Prison of Night

Chapter Six

The building was of stone, massive blocks fused together with the heat of lasers, windows shaped in tall, pointed arches, the stories rearing one above the other against a somber sky. Leaden stone set in leaden grounds against leaden clouds. On Fralde everything was grey.

Director Ningsia matched his environment. A short, blocky man with skin bearing creases as if it too were made of stone. Grey hair swept back from a high forehead. His mouth was thin, the lips bloodless, the eyes slanted ovoids beneath uprising brows. His uniform was grey; only the insignia of his rank riding high on his left bicep shone with luminous emerald.

A neatly precise man dedicated to the stern dictates of his culture. One who believed in the submergence of self to the good of the whole.

He said, "Cyber Ardoch the matter is being dealt with in the usual way. The man is beyond any aid we can give."

"But he is still alive?"

"Amazingly, yes. His continued existence is a contravention of all accepted standards of the survival-attributes of the human race. My own speculation is that he has certain mutant traits which has increased his defense mechanisms to an incredible extent. The condition of his epidermis and the internal decay alone would have killed any normal man. An interesting specimen which is, of course, the reason we have devoted so much time and material to his welfare."

An attitude the cyber could appreciate.

"You have information as to the original situation?"

"Of course. The rescue vessel was a small ship operating from this planet and engaged in plotting the energy-flows occurring in this region of the Rift. Its detectors spotted mass and an investigation was made. The wreck was little more than twisted metal as was to be expected but, incredibly, a portion of it remained intact. Apparently the sole occupant had sealed himself within and insulated the compartment with a pattern of meshed wires fed by battery-power. In effect he had, somehow, managed to heterodyne the destructive energies of the Rift. Naturally he had also a supply of food and water which, together with quick-time-but surely you have read the report?"

"I have."

"There is nothing more I can add." Ningsia made a small gesture, one of dismissal. "A full autopsy will be made after the man has died and the report completed. If you are interested I will see to it that a copy is sent to you."

Ardoch said, evenly, "That is not why I am here, Director. It is essential that I see the man."

"See him?" Ningsia frowned. "What purpose would that serve the patient? He is comatose."

"Even so, Director, I must insist."

The cyber didn't raise his voice, it continued to be the trained, even modulation carefully designed to eliminate all irritant factors, but the Director was under no illusion. The Cyclan was powerful and the cyber was a servant of the Cyclan.

As he hesitated the cyber continued, "It is a small matter, surely? It will not inconvenience the running of your hospital. All I require is access to the patient and the services of a medical practitioner who will obey my orders. That and privacy."

Privacy? Ningsia's frown deepened-what business could the cyber have with the near-dead survivor of a wrecked vessel? Yet how could he refuse to cooperate? Fralde was on the verge of completing negotiations with a sister world-an alliance which held great promise. The Cyclan had been of tremendous help in gaining maximum advantage. To deny the request would be to risk his own advancement and to court punishment for his lack of discernment.

Stiffly he snapped to attention. "I am at your full disposal, Cyber Ardoch. The patient is in ward 87, bed 152, Doctor Wuhu will attend you." He added, bleakly, "He will do everything you ask."

Wuhu was a younger edition of the Director; a little less stiff, a little less tall. Following him through the hospital the cyber, by contrast, was a pillar of flame. His scarlet robe with the great seal of the Cyclan glowing on its breast reflected the light in a host of ruby shimmers. His shaven skull, rising above the thrown-back cowl, looked emaciated but was simply bone and muscle devoid of fat. As was the rest of his hard, lean body.

To a cyber food was something to fuel the metabolism and nothing else. Fat was a waste of both food and energy, unwanted tissue which slowed mental processes and physical function. Like emotion it was unessential to the working of the intellect.

And no cyber could feel emotion.

An operation performed at puberty on the thalamus reenforced earlier training and divorced the mind from the impulses of the body. Ardoch could feel no hate, no fear, no anger, no love. A flesh and blood robot he followed the doctor through the bleak corridors of the hospital, indifferent to the cries, the moans, the sounds of anguish coming from the beds ranked in the vast wards.

