“Mixaham beravam! Bayad beravam!” he roared, coming for me with talons raised to rake. I scrambled backward, I hit the wall with such force the building shook and the planks of the wall, thick as Bibles, cracked and started. Something was knocked loose. I caught it in midair as it dropped past my face. My Imperial Navy saber. In the same second I had put my boot up to halt Courier’s oncoming rush and kicked him in the chest with all my strength. He flew backward and hit the opposite wall, crash, and more planks split. There was a thunder of running steps as the mortals rushed down the hall to look through the doorway.
“LE BATEAU-MOUCHE EST EN RETARD!” Courier cried, in a voice that made the mortals cover their ears. I was desperately trying to shake the scabbard off the saber; something was wrong with the mechanism of my left arm. Blood and oil were drooling from Courier’s jaws as he sprang again, straight for me, and my good arm went up and whipped the saber in an arc that passed through his neck. His head flew off, hit the wall and rolled to Iakov Babin’s feet.
All my strength left me. I became aware that I was badly damaged. I slid to the floor. Courier’s body was already still, having gone into fugue at the moment my blade broke the connection between the Sinclair Chain of his spine and the titanium gimbal of his skull. Already the neck arteries had sealed themselves off and a protective membrane was forming. His head was doing the same. Eyes, ears, nostrils were exuding a thick substance that would seal them against further injury.
“God damn, Doc!” Babin broke the appalled silence. “That was one fine sword cut! You fought like a man.”
I had, by God. “Thank you,” I said with difficulty. My lips were split and bruised. The rest of my fleshly parts hurt as well. “You were right, Iakov Dmitrivich. He was a dybbuk.”
“I told you.” He stepped into the room cautiously, edging around the body. The other mortals cowered in the doorway. Someone was whimpering hysterically. “I seen devils in this New World just as ornery as any we got in Mother Russia. You ask the Indians. I reckon this one killed that boy, whoever he was, and possessed his body. Are you hurt bad, Doc?”
“I think my arm is broken.”
“And some ribs, too, I reckon.” He squatted down and peered at me in awe. “God Almighty, Doc, you’re beat up black and blue. You sure put up one hell of a fight, though. Wouldn’t have thought you’d had it in you. Come on, boys, let’s get him up on the bed.”
“What are we going to do with that ?” The junior manager pointed with a trembling finger at the body.
“Take it out and bury it at a crossroads?” The farm foreman stepped in and gingerly lifted the head by its hair. “That’s what the stories say to do. And put a stake through its heart, or it’ll come back to get us!”
I let them lift me into my bunk, too impaired to protest. Besides, it didn’t matter. The moment Courier’s head had been severed a distress beacon had been activated, transmitting straight to the nearest Dr. Zeus HQ. Wherever he was buried, a repair crew would retrieve both his parts within hours. He’d be whisked away to a hospital and I hadn’t the slightest doubt he’d be good as new within days, assuming they could do something about that nasty psychosis of his. I, on the other hand, would have to heal myself, and my self-diagnostic-and-repair program didn’t seem to be working very well.
The body with its head was stuffed into a sack and hustled out by Babin and a party of others. Someone sent a Creole woman up with a basin of water and a rag to tend to my hurts. Her almond eyes widened at the extent of the damage, but she didn’t say much; and it would have been rather pleasant to lie there being ministered to, but for Andreev the Assistant Manager rushing in.
“Kalugin! What on earth is this story that you’ve killed a man?”
“Self-defense,” I said in my feeblest voice. “It was the visitor. He went mad, sir … tried to kill me … all the men witnessed it … ”
Andreev was looking around wildly at the blood and smashed walls. He noticed the saber lying almost at his feet and did a little two-step dance back from it.
“God in Heaven! You killed him with a sword ? What will General Manager Kostromitinov say?”
What indeed? I pretended to lapse into unconsciousness. The dybbuk story would sound more convincing if Babin told it, I was certain. Andrei Fedorovich stood there wringing his hands a moment longer, and then ran out of the room. I let myself slide into genuine oblivion …
“Marine Operations Specialist Kalugin?” It was a suave voice speaking cultured Cinema Standard that woke me. I opened my eyes. A man in a neat gray suit of clothes was sitting at the foot of my bed, by the light of my wildly flickering lamp.
“West Coast Facilitator-General Labienus,” he introduced himself with a slight inclination from the waist.
“We’ll be overheard—” I tried to rise on one elbow, indicating my open door, but he negated me with a wave of his hand.
“We’ve activated a Hush Field over the settlement. None of the mortals here can regain consciousness at present. We’re recovering Courier—what’s left of him, anyway—from his grave out there on the road. I’m afraid we owe you something of an explanation.”
That took a moment to sink in. I opened my mouth to demand answers, but he held up his hand. “Please. Don’t tire yourself. You want to know how one of Us could suffer something like madness when we’re all perfect, don’t you? It’s really quite simple. Courier wasn’t—exactly—one of us.”
I stared. Choosing his words with delicacy, he went on. “I suppose you’ve heard the old rumors about Flawed Ones, about fantastic creatures produced millennia ago when Dr. Zeus hadn’t perfected the immortality process. Well, of course those stories aren’t true; but it seems that, back in the early days, one or two individuals were produced who weren’t quite up to Company standards.” He drew from his inner breast pocket a slim silver case and, opening it, selected a silver-wrapped stick. “Theobromos, by the way?” He offered me the case. I took one gratefully, unwrapping it single-handed. My arm hadn’t repaired itself yet. He resumed:
“Now, as you know, Dr. Zeus is a humane organization. Simple termination of the poor creatures was out of the question.” Especially since they were immortal, I thought to myself darkly. I put the Theobromos in my mouth. Oh, welcome bliss. It was highest-quality Guatemalan. Labienus watched my dreamy smile with amusement.
“Of course the Company found places for them. But in Courier’s case—and by now you’ll have guessed he was one of these substandard unfortunates—there were special circumstances that made it a particular challenge.
“It has to do with his autoimmune system, you see. Dr. Zeus had already perfected Hyperfunction, but at that time there was no reason to believe it wouldn’t work equally well on all subjects, regardless of personal biochemistry. However, Courier’s metabolism presented certain problems.
“What’s the simplest way to put this? You could say that his body decided his own RNA was a pathogen, and set about attacking it, breaking it down. The Company stabilized most of his metabolic response, but the spontaneous nature of short-term memory proved beyond them. You’re aware that the brain stores memory in RNA molecules? Of course you are.
“I won’t confuse you with the details, but the end result is that Courier reacts to memory as though it were a disease process. Any repeated specific experience and he undergoes an adverse reaction. Consistently repeat a specific sequence of events and paranoid psychosis is the result, with all the attendant physical manifestations you saw.”