The Parasite

  ‘Hardly original, but then what can you expect from World Health? It was they who named you I presume?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So direct. Aren’t you curious about my plans? Or don’t you have a ... a curiosity program? That is, I suppose, what they’d call it.’

  ‘What are your intentions?’

  Haven pointed with the very tip of his forefinger. ‘My dear Chris Golem, they are just about to come through that wall.’

  With a crash the ceramal slid up and something ripped away the false wall behind it. Chris transmitted, only to have his signal bounced back at him from shielding beyond the mechanical nightmare lunging for him. It possessed the grab arms of a dray and a writhing mass of ribbed tentacles. Chris shot to one side and tried to get past it, something slammed across his chest and he sensed syntheflesh rip away. He struck down with his hand against a tentacle with about as much give as a girder. It bent, but still flung him into the grab, which closed like a trap. He struggled; a mouse in the claw of an eagle. A bladed palp tore the syntheflesh from the back of his head. He turned and saw one of the narrower tentacles snaking towards him. He tried to turn away but it slid round behind him. Claws like scalpels closed across his face and a direct link plug snicked into the socket in the back of his neck.

  Blackness.

  Shutdown.

  Consciousness.

  His internal atomic clock told him that one hour and twenty-three minutes had passed. This was not supposed to be possible. He considered then what else might be possible as he opened his eyes.

  ‘Breathtaking, isn’t it?’

  A wide directional flash-glass window lay before him presenting a panorama of space and the blacked-out orb of the sun. He tried to stand, but nothing happened. He ran his diagnostics and discovered the only freedom of movement he had was of his head, and moving that he found certain restrictions for the direct-link was still plugged into the back of his skull. He turned aside to gaze at Haven standing next to him.

  ‘Do you see that?’ Haven pointed. ‘At about three o’clock on the edge of the solar disc. It’s a speck, but only a few miles away. It’ll take him years to reach the sun. Not that it matters to him, since he’s probably dead by now.’

  ‘Jack Smith.’

  ‘How observant. Tell me, how do you feel.’

  ‘A little stiff.’

  ‘Humour? My word, there’s some sophisticated machinery coming out of Cybercorp nowadays.’

  Chris didn’t respond so after a moment Haven continued, but with a hint of irritation in his voice. ‘Let me tell you what I intend to do with you now.’ Chris’s chair moved back from the window, then turned towards Haven who had now seated himself on a plush sofa. ‘I have in my possession a positively huge collection of well, I suppose the popular term is ‘snuff movies’, but they are so much more than that. They are art.’ He waited for comment but Chris continued to disoblige him. He went on, ‘You see my intention is to project the digitized version of these movies directly and without buffers, time linked, into what is mistakenly called your hard wiring. So, what you will experience is an actuality, and what will happen, I hope, is that all your prime directives will be smashed.’

  Haven grinned.

  ‘Now, you may think I am doing this for the sake of malice, but what is the point of me being malicious to a machine? Pointless. You will agree. My intention thereafter is to programme you with a little gem normally used on the wetware of vat grown human killers. I recently lost two to our friend out there.’ Haven pointed towards the window. ‘You though, will be harder to kill than them, and a great asset to The Cryon Corporation.’

  Chris just stared at him.

  ‘Nothing to say? Very well.’ Haven glanced up at the ceiling, ‘Lilly, commence ream.’

  Chris threw up every mental defence he could. The real-time images went through them like a hot nail through cheese.

  I will not kill. I am killing. I do not kill. I kill. No. Yes.

  Incredibly complex silicon nanocircuits heated. Random pathways were burnt or etched by survival mechanisms and competing diagnostic programs. Chris tilted his ceramal head back and opened his mouth. He screamed.

  Will not kill ... Will not kill ... Will not ... kill ... I am Chris Golem and I ...

  ‘All right Toad, on your feet!’

  ‘Lilly F1! F1!’

  ‘I am sorry. I am not able to comply. All automatic guns in this apartment have been deactivated.’

