For a time the darkness had him and he stood there, thoughtless, his animal self shuddering uncontrollably, a gobbet of spittle dribbling down his chin. Then, with an abruptness that -caught the animal unaware, Kim threw himself at the column and scratched at its surface, trying to find an opening.
He could hear himself gibbering with fear, and in another moment he would have backed away, defeated, but suddenly the aperture slid open with an outbreath of air and he tumbled in, onto the smooth, uncluttered floor, his hands going up to cover his eyes against the brilliance.
The brightness hurt him. It cut into his head like a flint. Then the door hissed shut behind him, trapping him. He whim-
pered in fear then lay there, shivering, his legs drawn up beneath him, waiting to die.
Yet what happened next seemed worse than death. The light in the room pulsed gently and a deep voice boomed out, filling the narrow space.
"Kewsel agas hanow, map!" Speak your name, boy! "Agas hanow!"
Kim gagged, then shat himself. His muscles went into spasm. For a while he could do nothing to control them. Again he was an unthinking animal, there on the floor inside the alien column. A stinking piece of quivering meat and bone. Then the bright thing in him bobbed up again and floated on the surface of his awareness. His name? What was his name?
"Laga . . ." He could not say it. He'd had too little practice. In any case, it was wrong. Lagasek—Starer—was not his name; or, if his name, then his name only in the darkness. It was not the name his mother had given him. Not the name he wished to take with him into the light.
He tried again. "Kim," he said finally, the word strange, more awkward in his mouth than in his head. His voice barely sounded the K and the rest of it was inaudible.
"Kewsel arta," said the voice. Speak again. It seemed much warmer than before; more soothing.
"Kim," he said more clearly, then lay there, perfectly still, wondering what would happen.
"Da, Kim," said the voice. Good. "Praga bos why omma?" Why be you here? "Praga prak why entradhe hemma pylla?" Why did you enter this pillar? "Gul nebonen sewya why?" Does someone pursue you?
"Nyns," he answered. No.
"Nyns," the voice repeated, and then chuckled to itself. What it said next was difficult to follow. The words were alien to Kim, like the nonsense utterances of his nightmares. "We've a fluent one here." This last seemed not to be directed at Kim.
Kim sat up, looking around him. Then he stood and went to the curve of the wall across from where the opening had been. No, he hadn't been mistaken: there was a shape in the wall's otherwise unblemished face. A pattern of light, almost too faint to see. He stood beside it, trying to figure it out.
"Ah," said the voice. "My gweles why cafos an matrix." I see you've found the ... But the last word was new. It was like the other words—alien.
Kim twitched and turned about sharply. The creature with the voice was watching him, then. Was close by. He stared up into the dimly lit tunnel overhead and tried to make out something in the darkness, but it seemed empty.
"Matrix?" Kim asked, pronouncing the word carefully, as if feeling the shape of it in his mouth.
There was laughter—soft, warm laughter—then the voice came back. "My bos ken tyller," it said, as if that explained everything. I be somewhere else. "Ha an tra a-dherak why bos un matrix." And that thing before you be a matrix. "Ef gul pycturs ha patron." He make pictures and patterns.
Kim struggled to understand, but could grasp nothing of what the voice was saying. Pictures? Patterns? How did it make these things?
"Gasa-vy dysquehs why." Let me show you.
The faint area glowed, then seemed to explode with color.
Kim shrieked and leapt backward, scrambling away until his back was against the far curve of the wall.
"Ef ny a-wra pystyk why. Golyas. Kensa un fas." He won't harm you. Watch. First a face.
The screen formed a face. A typical face from the Clay, seen in partial darkness, its scars and deformities nothing unusual. Kim nodded, his eyes watching the matrix closely.
"Nessa, un patron. Un semple patron. Tyby kettep myn bos un men." Next, a pattern. A simple pattern. Imagine each point be a stone. "My muvya an meyn formya un form. Un patron." I move the stones to form a shape. A pattern.
When the image on the screen re-formed it showed three lines of three points. A square.
"Den lufyow, le un bys," said Kim. Two hands, less a finger. It was the most he had said until then.
"Ahah," said the voice, and this time Kim could hear a second voice speak softly in the background. "Numerate, this one. That's rare." The hair on his neck stood up, hearing that foreign tongue again, and his lips peeled back, his dark self hostile to it, knowing it for the language of the light.
Unknown to him, however, he had taken his first step into the Above. And when the voice sounded again its tone was slightly different: less cozy, much more businesslike.
"Dos ogas an matrix, Kim. Dos ogas ha my deryvas why fatel muvya an meyn a drodhe."
Come near the matrix., Kim. Come near and I'll tell you how to move the stones about.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Machines of Flesh
KLAUS EBERT, Head of GenSyn, Chung Kuo's second largest company, looked down at the corpse on the dissecting table and slowly shook his head. "No, Knut. I've never seen its like."
He pointed out its internal structure—the lack of a spleen; the simplification of the respiratory system; the artificial latticework of the rib cage; the replacement of the stomach and intestinal system by a single sac, sealed off and unconnected to the anus. Most obvious of all was the flat, compact battery, like a black lacquered hipflask, placed where the human liver should have been.
"I'll have my experts look at this, but it's not GenSyn, that's certain. It isn't even organic. It's just a machine; too simple to function longer than a few months. It can't digest. It can't even process blood. Whoever built it designed it for rapid redundancy."
Ebert turned, facing the General, his face ashen.
"Gods, Knut, but it's so like me, isn't it? Looking at it there, it feels like part of me has died."
The General studied his old friend a moment, then looked back at the part-dissected corpse. It was a perfect copy. Too good in some respects. He had seen the films of it before his men had neutralized it—saw how cleverly it had mimicked Ebert's voice and mannerisms. And if there had been something unnatural about it, something just a bit too animated about its speech, its gestures, that was only noticeable in retrospect. It had been good enough to fool Ebert's personal staff. But the eyes. . . When the thing had been cornered in Ebert's private suite, those eyes had burned, like the eyes of an addict.
"Who could have built this, Klaus? Who has the know-how?"
Ebert laughed uncomfortably. "GenSyn. MedFac, maybe. No one else. At least, no one on-planet."
The General looked up sharply, "You think it's from outside, then? From one of the colonies?"
Ebert dragged his eyes away from the dead thing on the table, then turned his back on it. "I don't know, Knut. Six months back I'd have said no, but I've seen a few strange things since then. Controls are less tight out there. The Edict has less force." He shook his head. "The Seven should do something, Knut. Now. Before it's too late."
"I know," the General said simply. But he was thinking of De Vore. If what the kwai Kao Chen had said were true it would explain much.
And Wyatt? He pushed the thought away. Wyatt was guilty. There was the evidence. Even so ...