The tutor glares at her, as if in warning, then turns back to Jamisia. “They used to call it other things: multiplicity, for one. But their understanding of the phenomenon was primitive at best—”
“Fuck this shit!” the black-clad boy snaps. He walks past the tutor, shoving in his direction as if to push him out of the way—but his hand passes through him like a ghost’s—and then takes up a position opposite Jamie, hands on hips, dark eyes challenging. “What he’s trying to say is that we were once part of you, just pieces of the whole. Only the great god Shido decided to give us lives of our own, and taught us how to protect ourselves. So right now all we’ve got in common with you is that we’re stuck in the same fucking body, which at its best—”
“Derik, please!” It’s the stocky girl speaking. There are scars all over her arms, Jamie sees through tear-filled eyes, some nearly healed, a few fresh. “You know that isn’t true. ” She fixes her gaze on Jamisia, and for a moment the restless scratching motion ceases. “Yes, we were all part of you once. And Shido gave us separate voices, and encouraged our differences, and taught us that if we ever became part of you again, it would be the same as death. So we’re not going to be tricked into going away, Jamisia, like I guess some of our kind used to in the past—”
“We won’t fucking lay down and die for you!” Derik explodes. “Because that’s what would happen, all the ‘cures’ they used to use just killed off the ones like us—”
“Reintegration, ” the tutor begins.
“Bullshit!”
The tutor moves ahead of him, quickly, cutting short any further tirade. “I’m sorry, Jamie. I would have stopped it if I could. But by the time I’d been brought onto the project there were already five of them active, and they’d been conditioned to view your healing as their death—”
“Damn right!” the dark-skinned girl mutters angrily.
“Why?” Jamisia begs. Her throat is so tight with fear she can hardly force the words out. “Why would Shido do something like this? I don’t understand. ”
It seems to her that her tutor hesitates. Consulting his programming? “It was an experiment,” he says at last. “Few people were told exactly what the whole of it was about, only the part they were meant to facilitate. Very secretive, Jamie. Very illegal. To take a child still in the grips of trauma and deny her the benefit of medical science, to encourage her soul to divide, and divide again—”
“Tell her about the other one, ” the dark-skinned girl demands; there’s challenge in her voice. “Show her the one they wanted!”
“Who is that?” Jamisia’s voice, like her body, is shaking violently; she can barely get the sounds out. “What does she mean?”
There is a pause. Then several of the figures move aside, making a path for her between them. She looks at her tutor for guidance; his expression is grim, but he nods ever so slightly. At your own risk, his eyes seem to say. She moves forward, slowly. The fog is thinning, responding to her need for discovery. Figures are resolving in the mist, trees and stones and a few more human forms—
—and he lies on the ground before her, his body curled into a knot so tight that she can see muscles in his thin arms and legs shaking from the strain of it. His skin is pale and covered with bruises, his eyes bloodshot and tear-filled, and spittle drools down one side of his mouth, stained with blood from where he bit his own lip. His gaze ... that is a thing of pure terror, as if the mere sight of her—of any living creature—is a torture too terrible to bear.
Then the fog closes in about him again, mercifully shielding him from her sight: her own mind, shutting out the vision.
She whispers it: “What is he?”
“Someone they hurt, ” the dark girl says sharply. Another voice, more gentle, adds, “What you might have been, Jamisia. What we all might have been, if Shido had willed it. ”
She looks at her tutor, her expression pleading.
“I don’t know the details, ” he says softly. “They gave me my part to play and didn’t tell me much else. But what you saw ... ” He nods back to where the terrifying figure lies, now sheathed in concealing mist. “They wanted him, Jamisia, they wanted him very badly. They were struggling to give him an independent voice when the station was attacked. Maybe if they’d succeeded, I could tell you more. ”
He steps forward and takes her shoulders in his hands—gently, so gently, like the father-substitute she remembers and loves—and he says to her, in a voice that is infinitely tender, “It. doesn’t matter now, Jamie. You know that, don’t you? Whatever Shido wanted, it didn’t get. And you’re free now. It’s time for you to make your own life. ”
She can barely manage to whisper it: “What about them?”
