“Yes, of course. Meshuggah. What does it mean?”
“Never mind.” Abrams grinned.
“What about rescuing you?”
“Don’t. You’d come to grief for certain. Besides, my personal chances are better if I invoke diplomatic immunity. I hope, though, our stunt will go off without a hitch.” Abrams looked about. “I can’t see you, Dwyr, and I can’t shake your hand, but I’d sure like to. And one day I plan to.” The boat grounded. “Good luck.”
Dwyr’s electronic gaze followed the stocky figure out, down the ramp and across the small parking strip in the garden. A pair of clan members saluted the Terran and followed him toward the mansion. A screen of trees soon hid them. No one else was in view. Shadows lay heavy around the boat.
Let us commence, Dwyr thought. His decision was altogether unperturbed. Once he would have tasted fear, felt his heart thud, clutched to him the beloved images of wife and young and their home upon far Tanis. Courage would have followed, sense of high purpose, joy of proving his maleness by a leap between the horns of death—thus did you know yourself wholly alive! But those things had departed with his body. He could no longer recollect how they felt. The one emotion which never left him, like an unhealing wound, was the wish to know all emotions again.
He had a few. Workmanship gave a cerebral pleasure. Hate and fury could still burn … though cold, cold. He wondered if they were not mere habits, engraved in the synapses of his brain.
He stirred in the womblike cubicle where he lay. Circuit by circuit, his living arm disconnected his machine parts from the boat. For a moment he was totally cut off. How many hours till sensory deprivation broke down his sanity? He had been kept supplied with impressions of the world, and asleep he never dreamed. But suppose he stayed where he was, in this lightless, soundless, currentless nothing. When he began to hallucinate, would he imagine himself back on Tanis ? Or would Sivilla his wife come to him?
Nonsense. The objective was that he come to her, whole. He opened a panel and glided forth. The systems that kept him functional were mounted in a tiny gravsled. His first task would be to exchange it for a more versatile body.
Emerging, he floated low, keeping to the bushes and shadows. Stars were plainer to see here, away from the city web and the beacon flare which lay at the foot of these hills. He noted the sun of Tanis, where Merseians had made their homes among mountains and forests, where Sivilla lived yet with their children. She thought him dead, but they told him she had not remarried and the children were growing up well.
Was that another lie?
The problem of weaving his way unseen into the city occupied a bare fragment of Dwyr’s attention. His artificial senses were designed for this kind of task, and he had a decade of experience with them. Mostly he was remembering.
“I was reluctant to leave,” he had confessed to Abrams on Starkad. “I was happy. What was the conquest of Janair to me? They spoke of the glory of the race. I saw nothing except that other race, crushed, burned, enslaved as we advanced. I would have fought for my liberty as they did for theirs. Instead, being required to do my military service, I was fighting to rob them of their birthright. Do not misunderstand. I stayed loyal to my Roidhun and my people. It was they who betrayed me.”
“They sure as the seventh hell did,” Abrams said.
That was after the revelation which knocked Dwyr’s universe apart. “What?” Abrams had roared. “You could not be regenerated? Impossible!”
“But radiation damage to the cells—”
“With that kind of radiation damage, you’d’ve been dead. The basic gene pattern governs the organism throughout life. If everything mutated at once, life would have to stop. And the regeneration process uses the chromosomes for a chemical template. No, they saw their chance to make a unique tool out of you, and lied. I suppose they must’ve planted an unconscious mental block too, so you’d never think to study basic biomedicine for yourself, and avoid situations where somebody might tell you. God! I’ve seen some vile tricks in my time, but this one takes the purple shaft, with pineapple clusters.”
“You can heal me?” Dwyr screamed.
“Our chemosurgeons can. But slow down. Let’s think a bit. I could order the job done on you, and would as a matter of ethics. Still, you’d be cut off from your family. What we ought to do is smuggle them out also. We could resettle you on an Imperial planet. And I haven’t the authority to arrange that. Not unless you rate it. Which you could, by serving as a double agent.”
“To you too, then, I am nothing but a tool.”
“Easy. I didn’t say that. I just said that getting back your family won’t come cheap. It’ll involve some risk to the crew who fetch them. You’ve got to earn a claim on us. Willing?”
Oh, very willing!
As he darted between towers, Dwyr was no more conspicuous than a nigh third. He could easily reach the place assigned him, on an upper level of a control station where only computers dwelt, without being noticed. That had been arranged on Brechdan Ironrede’s own command. The secret of Dwyr’s existence was worth taking trouble to preserve. A recognition lock opened for him and he glided into a room crowded with his bodies and attachments. There was nothing else; an amputated personality did not carry around the little treasures of a mortal.
He had already chosen what to take. After detaching from the sled, he hitched himself to the biped body which lay stretched out like a metal corpse. For those moments he was without any senses but sight, hearing, a dim touch and kinesthesia, a jab of pain through what remained of his tissues. He was glad when he had finished making the new connections.
Rising, he lumbered about and gathered what else he would need and fastened it on: special tools and sensors, a gravity impeller, a blaster. How weak and awkward he was. He much preferred being a vehicle or a gun. Metal and plastic did not substitute well for cells, nerves, muscles, the marvelous structure which was bone. But tonight an unspecialized shape was required.
Last came some disguise. He could not pass for Merseian (after what had been done to him) but he could look like a spacesuited human or Iskeled. The latter race had long ago become resigned to the domination of his, and furnished many loyal personnel. No few had been granted Merseian citizenship. It had less significance than the corresponding honor did for Terra, but it carried certain valuable privileges.
Ready. Dwyr left his room and took to the air again, openly this time. Admiralty House grew before him, a gaunt mountain where caves glared and the beacon made a volcano spout. A sound of machines mumbled through the sky he clove. He sensed their radiation as a glow, a tone, a rising wave. Soaring, he approached the forbidden zone and spoke, on a tight beam, those passwords Brechdan had given him. “Absolute security,” he added. “My presence is to be kept secret.”
When he landed on the flange, an officer had joined the sentries. “What is your business on this level?” the Merseian demanded. “Our protector the Hand is not in Ardaig.”
“I know,” Dwyr said. “I am at his direct orders, to conduct some business inside. That is as much as I am allowed to tell you. You and these males will admit me, and let me out in a while, and forget I was ever here. It is not to be mentioned to anyone in any circumstances. The matter is sealed.”