine, feeling pure fear for the first time in my life. Not anxiety, not concern, but real fear. I did not fear death—never had—but this was something else. I always feared going under a psych for a total wipe; there was always the chance that something of me might yet remain, might know, and that was the ultimate horror to me.

Fallon and two techs completed the attachments of my numb body to the “couch,” and she stepped back. “This will be most interesting,” she said, enjoying my discomfort. “You have not only a unique destiny and vision but Jorgash, the psych back there and our top psych on all Medusa, will be renowned as a brilliant artist and technician for the results.”

“Bastards,” I tried to snarl, but very little came out.

“You can see the First Minister’s point of view,” she went on. “Not only will he have his dream, but he will know that his dream was once one of the Confederacy’s top assassins, one devoted to killing him at all costs. You will be a constant reminder and reassurance to him of the impotence of the Confederacy here, and, in a real mark of irony, you will be his most devoted slave and bodyguard. He has ordered the entire changing process visually recorded, by the way, so he can if he wishes prove to anyone—including your precious Security—that you were, indeed, their big-shot assassin. Talant Ypsir will be here tomorrow, by the way, on his way to a Four Lords conference called on the satellite of Lilith. I spoke to him just now, and he wants me to set up video recording in a studio room, so he can put you through all your paces before he leaves. And you’ll get your wish, really. Not only will you reach the Lord of Medusa, you will meet the others as well. He surely won’t be able to resist showing you off to them, perhaps even bringing you into the meeting on a gold leash like the pet you’ll be.”

Damn herl She was enjoying every minute of this!

“Good-bye, Tarin Bul or whatever your name really is. I’m sure you realize that all this is going to your control as well, and so do we. Therefore, the first thing to be done is locate that little organic transmitter in you and excise it. But maybe we’ll send your control a copy of Talant’s recording session. Wouldn’t that be true justice?” And, with that, she walked out and the door hissed behind her.

I could not move, literally. All I could do was die a little each second as I heard the master psych turning on various devices.

Suddenly I felt another presence in my head. It was the start of the psych process, of course, but merely the preliminary test of my blocks and defenses, set up by the best psychs in the Confederacy. I could not be broken, nor could they—my mind, however, could be destroyed just like anyone’s else’s, perhaps with a lot more effort. In fact, my immunity to psychs in general was now the root of my greatest fear. What if they didn’t get it all? What if there was one tiny corner that was still me, unable to act or do anything yet there … ?

I heard a recording cube slip into place in the dark. It begins, I thought, and steeled myself.

But it wasn’t the beginning. Instead a thin, reedy man’s voice began feeding directly into my brain. “Listen, agent,” he said, “I am Jorgash, the psych in this project. Like all other Medusan psychs, I was trained at an institute on Cerberus, the only such institute for psychs in the Diamond. It is run by a master. Neither he nor we have any taste for the Four Lords, for Talant Ypsir, for this incredible alien alliance that might well destroy us all, or for the rest of it. We did not train to be torturers, but healers. Long ago we established our control over many of the top-level bureaucrats of Medusa, since Ypsir insists they all undergo psych loyalty reinforcement to him. We gained control of Laroo on Cerberus in that way, with the help of your comrade there. But that is out for Ypsir himself; he won’t come near a psych machine. Since he was once in an accident with Fallen and Kunser and at their mercy—and they saved him—those are the only two others he trusts implicitly. They won’t undergo psych, either, for any reason.

“It would be relatively simple to kill Ypsir, but that would do no good. Unless Ypsir, Fallon, and Kunser are all killed—and in a relatively short time—the elimination of one will simply elevate another. Fallon, in particular, is adept enough at the couch to create others outside our influence, as could Kunser. They make it their business to know. They do not trust any psych, but neither do they suspect that almost all of us are involved. But before any can move toward an effective takeover of the entire system, we will need all three dead close together. Accomplishing this will be difficult—may be impossible. The three are rarely together, with Fallon and Kunser meeting only twice over the past three years and only once with Ypsir present. I say this so as not to encourage you unduly.”

I felt some hope rise in spite of myself. Was this just a trick of a master psych or was this for real? I had no way of knowing.

“I cannot save you,” Jorgash continued. “I could not save your friends. But their minds didn’t have your strength or your core identity, built up and reinforced by master psychs. If I did not execute this program almost exactly as Ypsir tailored it, if any of the original you remained even on the subconscious level, it would show. It would show physically; you couldn’t help it, and that is exactly what a cautious Ypsir will be looking for. What I propose to do I frankly admit I have never done before, and understand only in theory. If my master teacher were here he could do it easily; he created the process long ago, for other purposes and for other times.

“What I propose to do is to push whatever of your core identity I can into a specific recess so remote from consciousness that it might as well not be there. It won’t be measurable in any way, and, in addition, all communication between the matrixed area and the rest of your brain will be cut. It is, a delicate operation—the difference between obliterating this core and storing it thus is a measurement best expressed as a forty-place decimal point. Even I won’t know if I hit it right or not, nor exactly what was saved—if anything. But what I am trying to save is your total hatred and contempt for the Medusan system and particularly for those people who would do this sort of thing to human beings. If your hatred is strong enough, if your thirst for revenge is strong enough, it might just survive, although so buried, and cut off that even you will not know it is there. In theory, if this part of you remains, a single stimulus could be used to trigger it, reconnect it to your psyche. The stimulus I will give you and reinforce is a situation in which all three principals are in your presence simultaneously. If I succeed, your blind hatred will rush out and you will then kill all three or die in the attempt.

“Now, this is a long shot. One of the three may die, in which case you may find youself in the presence of the other two and not have your rage triggered. Or all three might never be together in your presence, in which case, again, it will not trigger. But all three have been together and may well be again, particularly under war conditions.

“It may be a week, a month, a year, ten years. We can’t know. But we can hope, and that is the chance I must take.”

A chance he must take!

“What you will be after you kill them, assuming you do and survive, I cannot say. Most likely the action will bring about a total release, after which you will again and always be what Ypsk has made you. You might become a wild beast. But you might have rational potential, depending on how much of you survives. Regardless, so thorough will the physical transformation and freeze be that you will physically, hormonally, and emotionally become what I intend to make of you. That I promise, although it is no comfort. Under a really good psych you might be restored intellectually, although, of course, as a new and different person with no past memories. I can do no less and still convince Ypsk and his test battery. Again, this may all fail—even my teacher succeeded only with fewer than ten percent of his subjects—but I can offer you, and your control, the hope that that beautiful creature by Ypsk’s side is in fact a ticking bomb that if triggered, could create such a power vacuum on Medusa that those under our control would assume power. I must proceed now, and I am sorry, but I hope this is some comfort. I have already spotted the absolutely ingenious organic transmitter in your brain, so I know your control has this information, too. Now only he and I will know. Time is short and the process long and arduous. Forgive me, Bul, or whatever your name is. Good-bye.”

Searing pain inside my head… Feel like I’m going to implode … Oh, God! I—

TRANSMISSION TERMINATED. TRANSMITTER DESTROYED.