"Ru Balakalak is preparing to enter the dystasis tank immediately. As I understand it, the unabbreviated procedure takes about twenty-six weeks. Is that correct, Archiator?"
"Approximately," said Mustard Smock. "In interspecific DNA exchange, there is a necessary preliminary operation, a sort of inoculation of the human template individual to preclude rejection of exotic DNA by the nonhuman recipient. This is followed by the phase during which the actual gene transfer and bodily transformation of the recipient is accomplished."
"Twenty-six weeks is a long time to wait," said the Locutor.
The Servant said, "Additional time will be required to tutor Ru Balakalak in details of the mission once he emerges from dystasis. It is estimated that he will be ready after thirty weeks."
"Thirty!"
"Meanwhile, one will keep the Council of Nine fully informed concerning operations on Earth. Needless to say, one expects that you, Ru Kamik, will be zealous in supporting the revised Grand Design."
She lowered her head again. "As you say, Servant of Servants."
"Excellent." He turned to the scientist. "And now one believes it is time for this one and the Council Locutor to interview the human demiclone."
"He awaits in the recovery room," Archiator Malotuwak said. "Please follow this one."
The three Haluk went away and I was left suspended in dopey horror, boggled by the technobabble and at a loss to understand the kind of espionage my duplicate was about to undertake. Questions swirled in my brain like terrified bait minnows in a bucket.
Who was the human traitor who now wore my face, who had hatched some ploy that was deemed vital to the Haluk Grand Design?
Whatever the hell that was.
How could a demiclone of me help put the Commonwealth of Human Worlds in thrall to an alien race?
Dammit—who am I, anyway?
A disgrace. A former cop. A diver. A zillionaire. Aside from the useless fragments of memory, my drugged brain had no answers.
So after a while I slept again and dreamed of falling snow, the roaring fire, the champagne, and my nameless wife's loving arms. Dreamed over and over again, to the accompaniment of Scott Hamilton's ancient, peerless saxophone.
At long last the dreaming stopped.
I realized instantly that my situation had changed. Some instinct warned me not to open my eyes and not to move. I had sense enough to obey.
I was out of the tank, breathing ambient air, lying on my back on a firm, slightly inclined surface, head cradled in a comfortable pillow. Warm and dry, not hurting—and surprisingly alert, even though I still had no notion of my identity or what had happened to me.
Alien voices were speaking and I felt gentle pokes and prods in different parts of my anatomy. Two Haluk individuals who called each other Miruviak and Avilik were right beside me, performing some sort of physical examination. The suffixes of their names indicated that one was male and one female. They were not wearing translators. My knowledge of the Haluk language is imperfect and I could understand only part of their conversation, which seemed to refer to my condition. I was apparently in satisfactory shape, and after a few minutes they covered me to the chin with a soft blanket and moved off, still talking.
I heard one of them say: "The blah blah authority figure is soul-glowing about the blah of the dystasis blah blah."
I understood that to mean that a Haluk VIP, perhaps my old chum the Servant of Servants of Luk, was happy about the results of some sort of dystasis procedure. "Dystasis" was the same word in English and Halukese because a human had illegally introduced it to the aliens.
The remarks that followed were spoken some distance away, couched in medical jargon almost totally incomprehensible to me. I risked cracking open my eyelids.
1 could see most of the room. It was at least six meters square and looked like an accommodation in a superior Haluk hotel catering to humans, situated on one of their long-settled colonial planets. With the human-Haluk rapprochement in place in the Perseus Spur, I'd once stayed in a similar place.
Good. You remembered that. Now try to remember something essential—like who you are!
The furnishings, except for scattered pieces of mysterious technical apparatus with blinking telltales, were an eclectic mix of alien and Earth designs. On my right, where the wall was completely shrouded in opaque draperies, were exotic chairs, a low table, stands holding Haluk bioluminescent lamps with quaint shades, and an elaborate human-style infomedia credenza. To the left, in an open-plan adjacent room, was a wet bar—no booze visible—and a compact kitchen, also human in design. An alcove held a tall case full of e-books and slates, plus a collection of anonymous small cabinets constructed of exotic materials. The head of my bed was against one wall. Another bed stood on the opposite side of the room, flanked by an open bathroom door with a human-type sink visible. A second door in that wall was closed.