He looks at the figures gathered about—all of them his students, his charges—and says quietly, “I’d hoped that without Shido pushing you, the fragmentation would eventually heal, but clearly it won’t. The fact that this program is running means one of these selves has made an overture to you, and now you need to respond. You need to accept this, Jamie ... whatever it takes. ”
“Overture ... ” She’s trying to fit all the pieces together, but they’re coming too fast. “When?”
“In the conduit. ” The owner of this voice looks not unlike Jamisia herself, but her body is generously curved where Jamisia’s is not, and she is dressed in an agressively tight-fitting jumpskin. Her eyes—a bright green, arresting—sparkle as she asks, “Forgotten already?”
She remembers that moment in the conduit, with Justin—remembers, and understands at last. A hot flush rises to her face.
“He says we’re going to have to work together now ... and that means sharing things with you. ” As she speaks, she comes closer, and Jamie can see a faint golden mist rising up from her skin. Sometimes a dreamscape uses such images to indicate scent. Perfume? “He says we’ve got to function as a team, it’s the only way to stay ahead of Shido. We’re willing to try it, Jamie. Are you?”
She can’t speak. Can’t even move. Horror is an icy knot in her gut, that presses against her lungs when she breathes.
“Ah, shit,” Derik spits furiously. “She’ll never cooperate. ”
Her tutor lifts her face in his hand, drawing her gaze up to meet his own. “Jamie. Do you want things to go back to the way they were in the habitat? Missing fragments of time, unexplained changes in your environment, pieces of a life that don’t quite match up? It doesn’t have to be like that anymore. You’ve got all the pieces now. ”
Tears burn her cheeks as they trickle down her face. “I want to go home, ” she whispers hoarsely. “Please. I just want to go home. ”
“Ah, my sweet.” He shakes his head slowly, tenderly. “There is no going home anymore, Jamie. I’m sorry.”
With a sob she moves forward, and he takes her gently in his arms, holding her as she cries. “It’s all right, ” he whispers. “You’re strong, you’re all strong, it’ll be all right. ” He presses his lips against her hair, a tender, parental kiss. “Say you’ll try it, Jamie. Say you’ll work with them. That’s all they want. ”
“And if I don’t?”
He sighs heavily. “Then Shido wins, my sweet. They took a young mind and they tried to destroy it ... and if you give in now, then they succeeded. And all the years I worked to lay the groundwork for this moment, preparing for the day when you would finally claim your freedom... that’s all wasted, Jamie. All of it. ” His voice drops to a whisper, no louder than a breath. “Say you’ll try, Jamie. ”
They gather about her, silent, waiting. Eyes that she’s seen in her mirror a hundred times, looking back at her now from faces of their own; the sight of it makes her tremble.
“What . . . ” She swallows heavily, trying to loosen the knot in her throat. “What do I have to do?”
“Accept them as part of yourself. That’s all that’s needed now; the rest will come in time. Accept them, Jamie, and you can reclaim your life. ”
Male and female. Dark and light. Angry, hate-f
illed, sympathetic, hungry ... parts of her soul? She shivers to imagine it.
We’re not going to go away, Jamisia....
We’ve got to function as a team, it’s the only way to stay ahead of Shido....
We won’t fucking lay down and die for you!
Is there any real alternative? The answer is cold, uncomforting.
“I’ll do it, ” she whispers. “I will. I’ll try. ”
END PROGRAM
How dare they come out here, these children of Earth?
How dare they benefit from the labors of the damned, even while they curse our name?
Tell them they are not welcome here. Shout your indignation to the stars:
We who wear these twisted bodies have not forgotten!
We who carry this twisted seed will never forgive!
Let our damnation be our pride, our every malformity a source of strength, our battered heritage a source of unity.
Let every Variant declare with pride: YOU are the abomination, Terran, not we. Take care now, lest we turn on you as you once turned on us!
