“If I am not Ashregan but Human,” he inquired triumphantly of them all but the two Humans in particular, “how is it that I can have mind contact with the Amplitur without the Human neurocerebral defensive mechanism engaging? I’ve experienced this without any harm coming to either myself or the Teachers involved. No Human could do the same, even if they so desired.”
First-of-Surgery consulted with a cluster of O’o’yan and other Hivistahm. Removing a sheet from the envelope of lies, the elderly surgeon approached the prisoner for the second time.
“Remember this picture?”
Ranji glanced haughtily at the plastic. “Maybe.”
“I again call your attention to the small area in red highlighted. This a much deeper scan is than any of the others. It shows a tiny portion of the interior of the right side of your cerebral cortex.”
“If you say so,” he replied indifferently. “What’s this one supposed to be? Another graft? Another trick?”
The Hivistahm’s teeth ground against one another as he slowly explained. “The red-enhanced portion the location signifies of a minute ganglionic complex. A nodule, a collection of nerve endings and connections. It took quite a while to find and was not at first noticed. Once it was identified a great deal of our time it occupied.” The sheet rustled slightly in his fingers.
“The Human brain no such formation contains.”
Ranji smiled. “You see? That only proves what I’ve been saying all along.”
The short Human scratched at an ear. “There is also no such nodule present in the Ashregan brain.”
Ranji involuntarily found himself eyeing the picture again. There it was: a fuzzy blot of indeterminate size and indistinct outline. Reason enough to concede one’s sanity?
First-of-Surgery handed him another picture. “Here still another view is. The magnification is greater.”
The blot resolved itself into a tight cluster of cells from which tiny filaments extended in many directions. It looked like any creature one might observe through a microscope.
“And still greater magnification.”
The third picture revealed the filaments and cells in detail. No biologist, he was incapable of identifying any of it. Except …
He pointed. “What’s that?”
First-of-Surgery forced himself to lean close. “A nanoneural weld. A place where nerve endings artificially joined have been.” The slit-eyed, scaly reptilian face stared up at him.
“Your body no code contains for such a complex. It was built and then in your mind installed. As one would accessorize any rare precision instrument. It in a portion of your brain reposes which Human scientists have designated as unused. I should prefer to say hitherto dormant.
“Research leads us to believe that this is the region of the Human mind which holds the key to Homo sapiens’s ability to resist Amplitur mind-probes and suggestions. It therefore follows logically that this unique addition to your cerebral structure was by Amplitur nanobioengineers there emplaced in order susceptible to their mental manipulation to render you. It a bridge appears to be. A neural bypass, if you will. As artificial and unnatural as the bony ridges above your ears.”
“Not only are they breeding Ashregan-looking Humans to fight for them,” said the woman softly, “if they can get you and your friends to mate with Human captives or others, they can breed out of the species the neurocerebral mechanism that enables humankind to resist their mind-probes. That has to be their eventual aim.”
“First-of-Surgery told you they take the long view,” her companion huffed.
Ranji stared blankly at them. A psychosomatic throbbing started near the back of his skull, where the minuscule nodule supposedly reposed.
“I don’t believe you,” he finally managed to mutter hoarsely. “If this thing is for real, then it’s something all my people possess. All Ashregan people. You’re trying to make me paranoid by showing me some obscure, harmless growth or faked imagery. Well, it won’t work. You’re crazy if you think I’m going to be taken in by something so obvious.”
“The nodule is to you unique.” First-of-Surgery was quietly insistent. “It is real, it is not found in Humans, it is not found in Ashregan. Only you.”
“This is a wicked thing,” the elderly Massood whispered. “Barbarous. Uncivilized.”
“Like war itself.” The short Human scanned the roomful of allies. “Mankind is just the only species that readily accepts the fact, is all. That’s why this discovery only surprises but does not shock us.”
“Indubitably.” The Massood’s comment was a peculiar mélange of distaste and admiration.