The two Haluk medical technicians, wearing human-style pale green hospital scrubs and murmuring quiet comments, hovered over the occupant of the other bed, who lay motionless while the aliens studied him. I didn't have a very good view of the patient, but I could tell that he was a good-sized human male with a fairly powerful build. A small console with what looked like medical monitoring equipment stood at his bedside.
I caught the question: "If a third demiclone is not required, then why not discard the blah?"
The female Haluk said, "This is a very blah demiclone, Miruviak. He must be taught blah blah blah and blah before blah his mission. Some of the teaching will be done by the human blah who taught blah blah. But blah from the blah over there is also needed. Our orders are to keep him alive until the blah decides he is blah blah."
Not very enlightening. In fact, ominous.
"This demiclone will wake up soon," said the male medic. "Listen, Avilik: one thinks we should blah blah blah. Just in case blah blah blah. Did you bring them with you?"
"Yes."
The meditechs had finished their examination of the other patient and replaced his blanket. Now they came across the room toward me again. I quickly shut my eyes, relaxed, tried to think Zen thoughts, and prayed that my bed wasn't equipped with a built-in vital signs monitor that would betray the fact that I was rally conscious. Somebody drew the covering away from my naked body. They rolled me over and I felt a sharp prick in the back of my neck.
"It is best that we wait to insert the second blah" Avilik decided. "But it is not really needed yet. He's still very weak."
Miruviak grunted something that might have been "That will take care of it," and then they rolled me over again and tucked me in.
"The dystasis turned him a most beautiful color," the female medic remarked, uttering the squelched barking sound that represented Haluk laughter. "His blah blah are certainly of an imposing size and blah. Later, one hopes to know him better before we must blah blah."
"Disgusting," hissed her colleague, clearly miffed. "You women only blah one thing."
I heard more alien snickering. Then both of the medical technicians went out of the room. I lay still, cold dread seeping into my soul along with a growing comprehension. My memory was coming back on-line—parts of it, at any rate— and I didn't like what I recalled.
I'd been in a dystasis tank for at least seven months. The Haluk had made two demiclones of me. The first evil triplet had been a human traitor, imperfectly morphed at the cell-nucleus level but otherwise my physical duplicate. I had no notion what his mission might be, but it boded no good for humanity. The second demiclone was a transformed Haluk, destined to replace Agent Number One, who possessed certain talents but also had the potential to become uncontrollable. Number Two had been more expertly engineered and was perhaps a perfect genetic replica. I presumed that he now occupied the bed opposite mine. He was going to be tutored before going out to fulfill his mission, and some of the briefings were to come from me, whether I chose to cooperate or not.
The suite's mishmash of Haluk and human decor made more sense now. It was a sc
hoolroom where my shadow and I would live and work together until he had his act down pat.
Interspecific genetic engineering ... there was something peculiar about it. I tried to retrieve what I knew from my cerebral database. My sister—what was her name?—had once been targeted for demicloning. She was rescued before a duplicate of her could be made, but she'd still suffered certain dramatic side effects from the procedure.
As I would have.
Turning an alien into a human being was trickier than the usual total-spectrum biological refit job and even more illegal under CHW law. It required that the human DNA donor—in this case, me—first be modified with an infusion of critical alien genes so the demiclone subject wouldn't reject the human material. The preliminary genen procedure superficially transformed the DNA donor—
Rats!
I lifted my right hand and drew it out from beneath the covers. The skin was very firm and tinted a rich sky-blue. There were no fingernails on the four abnormally elongated digits. The bones of the pinkie and ring fingers were partially fused now, enclosed in a single fleshy envelope. My lower arm, quite hairless, was decorated with a dramatic pattern of ridges that sported faintly drawn golden patterns, almost like delicate enamelwork.