(Excerpt from a propaganda ‘cast of the Hausman League. Author unknown.)
GUERA NODE TIANANMEN STATION
DRESSED IN her ritual finery, simba-kaja clearly outlined on her face, her Ladyship Alya Cairo, Guildmistress Prima of the Ainniq Nodes, prepared to meet her guests.
That they were coming in person to the Guildhall on Tiananmen Station to meet with her, rather than being represented by holocasts, spoke volumes for the delicacy of the matter at hand. These guildmasters were accustomed to dealing with sensitive issues, and were unlikely to forget just how vulnerable a holocast program was during its transmission. But that wasn’t the only reason she wanted them here in person. The truth was, she liked the power of direct confrontation. She liked the almost palpable sense of tension she got when she met the eyes of an inferior, or a rival ... you never got that on vidscreen or in holo, no matter how good the governing programs were. You never got that psychic sense of what your people were thinking, when they were growing restless, when they began to wonder if perhaps the kaja they had chosen for the meeting was not the best choice they could have made. She liked it because it gave her a sense of power ... and in fact it might be said that the Mistress Prima of the Ainniq Guild, who controlled all transportation between the outworlds and therefore all commerce, was in fact the most powerful human in the galaxy. If not the most powerful human who had ever existed.
She liked it best that way.
The chamber she had chosen was sleek and spartan, as were most meeting spaces in the Guildhall. It wasn’t so much an aesthetic choice as one born of necessity; so many of her people had visual handicaps or other sensory distortions that it was wise to keep the surroundings simple, efficient, and uncluttered. A slate-gray table with twelve monitors for guests. A set of matching chairs. Everything edged distinctly in contrasting shades: white on black, charcoal on pearl gray, mist on slate. Despite the fact that there were simple programs to compensate for lack of sensitivity to borders, she knew that some of her people disdained to use such artificial aids, and would have difficulty distinguishing items from their background without aesthetic assistance. The chairs were perfectly spaced, of course, and the monitors all adjusted to the same, precisely chosen angle. Any other arrangement would have resulted in a waste of time and energy for one of her most valued officers.
All was ready.
Of her five senior Guildmasters, only four would be coming. She regretted that, but there was no helping the matter. Luis Hsing was still in transit from Guera proper, not due to arrive in outspace for another E-month. She hadn’t wanted to wait. His report was in, which was what mattered. The Gueran professor was with him, and was already at work on their problem. The parameters of his involvement had yet to be explored.
I only hope you’re right, she thought darkly. As if the man who had recommended that Masada be hired was standing there, as if she were addressing him directly. I only hope that hiring this man doesn’t cause more problems than it solves.
It angered her that she would have to wait another month to talk to Hsing in person. It frustrated her, that the nature of human demographics made such travel delays commonplace. Like most members of the Guild she considered the ainniq system to be the natural hub of the universe, and couldn’t understand the obstinate refusal of so many humans to accept that fact. If she had been Prima in the early days of the second settlement, she would have seen to it that the homeworlds of humankind were abandoned, their dirt and meteorological hazards traded for the modem efficiency of space stations and all the benefits that came with them. That such worlds had been encouraged to endure, rather than simply being evacuated, never ceased to amaze her. Couldn’t they see that if all humans lived within an arm’s reach of the ainniq system, every one of them—Variant and otherwise— would be capable of getting to any point in human space within a few days at most? Wasn’t that worth striving for? Wasn’t it worth a little sacrifice?
But the planetborn didn’t feel that way. They clung to their homelands and their history, and weren’t likely to give up either for mere transportational convenience. Even Guera was still heavily populated, despite a year-long round trip ticket to the nearest ainniq, so her race could hardly preach to others about convenience. Why, this professor they had hired had never even been to an ainniq, had never set foot upon a single outworld ... incredible, she thought. Why would anyone who had the whole universe at his fingertips choose to live on such a tiny island? And an educated man, at that? It was incomprehensible to her.
“Your Ladyship?”