Indifferent also to the glimpses of doctors working in operating theaters, the machines, the attendants, the creatures on which they worked. People were basically machines; those who healed them were engineers repairing the biological fabrications. They were merciful in their fashion-but efficiency came first.

An attitude of which the cyber approved.

"In here," said Wuhu as they approached a door. "Far down on the left."

"You have mobile screens?"

"Of course."

"See they are placed in readiness. I understand the patient is comatose-have drugs on hand together with a hypogun. You use such a device?"

"We are not primitives," said the young man, stiffly. "May I ask what drugs you intend to use?" He blinked at the answer, his momentary hope of scoring a small victory over the other's ignorance vanishing as he realized the cyber knew as much about medicine as himself. Even so he uttered a warning. "They are potent compounds. Excessive use or certain combinations could result in convulsions and death."

Ardoch said, "Your orders were plain, were they not?"

"To obey you-yes, they were plain."

"Then do as you were directed. See to the screens, obtain the drugs and equipment but, first, show me the patient."

He lay on a narrow cot, a mass of decaying tissue, the face distorted, the cheeks sunken, the lids closed over the twitching eyes. Beneath the thin sheet, which was his only cover, the body seemed distorted, one leg ending in a stump, the hips swollen, asymmetrical. The skin was scaled, cracked and oozing a thin, odorous pus. A crust had formed at the edges of the mouth.

He was not alone.

Ardoch stiffened at the sight of the cowled figure which sat beside the cot, hands resting on the patient's arm, his voice a low, soothing murmur as he enhanced the hypnotic trance into which he had thrown the sick man.

"You are standing on a meadow bright with little flowers with a brook running along one end and trees giving shade at the other. There are friends with you, a girl whom you love and who loves you in return. Soon you are to be married but now you are young and filled with the joy of life. The sun is warm and together you will swim in the clear water. You can feel it now. You are touching it and your friends are laughing and your girl is smiling and you are content. From the trees come…"

The monk paid no attention as the cyber halted at his side, concentrating on the hypnotic suggestions he was implanting in the mind of the dying man so that, at least, he would know a brief if final happiness.

As Wuhu came to join him Ardoch said, "Does this man have permission to do what he is doing?"

"Brother Venn is known to the hospital. He comes and goes as he pleases."

"That is not what I asked."

"Yes, he has permission to tend the patients. When we have done all that we can do then he seems able to give added comfort. It costs nothing."

"I understand the patient was comatose."

"He was, brother." Verin rose to his feet to stand beside the cyber, his brown robe in sharp contrast to the scarlet, the homespun to the shimmering weave. "But there are ways to bring comfort even to a mind locked in on itself."

"You have used drugs?"

The monk shrugged aside the accusation. "I have used nothing but touch and words, brother. They are all that is needed for anyone wise in their application. Words and-" he let irony edge his tone "-a little understanding. Men are not machines no matter what those who would find it convenient for them to be may claim."

Watching them Wuhu sensed the mutual antagonism which wreathed them like an invisible cloud. Masked yet it was there as they faced each other. Like natural enemies, a cat and dog perhaps, or the opposing articles of differing faiths. The monk who believed in love and tolerance and the cyber who believed in nothing but the cold logic of emotionless reason which had no room for sentiment and no place for mercy. The Church and the Cyclan face to face over the dying.

If it came to a war between them who would win?

An academic question as the young doctor was quick to realize. Those who had dedicated their lives to the doctrine of peace would never seek to kill and those who followed reason would never yield to the final stupidity. Between them would be no bloody battles or corrosive wars in which planets would burn and men wither like flies in winter. And yet, even so, always between them there would be conflict.

But, if by some incredible twist of fate actual war should rise between them, Wuhu would back the Cyclan. They were not afraid to exterminate.

And yet who could assess the stubborn resolve of a crusade?

He shook his head, aware that such speculation had no place here at this time, if ever, and the moment of strain passed as Ardoch turned toward him.

"Where are the screens?"

They arrived as the monk, after a final glance at the dying man, moved quietly down the ward to where another patient was in need of his ministration. He and all the occupants of the neatly set rows of beds, vanished from sight as attendants set the screens into place and turned the area around the bed into an oasis of privacy.

