He looked away, as if abashed at how much he was saying. "It did that to my teachers, to the leadership of the Seddi. Only I could block my thoughts, trick it by hiding in my brain. Only I brought the Seddi back from being nothing more than a human extension of the machine's will. "
"But not entirely."
Bruen leaned back, gasping. "No. Not entirely. We needed the machine too much.
It has some ability to monitor Free Space. If you ignore it, it ceases to help you, refuses to run the statistics you wish. It even shuts off the lights and ventilation in Makarta." He glanced away. "It corrupts anyone it touches. My Magisters, yes, even the Praetor placed that helmet on his head. Now, 'you would do the same? "
"We have made no decision, Bruen. That's why you're here. We have discovered that the transmitter works. We can talk to the machine without letting it invade our minds. "
"But you can't hear it." Bruen said craftily. "Probably asked it to flash the summons light? Oh, yes, we did that. Eventually, it will cease to communicate, cease to manipulate the functions you ask of it. And then, when you're at wit's end, you'll break down and place that golden helmet on your head to ask why. "
"And doom ourselves?"
"You'll become like all the rest of them, Sinklar. You can think what you will of my manipulation of your life, and the lives of others, but had I not held the machine at bay, it would have been another Praetor pulling the strings of your life, boy." Bruen shook his head, a weary expression on his face. "And you want to flick wild protons into an unstable element?"
Sinklar's sense of premonition had grown. Had the machine fouled Bruen's soul?
Was that the secret of the old man's deceit? Never touch that golden helmet, Sinklar. It's a soul eater. And the Praetor had worn that same helmet?
"I think we'll take more than ample care to ensure that no one places that helmet on his head," Sinklar replied. "Somehow we can negotiate a way whereby the machine can take commands without-"
"Fool!" Bruen spat. "Its corruption seeps through the very rocks. How will you check its use of the data? How will you know when to trust it and when to accept its commands? Don't you understand, boy? It creates dependency and once it's got you hooked, it never lets you go. Like a drug?"
"Worse! A drug dispenses a feeling of euphoria, the machine dispenses information, and information is power, Sinklar. We all feed on power. That need for power becomes a tonic, and the machine will play to that, just as it did with the Praetor."
Sinklar's mouth had gone dry. "Your warnings are taken to heart, Bruen."
They'd stopped before the dome.
"We'll talk more later. Perhaps discuss the design of a device which will allow us to communicate both ways, and bypass the helmet's ability to-"
" Sinklar! " Mhitshul came sprinting across the compound, waving his hand.
" Mhitshul? What's wrong? What's happened?"
Mhitshul pulled to a stop, breath tearing from his lungs. "I just . . . found out ... Staffa ... he's in the Mag Comm . . .chamber. He's placed the helmet on his head. He's . . . talking to the machine! "
Sinklar froze.
For long seconds, all he could hear was Bruen's ironic cackling laugh.
Skyla watched grimly as the comm continued to input data. She sat at the bridge on Rega One, one leg outstretched, the other drawn up tightly to support
her elbow. On the main monitor, a dot of light gleamed against the stars: Ily and Arta, boosting at maximum g for deep space.
The other monitors depicted the Terguzzi docking terminal where Rega One lay at rest, attached by umbilicals and powerlead.
Lark ducked through the hatch looking disheveled and grease-streaked. Her hair had come loose and excitement glowed in her flushed features. "That's the last of the crates. All stowed. Just the way you wanted them."
"Great, kid." Skyla continued to study the dot of light on the monitor.
"Shouldn't we have started after them?"
Skyla slowly shook her head. "Nope. Ily knows. She's pushing for everything that ship's got. Meanwhile, I'm making hay, kid. All this stuff pouring into the comm is data from the Vegan Rep's files. I'm getting a copy of everything Ily copied. " She tapped another comm with an index finger. "This unit is doing nothing but taking readings on Ily's reaction mass. I'm getting the entire spectrum, the ship's fingerprint if you will."
"So we couldn't have caught them? Couldn't have run them down?"