I touched my altered face and cursed more eloquently. Weird bulges and a Haluk-style flattened nose. Eye sockets of normal human diameter, slightly smaller than Haluk orbits. It seemed that I'd kept my human-sized eyeballs, just as my older sister Eve had when the Haluk tried to demiclone her.
Eve! Her name was Eve. And my name was ...
On the tip of my tongue, which felt strange, as though it were too large for my mouth. My teeth seemed peculiar, too. The spaces between them were wider than normal.
Under the blanket, my hands explored a body that was humanoid but not human. Externally, the preliminary genen procedure had turned me into a facsimile of a Haluk, complete with a wasp waist that was only about 70 centimeters in circumference. But inside my ridged blue skin were human muscles and human guts and human bones, plus a discombobulated but swiftly recuperating human brain. I lacked the Haluk elongated neck and overall slender build. My alien hands groped lower on their inspection tour until they reached my crotch—
Oh, God! Holy blazing bloody shit! No! Not that!
It was all I could do not to scream my lungs out. Those rucking xeno fiends ...
For a few minutes I felt drowned in a black tide of self-loathing and despair. Then I remembered that my partially morphed sister Eve—Who hadn't experienced this particular indignity—had been restored to her normal human physiology by another sojourn in the dystasis tank. At the time, it seemed to be a miracle of modern science.
I, too, could be made good as new. The ghastly transformation of my genitals could be reversed, as could the other changes. Provided that I managed to live long enough, and escaped from whatever exotic planet the Haluk had stashed me on.
Very slowly I sat up, experiencing nausea and a fleeting dizziness. I was weak as a new-hatched chick and there was a curious itching sensation at the back of my neck. I touched it and felt a tiny lump right at the base of my skull. The damned Haluk meditechs had given me an implant, and odds were it had to do with keeping me under control.
Maybe it was signaling them at this very moment.
My weird blue feet settled onto the floor—wood parquet laid out in a minuscule herringbone pattern, coated with ice-clear "skating rink" glaze a full centimeter in thickness. It was a labor-intensive human interior design style, ultra-trendy. Just the sort of thing the fad-conscious Haluk were likely to borrow. I judged that I was being held in a very upscale alien establishment—certainly nothing resembling the godforsaken outpost in the Sagittarius Whorl where I'd gone on the Barky Hunt. Perhaps my captors had taken me to the planet Artiuk, their colonial capital in the Milky Way...
Which was situated in the Perseus Spur sector of the galaxy, fourteen thousand light-years from Earth. More memories data-dumped. I'd lived in the Spur myself, on a pretty little freesoil world called Kedge-Lockaby. Had a house on a tropical island, a yellow submarine named Pernio II, and a bunch of rascally friends. Once upon a time I'd been a disenfranchised Throwaway, an ex-cop, a happy-go-lucky charterboat skipper who ran a sport-diving service for tourists.
But not lately.
Something momentous had happened to me. I had returned to Earth and stayed there for some years, doing ...
What?
Something to do with politics. Something to do with lawyering. Whatever it was had keenly interested the Haluk, given my double demicloning and the secrecy attending it. Unfortunately, the exact nature of my recent terrestrial activities still eluded me, along with my name.
My name! If I could just remember that, all the rest of it would come back.
Wrapping the blanket around my dainty middle to hide the disgusting alien sex organs that had captivated the female medical technician, I struggled to stand up. Exerted long-unused muscles and shuffled creakily across the room to the other bed. Stared down at the guy who lay there, asleep or unconscious, with tiny alien-type medical sensors stuck to his forehead, temples, and neck.
Recognized him.
I inhaled sharply, found myself pitching forward in a sudden fit of vertigo, shocked to the depths of my being. My blue fingers caught at the bedclothes and I saved myself from falling, pushed my trembling body upright and stood there swaying and gasping for breath.
