He raced back to the command area—passing the unconscious Brennen at the end of the axial tube—and powered up the habitat’s Valliardi Transfer. Typing in a command, he waited until the computer announced that a course had been calculated. He requested a ten-minute delay before transference and pressed the command entry button. For an instant he considered setting the fission bomb with a fifteen minute delay. Instead, he defused it and fastened it and his waist pack to the command seat.
There, Mad Wizard, he thought, heading back to the airlock, go back to Pluto and scare them. Maybe they’ll settle for taking you apart to find out why you survive transfers. They’ll get a wrong answer because you’re insane and I’m not not not not... well, not exactly.
“Not not not not not not not,” he muttered as he sealed the clone up completely and pulled her inside the airlock. He pointed his hand and fired the laser, blowing a finger-sized hole in the hatch. A hiss filled the room, bringing with it a wind that whistled through the outer door. He fired again. The wind blew stronger, the hiss grew louder. Both gradually decreased to stillness and silence. He opened the hatch and rushed his barely human cargo through the airless passageways. She only had the air inside her helmet to sustain her, but it was all she needed.
He strapped her into the seat next to him and powered up the shuttle. He locked down the hatch and pressurized the cockpit and only then opened her headgear.
Still breathing. Good. Death Angel, you fight your master well. One minute. We go.
He eased the spacecraft out of the docking bay and ran the engine up to full power for an instant. They drifted away from Bernal Brennen. The huge sphere and shaft receded slowly to less awe-inspiring dimensions. When it suddenly vanished, he blinked his eyes twice.
So that’s what a transfer looks like from the outside. Goodbye, Mad Wizard. Sate their curiosity in twelve years. Now I’m free.
He calculated approximate return coordinates to Circus and transferred.
Finally Death Angel is dying beside me. She heads down the corridor with me, but then she becomes Jenine, her body whole, forgiving me and asking me through the hole at the end of the corridor. Yes, Jenine, I’ll follow you. Don’t let me go back. Please—
“No!” The space he was in looked very much like the space he had left.
Except that a tiny point of light slightly ahead and to starboard grew in brightness and diameter.
Why can’t I ever go beyond? What lies there? Light? Peace? New life? Circus flies up to me, Ben chattering through the roar that’s surrounding me now. I ease the shuttle inside the small hole in wall of steel and aluminum...
Then I pull her out and take her to our playroom...
Gently he removed the pressure suit to inspect her dirty, abused body. He cut her hair to shoulder length. He washed her and placed her into the boxdoc. Its silver surgeons mended her ankle and soothed her other ills, which the machine displayed on a scrim: intestinal parasites, squamous-cell skin cancers, respiratory disease, ulcers, and several different bloodstream infections.
“Virgil,” the computer said. “You have been here an hour and you have not told me what happened at Bernal Brennen.”
Ben, can’t you see I’ve got no time for your ciphers? “Brennen had her.
I took her back and sent him to trans-Plutonian orbit where I figure the Belters will pick him up. Maybe they’ll find out why he could survive the transfer.” And divert Master Snoop away from me, maybe. “What did the dead man in me do while I was away?”
The computer took some time to consider the possible interpretations of the question before answering, “He was in therapy with Delia.”
“What sort?”“I recorded the proceedings.”“Play it back.”He watched and listened. So Jord’s afraid he’s nothing. Nothing but a dead man.
Why is Death Angel talking about killing me? DuoHypno? Why did I fall for that? No! The dead man is fouling me up! Messing my resistance to Duodrugs. Hide? But I can’t hide. Not for sure anymore. Jackal? Jackass! Listened too long. Now I’m back. Back here. Baker.
He switched off the scrim and smiled. He glanced at the boxdoc, seeing the body inside, and asked, “When will she be ready?”
“The bone is already set and welded. It will be stato-braced with a portable electro-healing pack and she should be ready for zero-gravity activity by tomorrow. Her other problems— ulcerated wounds, vitamin deficiencies, capillitic seborrhea, and some other minor nuisances—will all be cleared up by that time.”
“What about the other body?”
“It has been ground down, the RNA and picotechs centrifuged out.”
Such a calm pronouncement. Just like some other computer must have announced that my own body had been pulped and leeched.
He wiped the dirty sweat from his forehead and transferred it to his thigh. “All right. Brainwipe this one while she’s in there and administer the juice.”
“Affirmative.” A series of posts extended from the inside walls of the machine, reaching toward the clone’s head. They touched and remained in contact. The electrodes withdrew ten minutes later.
“Brainwipe complete,” the computer said. “No brain activity other than autonomic functions.”
“Administer the picotechs whenever you deem it safe.”
“Affirmative.”
Baker drifted to a corner of the medical bay and slept.
He awoke hours later and washed, shaved, and ate.
Feels good to do normal things again. Now back to the abnormal.
“Is she awake yet?”
“No,” the computer answered. “I administered the transfusion fourteen hours ago. Her integration will probably be much faster in this clone because it was a brainwipe who had been more than marginally aware. The neural paths are built up, but uncircuited. She is healthy, though there is no telling when she will awaken.”’
“Can I take her out of the boxdoc?”
“Yes, you may.”
Baker made his preparations. First, he overrode the computer’s independent ability to actuate the Valliardi Transfer, leaving only its calculative function.
“That’s so we don’t have to go through any surprise transfers,” he said in response to a question from the computer.
“What if we are attacked?”
“By whom? You told me that Brennen was on its way back to the Solar system. And it would take more than twelve years for a psychfighter to make it out here. Is there any life on Tau Ceti’s planet?”
“On the fifth planet there exists life forms that have reached a stage of development not quite capable of space flight.”
“Primates?”
“Phytoplankton.”
“No threat there. And space is vast enough that no one else will find us.
I just don’t want you killing me again for any reason.”
“Do not think I have any emotions that might be bruised.”
Baker closed up the circuit cabinet and returned to the medical bay with the equipment he had rescued from the airless recreation room.
He bolted a chair next to the bed in the psychometric bay. He arranged the buckles and straps around it and bolted them to the frame. Then he welded a support to the back of the chair and fastened a five-liter bag of intravenous nutrients to it.
Returning to the boxdoc, he gagged Delia, lifted her out, then carried her to the next room and strapped her into the chair, inserting the needle in her arm and taping it to her wrist. He strapped down to the bed and waited. Sleep soon overcame him.
A muffled cry woke him from a dream. Delia writhed before him, her neck length hair swirling about her in short arcs. Her hands, fingernails carefully trimmed all the way back, wrestled with the straps at wrist and elbow. Her legs kicked, but her pink scarred flesh only turned redder against the straps at ankle and calf. She breathed in angry snorts, her abdomen pressing hard against the wide belt cinching her midriff. She could not look away from him because of the brace holding her head in position; she could only close her eyes. Saliva drenched the gag that pulled her lips back and blocked her tongue.