  The exchange only got through to Chris when the plug was jerked from the back of his skull and blessed calm assailed him. His vision returned to show him a curious scene. Haven, his face white and strained, was getting clumsily to his feet. To one side stood a thin grey-haired man clad in soiled and torn overalls. The man’s face was severe face, eyes a penetrating blue, and he held upon Haven a gun like a chrome Luger but for the LED displays on its side.

  ‘Who ... are ... you?’ managed Chris.

  The man did not take his eyes off Haven. ‘Me? I’m the one that got away. Am I not, Toad?’ He said the nickname with vehemence.

  ‘My dear Peter–’

  ‘Mr Mendelssohn to you, shit head!’ After a moment Mendelssohn glanced round at Chris. ‘Do you know how he gets away with the things he does? I’ll tell you. You see he knows about information; he know it can be manufactured, destroyed, changed, refuted, and if you have the legal punch you can manipulate it and get away with anything, but if there are witnesses you’re screwed. That’s why so many hack and grabs get caught; they forget the human element and it’s normally that which puts them in prison. Not the Toad though, since he regularly dispenses with the human element. You’ll find the results of his house-cleaning floating all over the system.’

  ‘Why does ... he you want?’ Chris shook his head, found he could move his right arm.

  Mendelssohn continued, ‘Go into the security sector and you’ll see a door with my name on it: Peter Mendelssohn, Weapons Development. I made an untraceable APW for him and when things started to get real nasty a few days ago he decided to dispense with me. Only Security couldn’t find me because I hid in the one place they wouldn’t search: his own outer ring apartment.’

  ‘Peter we can–’

  ‘Shut! Up!’

  Chris found he could move his other arm, his right leg as well.

  Mendelssohn was breathing heavily as he went on. ‘In one sense you’re a complete idiot, Toad. I could have made you millions. You see this?’ He waved the gun about. ‘It’s one you never got the specs for. My own little project, but one I was going to hand over to TCC. The pellet it shoots is mostly lead, but inside it is a proximity sensor and an interface field generator. The field drops to point zero on impact and generates a collapsing gravity sphere about a metre in diameter. Can you imagine what that would do to a man?’

  Haven shook his head.

  ‘Well, I guess you’re going to find out.’

  The gun made hardly any sound at all, just a slight tinging as of wind-chimes disturbed by a slight breeze. The Toad let out a squeal that abruptly cut off. There ensued the sounds of flesh and bone being abruptly distorted; a wrenching, squelching, crackling. Suddenly, where the Toad had stood, a shapeless steaming lump of offal dropped to the floor with a soggy thump, and leaked.

  Mendelssohn lowered his gun and glanced round at Chris. He seemed very tired. Chris rose to his feet in one smooth motion. ‘I could have stopped you,’ he said.

  Mendelssohn nodded and held out the gun to Chris. ‘Do what the fuck you like now. I ceased to care as of ten seconds ago.’

  Chris took the gun, studied it, then tossed it onto the sofa. ‘I could have stopped you,’ he repeated, then turned and left the room.

  He was, of course, still a good ninety million miles from the sun, but the crate, though highly reflective and made of low conduction ratio bubble metal, had been in direct sunlight for an hour, and in vacuum, had no convection currents to cool it. In the blackness Jack could feel the heat radiation on t
he side of his face. It was not a source of worry to him. He had got his breath rate down to one breath every five minutes and was barely conscious. He had raised his survival time from twenty minutes to one hour forty minutes. He now had thirty-seven minutes left. No, the heat was nothing to worry about.

  At six feet six and weighing in at fifteen stone, and none of it fat, people wondered why Jim Atkins was called Dwarf by his friends. Some speculated on some kind of inverted joke about his size, but this was not the case. The guy who had started it had begun by calling him Dopey because of his love of getting completely blitzed on the best Morocco had to offer. This had lasted for all of half an hour until Atkins had asked him if he would like a stun rifle suppository. The name had quickly been changed to Dwarf as in Snow White and the seven etcetera.