"The drugs." Ardoch gestured at the physician. "This man is in a deep, hypnotic trance. I want him brought out of it and his mind placed in a state of conscious awareness. It would be as well if you recognized the urgency of the situation."

In other words kill him if it was necessary but wake him long enough to listen and answer. Wuhu was aware of the implication but, a physician of Fralde, he had no compunction at cutting short a life which was already lost. And it would be an act of mercy to shorten the dying man's anguish.

As he stepped forward to lift the charged hypogun and rest it against the flaccid throat of the patient the cyber caught his arm.

"A moment. I wish to check the medication." He twisted a knob and ejected the charge. "As I suspected. You were about to give far too high a dose of painkiller. Coupled with the rest it would have given him a momentary euphoria. You forget that he is experiencing subjective pleasure. Before he can be of use that must be eradicated. Here." He handed back the instrument. "I want him awake, aware and in pain. Commence!"

Silently the doctor obeyed. The hiss of the airblast carrying the drugs into the patient's bloodstream was followed, within seconds, by a groan.

It yielded to a scream.

"God! God the pain! The pain!"

The voice was thick, slobbering, the words almost lost in the liquid gurgle of phlegm, the dissolving tissue of decaying lungs. On the cover the hands clenched, fingers digging into the fabric, pus thick at cracked joints.

"The pain!"

"It will be eased if you cooperate." Ardoch sat on the edge of the bed and leaned towards the contorted face. Reflected light from his robe gave the pasty flesh an unreal flush of artificial health. "Your name? Your name, man! Your name!"

"Fatshan. Fatshan of the Sleethan. The engineer. We got caught in the Rift. A generator-for God's sake do something about the pain."

The hypogun hissed as the cyber gestured. Wuhu stepped back, eyes and ears alert, Ningsia, for one, would be grateful for any information he could gain and convey. As if guessing his thoughts Ardoch held out his hand.

"Give me the hypogun and go."

"Leave my patient?"

"To me, yes. And I shall not remind you again of your instructions." As the man left the cyber stared at the dying engineer. "Look at me," he commanded. "At the robe I wear. You have seen others like it before I think. On Harald? On board the Sleethan?"

The only pleasure a cyber could experience was the glow of mental achievement and, as the dying man nodded, Ardoch knew it to the full. A prediction confirmed and his skill demonstrated without question. From a handful of facts, diverse data collected, correlated, woven into a pattern he had extrapolated the logical sequence of events. An attribute possessed by all cybers, the fruit of long and arduous training which enhanced natural talent, the thing which made them both desired and disliked by those who paid for their services.

Would a certain pattern gain favor in the markets? A manufacturer of clothing could find the answer-at a price, the predictions as to sales and shifts in fashion guiding him and ensuring the maximum protection against loss, the maximum anticipation of profit.

Should a proposed marriage be canceled or the original intention pursued? A cyber would point out the path such a union would take as appertaining to the shift and balance of power, the influence of possible children, the merging of interests, the alienation of potential enemies.

To hire the services of the Cyclan was to ensure success and to minimize error. Once used the temptation to take advantage of such advice could not be resisted. So the Cyclan grew in power and influence, with cybers at every court, in every sphere of influence, predicting the sequence of events following any action, weaving a scarlet-tinted web.

Sitting, listening to the liquid gurgle of Fatshan's voice,

Ardoch filled in the parts left unsaid, verifying pervious knowledge, endorsing made predictions.

"On Harald men took passage on board the Sleethan." he said. "Cyber Broge, his acolyte and a man called Dumarest. Verify!"

The ruined face lolled on the pillow. "Gone! All gone!"

"Dead?" A doubt to be resolved and a search to be ended. "Did they die in the ship with the others?" He leaned forward as the bloated head signaled a negative. "They did not die."

"Not in the Rift. They vanished before we reached Zakym."

"Vanished?"

"Disappeared." The engineer reared. "The pain? I can't stand the pain! For God's sake give me something for it."

"You'll talk? Cooperate?" The hypogun hissed as the man grunted agreement, the instrument delivering its reward of mercy. A double dose; the drugs which numbed pain were accompanied by others which gave a false confidence. "Tell me!"