The man was tall and heavy-boned, with a physique less well-developed than it should have been—although that flaw could be mitigated through appropriate clothing or even judicious doses of steroids. The face would need work, too. The skin was pasty from his long sojourn in the tank, and the features were too fresh and regular. He lacked a certain distinctive scar at the top of his left cheekbone. His nose had never been broken in a Big Beach brawl and coaxed back into shape by a defrocked Throwaway plastic surgeon suffering a cosmic-class hangover from Danaëan rotgut. His hair was pretty authentic, the color of bread crust, springing from his forehead in a distinctive widow's peak. It was a little too long, but a barber would fix that. When his eyes opened, I was positive they'd be cold green with an inner ring of amber.
I knew him, all right.
He was me.
My demiclone, the alien imposter who was going to take my place—or rather the place of Demiclone Number One, already secretly machinating. We would help conquer humanity on behalf of the Haluk race.
My name was Asahel Ethan Frost. Called Asa by my family, Helly by my friends, and Helmut Icicle by assorted crooks, ne'er-do-wells, and disenfranchised wretches of the Perseus Spur. My father was Simon Frost, the founder of Rampart Interstellar Corporation, which had now become Rampart Amalgamated Concern. My mother was the late Katje Vanderpost, gentle philanthropist, whose murder I had yet to avenge. Her gift had made me a zillionaire. My siblings were Eve, Bethany, and the matricidal Daniel. My wife—my former wife, for we had been divorced for nearly eight years—was Joanna DeVet, Morehouse Professor of Political Science at Commonwealth University, Toronto Campus.
I remembered it all, including details of my anti-Haluk political activities, my legal triumph for Rampart Concern, and the ill-advised escapade in the Sagittarius Whorl that had brought me to this pretty pass.
So, what are you going to do about it, you sorry Halukoid piece of shit?
The back of my neck tingled as a wave of fury washed over me, and I jumped as if I'd been goosed. Whatever I did, I knew I'd better do it mighty damned fast.
Fake Helly looked so peaceful, lying there. For an instant I wondered what kind of sweet alien dream they'd programmed for him while he was in dystasis. Then I twitched the pillow out from under his head, pressed it over his face, and held it down while he writhed feebly under me and uttered muffled cries.
The medical monitor standing beside the bed let out a shriek of alarm. Simultaneously, the gizmo implanted in my neck began to administer a series of increasingly severe shocks at intervals of about five sec
onds. If they were intended to deter me from homicidal rage and other adrenaline-driven misdeeds, someone had badly miscalculated the human pain threshold.
I flung myself on top of my double, using my weight to pin his flailing arms. Neither of us was up to snuff physically, but I still had my superior human musculature and knew how to use it. The regular shocks from my neck implant were now so strong that I was moaning in agony.
I kept on doing what I had to do.
His struggles weakened and finally stopped. I held the pillow down hard for another minute or so, then pulled it away. His lips were cyanotic, smeared with blood from his bitten tongue. The wide-open eyes had tiny points of red dotting the whites, and the pupils were wide and black. I felt for a pulse in his throat and found nothing. The monitor continued its shrill distress signal.
He was clinically dead, but they'd be able to revive him. Unless ...
The pain from the neck shocks was becoming unbearable, and I knew I'd pass out unless I could do something about it. I staggered across the room toward the small kitchen, scratching impotently at my nape with Halukoid fingers lacking nails. Tore open drawer after drawer, finally found one with small cooking utensils. What to use? I couldn't find any knives, which figured.
That! If only it's sharp enough ...
I grabbed it, thrust it awkwardly against the tiny lump, and gouged with all my strength.
One last bellow emptied my lungs. Then pain—but of a new sort, related to torn flesh. I dropped the melon bailer with its malignant contents on the floor, grabbed up a dish towel and pressed it against the streaming wound. My blood was very red, very human.
As his would be, no longer circulating. But the Haluk medics would be able to do something about that unless I made it impossible.
I dived back into the drawer of kitchen utensils and rummaged frantically, cursing the absence of sharply pointed implements until I realized that any damage I might inflict with them would be easily repairable. I had to destroy Fake Helly, and do it within minutes.