Gallen looked up at her, knew that she was speaking what she believed was the truth, yet dangerous thoughts kept flooding through his mind, welcome snatches of memory. He felt far more experienced in life, far wiser than ever before. He reveled in his new memories, as if they were a new great cloak that weighed heavily on his shoulders, but was yet new and comforting. The memories that the Inhuman offered were sweet and exotic and tinged with pain, and he hungered for more.
Maggie was human, and she accepted the human agenda without question. But neither she nor Gallen had ever looked beyond the human agenda. Neither of them had really considered whether the benevolent Tharrin were running the universe in the best possible way. Gallen remembered the deadly rose, left as a warning on Fale. And now, Gallen recalled the lives of the people of Babel, saw how their lives were thrown away, how their needs were ignored. They suffered. They suffered. Ignorance, poverty, lawlessness, death. The humans of Tremonthin could protect the people of Babel, sweep all of these ills away, but they did not.
“Maggie,” he whispered. “I need to go under again. I need to know more!”
“Not right now,” Maggie said, squeezing his hand. Her eyes were frightened, and he knew that she didn’t want him to ever go under again. “Give your head some time to clear. Rest.”
“Soon, then,” Gallen said. “I want to go under soon.”
Maggie’s eyes were large and frightened, but Gallen suddenly knew that there was nothing to fear. The Inhuman had never sought to kill them, had never sought to harm them. Gallen felt dazed, as if he were whirling, and he knew he was too tired to stay awake much longer.
“Promise me,” Maggie said, her voice tight, “that you won’t go under again without telling me. Promise me that!” She took him by the collar, held him, her lips just inches away from his.
Gallen gazed into Maggie’s wide eyes, and wondered how he would tell her of the things he’d seen, the things he was beginning to guess-about the Inhuman’s beautiful plans.…
* * *
Chapter 18
When Maggie woke at dawn, Gallen was gone. She hoped that he had not tried to wrestle with the Inhuman once again. Whatever he’d felt the night before, she had seen in his face that the Inhuman was more dangerous than she’d imagined. It had seduced him in only a moment, and she feared that he had wakened hungering for its touch.
She stalked around the camp all morning, wondering if she should tell the others, wondering if Gallen would come back at all. She retrieved the broken Word from the bushes where she’d thrown it the night before, then went outside of camp, put her mantle on, and Maggie silently asked her mantle to feed her information on the creature-its probable functionality.
Immediately, the mantle showed her a schematic for the creature, detailing the known hinges in its joints, its sensory apparatus, its own brain and system of energy storage. The body of the Word was just a simple machine designed for invasion. It was too small to be self-aware, and therefore would try to complete its only task rather doggedly, and stupidly, at times.
But the information she needed most was not available. Once the creature invaded its host, the nanoware inside was extruded into the host’s brain, and that nanoware could not be studied without microscopic sensors that Maggie’s mantle did not have.
So Maggie asked it to make a guess about the most logical functionality of the thing based on current technology. The mantle suggested that the system required several components: an antenna system to receive signals; an amplifier to boost the signal; a power system to power the amplifier; and a neural interface that would let the Inhuman’s message be sent directly to the brain.
Beyond those four systems, Maggie didn’t know what else the Word might have incorporated into it. But Maggie considered each of these systems, wondering how to sabotage them.
The antenna was first on her list. Her mantle said that since the human body already worked as an antenna, receiving radio signals due to the electromagnetic field created by ionized salts within the body, the Word would need to do very little to actually receive the signals. The body already could receive signals, it just wouldn’t recognize them. But solar interference during the day might distort signals, weakening them to the point that they would be worthless. And beings living underground might not receive the signals at all. And the dronon may have taken these factors into account.
Her mantle whispered that the human body could be greatly enhanced as an antenna by temporarily introducing small amounts of metallic salts, and Maggie suspected that such metallic salts would disperse evenly throughout the body.
But the main thing that the Word needed was not a better antenna, but a good amplifier, and that amplifier would be powered by converting body heat into electrical energy.
Maggie noted that the servants of the Inhuman had kept the Word close to their bodies, kept them warm, and she suspected that the biogenerator was concealed in the body of the creature, probably with the amplifier. If she could get that biogenerator to cool, the Word would die.
But the Word had burrowed to the base of Gallen’s skull and had actually inserted itself inside the skull, making it almost impossible to remove.
Gallen had said that he felt it “moving in his skull,” and Maggie had the very disturbing notion that he might have been right. Once the creature made its entrance at the base of the skull, it might well have moved higher into the brain to protect itself.
Once there, it had little difficulty sending a chain of nanoware devices into the brain and spinal column, forming new neural pathways so that it could send its message to its host.
Once there, the Word had only to receive its signals from the Inhuman, then convey the information to Gallen. He recalled two lifetimes in only two minutes, which suggested to Maggie that an incredible amount of information was being downloaded rapidly.
But those possessed by the Inhuman were not being controlled individually, of that she was sure. If they were all connected through a transmission network, they would have been able to send and receive information instantly, coordinating their attacks without even voicing commands.
But back in town, the hunting packs of the Inhuman had relied upon their scouts to convey verbal communications. Which meant that the Inhuman, once it fed its propaganda to a host, released the host, expecting it to act at its own discretion.
The Word … Maggie recalled how her attacker in Northland had talked about it almost reverently, as something to enjoy. And Gallen had been seduced by its touch, and now craved to hear more. When she’d first looked at his face, he had been filled with joy and peace and loss. His eyes had been shining with an emotion she hesitated to name-ecstasy.
And Maggie realized that the entire process, rather than being dark and frightening, had been designed to be something far more palatable for its victim-perhaps even something desirable. Perhaps that was why the Tekkar were converted so quickly; instead of running from the Inhuman, they embraced it joyously.
Maggie considered the Word, as she walked up a steep incline, wondered how to combat it.
If she were a surgeon and had the proper equipment, perhaps she could have destroyed the neural network. But she wasn’t prepared to perform brain surgery out here in the woods. Likewise, she couldn’t risk trying to open Gallen’s brain to get to the Word’s amplifier or biogenerators.
She wondered if it might be possible to damage the Word, corrode the nanoware with chemicals-but her mantle whispered that such an attempt would be dangerous. The nanoware would be more resistant to most chemical attacks than Gallen’s own body would. Doubtlessly, with the many human subspecies on Tremonthin, the dronon would have created the Word to be suitable to a broad spectrum of creatures.