“Lies, clever lies.” Ranji glared defiantly at the two Humans. “They won’t help you. Did you really think you’d be able to convince me of such a sweeping hypothesis on the basis of such paltry evidence? This,” and he shook the plastic sheet violently, “is nothing!” He whirled and flung it as far as he could. It sailed through the air.
In the split second that every eye in the room turned to follow the picture’s progress Ranji was out of his seat and moving. First-of-Surgery went flying as a powerful forearm brushed him aside.
With no one else standing in his way Ranji was at the door before the two guards could react. The larger of the two caught a brace of stiffened fingers square in his throat. He gagged and went down as heavily as if he’d taken a slug to the chest. His companion was trying to backpedal and aim his gun when the prisoner’s spinning heel caught him across the side of the face, sending blood and teeth flying.
Ranji roared up the corridor, legs and lungs functioning smoothly in tandem. If he could just reach the surface … He was counting on his specimen value to preserve him from destruction, betting that the order was out to shoot only to stun.
Turning a corner brought him face-to-face with a single Wais. The ornithorp was seated behind a high metal desk in the center of a floor inlaid with speckled stone. Walls of glass revealed the underground parking area he remembered from his arrival many months earlier. Few vehicles were in evidence. More importantly, the external door was open. Beyond lay blue sky, clouds, and fringing vegetation.
Turning, the Wais started to speak, recognized him for who he was, and froze. Ranji was racing past the desk and halfway to the exit when his right leg went numb from the knee down.
He kept moving, dragging the paralyzed limb, lurching desperately forward. A glance over his shoulder showed a pair of Humans firing as they came up the corridor. He ignored them and concentrated on the egress. If he could just make it outside he might be able to appropriate a vehicle and get clear before they shut the tunnel on him. The paralysis would wear off soon enough. He tried to will himself to limp faster, to run on one good leg; to levitate.
Something shocked his left thigh and he fell forward onto the smooth stone floor. The Wais at the desk had yet to move. A pair of Hivistahm technicians hesitated in the doorway, staring blankly at his prone form, clicking their teeth at one another with soft reptilian eloquence.
Ranji began pulling himself hand over hand, struggling to get a purchase with his fingers on the slick tiles. Out of the corner of an eye a pair of legs appeared, effortlessly paralleling him. Turning to look up, he recognized the guard he’d jabbed in the throat. The man’s expression as he drew back his leg was more than simply hostile.
Despite the throbbing in his legs Ranji smiled up at him. “You see, I would never contemplate doing what you’re about to do, but that’s because I’m not anything like you. I may be a soldier, but I’m also civilized Ashregan. Whereas you are only Human.”
The guard hesitated, then slowly let his foot drop to the floor. He stood close, keeping the rifle he carried pointed at the back of the prisoner’s skull. Muttering nervously to themselves, the pair of confronted Hivistahm entered in haste, scurrying across the floor to disappear down another corridor.
A resigned sigh escaped Ranji as he gazed longingly at the vacant portal. “Almost made it. I should have hit you harder.”
&nb
sp; The guard rubbed his neck. “Wouldn’t have mattered. They would’ve caught you before you’d gone far.” He glanced back the way he’d come. Other guards were moving to seal the exit and block off the far corridor. Shaky but now mobile, the Wais was frantically filling her headset unit with declamations in several languages.
Some of the scientists and research specialists from the conference room had arrived. Bunched up behind the guards, they were murmuring and pointing in Ranji’s direction, worried lest their precious specimen suffer further damage.
“You know,” the burly Human standing over Ranji informed him conversationally, “I want to kick you really bad. A good, hard, uncivilized shot right to the kidneys. Assuming you’ve got kidneys. If the brainoids are right, yours are just like mine. Waited too long, though. Too many witnesses now.”
Ranji pushed himself into a seated position, leaning back on his palms. He regarded the Human as one would a particularly nasty carnivore recently collected from a hostile, uninhabited world.
