“I think,” said Kane, choosing his words just as carefully, “that the situation is very much in control of the situation. If we were to attempt to deal with the situation, I fear the situation would deal with us first.”
“We’ve proved that we can get in,” said Lukyan, “and that’s enough to be getting on with. It will have to be enough. I suggest we leave and reconsider what to do next.”
Kane nodded. “I agree. Lieutenant?” Tokarov also nodded. “Well, we’re all agreed, then.”
“I agree too,” said Katya.
The three men had the grace to at least look embarrassed. “All agreed,” said Kane quickly. They turned to leave. “Would you open the hatch, please?”
“Which is the replacement?” said the Leviathan.
Kane stopped and looked back, his mouth working soundlessly. “What?” he managed.
“Which is the replacement?”
“Clarify your statement,” said Kane, but Katya could see he already knew full well what the Leviathan meant, just as she knew.
“Which of these three humans is to replace you as the biological component in my intelligence?”
“What makes you believe any of them are?”
For its answer, shimmering multi-coloured beams spat from the surface of the Medusa sphere. Suddenly, there were two Kanes. The new one was faintly translucent and Katya realised it was a projected, animated hologram, a technology unavailable on Russalka since the war destroyed the few facilities that contained it. The new Kane was nothing like the one she’d first met back in the launch locks. He seemed younger and was wearing a Terran uniform. With a small shock, she realised that this was Kane as he’d been ten years ago. He was pacing up and down in front of the door, his eyes and hair wild. He looked like a man at the edge of a breakdown.
“Why do you wish to leave?” boomed the Leviathan.
“I… I just,” the holographic Kane ran his fingers through his hair and clamped his palms to the sides of his head in frustration and fury. “I just need to go, that’s all.”
“You have your function.”
“I cannot fulfil it, you know that.”
“Then you are without function.”
“In that case, I might as well go.” The younger Kane looked optimistically at the door, but it remained sealed.
“You may still have utility for the mission. You will be retained.”
“No!” barked Kane. “No! I will not… You… This mission is over!”
“You do not have the authority to declare the mission aborted. You will be retained.”
“And what if I never have ‘utility’ again?” Katya could see the fear in the recorded Kane’s face. The real Kane looked away. Katya couldn’t read the expression on his face. It may have been sickened, or it may have been humiliated.
“You will be retained.”
“I could die here! I could get old and die in this… this cybernetic mausoleum. With just you! You for company.” There was a sob in his voice. “I’m in Hell.”
“You are aboard the Terran attack cruiser Leviathan.”
The recorded Kane laughed a horrible bitter laugh that quickly subsided into sobs again. He hammered at the closed hatch with his fists. “Let me go,” he begged, “please let me go.”
“You will be retained,” said the Leviathan, its intonation exactly the same every time it repeated the damning phrase.
Then Kane stopped his sobbing and looked back into the chamber with an air of cunning on his face. “I have utility,” he said.
“Specify your utility.”
“You require a person to interface with, to attain full operational status, yes?”
“That is correct.”
The recording of Kane stepped closer to the throne and pointed to it. “I’ll find you somebody who can sit there for you. I’ll find you somebody to merge with.”
“There are parameters to be observed.”
“I know, I know. I know all about all that. I can find you somebody.”
“Your mission is to locate and retrieve a suitable candidate.” Katya could tell that the Leviathan was not thinking it over with those words; it was telling Kane what to do. In the gap between two sentences, Kane had gone from the Leviathan’s prisoner to its agent. The door, the holographic door, slid open leaving the real one still in place. “Proceed to the launch area. The escape pod is being readied.”
“Yes!” cried the holographic Kane exultantly. “Yes!” He ran through the shadowed door.
The coruscating, brightly coloured beams faded and the laser-fed echoes from ten years before vanished.
“You have fulfilled your function,” said the Leviathan. Lukyan, Tokarov and Katya all looked at Kane with horror.
“Which is the replacement?” demanded the Leviathan.
CHAPTER 11
Mythical Creatures
“You did this deliberately!” roared Lukyan.
“No!” Kane looked in as much shock as the others. His eyes wavered around even as he tried to explain himself, as if he were trying to deal with the present and the future simultaneously.
“Dirty Grubber…” Lukyan wanted to say something so vicious that it exceeded even his vocabulary. Instead he reached for the sidearm he’d strapped on before they’d left the mining station.
“Hold on,” snapped Tokarov, grabbing his wrist. Lukyan glared at him as if to say he could be next if he liked, but Tokarov’s steady eye-contact gave him pause. “If you draw that gun, the Leviathan will kill you before you’ve even got the safety off. Calm down. It’s the only way we’re going to get through this.”
Lukyan slowly subsided, but the looks he gave Kane were still venomous.
“I’m sorry,” said Kane hopelessly to nobody in particular, “I’m so sorry. I forgot that I ever said such a thing. I was desperate, I had to get out. I’d have said anything. I did say anything.”
“Leviathan,” rumbled Lukyan, his fury suppressed but evident, “why was this man here, Kane, you said he was rejected. Why?”
The reply was curt, factual and unhelpful. “Interface misphasing.”
“What does that mean?”
Kane shook his head. “You’re wasting your time. It doesn’t understand language in the same way you do. It was never programmed to act like a thesaurus.”
Lukyan turned on him. “Fine. You tell me then. What the blazes is ‘interface misphasing’?”
“I don’t think this is the time or the…”
“It’s exactly the time and the place,” said Lukyan, darks threats in his voice.
“It’s not like we can walk out of here,” said Katya. “Please, Kane. If you were rejected, we need to know why. Maybe we can make it reject all of us.”
Kane heaved an exasperated sigh. “Simply put,” he said with a sideways glance at Lukyan, “it means the Leviathan couldn’t interface with my nervous system. It’s supposed to attach itself to nerve endings and the grey and white matter of the spine and brain for full interface. For some reason my nervous system rejected it, or it rejected my nervous system. I don’t know which. All I know was that the attempt was very painful.” He shuddered at the memory.
Tokarov looked cynical. “You don’t know why it happened?”