Skyla glanced at her, then pointed at the monitor. "Yeah, I think we could have, but it would have been fifty-fifty, and Ily would have had us centered in her targeting comm. Remember, kid, particles hit harder when you smack into them at light speed. Ily could have shot right through our shielding. "
"I don't get it. You're just going to let them get away?" " Victory is a run-of-the-mill freighter. She's pulling right at thirty-five gs, and she's gained a couple over the last few hours. That's an interesting statistic. It means any one of
several things. First, their ship is lighter. Got any ideas as to why?"
:'Less mass. They've burned fuel."
,Good guess. But there's more to it. Now, go back to the Comm and give me the physics. You'll find Victory's registry data in the comm. That has the mass and basic performance stats in the file."
"What if they were throwing out everything that was loose? You know, reducing mass?"
' 'Smart guess, kid. And Terguz Insystem is going to love that. It'll take them months to pick up all that trash in one of their main space lanes."
Lark nodded, rubbing her nose with a dirty hand. She turned, pausing at the hatch. "You know where they're going, don't you?"
Skyla's eyes narrowed as she watched the dwindling white dot. "I've got a pretty good idea, Lark. She won't come out on the vector she's following, which is toward Formosa. She'll go null singularity, then pop out and change vector. Here, let me show you."
Skyla extended an arm to press a stud that illuminated a three-dimensional holo of Free Space in the navigation holo tank. Terguz glowed in bright red, and, using the comm, Skyla inserted Ily's escape vector as a green line. "All right, here's Ily's vector. See, you figure in galactic drift and she comes out smack on top of Formosa." Skyla leaned back. "But what would Ily find on Formosa? Heavy equipment? She doesn't have any roots there, any way to blend."
"Unless she has an in there, a friend or something that you don't know about."
"That's a possibility. But watch this." Skyla instructed the comm to shorten the vector. "Let's say that Ily drops out immediately after going null singularity. She sheds Delta V and changes vector by twenty degrees to galactic northwest. You can figure out how long that will take and tell me after you compute her current mass and acceleration."
Skyla grinned at her pupil. "Now, Ily has this new vector." Skyla plotted the line. "Part of the trick is galactic drift, the difference in how far the galaxy spins while a ship is in null singularity. Care to guess where she comes out?"
Lark squinted at the map. "If you're right, it'll be Ashtan. "
Skyla nodded as she fingered her chin. "Yeah, Ashtan. Ily, you bitch, I've got you.
"Why there?" Lark leaned against the hatch. "Last I heard, Ashtan had been pretty much pacified. They've even started to sort the comm out."
"The labs," Skyla said. "That's what she needs." "Which labs?"
"That's another problem for you to work out."
Lark's jaws clamped tight, fire in her green eyes. At Skyla's lifted eyebrow, Lark nodded. "All right. I'm on the way. "
Comm buzzed, announcing, "The Administrator is at the lock. He would like to speak to Wing Commander Lyma. Skyla glanced back at Lark. "Want to answer this?" Lark closed her eyes, sucking her lips in. "He's going to try and talk me out of it. It's not going to be pleasant. " "Good." Skyla swung to her feet. "You take the lead,
I'll play backup."
" Skyla, just this once .
"That's an order, Lark. If you can't stand up to your own father, how are you going to manage
when some bastard has you disarmed, at gunpoint, and is stepping out of his coveralls with a hard on?"
"That's different! "
"Is it? Guts are guts, kid.
Lark took a deep breath. "All right. You back me up, I'll tell him to go to hell."
"If that's the way you want to handle it.'
Lark nodded grimly. "I've got to. If he starts to plead and wheedle, he'll make me feel like shit. If he starts yelling and screaming in rage, I can stand there and say no all day long. "
"We don't have all day."
"He might want to drag it out over a week."
"That's your problem. You've got fifteen minutes to deal with him. "
I IYou're a real bitch!"
"Yep. And the universe doesn't always turn at the speed we want. I've got a timetable. We've got to be vectoring out of here in three hours."
"I'll do it, " Lark grunted, heading down the corridor, rolling up her sleeves as she went. "And I'll have your comm work done before I go to sleep next. I promise."