“Nothing about me is anything like you.”
The man looked indifferent. “Doesn’t matter. If a Human had hit me like that I’d want to smack him just as badly.”
“Contemplation of violence against your own kind. What an astonishing racial conceit.”
“Yeah, ain’t it? That’s why our Weave brothers love us so much.” As one of the other guards approached, the man passed him his rifle and stepped behind Ranji. Slipping both arms underneath the prisoner’s, the guard heaved him to his feet. A sensation as of stabbing needles tormented outraged muscles as the Human forcibly walked Ranji in circles to rush feeling back into his legs.
“I hope they decide you are Human.”
“Why?” Ranji’s grunts of discomfort elicited no sympathy from the man.
“Because then maybe we’ll have the chance to meet up with each other another day, when you won’t have whining rats and lizards to protect you.”
Able to stand on his own now, Ranji shook himself free of the other’s grasp. “I look forward to it,” he replied placidly.
As the guard recovered his weapon he responded to the challenge with an utterly heinous, completely lurid Human response: he grinned.
Heida Trondheim was among those who now crowded the hallway. Ranji gazed thoughtfully in her direction as the guard nudged his spine with a rifle butt. “I’d love to spend some time alone with you, friend, but your keepers are getting anxious. Let’s move it. And if you try anything again, if you so much as look funny in my direction, I’ll stun you right where it hurts. Assuming our equipment is similar in that respect as well.”
Surrounded by wary, armed Humans and Massood, Ranji was marched back to the room from which he’d taken brief but exhilarating flight. This time they were careful to shut the door behind him.
Once back inside Trondheim came close. “It’s all right. I don’t blame you. You’ve been severely traumatized.” She tried to put her hand on his shoulder but he shook her off. Hurt, she resumed her seat.
Once again he found himself surrounded by a roomful of curious gazes. “Go ahead. Show me all the pictures you want. Though if your intent is to amuse me there are simpler ways. But don’t think you can ever convince me that I’m something I’m not.”
The tall woman was shaking her head slowly. “You’re Human. Like it or not, the evidence is overwhelming. If anything, that little outburst of yours just now confirms it. No Ashregan, no matter how altered or enhanced, could’ve gotten that far.”
“Truly he is right.” Attention shifted to First-of-Surgery. The elderly Hivistahm appeared to have handled the unpleasant episode well. “I do not think we will with words and pictures convince you,” he told Ranji. “Your conditioning too ingrained is, too much a part of you. We will have to something more do.”
“Go ahead,” Ranji taunted him. “It won’t make any difference.”
Double eyelids blinked over snakelike pupils. “Truly I beg to differ.”
XI
He never knew how or when they slipped him the anesthetic. It might have arrived in his drink, or his food, or the air of his apartment. When he sensed the impending clutch of lugubrious drowsiness he tried to fight back, screaming imprecations and pounding the walls in a futile attempt to stay awake.
As awareness faded he found himself wondering why they suddenly felt the need to render him unconscious. Perhaps they planned to move him to another installation and, mindful of his recent outburst, were taking no chances. Considering his state of mind and demonstrated capabilities, he wouldn’t have taken any chances when moving him either.
He appreciated the fact that oblivion came painlessly, but then Omaphil was a civilized place. He wondered how he would’ve been treated on the Human homeworld. That disagreeable thought was the last he recalled before sliding into a sleep of abyssal dimensions.
A great many individuals were gathered around view-screens scattered throughout the installation and elsewhere on Omaphil. The Surgery itself was uncrowded. First-of-Surgery was among those present, not to perform but to advise and observe. He had been teaching for so long that he no longer felt in possession of the necessary skills required to supervise the delicate operation. But he had been associated with the study from the beginning and realized that his presence would be a comfort to the others.
Another First-of-Surgery would handle the actual mechanics in conjunction with a highly experienced O’o’yan. Together they represented the zenith of Weave medical accomplishment.
