Gallen and Orick walked north along the river for a mile until they came to some low wooded hills. Here they slipped into the brush and made camp. Gallen worried about Maggie. Every few moments he would verify some details. “This Karthenor said that Maggie would be working for him? Did he say where?”
“No,” Orick answered, yet Gallen felt more easy. If Karthenor needed workers, then Maggie should be all right. Karthenor wouldn’t want to harm a servant.
“I’ll have to find Maggie,” Gallen said. “To do so, I’ll need to sneak through the city. You can’t come with me.”
“But what should I do?” Orick asked. “I don’t want to just sit and wait.”
“I still need your help. We know Everynne came through the gate before us, but we don’t know where she may have come out. I’d like you to hunt for her trail. Maybe you can find her. I want you to make a thorough search, then come back here in two or three days.”
Orick agreed reluctantly, headed south. He looked over his back. “You’ll get her out all right, won’t you?”
“I’ll do my best,” was all Gallen could promise.
When Maggie woke in the morning, her head burned with a fever. She wondered at the pain. A voice whispered in her mind, “It is I, your Guide. I have been creating neural pathways into your brain and spinal column all night, and this causes your discomfort. By nightfall the process will be complete, and we will become one.”
Maggie tried to get up but could not move. Instead, the Guide let her lie abed for a few moments and began feeding her information at an incredible pace. “If you have questions,” the Guide said, “ask.”
The Guide began by showing her the structure of DNA in all of its intricacy. In brief visions, it revealed the function of each set of genes in the human genome, and how these genes were affected by variations. It showed her machinery and taught her how to run the tools that aberlains used in their work-chromosome readers, gene splicers, tissue samplers, DNA dyes. She learned how to remove egg cells from women and sperm from men, divide them into lots based on desirable characteristics that the cells would transmit, and then infect each lot with tailored genes to ensure that all progeny were properly upgraded to standards set by the dronon overlords. Once a batch of eggs and sperm were perfected, they could be mixed and incubated for sixty hours, then the resulting zygotes would be implanted into a woman’s womb.
The lesson lasted for nearly an hour, then the Guide forced Maggie from her bed, had her shower, and let her go down to the dining hall for breakfast. Maggie sat at a table with other aberlains, men and women who all wore Guides like hers. And though none of them spoke, she could hear their voices in her mind as they discussed the tasks that each would need to complete that day. She ate greedily, but the Guide forced her to stop just before she felt satisfied.
She spent the morning working in a clinic. Couples who had sought a license to bear children were there, and Maggie took egg samples from women, sperm from men. She laboriously tagged and labeled each sample, but since the dronon would allow only people with certain body types to reproduce, she ended up throwing most of the samples away. Instead, the women were implanted with zygotes from approved parents.
Several times during the day, the women asked Maggie, “Will I really be getting my own child? You won’t implant me with someone else’s child?”
Each time, Maggie’s Guide responded by comforting the potential mother and answering, “Of course you will get your own child. We take great care in labeling every sample, and there is no chance that the samples could get mixed. We will simply invest the cells with some standardized upgrades, and you will then have your own embryo returned to you.”
Each time she told this lie, Maggie would fight her Guide, try to scream out a warning, and the Guide would respond by doing something that Maggie could only describe as “tickling” her: suddenly her head would itch, and then a sweet feeling of euphoria would wash through her, the greatest contentment she had ever known.
Once, when Maggie was away from the patrons of the clinic in a storage room, she said to her Guide, “How can we lie to them? Why should we lie to them?”
“We do them a favor. Why should we let them harbor ill feelings about a process that they cannot change? Our system maximizes efficiency and insures an even distribution of genetically upgraded offspring.”
“But their children will all be brothers and sisters, even though they come from different families,” Maggie whispered to her Guide. “They won’t be able to marry.”
“Within each hive, our dronon masters are brothers and sisters. Each queen bears a hundred thousand eggs, and vanquishers are born brothers to architects, workers are sisters to queens. The new family revels in unity; thus the hive bonds. When our human offspring discover that they are all brothers and sisters, they will revel in that kinship.”
The Guide tickled her again. A new and stronger wave of pleasure washed through Maggie. It was a mystical, magical feeling, to be involved in such a great work, a work approved and loved by and her overlords.
In the late evening, Maggie took a young woman into a back laboratory and had her lie on the operating table. Maggie took out a tissue sampler which she would use to remove egg cells from the patient. The sampler was a long, thin piece of metal with a small scoop at the end to catch a slice of ovary. Maggie was removing its sterile covering when the patient looked up at Maggie and asked, “How free are you?”
Maggie turned to the woman, unsure if she had heard correctly. The woman looked deep into Maggie’s eyes. “How free are you? Do you want to escape from your Guide? If so, blink twice.”
Maggie tried to blink, struggled until tears formed in her eyes, but she could not blink. The Guide whispered, “Do not be alarmed by this woman, the guards are coming for her.”
Maggie stared at the woman. She was small, with mousy blond hair cropped close to her scalp, and a firm chin. She was nervous, sweating, and she whispered, “I’m in danger, aren’t I? I think I’ll go.”
She leapt off the table and opened the door. A green-skinned vanquisher with large orange eyes stood behind it.
The small woman tried to slam the door. The vanquisher shoved it open, grabbed the woman by the throat and one arm. She kicked and screamed, trying to escape, but he held her tight, dragged her away.
Maggie stood, staring out the door, shocked, her heart hammering. The Guide flooded her with pleasant sensations, whispering peace to her soul.
That night, as Maggie prepared for bed, her Guide transmitted a report to Lord Karthenor, detailing her accomplishments for the day. Her Guide reported that Maggie proved to be “culturally retarded,” and the Guide had to instruct her in the use of even the simplest machinery.
Karthenor was not concerned by this. Given Maggie’s background, it was only to be expected. But the Guide also reported that it had been forced to stimulate her hypothalamus over fifty times during the day, keeping her in a state of vegetative euphoria. Such overstimulation was dangerous. Within a week, it would lead to severe depression, a depression that could not be reversed for months. Under such circumstances, the Guide could still use her, but she would become despondent, an unreliable host. If the Guide temporarily lost control of her under such conditions, she might kill herself.
Karthenor considered the report, called to one of his technicians, a human named Avik whose parents had been integrated into dronon society two generations ago. He was a young man with hair so golden it appeared to be silver, and he had a sleek, well-muscled body. Avik reported quickly.
“My lord?” Avik said when he reached the door.
“The new servant, Maggie Flynn, needs someone to help make her adjustment smoother,” Karthenor said. “I would like you to talk to her, befriend her. I’ll instruct her Guide to give her free reign during your contact.”