  Atkins leant against the wall of the corridor and removed a Moroccan Gold from his top pocket. This search was a waste of time he reckoned. If Mendelssohn did not want to be found he would not be found. The guy had smarts. Atkins struck up and took a long pull. He’d had enough of traipsing all over the station and now it was relaxation time. He took another long toke and leant his rifle against the wall. Everything was beginning to look rosy until the security doors to his section buckled with a heavy crash and then with a scream of ripping metal were torn open.

  Oh shit!

  Atkins reached for his stun rifle as a figure stepped through. Suddenly he did not feel in the least stoned.

  ‘Er ... halt?’

  A ceramal hand slammed into his chest. He came off his feet and hit the wall three feet above the ground with his breath whuffing out, then slowly slid down in the low spin of the station. The figure said, ‘I could have stopped him,’ then strode on past.

  It took Atkins about a minute before he could move. He considered picking up his rifle and giving chase and immediately rejected the idea as not what his mother would have advised. He unhooked his communicator from his belt.

  ‘Atkins here.’

  ‘Go ahead, Atkins.’

  ‘Sir, there’s a Cybercorp android, Golem eleven or twelve I think. He’s heading for the MSB, and boy is he pissed off.’

  ‘Atkins, I think we are going to have to have a little talk about some of your habits.’

  ‘No bullshit, sir. Come and look at these security doors if you don’t believe me.’

  ‘Did you try to stop him?’

  ‘Stop him? I’m a security guard, not a bulldozer, sir.’

  A long pause ensued, then, ‘How long do you think it will take him to reach the Mini Shuttle Bay?’

  ‘The doors don’t seem to slow him down much. Maybe five minutes.’

  ‘Okay, we’ll check it out in six minutes or so.’

  ‘Very well, sir’

  ‘We didn’t have this conversation, Atkins.’

  ‘Oh I agree, sir.’

  That nobody tried to stop him after that first guard was of little concern to Chris. He knew that without any doubt the weaponry required was too dangerous to use on board a space station. Perhaps that machine of Haven’s could have done it. But there was now no Haven to give orders, for the TCC beast had been beheaded. Chris had only three concerns now. One: would they use weapons on him once he was outside the station? Two: was Jack Smith still alive? Both of which seemed unlikely. And three:

  I could have stopped him.

  The thought had become a loop he found difficult to dislodge. He had allowed murder to take place when it had been well within his capabilities to prevent it. Had Mendelssohn wanted him to intervene?

  I could have stopped him.

  His prime directives were gone. An outside agency had deleted them, just as the parasite had deleted, or distorted Jack Smith’s genetic imperatives. He, Chris Golem, could kill. Had he expected some sort of cybernetic joy? There was only confusion where before there had been certainty.

  I could have stopped–

  The doors to the shuttle bay buckled before him. He entered, climbed into the car-sized shuttle, and at high speed, ran through the opening sequence in the onboard computer. With a questioning whine the floor dropped and doors closed overhead. Then the doors below opened and with and explosion of vapour he dropped out into glinting night. At full power the acceleration slammed him back into the seat, and he steered a course for the sun.

  Five breaths: twenty-five minutes of life. Here were the parameters of his existence. This was all that was known by the shadowy awareness called Jack Smith. He took the first of those five breaths and it seemed as if no time passed before he took the next, but then his time sense was not concentrated in that awareness. The next breath came, passed – one more scrabbling grip on life. The next came, went, and then the last. He did have the energy to take one last breath but there was nothing to breath but carbon dioxide. He did not breathe. His awareness became a single bright point on the edge of blinking out.

  Chris stepped out into vacuum and studied the seemingly stationary cube of bubble metal. He suspected that against the backdrop of stars he, the crate, and the shuttle presented a most surreal diorama. Had he made speculations like that before? Yes, yes of course. There was the aesthetics program. He shook his head then raised the line gun he had brought out with him and aimed it at the crate.

  Thou damned whale, thus, I give up the spear.

  There was no voice in vacuum though, just silent vocal mechanics, and the silver line flashing to the crate like a grounded spark, then drawing taut as Chris wound it in. Slowly shuttle and crate drew together.

