“You thought you had me, didn't you, Trickster?” Thaddeus shouted. “You thought that you had me in stasis forever, out of your way, so you could go on playing God with these pitiful primitives, go on playing your stupid games with the women! Well, Trickster, it looks like I'm the one with the last laugh, the one with the best trick!"
Geste could not have answered had he wanted to. He had lived his entire life, centuries now, with the conviction that he would live on until he grew tired of it-and the happy suspicion that he would never grow tired of it. Death was for other, lesser beings, never for A.T. Geste of Achernar IV.
Now he knew, with absolute certainty, that Thaddeus was going to kill him, and the thought of death, of ending, of nonexistence, tumbled down on him like an endless avalanche. He waited, trembling, for oblivion.
It wasn't fair, something screamed in the back of his mind. Sure, mortals died all the time, but they knew they were going to die, they were told from early childhood that they would someday die, and no one had ever told him that, no one had prepared him. He had been promised eternal life, and he was being cheated out of it because he had been stupid enough to stand up for what was right, instead of cowering like the rest.
“How did you hide that thing, anyway?” Thaddeus asked. “I didn't see, either through my puppet or on the recordings. It's a good trick, Geste-not good enough, of course, but a good trick. How did you do it?"
Like the swift and sudden dawn of Denner's Wreck, the realization burst in Geste's mind that Thaddeus was not going to kill him immediately. He wanted something, first. Fear washed away. It was if he had been trapped inside a mounting wave that had broken upon the seashore-not the little waves of this tideless, moonless planet, or anything from the tamed and broken oceans of Terra, but the great pounding surf of Achernar IV. He was still afloat, drifting against his will, but he was no longer blind and drowning. He was able to think again.
“I'll tell you how I survived, if you like,” Thaddeus said, as if making casual conversation. “It wasn't hard. What you have in the bubble there is an old-fashioned clone. I made him about sixty, seventy years ago now, did a little surgery when he was about a year old, destroyed his personality, juiced up his growth hormones to bring him up close to my own size, and then grew a receiver into the brain, so that I could use that body myself. I've got a little switch here, so that, up until a few minutes ago, I could use whichever body I fancied at any given time. I did some adjustments, so we'd be as indistinguishable as possible-sped up his growth, as I said, and carved some scars, that sort of thing. A neat job, wasn't it?"
Geste managed to nod. His reflected face bobbed up and down on the stasis field, distorting as it slid across the magnifying curve of the sphere.
“I figured it might be useful to have a back-up of myself."
Geste fought to control his trembling; it lessened, but did not stop.
“That's about the smallest stasis generator I've ever seen, Geste; did you build it yourself?"
Geste twisted his head to one side, then back.
“No? Aulden?"
Another twist and return.
“No? Well, it doesn't matter. Is it collapsible? Is that it? I don't really see how it could be, though."
Thaddeus paused, but Geste did not respond.
“You know, with that clone of mine, I had the switching mechanism set so that if the signal ever got interrupted, I'd be in control of my own body again, so here I am. A little safety measure. Has it occurred to you just what you would have done to me, if I hadn't done that?” Thaddeus's voice, which had been bantering and conversational, took on an edge.
Geste shuddered once more, then managed to still himself.
“I don't think you've thought about that, Geste. You see, I am always in my own body, the essential self; I've never trusted technological transmigration. If I'm in another body, I don't know it's still me. Sure, lots of people have transferred into other bodies, or machines-it's been going on for millenia-but how do you know that they didn't just die, that the mind in the new body isn't a simulation that thinks it's the same person? I'm sure you've heard the philosophical debates about this, haven't you?"
Geste nodded.
“I was sure you had. So you see, I keep my consciousness, my personality, my soul, in my own head, this same one I was born with seven thousand years ago. When I used that other body, it was all remote control, using a little transceiver arrangement at the base of the brain. When you put that body into stasis, you cut off all the input and output through that transceiver. You cut off my brain, Geste. I wasn't in the stasis field, not the real me, so I stayed conscious the whole time, but I was cut off from my own body, because I can't run both at the same time. And I couldn't switch back, Geste-the control is worked from whichever body I'm controlling at the time. We're talking about total sensory deprivation. I had a very bad second or two, wondering if the emergency switch would work-I had designed it for when the clone was killed, not enfielded. I suppose you thought you were being merciful, using a stasis field instead of a blaster, but what if I hadn't had my little switch, Geste? You wouldn't even have known what you'd done to me! I'd have starved, rotted, conscious the whole time!” His voice rose to a cracking screech.
Geste, his mind still slowly emerging from panic, saw the error in this; Thaddeus would not have stayed conscious once his body deteriorated below a certain level, and in a state of total sensory deprivation he would have felt no pain, had no sensation of the passing of time.
Still, it would have been a gruesome fate indeed, and Geste, shaken and terrified as he was, decided not to quibble.
“Now, how did you get that stasis generator in here?” Thaddeus demanded.
The thought of actually answering Thaddeus truthfully occurred to him, but he suppressed it. Right now, he was sure, only the fact that he had information Thaddeus wanted was keeping him alive. Besides, he was sure that his voice would tremble-if he could speak at all. He remained silent.
“Damn it, punk, do you want me to have to dissect you to find out?"
Geste shuddered again, even while a part of his mind wondered what would happen if an autopsy knife cut into the mouth of the bent-space pocket. Would it pop back out into normal space, its integrity disrupted? What would it do to his head if that happened?
His gorge rose in his throat.
No, he desperately told himself, the knife couldn't cut the pocket, he was sure. It was far more likely that the blade would break.
“I'm sending some machines, Geste-we'll see if they can't convince you to be a little more forthcoming with your information."
Geste sat, watching the triangular black floater bumping helplessly against its own reflection on the stasis field, never spilling a drop of whatever beverage it held.
The machines Thaddeus sent would not be as ineffective, he was sure. He lifted the stasis generator, thinking hard.
Thaddeus spoke again, but this time his voice was cut off in mid-word.
“What the hel…” he began.
Geste looked up, suddenly hopeful.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Lady Tsien lives in the treetops of the southern jungles, where she leads a horde of strange manlike creatures. Travelers there report that these creatures shout taunts at them as they pass by below, whooping with laughter and calling insults. Some claim that these were once true men and women, but that Lady Tsien ensorcelled them; others say that that's nonsense, for there are certainly men and women who have met Lady Tsien and come away unscathed, and no one can name anyone who turned up missing after seeking her out…"
– from the tales of Atheron the Storyteller
The machine was not meant for riding on, but Bredon managed to cling to it. He sat precariously atop its central box, his feet on two of the forward appendages, his hands clutching the edge. “Go to the war room,” he ordered. “Ka nama kaa lajerama!"