"We were on Harald," wheezed the engineer. "But you know that. The cyber and his acolyte took Dumarest prisoner. The captain had no choice but to agree. The reward-you understand."

A free-trader, operating on the edge of extinction, any profit shared by the crew-how could he have refused?

"There were three of us," continued the engineer. "Me, Erylin the captain, Chagney the navigator. Too few but we had no choice. We were less later." He doubled in a fit of coughing. "The Rift-damn the luck. Damn it all to hell!"

"What happened?"

"They vanished. They simply vanished. Three men disappearing from a ship in flight They must have died. Maybe they had a fight or something and the survivor threw out the bodies and himself after them. I don't know. We were going to report it but Chagney advised against it. He acted odd. Kept drinking though he knew it was bad for him. Erylin tried to warn him but nothing he said made any difference. Not him nor me." He coughed again, blood staining the phlegm he spat from his mouth. "Damn the luck. We needed a navigator."

"In the Rift?"

"Where else? How the hell can you hope to navigate without one? Erylin tried but he'd forgotten his skill. The instruments were acting up, old, rotten, the whole stinking ship was rotten. I should have gone with it. Died while I was still whole. Quit like Chagney did-at least he had guts. Jumped out after we left Zakym. Just walked through the port and breathed vacuum. There are worse ways to go."

Lying cooped in a small compartment with a mesh of wire singing with trapped energies-electronic spiders leaping with scintillant darts of flame and no certainty that rescue would ever come. Eking out the food, the water, lying in filth, the body rotting with accelerated decay. Waiting while quick-time compressed days into minutes, the drug altering and slowing the metabolism and so extending life. A convenience which reduced the tedium of long journeys. One used by the engineer to extend his life. One which ended as the cyber watched.

Fralde was a bleak world; the suite given over for the use of Ardoch was little better than the harsh wards of the hospital and differed from a prison only in that the doors were open and the windows unbarred. The Spartan conditions meant nothing to the cyber. A desk at which to work and a chair on which to sit were the only essentials and, in the room to which he retired, a narrow cot was all he asked.

Now he moved toward it, giving the attendant acolyte a single command.

"Total seal. I am not to be disturbed."

As the youth bowed he closed the door on the inner chamber and touched the thick band of metal embracing his left wrist. Electronic energies streamed from the activated mechanism to form a zone through which no spying eye or ear could penetrate. His. privacy assured, Ardoch turned to the bed and lay supine, relaxing, breathing regularly as, closing his eyes, he concentrated on the Samatchazi formula. Gradually he lost the use of his senses. He became deaf and, had he opened his eyes, he would have been blind. Divorced of the irritation of external stimuli his mind gained tranquility, became a thing of pure intellect, its reasoning awareness the only thread with reality. Only then did the grafted Homochon elements rise from quiescence.

Rapport was established.

Ardoch became wholly alive.

He soared like a bird and yet more than a bird, flying through vast immensities by the sheer application of thought, gliding past pendants of shimmering crystal, seeing gleaming rainbows locked in an incredible complexity; arching bridges, bows, segments of multi-dimensional circles, lines which turned to twist and turn again so that the entire universe was filled with a coruscating, burning, resplendent effulgence of light which was the essence of truth.

And, at the heart of it, an incredible flower of brilliance among an incredible skein of luminescence, was the convoluted node which was the headquarters of the Cyclan. A fortress buried deep beneath miles of rock and containing the mass of interlocked brains which was the Central Intelligence. The heart of the Cyclan. The multiple brain to which he was drawn, his own intelligence touching it, being absorbed by it, his knowledge sucked into it as dew into arid ground.

Instantaneous organic transmission against which the speed of light was a veritable crawl.

"Dumarest alive! Explain in detail!" Ardoch felt the pulse, the urgency, the determination. "Are you certain?"

The engineer had not lied, of that he was convinced. And there was verification. Broge had found Dumarest, had taken him, was on his way to a rendevous in the Sleethan. He had communicated and was confident that nothing could go wrong. Too confident for that was the last communication received. Had he been alive he would have established rapport-as he hadn't, it was logical to assume he was dead.