  As soon as he had the crate secure Chris reached across and searched for a quick release that had to be there. In moments he found it, and the lid popped up. Chris peered inside. The suited figure lay still, not breathing, with no signs of life other than the fact that its every cell was an egg. Chris considered his options. He could allow this crate and its contents to continue on towards the sun and good riddance, or he could bring this body back, for it might yet contain vital information, and Jane would never forgive him if he let it go. He reached into the crate and hauled the suited figure out, shoving the crate on its way tumbling course towards the sun. Back inside the shuttle he strapped Smith into one of the seats while the cabin re-pressurized.

  Jack Smith.

  Jack Smith?

  What proof was there? All he saw was a corpse in a space suit with a mirror glass visor. Yet, if he opened the suit more of those skin cells could be released into the air. How many deaths would he be responsible for? How far did responsibility go? There was no way to calculate. He unclipped the helmet and removed it, and studied the thin grey face of Jack Smith, locked in a rigor that could not be mortis. Then, as Chris watched, eyelids rose, tear ducts dampened eyes, and Jack Smith took a shuddering breath he should not have been able to take.

  Chris jumped back and altered the controls for re-pressurization to enrich the air with oxygen. After that first breath Jack immediately began to hyperventilate, but faster than a human could. His lungs worked like the pump on a compressor, for he seemed more like a machine than a living thing. In seconds his colour returned and he began to show some awareness of his surroundings. He inspected the interior of the shuttle, glanced at Chris, then at the time display on his wrist.

  Chris said, ‘If every human could have the parasite like you, it would be worth spreading. In you it is not a parasite but a symbiont. It kills everyone else. Why did it not kill you, Jack Smith?’

  Jack gave a bark of laughter. ‘Oh sophisticated machine. Work it out for yourself. What happened to me after I was infected and hasn’t happened to anyone else?’

  Chris reached for contact with Earthbound AIs and got nothing. Only now did he realize how alone he was. He discounted this and concentrated on what Jack had told him. He cross-matched events and made comparisons and suddenly, came as near to feeling like an idiot as it was possible for him to feel. How had he missed this? How had Jane missed this?

  ‘You were cryogenically frozen for the two years of your return journey.’

>   Jack went on, ‘During which time the parasite grew to maturity in my body without killing me. Bravo. Now can we get back to that station. I’ve got a rather obnoxious amphibian to kill.’

  ‘Geoffrey Haven is dead.’

  Jack stared at Chris for a moment, then as if seeing it for the first time, stared at the damage to Chris’s body. His eyes narrowed and he lifted a finger to the centre of his forehead. ‘You are a Cybercorp Golem 12 and you work for World Health. How did the Toad die?’

  ‘One of his employees killed him.’

  ‘What are your,’ Jack abruptly released his belt and floated free of his seat, ‘instructions concerning me?’

  ‘Now I know how you survived the parasite, my instructions are not to allow you to return to Earth.’

  ‘Then I am not considered human.’

  Chris realized Jack was making logic jumps that only androids and a very few humans could make.

  ‘Now, whether you are human or not is of no consequence. Geoffrey Haven has managed to break all my directives.’ Chris pulled himself to his seat and strapped himself in. ‘What he took away from me in the way of certainty he replaced with choice. One of my basic directives was to follow orders. I choose not to.’

  Jack smiled to himself and pulled himself to the other seat. ‘You’re finding out what soldiers find out when they leave whatever force they are in; how difficult it is to have responsibility for your own decisions. I am the only carrier of the parasite. No-one else carries it in mature form, and no-one can, unless they go through the freezing process. Without me it could be stamped out.’

  Chris continued to guide the shuttle back towards the station. ‘You are the parasite. You are a new life form, a new sentience. I could destroy you, perhaps. But if I destroyed you what would happen to those infected on Earth? Do you think that after they have gone into cold coffins for a few years they would be allowed out? By making a permanent problem I ensure the survival of parasite victims. This is my choice.’

  Contemplatively Jack said, ‘A choice that may kill more than it saves.’