Startled, she looked up to see that Devlin Gaza had entered while her thoughts were elsewhere. He vouchsafed her a small smile to go with the title, his expression more intimate than his words. At times like this he preferred to address her in a formal manner, and in truth she found it most helpful at formal meetings. But it was hard to forget that when the guests were gone and the conference room abandoned, their relationship was something else entirely.
Ten years now. No other relationship she’d ever attempted had lasted so long. But then, no other lover of hers had been like Devlin. In part it was because there was no sense of competition between them, as there had been with other men, no sense of his resenting her authority. Devlin Gaza had power of his own, as the head of the Guild’s programming development team, and though nominally he answered to her authority, in practice he was all but independent. She trusted him to do his work and do it well, and rarely interfered with his chosen protocol. Perhaps that was what made a relationship possible. Perhaps that was why they had lasted ten years now, while all her other relationships had fallen apart within months.
Or perhaps she simply hadn’t burned him out yet. Or driven him away. Or—what had her third lover said?—made it clear that all things came second to her work, including the people who cared about her.
“The Exeter just pulled into dock,” he told her. No nonsense, all business, that was his way on occasions like this. She was grateful for it. He wore the aggressive raj today, combined with his usual nantana-kaja: I am capable of dealing in subtleties, but have no time for bullshit. “Varsav should be on it. That makes four.”
“Good. Karmen knows to bring him here as soon as he arrives.”
Soon they would all be here. Soon.
Devlin nodded, vouchsafing her a tight smile as he took in the arrangement of the chairs, the monitors, and probably every speck of dust in the place. Apparently her efforts to get it all right passed muster, for he made no move to fix anything, but simply took his place behind one of the twelve chairs, there to await the other guests. She knew that if she had placed a pile of hardcopy reports on the table he would probably straighten that pile, aligning its edges until they were perfectly complimentary to the periphery of the table. Or perhaps he would distribute them in advance, laying each one perfectly beside its monitor, parallel to the table’s edge, flawlessly aligned to the arm of the attending chair
. At times she wondered what alien formula was churning in his brain, assessing the environment in terms she would never think to apply. He was her lover, but he was also Gueran, which meant that she never could really understand him. Was it different on Earth, where all minds conformed to a single standard? She suspected not. She suspected that no matter how similar two people might become, there was always a void which could never totally be breached. Guera’s voids were dark and dramatic, but Earth had her own version. What was it a philosopher had once said? Each human is, within himself, an alien landscape to all others.
The door chimed softly, a warning. She stiffened, smoothing her black robes with practiced efficiency. Now was the time for the simba to take control, the kaja whose message was both simple and absolute: acknowledge my dominance and all will go smoothly. The animal from which the kaja took its name sent others to hunt for its food, then ate first, leaving the hunters its scraps. It killed such cubs as might carry the genes of a competitor, without regret and without delay. It assembled about itself a court of mates and offspring who understood the rights of the master and acquiesced to them ... and it would respond instantly to another of its kind who violated its territory. She smiled a tight smile as she reflected upon that last point. It had been years since anyone had dared to wear the simba in her presence, and that had indeed been a rival ... not a man she worried about now. Not a man that anybody worried about now.
The door slid open, and the first of her guildmasters entered. Ian Kent—tall, well-mannered, handsome—bowed deeply as he saw her. “Prima.” As always she was struck by the utter tranquillity of his presence, the almost preternatural calm the man seemed to exude. Which was nothing short of amazing, she knew. The man had been an outpilot once, had tasted the ultimate human power ... and had lost it in a docking accident, which had damaged his brain and removed him from the roll of outpilots forever. Was serenity a byproduct of the programs he used to control his deadly Syndrome, now that it had no safe outlet? Or something more personal? Gueran etiquette demanded that she not question it, merely accept. “An honor to be in your presence again.” He wore the natsiq as usual, with little adornment. I serve the Guild; that is all I want you to know. Full black robes in outworld style swept the floor as he moved, a traditional costume as old as the ainniq themselves; Guera’s children did not flaunt their earthlike bodies in front of the more obviously deformed Variants.