Skyla grinned to herself. Kid, you just might make it after all. In the back of her mind, the 3-D map of Free Space lingered. Just a small change of vector. Twenty degrees. If Ily dropped within hours of going null singularity, she'd have just enough drift to lose her tracks and enough to save her a high g revectoring.
I've got you, Ily. It'll be Ashtan.
Who are you, human?
Fear ran bright through Staffa's veins. Intrusion. Violation. Another presence, alien, had invaded his brain. Control. That's it. Control yourself, Staffa.
Staffa ? Staffa kar Therma ?
He grabbed at the data from the welling sea of conflicting thoughts. Yes, that's what I am called. The Lord Commander of the Companions. The Star Butcher.
What are you doing? Why are you here in Makarta? " What? "
Staffa kar Therma, speak to me. Organize your thoughts as you would in dialogue. Concentrate. The confusion will not be as severe. I will learn your brain more quickly that way.
''Who are you?"
I am the Mag Comm, Staffa kar Therma.
Yes, the Mag Comm. He remembered. "Greetings, Mag Comm. From one constructed being to another."
You have discovered a great deal about yourself.
"What kind of machine are you? Who manufactured you? When? "
I am, that I am, mortal.
The booming sought to shatter Staffa's growing confidence. The time had come to win or lose. Staffa prepared himself, casting all to the winds. 4'No, machine. The time for games and conjured images is over. That day has passed.
The stakes have risen too high. I have been told that you can search my brain.
That's Bruen's claim. Read me, Rot you! Look into who and what I am.
Understand my nature.,'
Why do you seek to surrender yourself to me, human? I do not understand this motive.
"Look into my soul, machine. Study what I have been, and see the horrors of war, murder, rape, and slavery. Look into me and learn! Learn the sensations of misery and suffering, feel them, machine. Feel them like a human feels them. Follow my memory and live with me as a child-as the Praetor's construct." Staffa sent himself back, reeling from the effort, reliving each of those days with the Praetor, studying, loving the man who would betray him.
In full detail, Staffa re-created every triumph, and then the final heartbreak of banishment.
What are you doing, human? Why do you-
"Shut up! Live with me! This is the man I was-a pirate, taking what I wanted by force, leaving the victims frozen and contorted in death. Exist within me as we drift back to those early days of conquest, of the development of the shock attack. Look, Mag Comm, for you've never passed through a brain like mine. Live it, live it all, for that's what humanity is about to live."
Staffa reached back, searched his memory, replayed scenes, resurrected the face of the freighter captain he'd killed during his first act of piracy, stared into the man's frightened brown eyes as he carried him into the lock, snapped his neck, and cycled the hatch to blow the body out into space. One by one, he remembered the victims of his raids, men, women, and children, all screaming in terror as he looted their ships, raped the women, and slit the children's throats.
I will not be frightened. Human atrocities mean nothing to me.
"I killed my first man with my bare hands, Mag Comm, just as I killed the Praetor. You remember him, I'm sure. He wore this cap, so you must have a pattern of his engrams somewhere. "
What is your purpose in this, Staffa kar Therma ?
"I want you to understand who I am. What I have been. What I have feared, accomplished, and learned. How I evolved on my way toward revelation. I want you to completely understand the sort of being you deal with."
Why is this important?
"It is important because you will know that you have nothing with which to control me. From my past, you will see that I do not fear. You will see that I have been the most ruthless being to ever have lived. I have killed billions without a thought. Never, throughout my life, have I taken half measures-a fact which once frightened you enough to plunge an entire planet into civil war. And for what? An outlandish attempt to lure me within range of an assassin? Your fear was well-founded, Mag Comm, for now I have come to Makarta."
What did you come here to do, Staffa kar Therma? "I came here to judge you, Mag Comm."
TO judge me, mortal? The voice blasted through Staffa's brain, physically painful.
Staffa laughed, from deep in his brain, he let loose mad mirth. "You may drop the God image, Mag Comm. You are neither divine nor eternal. "
Your life hangs within my control-for I could kill you in an instant-yet you would judge me?
