Bruen shifted again in an attempt to curry favor from his hip. "It would leave him feeling more comfortable."
"You talk as if the Praetor's creation is a human being."
Bruen touched the stud, the holo forming again to show Arta Fera inside the caverns of Makarta where she placed the pistol in the weapons rack. She stopped, an uneasy frown on her perfect forehead, as if she still couldn't comprehend her talent for destruction.
"Maybe he is. He loved once."
Hyde laughed loudy, ending in a fit of coughing. He wiped his eyes and stared at his old friend. "Becoming maudlin, Bruen?"
The Magister shook his head. "No, Hyde, old friend," Bruen responded sadly. "I just wonder what right two doddering old men like us have to meddle with the future of humanity. Are we saviors, Hyde… or puppets of evil and death?"
Chapter 6
In the darkness, Staffa kar Therma lay on his back. Around him the soft whispers of Chryslas humming presence should have reassured him. Instead he replayed that final moment in his mind when Chrysla's guns blew the Praetor's battleship into slag — and with it, the only woman he'd ever loved.
I killed her. How could I have known? He reached up to rub his eyes with thumb and forefinger. And my son? Does he live? Or did I kill him, too? The Seddi. the Seddi. would know.
\ What would his son be like? The old question that had plagued him for years nagged at his thoughts. He tried to sort out the emotions — and failed. Attempts at thinking rationally ended only in confusion, and he began to comprehend the conditioning that had been triggered by the Praetor's words.
"I understand now, old man, I was your experiment, wasn't I? That's where the pride in your eyes came from. You took an orphaned boy and used him as a behavioral experiment. With the training machines, you stifled my emotions, turned me into a biologica robot. Rational, logical, without a shred of emotion except the desire to succeed.
"My God, Praetor, what a cunning monster you were." Through the emotional haze, the pieces began to fall into place. But where did the reality lie? Had his brain been normal before, or had the psychological trigger released him from a conditioned state? He took a deep breath, stilling his thoughts, stifling the emotions, as he reviewed what he knew about brain physiology and chemistry.
Based on a complex interaction of physiology and chemistry, the brain created its own criteria for normal behavior. In doing so, it built a network of neural pathways that cre-
ated memory and allowed it to lea new adaptive strategies.
"And all of that has been overturned by the Praetor's hidden trigger." Staffa balled a fist and smacked the sleeping pallet. "So, what happened? The Praetor's words triggered a neural response that interacted with the brain's feedback to maintain chemical balance. But which state is the real me?"
And there was the real problem. Had the Praetor's conditioning denied him part of himself for all those years, or did the key words, "construct, machine, and creation" trigger an emotional imbalance calculated to destroy him in the end?
The answer lay moldering in the Praetor's grave.
The fact remained that the subliminal cues that stimulated his brain to slow production of corticosteroids, serotonin, acetylcholine, and norepinephrine had been given and the old balance had been upset.
Staffa stood and paced restlessly. The answer had to lie in the Praetor's last words. Sometime, in that discussion, the old viper would have given him a clue. Even amid the destruction of his world, the Praetor couldn't have resisted one final test, but what? Staffa replayed the conversation in the Myklenian hospital word for word. So much had been said, so many meanings tendered. But which phrase held the clue?
Staffa frowned and propped his chin on a fist. He'll bet on my pride and arrogance. Staffa smiled grimly. Yes, that's his way. The words, "no soul" recurred in Staffa's memory;
the old man had harped on that. "No responsibility to God?… I bred that out of you. banished it from your personality… a creature without conscience. money and power motivate yo. "
Staffa's expression hardened. "And what else is there, Praetor? How else does a man measure his worth? Power is the only measure… as you taught me so well."
The eerie squawl of his son's cry pierced the years, wailing, condemning. Staffa closed his eyes, only to be haunted by Chrysla's sad eyes. He couldn't avoid the gentle censure, the rebuke that lay in that yellow gaze. An invisible fist gripped his heart, squeezing as if to force the life from that throbbing organ.
"I didn't know he'd taken you," Staffa whispered to the specter. "No wonder you disappeared so thoroughly. In all of Free Space, only the Praetr could have bought such secrecy. I should have known, my love. I should have known."
His son's onely cry left his soul shivering. Guilt flooded him and mixed with the grief. Why is this happening to me?
The Praetor had claimed his conscience was reptilian. "And I told him I had no interest in conscience." The man who would unite all of Free Space in order to challenge the Forbidden Borders could only be burdened by conscience. "Don't you see, Praetor? The stakes are so high. As long as humanity is divided, as long as we feud and fight among ourselves, we'll never break this cage that binds us."
He shook his head, glaring up at his memories. "That's the essential point you missed, Praetor. You forgot that you taught me to dream — to aspire to ever greater things. I must rule Free Space."
. And you'll finally fail. fail. fail.
Staffa spun on his heel, powered by a sudden surge of adrenaline. A wicked smile spread across his hard lips. "That's the key, isn't it Praetor? Throughout that entire conversation, you mocked me, knowing full well that you'd conditioned sentimentality out of my personality — banished, as you so aptly claimed. That's why it surprised you that I loved Chrysla. She could have broken the conditioning in the end. You had to get her away from me. It would have ruined the experiment — tainted your 'greatest creation.' "
Staffa laughed sourly. "My Achilles' heel. Inhumanity. Lack of conscience. That's why you called me a machine." Staffa's eyes narrowed into slits. "You left me only half a man, Praetor."
But had those three words released all of him? Had they broken the conditioning completely? Anger blended with frustration. "You've got to find yourself, Staffa, or the Praetor will win in the end. If you'd see your dream come true, you must know what it is to be human, as the Praetor said, to 'feel the spirit that breathes within the species.' "
He filled his lungs, holding his breath to still the sudden
pounding anxiety in his heart. "Praetor, first, I will find my son, if he lives. And then I will find myself."
"Don't tickle," she warned as his fingers slipped in light caress along the silken cool skin on the backs of her thighs.
Drawing a deep breath, Tybalt the Imperial Seventh let it whistle past his lips. "Why do you do this with me? You don't love me, Ily."
She turned, flipping a wealth of gleaming black hair over her shoulder so she could face him on the rumpled sleeping surface. Her long legs had wadded the golden sheets to a crumpled pile during the heat of their passionate coupling. She moved closer, as if drawing on his body heat, and extended a muscular leg over his belly. One of her breasts flattened against his arm. The contrast between the firm whiteness of her skin and his rich black tones absorbed him for a moment.
He gazed into her piercing black eyes so close to his own.
"Maybe I ike the taste of power, Imperial Seventh," her voice came as sultry as the musk of her cooling body. "Maybe you represent the ultimate triumph."
He shuddered slightly as she began nibbling at his chest, her pointed tongue circling his nipple to send chilling thrills down his spine.