Save for a single exception, interested Humans were excluded from the Surgery itself. While it was to be performed on a Human brain, no Human physician could have hoped to duplicate the sureness of movement and delicacy of touch possessed by Hivistahm or O’o’yan. They could only watch and envy.
Though everyone involved exuded confidence and expectation, an undercurrent of unease still permeated the proceedings. While the procedure had been thoroughly discussed and mapped out in advance, everyone realized they were entering unknown territory. Weave study of Homo sapiens had resulted in more than one surprise, not least to its own kind, and while expectations could be formulated, where the Human nervous system was involved nothing was absolute, nothing was certain.
In addition to the Hivistahm-O’o’yan staff there were two Humans in the Surgery: the man on the operating pallet, and a huge coppery-skinned male whose fine long-fingered hands seemed to have been lifted from a different body. Despite possessing skills which rendered him supreme among his people, he was present only to observe and advise. Hands which had worked on hundreds of his own kind would not go near this particular patient, would not in the event of emergency manipulate the microsurgical instrumentation. That would be left to aliens possessed of a touch finer than that of the greatest Human surgeons who had ever lived.
A thin sheet of softly opaque, nonreflective material covered Ranji-arr from the neck down. His forehead gleamed beneath the superb overhead lighting. Due to the nature of the tools which were to be used it had not been necessary to shave his skull. Invisible air clamps locked his head in place, allowing access by hands and equipment but no involuntary movement.
The attending physicians had already performed the operation many times on a virtual-reality simulator. Still, actual reality was different. If you made a mistake, there was no Reset button to push. In actual reality, patients died. So the surgical team was confident, but not certain.
The single Human towered over the roomful of Hivistahm and O’o’yan technicians, looking clumsy and out of place. His presence was something of a concession, and he knew it. Privately he had assured the two surgeons in charge that he would do his best to stay out of their way.
“As we begin,” the Human said through his translator, “I have to remind everyone both present and looking on that we don’t know what the result of our efforts will be. We may as readily kill as cure the subject. As those of you who have been following developments already know, scanning has detected at least one cluster of contain
ed explosively carcinogenic cells implanted within the nodule. Any attempt to remove it would likely release these cells within the brain in a region where any hasty attempt at counteraction or emergency prophylaxis would be at least as damaging to the patient as the cells themselves. A carcinogenic time bomb, if you will.
“If this mechanism were located elsewhere in the body, we might be able to deal with it, but because it is buried deep within the cerebral cortex we cannot take the chance. Therefore it has been decided to leave the nodule in place and untouched while severing the neural connections between it and the rest of the patient’s nervous system with nonintrusive instrumentation. The aim is to render the growth harmless without removing or traumatizing it.”
“Truly this a delicate procedure is,” said First-of-Surgery senior, continuing the explanation for the benefit of onlookers. “As is any manipulation of the interior of the brain.” He turned to the table. “My colleague will now begin.”
The other First-of-Surgery fingered sensitive controls. The operational details had been programmed into the relevant instrumentation earlier, movements and reactions having been gathered from numerous operations carried out in virtual reality. The surgical computer would automatically compensate for any minute differences it detected between its programming and actual reality. Having installed the requisite programming and instructions, the surgeons’ presence was required only in case something went wrong. Should it encounter anything unexpected in the course of the surgery, the master computer would pause the operation and ask for new instructions.
A small metal dish lowered on a gleaming automatic arm until it stopped a few centimeters above Ranji’s skull. Medical scanners were active on both sides. Several small needlelike instruments projected downward from the dish.
“If we missed any neurological booby traps similar to the one we found earlier, we’re likely to lose him,” the tall Human muttered to no one in particular.
First-of-Surgery senior looked on intently as the sonic scalpel hummed softly for a split second. One needle shifted its position infinitesimally on the surface of the dish. Each time the needle moved and hummed a single neuron within Ranji’s brain was severed.