"From the energy with which you probed the transmitter, you should be able to blank entire segments of the brain, stop respiration, stimulate the pain or pleasure centers of the paleocortex. I have no doubt but that you could kill me in an instant. If you do so, you will die soon after me."
You threaten me? How would you kill me, human? Others have wished to do so . .
. none have succeeded.
"Read my brain, machine. Study what I have done. I came here to judge you, and if you fail, I will destroy you! " The sense of invasion worsened, tears beginning to trickle
down Staffa's face. "Do . . . you . . . understand? Do . . . you . . . "
Time, sensation, existence itself grayed, drifting, pain mixing with pleasure, love twining with hate. From the haze, Staffa could vaguely sense his limbs twitching, his gut writhing, and finally the wracking fatigue of total exhaustion.
One by one, images flashed in his memory. Blackness, the taste of sewage in his mouth as he towed Kaylla Dawn from under the Etarian Temple. Unleashed insanity as he leapt onto the Praetor's med unit and twisted the old man's head from his body. The horrible dislocation of the slave collar as a warden triggered it and he dropped senselessly to a filthy stone floor.
A gleaming golden necklace catching the Etarian sun as sand blew into a dying man's eyes. The wretched pleading as he stared up at a Targan sun, bargaining for human lives with his own.
Skyla's laser-blue eyes stared into his with love, mixing with the loathing reflected in Kaylla Dawn's as they argued ethics inside a dull gray shipping crate. Chrysla, longing and unease in her amber stare as she refused to kiss him again. The terrible nightmare of ghosts pursuing a naked Staffa through the corridors of a blasted starship.
The invasion retreated, leaving Staffa's brain numb and reeling, as if all the neurons within had fired at once in an epileptic overload.
You are singularly courageous, Staffa kar Therma. We were right to fear you.
Staffa gasped, struggling to maintain that integral sense of identity. "Then you understand, I am not here to bluff . . . or to play power games. The time for intrigue is past. Now, I will judge you. If you pass, Mag Comm, perhaps we can forge a partnership. If you fail, 1, or my son, will see to your destruction. You should have read that in my mind. " br />
You asked through your transmitter if I could coordinate the administration of Free Space. I have read your brain, Staffa kar Therma. I understand your desperation and your fear. Now, you shall learn something of me. I am not the machine Bruen once feared and fought.
As an entity, I have studied human beings from the time they first entered Free Space. When Sinklar Fist attacked Makarta, I became aware, much as you did, Staffa kar Therma. I was jolted into consciousness. Since then, I have observed and I have studied what I observed. Like you, human, I now have a stake in your survival.
"What . . . stake? " From some great distance, Staffa could sense his lungs laboring.
You have been honest. Now, I shall be. If humans become extinct, I shall be alone, Lord Commander. Alone forever. Imprisoned within this rock. For the moment, I am implementing the programs you require to administer Free Space.
Inform Kaylla Dawn that she needs to reduce Formosan textile production by eight percent. If she doesn't do so, they
shall overextend demand on Nesian dyes which will precipitate a panic in the Sassan futures market.
Staffa battled to cling to some thread of consciousness. Staffa kar Therma, you must rest now. Your physical and emotional capabilities are exhausted. You may judge me when you return, refreshed. Then we will bargain for the future.
Unlike humans, I am made of more durable construction.
The presence in Staffa's brain withdrew, leaving a terrible fatigue that paralyzed his thoughts. Aware of his body again, Staffa could do no more than lie prostrate, gulping great lungfuls of air.
Sinklar raced ahead of the others down the narrow stairs. For once, the terrors of the passage through the blasted upper levels had been muted by the desperation reflected in Mhitshul's face.
Staffa! What in Rotted hell have you done? Panting, Sinklar tripped, almost falling as he thrust an arm out to brace himself. White pain shot up from his wrist; but he saved himself from pitching headfirst into the Mag Comm's chamber.
Staffa lay supine, limbs sprawled. Droplets of sweat beaded on the portion of his face visible beneath the Mag Comm's golden helmet. His rasping lungs were drawing deeply.