"The engineer was genuine?"

Affirmative.

"And he stated the party had vanished?" A pause. "From the ship and Dumarest must have been the cause. Even if he had died his body would have been delivered. He destroyed the cyber and his acolyte, evicted them and after?"

A split second in which countless brains assessed all possibilities, discarded the impossible, isolated the most probable and produced the answers.

The affinity twin. The secret Dumarest held and for which the Cyclan searched. For which they would hunt him over a thousand worlds and through endless parsecs. Had hunted him and would hunt him still, using every resource to gain the correct sequence in which the fifteen molecular units had to be joined in order to form the artificial symbiote which would ensure the Cyclan the complete and utter domination of the galaxy.

Fifteen biological molecular units, the last reversed to form a subjective half. Injected into a host it settled in the cortex and meshed with the motor and nervous system transmitting all sensory data to the dominant portion. In effect the person carrying it became other than himself. He became the host, living in the body, looking through the eyes, feeling, tasting, sensing-enjoying all the attributes of a completely new body.

An old man could become young again in a firm, virile body, A crone could know the admiration of men and look into a mirror and see the stolen beauty which was hers. A cyber could take over a person of influence and work him as a puppeteer would a marionette. And what one cyber could do so could others. They would occupy every place of power and wealth, each throne, every command.

A secret thought lost when Brasque had stolen it. Thought lost again when every sign pointed to Dumarest having died together with Broge and his acolyte when the Sleethan had been lost. As it had been lost, wrecked in the Rift, only the wildest chance bringing it and its sole survivor to light.

"Verification?"

Surely a test, the Central Intelligence did not need the calculations of a lone cyber to check its findings but already it had taken the prediction from Ardoch's brain.

"Probability is in order of ninety-three percent that you are correct. Dumarest must have chosen a crew member to be the host which is the only logical step he could have taken in order to ensure his own survival and arrange for the disappearance. Which?"

A name.

"Correct. It had to be the navigator, Chagney. After the ship had deposited its cargo on Zakym the man had to die in order to release Dumarests intelligence. Therefore the excessive drinking. Therefore the apparent suicide."

A question.

"Yes. Dumarest must have landed on Zakym hidden in a box of cargo. The probability is that he is still on that world. There are unusual attributes to the planet which would have had a peculiar effect on him. Certainty is lacking but the prediction is eighty-two percent that he is, or was while on that world, not wholly sane."

A query.

"Correction. Sane is not wholly appropriate. He will be a little abnormal. You will proceed to Zakym with the utmost dispatch. Dumarest is not to be killed or his life or intelligence placed in danger. This is of utmost priority. Once found he is to be removed from the planet immediately. That is if he is on Zakym as the prediction implies. If not he must be followed."

Acknowledgment and, again, a question.

"No. Do not hold him and wait for contact by our agents. Zakym is approaching a critical state as regards the stability of the present culture. Information from Ilyard and other worlds shows the interest of mercenary bands. Find Dumarest and move him before he becomes embroiled in a war!"

The rest was sheer euphoria.

Always, after rapport had been broken, was a period when the Homochon elements sank back into quiescence and the mind began to realign itself with the machinery of the body. Ardoch hovered in a dark immensity, a naked intelligence untrammeled and unconfined by the limitations of the flesh, sensing strange memories and alien situations, knowing things he could have never learned, living lives which could never have been his. A flood of experience, the shards and overflow of other minds, the contact of other intelligences.

The radiated power of Central Intelligence which filled the universe with the emitted power of its massed minds.

One day he would become a living part of that tremendous complex. His body would age and reach the end of its useful life but his mind would remain as sharp and as active as ever. Then he would be taken, his brain removed from his skull, placed in a vat of nutrient fluids, connected to a life support apparatus and then, finally, connected to the others, his brain hooked into series with the rest.

He would become a part of Central Intelligence and, at the same time, the whole of it. His ego merging with, absorbed by, assimilating the rest in one total unification.

Converted into a section of an organic computer working continuously to solve each and every secret of the universe. To meld all the races of mankind into a unified whole. To make the Cyclan supreme throughout the galaxy. The aim and object of his being.